0:00:00 - 0:00:22 So I made this video not too long ago called Ride the Tiger. And in it, I described some strategies you could use to encounter more than average success even in the de decaying world that we live in. I know this is a topic of some interest amongst many people. And so I found a specific example of the 0:00:22 - 0:00:47 sort of thing I'm talking about here on Twitter. And so I wanna go through this post today. And if you haven't seen that video, I encourage you to look it up, Ride the Tiger, you'll find it on my channel. So the main idea of that advice is that the average situation is decaying in real time, but you 0:00:47 - 0:01:10 only get the average if you do what everyone else does. And so one of the big differences in modern times versus the decades that preceded them is that you can't do the same thing that everyone else did or does. That's a fundamental shift. It's not the same as it used to be. It's not the same in terms 0:01:09 - 0:01:26 of following the same pattern. It's also not the same as far as following the crowd. If you do what everyone else does, you're going to get the same result that they get and it's not good. But there are so many paths like this one we're going to go through that are out there that are opportunities for 0:01:26 - 0:01:47 young people and for slightly older people, um, the doors tend to close the older you get, depending on the choices you made before. But if you're in high school or earlier right now, hey, the world's still your oyster. So that being said, one of the reasons people don't go off the path is because it's 0:01:46 - 0:02:06 much easier to just follow everyone else. And uh because of human nature, most people will tend to go in paths that are chosen because of their ease, not because they're necessarily best. The things that are best usually carry a higher cost and that's not something that, that most people are willing 0:02:06 - 0:02:33 to deal with. And so these, these one off kind of solutions that, that certainly won't fit everybody's situation and it certainly won't match what most people want to do. Um, they're, they're, they're more custom. So let's let's get into one of these. Ok. So this guy, um, just to familiarize you with 0:02:33 - 0:02:57 him, he has been posting things about uh progress reports about this cabin project he's been working on for a long time. Now, his, his advice here, it is definitely worth reading. He said if he's eight, if he was 18 and earning 45,000 A year. He presents a plan where he could own a house by 21 and be 0:02:57 - 0:03:22 mortgage free with a second house on 20 to 30 acres by 25. And his plan is completely plausible. Ok. So the first thing I'm gonna do is actually not go line by line through this. I want to go through somebody pushing back on this idea that an 18 year old could make 45,000 a year. It's down here somewhere 0:03:21 - 0:03:47 . Here you go. It's extremely rare for 18 year olds to be making 45,000 a year. And this is one of my main points. Who cares if it's extremely rare. The rarity of an event doesn't imply its possibility. It is very true that most 18 year olds do not make 45,000 a year the first reason, but that has nothing 0:03:47 - 0:04:13 to do with their ability to. The first reason is because most 18 year olds don't work at all. They're still on their mom's teat, ok. They're living in their parents' basement or in their regular bedroom. Very few young people have a job at all before 18 today. That's one main problem that, that it causes 0:04:13 - 0:04:38 so many secondary problems. Ok. Issue number two, 4, 18 year olds that work who work, how many of them make this much? Well, not very many. Why? Because they're stupid. Now, a lot of people are gonna get rubbed the wrong way by me putting it this way, but there's no other way to put it if there are jobs 0:04:37 - 0:05:02 posting at $21 an hour and there are, and you're working for less than $21 an hour. That's your choice. Right. Why would anyone work a job where you make less than that? If there are walk on jobs available where you can make that? And I know everyone's gonna say, oh, I've applied at all these places 0:05:01 - 0:05:25 . No one's calling me back. Have you applied at Wendy's? The Wendy's by me pays that much an hour. Well, my Wendy's doesn't pay that much. Find one that does. You don't have to live where you live. So what, what is this a case of, let's wrap all of this shrink wrap this into one problem. You aren't being 0:05:25 - 0:05:48 honest about the constraints that you're putting on the problem. This is, this is a modern problem of, of constraints, invisible constraints. Let's call it invisible constraints. You see it in dating, you see it in career. You see it in housing. All these financial complaints. People have massive constraints 0:05:47 - 0:06:14 on their search, but they're not being explicit about those constraints. I mentioned the Wendy's here hires a 20. You could be a bus driver where I live and I think they pay 2250 for to be a bus driver and they'll train you right. So, and most waitresses make a heck of a lot more than that. Bartenders 0:06:13 - 0:00:00 , you can't be a bartender at 18. But, so what are the constraints on this? Well, you, maybe you say, well, I'm not working at Wendy's. That's a constraint. You understand? So, one, it doesn't matter if it's rare, it matters if it's possible. And two pay attention to your invisible constraints. Now, 0:00:00 - 0:07:04 one invisible constraint on this guy's thread which we'll now get back into is a fact that very few people are willing to be self-employed. Almost everyone would prefer someone else handling the, the ecosystem of red tape and seeming risk. And that's why people apply and get these W-2 jobs. That's almost 0:07:04 - 0:07:32 everyone who's employed gets paid on, on a, a salary or on, um, hourly on a W-2. And they have no idea about payroll taxes. All these other things that you have to worry about when you're, when you're self employed or you're the owner of a business. So they're too scared to venture out and do something 0:07:31 - 0:07:50 like this. And that's why, that's the number one reason why people wouldn't follow this guy's advice, which is not a one size fit all, but it would work for a whole lot of people. A lot of people could do this before it couldn't be done anymore. All right. So this guy says the first thing you need is 0:07:49 - 0:08:12 $30,000 now that, you know, is hilarious to most people who, who can't get $6 together for an overpriced coffee. But it's totally possible. And so what he says now in this, in this, the guy already got a job in this scenario working Monday through Friday and making 45 K. And he said, he says, I'm picking 0:08:11 - 0:08:31 up work from a contractor on Saturdays to make some extra money. And then you're also learning on the job how to do construction, which you, you will see is gonna be important later. Well, I would actually simplify this and say, if you're 18, just go get a job in construction. There are many places around 0:08:31 - 0:08:50 the country where you can get paid 21 or better per hour doing construction and in many cases, you can walk on the job and make that much. It's certainly the case where I live. But there are a lot of places with lower cost of living where you can make really, really good money just walking on the job 0:08:50 - 0:09:08 again, constraints. So people say, well, I don't wanna go work in the oil fields in North Dakota. Ok. There are other ways you can do it. But the point is what are your constraints and what do you care about more? Because if you, if you are more concerned about doing what all your friends are doing or 0:09:08 - 0:09:25 not moving away from home or, you know, I don't want to take this job that people are gonna look down on me for in the case of working at Wendy's. Well, then you've chosen what's more important to, you don't complain about not being able to make money. And if you say, well, my parents, my grandparents 0:09:25 - 0:09:47 , they were all able to have these wonderful jobs just waiting for them right out of high school. Go watch a video I made called Make Up For Men and I dress that there. So get a job, you work construction, you're making enough money that you can stack away $30,000 and you could do that in a year or two 0:09:47 - 0:10:11 . OK. So this guy gives three years for that. And so your objective is in this scenario to save up $30,000 in cash because he correctly says money opens the door. So many people starting out today, they don't understand the idea of compound interest when you make a spreadsheet showing how much money 0:10:11 - 0:00:00 compounds with interest. So that means that you're, you're making some percent of interest and you're reinvesting it. You need to look at that chart and see that things increase exponentially when you compound resources. So how does this work outside of the realm of compounding interest in terms of, 0:00:00 - 0:11:00 of the simple situation of depositing money in a, into a bank? Well, it, it it happens in life opportunities compound. So you have to understand that, that it might seem like it's not worth it having a second job or working more hours or, or doing something that, that most people would consider ridiculous 0:10:59 - 0:11:25 to drastically cut down your cost of living. But doing all those things early on are going to pay dividends for years and years down the road and the benefits go exponential. I had a friend relatively recently and I, he was sitting on an unusual amount of cash. He was thinking about maybe buying his 0:11:25 - 0:11:46 first house, but he wasn't quite there yet. And it was just sitting in his bank account and I said, hey, why don't you put that into some stable investment? Like t bills happen to be paying high interest right now. Uh, historically, high interest anyway. And, and he said, well, I did the math on that 0:11:46 - 0:12:09 and I would only make, and it was some amount that was roughly equivalent to about two weeks of work per year in interest on his savings. And I said, so it's free money and of course, you have to pay a little bit of tax on that. But he said, yeah, but that's just not worth the stress. I said it's not 0:12:08 - 0:12:31 worth eight minutes of clicks on a screen to make two weeks of what your normal job pays. Yeah, it's just not that big of a deal. Well, guess what that mentality carries through everything you do in life. And if you jump, if you skip over all of the seemingly small opportunities, which I don't even think 0:12:31 - 0:12:55 that's small, but whatever in aggregate, you're going to have an abysmal life compared to what you potentially could. And so saving up $30,000 seems like a Moonshot for most people. It's just, they can't even think about having that kind of cash, but most young people today, but it's not that hard even 0:12:55 - 0:13:19 today. It's not that hard. You just have to, to trace that through the smaller term periods of time and each little decision you make, you know, do you want to buy water in a can for $2 a can or do you want to drink water for free or for almost free if you're on municipal water? Ok. So you get to the 0:13:19 - 0:13:39 point where you've got 30,000 in cash. And in his scenario, he started at 18 and now he's 21 and you have a few years of construction experience, you know what you're doing there. You didn't waste any time in college, by the way. So now what he's gonna look for is a property and he's gonna intentionally 0:13:39 - 0:13:59 try to find what is called a distressed property and maybe that distress is financial. He doesn't really talk about that, but you want a property that needs a lot of work. Ok? There are a lot of details in this. This isn't the full story, but you wanna find something that and this is wise here. He would 0:13:59 - 0:14:22 look for a property whose faults are things that match his skills and capacity. And so in other words, you, it's not like you want a property that you're gonna need a $2 million piece of equipment to fix up. You want to find a property that matches the skills that you've gained and has faults that you 0:14:22 - 0:14:41 can fix yourself. So, this example he gives is, is an overgrown property. Well, that's really easy to fix. You just get some goats, put up a nice fence and get some goats and they'll take care of that, but you could do it by hand as well. Um, but you know, you, you can repaint exteriors, you can redo 0:14:41 - 0:15:00 bathrooms and kitchens and that might seem like it's way too much for, I don't know, a normal person to do, but anyone who's worked construction for any amount of time, definitely three years could handle that. Ok. You could figure out how to do that without any construction. If you just look at youtube 0:14:59 - 0:15:23 , I speak from experience. I've remodeled a whole bunch of bathrooms at this point. Uh, 123, I've done tons of tile. You know, you can figure these things out if you're at least middling intelligence and you've got a little bit of, uh, of courage and determination. All right. So he says he would look 0:15:23 - 0:15:41 for a house that really needs help, probably not plumbing, whatever. And then he would spend the next two years fixing it up. Now, in his scenario, he's still doing his Monday through Friday job. And so he's got to fix up the house on nights and weekends and this is where the youth comes in because I 0:15:41 - 0:16:04 did this sort of, we bought a crack house. I mean, it looked worse than this when I was 25 newly married and basically broke. And we got into this house. It was the only house we could afford in the town we were living in and I fixed it up over the next 2.5 years and I was doing it on nights and weekends 0:16:04 - 0:16:28 . I had, um, more than one job and it can be done. And if I could do it from 28 to around 30 it's certainly doable for someone who's 21 you'll have a lot more energy. Ok. So then he makes this very important point and this is what I'm talking about. When you're looking to color outside the lines, you're 0:16:28 - 0:16:50 looking to find, you wanna ride the tiger, you wanna find opportunities that everyone has, but no one's taking, this is one of the things that just seems like something floating out there, but turns out to be much more than just another option. It's extraordinarily valuable and you have to learn to see 0:16:49 - 0:17:10 and leverage these opportunities that seemed like one thing in a big basket. But it turns out they're more valuable than, than anything in the basket and maybe everything in the basket combined. There's so many things like that in the modern world. It, and it's a, it's a feature of complex systems, but 0:17:09 - 0:17:39 people just just aren't very good at that. And this is, this is a perfect example of this. It turns out turns out the taxes are very high. Income tax is very high. And it turns out that young people usually in so 18 to 21 year old people don't have a whole ton of things they can do to make six figures 0:17:39 - 0:18:08 . But it turns out that if you sell a house and you've made money on that house, you, if that's your primary residence for two or more years, you pay no income tax up to 250,000 in profit. I believe that's the cap right now. So you really have to think about what's that, what that's worth. So the, the 0:18:08 - 0:18:24 thought itself is outside the realm of what normal people do. Normal people don't think like this. They just say, oh, I need money. Oh, I must work. Oh, robot, robot, robot, they're sheep. They just go with what everyone else does. You have to look at the opportunities that exist that are outside of 0:18:24 - 0:18:57 the norm. If you can clear, let's, let's call it 250,000 on a house that you fixed up for two years. You've lived there for at least two years and you sell that house, you now have 100 and 25,000 a year for the two years you worked and you get it tax free. So if you're a single person and you were to 0:18:57 - 0:19:27 work in order to clear 100 and 25,000 to net 100 and 25,000 after taxes, you'd have to make something like 100 and 75,000. And that's a lot of money. That's not easy to do. It's, it's not easy to make 100 and 75,000 on a W-2 job as an 18 to 23 year old. We can club the, the age range here, but you get 0:19:27 - 0:19:43 the point. So what kind of a difference would that make in your life? Because you look at this and you say, yeah, but this is overwhelming. I mean, who would want to do all this? You're just out there beating your own trail? There's all this risk. And I mean, and I know I've been there when you're, when 0:19:43 - 0:20:01 you buy AAA messed up house and you're sitting in that every day, that's a lot of stress to deal with. You have to learn to overcome the stress. You can get to the point where believe it or not, it doesn't stress you out at all. And then it, that's an added benefit. And you want to put a price tag on 0:20:01 - 0:20:22 that. What would it be worth to be able to walk into the, the least organized, most chaotic, completely unbounded problem situation where you don't even know where to start? You have no idea if you're gonna be able to do it. And by the way, you just locked in your life savings into this thing. What would 0:20:22 - 0:20:47 it be like to have such mechanisms for dealing with this sort of thing that you could walk into that and not be stressed at all that you could live with that each night and go to bed peacefully and not lose any sleep. The only way you can learn to do hard things is by doing hard things. Anyone who lifts 0:20:46 - 0:21:09 weights knows this, right. And it's a principle that applies to so many things in life. So, but it is, it is understandably this is a, this is a high barrier for people to climb over because it's, it's usually its way out of, outside of anyone's comfort zone. Right. But what would the reward be? And 0:21:09 - 0:21:39 that's the point. What other path would you take? So that in just a few years out of high school you have, say $250,000 in cash. I mean, short of bringing things across the border illegally. I'm not sure what else you could do to make that kind of money at that age. Now, there are things that, that can 0:21:39 - 0:21:59 be done, but we're talking about things that any normal person could just walk into and do. There just aren't that many of them. Ok. And what do normal people do? Well, at 23 they're saddled with crippling lifelong student debt. They have a worthless degree. Their ideas are probably full or sorry. Their 0:21:59 - 0:22:22 heads are full of nonsense ideas that they even, uh unknowingly picked up during the, the mandated classes they had to take that had nothing to do with their degree. And they're probably coming into a position or a, a field where there just aren't very many open jobs and that those jobs pay less with 0:22:22 - 0:22:42 every passing day because they don't keep up with inflation. Ok. So what's the next step? Well, from there, this guy says that he would then buy the piece of land. He actually wanted to live on long term and he'd look for for some acreage which again, this is like talking about having 30,000 in cash 0:22:42 - 0:23:11 for most people. We may as well be talking about unicorns and you know, flying cars. Well, it is possible still to buy land with acreage. It's still possible. And yes, it's, it's, it's exorbitantly expensive in s uh some places, maybe it's fair to say most it's overpriced in all places, but it is still 0:23:11 - 0:23:35 available to buy at approachable prices in places across the country, not in every place. I'm saying there are places many places where you can do this. And so he would look for something for 2000 an acre and you can still find this and then he'd buy the lot and build his own house. Now, here you get 0:23:35 - 0:23:54 into another layer of complexity which would further overwhelm people who are overwhelmed at it just the beginning of this obviously, but you need to know the, the building codes and, and other regulatory red tape of the county you want to build in and this matters and you'd have to look into that. But 0:23:54 - 0:24:18 this guy built a really sweet cabin for $42,000. And so between the land cost and the house cost, the point is you could do this. Now, you might look at that and you might say, well, I can't build a house even if I can figure out how to remodel a house, which is certainly, I wouldn't say it's easier 0:24:17 - 0:24:39 . I think in some ways it's actually a lot harder. But be because you're, you're not doing something from scratch. You have to get into this thing that's already been done and make it right. And usually it's a lot more complicated. But remodeling is, is more easily partition with a house. It's like you 0:24:39 - 0:24:58 got to do the whole thing at once until you get to a certain stage. And then you can break it down into things that, that mentally you can partition off. But the thing is, is there are other options. Manufactured homes are one option and it, it, they cost a lot more than 42,000, but you can certainly 0:24:57 - 0:25:20 get there. Ok. There are other paths of as well. You, you might want to pay somebody to build you a traditional house on the land that you bought. And in that case, you might be short of cash and you might have to do something like live in some sort of temporary situation. And shockingly, you can, you 0:25:20 - 0:25:41 could drop 3 to $6000 and get a small used travel trailer and live in that and in most areas of the country that'd be sufficient for the winter. And so there are options is the point. But again, invisible constraints, people will look at that and say I can't live in a travel trailer. Well, you choose 0:25:41 - 0:26:03 not to, it's not that you can't, you choose not to. So that's fine. But just realize that every choice you make is a selection between options. And you can't say there is no option. In this case, you can just say, well, I choose my current option over the alternative and that's fine. But then you got 0:26:03 - 0:00:00 to deal with that. And so you get to pick which one you want the most, right? Ok. So that's pretty much what he goes on to say that he, he built a barn and whatever. Ok. So, um, one very obvious thing and this comes back to some I said earlier, obviously, the older you are, the harder this is to do. 0:00:00 - 0:26:49 Why? One? Because there's an increased likelihood that there are other people depending on you. And you probably can't go and do something like work every waking hour of your life because you have to spend time with people who depend on you or excuse me or the other thing is that when you, you and I'm 0:26:49 - 0:27:12 , I'm gonna specifically orient my, my comments here to young men, but they apply wherever they apply. When you're with somebody, the, the constraints for solving problems aren't just the ones you create. They're the ones you share. And so when you're with somebody, if you're a young man, odds are the 0:27:12 - 0:27:36 woman you're with will be less willing to deal with situations that, that you would have to go through in order to launch a plan like this. And that's one of the benefits of getting started on this early. You do all this, you're all set up by 23 maybe 24 maybe 25 but you're still young, you could still 0:27:36 - 0:28:02 totally get married and have tons of kids, right? If you have a paid off house on land that you own at 25 you are a freaking catch. Ok. Now, will most women realize that? No, but who cares what they think again, this is back to, but most people don't make $45,000 a year, most 18 year olds. No, they don't 0:28:02 - 0:28:27 . Who cares? You're not? Most people, you do what you want to do for you. It's about whether it's possible, not, whether it's popular, it's about possibility, not how difficult it is. It's about whether it's worthwhile. Do you understand the difference? So people could totally do this and you, you could 0:28:27 - 0:28:53 be a guy and do this. You could be a girl and do, do this. It doesn't matter. Ok, but it's easier to do as a single person unless you have a really awesome other person. Ok. Spouse, probably. If that person wants to go all in with you, that's great. Now, when I did this, I was married, my wife had zero 0:28:52 - 0:29:20 interest in helping with renovations, which really was stinky. But we also started having kids and she was more inclined to take care of the kids while I was doing this work. And I'll tell you because I've been through it. That is not easy to do. It adds several layers of difficulty into all of this 0:29:19 - 0:29:40 when, when you have to um take care of a family as you're doing something like this. So it's definitely easier to do when you're young and when you're single and obviously there's a lot of wear and tear on your body as you get older. Um This is not something that I would get excited about doing at 38 0:29:39 - 0:30:01 . I did it around 28 and uh it was still obviously physically taxing. So anyway, um yeah, food for thought, this is one potential thing that would totally work. So if that fits your situation or someone, you know, be open minded to the possibility.