Can building wealth be as entertaining as a round of trivia in the basement? We think so—and today’s episode proves it. Joe Saul-Sehy is joined by Doc G, Paula Pant, and Jesse Cramer to play a fast-paced financial game show based on 11 expert-approved ways to grow your wealth. From boosting your income and dialing in your budget to the eternal tug-of-war between paying down debt and investing more, this episode delivers wisdom with a side of basement-brand chaos.
But we don’t stop at just the basics. Our roundtable dives into:
- How homeownership plays into your wealth picture (even if it’s not as sexy as index funds),
- Why insurance coverage might be your best wealth-preserving move,
- The truth about improving your credit score without obsessing over every point.
Plus, a trivia celebration of 50 Cent’s Vitamin Water payday turns into a lesson in surprise wins—and surprise losses.
Whether you’re just beginning your wealth-building journey or refining your strategy, this episode brings practical insights, hearty laughs, and a gentle nudge to rethink what really grows your net worth.
- How to increase your income (without selling essential organs)
- Budgeting strategies that actually stick
- Why investing early matters—and when paying off debt takes priority
- The real ROI of proper insurance coverage
- A homebuying debate that might ruffle some financial feathers
- Birthday trivia for 50 Cent and the Vitamin Water deal that made him a legend
- End-of-episode takeaways you’ll want to write down (or tattoo, if that’s your thing)
Stackers, whether you’re navigating rainy days or planning for a brighter financial future, today’s conversation will help you stack smarter, live better, and maybe even walk away with a new strategy—or at least a smile.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic:
11 Ways to Grow Your Wealth (Kiplinger)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Homeownership
- Forced savings
- Renting vs. buying
- Stock market
- Broad index funds
- Compound interest
- Long-term investing
- Tax-advantaged accounts
- Roth IRA
- 401(k) contributions
- Automation
- Wealth psychology
- Behavioral finance
- Budgeting habits
- Savings rate
- Lifestyle inflation
- Emergency funds
- Side hustles
- Entrepreneurship
- Income growth
- Career leverage
- Delayed gratification
- Net worth tracking
- Financial education
- Real estate investing
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest on Apple Podcasts
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
Doc G
Another thanks to Doc G for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Doc G on his show, Earn & Invest podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Check out his latest book The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy.
Paula Pant
Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- In 2007, Coca-Cola purchased Glacéau—the maker of Vitaminwater—and one of the brand’s celebrity investors, 50 Cent, walked away with a tidy payday thanks to his minority stake in the company. If his earnings from the sale were paid entirely in U.S. 50-cent coins, how many 50-cent pieces would 50 Cent have received?
Mentioned in today’s show
- How to Start a Side Hustle in One Month | E167 – FI Minded: Achieve Financial Independence & Have Fun Doing It – Apple Podcasts
- The Simple Path to Wealth (Revised & Expanded 2025 Edition): Your Road Map to Financial Independence and a Rich, Free Life
- The E-Myth : Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
- The Soul of Wealth: 50 reflections on money and meaning
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’re deep diving into consumerism and what it costs your wallet. We’ll talk about your spending, budget, and tips to find a way out of keeping up with the Joneses.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: The Case for International Investing & The True ROI of Emergency Funds (SB1690).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
STACK 06-06 Game Show -steve
Doc G: [00:00:00] All right, here we go.
bit: Hold your ears, folks. It’s Showtime
Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan, how do you grow your wealth? We found one publication that describes 11 ways to do just that, and we’ve asked our Gold Medal Roundtable participants to share their views. Unfortunately, none of them were available for today’s taping. Oh my God. So we pulled, we pulled these three losers outta line at the DMV.
And we’ll get their completely uninformed opinions. I did
Joe: not write that, just so you know where the blame lies. I did not write
Doug: that, but that’s not all. Halfway through this discussion, we’ll pause briefly for [00:01:00] another dollop of my amazing trivia. He wrote that Can Paula and Jesse catch og? You’re about to find out, and now the guy who found out a long time ago how not to grow your wealth.
It’s Joe,
Joe: that would be a great top 11 list ways Joe’s practice to not grow your wealth. Yeah, it, it could be like 27. Hey everybody, welcome to Friday on this Stacking Benjamin Show. Let me be the first one to welcome you. Sit back and relax because we have a special episode today and we’ve had three very special contributors.
Mr. Oji is not here today, so filling in for him. He’s a good friend in Chicago from ER and Invest. Doc g Jordan Grommet joins us. How are you brother?
Doc G: I’m good and I’m really looking forward to tanking OGs trivia score. So this is like, this couldn’t be better. This Couldn couldn’t be better. Og, you’re going down ’cause I’m getting it wrong.
Joe: It’s so funny, Doug, that [00:02:00] we’re like, uh, who should fill in for og? Oh, we know. Somebody’s really bad at trivia. It could be, could be Doc G. Speaking of bat at trivia Paula Pants here. Manhattan is in the house. How are you?
Paula: Oh, I’m fantastic. I am looking forward to this episode. This, this is gonna be my episode.
I know it.
Joe: This is the one I’m feeling
Paula: good.
Joe: You could get two points in today’s episode. Ooh.
Doug: Ooh. I know this is a bad one for OG to miss. This is mm-hmm. Heavily weighted scoring opportunity. It’s
Paula: a great one for the coalition. Remember, there’s a coalition to defeat og. Oh God.
Joe: Hey, here’s the question though, Paula.
Mm-hmm. This show’s been on for 15 years. How many times have you said. I’m feeling good about today
Paula: over the span of the last 15 years. I’ve said it many times and nearly every time, if not every time I was incorrect. Uh, which means that we are due for a reversion to the me she’s due, right? We’re due for a reversion to the just [00:03:00] probabilistically speaking.
We have to mean revert at some point. I think she
Joe: said that the last eight years, Doug. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yes. And way up in the frozen tundra of Rochester, New York. Our good friend Jesse Kreer is here. How are you? Man?
Jesse: It’s great. It’s really nice. We just got above freezing for the first time last week, and so the snow banks are melting.
Most people put their snowmobiles away and we’re, uh, we’re ready for summer.
Joe: Just a slight amount of hyperbole there. Just slight, by the way. I was in Boston, uh, just recently and some people hear this about, uh, a week and a half ago. And I’d wear my coat part of the time, Jesse. It’s still, uh, not summery there.
Then I come back to Texas to 91 degrees.
Jesse: Yeah, it is unseasonably cold here. I mean it, you know, it’s chillier than it is down south, but I still think right now I was just, I just saw something yesterday. ’cause it’s kind of making some headlines. Like the average high temperature right now is like mid sixties, high sixties, something like that.
And this whole week has been like low fifties, even high forties, so. Well that’s cute. It’s definitely chilly still, but it’ll get nice. It’ll get nice.
Joe: And the Rochester New York weather report brought [00:04:00] to you by, we have a special episode, it’s called a Game Show episode. I’ll explain it in just a minute.
We’re gonna talk about all the different ways to grow your wealth when we get back. But before then, the Weather Report is brought to you by these two sponsors that give you all Jesse’s Rochester weather, goodness, and the Game Show and our trivia segment all for free. So sit back, let’s hear from them.
And then it’s time to pit these three crazies against each other talking about growing wealth.
Oh, you guys know what that sound means? It means it is time for the game show. And if you’re new to Stacking Benjamins, what we do is we take a piece from the popular press that, uh, some stacker found online. This one I actually found myself. I can even do it myself, Doug. I don’t have to have Doug feed me all the pieces I actually found by myself.
All by myself, myself. I know. And generally, by the way, if you’re new to our game show, the pieces a lot of the time are kind of bs. They, they kind of truly are [00:05:00] not that great. And what I love about the game show, and Paula’s done many of them, doc G’s done a few. This is Jesse’s first game show. So Jesse’s getting in on this.
Goodness. What I really like is the banter between the three of you. ’cause often the stuff you come up with. Is way better than the things in the piece. I think this piece is no exception to that rule. These are 11 ways to grow your
Doug: wealth. Basically, Joe is serving up rage bait for you three.
Jesse: I’ve done one of these.
You have done one. Ben Carlson wrote one. It was the 15 Mistakes that People Make in the Market or something. But it just, that’s you
Joe: have, it’s been a while. The
Jesse: Jesse, it just came. It has, it has. I mean, I forgot about it so much. This might as well be my first, but I’ve been
Doc G: here before. You’ve been re Virginized.
Oh. Oh, whoa. Yo. That’s what Jesse, that’s a medical term.
Jesse: He’s a doctor. Guys, that’s a medical term.
Joe: That’s what Jesse tells all the podcast he goes on. It’s been so long. You might as well be my first. Yeah. Uh, so 11 Ways to Grow Your Wealth, Doug and [00:06:00] I have them in front of us. Hopefully you don’t have them in front of you.
We will go because Paula, you are. Well, let’s see what the score is, by the way. ’cause the rules are, you’re gonna get one point for this game. And then the meta thing we always do during game show week, we stop the game halfway through to play a different game. So you can get two points. The way the game show works is we’re going to have three rounds round one answers are worth one point round.
Two, they’re worth two points. And in round three answers are worth three points. But, uh, Doug, what is the score of our trivia contest thus
Doug: far? Currently we have OG sitting at six. We have Jesse at five and a half points. Oh, and Paula at four and a half.
Joe: Anybody can take the lead today. Today, that’s right.
So that means Paula, while there’s 11 names on the board, you get to guess first. Which title? So for everybody new, what Paul is [00:07:00] trying to do is guess one of the 11 points that were on this piece. 11 things you can do to help grow your wealth.
Paula: The pressure is on being the first to guess. Whew. Okay. 11 things you can do to help grow your wealth.
Where was this published? I can’t tell you. Ah,
Doug: I will tell you later. Can I get a country of origin?
Joe: Could use it in a sentence.
Paula: Yeah. 11 things you can do to help grow your wealth. Invest in your 401k.
bit: Hmm.
Paula: Oh, no.
Doc G: I don’t think we can give it to her. Joe. The article’s wrong. The article’s wrong. You don’t think so?
Because here’s the deal, Doug. Uh, the judges are talking now.
Paula: It’s too specific. Mm, I was too specific. I should have said invest.
Joe: It is too specific. So, Doug, do we give her a different, another chance, or do we, uh, just say nay? Nay?
Doug: Well, I [00:08:00] think I, I, no, I I think we have to say nay. Nay because. If we give her this one, it covers, it could be a bunch of different ones.
It could be a bunch of different ones. Yeah, it could be a bunch of different
Joe: ones. So we gotta do this, Paula?
Yeah. These are, uh, these are a little more general than that. So let’s go to Jesse. You get to go second. Paula opened it up for you. I think
Jesse: she did, but I’ll let Paula reclaim that one later if she wants. I’m gonna go with, uh, I’m gonna go with work more.
Joe: Work more. Work more Is work more on the list? Yes, it is.
They don’t call it work more, they call it boost your income. Right. And what’s funny, Jesse, is that, you know, sometimes in financial planning it is an income problem. It is an, it can be an income problem.
Doc G: I’m already having problems with this ’cause boost your income is like 10, 15, 20 different things we talk about on personal finance podcasts.
So, oh, these are gonna be great. You’re gonna hate [00:09:00] all these falling right into our trap rage bake. I’m telling you now, like that got rid of like five of my choices because I was thinking of specific ways to raise your income.
Joe: But Jesse, let’s check. Well, and, and Doc, we can go into some of those too, the different ways to do that because I’d like to pause on each of these for a second.
We get one right? But Jesse. A lot of the time we’ll find stackers are very interested in how do I cut more, how do I cut more? How do I cut more? Yeah. And often when I talk to these people, it seems like they’ve cut to the bone when clearly it, I mean it’s blue sky if you just increase your income.
Jesse: Yeah. I mean this is funny ’cause it’s, you hear this discussed a lot and the one thing I’ll, I’ll give people a lot of credit for is if you’re thinking in the short term or if you like, if you wanna start taking action this weekend, the thing to do is to cut.
Right? The thing to do is to look at your budget and cut. But if you can zoom out to a slightly wider lens, like say over the next year, how, how do I do something over the next year? Well, all of a sudden there, there might be a way to boost your income somehow. Additional hours, additional certifications, more [00:10:00] training, a better job.
I mean, all those kind of things that in the long run that’s probably the, the better use of your, uh, time and energy.
Joe: Doc, you were talking about different ways to boost your income. What’s a favorite one? If you need money quick and maybe a better one. If you need money, more money. Longer term.
Doc G: So longer term, I think we all agree.
Ask for a raise. Like prove that you, the easiest thing to do right is to prove you’ve already been showing up at work regularly and doing a good job and maybe you deserve a raise. Do a little bit of research. Find out what other people are getting paid to do what you do. Look at the last time you had a raise.
Look at whether you’ve delivered on your deliverables and if you’re checking off all those boxes, maybe it’s time to say, Hey, I’m worth more than you’re paying me.
Joe: Yeah. Paula, I don’t love driving Uber, but I think it’s a great thing if you just need money in the next two weeks. Yeah, yeah. You
Paula: know, when you, when it comes to side hustles, there’s a couple of different buckets that these belong to.
So there’s gig economy, which is what you’re talking about when you discuss driving Uber gig economy. The benefit is that you get money in the door [00:11:00] immediately. The drawback is that the upside is limited. Beyond gig economy. There are also side hustles where you’re selling a service or a product. The benefit is that there’s much, much greater upside.
The drawback is that there’s a much longer, slower ramp to getting there, and there could also be startup costs or some startup capital. The way a lot of people play it is they might start by offering a service which has low cost of capital, and then eventually use the cash flow from that to develop a product.
There’s a whole gamut when it comes to side hustles, ranging from gig economy, drive for Uber, get money today versus start aside business. Get money next year.
Joe: Our good friend Justin Peters, who was on the show a few weeks ago, Justin, just had a great episode with Nick Loper. Mm-hmm. From Side Hustle Nation, and the two of them really dive deep.
So we can link to Justin’s cool episode on that very topic in the, in the show notes. Another thing I like about, uh, side Hustle is if you’re thinking about whether I like something or not doing it as a side hustle part-time to see if you [00:12:00] truly like it. I love what Austin Cleon said when he was on the show.
The guy that talks about steel, like an artist, about everything, doesn’t need to be a side hustle in America. We see somebody who’s great at baking cupcakes was his example, and we immediately go, oh, you should sell cupcakes. And if you read a book like the E-Myth, you learn very quickly that there’s a difference between selling cupcakes and making cupcakes and running a cupcake business can suck all the joy outta all the cupcakes that you were having fun just giving to your
Doug: friends.
I think we’re overcomplicating this, I mean, Paula was halfway there. I mean, it, it could just be good old fashioned street hustling. I mean, think of the upside. The, the, the wardrobe is amazing. You get to wear these baller clothes. I. And it’s instant cash. I mean, whether it’s like Three Card Monty or that you’re,
Doc G: I like the show game.
I like the She Game. Yeah. You know, the show game. The show game. I mean, maybe
Doug: you’ve, maybe you got a banging body and you’re just like out this, I, I mean, it’s instant cash only fans, I mean, 15 minute increments. I don’t, I mean, don’t, doesn’t always have [00:13:00] to be that complicated.
Joe: Oh, just a second. We have a last minute disclaimer coming in.
Uh, Doug’s opinion’s not endorsed by the Stacking Benjamin Show. Sorry. Just dunno where that came from. Jesse’s on the board with one Doc
Doc G: G. There’s still 10 left. I mean, if we’re going as broad as make more money, then we have to talk about what Jesse said was the thing that everyone brings up, but spend less than Right budget or spend less.
I mean, if you’re gonna really build wealth, that’s one of the other ways, if we’re looking at broad, very broad categories. And don’t, and don’t tell me that’s not on there. ’cause this is not a good article if it’s not on there.
Joe: Well we already know it’s not really a good article. Well now
Doug: I kind of wanna say no
Doc G: just, just to see him snap just dis.
That’s not on there. It just disqualifies the article. I quit. I’m done. That is so funny, Doug, because I
Joe: was just about to hit this button for fun
bit: when in truth
Joe: it’s actually this button. Yeah, he got it right. Stick to a budget is on the list. You know, especially for our [00:14:00] stackers doc, just getting started, just knowing how you spend money, I think is, is job number one to being able to shove more away?
Doc G: Yeah. I mean, look, it’s wonderful if you have all these sources of revenue, it’s wonderful. If you can ask for a raise, it’s wonderful if you can do a side hustle. But all those depend on possibilities that may or may not be in your hands. But uh, almost anyone can look at their budget and say, Hmm, do I really need to spend that much?
Joe: Yeah, it doesn’t have to Paula be a quote budget per se. You do it kind of the opposite, right? Which is pretty cool.
Paula: So I’m a big fan of what I refer to as the Antib Budgett, where you pull your savings off the top first and then spend the rest. And so with the anti budgett, number one, when I say savings, I’m referring to anything that boosts your net worth.
So it could be literal savings in a savings account, it could be contributions to a retirement account, it could be extra payments on a debt above and beyond the minimum required. But any net worth booster is what I include in this savings. And you just pick [00:15:00] a number, either a raw dollar amount or a percentage of your income, you pull it off the top first and then whatever is left over is yours to spend freely.
Joe: Jesse, do you like that approach Apollo as the anti budgett? If somebody’s brand new to the world of trying to get more money saved.
Jesse: Yeah, I mean, just from experience there are, there are a lot of people who, if they see money sitting in the account will feel the temptation to spend it.
Joe: Me.
Jesse: Right? Right. And, and so I think there are, I mean the anti budgett is one of a few different ways that it really helps people like that ensure that they check the right boxes first before they go off and spend their money.
Joe: I still think there’s value though, in seeing those expenses and how you spend money, which is why I’ve advocated like a 20 minute meeting once a week. Just go take 20 minutes, set a timer so that you don’t go over that. Just review how you spent money last week. Think about how you spent money the next week.
Boom, you’re done. Very, very simple because I found subscriptions early on that I forgot that I had, I found, um, opportunities with [00:16:00] my phone bill that I didn’t realize that I had. Like just, I think that that conscious 20 minutes, Paula can go a long way if somebody’s new. I.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I will say, you know, the Antib Budgett tends to work best if you have a little bit of discretionary income.
If you’re really paycheck to paycheck, sometimes it requires a, a much tighter budgeting because you just have less margin there. Alright,
Doug: at the end of round one, Doug, what’s the score? We have Jordan with one point, Jesse with one point, and Paula with zero points.
Joe: I feel bad making Paula go first now because it was so close.
It was so, so, so, so, so close, man. But we’re gonna turn it around the opposite way in round two. And uh, doc G, you get another guess here.
Doc G: Oh, well geez. I’m gonna go for the low hanging fruit then Invest. How you doing wealth? You’re gonna invest. Is invest a key to building
Joe: wealth? It certainly is. You guys find this shocking.[00:17:00]
Yeah. Do we need to take a second, Jesse and talk about why investing might be important if you want to build your wealth?
Jesse: To be honest with you, it wasn’t on my list.
No, I mean, yeah, I mean clearly it’s, we want assets that will work while we sleep and we want assets that will grow, hopefully in excess of inflation. Uh, and the whole idea is that you set some capital aside and, and you let someone else do something productive with it. Usually sometimes you’re the one doing something productive with it, but in the long run you kind of benefit from this.
Great. Instead of paying an opportunity cost, you’re really benefiting from an opportunity cost.
Joe: Jordan, where does the new person start when it comes to investing? ’cause it looks like this big wide field we can freak out over. Well,
Doc G: there happens to be a book that’s being republished very sooner, or actually it was May 20th.
So J Collins book, the Simple Path to Wealth, basically the Stacking Benjamin Show, all sorts of podcast blogs can really talk to you about basic investing. It is much easier than you think, especially when you’re new. [00:18:00] As we know, Joe Cel is a big fan of starting out simple. Then as you understand investing better, you can actually build a better portfolio, a better asset allocation.
But in the beginning it’s getting the easy things right? Picking a few broad based index funds or even one very broad based index fund and jumping in the way you phrase that answer, I feel like I owe you 20 bucks.
Joe: Like do I owe you money now? You, you and jail? Yeah. Yeah. Both of us. Like Doug’s like, oh God.
Yeah. This is why Jordan’s, my b fff right there. Alright, we go to Jesse now, Jesse, uh, we got eight of ’em left on the board. Things you can do to build your wealth.
Jesse: I just wanna point out I was, I was saving invest for Paula going around the horn ‘
Doc G: cause of the coalition that’s been formed. I need the points, man.
I need the points. Is the coalition breaking up?
Jesse: Mm-hmm. I’m gonna go inherit it.[00:19:00]
Doc G: The old fashioned way, real passive income is kill a
Joe: relative on the list.
Ouch. Inheritance did not make the list. You know, a lot of people think when they first get into the building wealth game that that, Hey, you know these rich people around me, they inherited it, and sometimes that’s the case. But look at some of these books that have come out that have studied people becoming millionaires.
The number of people that have inherited wealth is just a sliver. It’s a small, small, small number. Yeah,
Jesse: no, it, it definitely is. And I, I mean, just in general, most people, is it fair to say most people would rather take their fate into their own hands? You know, we all have heard the stories of, there are times where someone was kind of depending on an inheritance in a certain way, and maybe they just made a wrong assumption about how wealthy their, their family was.
Or maybe they didn’t realize that the estate plan that their family member put together actually left a bunch to charity or, you know, left a bunch to a cousin Rick instead of them. Like those kind of things. So I’m a little surprised it’s not on the list, [00:20:00] but still, I, I, I don’t think it’s something that people should really depend on.
Maybe with the one exception of if you’ve had really clear discussions with others in your family about how you are written into estate planning documents, like maybe then you can plan on it in some way, shape, or form. But that’s probably the only exception.
Joe: All right. Last guess before we take a quick break.
Paula, we still got eight of them hanging out there.
Paula: Alright, we’ve covered the basics. So we’ve covered, earn more, spend less, and invest.
Joe: Oh, I would submit there’s eight more really basic things you can do.
Paula: I’m going to take the other half of my perhaps two specific initial guess. Initially I had said invest in your 401k. That was too specific. We’ve established that the first part of it, invest is one of them, but what about with regards to the 401k? What if save for retirement or plan for retirement [00:21:00]
Joe: broadly is broadly save or, or did you have more?
Did you have more save plan? Dream of, she’s
Doc G: trying to be as broad as possible.
Paula: Aspire
Doc G: to, I think save is what you wanna say. Mm-hmm. This is a very broad thing, is save for retirement on
Joe: the list. It is. And actually they’re even more specific, Paula, which is start with retirement. When you start out prioritize financial independence over everything else.
Hmm. Like if you’ve got all these other goals, the other goals are fine, but saving for retirement should be the number one thing when you start investing. Do you agree with that sentiment?
Paula: Yes. I believe that at, so a lot of people who are starting out often start out with some amount of debt. Like oftentimes if you are 18 or you’re 22, it’s not uncommon that you would have student debt, maybe a car loan.
You know, a lot of young people at the beginning of, of their life do have that. So I believe that debt payoff [00:22:00] should be a major, major piece of the focus. But I also believe that some amount, uh, if you have an employer with a match, get the employer match. If you don’t. You’re still, you’re so young. Put a little bit into a Roth IRA, just 50 bucks a month, whatever.
Just put something into a Roth IRA, even though you’re also paying off your debt because it builds that habit.
Doc G: Is that what you did, doc? I. I I didn’t actually listen to her answer ’cause I was thinking of what the next thing is. So I wasn’t even paying attention. Darn it. Did you prioritize
Joe: retirement? Did you I realize this game show thing is a lot of, it’s
Doc G: complicated for me.
I’m, I’m really, I’m thinking about the next answer, like I’m thinking That’s right. Maybe if I get the next one right, I could win. Well, the good news is you’ve got a whole break here coming up before that I was not good. Actually, I, you know what I told my accountant when I first started practicing, I’m not putting money in the 401k thing.
I don’t think it’s necessary. Oh, seriously? I said that at the beginning of my career. Yeah. Um, so I had no idea what [00:23:00] I was doing on that level, but I was really good. I was saving tons and I was investing tons and I was even buying real estate. But I actually was late to the 401k game. I started about five years into my career.
My wife already was, and I was already getting some match already. Like I was already getting, it wasn’t match, but I was getting some free money in my 401k. So I did have something there, but I did not follow that advice ’cause I just didn’t know.
Joe: It’s cool though that you, I mean, you actually did very well.
I’m saying that because it was public in a piece recently, despite himself. Despite yourself, you still did very well.
Doc G: Yeah, I was lucky. My parents really modeled great money making modeling. They were really good about just saving, investing, side hustling, et cetera, et cetera. So how did you finally get
Joe: on the 401k train?
Doc G: I think I just finally realized, I’m like, this is dumb. Like, I’m looking at my taxes, I’m looking at how much I’m spending. I’m looking at the fact that I could have this tax deferred growth and just realize that this was a gift and I should be taking it and using that gift as opposed to ignoring it.[00:24:00]
Jesse, did you get started early on
Joe: prioritizing retirement?
Jesse: Yeah, pretty early. I mean, I know at my first job I was, uh, using a 401k and getting, probably maxing out the match. But from my, my experience was kind of, um, in my mid twenties, this combination of trying to figure out how to prioritize my dollars, like pay down debt, save for fun stuff, say for retirement.
But then also, um, this is kind of what, uh, Paula alluded to, like building the habit of investing. And I think something that comes along with that is your account balance gets to a certain point when you’re like, oh, there’s a lot of money on the line, and if I don’t learn what’s going on and try to like systematize what’s going on, I might shoot myself in the foot in a pretty big way.
So that’s what happened to me was, you know, it only takes a couple years in those, you know, it was 20 12, 20 13, 20 14, if anybody remembers what the market did during those years where yeah, a couple years of diligent 401k saving and next thing you know, you’ve got like 30 or 40 or $50,000 in there and you’re like, oh, I should really figure out what this is.
So that was, that’s how I, how I got started. Isn’t
Joe: it funny how that positive experience makes you go, I [00:25:00] like this. Like this is great. I mean, it’s way better than, but you, you read about this, people that walk into a casino and if they put a little bit of money in a slot machine right away, like that’s not good.
Well excuse me, they put money in the slot machine, they win right away. They is what I meant. They,
bit: yeah.
Joe: If they win early on in their gambling adventure, not a good thing. Not ’cause you’re gonna learn the wrong things, but heck, if you get it investing, Jesse, that’s way better. Alright, Doug, we’re two thirds of the way done with that game and what does that mean?
Our score is? Well
Doug: Joe, we have Paula with two points. We have Jesse with just one point, and Jordan, who is failing in his attempt to sink, OG ship. He’s leading. He’s leading with three point. What happened to all this? Talk about the coalition and we were gonna, I think,
Doc G: brainstorming answers for this next round too.
I’m not even in the trivia now. I’m thinking about the next round.
Joe: He’s like, who cares about og? I get to win win. I’m trying to figure out
Doc G: out which one of my choices to pick here.
Paula: Alright, well, well, Jesse and I are firmly coalition to defeat. Og
Joe: [00:26:00] gonna have to, you guys are gonna have to. So, Doug, you’ve it Doug.
Doug said we
Jesse: could combine points. No, we did not.
Paula: Jesse had never said that. Yeah, yeah. Joint forces. You texted me like parliament. You texted me.
Joe: It never, never happened. Uh, what does happen though, every Friday, most Fridays on the Stacking Benjamin Show is we have this year long competition between our three frequent contributors, og, Paula and Jesse and Doc G.
Today you’re playing on Team og. We have this year long trivia competition where we ask them a question, a money related question that is going to usually very, very, very difficult to get the answer to. Today’s maybe no exception. We’re about to find out. Doug, what is today’s trivia question?
Doug: Well, hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug, and today is my buddy rapper, 50 cents Birthday. Ah, me and 50 cent. We go way back. I mean, he’d make an [00:27:00] album and buy it. He’d wrap the song I’d, I’d wrap along. It’s just two besties, collaborating and having a great time. 50 cent like me is a great investor as well.
Check out today’s trivia question. In 2007, Coca-Cola purchased glass, so the maker of Vitamin Water and one of the brand’s, celebrities, investors, 50 cents. My good friend walked away with a tidy payday thanks to his minority stake in the company. If his earnings from the sale were paid entirely in US 50 cent coins, how many 50 cent pieces would 50 cent have received?
I’ll be back right after I helped Joe’s mom clean change out of the junk drawer. 50 cent coins. Are you kidding? Kidding me on?
Paula: Is, is this a trick? Can I use a calculator? Is this a trick question? Are there 50 cent coins?
Doug: Oh, that’s one of the best questions Paul has ever asked.
Doc G: What was that? What was the
Doug: question?
Are there Paul asked, are [00:28:00] there actually 50 cent coins? She thinks this is a trick question. Is
Paula: it a trick question? And they’re actually, yeah, they’re half dollars’.
Doug: The one with JFK
Doc G: on it?
Doug: Yeah.
Doc G: Half dollars. Yeah. Huh.
Paula: Alright.
Doc G: There’s silver dollars and half dollars. Yeah. Produced
Doug: regularly until 2022. Now minted only on special request, but there are still a massive number of them in circulation, still legal tender.
Can
Doc G: I use a calculator to calculate how many 50 cent coins as my number? Or do I have to do it all in my head?
Paula: Well, you could probably talk it out loud, like, okay, so, okay, let me,
Doc G: that’s too much pressure, Paula. That’s too much pressure. As an example.
Paula: So $1 is two 50 cent coins, so $10. Is.
Doc G: That’s true. It’s just multiply.
It’s true. It’s just multiplied by two. That’s Yeah. It’s multiplied by two. Just multiplied by two. Yeah.
Doug: Joe, we have to let everybody know the order, like who gets to guess when. Yes. Right? Yes. We can’t just let them take over. They’re running with this thing. Get ahold of the res
Joe: man. What are you doing, Doug, man.
All right, doc G. Playing on behalf of og, you [00:29:00] unfortunately have to go first. So the parent company of Vitamin Water purchased by Coca-Cola. If 50 cent was paid in 50 cent pieces, how many 50 cent pieces did he get?
Doc G: So he had a minority stake, I’m gonna go with, his payout was $75 million. So I’m gonna say that’s 150 million, 150 cent pieces and
Joe: 50 million.
What do you think about those? I was gonna say those apples, Jesse, but I should say those 50 cent pieces.
Jesse: It’s a tough position ’cause it’s like if I go one over. I’m just trying to think. It’s like, you know, do I go one under, maybe Paula goes one over. That would make
Doc G: one of you win. I mean, it’s cruel, but it would or it would work
Jesse: Unless he’s right on.
It would secure
Paula: a coalition victory,
Jesse: right? It would for some reason. I’m thinking higher. I’m thinking higher than you og. I’m gonna say OG or uh, sorry. Doc G. All the Gs. We got [00:30:00] all the Gs, I’m sorry Doc G. That was mean of me to say, I’m gonna say two 50.
Doug: 250 million, 50 cent coins is, that’s your answer. Okay.
Yes. Got it? Mm-hmm. Paula, we
Paula: got
Doug: what?
Paula: 250,000,100
Joe: 50 million.
Paula: Okay. So, yeah. So Jesse thinks that he made 125 million US dollars.
Doc G: Yes.
Paula: And Doc, she thinks that he made 75 million. I’m actually gonna take the under. So let’s see. Doc cheese’s guess was 150 million, so I will be 1 4 9 9 9 9, 9 9. How many nines is that?
9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9. Nine, nine.
Doug: We at some point we can’t divide the 50 cent piece that many times, so we’re going with 1 49. Got
Joe: it. The judge has spoken. All right. We’ve got ’em locked in. 149 million. 50 cent pieces from Paula, 150 [00:31:00] million from Doc G, and 250 million from Jesse, who’s getting the point. We’ll find out just a minute.
D Chi, you kicked this off with 150 and the coalition immediately split. They were supposed to come in, like both on either side of you and they didn’t do it. Yeah,
Doc G: I’m surprised. I’m surprised. Jesse. Jesse, man, you could have, you could have made it a loss for sure. Who knows? I have no idea. Maybe he made like a billion dollars for all we know on his minority.
Although I don’t, I, I, I don’t know. 50 cent I think went bankrupt at some point. So hopefully, you know, you still don’t have a lot of room. I mean, you got no who’s got what, 50, $50 billion. So that, but that’s why I am planning on winning the game show.
bit: My
Doc G: head’s not even in this now, now you dangled something else in front of my face.
My, that’s where my brain is. So, Jesse, you dangled in front of his face,
Joe: so, oh boy.
Doug: Sorry. He did what?
Joe: I know. [00:32:00] You, you, I can’t even say it. You dangled a slightly smaller answer. No, a slightly larger answer. In front of his face.
Jesse: I did, I did, uh, dangle A slightly larger answer. Definitely larger than originally anticipated.
Um, surprising even the amount of dangle. Uh, but, you know, I’m feeling good. I’m feeling good about, uh, you know, for some people it’s, the guess is it’s probably too much. But for me, it’s the right amount.
Doug: I mean, if I had, if I had that much to dangle, I’d, you know, I’d be both proud and a little embarrassed.
Joe: Uh, but Paul, you dangle.
I mean, I, I took
Paula: the under.
Joe: Oh my, what just happened? Do we know what just happened? This is all your fault, Joe. Doug, quick get us an answer. Who’s gonna win this thing?[00:33:00]
Doug: Hey there, stackers. Get your minds out of the gutter. I’m not that rare coin collector and guy just helping a pal celebrate his Bday. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. It’s my old pal, 50 cents birthday today. And to celebrate, we are focusing on how he cha-ching, the cash register. When Coca-Cola bought a company he’d invested in Vitamin Water back in 2007, the question was if 50 cent, and yes, that’s exactly how you pronounce his name, were paid his proceeds for his minority stake in the deal, all in 50 cent pieces.
How many 50 cent pieces would 50 cent have received if a woodchuck could chuck the answer? According to both Business Insider and Forbes 50 cents portion of the payout was a cool $75 million, which means the answer in 50 cent pieces is. This is unbelievable. [00:34:00] This is a tragedy. This is the worst who possible outcome.
This is horrible of all of this, because the answer is 150 million, 50 cent pieces making Doc G what? Our winner, which means really we’re all losers. Wow. Because he’s helping og What the hell happened? Wow. Right outta the gate. You stuck at this Doc G.
Joe: You were supposed to come on and lose. I, I’m speechless for once.
Wow. Seriously, Doug? When he got it with the first answer, I said, mother. Yeah. It’s like, really? I was listening.
Doug: I didn’t hear any keyboards. He wasn’t Googling. Wow.
Doc G: What a jerk. Doug, I need to give you a compliment here. Your game face. I was like, if I had hit it. Doug would be losing a right now. So I’m like, I must have lost.
I was like, I must have lost because Doug’s gonna be losing a if I’m right. So I have to give you a lot of credit, man. You maintained that game face.
Joe: Perfect. I saw it just briefly, Doug, by the way. I saw, I think we might’ve exchanged the look like, oh, [00:35:00] okay, Jesse, you’re gonna lose. What do you wanna guess?
Jesse: I felt like I had a chance.
You dangled it right in front of me. It
Paula: would’ve been exceptionally funny if we had taken exactly either side 1 49 and 1 51. I know he still won and it still wouldn’t
Jesse: have mattered. Right. We could have done that
Paula: and he still would’ve won.
Joe: And you even debated it. You got so close. You guys are the lamest coalition of all times.
Alright, let’s wash off from that competition. Get to another competition, see if Doc G can actually win two competitions in the same day on this show. That would be a new record, but Doug, uh, remind us what was the score of our main competition today?
Doug: Well in third place we have Jesse with just one point in second place.
We have Paula with Two Points and Jordan currently leading with three points. And let’s just be clear, whoever wins the game show portion of the game wins one point. So the maximum take home [00:36:00] today is two points, right? Job. That’s right. So it’s a tie. One point for the trivia and one point for the game show is the maximum take home for this.
Joe: Jesse and Paula gotta step up ’cause you guys at least gotta get a tie. You gotta keep pace and
Doug: correct answers in this round are worth three points. So you’re all still in it. Everybody’s gotta a shot. I get to
Joe: go
Doc G: first.
Joe: Nope. Paula is first. We go back around again.
Doc G: Yeah, but you never got, I never went first.
You did go first. Paul went first, then Jesse went first, and then we had a break.
Doug: Jordan went first in round two and took the easy investing You did, you took the, you did investing answer.
Joe: Yeah. The person who’s second Jesse will always, you might not remember ‘
Jesse: cause it was Paula’s idea Jordan, so it might not thank
Joe: man.
Right. Remember the point Jesse gave you? Yeah. Typical man.
bit: Alright.
Joe: Alright. So the person who won’t go first is Jesse. He’s gonna stay second the entire way. So Paula, you’ve got a chance to take the lead and put pressure on these two yahoo’s. Yikes.
Paula: Pressure is on. Okay, so I [00:37:00] know that this list writer writes in broad generalities,
Joe: seven things you can do that will help you grow your wealth.
Paula: So far we have covered earn more, spend less invest. Uh oh, what was the other one? There was one other
Joe: focus on retirement first. Fer entertainment. Uh, say for
Paula: retirement. That’s right. That’s right. It was yours. That one was mine. Yes, that one was mine. Welcome
Joe: to Paula, the short-term memory loss.
Paula: Uh, I may live to regret this answer.
Joe: Be properly insured. Hmm. Be properly insured. Is that on the list?
bit: Yay. Yay. Check
Joe: your insurance coverages. This piece goes on to talk about Paula, about that. You know what’s gonna wreck you building your wealth. Is that you get disabled, you have a car accident, you have a problem with your, your rental, uh, place or the house that you own.
Not having good insurance is, uh, creates a lot of horror [00:38:00] stories.
bit: Yeah,
Joe: absolutely. How about that, Jesse? How often do you look at your property casualty insurances, your homeowner’s, renter’s insurance and, and, uh, annually.
Jesse: Annually. Once a year. Annually, yep. Annual renewal. Uh, I might have talked about it here before, but I, I recently, uh, uh, two or three years ago, I started working with an actual, with a broker who kind of shops around on our behalf and at least, you know, someone to bounce some ideas off of, you know, for all I know, and this is one of those things like, you know, how we all kind of have some potential leaks in our financial plan, or some holes or some places where we might not be optimizing?
I don’t know if actually I’m, I’m saving money by using him, but. The costs seem reasonable compared to the research I’m doing. And, uh, he does shop around on my behalf. And, uh, we do that every year.
Joe: I like a broker. ’cause they’re looking at lots of different companies. Correct. And not just one. Paula, how often do you check your property casualty?
Paula: Uh, never. Never? I, yeah. Yeah. Oh, there’s an opportunity,
Joe: Paula.
Paula: I know I need to get on it. I absolutely need to get on it.
Doc G: Doc G, how about you? Every few [00:39:00] years, usually something comes up or something happens and we’re like, oh, it looks a lot more expensive than we thought it was. And we shop it around and get it cut down until they start raising it again.
Doug: Doug, I unfortunately, very rarely, probably every three to five years and often I don’t do anything about it. But it’s, uh, inert is powerful when it comes to, uh, insurance and I think they’re counting on that ’cause it’s a pain in the butt.
Joe: Well, I had an actual insurance agent tell me, you know how sometimes your insurance rate will spike?
They have to raise your insurance rate on an entire class of people. And generally what happens is this agent told me was that nothing changed except you had a birthday. And because the insurance company was really focused on this set of people and you’re no longer a part of that target group, you all of a sudden will see a rate increase.
’cause everybody that has that same birthday has the rate increase. Which is why he said, Jesse, that the answer there of your answer and generally doing it just after your birthday is a great time to take a look. Having a [00:40:00] broker makes that very, very easy.
Paula: I thought he was gonna say the answer is get a fake id.
Joe: That’s, that’s perfect. Yeah. Is get a fake ID on this list That could be side help make fake IDs. No, that is not also sponsored by us. All right. Jesse. Paula now has taken the lead. Mm-hmm. How often do we get to say that Paula has taken the lead? So, Jesse, you can grab the lead back and be in charge.
Jesse: I don’t think I can.
I don’t think I can grab the lead back.
Joe: Can he grab the lead back, Doug? No. Peace toast. Well, Jesse, you can be the spoiler then and take one away from Doc g.
Jesse: I was gonna say, yeah, I was thinking about just giving an off the wall answer, but I’m, I’m gonna go for the lowest hanging fruit. I have a few ideas written down here on my notepad and I don’t think anyone’s discussed debt yet, and I have to think that is somewhere on the list have debt.
Oh, that’s a good one. Uh, so I’m just going to say avoid debt. Is minimize debt, something like that. It
Joe: is. Minimize or avoid debt on the list. [00:41:00] It is. Paying down debt is a great step, but Jesse, when you look at paying down debt versus investing. Like how does somebody determine which way to go there and the age old either or question.
Jesse: Yeah, I mean, the math is just, you kinda look at, um, the rates of return or the interest rates, but then you, you really do have to think about risk. Uh, and, and so what I mean is that, you know, the mistake that I see too many people make is like, oh, well if I invest in the stock market, I will get 10% per year because that is a long-term historical average.
Uh, whereas this debt I have, maybe it’s my car loan is only 7%, so I’d rather invest so I can get the 10 instead of paying down the seven. And the thing they overlook is that the, the 10 has a lot of risk with it. There’s no guarantee that you’re gonna get 10, whereas paying down the loan is a guaranteed, right.
A prevention of future debt payments is a guarantee. So if, if someone’s coming to me and saying, should I throw money in the stock market or pay down my 7% car loan, I’m actually probably gonna encourage them to pay down the loan. There does get a point when the interest rate’s low enough that I actually think it would make [00:42:00] more sense to invest.
But there’s some gray area and it depends on the person and their personal risk tolerance, how much they wanna avoid that, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s my take.
Joe: Paula invest or, uh, pay down debt,
Paula: I’m strongly on the pay down debt side, but I think that that’s contextual with the type of occupation that you have.
Oh. So for a person like myself, I’m a small business owner. Being a small business owner is a highly volatile income, means I have a highly, highly volatile income stream. So I think that for somebody like myself, avoiding debt is more important.
Joe: Keeping your cashflow obligation low
Paula: Exactly, exactly. Is really the focus
Joe: for you.
Yeah.
Paula: Whereas if I were a tenured professor where I would have a, a very stable job with very stable income, I think you could take on quite a bit more debt. So I would make that occupation specific.
Joe: I love that as an add-on. ’cause I love Jesse, that you said, you know, interest rate. Might not look the way you think it is, but compare interest rates.
And then Paula looking at cashflow [00:43:00] Doc G, there’s something interesting in your book, which really I think is attractive to people as they think about retirement, which for people that don’t know, doc G wrote this great book called The Purpose Code and talking about what’s our purpose in life, you know, bigger than just your occupation.
One thing that you and I have shared, which is wealthy people, when they’re looking at retirement retirees, they’re, they’re not dumb, but they still pay off their debt. I think that leaves people a lot more time and energy and focus, because you wonder if people know the math, right? They know the math around, Hey, this is at a low interest rate.
Should I keep it? But they pay it off anyway. It’s like the happiest retirees are able to spend more time thinking about their purpose because they kind of don’t have these mosquito bites all over them of these, you know, low interest debt payments.
Doc G: Yeah, I mean, I think people get to risk mitigation space, right?
When you are getting towards retirement and you are wealthy and you’re like, I don’t wanna spend my time worrying about these [00:44:00] possible debts or these possible, as you were saying, mosquito bites. I, I think a lot of people start thinking about risk mitigation, which gets back to what Paul was talking about.
Depending on what your career is. If you’re an entrepreneur in a similar way, you might wanna risk mitigate if, you know, you’re not having a lot of active new income coming in. Sometimes taking care of that debt and not leaving anything to chance, I think, uh, is what even wealthy people sometimes do in these situations.
Doug: You know, Joe, I got a question for the round table. I’d be interested to get some feedback from the round table on the 6% rule or the 6% kind of as a high watermark for helping you determine when you pay down debt versus invest. Uh, I’ve heard this for years now, where if you have debt that is at an interest rate greater than 6%, it probably makes sense to pay that down because there’s sort of a gravitational pull there if that debt may grow faster than what you can earn in a conservative typical return in the market.
So if you have debt that’s less than six, you know, that’s, that’s the number I’ve always heard. [00:45:00] What do you guys think about that?
Paula: So that number to me sounds a little arbitrary. I might tie that to what is the interest rate that you could get in a high yield savings account or maybe what type of interest could you get from treasuries?
Like what kind of returns do you think you could get from treasuries?
Doug: What I, um, I, I bristle at your accusation of arbitrary Paula bristles. Bri, I’ve taken umbrage, oh, I’ll go toe to toe with
you.
Joe: And vocabulary. Well wait a minute, Doug, you started off saying this is like a rule of thumb and now it seems like, was this a rule of thumb you made up?
’cause
Doug: you’re so. Sensitive about it? No, no, no, not at all. I haven’t made it up. It was, I mean, I don’t recall where I heard it, but it has been several years now, and I think it’s a very, very conservative assumption of what you might earn in the market. You know, we often on the show talk about 8% as a typical long-term return on investments in equities in the market.
Um, but 6% is just a more conservative version of that. I think that’s, that’s where that six came [00:46:00] from, not just. Pick a number out of random and throw a dart at it.
Joe: I thought you were, you were taking a bridge to use your I did word. I didn’t like the accusation because of the fact that you made, like, it’s not your rule of thumb, Doug.
You don’t need to be mad ’cause you didn’t come up with this rule of thumb.
Doug: Well, I guess not, but it felt like she was, she was sending slings and arrows my way.
Paula: Oh no, I, I didn’t mean to imply that you had made up an arbitrary number. It just, uh, I didn’t see any rationale behind the specificity of the number six.
Doug: Somewhere in there was an apology and I accept. But anyway, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this,
Jesse: Jesse, I’m just wondering, and this is something I know you’ve spent a lot of time talking about, Joe, but when you look at the efficient frontier, Joe, of just like stocks and bonds, stock bond portfolio, what allocation has the best risk adjusted return?
Do you know
Joe: what allocation has the best risk adjusted, adjusted
Jesse: return on this efficient frontier? Because I think, if I remember right, it’s, it’s like depending on what timeline you look at, it’s actually like 2080. It’s like [00:47:00] 20% stocks, 80% bonds,
Joe: where it starts turning more to the right. You’re saying where you, where you’re right on the curvature.
Jesse: I, I, exactly. I think it’s like the furthest left point on, um, the efficient frontier.
Joe: To be very honest, I have never paid attention.
Jesse: Yeah, that’s okay. I, I, I, so here’s my theory, here’s my working theory. I think if you pull it up, um, and I’m kind of looking right now, yeah, it’s usually around like 75 to 80% bonds, 20 to 25% stocks.
And if you look at that portfolio, you can almost do it in your head and you can say like, okay, 80% of bonds, that’s like 80% of a 5% return. That’s four 20% stocks, 20% of a 10% return. That’s two, four plus two is 6%. Woo hoo, 6%. So, okay. It’s like, I, I don’t know if that’s the rationale or not, but I could see someone saying like, Hey, my, my reasonably conservative.
But like mathematically prudent portfolio is 2080 and that’s gonna give me a 6% long-term return.
Joe: Now Doug goes, Jesse, 10 bucks.
Doc G: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but all this put together really [00:48:00] depends on how long-term this debt is. So if you’re talking about, for instance, paying off a mortgage and it’s gonna be 30 years, that’s a probably pretty decent bet.
But if you’re talking about paying off maybe a small amount of college debt or something like that, where it’s only gonna be over three to five years, statistically you don’t really know how returns are gonna be over three to five years. But I like ’cause it’s a little bit more chaotic.
Joe: Yeah. And I think Jordan, and it’s even deeper than that.
I mean, I like Paula’s argument about it also depends on your profession. I like the cash flow argument and I like the retirees argument. Like who cares what the interest rate is, get rid of it. Like if you’re gonna be okay, let’s just get rid of it so that you can focus on your purpose and not on this stuff.
Jesse, nice job swatting a one away and making it harder for Doc G to win this thing on behalf of og. So that means Doc, there are five left. Doc G gonna win? Or is Paul gonna take this thing home for the coalition?
Doug: Think very carefully about your answer here, doc.
Doc G: Yeah, so basically, right, we’re talking about things people can do [00:49:00] to build wealth.
I know in America what the number one thing people generally do is to build wealth. It’s actually something I don’t necessarily wouldn’t be the first thing I’d suggest to people, but there’s a bunch of other, I, I have like four or five here. I don’t know how to choose between them. I’m gonna say buy a home.
I mean, I think that’s what Americans do to build wealth and it is actually the most successful way to. Build wealth in the United States. So buy a home is my answer
Doug: is buy a home on the list. It is. He can never come on this show again. Wow.
Doc G: Can I say my other ones? I’m wondering if they’re right or that, well, hold on a
Joe: second.
Let’s do that. Let’s talk about buy a home first and then we’ll talk about the four that you guys didn’t get, but buy a home in this piece that even start, by the way, the piece was in Kiplinger, and we’ll link to it, the 11 things you can do to grow your wealth. It even says at the beginning of the piece that a lot of experts will disagree with this and that renting can be a better way to grow your wealth.
However, the numbers show historically that homeowners have amassed way more wealth than non homeowners now, [00:50:00] correlation and causation. I think there’s a lot of discussion around why that is, that homeowners have that and and you even said, doc, you said, I don’t know that I agree with this, but. Buy a home on the list.
Doc G: Yeah. I mean, we know statistically it’s that way. Statistically, we know that that’s the way Americans build wealth. Maybe part of the reason is it’s for savings, right? So someone, like any of us, we could go rent and we take all that extra money that we’re not paying on taxes and that we’re not paying on upkeep.
And we could put in the s and p 500 and we could come out just as good if not better, depending on how much that house appreciates. But your average person isn’t gonna do that. Your average person who doesn’t buy a house is gonna rent and then spend that money and not invest it wisely. I think that’s why Americans build wealth that way.
Joe: I gotta believe. Paula, you strongly disagree with this one.
Paula: Uh, that I strongly disagree. That buy a home is a path to building wealth. Buy
Joe: a primary residence, yeah. Is a path to building wealth.
Paula: You’re correct. I, I strongly disagree that it is a good path to [00:51:00] building wealth, particularly if you live in a high cost of living area.
I live in Manhattan. The median price to rent ratio here is 55 0. So price rent ratio means the price of a home divided by what you would pay annually in rent for that same home is 50. It means that renting is a much better deal in a place like Cleveland, where overall citywide, the median priced rent ratio is 11.
In Cleveland, it’s a very, very good idea to buy. It’s a slam dunk to buy, but in Manhattan, it’s a slam dunk to rent. So it is highly geographically specific.
Joe: Jesse, what do you think about this correlation of people that have built the most wealth and the fact that they own homes?
Jesse: Yeah, I think it’s a really good question because I’m not necessarily convinced that the act of home ownership is the thing that led them to be wealthy, but instead the things they did to be [00:52:00] wealthy allowed them to be homeowners.
I mean, that’s the argument, the correlation for CAU thing. It’s like the correlation
Paula: of yacht owners who are wealthy.
Jesse: Right, right, right, right. And that’s, that’s a really good point because it’s like, depending on what the asset is that we’re looking at, that’s great. You know, it becomes really obvious. Now, homes are a much more kind of a broad middle class, you know, a lot more Americans own a home than own a yacht, but I, I still think that if I had to guess, it’s probably like 80 20, I would bet that the forced savings aspect that that Doc g pointed out is actually pretty important and, and is a big factor.
But I also think there’s some of that going on where it’s like, well, these people probably are doing some financially smart things anyway and would’ve been wealthy anyway. I just, I have one question. Uh, just a point of parliamentary procedure. You said this was a Kiplinger article, right?
Joe: Yes.
Jesse: So I just, I went and looked it up and I did see, so number three, and, and we talked about this in the show, but number three was prioritize your retirement.
And then it spends a lot of time talking about investing in a 401k in, in [00:53:00] number three, just. Just wondering about that one. She still won, Jesse? Ah, no she didn’t. No,
Paula: no. I came inside one.
Joe: No, she didn’t win. Not you won. She did win because I got all three. It does. It does spend a lot of time. But here’s the deal.
We had three different ones that that answer fit because she said invest in your four. So we had invest. Yeah, we had prioritized retirement. And then we had a specific one that you guys haven’t gotten to yet that is also on the list. And by the way, Jesse, we changed the name of the next one down for this exercise.
I guess what is Jesse like an auditor? I know.
Doc G: I do wanna go back to one thing about the housing though, because I think it’s important. And I, I remember, Joe, you and I both. I interviewed John Hope Bryant, and there are definitely people, especially when they talk about minority populations that talk about home ownership and building wealth and will point to things like redlining and the inability of minorities to get mortgages as basically one of the main factors in why [00:54:00] there’s such a despair between wealth, between different racial groups.
And so, I don’t know if it’s true or not, but certainly there are many people out there who feel that that home ownership very positively correlates like a first step on the rung. Yeah. And I, I don’t know the answer, and some of that has to do with the appreciation rates of houses over time in certain areas, et cetera.
But I think it’s a compli, uh, the, what, I guess what I’m trying to say is I have no idea, like, I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, I just, I do know that there’s a lot of theory and speculation about that being kind of a main, a divider in wealth.
Joe: Well, and here’s the interesting thing on that note, doc, is that, Jesse, what you said about inheritance.
I mean, owning a house where at the very least the proceeds you pay into the mortgage for let’s say 30 years, and now you have some inheritance for the next generation, can be a way to, at the very least, maybe build some intergenerational wealth to get people on the right track that way. I don’t know enough about the statistics, but that’s an [00:55:00] interesting argument.
Doc G: There’s also tax benefits too. Don’t forget the fact when you sell your house, as you get older, you don’t have to pay taxes up to a certain percent.
Paula: Regarding the intergenerational pass on in rent stabilized areas, again, I’ll, I’ll use Manhattan as an example. You see that happen with rentals where a stabilized rental unit will get passed on from grandparent to parent to child to grandchild, and so because it’s locked in at a rent stabilized price, the child or grandchild ends up getting that rental at a significantly below market rate.
Joe: And their ability right away to live in a area that might be more conducive to building wealth.
Paula: So you get to spend less on housing, which means spend less on housing, which means, right. You get to live. I know somebody actually, well, it actually, it could
Joe: be. It could be both.
Paula: Yeah. Yeah. I, I know someone who lives in the Upper West side and his apartment is 1100 a month.
Joe: Oh
Paula: my
Joe: goodness.
Paula: Beautiful. One bedroom apartment. It’s on the 18th floor. It’s got these gorgeous views. It’s [00:56:00] $1,100 per month. That’s what happens when you have something that’s rent stabilized that somebody in your lineage has held for decades.
Doc G: Yeah. That happened with my family. My grandma lived in the same place in New York for like 40 years and then handed it down to my cousin, and so she lived in a rent stabilized apartment for a while too.
Paula: Yeah. So I just wanna make the point that intergenerational transfer can also apply to rentals
Doc G: affect
Joe: that way. That’s interesting.
Doc G: Yeah.
Paula: Doc, you said you had some other ones,
Doc G: so I have, should I just rattle ’em off? I got three or four other possibilities. Yeah. Sell things right. Put stuff up on eBay, et cetera.
Another one is do it yourself. Hold on a a second.
Joe: Hold on. Let’s take these. Doug did sell things. Make the list. It did not, it did not make the list.
Doc G: Another one I had was do it yourself. Do it yourself. Instead of hiring someone to do it, people remodel their own houses. That was not on the list. And then the last I had was move geo arbitrage.
Doug: Eh, my god. You could have picked any of those. Any of those, if you’d picked, would’ve. I knew my
Doc G: home was up there because buy home is what everyone talks about building wealth in America. Like whenever you talk about anyone. [00:57:00] Who’s looking at general trends, they’ll talk about home buying and building loans.
So
Joe: the other one’s on the list. Uh, keep investment costs low. That’s annoying. Polish your credit is on the list. Oh,
Jesse: Polish. I thought it was Polish. I didn’t understand that one. Polish your credit.
Joe: Polish your credit. Develop a credit score in Poland and Polish. Your credit is different by the way than check your credit.
Right? Aw,
Jesse: come on. I like
Doug: that one. We’ll be here all week ladies and gentlemen.
Joe: Actually, uh. What’s interesting, the opposite of do it yourself, get help from a pro is on the list. And then the last one we changed slightly because right underneath, and Jesse, you see this on the list ’cause Jesse’s looking at the list, it says prioritize retirement, but then the next one is save for the rest of your goals.
But then it gets into the idea of use goal-based investing. So we changed it so that we could decouple those, change it into use goal-based investing, which is [00:58:00] really the point of say for the rest of your goals. So those are the four. Very generic. But you know what? We had a very not generic conversation.
And for that, I thank all three of you. Let’s talk about what’s happening, where all you work. Let’s start off with, it’s weird calling him the special guest ’cause he’s here all the time. Doc G, what’s going on at the Earn Invest podcast man?
Doc G: This week we are having on Daniel Crosby, the Soul of Wealth, to talk about his book and talk about various different investing, saving, earning philosophies.
Uh, and of course when you’re hearing this, the Monday episode will be a solo episode of pre episode, uh, usually in run up to that Thursday episode. But since we are doing this in advance, I don’t know what it’s gonna be about yet.
Joe: When you said Dr. Daniel Crosby is The Soul of Wealth, I’m like, I think there might be other people.
Wow, too. What’s
Doc G: the book? The book The Soul of Wealth,
Joe: that is his book, which is a collection of essays, very thoughtful essays about wealth. Just a [00:59:00] fascinating guy, Dr. Crosby. Love that guy. Jesse, what’s going on at personal finance for long-term investors?
Jesse: I’ve been mixed up these last few weeks and I think the last couple times I was on, I was like, oh, we’re about to release an a MA episode, and I was wrong.
But for now, I can say that, uh, depending on exactly when this episode publishes, we either recently released or are about to release one of our well-received a MA episodes. And then, uh, the other exciting thing is I recently wrote a, a little white paper. Wait a minute, wait minute. Are you, did
Joe: you just say, so if I say a MA episode, enough episodes in a row, it’ll at some point finally be true.
Essentially,
Jesse: it’s that when I said it on the last few Stacking Benjamins episodes, I was just misinformed about my own podcast scheduling. Whereas today I am informed.
Joe: Yes. So it is either just happened or it may be happening soon.
Jesse: Correct. It was kinda like back when you were talking about, uh, insurance coverage.
You said a really good time to check is right after your birthday. Yeah. And I totally agree. Once my birthday hits in those next 12 months, I usually check [01:00:00] my insurance coverage.
Joe: That’s such a key, but an a MA episode. Yes. And you also have another episode coming out with a bunch of contributors that I just sent you.
That is
Jesse: true. That is true. So that one I think is going to be if the a MA just happened. Then this next episode that you alluded to will be, uh, I’m calling it the Keeping Up with the Joneses, where I asked 5, 6, 7 contributors to send me a fun story about a time where they kind of fell into some sort of spending trap, or maybe they had a really good spending lesson.
They, they capped up with the Joneses and, and realized it wasn’t something they should be doing. So a few well-known people, uh, I think including some stacking Benjamins, uh uh. Talent. Uh, I, I got caught there. I was gonna say dangle talent contributing to that episode, so that’ll be a good one.
Joe: That’s awesome.
And that’s at the personal Finance for Long-Term Investors Podcast. My contribution, by the way, was my big mistake was the time I thought the mini bar was free.
Jesse: It’s a really good story,
Joe: which is a, was a huge mistake. My bad. It
Doc G: was free before checkup. [01:01:00]
Joe: Yeah, it was free until it wasn’t. And then I realized, well, you gotta listen to that episode.
But Paula, what’s going on and afford anything?
Paula: Well, before I talk about the Afford Anything podcast, I wanna answer a question from somebody in our live audience. It’s
Joe: funny, I always say hi to people, the live audience
Paula: and today. Right. I’ve been so focused, so focused on, on running two games simultaneously.
Yeah. Right, right, right. Both of which put OG over the top. Carlos asks, Hey Paula, how is your cat doing? Oh, yeah,
Joe: yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paula: So, yeah. So Carlos, thank you for asking about her. My sweet for, for those of you who haven’t heard, my sweet, beautiful 15-year-old cat Tassie, uh, has large cell lymphoma. She has now undergone two rounds of chemotherapy.
She’s done really well. She has gained weight each week over the past three weeks, which is like, it’s hard to gain weight when you’re on chemo, but she is gaining weight every single checkup. She’s like, weighs a little bit more than she did the last time. Oh,
Joe: that’s [01:02:00] fantastic. So,
Paula: yeah, that’s a really, really good sign.
She was supposed to go in for her third round of chemo yesterday. We had to delay for a couple of reasons. So her third round’s gonna be next week, but, uh, yeah, we’ll see. We’re, we’re taking it sort of a, a week at a time. Overall, her prognosis is between six to nine months. So I’m just trying to give her the best life possible.
But that being said, uh, thank you for asking about her on the Afford Anything podcast. We have an interview with Sebastian Page, who is the Chief Investment Officer at t Rowe Price, and he talks about leadership. So we actually don’t discuss investing per se. We talk more high level about leadership, about personality, about psychology, you know, about all of those quote unquote soft skills that make the big difference.
Joe: It’s funny, I, I always, whenever I hear those called soft skills, I’m like, those are some of the hardest skills,
Paula: right? Yeah. Exactly.
Joe: Wow. And that’s on the Afford Anything podcast, by the way. Uh, uh, Jessica takes [01:03:00] umbridge. Doug, it’s, she lost her shizzle there, didn’t she? Because it is 50 cent, not 50 cent. So
Doug: she goes, I knew I was gonna get somebody’s feathers ruffled.
And yes, I’m glad I succeeded. Thanks Jessica. Jessica hanging,
Joe: Jessica hanging out with us on YouTube says Gbas do Finnie, all caps screaming. A just like calling you Doe. So good. Well, thanks for hanging out with us. If you wanna hang out with us, normally we’re here. Wednesday afternoons, but because of some recent travel, we’re here on Thursday, but generally Wednesday or Thursday afternoon, most of the time, uh, around, uh, 4:00 PM Eastern Time.
All right, that’s gonna do it for today, Doug. Lots of takeaways from this one. What are our big three?
Doug: Well, Joe first take some advice from Paula Pan when she advised using an Antifa budget. Paula, can you summarize that for us? Oh, what,
Paula: yes. The Antifa budget that is antiques, uh, for the. So your budget should be [01:04:00] full of antiques, meaning you should go to yard sales, you should go to garage sales.
You should buy lots and lots of antique furniture. I
Doug: did not catch that the first time. Thank you for clarifying. And Jesse’s like, wait a minute. I can’t get away with that, but she can. Yes. Right. Let’s give him a chance to redeem himself right now. Second, Jesse said some smart stuff about deciding when to pay down debt versus investing.
Uh, let’s see if lightning can strike twice. Jesse, can you remind us what you said?
Jesse: I think we settled on somewhere in that six to 7% range is a rule of thumb break. Even if your debt is over that you should probably focus on paying down your debt. If your debt interest rate is under that, you might be better off investing.
Doug: See, Paula, that’s how you do it. But the big lesson, if someone offers you 150 million half dollar coins, here’s what you do. Say thank you. You rent a forklift and you clear out a spot next to Joe’s mom’s canned green beans, because [01:05:00] that would weigh 3.75 million pounds or about 6 7 40. Holy, really? Yeah. I did the math.
Holy. A 50 cent piece weighs 0.4 ounces. So I did all the math. I did a whole bunch of research. 7 47. You’re welcome. Stackers next to the canned green beans. Doug’s on it. Yep. Thanks to Doc G for joining us today. You’ll find his podcast called The OG Fanboy Show wherever you are listening to us right now.
He’s also got a show called Earn and Invest. We’ll also include links in our show [email protected]. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. She’s like, oh crap. What’s he gonna say? You’ll find her totally arbitrary podcast. Afford anything wherever you listen to mid podcasts. Oh, man.
Yeah, I’m still a little bit raw from that one. Thanks also to the Jesse Kramer for joining us today. You’ll find Jesse’s podcast, personal finance for long-term investors, also [01:06:00] exactly where you’re listening to us right now. Hey, everybody, pause this and subscribe to all three of ’em. Why don’t you? You won’t regret it.
This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul Sea Hyde. Joe gets some help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome [email protected], 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.
I.
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