Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. My name is Joshua Sheets. Many years ago, right after college,

I spent some time working for a marketing consulting company. And I had an experience there

that related to one of my favorite topics. I don't remember who the customer was or who the plan was,

but we were creating some kind of marketing plan. And it seemed appropriate to

me to offer a suggestion that we created, that we create an ad involving camping. And for me,

camping has always been something that I really enjoyed. I'll tell you why in a moment, but it's some of my

favorite parts of my life

as a child have been when I've gone camping. And so I opened my mouth and I suggested something

camping related, one of the senior marketing consultants. She did it very kindly, I'm sure,

but basically she just jumped on me and she said, Joshua, don't ever let me hear you suggest anything relating to camping ever again.

She said camping is basically the ultimate black hole in the marketing space.

Like it just doesn't work.

Nobody wants to do it.

It sounds nice, but don't ever suggest anything related to camping.

Don't ever use camping imagery.

Don't come at me with camping, basically. Well, today I'm going to break that rule, and I'm going to tell you why I believe

that you and your family should consistently go camping, whether you like to do it or not. Now, a little bit of background on my story.

You know, just this last week, I took my family camping. And I took my family camping because,

for me, it has all the benefits that I'm going to share with you, but it's also an important

part of my family culture. Growing up, my father had seven children and he didn't have very much money.

But somehow, you know, they traveled a good bit.

And so at some point in time when he had a bunch of young children, he was thinking,

...