How do you know when the time is right to walk away from a career? Do you even want to? Can you afford to? Our roundtable discussion centers around thinking about retirement, and how to prepare yourself financially so you can stay retired. We welcome Founder/President of Capital City Wealth Management, CFP® Benjamin Brandt to join Paula Pant and Len Penzo.
How do you factor paying for health insurance into your early retirement planning? What about debt payments? When you retire, there will be greater spending in some areas that you may not think about while still working.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch on our YouTube channel:
Our Topic: A Few Word Description
10 Reasons Why You Should Actually Retire at 62 (If You Can) (NewRetirement)
During our conversation you’ll hear us mention:
- Reasons to retire/not retire.
- Love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.
- Evolving work expectations.
- Work flexibility.
- Thinking about what you will do when you retire.
- When to pull the plug on your career.
- Managing your retirement portfolio before/during retirement.
- Retiring early.
- Risks to retirement finances.
- Deferring experiences until retirement vs. taking sabbaticals.
- Setting career and life priorities.
- The ability to take sabbaticals in your career.
- The emotional and mathematical pieces to retirement planning.
- How to factor in projected Social Security benefits.
- Investing in your health.
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Benjamin Brandt
Another thanks to Benjamin Brandt for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Benjamin on HER/HIS show, Retirement Starts Today at Retirement Starts Today Radio – The Fastest Growing Retirement Podcast on iTunes.
Learn more about Benjamin and his firm, Capital City Wealth Management, by visiting Benjamin Brandt Certified Financial Planner About.
Paula Pant
Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
Len Penzo
Visit Len Penzo dot Com for the off-beat personal finance blog for responsible people.
Follow Len on Twitter: @LenPenzo
DepositAccounts
Thanks to DepositAccounts.com for sponsoring Stacking Benjamins. DepositsAccounts.com is the #1 place to go when you’re looking to see if your rate is the BEST rate on savings, CDs, money markets, and even checking accounts! Check out ALL of the rates ranked from best to worst (and see the national averages) at DepositAccounts.com.
Mentioned in today’s show
- 5 Retirement Calculator Mistakes
- Subscribe to get Marketplace updates by email and text message | HealthCare.gov
- Policygenius: Compare Free Quotes & Buy Insurance Online
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’re talking all things retirement, crime, and fiction with author Michael Balter.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: The Important Role of Kindness and a Little Math When Stacking Benjamins (SB1500).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
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─ You know, I don’t understand this podcasting thing. How come you boys can’t have those keg parties and chase the girls like all the other nice boys do? Y’all are
nerds. I. ━━━─━━━━━─━━━━━─━━━━
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s ━ the Stacking Benjamin
Show. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s round table, our team will talk about retirement, as in when’s the right time to retire. Here to help us is the founder and president of Capital City Wealth Management, Benjamin Brandt, plus a woman who’d sometimes like to send us all to space. I’m talking like, pow, right to the moon.
It’s Paula Pant. And finally the first person to walk on the moon, buzz Aldrin. Oh wait, was that the other guy? Anyway, we couldn’t get either one of ’em. We just got a resident space cadet Len Penso, and now a guy who traveled beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. Just to get another passport stamp. It’s Joe Saul Sea High. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I do think I need the bigger passport book. Hey, happy Friday everyone. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. You know what we’re gonna do today? Have you thought about retirement? I’m sure you have if you’re not retired already. And even if you are, have you thought about how to make your retirement better? We are going to reset retirement because we have a retirement expert with us today.
But before we get into that, just need to say that today’s Friday round table is always brought to you by State Farm. If you’re a small business owner isn’t just your business, it’s your life. Whatever your business may be, you want someone who understands, and that’s where State Farm Small Business Insurance comes in.
State Farm agents are small business owners too, and they know what it takes to help you personalize your policies for your small business needs like a good neighbor, state Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today, and today you’re gonna be speaking with three people that’s introduced them right now, beginning with a woman who’s holding the microphone in her hand. ──
Where the hell are you? Paula Pant. I
am at a WeWork and so I don’t have a microphone stand. I’ve, I’ve got this. I’ve got,
wait, wait, wait a minute. They still have WeWorks. They’re supposed to be, we bankrupt, aren’t they? We,
we broke. ━ Yeah, they still have WeWork. I think they’ve gone into bankruptcy twice now, so I don’t know why I keep paying them, but here I am.
Like a show. Show. Are
you in Anne Hathaway’s office right now? Did, did, do you like rent her office out? Remember that scene from the movie?
Oh, I never saw the movie. Obviously it’s a movie. Do you think I’ve seen it right? ━━━━━━━━━─━━━━━────
Movies. ━━━━━━━ Paula? No. Although I will say we were sharing something about Len’s. Uh, latest, uh, uh, by the way, Len Penso is here. How are you, Mr.
Penso? Well, I’m a little disturbed because you, you remember, if I told you a few weeks ago, I got a, an email from my colon telling me I had issues, and then I got an email today from my prostate, and, uh, apparently it says I, it’s the size of a lemon.
So I’ve, uh, I’m a little concerned about that. I guess I’m gonna have to go to the doctor. ─────
W Wait, what’s the doctor gonna say?
I don’t know, but I, if my prostate’s the size of a lemon, I better get it fixed, don’t you think? Well, when life gives
you lemons, ─━━━━━━━━━━───
I, I’ve just tried to find the dad joke in here where, no joke. Hold on.
You get, you get emails from your
organs? Yes. Well, certain ones you, so far Mr. Colon and Mr. Prostate have checked in with me, so I don’t know what’s next. Prior
to, I’m afraid to the, to the development of the internet. How did they communicate Through snail mail. ──━━━━━─
I dunno. ── I don’t know. Paula, is that a rhetorical question? I hope. ━━ I
know we just started. I have no idea where the hell do your job, do your job, Joe. ─ I just tried to say, hi, Lynn. That’s all we tried to do. And then I don’t, I don’t even know. But we were having a discussion though this last week and Len was showing us, uh, squirrel cam gone wild, which was squirrel cam at night.
Squirrel cam, which is very exciting. Squirrel cam after dark squirrel cam after dark. And, and we saw some new friends at the squirrel cam. I believe you have rats. Yes, ━ I
do. ━ And Doug’s like, he’s shocked that there’s rats at my house. I’m like, of course there’s, there’s rats everywhere. Paula didn’t flinch.
Paula just said
all those rats. I was like, this must be len’s way of telling us that he’s moved to New York.
Yeah, I was gonna say, Paula probably has three roommates that are rats, but LA Southern California.
No, wait a minute, then we, that’s, we brought up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I will, I will.
Paula Pant was like, oh yeah, I’ve seen that. Yes. We were like, what
the, what the hell? Yeah. Well, you’re forgetting I have a pet turtle, so I am more likely to see media that contains
turtles. ── And guess what guys? The guy who thinks he’s probably in the wrong place ’cause he thought this might have been a money podcast ─ From, from from Retirement Begins today, radio.
Retirement starts Today, radio. Ben Brand’s here. Retirement starts, retirement begins. Squirrels
are just rats with better PR and convince. Yeah, ━━━
totally. Exactly right. They’re the same thing. ─ The rats are the dirty cousins that they don’t let let out until night. They don’t get invited to the
reunion. I, I think that
might be right.
Now you are in North Dakota. Beautiful. By the way, North Dakota. I’ve been bragging about coming to see you ever since we did, but, uh, you guys have, you guys, you used to have huge rats in North Dakota. Those are called coyotes, ─── of course. The, the rats of the, uh, of the wolf world, of the dog world. That might be.
But how’s the podcast going, Mr. Brant? We haven’t seen you in a while. How you been? The
podcast is going great. Uh, we’re having lots of fun. Every Monday morning we talk retirement topics and lifestyle topics, and. All kinds of fun stuff. We’re, we’re starting to get into some health elements, uh, as well. So anything retirement, uh, I’m interested in,
well, health is a big, big topic.
I mean, what’s money if you are not healthy enough to enjoy it? Yeah,
that’s exactly right. I actually just last week had a full body MRI, and I could tell you that my prostate is significantly smaller than a lemon. ─━─━─━━━━━──
That’s why you didn’t get an email from your prostate like I did.
That’s right. Yeah. How would they send that?
Would that be on an, would that be on an MRI phone? Is that, is that a bad joke? ━
I don’t. ─ Oh my God. He fits right
in. Could you call that
a Mr. iPhone? ━───━
Mr. iPhone? Yes. Sorry,
sorry. ────── Oh my goodness. ───── I think we should
just wrap up right now and call it a day, Joe.
And that’s our Friday. Thank you everybody. ─ You thought we were gonna talk retirement?
We’re retiring. Today’s podcast. It’s over. Actually, you know what? We are going to get to retirement, but thank you for helping us keep this podcast free as we say hello to the people that make this free. ───── I should have put that the Zo way where Len says, click on all my ads at least three times when you visit zo.com.
Please don’t skip through our ad. Should I have said that, Len? Now you’re
learning. Joe. Now you’re learning. Let the money start flowing in. In fact, people should
rewind and re-Listen to the ads. ━━━ Great idea. Someone should write an algorithm where it just goes on loop. ─━━─── Just
that second and just play ’em all day.
Yeah, please God, do it. ─── We got Ben Brand here. We got Zo, Paula Pan, neighbor, Doug. Let’s Talk Retirement. ━━━━━━━━━─━─━━━━━━━━━━━━─━─━─
Our piece today comes to us from, uh, the people at New Retirement, uh, love their calculator. We actually have a great page about new retirement calculator on our, on our YouTube page. So if you want to check it out, however. This is a wonderful blog post about retirement. Kathleen Coxwell wrote it, and it’s 10 reasons why you should actually retire at 62 if you can.
And I’m gonna go to you first, Ben, because, uh, Cheryl, my spouse, works in the medical field. She loves what she does, and frankly, if she wanted to stop doing it today, she could, but she’s like, I think I wanna do it for another seven or eight years. Like, that would be great. And that, by the way, would put her. ─
Around this age 62, they’re talking about, ─ I’m a guy who says, what would I do if I didn’t get to talk to interesting people about weird topics like we had in the open? What would I be doing besides this yet, this piece that I should really, seriously think about retiring at 62. When you think about people doing something and they tell you they wanna do it forever, what do you think is a financial planner?
I say
more power too. Yeah. I talk retirement topics for a living. I don’t see myself ever retiring. I, I, what would I do with myself? I. I love what I do and it’s enriching. And if that is your job, right? If, if you’re getting fulfilled by your job, there’s no reason to quit that people retire, to go find that thing that’s gonna get them outta bed in the morning, excited.
If you already have that and it’s providing income for you that you should keep working, I
think. Paula, what about you? Because you, you know, you and I have very congruent things that we’re working on, right? Do you see yourself retiring? You got a retirement date in
mind? No, not at all. You know, my role model is Betty White, who at the age of 99 was still working and clearly loved it.
You could tell just by watching her that she was having fun. Charlie Munger, same thing. He worked until he was 99, and you could tell he was enjoying every moment of it. So my hope is to. ── Be in good enough health that I’m able to work until I’m 99 or 199 or 1,099. ── See how life expectancies go.
Does that include though Paula changes to your schedule?
And the reason I ask that is, uh, you may know you and I are, I always call it the Westwood One network. It’s now the Cumulus Network. We are on there together. Mm-Hmm. Uh, but Ed Millet, another podcaster, an influencer just joined uh uh, the Cumulus family of shows. But I was talking to somebody yesterday who said that Ed Millet travels 300 days a year.
Mm. I can imagine Ed Millet continuing to do what he does. He seems to be another guy who’s in a, I do this as long as I want to kind of mode. But do you see yourself changing your schedule, changing maybe the things that you do? Because I can’t imagine Ed Millet at 90 years old, traveling 300 days
a year.
Well, even now. Even these days, I change up my schedule based on what else is going on in my life. You know, even now I just, on a day by day basis, I will modify my schedule based on if I’m going to have like a, a big, like two hour workout in the morning or not. I. That’s just on a day-to-day basis. And like in the overarching sense, uh, if I, if there’s a conference that I really wanna go to or, or if there’s a trip I really wanna take, I just went to Mongolia and China and Egypt, you know, and I was like, Hey everybody, I’m just not gonna show up to work for like two and a half weeks.
Peace out.
No, this is super cool guys. So, Paula. Goes to Cairo instead of making a podcast recording for Stacking Benjamins. Aw, ━━━──━━ do, do you be fair?
I thought the recording was going to be on Wednesday. Oh, it, the recording was on Wednesday in Mongolia time. I just got my time zones confused.
Doug’s on Mongolia time, aren’t you Doug When it’s
convenient for me.
Yeah. Like it was for Paula. ━━━━━━──────
We had some fun at Paula’s expense. It was, it was a great time. But anyway, yes, but that’s cool. But, but very seriously. You spent a day and a half in Cairo at the last minute. Yeah,
I had a flight back that had a 19 hour layover in Cairo, and so I was like, okay, this is cool. 19 hours, so it’s enough time to like leave the airport and have a meal.
And then I got an email from the airline saying, Hey, we’ve actually canceled the Cairo to JFK. Portion of your flight and we’ve rebooked you on another flight that is 24 hours later, which meant that I ended up having a 44 hour layover, so totally spontaneously without intending to, I had a spontaneous two days in Egypt, which was great, but the fact that, yeah, I have a job, or I run a business, I run my own business and that gives me the flexibility to just spontaneously spend two days in Egypt and as a result.
Completely missed the Stacking Benjamins recording, ───── which I ─ thought was on Wednesday ’cause it was on Wednesday in Mongolia
time. It’s fabulous. And actually it, it was better that we got to record that at a different time. Len, you were obviously on a different train, right? You were on a train of I am gonna retire from working for quote the man.
When did you decide that retiring early was gonna fit your lifestyle? Because you did retire early, even earlier than the 62 they put down here on this piece.
Well, when I realized I had enough cash on hand based on my calculations, which are, were conservative to probably outlive myself. So that’s, I got to that point and I said, Hey, well then why not?
But
was that your goal at 30? At 30 was your goal to retire early? No. No, no. That was
not my goal. No. But, uh, you know, over time you, you have a career and if it’s not a fun, you know, if, I mean, it’s fun. I enjoyed my job immensely, but. You know what? It does get tiring working for the man. It really does. It’s kind of like being in the military.
I mean, you have to answer to other people. You have, you have to get up at certain times. You have to go places where you might not want to go. You don’t have the freedom that somebody who works for themselves does or, um, who is already retired. So that gets old. It’s not so much the job that you’re working, but it’s just the fact that you’re, you don’t have all your hours to yourself.
You don’t write your own life script. As you get older, you want to be able to do what you want, when you want. And so that’s how it is now. And I don’t look at it as retire. I mean, retirement is just What is retirement? I mean, I’m retired from that. My job working for the man, but I don’t consider myself retired.
I have a lot of irons in the fire. I’m doing lots of things. I have projects, I have hobbies, and I’m enjoying life. And, um, I’m very busy. So we use the word retirement and we might think, well, we, you know, we sit back on the couch and we watch TV all day. Or squirrel cam if you’re,
unless you’re deep. Yeah.
He’s undertaken a
longitudinal rodent study.
Of course.
Exactly right. Doug. That, that’s, that’s precisely now, and I’m gonna go back real quick to Paula. I mean, she’s the world traveler. That’s great. She’s going everywhere. I like to travel too, but I do it. Speaking of being a couch potato, in this case, I do it by watching the Amazing Race.
So I get to go to Cairo and all these places and see these, I don’t have to leave my living room. So that’s how I prefer to see the world in that regard. That way it doesn’t interfere with my hobbies and all my other things that I’m doing. Do you
see yourself, Len, going to Cairo? I mean, you’d being, I’m not sure if you’ll be facetious. ─
There are people who love to travel and I’m, I don’t like to, I’m a homebody, really, you know, I prefer staying local, uh, or if anything, staying within North America. Um, I think I’ve been to four countries my entire life and they’re, they’re all attached to the United States, right? I’ve been to, I’ve been to Canada and Mexico and The Bahamas and Sacramento
doesn’t count Len. ─
And so
that’s it. That’s my life. But I’m fine with that. I just don’t like to
travel like everybody’s doing the math on four countries that are attached. Yeah,
I know. I know. I was completely, that’s exactly what I was thinking. ━ Like, Glenn, have you seen a map
lately? Ladies and gentlemen, public school education ━━━━ right there.
Proud product. ━━━━━ Ben, I wanted to start there specifically because. Of how wide ranging this is. You know, we talked about Paula with spontaneity, uh, Len, with working for somebody else and how that grinds on you. But when you, I wanna kind of set a rubric for people that are just beginning to have this discussion about retirement.
And the reason I do, and the reason I wanted to cover this was. ── I was at this coaching organization, strategic coach that I go to yesterday, and a guy who I was sitting close to between last quarter and this quarter, last quarter. He was gungho about running his business. He was an entrepreneur. I mean, he’s an entrepreneur.
He runs a very successful business. Three months ago, he was gungho about it, and then today he said. ── I think I wanna figure out how to sell this and I wanna sell it like in the next three months. Like it changed. It changed fast, Ben. I mean, so it went from, I wanna do this forever to, you know, I think I’m done.
I’m just done. So where do we start along this retire when you’re starting a people on retirement planning and retirement starts today, where do we begin that rubric?
That’s a great question. ─ When you mentioned Strategic Coach, you know, one of the, uh, quotes that I heard from Dan Sullivan years ago that always stuck with me is that his definition of retirement is to be put out of service.
And that always really stuck with me. And when we think about retirement or financial independence, it might go from my career to being. Where I’m in service to others, to being in service to others in a different capacity. So maybe I’m in service to my local community. I’m mentoring, I’m helping my kids with their kids.
Uh, I’m doing something else. But if retirement is to be put out of service, then working is to be in service to others, maybe that changes. So that’s, I think a good place to start from a non-financial perspective is how am I going to still be of service to others, assuming that’s where we get some fulfillment
from.
Is it then, I mean, taking this guy as an example that he went from never wanting to retire to let’s sell it. Now ─ I think about when we rebound portfolio, I. People are like, where the hell is this going? Because he’s have nothing to do with each other. But I think they do it. It used to be several years ago, but he said, you know, once a year or twice a year, rebalance your investments to get back to your original asset allocation.
And now most financial planners will tell you they don’t like to do that. They like a band. Right. A range. And when, when I hit a low or hit a high, that’s when things change. Clearly. This gentleman came into this discussion where he was at the low end of that range and he’d had enough. So because of that reason for you as a guy helping people plan retirement, should my goal with my assets be if, if I’m a Paula Pant or a Joe Saul-Sehy, well, you feel that way now, ─ but your feelings might change quickly.
So this is a race to get your money where it should be as quickly as possible. ─ Is it a, uh, quicker is better kind of thing?
Possibly with your friend’s situation? I would be concerned if, if he’s been an entrepreneur his whole life and he’s just gonna pack it up and sell it in three months, I would want a really well thought out plan on what he’s going to retire to.
Because, uh, if you’ve been an entrepreneur your whole life and service to others, then you just quit. An entrepreneur is, is uh, has a lot of gravity in their life of always solving problems and putting out fires in a positive way. If you just retire and sell your business, life will create its own gravity in a negative way.
Uh, I know, I think we all know people that retire and then their health goes downhill or their relationships go downhill, or they will create negative gravity. So if you’re used to walking up hills your whole life, metaphorically. You should probably just keep doing that your whole life. So I would be a little bit concerned.
I wanna know exactly what he’s retiring to, how he’s gonna fill 40 hours a week, 50 weeks, a year, whatever that is. Hey, Joe, I, that’s where my money
goes. I think those who wanna retire earlier, I think one thing you are doing is you’re bringing more risk into your retirement plan because of the unknown unknowns down the road.
You just have a longer lifespan if you retire early, where more things can go. Poorly and things that, something you might not have foreseen that could short circuit what you thought you had enough money for, and then you don’t. So I, I think there’s a, there’s definitely a risk of retiring earlier as opposed to someone like myself who retired relatively late, or somebody who retires at, you know, I retired at 58, somebody who retires at at 65 or 70.
The advantage of retiring later in that regard is if you’ve planned properly, there’s less unknowns. Unknowns out there that could really disrupt your retirement planning. First
of all, Len, the only people that would say you retired late would be in the fire community. I. Any other community on earth. You retired early, my friend.
You retired very, very early.
Yeah. If that came out, if I came, if I made a, I just, I’m just saying I retired relatively early. There are people out there who are trying to retire at 40 or at 35 or at 42. I mean, that to me is, that’s really putting yourself out
there. Well, I was actually talking Len about the inverse of that, which is Paula wants to work forever and then three months from now her feelings changes.
He’s like, yeah, I think I wanna sell, afford anything. I just, I just don’t wanna do this anymore. You heard it here first, folks. ━━━ This, this is how rumors get started right here. We’ll just create editing on that video. ━━━─━─ Paula just say yes. I was just thinking that if you could just speak right into the mic, sh ────━
I’m sure you can get an AI bot to do it.
That’s true. And it would be even more believable. Good
point. Paula pant deep fake. But what I’m talking about is that Len not about retiring early, but about somebody that thinks that they’re gonna do it forever and then all of a sudden that. They don’t, I mean, we should all be prepared for that.
Yeah. Oh, you should be prepared for that.
I, I mean, what would cause somebody to do that? I, I don’t know. Uh, somebody would just give up that quickly or, or wanna get it Unless can tell you Totally. I can tell
you specifically what it is without outing the guy. Okay. He had some surgery on. On a thing that was cancer, and all of a sudden he got this medical diagnosis.
It made him aware that money wasn’t the problem, money hadn’t been the problem for this guy for a long time. It was now time, and he finally took seriously the idea of, is this what I want to be spending my time on? So to Ben’s point, what are you gonna go to? I love the idea of pumping the brakes there, but so it was a medical thing, Len.
I get it and the older I get, I mean, the older we all get, you do realize time is the actual, you know, money can always be made. Time cannot. Time becomes more precious. As you get older, you, you do see your mortality. ─ As you get older, you actually see it and, uh, it, it does change your reflections on things and it puts what’s important.
The real importance time really does Trump money in the long run? It it really
does. Yeah. And I do think that time where you’re good and healthy, like as an example, I have this friend that kind of has a medical condition where he thinks that his organs write emails to him. ━━━── And I worry about the guy. I just, I, I do, he doesn’t
see it as a problem yet.
You know, my cousin, my cousin Kevin always talks about, uh, the CPA. He, you know, he’s doing planning and with certain people and, and he’s always told people, he said, you know, people say, think the golden years are are your seventies and yay I am in my golden years. You know, it’s my seventies and my eighties.
No, your golden years he says are really, it’s. It’s your fifties and your sixties, those are your golden years. Hmm. So, I mean, if you’re gonna wanna retire and enjoy life and, and get around and do things, you really should be planning to do all that before you turn 70. Because after that, you know, physical ailments start popping up and you can’t, you know, you, you have to be prepared that you might have saved all this money and you’re not gonna be able to do the things you wanna do because now.
The physical ailments just prevent you from
doing that. Paula, this piece is about retire early to do what Len talked about, but retirement or if you can swing at sabbaticals.
Yeah. There are two concepts that I wanna bring up right now. One is that I wanna make sure that we’re not conflating financial independence with retiring early.
Mm-Hmm. So, whether or not your goal is to retire early, I think everyone should have the option to retire early, whether or not you want to. And again, going back to Betty White or Charlie Munger, they both had the option to do so. So the Now, now joie
your point on, yeah. Hold on for a second, Paula. So what you’re saying is.
When I asked Ben, is it a race to get your assets in order as fast as as you can, ’cause things may change, your answer then would be yes.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that, uh, ─ to the extent that you don’t want to sacrifice today for the sake of tomorrow, right? You want to enjoy today while also building for tomorrow.
So when the pendulum swings too far in the wrong direction, you can sometimes fall prey to the temptation to live in the future rather than merely plan for it. ─── Uh, so the verbiage, is it a race? I mean, ── you know, you don’t wanna run so fast that you get injured, ──── so I would be a little bit careful with the race analogy.
Sure. Just because you want to still be living in today. But I do think that it’s important again, Betty White, Charlie Munger, like Taylor Swift is financially independent. You know, she, if she wanted to retire, she could do so. She’s not producing albums for the sake of paying the bills. Right. She’s doing it for the love of the work.
She’s not on the Aris tour for the sake of paying the bills. She’s doing it for the love of the work. I’m
sorry, I’m just laughing. Paula, just thinking about if she was doing it. She’s like, do you know how high my credit card bill is? Like, seriously, I gotta pack this thing. ───── I seriously had a bad month early last year.
I ran up the Capital One card. I think we gotta fill a tour. ━━━───
Maybe not. And so, regardless of whether or not you want to retire, I think everyone should be prepared to do so, even if you never actually act on that preparation. Uh, that’s the first thing. The second thing, Joe, to your question when you asked about sabbaticals, sabbaticals are wonderful.
I think that rather than defer traveling and defer pursuing hobbies, like rather than defer all of that into your fifties and sixties. ─ Do it throughout your life. Do it in your twenties. Do it in your thirties, do it in your forties world. Travel is going to be different at different stages of your life.
Your experience of traveling to another country, or your experience of pursuing a hobby at the age of 28. Is going to be very different than what that experience is like at the age of 38, at the age of 48, at the age of 58, at the age of 68. Partially because the world changes and then partially because you yourself change.
One of my emblematic stories about this are I went to Japan twice. The first time I went, I was 18 years old. The second time I went, I was 36. The first time I went at, at the age of 18, I was really excited about the fact that you could buy alcohol from a vending machine ─━━━ and they didn’t. Id,
I’m excited
about that at 56, ━─── but when I went back at the age of 36, I was really excited.
You could buy coffee from a vending machine, right? ━──── So your experience of a place is going to differ depending on. Where you are at that stage of your life and it’s nice to be able to, to check back in with the same places, go to Japan at 18 and at 36 and at 72, ─ and see how it has changed and also how you have changed.
Sometimes that’s not possible though. Like if you have kids and a family, it’s like you just can’t travel in your thirties or your forties.
Like, oh, that’s not true. At, at all. Have to. Oh, that’s not, no, that is not true at all. That is true. No, that is true. Yes, that is absolutely not. Yes. No, that is not. That is.
That is false. Paula, fake news. Fake. News. I have six kids and I never leave my house. Well, that’s ’cause you don’t make it a priority. You do not make it a priority. You know how many people online have families and their kids are the reason that they travel. The first time that I took an overseas flight, my kids
are the reason I travel, but I leave them at
home. ━━━
The first time that I ever took an overseas flight, I was six weeks old. All right? My family traveled. All the time. We went to Thailand, we went to Nepal, we went all across Asia when I was a baby and when I was a young child. All right? And if you go online right now, it has never been easier than ever.
There are blogs, there are podcasts, there are forums. It you are making excuses if you blame your kids for your sedentary.
I’m not blaming kids. No, Paula, I’m, I’m, no,
you’re, no, you’re, you’re also promoting a false mythology. It is absolutely 100% false, and all you have to do is look at all of the travel bloggers.
Look at the family travel podcasters. There are literally thousands of people on the internet who have families and who live on sailboats. They live in RVs, they travel the world. They’ve been to a hundred countries. They’ve road school with their kids. Look at the entire road schooling community. ──
Paula, that’s not, that’s not how everybody can do that.
Paula, I’m sorry. You
can, you everyone, can people choose not to you? No. But cut with this can stuff. Everyone can, unless you have some type of a debilitating illness, there might be a health reason really? So money
doesn’t come into play. Paula. Paula, do you know how much you can cost? You can make money,
Paul.
No, you don’t. You can. There are a million ways to make money. Don’t think do Oh, Don’t think do Oh, Paula, I think 80 thou. Oh my God. Oh, so, okay. I spent $80,000 on fertility treatments, first of all. So I do have a good idea of how much kids, like before they are born, I have been spending money on my future family. All right.
But I absolutely, that’s, that’s,
that’s, that’s immaterial
Paula. But I immaterial, absolutely. No, no. Caught with this. Can’t. ━─ All right. My parents were immigrants. Paula, my parents had no money and they
still took and stop. Would you stop with that? What? I just made a, an innocent comment and now here you are talking about immigrant families and come on.
Yeah. Look
at immigrants. Yes. Look at immigrants. Immigrants travel. That’s hundred percent immigrant.
Immigrants. Hundred
percent. I Immigrants travel. Yeah. Most immigrants probably had their whole country. Every wife growing up. Paula in immigrants. My life. Immigrants travel back to the Honduras, they travel back to Mexico, they travel back to Guatemala, they go see their families.
’cause it’s a priority ’cause it’s important and they take their kids with them. Okay,
very good. Then. You heard it here, folks, everybody can travel if they want to. Yes. Unless
there’s a medical reason. Yes, course. Unless there’s a medical reason. Okay. There
you go. Everybody do it. There
you go. ─ Mommy and daddy, please stop fighting. ─
We, I, I think that the use of the word can is the difficulty. This is where it becomes hard. It becomes hard with the thing that you’d love to do involves a career where you’ve decided. I think the thing here is, is, and what you decided to do, you’ve decided the thing that you love is a career that will not sustain a sabbatical.
It won’t sustain a sabbatical. ── And I agree with you, Paula. You made that decision that that is your priority. But there also is, I think, Len, to your point, I think there is then the pull of, I got this thing that I love, like we heard that the last time we talked about this a couple years ago. We got this wonderful letter from a woman who’s a nurse.
She loves taking care of people. That is her, Emma. It it, it isn’t even her vocation, her career. It is her identity. That is how she sees herself as somebody that takes care of, of other people. ─ The issue for her was, was that she’s like, you make it sound like taking sabbaticals, like the world’s easiest thing.
Like everybody can do it. And the answer is, Paula, to your point, everybody can do it. ─ You can do it. But then there’s that discussion. I’d love to go to you, Paula, on this one, which is, you’ve got this discussion between ──── I’m able to do it, but it’s the thing IF in love to do. So where do I draw that line? I.
So if the career allows for a sabbatical, then you return to that career after the sabbatical is over. So, for example, if the career allows for six months off, or eight months off, or three months off, even
then my question’s the opposite. My question’s the opposite. What is it in, in this woman’s case? She says
that it doesn’t.
It does not. It doesn’t. Alright then is she able to do that career in a different location? She could. She’d
take a massive pay cut. Okay. That was her problem. She’s like, you guys made it sound like, and we did on that particular round table, we all, me included, made taking a sabbatical very easy. I didn’t know, by the way, I didn’t know sabbatical was gonna be this hot button, but we did make it sound very easy, I remember on that.
Mm-Hmm. On that, on that particular round table. And, and she brought up, I think what you’re trying to articulate was that yes you can, but the huge sacrifice was going to influence her financial independence. Mm-Hmm. It would influence the thing that she sees as her vocation. She likes the people that she’s with. ─
She totally can, ─ but to keep the quality of life she wants. While can’t is a strong word, and I get where you’re coming from, see if she can
negotiate with her employer for unpaid leave. If she could take three months of unpaid leave ── and if the employer really won’t allow that, then I would ask to be either asked to be transferred to an alternate location temporarily. ─
Or, I dunno how much vacation time she has, but if she can stack vacation time so she can roll vacation, let’s say she gets four weeks a year, four weeks in December. Four weeks in January, that’s two months, right? Two continuous months. So boom, now she’s got two months that you can do a pretty big trip in two months.
Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t wanna put words in your mouth like, was that what you were trying to say? ── Mostly.
Yes, that’s what I was trying to say. There’s just all I was trying to say is there are people that can’t, that, I’m sorry they can’t do it because they have other things that are happening that just, it just isn’t possible.
There’s other things going on in the family life that won’t let you do it. That’s all I’m trying to say. That’s all I was trying to say,
but I do think it’s about priorities.
It is prior. Yes, it is. Yeah. It’s priorities. Yeah, absolutely. You can do whatever you want. Of course it, you know, everybody has free will, but does it make sense financially for a lot of people, it’s impossible.
You can’t do it, especially when you have kids. It’s a huge expense. That’s all I’m saying. And I, and I had made a heck of an income, you know, my whole career. I was. Probably in the top, you know, a huge salary, a huge income. And even at my level, I couldn’t, I couldn’t justify it. I couldn’t justify it. Could I have done it?
Sure would. I have retired at 58? No. But that’s my choice. And, and I’m making a lot of money and, and I know people that made, you know, most people made far less than what I made in my career as a salary. I cannot see how they could possibly have done it and still made ends meet. That’s all I was trying to say. ──
That’s all I was trying to say.
I’m gonna bring Ben back into this for a second because Ben, you know you’ll have clients. Well, frankly, I don’t see the idea. Let’s start here. I don’t think I see the idea of a sabbatical enough in, at least in American society. I can only
think of
one client that I’ve helped retire over the last decade or so that had a sabbatical.
I think for a lot of people, it’s just not something that’s in their lexicon. ─ I think if you, if you try to think about what a sabbatical, what we’re trying to discover about ourselves with a sabbatical, could we recreate that under less grand terms? I think there’s something like $50 billion a year in the United States that is squandered as unused vacation pay.
So, so while, you know, a six month sabbatical would be great, what, what could we create? In 10 days with unused vacation pay, what little pieces of data could we discover about ourselves and what we might wanna pursue in retirement in smaller pieces? I think that is maybe more in reach for like an electrician or, or a school teacher or something like that. ─
We obviously hit an emotional hot button here, but I also think that, that there’s two pieces to this retirement game, Ben. There’s the emotional piece and there is the mathematical piece. ─ Which piece do you see? We get to, we, we get wrong more.
By far, people get the emotional part wrong, especially people who listen to retirement podcasts.
They tend to be the numbers people. And so there’s a saying that says, sell people what they want. Give them what they need. So if, if somebody comes to me for the financial, obviously I do that, but then I give them the lifestyle and the mindset stuff. If somebody were to find me for the mindset stuff, we’d give them the financial stuff.
So it’s both, but especially in our lexicon of financial topics, people tend to over focus on big round numbers, whether that’s taxes or having a million dollars, and they think a lot less about. What am I actually gonna do with myself
for the next 30 years? I wanna talk about things like health insurance, debt, right?
The idea of debt in retirement, and also the idea of social security, so benefits and debt and our health. But please, as Zo says, uh, please, uh, listen to these ads four or five times. ━─────────
Hey, it’s Matt from Gainesville, Georgia, and
when I’m not delivering on this consumerism in a big brown packaged car,
I’m Stacking. ─────
Because of our travel schedules, uh, normal Stacky Benjamins Friday listeners are wondering what’s going on with our trivia competition. No trivia today, kids. So we are gonna dive back into the piece. Let’s start here with, with health insurance, Paula, health insurance, and early retirement, not two things that tend to go together.
What do you think? ───
Yeah, health insurance is an expensive line item when it comes to budgeting. We’re used to paying a lot of money for housing. We’re used to paying a lot of money for groceries. We’re used to paying a lot of money for transportation. Those tend to be the three big ticket items. Health insurance for people who are accustomed to being a W2 employee. ─
Many people aren’t used to spending a lot of money on health insurance. ─── So the mental flip is to understand that a huge proportion of your income, or a much bigger proportion of your income is going to go towards health insurance. And what that means is that you have to claw back some of the money that you otherwise would spend on things like housing or transportation in order to make space for that.
Well, you’re also suggesting that I would think start getting price quotes way, way, way early and model it ahead of time. ──
Yeah, well, you can go, uh, with the, with healthcare.gov, you can go on healthcare.gov and get that information, or you can go to a site like PolicyGenius and you can get that information.
There’s a, a lot of different ways to gather
it. Yeah. But you do agree with modeling it early? I mean, because like you said, you gotta change your viewpoint. You gotta go, you know what, this is naturally expensive and you’re very lucky that it’s not. ─ Mm-Hmm. Uh, Len, for you, how much was having, I’m, I’m assuming that you had employer provided healthcare. ──
Yes. Still do. Yeah. And so how much was that able to help you retire early. ─ A
lot. ─ 25, 30,000 a year. I’m saving just by, because I have such fantastic health insurance for my employer. If I didn’t have that and I had to go out and just have health insurance myself, I think, I think the minimum right now would be 2 2500 a month.
So I mean, that’s a, that’s a significant amount of money. Huge. So if I didn’t have that, yeah, I’d probably still be
working. Well, would you be, because you would’ve known that earlier, and this is what I was trying to get at when I asked Paul about this question was. You would’ve known that earlier, do you think you would’ve made some sacrifices earlier and saved more money so that you could get this earlier date to exit?
I knew what the details of the pension was and the health benefits. I mean, from an early age when I first started working, you know, with the company, so I. Boy, I don’t know. I don’t think I would just because I don’t think I would’ve anticipated how expensive healthcare had gotten, you know, 30 years ago I think it was, it was a lot cheaper.
Sure. So, and now it’s, it’s just huge. So I, I don’t think I would’ve, I think I just got lucky in that regard. ’cause I, ─ I was just in a, in a business that had a pension that paid my health most of my healthcare for me. So I got lucky in
that regard. But I do feel like, Ben, that, you know, when it comes to this idea of, of retiring from whatever job that we’re leaving, we set the state in our mind, we set this thing that we want to do, and then we kind of carve the numbers up to try to make that happen.
Do you see a big difference between people that have health insurance and the average age they retire? I would love, somebody must have done some research on this, the average age they retire, versus people that have to go out into the marketplace or wait for Medicare and do it on their own.
Anecdotally, definitely.
I mean, people that have health insurance have one last big budget item to think about. I mean, we’re talking But you see them retire earlier. Yes. Or the other way. I see people that are on the hook for their own health insurance, having the conversation that I’m, I’m going to work longer because I need to be their comfort level to be closer to 65.
They wanna be closer proximity to 65 ’cause they’re facing a thousand, you know, 1500, $2,500 a month. For their health insurance. Some people can do the, uh, healthcare.gov and do an an income based premium, but if you have a pension or if you have, you know, if your lifestyle, which you’re taking out of your investments, if you’re more than six times at a poverty level, you’re not gonna get a lot of of premium credit.
So, anecdotally, yeah. People that have access to health insurance through their employer tend to retire sooner. People that are on their own tend to work longer in my, in my experience. ─
One of the 10 reasons it says to retire at 62, Paula is retire if you’re debt free, or almost this piece says probably bus big, probably biggest indicator it’s really okay to retire early is your debts are paid off or you’re very close to it.
But we’ve seen mortgages at some low low rates. You and I did in afford Anything episode talking about how there was somebody that called into your show who was making more in their money market Yeah. Than they were, than they were paying out ─
for their mortgage. It wasn’t a. It market. Market. It was a savings account, right?
It was a, their high yield savings account. It was, it was a high yield savings account, and they were making more on their high yield savings account than their, their mortgage interest rate. So,
retire early if you’re debt free,
it makes a lot of sense to hold onto a very, very low interest mortgage, particularly if you can ─ invest your money conservatively and arbitrage that. ─
The
social security game, Len, when you decided to retire early, how did you rectify that with Social Security? Well,
obviously I know I was before I could get Social Security, but whenever I did my retirement calculations, first off, I never included Social Security ever. I always assumed that I would never have Social Security.
If I ever do get Social Security and I’m not convinced I’m going to get Social Security. ─━ That’s just gonna be gravy. So if you take social security outta the equation, then that conundrum kind of disappears. It’s gravy if you get it. And if you don’t get it, well it doesn’t matter ’cause you planned for it.
Ben,
do you use social security in your retirement projections when you’re helping somebody put a plan together? Oh yeah,
definitely. As it stands now, it’s not possible. For social security to run out, it’s a dedicated payroll tax. Now, not dollar for dollar is not accounted for, which is a problem, but like 70 cents on the dollar is accounted for.
So even if the 2034 or whatever it is these days, you’re still gonna get 70 cents on whatever the dollar is. It’s a dedicated payroll tax. Every two weeks that we work, we pay the payroll system that goes out to current retirees. So the idea of not getting anything, I don’t think, ─ unless there’s means testing or something in the future.
People that are close to retirement today will get some social security. So I, I don’t, I don’t want that to influence anybody’s claiming decision. I gotta get claim early because it’s running out. I don’t think that holds water for me. But I
do like the idea of what Len did, which is if you can do it without it, if it works without it, that’s fantastic.
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s hyper conservative. Yeah. So you’re, you’re under promising overdelivering, and that’s great.
What, what about some of the things in, in retirement, like the big expenses that come up, do you feel like people plan for that enough? Like. You know, I buy a car every so many years, as an example, would be a big expense.
Or I wanna do some of these massive, uh, massive trips that I haven’t taken during my life.
I. Ideally, you wanna have a sinking fund where if you’re gonna spend $30,000, you want to take out a thousand dollars a month, 30 months in advance, especially if it’s coming out of an ira. So you can spread it over multiple years.
That, that seems to help with the tax bill. But ultimately, I, I’ve found that the same, uh, skillset that people have to save money is not the same skillset they need to spend it. A lot of people need me to lean on them to actually spend the money that they’ve saved, and so that the, the mechanics. ─ Is a little easier than the actual, uh, the energy of like, Hey, you need to spend some of this money.
It’s still accumulating. You’ve been retired. You need to go take that trip. You need to go make that financial gift, whatever. It’s ─ so a sinking fund is probably the best physical way to do it, I think.
And you just segregate that. You’d have it be a separate fund altogether, I would imagine, behaviorally so it doesn’t get, you know, so your meat doesn’t touch your potatoes.
I don’t, I dunno. Yeah. Yeah. You,
you pay it outta your 401k and then, and then you squirrel it away in a high yield savings account in the money market. Yeah, ─
there’s a few pieces of this piece that I don’t like. There’s a few things I don’t like. Uh, uh, one, Paula, let’s start with you, and we’re gonna go once around here with these things, but retire at 62 if you wanna learn new things.
That just rubbed me the wrong way. The idea of, yeah, retire early if you wanna learn something new.
I, I don’t like that either. I, if you are interested in learning something new, let’s say you wanna learn chess, right? You can have a job and learn chess. You can have a job and learn how to build model airplanes or learn needlepoint or learn how to paint.
If you are not doing it when you have a job, then you’re not gonna do it when you don’t have a job. Right? If you’re not doing it, then you’re not doing it. ─
Yeah. I feel like that. Do it now. Like don’t wait for 62. Yeah, exactly. Len, reason number two on here, retire at 62. If you know what else you wanna do. ─
There are people listening to this who are 32 years old, 33 years old, and they feel like they’re not doing the thing that they wanna do. ── What would you tell those people? ───
I would tell you stop doing it. I mean, ── I. You’re wasting your life doing something you don’t wanna do. Get out as soon as you can and do what you want to do because life is too short.
First off, I, I think a lot of people that don’t do what they don’t wanna do, you’re not gonna be good at what you’re doing anyways. So I think you’re just compromising and it’s important to, to go and do what you want to do and do it as recognize. The sooner you recognize that, the better off you’ll be. ─
Do you believe though, Len, that there is a messy middle to life? Like, you know, there’s the shine on the new job, everything’s great, but then you realize that you start at the bottom. Like I remember we had this guy who worked with me at American Express who thought that he was going to get the great accounts and he was pissed that he was working with like the people that were barely doing anything with American Express.
They had no relationship with a company. And I remember one of my managers looking at this guy going. ─ You really thought we were gonna give the new guy, like the high-end relationships, the ones that we really count on, the unproven person. ─ I think for some of us there can be these unrealistic expectations in this, uh, this, I don’t know.
Do you believe in the messy middle?
Yeah. Well, I, I do, I I think you have to do the grunt work in any profession. I mean, whether. You know, the restaurant industry, obviously you gotta start, you know, most people should start busting tables and doing the dishes before they get to being a waiter or a chef or what have you.
And it’s the same I think, in most other professions. You’ve gotta do that dirty work, that’s where you get most of your experience, actually isn’t doing the dirty work and doing things you don’t necessarily, uh, expect, you might want not want to do when you first start. You might want the glamor stuff early, but. ━
Here, here’s the other reason why you wanna do that. It builds respect among your peers. So if you just start off at the top and getting those top, uh, contracts, and, and right off the bat, you, you don’t have the respect, you don’t earn the respect of your peers. So it’s important just, if anything, to earn that respect from your peers rather than just getting off and thinking everything’s gonna be great right from day one.
Because in most businesses it, it’s not gonna be that way. ───
The last one, Ben, that kind of bothers me is right up at the top, number one. And I know that you said you guys are talking about health a lot lately on the show. And reason number one, to retire early is if you wanna stay healthier longer. And I think it kind of almost goes to what somebody was saying earlier about, you know, you can probably think, you said it about this idea that I’m gonna race now for this beautiful future.
Should I be thinking about my health when I’m 62? Or should maybe I try to find a way to integrate it today,
I guess better late than ever. Yeah, you probably don’t have to retire fully from, you know, your job to practice some good habits. I mean, how long does it take to walk around the block? Right? How long does it take to, I don’t do a lap around the office.
Like if it’s in your head that you should start focusing on your health, you should do that right now. At whatever age you hear this, you should do that right now. So. That in and of itself, a reason to retire is maybe a stretch. I don’t know.
I just think you can look at some things like when I, when I think about health, I think about sleep quality.
You can have a demanding job and have better sleep quality by doing a few things. You can do the walking, like you’re talking about, like there’s, there are plenty of intentional things you can do. You can eat different foods.
Tracking macros takes five minutes. You know, it’s there. There’s a lot of easy things, a lot of low hanging fruit, uh, pun intended.
Yeah. Nice job. Is it a le is it size of a lemon? ━
Slightly larger than a lemon fruit. Decisive
lemon. Yeah. I think that’s a great place to leave it. I will link to this piece on our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com, and I hope people got a lot outta it today. And also got maybe a good idea of a few things.
Number one, it’s not about tomorrow, but also number two, the big difference between retirement and financial independence. And then number three is, uh, well, heck Doug. I’m gonna, I’m gonna wait for you to fill in, uh, three of these here in a second, but let’s find out what’s going on, where each of you guys are.
Let’s start with our guest of honor. Ben, ─ what’s happening on the podcast, my friend?
Well, I’m going to do, uh, like I said at the beginning of the show, I am trying to be a retirement crash test dummy, making investments in my health. So I did a full body MRI that I’m going to, uh, show everyone the results and tell you if I think it’s a, a good idea to invest in, uh, in a full body, MRI as you approach retirement, as you’re investing in your health.
So watch for that in the coming months. ─ Is that expensive? It’s expensive, and health insurance, uh, laughs at you when you, when you, uh, ask them to cover something, it’s 2,500 bucks. It’s very expensive. I
saw a guy do a similar thing. He went to the Cleveland Clinic for a day and I think he said that was $3,000 and they put him through a whole range of stuff.
Yeah. But if you’ve got 30 years of your life ahead of you, it’s a great time to make those investments and say, if I can get, you know, if I can learn what’s going on inside my body and if I can extend my good years of retirement a few years, that can be worth an awful lot of money. So I think it’s good to make those investments in cer certain circumstances.
I heard the number. I thought that’s crazy. And then I saw the results and he talked about the results and how glowingly, he talked about the results and how much of a difference it’s gonna make in his life. Could be huge, but you gotta do something.
Yeah. In the grand scheme of things, you know the average social security check is like $2,500.
So if this literally extends your life a month, it pays for itself. ─
Yeah. And that’s it. Retirement starts today. Radio, wherever. Find your podcasts are. Located. That’s right. Thank you, Len. What’s going on@lenpenso.com man? Besides the squirrel cam, you know what I want, I want the squirrel cam, like on the front page where it’s 24 7.
Like I think that would be, uh, that’d be a huge, huge addition.
You know what, uh, that’s a good, I’ll, I’ll see about that. I may do that. It’s going all the time. I, I’ve got tons of videos every day, so I put up some chicken wire around there. We got a new puppy, so I had to put chicken wire around it to keep the, the puppy from the.
Eating the squirrels nuts, and now there’s cage matches. You’ll get two squirrels in there and, uh, it’s quite a, you’ll, you’ll get quite a, a ca quite a, uh, a cage match experience in there every once in a while. So you could sell tickets to that? I could. I I actually could. It’s, it’s actually quite entertaining.
Yeah, it’s quite entertaining.
I was telling somebody earlier, by the way, how disturbed I was when I found the squirrel cam, uh, video so compelling. I watched it longer than I really wanted to, and I thought, what the hell am I doing? Like, what, what is going on? Well, I,
the after dark ones are really good.
I’ve got a couple, uh, there’s, you’ll have to see there’s animals that you wouldn’t even. Imagine that show up on there. I’ll, uh, I’ll share some of those too. Besides the rats
and the possible Do it soon before Len puts it behind a paywall. Do it soon before Len in institutes the paywall. Yes. What’s coming up@lenpencil.com?
Man? I
don’t know. Squirrel cam come over. Squirrel cam will be something over there for everyone. ──
Paula, what is going on at the Afford Anything Podcast?
So we on the Afford Anything Podcast are talking to a couple of guys who are experts at NFTs non fungible tokens, and they’re gonna explain exactly ─ what is an NFT, why does it matter, and is this something that you should be paying attention to in your financial life?
They do a fantastic job of really breaking it down. We also previously spoke, wait
a minute, hold on. Paula spoke with George. ━ Are they gonna talk about what the hell happened in the NFT market? ━━━
Yeah. ━ Yes. We go through the, the storied history of NFTs. Good. Um, yeah, because
I think a lot of people don’t know about all the, I mean, that was a circus for a while.
It was,
it was. I mean, it was literally circus in that one of the most popular NFTs was an image of a monkey. It was, uh, that image. Yeah, exactly.
Joe, you say it was for a while, like it’s all settled down now and now it’s just
safe as houses. Well, it is settled down in the way that a lot of the overinflated market has corrected.
And also we saw places get raided. We saw people going to jail. We saw, we saw all kinds of craziness in the wild west of NFTs. So. That should be super interesting, Paula. Yeah,
I can’t imagine. So to learn all about NFTs and Web3 and the World of Crypto, tune into the Afford Anything podcast
again, we’re finer
podcast everywhere.
Yes. Spotify, apple Podcasts. We’re on YouTube now.
Maybe you can help out WeWork and, and see if they can, you can maybe donate a. She said to hold the microphone stand the entire time. Maybe
WeWork could issue an NFT ─━
maybe to support their purchase of a microphone stand or Paula. ─ Alright, uh, that’s going to do it for us.
Almost guess what we’re gonna bring back guys. Why don’t we see what’s going on in the back porch? Guys, I actually told this story earlier on a podcast because we, we were, we were talking about, um, uh, forgetting people’s names. He’d been going to the same barber for forever. The guy whose show is on and the barber, he brings his kid ’cause he’s so proud, he’s gone to the same barber dude’s like 85.
His name is Josh, and he walks in, he’s like, you brought your son John. ━━ He’s like, I’ve known you forever. And you think my name is John. ─━── I had this, I had this doctor. I had this doctor who I absolutely loved, Dougie, was in Southfield. He was amazing. Doctor Dr. Schwartz. And, uh, went to him forever. And finally I recommended that my wife go see him, and he and Cheryl hit it off.
And so she starts seeing him also. And then I come in for a checkup one time and he looks at my file. I’ve been going to the dude for like six years. Cheryl has been there for like six months, and he looks at my file. He goes, Joe, Saul, see ya. Are you related to Cheryl? Like, I’m not gonna introduced you to Cheryl. ━━━─
I’m the dude that bragged about, you’ve no idea who. I’m ─ like, I tell him that and, and of course he starts laughing. Well, anyway, we get to that part of the physical where I am. ── Pretty naked, and I’m bending over the desk, right, to get ready for that thing. And he’s putting on the latex glove and he starts laughing.
I’m like, there’s nothing worse when I’m bending over a thing with my pants around my ankles and the dude’s putting on a glove laughing. I’m like, oh my g uh, do I wanna know? And he’s like, yeah, I was just thinking, I can’t remember your name, but you’re not about to forget mine. ━━━━━━━━━━━━ He said that. ─────── And I was like, oh, ━───── I’m sitting there cracking up while I’m bending over the, ━━ that’s funny. ━─━
Just ── awkward as ever.
Like this conversation. ─━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━─━━━━─━━────━━━─━──
So there I was. My feet up in the stirrup Doug. You were at the wrong doctor ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━──━
Doug. Quick save us. What are our takeaways from today’s
show? So, what’s stacked up on our to-do list today. First, take some advice from Benjamin Brandt getting ready to retire. Recognize your skillset and start working on your gaps. Already a great saver. Well, you might need to learn how to spend a little in retirement. ─
Second, take it from Paula. You don’t have to wait for retirement to learn something new. If you’re not motivated enough to dive into something new while you have a job, you probably won’t when you’re retired. So just do it now. But what’s the biggest to do? ━──── If I’m gonna retire early, apparently I’m gonna have to put away this box of Twinkies. ──
Now, who am I kidding? I’m gonna be working forever. Can’t put these Twinkies away. ─────────── Thanks to Benjamin Brant for joining us today. Head over to retirement starts today.com To learn more about the great things they’re doing we’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today.
You’ll find her fabulous podcast. Afford Anything. Wherever you listen to finer podcasts. And thanks to Len Pezo for joining us today. You can find Len pezo@lenpezo.com slash Rat fights. ── This show is the property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine.
Karen and Joe get help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. ━─━━─━──━━─━━──────────────────────────────────
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