Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast, Episode 2. I'm your host Joshua Sheets.

So I thought a lot about how to begin this podcast. I've gone down a few different rabbit trails in my mind.

For example, I question should I jump right into the tactics of what type of retirement account to open or what type of investment to choose

or how to save money on your living expenses. But I think I'd like to begin somewhere else. Like to

begin with a question, what do you really want?

And then that would lead naturally to the second question, why?

I read and consume, probably like many of you, a lot of financial literature. And I think about a lot of arguments, I think a lot of the debates that are commonly

had about what's the better thing to do.

And I've come to the conclusion that there are lots of great things to do. And just about

every decision that somebody makes could be correct given their circumstances if they know what they want

and what they're trying to achieve. So the best place to start with financial planning is what do you want?

What are your goals?

Now the challenging thing is that most of us, me included, often don't exactly know what we want. If we did,

we'd probably be a lot closer to it than we are right now. So I think there's a period of

self-searching soul-search, self-discovery as you kind of figure out what it is that we actually

want.

But that's got to form the foundation of our financial planning conversation.

When I chose the title for this podcast Radical Personal Finance, I chose it because I'm drawn to the extremes. I'm drawn to the people who live

radically. The interesting thing is I think I'm not the only one who's drawn to

that. I think many people are drawn to that. We're often

drawn to extreme stories, stories of extreme wealth and success, story of extreme poverty, stories of extreme

success. poverty, stories of extreme success, extreme sacrifice. And I think the reason that we're

...