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Do it now. EffortlessEnglishClub .com Your Money or Your Life Your Money or Your Life it's the name of a book about financial freedom I did a book club on that book about that book it's an excellent book it is the book the number one book for financial freedom for normal people in my opinion this book had the greatest influence on me financially in terms of money and for becoming financially free you can see the title the title gives a choice your money or your life and the choice is which is most important Of course, your life.
Right? Your money. Money is just a tool.
Sorry, I just lost my mic for a second.
Money is a tool. Money is something that should serve us.
in our life, right, that we use in our life.
Money is not the point of life.
This is where so, so, so, so, so many people get lost, confused, distracted, deceived.
as they focus on money instead of the quality of their life because what does it mean this this phrase financial freedom what means that you are free of financial, financial means money related to money you're You're free from, mostly free from, money stress, financial stress.
And as we talked about in the book, kind of the main point of the book, the main idea of the book, is when we talk about your life, we're talking about time.
Time, that's the key point, that you're financially free when you don't need to spend a lot of time focused on money, making money, working for money.
That your true wealth, true wealth, is measured in time, not money.
It's not about how many dollars you make every month.
It's about having the time and yes, enough money to live the life you want to live instead of being a slave at a job that maybe you don't like or even if you like it but maybe you just don't want to be at your job so much away from your family, away from your kids away from other activities that you want to do I mean, one thing I hated working, I hated having jobs But even the few jobs that I didn't hate, that were okay, still took me away from my life, the other things in my life, too much. Working full time, you know, it was more than 40 hours a week.
Even if you work full time 40 hours a week, you then have to get to your job and get back home.
So that takes time, and if your job is a little bit far away, for some people that takes a lot of time every week.
Just getting to the job by the train or car or whatever, and then getting back home.
A lot of jobs want you to work more than 40 hours.
Even if they pay you overtime, it's still sucking up huge amounts of your time.
And the other part is energy.
So what I found is when I worked full -time, 40 hours a week or more, that I'd have to work 40 hours a week, several hours more just getting to my job and getting home.
And then the big one is I would be so kind of tired after my job that I was kind of useless for the rest of the day.
So I'd get home, let's say five or six.
But I'd be tired. so i wouldn't have the energy to do other things i love doing or enjoy doing right a lot of people do this right after work you just want to sit around and watch watch a movie or something you're just kind of recovering and even this can happen in the weekends where people they get kind of so tired or bored at their jobs that on the weekend they they don't have much energy or enthusiasm to do much else.
That's when I was single with no kids.
So now I can't even imagine it.
So if there's one idea you want from that book, and if there's one idea you want to know about financial freedom, is that it's measured in time.
It's about having the time to be free, to live your life.
That's what it means to be free, because nowadays, people are not slaves in chains.
The chains are financial.
We're part -time slaves for huge hours, huge numbers of hours every week.
So the point of the book is to gain financial freedom, meaning you don't need to work for money anymore.
That you have all your time to yourself to live your life as you want.
Now, you might still want to do some work that's meaningful to you.
That's fine, but you don't have to, to survive.
The reason I'm thinking about this book recently is I had a phone call with, well, some of you may remember her, Kristen from Learn Real English.
And I've been texting Joe, her husband.
They're my two closest friends.
And, man, they just got terrible news.
they live in san francisco a very very very expensive city and they were living in a rent controlled apartment for like 20 over 20 years they've been living in the same apartment and in san francisco there are laws to keep the rent down meaning that if someone's in an apartment the landlords the owners cannot raise the rent really high and really fast on them so what that really means is if you stay in one apartment your rent kind of stays the same so you can imagine they they've been living in the same apartment for 20 years their rent was super low but unfortunately there are also little ways
for the owners to cheat this system and And they basically just got kicked out of their apartment because the owners want to make more money is what it comes down to.
So they had to go searching for another apartment.
But now, all the rents in San Francisco are crazy.
I think it's the most expensive city in the United States, more than New York City.
and the most expensive rent, average rent.
So now, this new place they found, which is about the cheapest they could find, is going to be three times more rent.
The rent increased by 300%.
and they're unhappy, obviously.
To make it even worse, Kristen had recently retired.
So her husband, Joe, is still working at a job.
He makes quite good money at a computer company, a tech company.
He's a very good software engineer, programmer.
So because of that and because their rent was low, she was able to retire.
He said, you don't have to work anymore, it's fine.
So she was just volunteering.
And she, at the very least, she had financial freedom.
Great for her, wonderful.
She's kind of like me, too.
She hates jobs, doesn't like working.
I mean, I guess some people like it, but I don't.
She hates it, too. Well, because of this situation, because now they're moving into an apartment that costs three times as much, she will have to go back to work just to get a full -time job just to pay for the rent.
And she's really upset about it, you can imagine.
I can imagine too. I just can't imagine going from being retired, finally done, you know, being able to live your life and then just suddenly, unexpectedly, oh God, I got to find a full -time job again.
And it's not even the money, they can't even enjoy the money.
The extra money she makes will all go just to pay rent on the apartment.
So it's not going to be fun stuff like, oh, make extra money and go travel around the world, make extra money and buy some cool stuff.
Nope. Make extra money and give it to a landlord. This is the opposite of financial freedom.
The opposite. The opposite.
But it's a good case study.
It's a good example of the trap the financial trap the way we become slaves financially and the way we're trapped because now they've become trapped where now they both have to work full time jobs and one of them is just giving all their money away to a landlord Lord. And this is not unique.
Okay, it's kind of an extreme example because San Francisco is so expensive.
But I'd say on the whole, most Americans, not just Americans, I'd say people all over the world, this mentality is that when people make more money, they what?
They start spending more money.
This is, we're kind of programmed for it.
You get a raise, an extra thousand dollars a month, what do most people do?
They spend a thousand more dollars every month.
They get five thousand more dollars a month, they'll spend five thousand more dollars a month.
The spending increases with the income.
So it's like a treadmill, you know, the machine at the gym.
People run on it, you know.
You can run indoors but you never go anywhere you can run faster and faster and faster but the treadmill keeps moving so you never move and this is kind of an image a metaphor of what this kind of financial slavery really is like because most Most people think, if I make more money, then I'll be free.
I just need to make more money.
If I just had a thousand more dollars a month, I'd be free of money stress.
If I only had 5 ,000 a month, if I only had 10 ,000 a month, if I only had 100 ,000 a month, the number keeps going up, up, up.
but they never really become free because they keep spending just as much as they're making.
So I was talking to Kristen and, you know, my mindset on this and not only my mindset but my personal experience my personal experience is that Well, I think what they're doing is crazy.
Just my personal opinion.
Because it's not worth it.
To work 40 hours a week just to pay rent is insane.
It is crazy. It's miserable.
Now, you know, their idea is that they can just do this for five or six more years and then both of them can retire completely.
This is another thing that people do, another mindset people have. And again, in this book, you should read the book.
Go find my book club on this podcast or on my YouTube channel.
Read the book, Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin.
There might be other books with the same title, but The One You Want is Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin, and the other author is Joe Dominguez.
Because they talk about this too.
People get the mindset, this retirement, this idea of retirement, retirement.
The idea of retirement is that you will work, work, work, work, work for decades, trades you know over 40 years 45 years and depending on the country you know you work like crazy full -time until you're 65 or 62 or 67 or they keep raising it and then finally you'll be free finally you'll get that pension finally you'll get that retirement and then at the end of your life you'll have a few years where you're finally free and a lot of people die shortly after that so they spend their whole life slaving away usually often at a job they don't really like or at least working much more than they want
to just to have a few years at the end of their life where supposedly they'll be free And I've, you know, I talk about this all the time.
But the idea is then, you know, at that age, 67, 65, whatever, suddenly you're going to become this great adventurer and see the whole world and do all the things you wished you could do when you were younger.
The problem is that a lot of people, when they hit age 65, 67, they just don't have the same amount of energy the energy they had when they were 30, or even 40 or 50.
They've been working, working, working like crazy 45 years or more, and they're kind of ground down and they're tired, they may have some health problems. So guess what?
Most of them don't do all that great stuff.
They don't become world travelers and adventurers and live their dreams. Maybe they go on a cruise or something, and that's about it.
The time to live your dreams is now.
Not 40 years from now.
So, you know, while for my friends, maybe five or six more years seems like, okay, it's not too long, but on the other hand, that's a long time.
They're in their 50s now.
and six more years of working away, probably at a job she's going to hate, 40 hours a week, I mean, you're just burning time.
Time is the only thing we really have, and we never know how long we're going to live.
So what's the solution?
I talked about it. The solution, according to this book, and I agree with that a hundred percent a hundred percent a hundred percent the solution is you must cut cut cut cut cut your expenses as low as possible you're spending how much you spend especially what are called fixed expenses fixed means means that they don't change.
They don't move. So rent.
You have to pay rent every month, right, if you live in an apartment.
You can decide if you go how much money you spend on movies.
That's called discretionary income.
Discretionary means it can change.
It means it's you decide.
You can decide. So each month, if your money's tight one month, you just don't go to a movie or you don't rent a movie, right?
You spend less. Food is kind of in the middle, right?
You have to eat, so you definitely have some fixed food expense for sure.
But let's say going out to restaurants is discretionary.
You don't have to eat out.
If your money becomes really tight one month or one year, you can just, you know, buy groceries and cook at home you won't starve so it's the fixed those fixed costs the ones you can't avoid the ones you have to pay every month and they don't change you you can't do anything to make them go lower at least not immediately those are the killers those are the ones you must must must reduce as low as possible.
Those are things like rent.
Maybe health insurance depending on your age and your health situation.
In some places you have to have a car so it might be a car and car insurance.
And then a certain amount of food, obviously.
need to eat also things like utilities you know your power heat and for heat and air con lights water bill depend you know depending some places you are included in your apartment those costs and some they're extra but they're fixed right meaning they're you can't do a lot to change those you can do some things to try to reduce them a bit if you're really tight on money you know you you can, in the winter, you can just make it a little colder in your apartment, wear sweaters and jackets, but, you know, for the most part, they don't change a lot.
And for most people, the biggest one is rent, or if you buy your house, it's the payment, the bank payment for the house.
That's number one for, what, 90 % or more of people, is their housing cost. Housing is the big one.
Another point that the book makes, and I agree, is that it's easier to cut expenses for most people than to make more money, especially short -term.
Making more money is tough.
You know, you've got to, if you're working a job, then that means you've got to get a raise or you've got to do a job search and get out there and find a better job.
It can take quite a long time.
There's no guarantee.
And probably you're not going to get a huge jump unless you, you know, change careers.
It's hard to do. I'm not saying it's impossible.
It's not impossible, but it's hard. Even if you start your own business, which is a better way to make a lot more money.
Again, that takes time.
Most businesses are not instantly successful.
They require a lot of work, a lot of learning if it's your first time trying to make a business, and a bit of luck, and so it can take several years, even with a successful business, a good business, it can still take you several years until you increase your income, increase the amount of money you're making.
But cutting expenses, you can do very, very quickly.
And, you know, back when I was young, so in my, it was really in my 30s, thirties.
So fairly young, young compared to now.
Back in my thirties, I was desperate.
I had been already been working, you know, 12 years or so for 12, 13, 14 years.
I was sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of working.
And I was like, I ha how do I get my time back?
I just want to have a slower, more relaxing life.
I want to be able to go for long walks.
I want to be able to sit in coffee shops and read books.
And I just don't like the jobs that I'm doing.
So at that time I was a social worker and a part -time English teacher.
and I realized, well, making more money, these two jobs do not pay a lot.
I don't know how I can make more money.
I hadn't started my business yet.
So I realized, okay, well, I read this book, Your Money or Your Life, and I agreed with them.
I said, okay, well, cutting expenses.
So I just started cutting.
First, I just started living in the same place I was living and just trying to reduce, to spend less money, spend less money, find cheaper alternatives to things I was doing.
I was spending a lot of money eating out at restaurants at that time.
I was single and living alone.
So I started doing that less and going to cheaper restaurants.
And if I was going to eat out, I would try to eat out at lunch instead of dinner because lunches are always cheaper in restaurants than dinners, at least usually.
so I reduced, reduced, reduced my expenses how much I was spending but it still wasn't enough it wasn't enough to give me freedom and for me at that time my goal was I gotta still work, I need to make some money but I just want to do part time if I can work 20 hours a week that's not so bad it gives me then a lot more time a lot more freedom to do other things I want to do and to have a relaxed lifestyle.
So cutting those expenses helped but it wasn't enough and I realized, okay, this is it.
The big one is rent.
Rent is killing me.
And as many of you know if you've listened to me a long time I decided on an extreme experiment.
experiment, I decided, okay, I'm going to reduce my rent to zero.
What if I reduce my rent to zero?
Well, then I'm like, oh, I don't even have to work 20 hours a week.
I could work like 15 hours a week or something, like just a little bit.
And I'd still have plenty of money for food.
I could still eat at restaurants.
I could do all the other things I like to to do.
I could really enjoy my life.
I wouldn't have financial stress.
I'd still have plenty of money for everything else.
But I have to have zero rent.
And I read, I reread again, one of my very favorite books, American books, Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
It's all about living a simple Simple Life.
It was written back in the 1800s, before the American Civil War, like the 1850s or something.
And what Thoreau did, he had the same thought.
Same thing. He looked around and he's like, people slaving away just so they can get bigger, bigger, bigger houses.
More and more and more stuff.
And they never, they don't have enough time for their families.
They don't have enough time for their spiritual life.
They don't have enough time for anything else or energy because they're just working, working, working like slaves just to buy more and more stuff and live in bigger and bigger houses.
So at that time in America there was more wilderness.
So he just wandered into the woods outside his town to an area where nobody owned it and he just built a little wood house, a cabin.
He built a little wood cabin.
Very, very, very simple.
And it was next to a pond called Walden Pond.
That's where the title of the book comes from, Walden.
And he lived there and he showed, he kept very careful details of every cent, every penny, everything he spent, all the money he spent he kept account and he showed how incredibly cheaply he could live he caught fish in the lake he grew some beans and some corn and some stuff in a little in like a garden and he lived super simply because of that he hardly really needed to work he i think he had a couple little small jobs like like maybe he would go to somebody's house and fix something and they'd give him a little money you know so like he worked a few hours a week maybe and the rest of his days
he loved walking and he would just go for long walks in the woods he'd go to walk into the town he'd walk and visit friends or his friends would come visit him and he had this really relaxed easy free life because his housing was totally free and he was growing some of his own food too so inspired by that I thought, okay, there's not so much wilderness anymore, certainly not where I was living.
I was living in South Carolina and Georgia at that time, in the USA.
So I thought, well, what about a modern version of Walden?
What if I did what Thoreau did, but kind of a modern?
And I thought, well, what would that be?
And I thought, I could live in my car.
I already have a car, this old car.
I think I bought my car, that car I probably bought for about, a thousand dollars I think but you know it worked it was a little Toyota Corolla I'm like could I live and I had a dog at the time could I and my dog my dog and I could we live in that car I'm like hmm I wonder I just want to experiment I had a job in Japan already I already knew I was going to go live in Japan at the end of the summer, but this was kind of in spring, and I thought, you know, this is a good opportunity.
I can try it. I have some money saved up from my job, which I was sick of, and I thought, instead of working all through the summer at the job just to pay the rent, what if I just live in my car for the whole summer, and I just have the The whole summer free.
Like when I was a kid.
Like when I was a kid and school was out.
I just have summer free.
Completely free to do anything I want.
No stress about work at all.
This could be an experiment.
If it works, if the experiment works, I can do it again but do it longer when I get back from Japan.
So that's what I did.
I built this wood platform.
This little wood bed that went across the passenger side of my car.
I had to put the seat down.
I mean, it was super tight.
Toyota Corolla is not a big car.
And my dog would sleep in the half of the back seat, and I would sleep on this bed on the passenger side of the car.
And when I was sleeping, my nose was almost touching the ceiling, the roof of the car.
so I did it, and I did it for, what was it, three and a half months, I think, it was in this summer in Georgia, it's hot, it was hot, it was very hot, because I had no air con at night, but you know what, it was fantastic, it was difficult in some ways, like I said, it was uncomfortable, it's hot, it's like camping, but better than camping, because I didn't have to worry about rain or anything, but my days, once again, I'd almost forgotten the feeling of like when I was a child, of what real freedom feels like, that freedom to just wake up in the morning and you can just do anything you want,
and then you wake up the next day and it's the same, and the next day is the same, and there's no, oh no, I've got to go to work in two days, oh, I'd better better enjoy Saturday and Sunday because Monday is back to work again.
None of that. Total, complete freedom.
Wake up whenever I wanted, go to bed when I wanted.
It was awesome. It was great.
Sometimes I tell the story and people think, oh my god, that sounds really terrible.
But it was not terrible.
It was fantastic. Fantastic.
I would just park the car in different spots in the town where I lived.
It was Athens, Georgia where I went to university.
It's kind of a college town.
In the days, you know, usually my routine, I would wake up in the morning kind of early with the sun because the car would start to get a little hot, you know.
So I'd take my dog.
We'd go to this big, giant park near the university and go for a nice long walk like an hour my dog loved running around on the trails in the woods so we just go for this long walk it was great and then after that I'd get back in the car drive over to a little cafe and get myself a coffee or some juice a light breakfast just sit and relax take my time, no hurry take as long as I wanted to I would read a book or I had a journal and I would do some writing I'd meet up with a friend usually sometime during the middle of the day to do something I found these guys who played a game called Ultimate
Frisbee just using a frisbee, a disc disc, and it's a little bit like, I don't know, something like American football or soccer, but using a Frisbee.
It's hard to explain.
It's called Ultimate Frisbee.
Do a search. You'll see it.
But anyway, I would go play that with those guys.
And then what did I do for baths and showers?
Because I didn't want to be stinky and dirty, right?
so I had two options one option I would I could go to a gym I would just pay like a guest a guest fee for the day go do a workout lift some weights or something and then use their showers easy and not too expensive if you're not paying rent it's not hard to do that the other thing I did I would just bathe in one of the rivers rivers.
And, you know, I know most modern people now, I kind of think, oh my god, oh, that sounds weird, but, you know, I remember I traveled in India, my first trip abroad was to India, and I remember seeing people bathing in the rivers all the time, everywhere.
I saw it in Bangkok, you'll see it a little bit too, sometimes near the bridges, and I thought, you know, why not?
there was a river going through my town it's not a big city, so it wasn't polluted it was pretty clean, it wasn't stinky, it wasn't nasty so I got some special soap that wouldn't harm the environment so it was okay to use it in a stream people who do camping and hiking use it so I would take a little bit of that and a swimsuit because remember this is summer and I would just jump in the river where it was shallow and I'd use some of that soap and then rinse off in the river and I had my towel just look like I was swimming because I had my swimsuit my dog would get in and splash around the water
too it felt great I mean after a hot long day to get in the get in the river and just instead of like being indoors in a shower to be out you know with the trees and and the birds flying overhead and it It was wonderful.
Really wonderful. And then, and again, the evenings, like, I would go and, you know, I might go here.
Because it was a university town, there were a lot of, like, little cafes and clubs where people would play music, live music.
so a lot of times I would go you know listen to some live music or you know again go hang out at a coffee shop for a while there's a car on the road next to me and so I'd hang out you know and relax again and then back to the car find a nice quiet parking spot and go to bed again it was fantastic that was my first experience with real financial freedom as an adult of course when you're a kid you're lucky because your parents take care of everything and so for a lot of people that that age you know just childhood is kind of their only taste of freedom and because you know for many people school
is a terrible experience not an experience of freedom for many people I think a lot of countries people get summer break or there's a break maybe like a two month or three month break in school from school and for a lot of people that's like their best memory and even their only memory of real freedom of real financial freedom or just freedom in general it was similar for me I look back and my summers as a child were magical Magical.
Magical. And that's why.
Because I was free.
There was no school.
I was not an adult, so I didn't have to work.
So my whole day I could just spend playing and exploring or reading or doing anything I wanted to do.
And then we become adults and we think that we're kind of brainwashed to think that that's just for childhood.
As an adult, you've got to work, work, work, work all the time.
Work, work, work, work.
What does that mean?
Work for someone else.
Do what they tell you to do.
Follow their schedule.
Work, work, work. And then people will become parents.
And at least one of them usually goes off and has to work, work, work.
And they don't get to see their kids very much. If you're lucky, one parent, usually the mom, stays home.
So she's got the freedom to be with her kids all day.
But then what? School comes and they send the kids away.
So anyway, this experience was very powerful for me.
So I went off. I went to Japan.
I worked about six months in Japan.
ran for the job full -time job uh made some money and saved it and then i went traveling to thailand nepal india again and i think malaysia that that trip too then uh then i came back home and guess what went back home to georgia and i decided i'm doing it again i'm coming back home i am not going to get an apartment i bought a van i wanted to be a little more comfortable the second time, because I was planning to do it for a longer time.
So I decided once again I am not not not going to pay rent.
I'm not going to get an apartment.
I'm going to live in my vehicle again.
I bought a Toyota van when I came back, which was a lot more space than a Toyota Corolla.
A lot more. And I built a nice little bed inside it and I built a little bed for my dog.
And actually I got some.
I organized it so I had some storage so I had more spaces for clothes.
I also did a little bit of work on it.
I put an extra battery in it, a big car battery, and I got some fans, a couple of fans, that I could put in my windows at night that would blow out the hot air in the car and the van and would suck in the cooler night air, and that helped so much. And for the winter I just had a really warm sleeping bag and some big warm blankets for my dog.
And I had a place to, you know, like a big thing for, places where I could store some food and some, you know, something to drink and that kind of stuff.
And this time I lived in my van, the second time, I lived in my van for a whole year with my dog.
So I worked at a sandwich shop and I would deliver food, you know, like a pizza delivery, well, I would just deliver the sandwiches and I would deliver them, you know, around the town during the day and as part of that, you know, I think they paid me a little bit of money for gas, so every mile, kilometer that I would drive, I would get some money and they gave me a free lunch because I was working at them.
sandwich place or restaurant.
So I got to get a free meal every, you know, I think it was five days a week I did it.
And, uh, and of course they paid me a salary and in America people tip.
So I would get tips and just doing that, I made enough money to just work.
I don't know. I worked, might've just been like 12 hours a week.
I think it was actually three hours a day, four days a week, something like that.
It was minimal, not much. And once again, it was just like my other experience.
I got a gym membership this time so that I could just go and take a shower anytime I wanted at the local gym.
Because I knew it would not just be summer, so I'm not going to be taking a bath in the river in the middle of the winter.
And you know what? It worked out great again.
Again, I was free. And you know, at that point, after you taste that freedom again, especially as an adult, you don't want to go back.
And I never did, actually, go back.
This is why my friend recently, when Kristen told me, Kristen and Joe told me what happened, and that she's telling me how she's going to go back and work full time, like I just felt heartbroken for her because I'm imagining myself it's like once you have the freedom, you don't want to go back again.
To go back is terrible.
You start to realize this is how we're supposed to live.
We're supposed to be free.
We're not supposed to be slaving away for some company 40 hours a week or more.
Wasting our entire lives for some giant company that does not care for us at all.
so I worked that whole year, and then after that, I ended up going to, living in Thailand, and getting another master's, and teaching English, and blah blah blah, but basically, from that point on, I never worked full -time again, I had part -time jobs, and, and eventually, you know, I don't live in a car now, in case you're wondering, I have two children and a wife.
No, that's not the point.
The point is I'm not trying to tell people go live in a car.
The point of my stories about the car and the van the point is just to show you how determined you can be.
How committed I was to being financially free.
How committed I was to being free again, how committed I was to really cutting my expenses.
And in fact, totally cutting rent.
So most people, you tell them this, oh, you need to cut your rent.
And they think, oh, well, most people don't want to do it.
They think whatever they're living in now is necessary.
Oh, no, I could never move back to a smaller place.
or they think if they move to another place they'll just cut their rent a little bit but you've got to be extreme if you really want to be free you must be willing to make huge cuts to your expenses you've got to be willing you must take big, strong bold action Tony Robbins calls it massive action He says when you have a dream or a goal, you must immediately take massive action.
Big, big action. Not little changes.
For something like being free financially, you can't just do little things.
I told you I tried that in the beginning.
I tried, oh, I'll cut my restaurant spending a little.
Oh, I'll cut this a little.
Those little cuts were positive, but definitely not enough for me to become free, especially as a social worker or an English teacher.
I was not making a lot of money, so I had to cut, cut, cut huge amounts of money out of my spending.
And I didn't want to, I still wanted to have a nice, relaxing life.
life i wanted to be able to go out to a coffee shops i love doing that my life i like going to coffee shops i love sitting in cafes and uh you know reading and writing i want to be able to meet my friends and go do things when i wanted to be able to go to a restaurant sometimes so rent was the logical choice and it is for most people so if you are not happy in your work if you feel like you don't have enough freedom, time freedom in your life, I recommend read the book, Your Money or Your Life, and I recommend the first thing you should focus on is your rent, your housing, and you've got to cut
it. You've got to cut it in half at least. At least cut it in half.
That means, yeah, you might have to move to some tiny little place.
You want it to be safe.
You don't want it to be in a drug and crime area, but otherwise it doesn't need to be pretty.
It doesn't even need to be super comfortable.
It certainly doesn't need to be big.
Do this. Do the opposite of what everyone else does.
And if you get a raise, if you do start making more money, don't don't don't go get a bigger place don't go out and get a more expensive apartment if you can find a bigger place that's cheaper okay great but don't go spend money quickly right this is what people do don't go buy a nicer car don't buy a nicer more expensive car don't get a nicer house or apartment that costs more.
That's crazy. You're just making yourself a slave again.
If you get a raise and you're making, I don't know, $500 more every month, just save it.
In fact, if you're smart, you'll cut your expenses.
Every time you make more money, you'll reduce your spending even more.
And now the gap, the gap, the extra between how much you make and how much you spend will get bigger, bigger, bigger.
That's the game. That's how you become financially free.
Not by making $10 million or a billion dollars or whatever number people have in their head.
Nope, it's just by making your income much, much, much, much higher than your expenses.
And mostly that means making your expenses super low.
so if you do get lucky and you start making tons and tons of money and become super rich okay great then you can spend a lot more and still have extra and still be free you know we all love that idea that's the sort of celebrity idea we see in the news someone makes 20 million dollars okay great then you can get a nice big house but for most people it's better to live in your van it's better to live in the cheapest safe apartment you can find in your town or city it's better not to have a car and instead ride a bike way better that's how you'll have freedom and you know I still follow these principles
Of course, I have more money now.
I do make my income as much higher now than it was when I was 32, 33 and living in my car.
But I still keep my rent low.
Super low compared to most people.
I think our rent is like $700 a month.
Which, you know, that's that was that would have been high for me when I was in my 30s but now compared to my income and I have you know we're a family of four it's actually it's pretty low and I I'm even thinking of moving you know at my sister's we pay zero rent none so we're only paying for our place in Japan and since we're not going to to be there as our main residence anymore uh it's even 700 seems crazy so i think we're gonna we're thinking next time we go back to japan we're gonna move to a much cheaper place we might be able to find a place for like 450 a month something like that and you
know what we all we all my wife and i and our two kids we all sleep in the same one room it's just one in Japan our living room is our bedroom it's the same room it's just basically is one big room like a not very big but it's it's one room with with the kitchen attached to it kind of a the kitchens kind of you know next to and part of it there's no wall and then there's a tiny little office so we just Just kind of Japanese style.
We sleep on the floor.
And then when we wake up in the morning, you just get the mattresses and roll them up and you stack them in a pile on the corner of the room.
And then the bedroom becomes the living room.
And at night, the living room becomes the bedroom.
So we just live out of one room, basically.
Four people. and you know for Americans especially this is you know most Americans think we are crazy most Americans you know with our income and with our family size you know they think every kid needs their own room and then the parents need their own room and then you also need another living room and the kitchen needs to be a whole separate room and they're living in these big you know three four bedroom houses or apartments and spending spending three, four, five times as much money as we do.
But it's not worth it because then you're no longer free because if you spend all that extra money on rent and housing, now you've got a lot of pressure to make more money and you're not saving any.
So then somebody, at least one of the parents, becomes a work slave. and I want to be with my children all day, every day.
I'm with them when they wake up.
I'm with them all day until they go to bed every single day since they were born and they're six.
And I plan to continue doing that.
In fact, that's the greatest joy and happiness of my life is that this financial freedom Freedom has allowed me to be in their lives as their dad at home all the time.
And their mom is also at home all the time.
They have both parents at home all the time.
There's nothing better than that.
No amount of money, no nice house, no nice car, none of it's worth it.
none of it's better than having the time to be with your kids all day every day and also because of that I don't have much pressure to make a lot of money from the business I can I'm pretty relaxed about it as you probably have noticed and uh because of that we have we We still have enough income where we can travel as a family so we can be in Japan a few months and we can buy a plane ticket and fly and stay here in Indiana where we now live most of the year.
But then, you know, we can go back every year to Japan and spend a few months and see family there.
And we can go on vacations as the kids get older.
I plan to do more traveling.
because we live so cheaply we're free we have enough money to do that and we have enough time to do that I wish everyone would live this way or could live this way I'm not saying you can do it right now I don't know your situation we're all different but I tell you if you get that book and you commit, commit, commit to making bold actions, to taking massive action.
You make this an important goal and you don't give up.
You can do it. So to bring it back to the original story, this is what I would tell Kristen and Joe.
I mean, this is my opinion on what they should do.
And I don't give, I don't give them advice unless they ask.
And they didn't ask, so I'm not going to tell them directly.
But, you know, I think they're crazy to, to be prisoners in this city of San Francisco that's so, so, so expensive.
And I know he makes a lot of money, but now they're also spending tons of money.
And now one of them, you know, now they both have to work full time just to be able to Save some money And pay this crazy rent So now Instead of living free They could retire now You know I think they could retire now If they would just cut their expenses super low If they would be flexible I think they probably got enough saved They could go live in an area in a place that's cheap, where they could get really cheap rent.
They could go live in Southeast Asia, for example.
They could just go live in another country and maybe pay a tiny amount.
25 % of what they're paying now.
20%. 10 % of what they're paying now they could possibly do.
They could reduce their rent down quite low, still be comfortable and safe.
live in a place that still is nice that they would enjoy but that has where they could do all the things they love doing but so much cheaper and instead of slaving for six years just to pay this rent and keep trying to save a little more money waiting for the day they can be free again instead they can be free right now and this is the mindset you know retire now I don't even if you're 25 now my mindset is always be retired or never retire but this is the same idea meaning don't be a slave for money live live live live your life live the life you dreamed of if you dreamed of traveling the world
do it don't wait till you're old and if you are old go do do it still.
If you dream of being an artist, be an artist now.
If you want to be a writer and write a book, write it.
Stop slaving away at a job and thinking you're going to do it when you retire.
Stop. That's just waiting to live.
That's what you're just saying is, oh, I'll start living.
I'll start living my dream.
I'll start living my life.
I'll start really living and being free when I retire.
And until then, I'm just going to be a slave. Don't do it.
Take massive action.
I wish they would do that, you know, because I think they could do it and it's such a tragedy.
It's like, instead of wasting the next six years slaving where they can't do anything, they can hardly be able to take vacations, they can't do it, they're just terrible.
Instead, they could just be living, doing all the things they love to do, living their dream life.
They could start right now.
And, that's my message to you.
Your dream life could start, if not today, much sooner than you think.
Not some far away time when you retire.
You have to choose your money or your life which is the most important.
Get that book and I hope that you too will be financially free.
That you'll be free to live the life of your dreams. Lots of love to you.
I'll see you next time.
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