Big Changes This Year | Why I Took My Money Out of the Stock Market

Hi everybody, welcome back to the cabin. My name's Shawn James here from My Self Reliance if you're new to the channel. And this is the first week of January 2019, so happy new year. Haven't uploaded any videos on this channel yet this year and I'm not even sure if I did in December. If you've been following my other channel, you know I've been pretty busy over there doing a variety of things. And in my New Year's Day video, I talked about all the things I'm going to be doing here this year at the cabin. So what's different about this channel? Why would you follow this channel instead of just subscribing and following My Self Reliance? Well, on this channel what I try to do is answer a lot more of your questions about how to not only live this lifestyle the way I'm living it now, but also how I got to this point in my life at 48 years old. I basically retired at 44 and started pursuing this and then last year really made inroads into this new wilderness lifestyle. Some exciting things happened just in the last week that I haven't told anybody, not on my other channel, or even some family members don't know yet, but my wife and I made a significant investment in our future this week that is exciting for our family, our kids, and also for this channel and for anybody who's interested in watching what we're doing here. Basically, what we've done is, don't wanna disclose too much, give away the surprise because it's going to happen much later in the year, but essentially what we've done is enabled or freed up enough time for me to be basically here every day instead of running into town to do all the shopping and uploading videos and stuff. So, that's all I can say. It's a lot more exciting maybe than it sounds and maybe less intriguing than it sounds, but significant change. So, what I'm doing here at the cabin, if you're brand new to both channels, is that I'm setting up this wilderness lifestyle and in order to do that, what I need is, of course, a house, which is the cabin, which I've basically got to the point where it was livable probably, I would say spring of 2018. I built this forest kitchen, this outdoor kitchen, so we can do all of our summer cooking out here. Last summer, summer 2018. Currently working on this sauna bath house, which is basically like a full bath house with a shower, I guess you could call it, in there and a sauna and little change area and what, a sink and stuff like that for brushing teeth and shaving, stuff like that. So, that's basically the bathroom and then we have the outhouse next to it. So, essentially getting to the point where it's a fully functioning homestead. I have a few more things I'm adding this year, like the cellar for food storage, a smokehouse so I can smoke more efficiently, the fish and game that I catch and then later this year, I'll be building a workshop so I can get out of here when it's inclement weather and work in a workshop, proper workshop, probably with a blacksmith shop in there and a lathe and stuff like that. All manual tools, but it's much, it's full service woodworking as possible, I guess and leather craft and all that kind of stuff. I basically want to get to the point where I'm making everything for my life here with as much natural materials as possible. So, I think eventually even my clothing I'll be making, my boots, my hats, my tops, jackets, all that kind of stuff, all the furniture, other tools that I need, I'll try to make as many of those as possible. So, essentially get to the point where I've replaced all my modern stuff with older stuff or with traditional hand tools and hand or handmade clothing and stuff like that and getting as much food from the land as possible. So, that's the goal up here and like I said, we've made some significant changes, some move in that direction just over the last week and like I said, I will tell you more about that. In fact, I'll tell you a little bit more now. I'm gonna go over and cut some firewood, but I'll just keep talking to you and tell you what I'm up to or what we've done and what investments we're making right now rather than sticking our money or keeping our money in the stock market which is, I think, on the verge of collapse again. So, talk to you in a minute. Really crazy about this kind of vlogging style, but on this channel, like I said, I do a lot more talking and explain what I'm up to, so I end up not as tranquil as my other channel, my other videos and I'm explaining a lot more about what I'm doing, but like I said, if you're new to the channel, you can see everything behind me there. It's the sauna, the earthen oven is in that smaller building and the outdoor kitchen, of course, the pavilions for working or cooking when the weather's not good. Got my little fire pit here which I do some outdoor cooking on and that tripod I made a couple weeks ago to smoke or dry some jerky from a deer that I shot in December. Here's my firewood pile. It's getting down. I do have firewood cut in various places on the property, so I'm gonna start hauling that in and replacing what I've gone through here. It hasn't been very cold. It started off around cold really early this year. In October, it started snowing. Looked like we were in for a really, really bad winter and then it kept snowing and it didn't completely melt, but it ended up being fairly warm, so it hasn't been a brutal winter. So, as a result, I haven't gone through all that much firewood. I know this time last year, I think it was all of December, it was freezing, like well, well below average, and I ended up burning a ton of firewood, but then the rest of the winter wasn't bad at all. So, it's not what it used to be like, that's for sure. So, one of the things that I wanted to talk about, like I said, more on this channel is the finance part of what I'm doing. And if you watch this other video from My Self Reliance, there's a full cost analysis of what it costs to build this cabin. All of the things here, mostly the cabin and the property cost and the ongoing cost. This year, I promised on that channel to document a lot more of the expenses, the living expenses to continue living this lifestyle. So, I'll share some of that here as well, but I can tell you what the cabin cost me and also here's the cost of what it would cost somebody else if they were to buy all the materials from the places that I was able to source some of the materials from. So, what I just mentioned earlier about the stock market, it's been a lot of, it's been volatile this year. I think it might have ended up, the majority of the stock markets here in North America ended up basically at what they started at the beginning of the year. So, they had good gains throughout the year and then lost everything near the end there. And I think it's, we're probably teetering on the edge of another recession like we had in 2008, which has, if you've been following along, you know that wiped me out completely. I went from seven-figure net worth down to being $700,000 in debt and had to sell my last, had to recover and pay all that money back from the company that went bankrupt, or didn't go bankrupt but went under essentially, stopped operating, left me personally $700,000 in debt. So, I paid off that business debt, that's what it really was, but I was stuck with it. And then recovered fully by starting another business and then selling off a bigger business that I was partnered with a few guys on. But part of that experience of starting a company with partners and then selling it to a public company taught me a lot, gave me a lot of insight into how the stock market works. Like I said, the company was public, but they actually went public in the middle of the acquisition process. So when they were buying our company out, they went public to raise the money to pay us out. What I saw during that phase was absolutely, it was pretty well a combination of corruption and incompetence. And it gave me far less confidence in the stock market in general, because everything they did was essentially legal. But the guy that was essentially running the company, so the CEO was a nice enough guy, but just completely incompetent. To the point where they actually gave $17 million to a guy that they were going to buy out, they were gonna buy his company out as well. And the whole deal just seemed too good to be true. Well, sure enough, it was a con. And they literally handed over $17 million to this guy without getting current financial statements from him on the business. So absolutely ridiculous. That money just completely disappeared, which wiped out my value, wiped out the value of the shares, so the whole value of the company. And they ended up issuing like 100 million shares in order to keep funding the company to keep it going. So they are still in business. They're still on the stock market. It's down to pennies, where it was over a dollar, a stock. And it showed me, and I watched the trades happening before and after major events, and I saw how much insider, let's put it this way. I lost complete confidence in the stock market when I realized what people could legally do, what legally they could get away with. So you're essentially gambling when you're putting your money in the stock market, unless you're just investing in blue chip stocks, like high value, good quality companies. And then you're not making a fortune. So anything less than that, you really are gambling. And I don't think I've ever really done, had a great year in the stock market, and as a result, kind of getting gun shy. But right now, telling you all the signs are there for a collapse. So I'm not interested in keeping my money in there. Bottom line after all that is that basically what we did is removed our money from the stock market and some other investments, and we invested in real estate, reinvested or invested additional money in real estate. My girls are at that age, they're finished high school, they're off to college, they're becoming a lot more independent, and they were ready to change their lives as much as my wife and I were ready to change our lives. So we made the decision in the last week or two to sell the family home after 20 years. So essentially, they're ready for a change. So that's what we've done. We've invested in some real estate that allows them and us to pursue our different directions yet still remain a cohesive family. That's as much as I can say right now, but it's really, really exciting for the four of us. I think it's really exciting for my YouTube channels, and it's exciting for this dream that I've always had to live this wilderness lifestyle. So you're gonna see a lot more content from me, simple, for the simple fact that I'll be able to film essentially every day, and I don't have to continue driving hours into town to upload videos every week. So that's the most exciting thing that's happening in 2019. But if you want to, like I said, follow the other channel, but I'll continue to upload videos here as well that give a little bit deeper insight into what's happening with me financially, how I got to this point, and how I continue to finance this lifestyle and what it's actually costing me. I'm gonna try to keep as much of that off the other channel, actually, because I think a lot of people there are there just to see the lifestyle and to enjoy nature and the tranquility and the solitude and the beauty of nature, and that's the way I like to keep it as well. I don't like talking constantly on video. I like to just put my head down, get to work, or if I'm canoeing, I don't want to be sitting here talking to the camera. If I see a beautiful sight or an animal or a loon calling, I don't want you to be looking at my face with a loon in the background. I want you to see the loon in all its glory on its own, or a moose or a wolf or a bear or whatever it is. So it's just not my style. But on this channel, this is where I talk, so if you don't want to just sit at your computer or your TV and watch me ramble on, then this is probably not a great channel. I would suggest just watching the other one instead. So, lots going on for this year. Like I said, most exciting year, I think, of my life, and I think an exciting year for my entire family and for everybody here on YouTube watching what we're up to. So I appreciate everybody following along and keep checking in here. If you're not subscribed, please subscribe. Hit that notification bell so that you get notified when I do upload a video. You can check my website. I also post all my videos on the website. Facebook, Instagram, I usually have links to the most current videos that I've recently released. And YouTube, just keep checking in. Go to the actual YouTube channel pages and make sure you haven't missed any videos if you're interested. And check out the playlist especially. Easier on maybe the other channel to follow a playlist like the Forest Kitchen. You can just watch it from episode one through 10 and see the entire build, for example. And I'll eventually have that kind of format set up here as well. Anyway, cold day, beautiful sunny day though. So I will get back to work and enjoy the day. So have a great week, and I'll see you up at the cabin next time. Take care.