Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Ladies and gentlemen, for this entire year, I have spent my time focusing on the most action-oriented topics that I can imagine.

I have focused you on things that you can do, and I have tried very hard to make my content actionable and not sensational.

But here as we close out 2025, an enormous news story has broken,

and I'm going to talk about it and talk about what it means for your future, my future,

and the future of the United States of America. But first, do you know what time of day many parents just flat out

dread? The answer is math time. Here's what happens. Your child comes home from school,

sits down with his math book and says, all right, time to do my math homework. Dad, can you help me?

And you sit down and open the workbook and there they are.

30, 40, sometimes 50 identical problems staring back at you. Problem after problem after problem.

And your child just shuts down. Because you know, of course, if we ain't crying, we ain't doing math.

Dad, when am I ever going to use this?

And honestly, you don't have a good answer.

Because if you can even remember how to factor a polynomial,

you certainly can't remember the last time you had to do it at the grocery store,

or last time you had to do it when paying your taxes,

or last time you had to do it when paying your taxes, or last time you

had to do it when accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud. And so you say,

I don't know. Guess what? It doesn't have to be like that. What if, instead of nonstop, endless problems,

and your child saying,

Dad, when do we ever have to use this?

What if every single problem were first introduced with a story,

wherein our wonderful friend Fred, our zany protagonist,

...