You can’t plan a great retirement if you haven’t first planned what you’re retiring to. In this episode, Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug open up Retirement Week in the basement with a Monday that’s equal parts insight, weekend recap, and questionable vehicle decisions.
🚪 Start with the most overlooked part of retirement: your lifestyle vision. What are you actually going to do all day—and will it make you happy?
📊 Then they dive into financial strategy, from coordinating pre-tax, Roth, and taxable funds to dodging sneaky IRMAA fees that show up like glitter—impossible to get rid of and oddly expensive.
🏎️ Thinking about a new car? Joe and Doug wrestle with the age-old question: maintain or upgrade, and how your answer could affect your wallet (and maybe your driveway credibility).
💼 Curious about investment leverage? Meet Basic Capital—a platform that might sound like a good idea… until it doesn’t. Joe and OG explain when leverage can help—and when it’s just risk in a tuxedo.
🎧 Plus:
- Saluting the troops
- What not to do when your retirement plan involves TikTok
- A sneak peek at the Nerdy Round Table
- And entertainment recs to round out your week like a pro
Start your week smarter and get a little closer to a retirement you actually want.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Doug’s Trivia
- What’s the additional fee you’ll pay on your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums if you earn above the annual threshold?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Shane has a question about a new fintech company, Basic Capital, and how they can use leverage in retirement-sponsored plan (and how that is even allowed).
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’re joined by the creators of the new film Join or Die, Pete and Rebecca Davis, and we discuss what your best retirement living and a successful life looks like.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Learning From 130 Years of Stock Market Crashes
Episode transcript
STACK 06-16 Successful Retirement -steve
[00:00:00] Joe: It’s Monday morning, the coffee’s hot. OG has a cold, and Doug is ready to roll. [00:00:06] OG: Sounds like a great Monday. [00:00:07] Joe: It does sound like a great [00:00:09] OG: Monday, like [00:00:10] Joe: any other Monday. We just saw OG cough up a hairball. That was fun. [00:00:15] OG: It’s cute. [00:00:15] Joe: Yeah. I’m glad we got that on video. So good. Well, to, to, uh, uh, how do I transition outta that [00:00:25] Doug: speak?Speaking of flame balls, we got some tasty programming for you. It’s
[00:00:31] Joe: gonna be great. You know what, let’s just, uh, completely segue. Because it is Monday and we are happy to do what we do every Monday, which is Salute the Troops on behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, the men and women making podcast mom’s basement.Here’s a big shout out to the men and women who kept us safe all weekend long. We’ll keep on keeping on. What,
[00:00:53] Doug: what do you notice? What do you notice about that mug there, Joe? It’s, it’s pretty, pretty plain, surprisingly devoid of a Stacking Benjamin logo, isn’t it? Another Monday. Here’s the troops. I wanna see how many times I can get you to say it’s in the mail I sent it.Let’s all, uh, go stack some Benjamins together Now, shall we?
[00:01:12] bit: Sometimes I feel like everyone I work with is an idiot. Right. And by sometimes, I mean all times. All the time, every of the time. [00:01:29] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and how do you create your best retirement today and all of this week, we are helping you live better. Retire happier and with more money. Sound good? Buckle up Buttercup because it’s retirement week in the basement, but that’s not all. I’ll also share a TikTok minute. Sure.
To make your head spin and we’ll answer a letter from Shane about a new investment option in your 401k. Can it help you grow your money faster? And like that shiny chrome on my El Camino, I’ll race in and deliver some of my beautiful podcast topping trivia. And now two guys who have raced to the mics to help you plan a better retirement.
It’s Joe and oh,
[00:02:35] Joe: hey there. Stackers it. A happy Monday to you. Welcome back to the show. We’re super happy you’re here. So sit back and relax because we are going to, as Doug, you so eloquently said, help you retire. The guy who’s helped a lot of people retire over the course of his career. Mr. OG is here. How are you, my friend? [00:02:52] OG: Pretty good. All [00:02:54] Joe: things considered. You lived through another fun weekend. There’s [00:02:58] OG: not enough DayQuil in the universe right now. [00:03:01] Joe: It’s great to be sick and have family visiting at the same time. Yeah. It’s gotta be fun. [00:03:05] OG: Yeah. That was a blast. I blame this all on my kids because they, because they’re defenseless.I don’t go anywhere. I just, I don’t interact with other people. That’s what I was
[00:03:14] Joe: wondering. Doug, do you need a reason? I just blame it on my kids. The fact that I haven’t made six mortgage payments in a row, blame it on my kids. [00:03:22] OG: Well, I mean, it’s only been five. I’ve only missed five. That’s six. They ding ya.Nope. Uh, happy to be here. Short week for me this week, and then I’m boogieing up north. I’m getting outta here. I’m, I’m playing hooky.
[00:03:34] Joe: It’s a great time to leave Texas [00:03:36] OG: right about now. It’s getting there. It’s getting there. I just figured a golf tournament on NyQuil should be pretty fun. So that’s what I’m gonna do this week.What are you guys doing this week besides, uh, helping people retire?
[00:03:47] Joe: Well, we are, um. What am I doing this week? [00:03:52] OG: You don’t have any idea. You’re just a day to day. [00:03:55] Joe: Yes. I’m on a need to know basis and apparently you don’t need to know and neither do I. [00:03:59] OG: Neither do you. ‘ [00:03:59] Joe: cause it’s, it’s gonna be a rough week.And Doug, of course is, uh, running around the house looking for the beeping. It’s occurring in his, in his house.
[00:04:08] Doug: Nobody knows what you’re talking, nobody knows what you’re talking about, Joe. I know, but you’ve had some beeping going on your mouth. We’ve had some beeping that we cannot find. It’s probably. A rafter somewhere.And, uh, we might have to go to some drastic measures to find this beeping. We have this, by the way,
[00:04:22] Joe: with our carbon monoxide detector, and I swear to God, they engineer this for, uh, no lu. Those beeps are too close together for them to figure out where the beepings coming from. [00:04:33] Doug: We gotta, we gotta put it just further apart.Can we do these three hours apart, these beats
[00:04:39] OG: also only at 2:00 AM. [00:04:40] Doug: Right. Yeah, that’s right. In high school we to a a cool teacher, to a really cool teacher. We played a prank where we took one of those musical birthday cards and just put it in the ceiling tiles up in the, oh no, the room, like in the back corner of the room.So it was just kind of faint. Oh, no. Yeah, it took all day for him to finally figure out he needed to go up into the ceiling tiles. It was pretty funny. Well, you’re funny. Yeah. Oh, no wonder you
[00:05:06] Joe: were so well liked in high school by all the staff. We got a great show. We are going to help you retire. Whether you wanna retire early, wanna retire on time, or maybe you’re starting late, we’re gonna help you get there better, more smoothly.All week long and today we’re gonna start that journey by introducing where a lot of people get it wrong and how to make sure that you are on rails when it comes to planning your retirement. We’re gonna dive into that in just a moment, but before we get to that, we’ve got a couple sponsors to make sure that we can keep on keeping on.
We’re gonna hear from them, and then you, me, Doug og, we’re playing in your retirement. Let’s go.
All this week we’re deep diving into retirement. No, gee, let’s kick off the discussion here. I think when it comes to retirement planning, there’s a little bit of beware what you ask for, and a lot of us get this wrong. We wanna start with, okay, what’s my safe withdrawal rate if I’m a suit uber geek, or what is my, what’s my plan to take money out?
How do I set up my funds? And I think before we get to any of that, we have to ask ourself, really, what is this retirement thing all about? Because let me give you a couple statistics. One we aired on the show last September. This is from the Wealthy Accountant Blog. The average Americans healthy retirement age, healthy retirement.
So we have our life expectancy and we have our healthy life expectancy. The difference between those is when we’re healthy, we’re able to do, of course, all the things that we wanna do, all these big plans that we have for retirement years. I’m not gonna be at work, I’m gonna be doing the stuff. The average healthy lifespan in America, 66.1 years, meaning that for a lot of people, if they’re gonna retire on time, og.
We’re not even healthy enough to do the things interesting that we think that we’re gonna do. That’s number one. Number two is you see all these statistics recently around as people dig further and further into what makes a successful retirement. The average retiree spends their first 18 months in this blissful happiness, this incredible, incredible happiness.
This is researched by a gentleman named Ken Dewald, who spent his entire career looking at retirement and how we retire. First 18 months we spend in this blissful place, and then og, if we haven’t done the right planning, we have the deepest, darkest trough identity crisis. And I think it’s OG because we go, oh, wait a minute, this is it.
It’s not just playing golf every day. It’s not just about waking up whenever I want to. Like, what am I actually doing with, with the rest of my life? So, I don’t know. I think we, we need to help people reset. I don’t think this really begins with the money.
[00:07:57] OG: No, no. It definitely doesn’t start with the money.I mean, the money is a significant part of it, undoubtedly, as you start to design what it is that you wanna spend your day doing. But you know, you have this structure that’s been your life for the last 25 or 35 or 45 years of what your, what the rhythm of your life looks like for us right now. It’s. Work hard from September to May, and then try to cram in all the fun stuff in June, July in the early part of August.
And if I told you that was my schedule, you’d go, oh, well you probably have kids. And that’s the rhythm that we have. If we got to the beginning of September or beginning of June and said, all right guys, what do you think you wanna do this summer? Like the, the, you know, the meter’s running, like it’s already, we’re already in it at that point in time.
We did just drop a trip in there. This late summer for us that we had not known about, and it’s pretty stressful to be eight weeks out now. We’re six weeks out when we’re recording this, but when we planned it eight weeks out from this week long trip that we’re doing that we’ve, I. Kind of forgot that we were doing.
So you think about, you know, your retirement and you get to your retirement. It’s like showing up on summer break and not having any sort of plan. Now, the first, like you said, the first little bit of, that’s cool, right? You’re like, I don’t know, sit at the pool and drink beer. Fantastic. That, that’s cool.
You know, and there’s a lot of research to suggest that you need two consecutive weeks of uninterrupted leisure time, right? Like, no work emails, no work phone calls two weeks straight to like totally decompress and like, you know, reset the meter for work. That’s a whole separate thing. So you can imagine, you know, the first couple weeks of summer break are like, oh, sweet, I can just kind of hang out and yeah, just kind of go where the wind takes me.
But then you get to the dog days of summer, right? And if there’s nothing on the calendar, you, you’re bored. I think that’s very similar to how you consider your, uh, your financial independence time as well. Not saying that you have to schedule everything. You know, I wake up at four, you know, or I wake up at seven, I do whatever.
You better have a pretty good idea of what that structure and that rhythm’s gonna look like.
[00:09:55] Joe: When does this planning start? If we don’t start it the day that we retire, which, I mean, to your point, if you did that with summer vacation, all the great attractions are full. All the stuff is booked up. Heck, we even tried, we had friends that tried to join us on a, we’re gonna do a Christmas markets cruise this year.We had friends just try to join us last week. That book is that, that boat’s long, long, but long packed. Like they just, you, you can’t do what you want a lot of the time when you wait till the last minute to plan. But when should we start planning? You know, we got some stackers in their twenties, we got some in their thirties.
When do we start to plan and how do we get, when do we need to get more granular around, okay, this is what I really wanna do with my time.
[00:10:33] OG: Well, again, I don’t know that it’s a granular thing. I don’t think that you wanna plan to the granular level. For example, if health and fitness is something that’s important to you, you’re probably gonna wanna be doing that when you’re in your thirties and forties and fifties.I would imagine that when you retire and you’re 60, you’re gonna wanna keep doing that. So maybe that’s part of your rhythm is you are gonna allocate time every day to exercise or whatever health related type things you wanna do. Maybe your trips or vacations or sightseeing things or whatever. Maybe that’s gonna revolve around things that are health related.
So instead of going sitting on a boat at the Christmas markets like you’re gonna do, maybe you plan a trip to. The park so that you have to, you know you’re gonna do some hiking or something like that. It’s gonna help you shape and frame out what the rhythm of your week or month or whatever’s gonna look like if you have kids or grandkids, like my wife’s parents.
They have a very rhythmic time to, when they come visit us, they see us in October when the weather’s nice in Dallas for a couple of weeks, and they get to catch some high school football games and Caroline Cheerleading and so on and so forth. And then they come at the end of the school year and they get to see the final little bit.
And it’s starting to get warm, but not warm enough yet, and the kids are outta school finally. So they get a little bit, you know, that’s, that’s that time and, and so they have this very predictable schedule that they have something to look forward to. Was it George Burns or something that said. How do you live so long or whatever.
Basically, paraphrasing, and he said, well, I’m booked on my hundredth birthday, so I have stuff to do
[00:12:00] Joe: right? [00:12:01] OG: When you stay in that schedule, you know what, if you’re gonna play golf, you probably play golf with the same people or a group of the same people, so you probably play golf on Saturday mornings. Or Thursday afternoons or like whatever that is, that’s your golf time. [00:12:13] Joe: Yeah. I think a lot of people were surprised with Christine Ben’s book that came out, uh, early last fall, OG in chapter number one, she interviews an annuity expert and they don’t talk at all about annuities. They talk about what makes a successful retirement and it’s spot on. What you’re talking about, this predictability.It doesn’t have to be a job. But if you treat retirement like a predictable job, but one that you love what you do, one when you can raise that flag, that that little middle finger flag whenever you choose, right? Oh, but you get out of bed at a certain time. You structure your day a certain way, just like it’s a job.
They’re finding more and more evidence that that is what creates a successful longer. Well, there’s
[00:12:55] OG: both sides of it. You know, Tony Robbins says that you gotta have certainty in your life and uncertainty, you know, so there has to be some sort of spontaneity to the, to the schedule, obviously. But if you like traveling, you should probably do some traveling.Make sure you like traveling. You and Cheryl travel all the time because you like doing it. And so if all of a sudden you retired, you would probably keep doing the thing that you like doing. And how do you know you like doing it? ’cause you’ve been doing it, you know, you’re not waiting until, well I gotta wait until I retire to figure out if I like golf.
You know, if you think you might wanna play golf, play golf.
[00:13:26] Joe: That’s what I liked about, uh, and I’ll, I’ll link to both of these episodes, the Christine Ben’s episode I just mentioned. I. And when our good friend Benjamin Brant was on and he was talking about og because you know, the original question here was when do we start doing the planning?Benjamin likes the idea, and I know you do too, of during your pre-retirement years experiment with these things that you think you might wanna do in retirement. Yeah. At one point. Cheryl and I thought we would like to be digital nomads. We’d wanna be homeless. I keep podcasting. Sounds great. Yeah. I would podcast from anywhere.
We’d live in Portugal for a while. We’d live wherever. It sounded amazing. I lasted five months. It sucked. It was not at all what I wanted to do, but the fact that we got to play, test that ahead of time. So I think whether you’re in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, think about what the things are that you might wanna do when you’re financially independent.
Just a
[00:14:12] OG: routine coyote walking down the street, [00:14:14] Joe: really as it [00:14:15] OG: happens. As, as, [00:14:17] Joe: as, as they do, [00:14:19] OG: as they do. [00:14:20] Joe: How come og you always get the good window, by the way, where you can see the coyote and I gotta, yeah. Oh yeah. Cream my neck to see the coyote right there. I got you. Got no idea. But this idea of tying it ahead of time, I love the fact that now in your vacations, og, you’re play testing your future retirement. [00:14:34] OG: Yeah. [00:14:34] Joe: So from there, I think this is the important thing. When I’ve sat down with people and we’ve been talking about planning out the numbers for retirement, a lot of the time OG people wanna start with the numbers. I believe this is what you start with. What do you wanna do? Then you begin to design, okay, how much money do I need to take out every month to make that happen?How much fuel am I gonna need for that number? So instead of starting with, what’s the safest withdrawal rate I can get? Don’t get me wrong, you might wanna calculate that later. Yeah, you should start with, can I afford to do all these things that I wanna do? Where do the lumpy expenses fit in there though?
Oh gee. Let’s say that I wanna buy an. Rv or I wanna buy a boat, or I wanna buy a second home. No, uh, early, early on. Early on my retirement. I mean, do I think of those as budget items in, in retirement or do I think of those as like a separate pot of money?
[00:15:26] OG: Well, it’s all, it’s, it’s all gonna depend on what your financial circumstances are.I mean, if you’ve got. $10 million and you’re gonna spend a million on a vacation condo and it makes sense for you to write a check, well then really you have $9 million to spend and a million of real estate equity.
[00:15:40] Joe: I think that’s a great way to think about it anyway, isn’t it? Like, just take it off the table and go.Okay.
[00:15:45] OG: Well, I mean, there’s, there’s different, you, you know, we’ve talked offline about the concept of vacation properties. I know I’ve talked to Doug about this. We have all these experiences in our family about going up north right in, when we lived in Michigan and, and even now, we live in Texas. We go to Michigan for a few weeks and.We have this recurring conversation of Lakehouse. But then you start doing the math on it and you go, maybe it just makes sense just to have a really good budget for travel, because after you say, well, I’m gonna go buy a lake house, it’s X dollars, I gotta put 10, 15, 20% down, so I’m out of pocket, a big chunk, and now I’ve got a mortgage payment, taxes and insurance and maintenance and utilities, and all the stuff that associated the fixed costs associated with having this place.
And then of course, the variable cost of when I go out there, I need to put food and put gas in the boat and so and so forth. So if you can pencil that all out and go, well, if I can afford to pay. 5,000 a month in fixed expenses. I can afford to pay 60,000 a year in some pretty banger vacations, you know?
Yeah.
[00:16:40] Joe: Cheryl and I actually made that very decision. Og. Yeah. We had a long talk about buying that second, that vacation home. Yeah. And decided instead to do what you talked about. [00:16:48] OG: Yeah. [00:16:48] Joe: So, hold on. [00:16:49] Doug: Did you just talk about a $60,000 vacation budget? [00:16:53] OG: Sure. At 5,000 a month with mortgage, mortgage, taxes, insurance, [00:16:57] Joe: if you’re gonna buy the second home, that is gonna cost you.That’s totally realistic. Huge amount of money.
[00:17:02] Doug: Way to be relatable, Mr. Every man, [00:17:07] OG: dude, $500,000 mortgage is three grand a month, and then you add taxes and insurance on top of it and, and utilities. I know that’s a half a million dollar Lake house. [00:17:15] Doug: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:16] OG: Which isn’t a lot, really. [00:17:18] Doug: No, it’s not. It’s hard to find those, actually. [00:17:19] Joe: Well, that’s what I was gonna say, Doug. It’s, it’s, to your point, if you’re 25 listening to us, that sounds totally unrelatable. But to the 60 year olds still like, [00:17:27] Doug: yeah, may maybe. Okay. Maybe no, and you’re right. And actually regardless of your age, that’s kind of how the numbers work out. But we don’t think of them that way.We don’t sort of reverse engineer them to realize, oh, this is how much I’d be spending and I can, I can have a lot of fun for a lot less money. So do I really need that asset in a vacation area when I can take half of that, invest it and spend 30 K and still have two vacations of a lifetime in the same year?
[00:17:53] Joe: Let’s say it’s someplace out in the woods in the middle of nowhere. And you can do that on $2,500 a month. Yeah. Oh gee, that’s still paying her vacations. Yeah. Still 30 grand. That’s still, we can cut that number in half. And it’s still, I mean the argument [00:18:05] OG: of course is that all of that money is not going to expenses.You have some equity you’re building up and that sort of thing, whatever. But um, nevertheless, it’s certainly something to think about. So. Your question around, you know, how do we think about those big, big purchases is, well, it depends on is is it gonna be a single purchase? Am I gonna buy the vacation house or am I gonna buy the boat, or am I going to have it with payments?
There’s no wrong answer to either of these things, it’s just, it’s gonna affect the cash flow with the rest of the assets.
[00:18:31] Joe: I love the fact that we just went through buying the second home and decided maybe not even just contemplating that ahead of time. [00:18:39] OG: I mean, that’s what we’ve done. I still look at ’em on Zillow, but [00:18:42] Joe: yeah, and by the way, I think that we still might purchase a vacation home, however, rent it out 99% of the time. [00:18:48] OG: Yeah. There’s good things and not so good things about that too. You know, there’s a hundred percent your neighbors will love you. [00:18:53] Joe: Yeah. I think the ones that we’re looking at are already vacation homes. Doug. Ah, right next door to you, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. So now we’ve got our number we wanna spend every month.We maybe have set aside some of those big lumpy expenses. I’ve got money in Roth, I’ve got money in pre-tax. I got money in after-tax. Let’s talk about the tax triangle, G. How are we gonna think about pulling money then from these three different buckets of money in a way that makes sense?
[00:19:21] OG: Well, this is a 3 0 1 discussion.I think unfortunately, it’s largely gonna depend on your year to year. Spending and consumption plans, you know, it’s gonna depend on what tax rates are. It’s gonna depend on what your social security and Medicare situation looks like. Other forms of income you have, if you have your rental income from your vacation house that you just recently purchased, that’s gonna have an impact on all these decisions as well.
So I think the answer is that you have to have a strategy that changes year to year. You can’t just, you know, make it up as you go. Sure. It’s gonna be different every year. That’s a really a great. Podcast answer, I suppose, but,
[00:19:58] Joe: well, no, no, because I think letting people know that you do this is gonna be an ongoing thing is super important.The, you know, the place that I start from myself is I. What are the ticking time bombs coming down the road? And when I look at the Roth bucket, there’s no time bomb. In fact, a lot of studies show that people end up not spending money from the Roth ’cause they wanna save it for later too much, right? We will end up spending less money and doing less stuff unless we’ve already planned out the way that you and I just talked about.
What are the things we really wanna do? Money in the taxable brokerage side. We’re either gonna pay the capital gain or we’re not. So really the ticking time bomb is. Money in the pre-tax portion. So I think maybe starting with that as your rubric, how much money’s in that pre-tax bot, how do I take that out efficiently so that I don’t end up with some big, uh, requirement and distribution issues, uh, down the road?
Is that maybe a good place to start?
[00:20:53] OG: Well, yes, but then you also have to consider all the other things too, because if you take all your money outta your pretax and then you get a higher Medicare premium, right, right. That’s five x what you were planning, you know, what did you save? Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.Uh, times two people in the household or something like that, or your social security is taxed at a different rate, so it all works together.
[00:21:11] Joe: On that note, og, I’m glad you brought that up because, uh, Doug can weigh in on this one with today’s trivia question. [00:21:18] Doug: Gonna shock the world here, Joe. Hey, there’s stackers.I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and let’s retire. This idea that you can use the same portfolio for retirement that you had pre-retirement, shall we? Case in point, if you pull too much money from pre-tax IRAs during retirement, you may pay a tax on your Medicare Part B and Part D. Today’s trivia question, what’s the name of this additional Medicare fee you’ll pay if you make a yearly income above the annual threshold?
I’ll be back right after I go yell at the neighborhood. Kids playing out in the street. Gotta keep up my reputation, right?
Hey there, stackers. I’m Mr. Get off my lawn. And Mr. Does your mom know you used that gesture? Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Seriously, these kids playing in the street? Shouldn’t they be at home like looking at an iPhone or some game system? I mean, really, before you know it, we’ll have kids outside playing pick up games of croquet or making friends and riding their bikes around the neighborhood.
Next thing you know, the HOAs hired them as undercover enforcement officers. We cannot have that. Well, what we can have is the answer to today’s trivia question, though today I asked you this gem, what’s the additional fee you’ll pay on your Medicare Part B and Part D premiums? If you earn above the annual threshold, the answer payers pulling too much from their pre-tax, 401k or IRA may find themselves subject to an income related monthly adjustment amount, or Irma, otherwise known as.
Irma, might I say it twice? AKA also Ima, ’cause there’s some extra R’s in there. How do you avoid Irma? My advice, don’t go to that diner out on Route three, but let’s see what Joe and OG have to say about this.
[00:23:14] Joe: Oh man. Well, good timing on that trivia, Doug. ’cause uh, OG exactly what you’re talking about is. A little text called Irma. [00:23:23] OG: Well, and the major problem with it, besides the fact that it punches you in the face, is that it’s two years removed. So it’s, the decisions you make in 2025 are gonna affect your Medicare premiums beginning in January of 2027. So there’s not even like that immediate cause and effect where you go, oh.Yeah, that makes sense. I had a big deal last year. That’s why it’s going up. It’s like you spent all that money that’s, that’s done and gone. And then a year later you get hit with the, the increase. So you have to pay attention to it. And sometimes, you know, look, if you have a lot of money and you make a lot of money, that’s just, that’s the cost of doing business.
Like it ain’t very, what’s the, what’s the phrase? It ain’t cheap being rich, you know?
[00:24:03] Joe: Yeah. I think though, that’s another reason why I build around my pretax. Because pre-tax has all these gotchas, right? There’s the Irma. Gotcha. There’s the required minimum distribution gotchas later on. Like, I might not wanna spend this much money later on every year, so maybe it’s gonna be better for Irma and for requirement distributions to take some amount out each year.The, the reason I say that is this. I think what a lot of people do is they’re just like, oh, I don’t wanna pay that tax, so I’m gonna defer my pre-tax money. I’m gonna deferred it. I’m gonna defer to I’m, I’m gonna defer it. I’m gonna defer it. And I think between RMDs and Irma, og, this just defer at all costs versus build around.
Maybe I tap that a little early too. Let a little bit of the air out of the balloon might be a better strategy.
[00:24:50] OG: I mean, you have to pay attention to it. It starts increasing at 212,000, which seems like a boatload of money. Until you start looking at what those required distributions could look like when you’re 75 or 80 or 85 or 90.And this also counts when you do things like conversions. You know, if you retire when you’re early, let’s say you retire when you’re 55. You have until 65 to kind of help plan that out a little bit because the 65 is where Medicare kicks in, right? So from 55 to 63, you can really start cratering that, pay the penalties, pay the taxes, no penalties, but pay the, pay the increased tax rate now so that you are potentially driving down those pre-tax assets.
Before it even counts. So there’s lots of, there’s lots of strategies that are involved. I think what’s important is to not have any surprises. Yeah. You don’t wanna show up and have your, you know, Medicare premium that you thought was $185 per person is now $600 per person. Like that’s a, that’s a pretty wild shock and it’s seems impossible.
You go, wow, my gosh, that’s $750,000. Well, yeah, that’s a lot of money. Do the RMD calculations. Run. Run that out. You know, and let me know what your RMD is when you’re 91 years old.
[00:26:03] Joe: Be like, oh me, I did not see that coming. Yeah, [00:26:05] OG: it happens. [00:26:06] Joe: Did not see that coming. The RMD that’s so big. It creates a bigger Irma situation.It’s like you get, you know, it’s like that Bugs Bunny cartoon. Bugs Bunny’s asking the the lion, where does he want to get hit? He’s not asking him if he wants to get hit with a mal. He’s asking him where he wants to get hit. Yeah. How would you like to be hit with this? IRS bunny? Plan it out ahead of time people, and that’s why I like starting with, how am I gonna control that faucet from the pre-tax mix?
Because I think that also answers another question. Where does the Roth play in? Well, the Roth is great. To help mitigate that. Also, I think a lot of people like, do I spend the Roth first? Do I spend the pretax first? You know, I like ’em both together because if I’m trying to live a certain lifestyle and I’m trying to have only so much money come out of the pretax bucket, I can supplement that with Roth money and have it.
Make a better tax situation than I did if I went in either e. E, either or. Coming up on Wednesday, we are going to talk about why geo arbitrage might not be a great idea. Following your kids might not be a great idea. I. It’s all about community and uh, there’s some makers of a new documentary that came out in the last couple years called Join or Die.
Pete and Rebecca Davis are gonna join us as we continue the discussion on what makes a successful retirement. And it turns out, OG you are more likely to have a successful, happy retirement if you do just a couple simple things that their documentary dives into. Of course, in the 2 0 1, we will also dive even further into this discussion on Friday.
We got a couple money geeks. People in the personal finance community may know karsten Jetski, a k, a big earn, who likes to talk safe withdrawal rates. Uh, Frank Vazquez who likes to talk, uh, risk parody. And our good friend, uh, Dana spac is going to join them for a very nerdy round table on Friday. Alright, now let’s go into a new segment.
We’d like to call.
[00:28:00] Letters: We just got a letter. We just got a letter. We just got a letter. Wonder who it’s from. [00:28:08] Joe: Did your kids see Blues Clues? Oh yeah. I love that show. So, so, so good. We did get a letter guys. We got a letter from uh, stacker Shane and uh, well, Doug, you’ve got the letter in your hands. Sure do. Joe Shane says hello. [00:28:22] Doug: That’s it. [00:28:24] Joe: Either shade. Thank you. And that was, we just got a letter, [00:28:28] Doug: a segment. Okay. Onto the next segment. Oh, but it, I see there’s more below that. I didn’t, didn’t realize the structure of his complex writing style. Uh, he says, today I learned about a new FinTech company called Basic Capital that is sketchy as all hell.Fun. I know. I’m not sure how he feels about it. Don’t beat around the bush Shane. Funded by Bill Ackman and ran by some former Goldman Sachs guy. Basically, they’re advocating for using five x leverage on your 401k. I feel like your listeners don’t need an explanation as to why this is a terrible idea, but I’d love to hear you guys explore one.
How is this actually structured to be legal? Two, I assume the math they’re using to justify how their fees don’t negate all of your potential profits is bullshit. Wow. I don’t think Shane just came outta church when he wrote this, but I’d love to have actual professionals explain why. And three, how is this any different than taking a loan from organized crime to fund your retirement?
Thanks for all the entertainment. No, thank you, Shane. I think you provided the entertainment today. Well, let’s walk into this
[00:29:36] Joe: because I have never seen anything like this guys. The website is basic capital.com. I don’t know if I even want to say this ’cause. This is, uh, the strangest FinTech I have, I have ever seen the crux of it.And by the way, they use a bunch of big, big, uh, obtuse terms and how this all works, even after being on the website for 45 minutes, looking to try to figure out what the hell they’re actually doing. Still incredibly opaque. But Basic Capital OG seems to work this way for employers. They can create a 401k plan, which is run ostensibly, I think, by these fine people at Basic Capital.
You then put money into the account. That’s usual. Your employer can match. That is also usual. They’ve created some online tools so that you can help decide what the right amount to put in is. So you can figure that out. Uh, you know, I wanna retire on X amount of money per year, so here’s how much I gotta put in to do that.
Okay. That’s kind of neat. But still, we’ve seen that before at places like Fidelity. And then here’s where it gets funky. You can either use standard investment options. Or quote and optional additional capital. What the hell is this? I’m
[00:31:03] OG: in? [00:31:03] Joe: Give your employees the option to get more from their 401k I’m in.When an employee opts into basic capital, they get $4 of non-recourse financing. I’m in. For every $1 they contribute giving this five what I
[00:31:18] OG: just say, I’m in [00:31:19] Joe: five full [00:31:20] OG: cents [00:31:21] Joe: of investing power. You like this? Basic capital generates an income stream that offsets the financing cost and ultimately pays it off as you approach retirement. [00:31:29] OG: I happen to be on one side. You know when you think of the bell curve of, you know, if you remember statistics class and there’s a bell curve and they have like one standard deviation and two, like I’m the third standard deviation of excess risk. Way over on that side. So yeah. [00:31:45] Doug: You’re like the wingsuit jumper of the financial world. [00:31:48] OG: Yeah. Yeah. Without, with one wing, it’s like, it’ll be fine. [00:31:52] Joe: I love the next line on this for employers, help your team hit their goals. I. [00:31:58] OG: I mean, here’s the deal with leverage. Leverage works fantastically. In fact, I don’t remember which personality said this, but it was somebody pretty famous and it was a comment this person made, uh, kind of off the cuff, and it caught a lot of people by surprise, but it’s completely right.The fastest way to increase your net worth is to lever the heck out of yourself and to do it with your investment portfolio is a great idea, except for when it’s not a great idea. Because it goes down five times faster. So let me put it in perspective. So let’s say that you have an investment account that has a million dollars in it.
If you have a million dollars at at your brokerage company, fidelity or Schwab, you and you say you have a million dollars of ETFs, very well diversified. Everything life is good, you can go to Schwab or Fidelity or whomever and say, Hey, do I get any extra benefits for having this money? And they’ll say, well, sure, what else do you want?
And you’ll say, yeah, what if I wanted to buy more stock today? Just based on the fact that I got a million bucks, they let you do it. In fact, some places will let you go nine to one depending on the type of investments that you have. One. Yeah, imagine if you have, let’s just say you just, let’s say you do this example.
Let’s say you do three to one, three to one’s a way easier, lighter, you know, not as leverage, right? It’s only 300%. You’re only borrowing 300% of your house, alright? So you have a million dollars. So you go to Schwab and you say, can I get. 2 million more stock and they’d say, yeah, absolutely. Have at it. It’s all yours.
Now they’re gonna charge you interest on that, right? The interest is whatever it is, 6% or something. And your goal is to say, well my, my 2 million that I borrowed at 6%, it’s gonna grow at 10 over time. So that’s gonna compound faster, you know, along the way. That’s the goal, right? What happens on April 8th when the market goes down 15%?
So let’s just do the math. So Schwab is not gonna, they’re not taking the hit on the 2 million, right? Like if there’s a chance they’re not getting paid back, they are gonna zero you out to make sure they get paid back. So you have a million dollars a year money plus 2 million of there. So you owe ’em 2 million.
You’re in the hole, the market goes down 20%. Well, what’s 20% of 3 million? 600 K, right? But you only have a million of your own money. So you take all the loss, so your million turns into 400 as it closes in on your money turning to zero. Schwab will zero you out as the market’s going up. If you’ve got 3 million in the market and it grows, grows by 10%, right?
S and p fund, life is good. Your 3 million goes up by 300,000, right? Well, you only have a million in the deal, so your million really went up by 300,000. That’s a pretty good trade. That’s a 30% return. That’s fantastic, but it also works the other way around. If your portfolio goes down 20%, you don’t go from 1,000,800, you go from a million to 400.
You get the excess decline as well. So there is some math to suggest that you should always be levered two to one, because eventually it works out. But it’s like one of those things where you have to be right and you have to be in at the right time. If you would’ve started this in like 2011 and been levered three to one on the s and p, since then, you’d be a gazillionaire.
That’d be fantastic if you would’ve started this on. March 1st, 2020, right before COVID went down 30% in 17 trading days, you’d be, you’d be zeroed out because that’s a
[00:35:23] Joe: great, that’s a great point, og. This is not a question of can this work? Yeah. Because the answer to basic capital’s solution here is, yeah, heck, if you’re gonna have $4 of somebody else’s money and a dollar to somebody else’s money, I put back on the screen for people watching the video of this.Uh, they have this,
[00:35:44] OG: yeah, you just get to the mountain faster. See, look how fast they have this pull [00:35:47] Joe: mountain graph. I love it. Which I think the SEC not that’s helpful with the SEC like this, you’ve got the little pink person who’s slowly going up the mountain and you’ve got the lightning bolt. I. Which is going up way, way, way faster.See how come they don’t show that as a Grand Canyon where you’re going down faster on the other side? But the words around this, check this out, guys. Basic capital enables employees to opt in to have more capital working for them, enabling them to, this is my favorite word, this is the word the SEC wants to see Uhhuh potentially build more wealth.
Your Honor, we said potentially. We didn’t promise a thing.
[00:36:27] OG: Yeah, I had five to one. Back to my example, if you have a million dollars, and some places will do this, like I said, you can go to nine to one in some places, so you go five to one and you’re gonna invest 5 million bucks or 4 million extra dollars.So you’ve got 5 million total. The market grows by 10% this year. Your million turned into 1.5. Like you get all the up. That’s fantastic. But a minus 20 on 5 million is how much? Minus 20 percent’s a million. And you only had a million. So you’re out, you’re, you’re done. You’re back to zero. ’cause, ’cause Schwab doesn’t go like, oh, we’ll take the hit with you buddy.
High five. Let’s, we’ll get fight another day. They take the, they’re like, no, we got our four mil. We’re good. And know, by the way, you also owe a 6% interest every month that you, or every year that you had that four mil. So the interest payment alone oughta pucker some people up. You know, it’s only $20,000 a month of interest.
Pocket change to guys like you or for the rest of us.
[00:37:22] Joe: This totally screams of that, uh, parody that you and I saw quite a few years ago on South Park where the dad takes his son in to get just a, something he thinks is a very safe investment. [00:37:38] bit: I really have to do this Dad stand now more than ever. You need to understand the importance of saving money, but Grandma said I could use this money to buy whatever I want.Okay, next, please. Go on Stein, how can I help you young man? I got a hundred dollars check from my grandma and my dad said I need to put it in the bank so it can grow over the years. Well, that’s fantastic. A really smart decision, young man. We can put that check in a money market mutual fund. Then we’ll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest and it’s God, uh, what?
It’s God. It’s all God. What’s up? Gun the money in your account. It didn’t do too well. It’s God, it didn’t do too well.
[00:38:20] Joe: I feel like that’s what happens at the ad. [00:38:22] OG: I mean, it’s all about timing. It is about if you time it out right, you’re gonna, you’re gonna be super happy that it works. [00:38:27] Joe: If you wanna go to Las Vegas with your 401k. Well check this out. I’m gonna go back to their website because when you click on four individuals, it has this big, big banner that says More financial power, increase your investing power.The only platform that. Wait for it. Supplements your contribution with additional buying power. Get $4 of financing for every dollar you contribute. Okay. We scroll down. So they talk about how cool it is to get $5 of borrowing power for every dollar you contribute. We go down again, simple passive index investing.
Ooh, og. Those are terms I’ve heard before and I like, so now I’m getting five to one plus with index investing. That’s good. Keep
[00:39:07] OG: going. Keep going. It gets better. There’s a really fun line that they get to. My [00:39:10] Joe: favorite one, click Backdoor. Roth ira. So you know this pain in the ass called the called Ducks bomb. [00:39:16] OG: Yep. Keep going, keep going. The next line’s the best. [00:39:20] Joe: That looks easy. And then now we have pricing. How does the pricing work? Og? [00:39:25] OG: Yeah. I don’t really even care about that. Keep going. [00:39:27] Joe: Oh, subscription fees. $0 per month with accounts funded only by bank accounts. $25 if it’s rolled over from existing 4 0 1 Ks and IRAs.Uh, half a percent management fee financing costs 6.25% on that loan that they’re giving you. Yep. Plus 5% of the gains Yeah. Pay directly from your investment. Wow. Only upon they’re gonna take 5% of the gain and they’re going to charge you 6.25. Keep going. Keep going. Percent, keep going.
[00:39:57] OG: The orange part [00:39:58] Joe: because everyone deserves the trust fund, baby. [00:40:04] OG: I love it. Wow. They are speaking to me. They know my love language. [00:40:09] Joe: Shane. Shane, you hit it, man. You hit it. Nice job, Shane. Yeah, I would say, uh, og maybe steer clear of this. [00:40:16] OG: Uh, yeah, probably. [00:40:18] Joe: And yet, what did we have on the, on the show last week? More and more. Companies going, you know what we need? We need more betting inside your 401k.So you know it’s coming. It’s coming. You’re gonna have all the opportunities to lose all your money as fast as you want.
[00:40:33] OG: Yeah. [00:40:34] Joe: Inside your [00:40:34] Doug: 401k, [00:40:35] Joe: you [00:40:35] OG: can do it. Well, [00:40:35] Doug: if we’ve got DraftKings and FanDuel all over professional sports, why not bring it into a 401k, partially owned by the professional [00:40:42] Joe: sports teams and by ESPN. [00:40:44] Doug: Yeah. [00:40:45] Joe: Yeah. It’s great. Anyway, thanks, uh, Sean for taking part in our brand new, we just got a letter. Segment. We prefer the voicemails though. And uh, so because of that, Sean, unfortunately you don’t get any cool Stacking Benjamin swag. We leave that for the people that call in, but that was awesome. Thank you very much.Last segment today before we head out to the back porch, is one that we like to call the TikTok minute. And this is where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either sharing something brilliant or air quotes. Brilliant. Doug, you think we got some brilliance today? Yes. Yes, we do. Joe. Yes, we do. This is a gentleman who works at a car dealership and he is talking about when to assess the timing on getting your new car.
And I’d like to get both of your, your takes on this. So when he’s, he’s gonna start off with add up your bills. He’s only talking about bills related to car maintenance. All right, so that’s gonna be a little confusing, but he’s talking about bills related to car maintenance. This is the math equation he believes.
[00:41:48] TikTok: Add up your last 24 months worth of bills and divide it by 24. You can take out your oil filter changes because it doesn’t matter if it’s new or used. You gotta change oil on it. Divide your total of two years worth of receipts by 24. If it’s close to a new car payment, it’s time to get a new car. On average, you’re spending hundred or 200 bucks.Keep the car, it’s worth it.
[00:42:13] Joe: So he’s saying that if your monthly expense over the last two years, if your monthly maintenance bill has been the same as a new car payment, buy the new car and pay the car payment. Forget about the maintenance on the car. [00:42:26] OG: I think this is a little backward looking and harder to predict the future, but I can see the logic behind it.In fact, this was kind of the thing that was a deciding factor when we sold one car and bought the minivan that we have several, whatever, seven, eight years ago now. What I found about car maintenance in my personal experience anyway, is that it’s very lumpy. It’s not like it’s, I
[00:42:48] Joe: think that’s why a hundred dollars [00:42:49] OG: a month, [00:42:49] Joe: but I think that’s why he’s saying two years og.Yeah. Yeah. That’s why he’s pulling it back.
[00:42:53] OG: Yeah. But my point is, so the car’s on the fritz and you bring it in and they go, okay, well all the blinker fluid needs to get changed and all the air needs to get rotated, and it’s gonna be five grand. And you’re like, all right, five grand. What’s the choice? At that point, you just, you literally pushed it into the maintenance bay.So now the question is, is there another five grand coming or is that one my last one For the foreseeable future, right. That’s the unknown
[00:43:17] Doug: and you can’t predict that. But let’s say you do. Let’s say you have another five grand and it’s unlikely. I went through this OG and I have talked about this several times offline.We had a car, a vehicle that was like that, that my son was using. The fin turn was using.
[00:43:31] OG: We had the same car as a matter of fact. [00:43:32] Doug: Yeah. When, uh, when Fin Turn was in school. Uh, in college. And we just needed basically something to get him from home, back to school, uh, for, you know, vacations and stuff. But let’s say you had two of those five thousands, one each year.10 grand divided by 24 is 500 bucks a month. There aren’t a lot of new cars you’re getting for 500 bucks a month. You could go get another used car for 10 grand that would, you know, wash out to be 500 bucks a month, but now you’re trading in. The devil you don’t know for the devil you do know. And so it gets really tricky in there.
I, I don’t know. I like his logic, but it’s pretty high maintenance cost before you can say, yeah, I think we’re at new car. ’cause new cars now are in like the 700 a month range. For not a super, super nice car, I don’t think, unless you’re going
[00:44:24] OG: really big, I think you can probably find him for much less than that.But just another thought to this, Doug, you and I have talked about this as well. We’ve got a driver or, or you know, a young man who’s gonna be driving shortly.
[00:44:36] Doug: I thought he was, say he a driver, he declared it. [00:44:38] OG: No, no, no. I’m talking about William. Alex is already driving. So the question is, do we go by the beater?Quotes, you know, that’s what, what’s a reasonable cost for a beater car? Seven grand. 10.
[00:44:52] Doug: Yeah. If you really say beater, you know a lot. Yeah. I mean, you could go, well, you want a 92 Chevy Geo. The, [00:44:57] OG: the further down you go, the more you’re gonna have to take it into the shop. So what’s better, the $10,000 thing that you’re gonna maybe put somebody into, ’cause the devil you don’t know, or the $299 a month lease for the next three years? [00:45:12] Doug: Well. You’re talking leasing and I thought the bonus of this was buying. Yeah. [00:45:18] Joe: Well, but the, the issue I have with leasing and new drivers has nothing to do with that. It’s, it’s the fact that, you know, both of my kids had fender benders. Absolutely. They’re going to, well, and not even, we actually totaled a car too. [00:45:31] OG: We’ve done that also, but there’s all the safety features on the new cars. You know, all the lane keep assists and the emergency braking and does that help? I don’t, I don’t know if it does or doesn’t. Then is the insurance cost a little bit less expensive because it has all those features, or is it more because it’s a new vehicle?I don’t know. It’s a no win situation. Basically, I think
[00:45:50] Joe: there is, I found that interesting, by the way. Thanks to Julie for sending that to us. Sam, what do you think about this? My answer like yours is, I don’t know. I could see his logic. It’s a fine, fine starting place. It’s, it’s [00:46:01] Doug: a good starting place. I think there’s, you know, 22 other little factors that you can bring into it, but it’s a good starting place. [00:46:07] Joe: Yeah. Thanks for that. I think that, uh, Shane’s letter and, uh, thanking Julie. I think that’s our back porch for the day, guys, looking at the time. Big thanks to all of you for hanging out. Coming up on Wednesday, man, Wednesday, we’re gonna have some fun. We got the creators of this new documentary called Join or Die.You can watch it on Netflix and if you wanna watch it ahead of time, go watch it, and then you can hear some of the behind the scenes. And how this impacts your retirement plan, and it impacts it in a big, big way. By the way, the documentary, if you do decide to watch it, the first half is not at all about longevity, and then they switch gears halfway through.
So enjoy the first half. And if you’re like, what does that do with my retirement? Hang on. They’ll, they’ll get there. Alright, Doug, you take it from here, man. What should we have learned on today’s episode?
[00:46:55] Doug: Well, Joe first take some advice from Joe and OG setting up your retirement distributions works best when you begin with the end in mind and where have I heard that before?Begin with your goal and then set up your funds to reach that goal. Second, leveraging your retirement funds. Buyer beware. But the big lesson, get this, those damn kids in the street now are saying that they have to go home and work on their homework. Homework. When I was a kid, I never let homework get in the way of messing around.
Now that I, I think about it though. Maybe that’s how I ended up hosting a podcast for my buddy’s mom’s basement. Hey, I’m second thought kids go. Join us Wednesday as we shift gears to talk about retirement longevity and happiness. Wanna be happy in retirement? The makers of a new documentary share how Pete and Rebecca Davis join us to share messages from Join or Die.
We’ll see you back here then. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets 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.
[00:49:28] Joe: Og, I think some people might wonder where the idea of, uh, blinker fluid and rotate the air in your tires, uh, comes from, of course, those jokes have been around for a long time, but a show that is across the country. I’ve had the fantastic experience of being on, because my, my dad was a big fan of these guys, Bob and Tom.Bob and Tom had this hilarious segment. Called the Mr. Obvious Show. Have you guys heard Bob and Tom before OG? You’ve heard Bob and Tom, right?
[00:49:58] Doug: Uh, it’s been a long, long, long, long time. Yeah. Doug, of course, I used to live in Indiana. They’re Gods there. [00:50:03] Joe: Yeah. And and they’re still on stations all over the place, all over the country.Yep. Yeah. Bob is long gone, but Tom and the team are still there. But, uh, do yourself a favor and watch some of those clips on YouTube. There’s some funny stuff from the Mr. Obvious show. I went and saw a Marvel movie Guys. I’ve been to see a Marvel movie in forever. I’m kind of afraid to see a Marvel movies ’cause they were just, they suck so bad.
Yeah, you
[00:50:23] OG: keep saying that. That’s all I watched this weekend was they had all of the Captain America movies and they were just, you know, it was a kind of rainy day in Alice. So there’s more than one. [00:50:33] Joe: Oh yeah, [00:50:34] OG: there’s four now. Yeah. Cheryl [00:50:35] Joe: actually saw the last one on a plane that we decided not to go see.It got decent reviews and she actually said it was pretty good there. Believe it or not, they’re back to the old days of. There’s just a bad person doing bad things and the superhero goes and gets the bad person. But, but I watched Thunderbolts, uh, went to the theater and watched that and, and what a, what a fun movie.
Really good Marvel movie. Pretty straightforward. I. Gets a little deep into depression and the kind of the, the downside to depression.
[00:51:04] Doug: That sounds fun, but [00:51:04] Joe: Yeah. But layered in a bunch of comedy. Francis Pugh, by the way, is, uh, one of the main actors and she’s, this woman’s so versatile. I’ve seen her in a few movies now and she’s incredible.She’s one of the Russian superheroes. So Thunderbolts, big thumb up for me. What have you guys been watching?
[00:51:23] OG: Nothing. [00:51:26] Doug: Doug’s been watching Nothing. Uh, I was, I was waiting. ’cause Josh was just talking about Captain America or Mr. America or, I don’t know. Um, Mr. America, he’s a big fan. I thought he was the Americas.We just finished watching. A documentary on Hulu called, well, it was about Ruby, Frankie, I wanna say it was like the Devil in the House, or the devil inside, uh, the Ruby Frankie story. But she was the YouTube vlogger who had millions of followers, uh, as parenting. Guru. And, uh, turns out she wasn’t all there in the head and she eventually went crazy and abused her children.
Oh no. Yeah. But it was, uh, it was a well done documentary. I really didn’t think I was gonna enjoy that at all when it was suggested, but I. It was good. It was good. It was compelling, huh? Yeah. I, I would say probably a little bit better than the Mormon wives. Oh my God. I mean, look, I’ll watch some trashy tv.
No way. Did you watch that? I’ve been made to watch that. Oh, no. Need to watch it. Holy cow. It is. It is so difficult. It’s just women who’ve been over-engineered. They’re keeping the plastic surgery industry alive in Utah, and they’re just arguing with each other nonstop for two seasons, 10 episodes a season.
It’s just so hard. I just have it in the background while I watch the Tiger game on my iPad, and just hearing all of that vitriol just drives me crazy.
[00:52:59] Joe: I tried to watch a new Netflix show, one of those real estate shows called Selling the City, and I normally like those real estate shows and it’s just a bunch of women fighting with each other from the very beginning.Cheryl literally walked into the kitchen while I had it on. I was making some food and she goes, I’ve been in this room for three minutes and they’re annoying. Yeah, walked, walked right out. It was such bad tv. Uh, I big thumbs down for selling the city.
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