A Sandwich Guide to Navigating Inflation (plus how to plug 401k "leakage") SB1717

Is your grocery bill beefier than your sandwich? This week, Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug unpack inflation in a way that only we can—by biting into Len Penzo’s Annual Sandwich Survey. Yes, prices are up, and yes, you can still eat well without triggering a credit card crisis.

But it’s not just meat and mustard on today’s menu.

We’re also serving a fresh look at 401(k) “leakage”—that drip-drip-drip of hardship withdrawals that’s turning your retirement plan into a leaky faucet. You’ll get pro-level insight on how to patch those holes before your future income soaks the floor.

And if you’re paying for (or dreading paying for) college, Christine from the Stacker community, who works in higher ed, joins to offer sharp and timely advice on keeping costs in check—from completing the FAFSA to finding overlooked aid.

Len Penzo’s Sandwich Index Which sandwiches give you the most delicious bang for your inflation-adjusted buck? (Spoiler: bologna stages a quiet comeback.)
401(k) Trouble Brewing Hardship withdrawals are on the rise. Why it matters, how to avoid them, and what better options exist when life throws you a cash crisis.
Tracking Expenses Like a Pro Joe, OG, and Doug explore the subtle ways inflation seeps into your budget—and how paying attention to where your money leaks gives you power back.
Higher Ed, Lower Bills Stacker Christine breaks down must-know tips on navigating skyrocketing tuition, including a FAFSA pep talk that could save you thousands.
Tuna vs. Roast Beef: The Sandwich Showdown Plus: Is the BLT still king? Can the humble tuna salad hold its ground against the mighty Big Mac? And where does salami fit into the sandwich power rankings?
Trivia, Movie Talk, and Park City Tales No Stacking Benjamins episode is complete without a detour or three—from Doug’s trivia trap to stories from the road and screen.

Takeaway for Stackers: In high-cost times, it’s the small wins—like swapping in store brands, packing a lunch, or tracking that budget leak—that give you the edge. And while it’s tempting to ignore those tiny cracks in your retirement plan or daily spending, you’re much better off fixing them before the flood.

Want to brag about your favorite money-saving sandwich? Drop into the Basement Facebook group and share it—bonus points if it doesn’t involve bologna.

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

Monday Mentor: Len Penzo

Big thanks to Len Penzo for joining us today. To learn more about Len, visit Len Penzo dot Com – The offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people.. Check out his latest Annual Sandwich Survey.

Our Headline

Retirement Account and Emergency Savings? 401(k)s Increasingly Play Dual Role for Many Workers. (Wall Streeet Journal)

Doug’s Trivia

Back in 1916 the USA entered into a treaty to buy what group of islands for $25 million dollars?

Better call Saul…Sehy & OG

Stacker Christine called in with suggestions to fellow Stackers about how to make smart moves regarding student loans.

Have a question for the show?

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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).

Other Mentions

Join Us Wednesday

Tune in on Wednesday when we help you master your negotiation skills with the host of the Afford Anything podcast and negotiation instructor, Paula Pant.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: What Would YOU Do With $50,000? (SB1716)

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Joe: It’s Monday, we’re talking sandwiches. And you know what pairs great with sandwiches? Beer. A salute to our troops. Oh, a beer. Beer. First thing in the morning.

[00:00:10] OG: A Corona. It’s the right answer. Tell me I’m wrong.

[00:00:13] Joe: Oh my goodness. And thank you stackers for writing in after Doug. We had the trivia about the number one beer on college campuses.

[00:00:20] Joe: Yeah. Ashley said it’s probably Bush light. Yeah. And stacker. John went to his authority, which is his son who’s in college, who said It’s probably Natty Light. Dad, we don’t drink beer. No, but, but everybody’s like, yeah, no, no, no. Corona. Can I get a line please? Right. Not that anyway. No, not beer. A SLU to our troops.

[00:00:43] Joe: The people that kept us safe. Okay. All weekend long. So raise your mugs everybody, because on behalf of the men and women, make a podcast in mom’s basement with these cool Stacking Benjamins mugs and the people serving our troops at Navy Federal Credit Union, our troops, veterans, and their families.

[00:00:59] Joe: Here’s our salute. Let’s go stack some Benjamins together now. Huh? Clink.

[00:01:06] opener: Hey, watch. You got here. That’s worth living for. True

[00:01:13] OG: love. True love. You hurt him. You could not ask for a more noble cause than that.

[00:01:18] opener: Yeah. Sunny, true love is the greatest thing in the world except for nice MLT, mud, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

[00:01:25] opener: When the mud is nice and lean and the tomatoes are ripe, they’re so perky. I love that.

[00:01:37] OG: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:01:51] OG: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And what’s the most fun way to look at inflation? How about by comparing prices of the products we use every day. Like the ingredients of a brown bag. Lunch. Today we welcome the Man behind the Best Sandwich survey since Wonder Bread Blend Penso. And in our headline segment, oh no, not again.

[00:02:15] OG: We got Leakage. Money is leaking out of one popular account type. The Wall Street Journal shared the story and we’ll explain why. You may wanna plug that leak. It just, it’s gross no matter how you say it. Plus we’ll answer a call from Christine who thought, you know, I’d better call Saul, see hi and OG to share advice for college.

[00:02:38] OG: Thanks, Christine. Wow. All that and my amazing trivia. It’s your lucky day. And now two guys who just turned the water heater into a DIY sauna and called it Sweating the Dead Out. Joe and O,

[00:02:59] Joe: the DIY Sauna works every time 60% of the time. Hey everybody, welcome back to Stacky Benjamins. We’re so happy that you’re here with us. We are the show that teaches you about money, whether it’s earning, saving, spending, get your plan together. We are gonna dive into all that today because the man across the card table with me is ready to.

[00:03:22] Joe: Help me say hello to Lynn Penso, who’s back og.

[00:03:26] OG: It’s about time. I’m very hungry. Skipped dinner. Yesterday wasn’t, but

[00:03:30] Joe: we just get hungrier where we hear about roast beef and cheddar, Turkey and Swiss.

[00:03:36] OG: We eat a lot at Jimmy John’s in our house, by the way, Jimmy John’s, if you wanna sponsor the show, reach out to us please.

[00:03:41] OG: I always get the roast beef and they just added horse radish sauce. Oh. So now you can take off the mustard and the mayo, which is awful, with roast beef. Mm-hmm. And do a horse radish sauce. So I’m optimistic that old Lenny’s got a horse radish and roast beef sandwich. Sadly, I know how much they are at Jimmy John’s.

[00:04:01] OG: I just wonder how much they are when he makes them.

[00:04:03] Joe: Yeah. If you’ve listened to lead in the past, he has these set static sandwiches he’s used for the last many, many years. What’s fascinating about Olive loaf stackers? Olive loaf,

[00:04:12] OG: come

[00:04:12] Joe: on. Olive loaf. Liver worst. Liver

[00:04:15] OG: worst. Come on baby.

[00:04:16] Joe: If you’re due here, you’re wondering why are we talking about sandwiches?

[00:04:19] Joe: It is a fun way for me, the funnest way to think about inflation and to see inflation. What’s more real than inflation at the grocery store. And so every year lens shows up. There’s one or two sandwiches that spike up one or two that come down from last year. We talk about why and how that impacts your wallet.

[00:04:37] Joe: This year, I’ve already seen guys the results of this year’s study. It is slightly different this year at the grocery store than it’s been in the past. So buckle up stackers ’cause we’re about to have some fun. Len Penso is for those of you who are new, an award-winning blogger. He’s won two plutus awards for len penso.com, his offbeat blog for responsible people.

[00:05:00] Joe: Len also called by CBS Money Watch the number one blogger in America. Of course, we’ve been collaborating with Len for 14 years. Collaborated with the Len Penso. This is for our long-term stackers, one of our favorite recurring shows every year. So let’s say hello to him in just a minute. The Man, the Myth, the legend, Len Penso coming up.

[00:05:22] Joe: But before that, we have a couple sponsors that make sure that we can keep on keeping on. You have to pay a dime for our wonderful mentors like Mr. Penso teaching us about inflation and the grocery store. We’re gonna hear from them first. And then Lynn Penso, you, me, and sandwiches.

[00:05:50] Joe: Well, you know what time of year it is. When we’re doing this interview, the sandwich survey is out and that means Len Zos back in the basement. How are you man? I’m great. I’m getting ready to start school again. How about that? Yeah, just in time. Time to bring out the sandwiches again?

[00:06:08] Len: Yes.

[00:06:08] Joe: I wanna jump right into the study.

[00:06:10] Joe: We will get back everybody about the common sense math around pecking your own lunch versus sending your kids to get the school lunch. Although school lunches. Some places. I don’t know, man. I see some of these school lunches line, they look great. Other ti, other ones I look at, they look awful.

[00:06:26] Len: Yeah, it’s hit and miss, man.

[00:06:27] Len: You see those ones with a chunk of cheese and a slice of bread. It’s like who? Oh, it’s dis. And I bet you if you bite into that piece of cheese, it’s all dry and crumb. Ugh.

[00:06:35] Joe: Is this school or prison? Oh yeah. Right, exactly. Maybe both. I don’t know. Here’s what I expected, Len. I expected to see more inflation just because I’ve seen so much inflation just in my own life.

[00:06:49] Joe: I go to the restaurant and I go, what the hell? Like every time I get a bill, what the hell? I see the price of gas that’s come down a little bit in our area, but I just feel like my life generally is more expensive than it was a year ago. And yet when it comes to this year’s survey. That seems to be wrong.

[00:07:08] Joe: Am I reading that right?

[00:07:10] Len: Well, I was expecting the survey to show lower prices. You were expecting prices actually to recede. Yes, I was. I really was. And while I was Yeah, doing the pricing at the grocery store, I was like, wait a minute. What the heck? What what I do is I take all 10 of the sandwiches. I think most people know, I’ll go over ’em real quick.

[00:07:27] Len: The sandwiches are the peanut butter and jelly, the bacon, lettuce and tomato. The, uh, Hammond Swiss, there’s a Turkey and Swiss egg salad. Salami, did I say bologna roast beef and cheddar roast beef. And Very good. Yeah, that’s a good one. Roast beef and cheddar, the tuna salad, uh, salami. And then

[00:07:43] Joe: famously the American cheese,

[00:07:45] Len: I don’t think, and of course, the American cheese.

[00:07:46] Len: And, and again, I’m gonna bring this up every time I, I said not just a boring American cheese folks. It can be a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s bread and cheese. You can get creative with it. Okay.

[00:07:54] Joe: We have to laugh about this every year, stackers, because somebody gave us a review of the show that said, sending your kid to school with a cheese sandwich is borderline child abuse.

[00:08:03] Len: Which is love. Hilarious. I love, I love grilled cheese sandwiches. Me, I like a cheese sandwich too. But anyway, even a cold grilled cheese sandwich is fine. Of course. Yes. Delicious. And as part of the survey, I don’t count the tomato. I put a tomato slice on my grilled cheese every time. Oh, oh my God. It keeps, it makes it so good.

[00:08:18] Len: Where was I? Oh yes. So I was expecting a lower price this year for the average price of all 10 of these sandwiches. It actually went up 5%. So if you take all of the prices of all those sandwiches to construct those this year, the average price of this, the average sandwich went up 5%. Which is a shock to me because I really thought it would drop.

[00:08:38] Len: Well, I thought,

[00:08:39] Joe: I thought it was gonna be all time high, and yet it wasn’t. It was higher two years ago, correct. Than it is today. Correct. So I expected even higher. But the one thing that we did get Len, and this, I think you’re seeing at grocery stores all over the place. Some of these prices went down by a ton and some went up by a ton.

[00:08:59] Joe: Like the big lesson I got from this year’s survey, and we’ll dive into it, stackers was, volatility at the grocery store is real.

[00:09:07] Len: Oh, it’s crazy. Yeah, it, it’s amazing. Some of these price changes from year to year to year, um, and some of these price changes, most of these are national. You know, I’m here in Southern California.

[00:09:18] Len: Most of the prices translate well nationally. However, one item on this list does not. It’s usually very local. It’s the price of eggs here in Southern California, again, this is where I was really, my jaw hit the floor in Southern California. The price of eggs. Went through the roof compared to last year, went through the roof up 23% over, or, uh, I think actually up 30, the price of eggs, 35% the price of eggs here in Southern California.

[00:09:45] Len: So if some of you were out there in say, uh, Salina, Kansas or someplace like that, you’ll be going, what are you talking about, Penza? That’s because the price of eggs are local. So that’s the one item. I think I have 18 items on this list. Ingredients, you know, I got the peanut butter, the salami, the individual, the price of lettuce, Turkey, all that stuff.

[00:10:03] Len: So 18 different ingredients. And, uh, I think 10 of those ingredients, 10 or 11 went up and they went up big. I mean, if you, you see it, Joe, the, the, these prices are, you know, ham up 25%, bacon up 20%, tuna up 30%, the price of lettuce up 40%. These were some huge increases in price.

[00:10:24] Joe: Generally when you’ve done this in the past, the volatility is kind of the exception.

[00:10:29] Joe: It sticks out. I remember the year that salami, remember the sal, the great salami year? Yes. Where it just went through the roof. And we’ve had some cheeses from one time to another, go through the roof. But, but, but now, but now staying. Staying the same, yes, staying the same is the thing that is shocking.

[00:10:46] Joe: ’cause these prices are all double digit down or double digit up. So let’s dive into this. You’ve got all of the pieces of the sandwich and if you wanna follow along stackers, we’ll link to lens blog post at stack your Benjamins dot com. Just go to the show notes and click on, and you can just look through this with us.

[00:11:03] Joe: But big picture here, eggs not up the most, the most is lettuce.

[00:11:10] Len: Yeah, it was a big jump this year.

[00:11:11] Joe: 39% increase in the cost of lettuce. We’re just talking about head lettuce, right?

[00:11:15] Len: That’s right. It’s a head of lettuce. Yep. What I do is you say, well, how do you figure that out for the price of, you know, A BLT?

[00:11:21] Len: Right? That’s the, that’s the only item on this list where I use lettuce as a formal ingredient, uh, the BLT. And what I do is I take the price of a head of lettuce. I use 10 servings per quote container. So a, a head of lettuce, there’s 10 servings. One serving of lettuce for BLT would be 25 cents. That’s how it would work in this case.

[00:11:40] Len: ’cause the cost this year was $2 and 49 cents for that head of lettuce.

[00:11:44] Joe: I had a neighbor, friends of mine give me free tomatoes from their garden last year. And you know, just the taste, Len, as you know of a garden tomato versus a grocery store tomato. So, so good. Oh my

[00:11:57] Len: gosh. That’s the only way to, that’s the best tomatoes in the world.

[00:11:59] Len: Homegrown tomatoes.

[00:12:00] Joe: It was so incredible. Go to a farmer’s market people, but in the grocery store, tomatoes, they’re down the second most tomatoes down 25%.

[00:12:09] Len: Yeah. It almost canceled out the price of the lettuce went up and that affected the overall price of the BLT. So you know, you’ll see that this year, the price of the BLT barely budged.

[00:12:19] Len: Yeah. The price of lettuce went up 40% almost. But the price of tomato came down 25%. So it’s interesting how this stuff works when you put it all together,

[00:12:28] Joe: we’re talking about produce there with lettuce and tomato canceling each other out. But when I said tomato was the second biggest dive, the biggest dive though was in the meat department salami down almost 30%.

[00:12:44] Joe: I don’t think, have we had a survey yet where we’ve seen salami price move that much in the up direction? Yes. Matter. Yeah. The other way.

[00:12:52] Len: Uh, it was back in 2000. It would two 19. Yes, exactly. Very good. Joe. Remember I’ve been doing this survey for 17. It’s hard to believe I started this survey in 2009, so I have 17 years worth of data here, which is, you know, each year it gets more and more interesting ’cause there’s more and more data to look back on.

[00:13:09] Len: But yeah, in 2014. Salami just had a terrible year. The price of a sandwich back then was a dollar 19. That is not inflation adjusted. Compare that to this year. The price of that salami sandwich is only 72 cents. It made a huge move this year. It’s one of the cheapest sandwiches you can buy this year.

[00:13:26] Joe: It cost about the same as it did in 2010.

[00:13:29] Joe: Yeah. It was 73 cents yes. Back in 2010. That’s incredible.

[00:13:33] Len: A lot of these things, it’s based on growing seasons or farm, you know, uh, the markets for pork or whatever. I mean, they go up, they go down. You have a bad year in growing season, or you have, uh, your, the cattle or whatever, the pigs or whatever, have a bad season for whatever reason that, you know, prices move in one direction or the other.

[00:13:52] Len: So it’s, it is volatile.

[00:13:54] Joe: You know, just thinking about this, by the way, as an aside land, have you ever been to one of these bars? They have one in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I’m from, called a beer exchange. So there’s a ticker tape around the top of the bar, at least the one in Kalamazoo has this. And it also has a menu where the prices change.

[00:14:14] Joe: And every time somebody buys a beer, the price goes up, and every time nobody buys a beer for X amount of time, the price goes down.

[00:14:21] Len: Very

[00:14:22] Joe: cool. And, and so you find yourself, if you stay there for an hour and you have a couple different beers, you will change beers just based on, just based on the price tag.

[00:14:32] Joe: And a couple times a night at random times, they will have a, you know, a market collapse they call it, where the whole market goes down and they just kind of wipe it out. But every night is different. You have no idea. It depends on what everybody’s drinking. It’s pretty cool. But anyway, that’s what I think of when I think about this salami.

[00:14:50] Joe: Price fluctuation, like I should be chowing on salami now, but maybe just for the next 12 months.

[00:14:56] Len: I would, I use the dry salami. This isn’t the cheap bologna salami that it’s like bologna, but they spice it like salami. That’s, you can buy that kinda salami. It’s super cheap. No, this is what’s called the dry hard salami.

[00:15:08] Len: This is very, this could

[00:15:09] Joe: be good on a charcuterie tray as well. Yes,

[00:15:12] Len: exactly. This is really good high quality salami that I’ve been using for the survey forever. You know, spoiler, this obviously didn’t come in first, but it’s one of the tops, and this is probably for me, this is the best value sandwich this year, is the salami sandwich.

[00:15:27] Joe: Yeah, sure. It looks like it to me. Let’s go back to the ones that went up the most again, lettuce up the most. Eggs up. Second, third place is tuna. Tuna is already expensive, Len, and now it’s up 30% more.

[00:15:42] Len: Yeah. Tuna has been, it’s been in a bad spot in the past few years. It went up 97% in 2022. The price of tuna.

[00:15:50] Len: This is Albacore Tuna now. This is the good stuff. It fell back 90 cents over the following two years, which gave a little relief to us tuna lovers. ’cause I love tuna. But now it’s back on the rise again and it went up 30% again. So after a couple years of relief, we’re feeling the pain again with tuna, unfortunately.

[00:16:07] Joe: Yeah, back in 2022. And I remember this ’cause there was some nationwide tuna fishing issue. It went from 1 55 to uh, not nationwide, excuse me, worldwide tuna fishing issue from 1 55 to 2 83 and it’s headed back there again. Price of a tuna salad sandwich. Yeah. And we’ll get to the overall sandwich prices here in a minute.

[00:16:25] Joe: But coming back strong and not in a good way. And then next, and this is the one that’s gonna make most people groan. Len number four on this list. I look, oh no, wait a minute. I almost forgot. Ham. Ham up 25% from last year.

[00:16:41] Len: What can I say about ham? The price, it dropped pretty good last year, but it’s back up.

[00:16:47] Len: It’s one of those middling sandwiches. It’s a good, it, it doesn’t really go up a lot. It doesn’t go down a lot from year to year. This year it did see a little, the price of ham did go up a bit. Um, but it, it’s not one of those sandwiches that it’s always gonna be in the middle of the pack of, of all the sandwiches

[00:17:02] Joe: and then tide next.

[00:17:03] Joe: And again, 20% increase in tied for fifth. Tied for fifth on this list. That’s crazy. A 20% increase is tied for fifth wheat bread. And the one I said, people are gonna grown at 20% increase in bacon. Say it ain’t so. Len.

[00:17:17] Len: Oh, I say it,

[00:17:18] Joe: it, come on.

[00:17:19] Len: It’s a shame. And, and I’ll be honest. Okay. So what I do when I do this survey, I don’t stick to one brand.

[00:17:24] Len: What I do is I look at all the bacon on the shelf or anything, whether it’s mayonnaise or mustard or Turkey. I look at everything being offered and I pick the lowest per unit cost item, and that’s what I go with whatever the cheapest was. So in this case for bacon, there was one available. There was this huge.

[00:17:43] Len: Pack of, uh, 32 slices of bacon. I can’t remember how many pounds that was. It was basically four strips of bacon per serving. There was almost 31 slices of bacon in there.

[00:17:55] Joe: Huge container.

[00:17:56] Len: Yeah. It was a huge container, and the price still went up 20% with that huge container. If you bought the basic one pound bacon, it went up even more.

[00:18:04] Len: It went up like, you know, 40% I think it was.

[00:18:06] Joe: Wow. So if you’re cooking for one or two and don’t have a lot of storage space, oh my gosh, yeah. This

[00:18:09] Len: number’s gonna be way bigger. It’s painful. It’s painful. Usually they don’t have this huge package of bacon there on the shelf. But this year they did. And it was, like I said, it was still up 20%, which is just amazing.

[00:18:19] Len: Shows you how high the price of bacon went up this year.

[00:18:22] Joe: It’s crazy. But again, tied for fifth.

[00:18:25] Len: Yeah, tied

[00:18:25] Joe: for fifth at 20%. Well, the

[00:18:27] Len: little bread, and the thing with bread is when the price of bread goes up, every sandwich has bread, every sandwich. So right off the bat you’re, there’s a 20% increase just on your most basic ingredient of the sandwich.

[00:18:38] Len: So yeah, that’s when bread hurts, when the price goes up.

[00:18:40] Joe: The only other increase, and the only increase I would call normal mayo, went up by 3%. Big deal.

[00:18:47] Len: Yeah. Now, here’s the interesting thing. On Mayo, the price went up 3%. If you looked at the previous year, the price didn’t change. The cheapest mayo on the shelf there at my local grocery store was 4 99, just like last year.

[00:18:58] Len: But what changed was the servings per container. The servings per container went from 61 to 59, and there’s your 3% shrink inflation.

[00:19:09] Joe: So if you’re not paying

[00:19:09] Len: attention, you’ll say, oh, price of mayo didn’t go up at all. No, it did because they reduced the servings per container. The container size fell.

[00:19:17] Joe: I’m just thinking about, we just went to the grocery store last weekend and I even remember thinking is is this Mayo container smaller than before?

[00:19:24] Joe: 2, 3, 4 ingredients did not change. Price of mustard didn’t change. Price of roast beef, thank goodness did not change. The price of bologna did not change and the price of American cheese did not change. And then let’s talk about what actually fell in value, unless you’ve got any comments about those. Any weirdness in those uh,

[00:19:48] Len: zero outs?

[00:19:48] Len: No, it’s interesting. It’s, um, American and cheddar cheese tend to go in, locks that pretty close. If Swiss cheese is the outlier, if you’re a Swiss cheese lover, that price can go up or down in large movements from year to year. And I don’t know what the difference is there. I know American cheese isn’t really, unless you’re getting it from the deli, you can’t get good deli American cheese.

[00:20:08] Len: But usually the processed stuff, the stuff I’m talking about here is the processed. American cheese, but uh, the Swiss cheese, yeah. It tends to make big movements compared to the other two cheeses, but as well,

[00:20:20] Joe: because versus everything else, Len, cheeses were pretty mild. I mean yeah. In a normal year, you and I talking and, and if I told everybody Swiss cheese and cheddar cheese went down by 8%, I would say, wow, that’s a big move.

[00:20:33] Joe: That ain’t a big move. ’cause we we’re, we’re gonna dive into some other ones that went down a ton more. Yeah, like down 8%. Okay. Big deal. But more Swiss cheese though is good. I, I’m one of those Swiss cheese fans like Oh, I am too. Yeah. Speaking of Swiss cheese. Swiss cheese is twin a Turkey on a sandwich down 17%.

[00:20:53] Joe: Yeah. And strawberry jelly down 17% only eclipse by peanut butter down 14%. Peanut butter and jelly down.

[00:21:03] Len: Yeah, that’s good news. If you’re a young kid and you like your PB and js, I mean, I can

[00:21:07] Joe: be 57 years old like my PB and j.

[00:21:11] Len: Well, let’s face it, the, the PB and j, we all know this. It’s always the top three sandwiches every year.

[00:21:16] Len: Bar none. It’s the cheese, it’s the PB and j, and it’s the bologna. The question is, and you’re, you’re probably gathering what’s probably the top dog this year, but those are the three most economical sandwiches year in and year out. Although there’s a very interesting, uh, trend that’s occurring and it’s been occurring over the last five years, and we can talk about that when we go through the individual sandwich rankings.

[00:21:39] Joe: Well, and the thing is starting to strike me. This is a hypothesis. We’ll see if it makes it to the end of the show, but this is a case of the cheaper sandwiches get cheaper and the more expensive sandwiches get more expensive. Like looking at this list of ingredients, the ones that tended to be on the high end.

[00:21:57] Joe: Like there’s a big difference in sandwiches. The delta between them seems to be spreading, but we can talk about that later. All right. 14% decrease in the price of peanut butter, 17% and strawberry jelly and Turkey, and I love it. Len, people have fought with you about why you would use strawberry versus grape.

[00:22:16] Joe: Yeah. That’s for a different day. Yeah. The grape lovers, please

[00:22:18] Len: hold your emails. I’m tired of it.

[00:22:21] Joe: The Grape Growers Association all up in arms, and then the tomato we mentioned at a 25% drop and salami, 29% drop. All right, Len, let’s put these together. Last year we saw the BLT, I think almost every year. The BLT is most expensive, isn’t it?

[00:22:40] Len: I think one year it crept to number nine, but yes. Other than that, the other 16, 15 times it’s been the most expensive sandwich. Yes.

[00:22:48] Joe: So before we get into this cost per sandwich, let’s just make the case, Len, for the. Idea of packing your lunch versus buying a lunch. What is the savings you think for the average person when it comes to buying a lunch?

[00:23:01] Joe: Before we get into this cost per sandwich,

[00:23:03] Len: I go to how much is it.org every year to see what the average price across the nation is for a high school lunch, not just high school. All the schools set primary and secondary and, and high school lunches. And this year they said it was three 50 again. So that’s the price of if you went to school and got a lunch there.

[00:23:20] Len: Generally the sandwiches, my sandwiches in this list range from 44 cents to $4 and 20 cents per sandwich. Okay. Um, you throw in a banana, you can get a banana for probably 25 cents to 30 cents at the store. On a per banana basis, you get a little small bag of chips. You know, you buy a big bag of 30 of them.

[00:23:40] Len: At Costco, it’s probably another 30, 40 cents. So let’s say 75 cents for chips and a piece of fruit, and then the sandwich. What do you got there? The 75 cents and uh, 44 cents. You’re just over a buck, maybe a buck 50 per lunch, per brown bag lunch if you bought the one of the cheapest sandwiches, a fruit and some chips.

[00:24:01] Joe: Well, you want the dollar menu?

[00:24:04] Len: There it is. Sure. There it is. That, yeah, absolutely. And I always point this out every year as well, even the BLT, which we know is the most expensive sandwich year, almost year in and year out. This year, it’s $4 and 20 cents, but the average price of a Big Mac this year in the United States is $6 and 20 cents for just a Big Mac.

[00:24:24] Len: That’s without the fries, without the drink. So compare that to a delicious BLT for four 20, and it’s a bargain. The BL T’s still a bargain and it’s healthier for you too.

[00:24:34] Joe: I just even looked up the price of the Whopper. The average Whopper right now costs $8 and 19 cents. No. Holy

[00:24:41] Len: smokes. Yeah. Yeah. Whopper are good though.

[00:24:43] Len: I like Whoppers.

[00:24:45] Joe: I do. I do like the Whopper as well. It doesn’t help that we’re doing this right before lunch.

[00:24:49] Len: Yeah,

[00:24:49] Joe: that’s true. So, alright, next time we gotta schedule this for right after lunch. Of course that will be sleepy. And uh, let’s jump back into this. You compare the prices of these sandwiches, bacon, lettuce, and tomato.

[00:25:05] Joe: Still the most expensive sandwich. $4 and 20 cents. That price went down 4% from last year. No. Went

[00:25:14] Len: up.

[00:25:14] Joe: Went up or went up. I’m sorry. Yeah, red is up. Only listed.

[00:25:17] Len: There’s only two sandwiches went down this year. The price of two sandwiches went down. One we already mentioned was the salami and the other. You can, based on what we just talked about, you can tell it’s the P, B and J.

[00:25:28] Len: Other than that, the roast beef and cheddar stayed the same. Everything else went up. And most of them went up a pretty good chunk. Most of these sandwiches went up in price.

[00:25:37] Joe: The sandwich is far more expensive this year than last year. It was number five on the list of cheap sandwiches last year. Now it’s number six.

[00:25:44] Joe: Ham and Swiss,

[00:25:45] Len: correct.

[00:25:46] Joe: Up almost 30%, 29% increase in ham and Swiss.

[00:25:50] Len: Yep.

[00:25:50] Joe: And that’s the price of the ham. That’s the price of the bread.

[00:25:54] Len: The ham and the bread. And a little bit, well, the Mayo’s 3% slightly. Yeah. That didn’t really make a big difference.

[00:26:00] Joe: No egg salad up. 23% was number four on the list last year.

[00:26:06] Joe: It’s number five now.

[00:26:07] Len: Right.

[00:26:08] Joe: And again, the price of eggs, the price of bread, and the price of mayo all went up. Yep. The salami sandwich went almost cut in half. Point seven two went from seventh most expensive on the list to third on the list.

[00:26:25] Len: What a move. I’d have to double check that, but I am almost positive this is the biggest move any sandwich has made in any year.

[00:26:31] Len: It is remarkable. It went from number seven to number three this year. And, and again, this is good quality salami. This is, you know, hard dry salami. Just delicious. This is the type of salami you could put on a, a charco, uh, how do you say? Charcuterie board Charcuterie. Yeah. It’s really good stuff. And it came in at third.

[00:26:48] Len: It’s 72 cents for one sandwich. Wow. You can’t beat it. Wow. Yeah.

[00:26:52] Joe: Peanut butter and jelly at 44, winning the day. Again, it’s always peanut butter jelly versus bologna. But peanut butter and jelly went down, as we talked about earlier with the ingredients. I didn’t know if it would go down enough len that it would bypass the increased cost of the bread,

[00:27:06] Len: but it did.

[00:27:06] Len: It did. And, and let me, so I kind of hinted at this earlier in this, but there’s a real interesting trend in the 17 years. Bologna has either shared the top spot or. Had the top spot on its own. I think, uh, it’s now 13 of the 17 years. Maybe it’s 12 of the 17 years. Bologna was always the king. In the last five years, PB and J has been creeping up and now PB and J is the cheapest sandwich at 44 cents a sandwich.

[00:27:35] Len: This year. It’s the second year in a row. Yeah, three of the last four. And over the last five years, there’s been a change and it looks like the PB and J is. Exerting its dominance now in the cheapest sandwich, uh, race

[00:27:48] Joe: over the period of time, 2009 to today. Bologna still though on average, has been the cheapest at 40 cents.

[00:27:55] Joe: PB and J at 42?

[00:27:56] Len: That’s correct. That’s overall 17 years, 40 cents. Yeah. Over the five years though, PB and J is the five year rolling Average is 45 cents for the PB and j and 48 cents for the balloon. I mean, we’re quibb in over 3 cents, but hey, if we’re gonna award a crown here, you know, give, give pb and j.

[00:28:11] Len: It’s due. There’s one other sandwich that has dropped in price the last three years. There’s been, there’s two sandwiches that over the past three years have dropped in price every year. PB and J was one. The Turkey is the other. There’s only one sandwich in the survey that has gone up three consecutive years.

[00:28:26] Len: That is the bologna sandwich, which is very interesting. That’s the only sandwich that’s gone up three years in a row, and two sandwiches this year hit their all time high prices ever in the survey. That was my

[00:28:38] Joe: next question, so you beat me to it.

[00:28:39] Len: Okay. And that’s roast beef and egg salad. In the 17 years of the survey, they’ve never been higher.

[00:28:44] Len: Those prices. So roast beef and egg salad are at all time highs.

[00:28:48] Joe: It’d be interesting we didn’t look at Arby’s, you know, with roast beef prices up. Oh yeah. Roast beef sandwiches.

[00:28:53] Len: They have the meats. I used to get those coupons in the mail for Arby’s and it’d be five beef and Cheddars for $5, and then somewhere on the, then it was five.

[00:29:03] Len: Just five. Was it beefs without the cheddar for $5. Now, I don’t even think you can get one Beef and cheddar for $5. Right. You know? But I remember those coupons. Five beef and cheddar for $5. Yeah. I’m old. I’m old folks,

[00:29:18] Joe: but inflation is real and it’s wild because through most of my lifetime in years lamb, we really didn’t notice it.

[00:29:23] Joe: But the last few years, man, I don’t think it’s just getting older. I think we have seen some inflation in the last few. You’ve

[00:29:27] Len: seen some big, and if you come to my site and you look at the charts, I have all kinds of charts here, and I have one, a graphical chart showing from 2009 to 2025. You can see a line chart of how the price has gone up and down and up and down over of the average sandwich price over those 17 years.

[00:29:43] Len: It’s trended up almost the whole time, but you’ll notice that starting in 2018 to 2025, it’s basically been going up at a a 45 degree angle. That price. Yeah. Except there was that spike during the COVID period there. 21 and 2022 and 2023, it spiked up. Then last year it came back down and it’s. Resuming that 45.

[00:30:05] Len: It’s almost a perfect 45 degree angle that the prices have been going up since 2018. I don’t know if we’re gonna see any more relief. In prices at this stage of the game.

[00:30:15] Joe: And I remember during the pandemic, I remember hearing Marco Rubio saying this, and it’s interesting because I think this was at the time, a bipartisan Len, Republicans, Democrats, everybody’s saying, listen, we’re either gonna have to fix the climate for businesses later, or we’re gonna have to help businesses now.

[00:30:33] Joe: And the way that we’re gonna do that is we’re going to flood the system with money. And what everybody said is, obviously there’s no such thing as a free lunch. I was very happy to see,

[00:30:44] Len: yeah,

[00:30:45] Joe: I was very happy to see people use that money in great ways. They paid off debt. You saw people get outta debt. You saw people do, wait.

[00:30:53] Joe: My belief in humanity went through the roof during that period when I saw how people actually used it versus the way I thought people would use some of that money that was spread in the system. But you’re seeing it come back, everybody at the grocery store, I mean, it’s right here in front of you. You flood the system with money and that creates inflation.

[00:31:11] Joe: That pandemic period. Pandemic ish period really shows up. Yeah. On this graph. It’s

[00:31:18] Len: really wild. Yeah. But like that and then the year before it corrected, but it didn’t correct that much and now it’s just resuming it’s upward trend. It’s fascinating actually. The longer the survey goes, the more fascinating the data becomes to me.

[00:31:29] Len: Anyways.

[00:31:30] Joe: The thing that I liked about the difference between 2024 and 2025 and aggregate, if I just look at your line graph, the line is not that hella up that we had during the pandemic. It’s up, but it’s more like the 2012, 2013 up. It’s a milder up this year.

[00:31:47] Len: Yeah.

[00:31:48] Joe: But that, that disguises the fact to me, and this is what I found interesting about this year’s study, while this looks like a calming down overall, you go to the grocery store land, it’s a show.

[00:32:00] Len: Oh yeah.

[00:32:01] Joe: It’s either way up or way down.

[00:32:03] Len: Yeah.

[00:32:03] Joe: There’s not much middle ground.

[00:32:05] Len: Like I said, when I went to the bacon section this year. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe, you know, and it’s not like I haven’t been eating bacon, but I don’t do the shopping, you know, the, the honeybee does the shopping in this house.

[00:32:15] Len: So, you know, I don’t see it. I see the final bill, but I don’t see all the individual components of that bill. And boy, what an eyeopener for me, this show that’s just crazy, crazy.

[00:32:25] Joe: One thing you note here, LEM, is that you can save a ton of money if you focus on store brand products. I know all the years you’ve done this, you found buying the store brand saves you a lot more than I think an average person thinks It does.

[00:32:37] Joe: Uh,

[00:32:37] Len: yes, it saves you a lot. And as my taste tests have shown over the years, you know, I do these blind taste tests with my family. I think I’ve tested probably 40, 50 products over the 17 years that I’ve had my blog. Many times the store brand actually tasted better, so it was cheaper and it tasted better.

[00:32:58] Len: Not every time. Sometimes the store brand was crap, but many times the store brand actually tasted just as good or better. It’s at least always try it the first time. And if you don’t like it, then you can go back to your national brand. But the discounts usually for a store brand, typically 30 to 40%. It’s incredible for most items.

[00:33:15] Joe: Thank you again, Len, for sharing this with us. Super fun. You can see all the [email protected]. Uh, we’ll have a link, but it’s really easy. Len penso.com. Just go there and for the next week it’ll be on the front page. Just scroll down and you will find the links to all this. Uh, goodness. This is so fun. One of my, uh, well, not just mine, the stackers that have been here forever.

[00:33:38] Joe: I know. Share the fact that they always look forward to this, uh, this episode and what happened this year. So thanks to Tline.

[00:33:44] Len: You’re very welcome, Joe.

[00:33:50] OG: Hey there, it’s Jackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and I was just flipping through the calendar of today’s date and history, and we got some great ones today. First, back in 2006, the Shizuoka meat producers of, uh, I gotta make me say again. Spoken just

[00:34:03] Joe: like a, yeah,

[00:34:04] OG: just like a native, and I gotta say it again.

[00:34:07] OG: Sh of Shizuka Japan. And there you go. This is now, they made it easy for me. And the Allan Bread Association collaborated to create what was at the time the biggest hotdog of all time. Listen to this guys. It was 197 feet long. Holy cow. And I know you guessed it. The bun was still too long, measuring 198 feet.

[00:34:31] OG: So even then, they couldn’t get the bun to fit the damn hot dog. You gotta be kidding me. That record, by the way, was broken in 2011 by an even longer hot dog. I mean, I, I don’t want to brag, but, and. You pick up what? I’m laying down there. Just keep up, please God. But that’s not today’s trivia question because oh, we need, it’s gotta be about money, right?

[00:34:56] OG: Not an existential conundrum. Like why is there a difference between the size of the hot dog and the bun? Or why are there more dogs in the package than there are buns in the package? Those are like life’s bigger questions. But how about this one? Back in 1916, the USA entered into a treaty to buy what group of islands for $25 million.

[00:35:18] OG: I’ll be back right after I check to see if we got mustard time to bring out the dogs and celebrate that you are about to nail this trivia question.

[00:35:35] OG: Hey there stackers. I’m the mustard only fanatic and guy who knows a Chicago dog is in affront to humanity. Tomatoes, come on. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. While my mind is on hot dogs, it should be on the USA, entering into a treaty back in 1916 to purchase a nice little set of islands from Denmark for 25 million bucks.

[00:35:58] OG: I have it on good intel that they didn’t even need to take out a home equity loan to afford that nice work. USA, it’s manager finances. What islands were they? If you said the US Virgin Islands, you’d be correct. And now back to two recent virgins who somehow found a way into the incredibly manly world of personal finance podcasting.

[00:36:20] OG: Joe and og.

[00:36:24] Joe: Oh man. I was just waiting for it. I knew we couldn’t have trivia about the Virgin Islands without Doug. Somehow I’m surprised that you didn’t do the Virgin Islands and hotdog and do something there. I dunno. But thanks to Len Pezo for joining us today. That would be low brow

[00:36:39] OG: Joe. We don’t play that low brow humor game here.

[00:36:42] Joe: Never. Og PB and j, you big pb and j fan?

[00:36:46] OG: Uh, you know, not, not as much anymore. I do like putting a scoop of peanut butter in, uh, like a protein shake or something. Mm-hmm. Adding a little bit. But you know, we got a peanut allergy kid, so it kind eliminate a lot of fun around here. One of those. Yeah.

[00:37:01] Joe: So the BLT

[00:37:02] OG: loser,

[00:37:03] Joe: the B, you remind him every day.

[00:37:07] Joe: Like if it weren’t

[00:37:07] OG: for you,

[00:37:08] Joe: we’d be

[00:37:09] OG: having a lot more fun. And this is why you’re not my favorite kid.

[00:37:13] Joe: You were so close. So the BLT uh, rebounding back upward a couple years ago. It was at five bucks a

[00:37:19] OG: sandwich.

[00:37:20] Joe: Yeah, but you know what’s salad? The BLT

[00:37:22] OG: crappy salad.

[00:37:23] Joe: Are you kidding me? What if I had the choice between A BLT or a Big Mac?

[00:37:28] Joe: I think I’m with Len. I’ll go BLT over for Big Mac any day of the week.

[00:37:32] OG: I’d go hungry.

[00:37:34] Joe: You do neither one of those. I mean roast beef and cheddar to my head,

[00:37:37] OG: I’d pick a Big Mac, but only ’cause, you know, why not? But a bacon sandwich with, with a tomato and lettuce on it. Oh, mighty

[00:37:44] Joe: tasty. Okay, let’s go through these then.

[00:37:46] Joe: So gross. Second most. Second most expensive sandwich was tuna salad. Do you like tuna salad sandwich?

[00:37:52] OG: Yeah. Yeah. I

[00:37:52] Joe: could put down a can

[00:37:53] OG: of tuna,

[00:37:54] Joe: toasted bread. I can do that. Doug’s, Doug’s going. No Little pickles. Pickles in there. Yes. Oh yeah. No

[00:37:59] OG: chicken salad. That exact same thing, but chicken salad, all about it.

[00:38:03] OG: I can do

[00:38:03] Joe: both. I’m, I’m an either or I’m equal opportunity there.

[00:38:06] OG: There’s a uh, Matthew McConaughey video not too long ago about him making tuna salad. He’s got a pretty sweet tuna salad recipe.

[00:38:12] Joe: Oh yeah. Hmm. Roast beef and cheddars next. How about that one?

[00:38:15] OG: Yeah, all day, every day. Uh, Swiss gotta be Swiss, not cheddar roast beef and Swiss.

[00:38:19] OG: Yeah, absolutely. God, I’m right. They do stuff freaking backwards. Drinking Swiss in the backwoods of Michigan, apparently. Basically all Swiss all the time on sandwiches.

[00:38:28] Joe: It doesn’t matter. And how about the cost of salami sandwich going from a dollar 35 to 72 cents? Yeah. Salami sandwich. Not, I like salami on a charcuterie board with a glass of red wine.

[00:38:40] Joe: But uh, the sandwich, I’ll

[00:38:41] OG: put salami on a sandwich on top of another piece of meat. There

[00:38:44] Joe: you go.

[00:38:45] OG: Yeah, like a Turkey sandwich with a little salami on it. Sure. Interesting. Wow. But not Swiss.

[00:38:53] Joe: Hey, let’s do a headline.

[00:38:55] headlines: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines.

[00:39:01] Joe: Our headline today was written by the Anon and comes to the rescue again, just a fantastic writer over at the Wall Street Journal and says, leakage, guys. Leakage. Not a term guys want to hear, but uh, Americans see their 4 0 1 Ks, not just as nest eggs, but as rainy day funds. There’s more leakage from the.

[00:39:26] Joe: $12.2 trillion in these retirement accounts. Ann says, last year record, 4.8% of workers and 401k plans took a hardship distribution for financial emergencies up from a pre pandemic average of about 2% according to the Vanguard Group. And nearly one third of people who leave jobs annually liquidate their 4 0 1 Ks, paying taxes and often penalties rather than keeping the money in a retirement account.

[00:39:51] Joe: I wanna pump the brakes here. Og. Part of this doesn’t surprise me because as we’ve gotten data recently from TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax, we’ve seen the amount of credit card debt after the pandemic ramped back up. So we’ve seen families go back to spending more than they make in some circumstances.

[00:40:09] Joe: So that doesn’t surprise me, but to go OG from a pre pandemic, 2% of people taking hardship withdrawals to four point. 8% of people taking hardship withdrawals. That’s a significant increase of people going, you know what? This is my new emergency fund. Yeah,

[00:40:24] OG: don’t do that.

[00:40:25] Joe: I think it’s a

[00:40:26] OG: good reflection on the fact that people have been saving in their 401k plans, maybe outta order, maybe we did this backwards and maybe should have a cash reserve.

[00:40:34] OG: Or is it that we burned through our cash reserves and now we’re on the next layer there. Yeah. You know what I suspect is, did everybody get addicted to that sweet, sweet tarp money or whatever it was called? And then when that ran out, that tarp money during the co, during COVID, people were from box seven.

[00:40:54] OG: That sweet government money, that government money, that cheese, the cheddar, that’s the only time I, I mean that’s washed through the system. Years ago, that’s gone. Well, I mean, honestly, who knows? But I mean, people got a whole bunch of money in 20 20, 20 21, and they got kind of used to that. And then once the thrill of the new car or the new house that they bought with all of that, that money that they had, maybe they’re now looking for the next cash infusion and they’re getting it from, don’t though,

[00:41:19] Joe: Doug, the data shows that people actually did good things with that money.

[00:41:22] Joe: We paid down debt. You know, debt levels actually decreased during that time. Wow. Yeah, you’re

[00:41:26] OG: right.

[00:41:27] Joe: I’ve heard that people built emergency funds, like that was exciting. And then it was almost the second, the pandemic and they bought

[00:41:32] OG: houses.

[00:41:33] Joe: Yeah. It was almost the second the pandemic ended that according to, you know, the numbers we saw from TransUnion and Experian was people going, Hey, oh, the party’s restarted again.

[00:41:43] Joe: It’s time for me to go. Spend a bunch of money that, that I don’t have, but I really like where you’re rolling here, og that okay, we’re saving money into our 401k, which is a great thing. Like what about that do we like and can we replicate that, but in an account where it actually makes sense? So I think the key here is that we’re taking money out of our paycheck before we see it.

[00:42:06] Joe: I think that’s probably the magic sauce, right? Get that direct deposit working for you and once the money is in a separate account that you think of that it’s for emergencies, AKA people thinking the 401k, you can kinda replicate that, but with a separate savings account instead and would probably be a ton better.

[00:42:24] OG: Yeah, the data suggests that. Defaults are starting to increase a little bit. In some areas, student loans are the primary default location. Makes sense. That’s the thing that hurts you the least. Auto loan defaults are the next, and then credit cards and mortgages are on the rise still low. What’s interesting though, and I haven’t really spent a lot of time on this, maybe you guys can think about this with me, but overall percentage of household debt to income is still pretty low.

[00:42:52] OG: So you can kind of think about how it’s gone through waves. You know, it was really high in 2007, 2008, 2009, cratered down as everybody kind of washed the books kind of trickled back up again a little bit before COVID cratered down again, to your point, Joe, where people said, oh, I got an extra 2,500 bucks, I should pay off my debt with this, and now it’s back to 10 11%, which is historically not bad.

[00:43:16] OG: It’s below average. So why is it, is it, do you think it’s just inflation and like wage growth, not keeping up that. Debt service is still a low percentage, but like living expenses are higher and that’s causing people to, uh, you know, to have to think about these longer term buckets. I, I, I think about it like, you know, short, medium, and long-term bucket.

[00:43:36] OG: And if I burn through all my short, medium money and I still need money, I mean it’s, you know, I gotta get it. I, I got money, I’m gonna use it. Right.

[00:43:42] Joe: Yeah.

[00:43:43] OG: So is it just inflation? Is it just wage growth? It’s not good.

[00:43:47] Joe: I don’t know. I went to a Mexican restaurant last night, downtown, two of us now, admittedly.

[00:43:52] Joe: We had, uh, a couple drinks. You did go with

[00:43:55] OG: the guac?

[00:43:55] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. We went ahead of time with the queso. The baked queso. We both had an, an entree, we had two drinks each. It was a fun little night for Cheryl and I. 1 25, a hundred bucks. Right. It wasn’t 125, but it was a hundred bucks for two of us. Yeah.

[00:44:12] OG: It’s incredible.

[00:44:13] OG: Here’s the thing, you’re not dipping into your 401k because your cost of restaurant visits have gone up. If you are, it’s, I mean, because your major month to month cash flow items on your. On your books as a person living anywhere is housing, transportation, healthcare. Yeah. Those are going up some, but all the other stuff, it’s because you’re spending money where you probably don’t really need to be spending money.

[00:44:43] OG: It’s, I think it’s easy to blame on those things that are put in front of our faces every day, like the cost of bologna going up. But that’s not what’s really causing you to dip into, in my opinion, not what’s really causing you to dip into your 401k. You’re spending money you don’t need to spend somewhere else.

[00:44:57] OG: But I think that’s why, I think that is

[00:44:58] Joe: why I think it is the restaurant. I didn’t need to go to a restaurant last night. Don’t get me wrong, we could afford it. We had a good time. But if I’m spending a hundred dollars at a restaurant and I don’t have the money in my bank account to afford that a hundred dollars night out and I’m not really tracking it.

[00:45:16] Joe: I think that is the, I think the inflationary effect for a person that doesn’t track their money is this prices go up. I don’t really notice it. I kind of notice it, but I don’t really notice it. But I keep my habits exactly the same. I’m not tracking it. And a few months later I’m like, what the hell? How come I, I think, yeah, all of a sudden I got the credit cards I’m not paying off every month.

[00:45:35] OG: Yeah. Maybe we’re, we’re agreeing with each other, but I think you’re dipping into the 401k, not because your core things in your budget are going up, but because of poor spending habits.

[00:45:44] Joe: But I think that is move number two, Doug, that you’re pointing out. Move number one, I think is automating to a place where you have the money available outside the 401k if it’s an emergency fund.

[00:45:54] Joe: And then number two is you gotta start tracking your expenses just to see how it differs from week to week. Og

[00:46:00] OG: No, I, I was just gonna agree with both of you. I think to your point, Joe, what? It’s, what’s that?

[00:46:05] Joe: You’re agreeing

[00:46:06] OG: with us. This is awesome. Yeah. No, I, I think that it’s the combination of not seeing the death by a thousand paper cuts.

[00:46:14] OG: Also just continuing to live your life when you know something is skew somewhere else, right? Either income hasn’t increased or you had a one-off expense that was higher than, you know, you had the ability to cover. And so that sat on the credit card and now you know, to your point, you’re still going out to the Mexican restaurant on Tuesdays ’cause that’s what you do and you haven’t accounted for either that one-off thing or the slow increase of, of something, whatever it is.

[00:46:41] OG: You know, whether it’s food or whether it’s auto costs or, or you have an adjustable rate mortgage and adjust. I mean, we just, my middle kid, everybody knows probably, ’cause we talked about it a lot, just turned 16 and you know, you go online and you say, okay, he doesn’t have a learner’s permit anymore. He has a driver’s license.

[00:46:59] OG: We added zero cars. We’ve not purchased another car. So we have still three cars, but now we have four drivers for three cars. Our car insurance went from an extremely obnoxious thousand dollars a month. To now an even more extremely obnoxious $1,900 a month. Wow. It fucking doubled almost by adding one more person without another car.

[00:47:21] OG: And so then when I put in like the model of like, oh, what if we bought a Toyota Camry for William? It’s like, yeah, it’ll be like another 70 bucks. So it’s not, it’s it’s not even the. It’s the fact that he’s exists. Mm-hmm. It’s not the fact that he has a car to drive, it’s the fact that he exists. Again, this is the peanut allergy kid too.

[00:47:39] OG: Right? Yeah, I know. I think he is plummeting down the charts. Strike another strike. And yes, we are shopping it. In fact, uh, I’ll, I think he shopping for

[00:47:47] Joe: a new kid.

[00:47:48] OG: No. Auto insurance. I think I’ve got a bid on this for a week or two from now about the power of shopping for it. We haven’t settled on it yet.

[00:47:55] aftershow: Yeah.

[00:47:55] OG: But anyways, all that to say that’s unavoidable, right? Like you just, I mean, I could, I could make it so my kid doesn’t have a driver’s license, I suppose, but you know what I mean? Like, it’s just life and maybe the extremeness of that is unique to me, but, but I think the ratio is the same. I think if anybody else has mm-hmm.

[00:48:11] OG: An 18-year-old, a mom and a dad and then adds a 16-year-old boy to it, you know, the effect is the same plus or minus a little bit. And so if we are not counting on that, if we’re not going like, oh, that’s another $900 a month to dump into the budget if we’re already, you know? Right. Even money. Where’s that gonna go?

[00:48:31] OG: Well, it’s gonna get added to the credit card bill, and then that rolls forward, and if we don’t go, hold on a second. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We have to take a few months off of the mm-hmm. Off the Mexican restaurant. This

[00:48:40] Joe: is where I think the family meeting comes in, because that weekly meeting where you’re looking down the road and going, oh, let’s look ahead in the future and see how, what the bumps gonna be.

[00:48:49] Joe: That $900 bump isn’t gonna be nearly as egregious as it is when you’re just blindsided. Right?

[00:48:54] OG: Yeah. I mean, I was blindsided, usually pretty good about this, but I didn’t know it was gonna be that bad. I was like, that one’s a two by four to the face for sure. Wait a second. That cannot be true. But I use, and I’ve talked about this quite a bit, I think there’s tracking, which is super important, right?

[00:49:09] OG: Get a sense of where all the bodies are buried if you don’t have Monarch or they don’t even mint anymore, but you know something that like literally just downloads stuff automatically in your bank app and you can Yeah. Sit with your bank app and do, what we do is I take a calendar like this right here, like that, and I literally write on the calendar when stuff comes out of the bank account.

[00:49:30] OG: Because I think about it like from a planning standpoint in advance, if you’re budgeting backwards, you know, that’s good. If you’re cashflow planning over the next quarter in advance and you can say, Hey, you know, I got five grand in my checking account. I get paid on this day. This is when the mortgage comes out.

[00:49:46] OG: This is the Amex bill, da da da, da, da. When you get to the end of that month and, and you see what the outcome is, and I am plus a thousand, I’m negative 900, whatever. It gives you the power to make the choice proactively. And maybe the answer is, there is no choice. I’m going 900 in the hole. I need to take this from my savings account to account for, I need to take this outta my 401k to account for like, at least you’re proactively managing that in advance as opposed to it reactively happening.

[00:50:11] OG: But the unique thing that happens with all of this is your brain already solves the problem. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality. So the fact that you’ve solved this for the next quarter and you go at the end of the quarter, I’m negative a thousand bucks, your brain goes, we’re outta money bro.

[00:50:29] OG: You will stop seeing things on Amazon, you’ll stop having the idea of going out to dinner because your brain goes, we don’t have the money. We know that in September we’re a thousand bucks in the hole. So how, you know, we can’t go out to dinner this week? Ever. Very powerful to do. So if you’re not doing some, some sort of ongoing, you know, in advance cashflow planning, I think, I think you’re missing out.

[00:50:48] OG: I like everything that he just said, Joe, but here’s what offended me. He just held up a piece of paper with handwriting all over it for his planning. And we are the old guys on this podcast. You should see I have these little cards. The

[00:51:04] Joe: tactile miracle of just writing stuff down is so, yeah, there is value to that.

[00:51:09] aftershow: Yeah,

[00:51:10] Joe: there’s, by the way, oog, it’s funny how, uh, we do things very similarly there. I also have written when the big chunks are coming outta my account on my Google calendar.

[00:51:18] OG: So

[00:51:18] Joe: each week, yeah. This

[00:51:19] OG: is a Google calendar. It’s just a printed Google calendar. It’s a

[00:51:21] Joe: printed one. Yeah. It’s all that

[00:51:24] OG: he wrote

[00:51:24] Joe: with ink.

[00:51:25] Joe: Uh, the last thing I wanna talk about here, ’cause I like the idea of automation. I like the idea of tracking. I like the idea of training your brain ahead of time and knowing where the levers are. The last piece Anne writes about, she said this 401k leakage has become so common that people often post about it on social media.

[00:51:42] Joe: A woman who said on TikTok that she cashed out her 401k savings to pay off debt reported being happy with the decision despite paying taxes and the 10% penalty people under 59 and a half years old typically owe. I love the way Anne writes because she leads us into, I think the other thing we don’t understand when we make these decisions is opportunity cost.

[00:52:01] Joe: And I wanna walk through one more time for our stackers. There was a gentleman named Tom who was in my office. I don’t remember the exact numbers. I actually have the exact numbers back in my book, but I’m gonna make them up for now ’cause I didn’t go through and reverify, but it doesn’t matter. Let’s say Tom at 25, I think it was roughly $14,000 he had guys, and by the way, at $25,000 at 25 years old, $14,000 in your 401k.

[00:52:26] Joe: Is that good?

[00:52:28] OG: Hell yeah.

[00:52:28] Joe: That. Well, we just don’t see it. We, we just never, so if you’re at 25 years old and you’ve got 14,000 there, it’s great. Well, he got let go by the small engineering firm. Now the cool thing is he got hired almost immediately by a bigger firm and he was going to have some decisions to make.

[00:52:45] Joe: So he is got this 14,000 sitting in the old 401k and the three legal things he can do, number one, he can roll it over to the new place. Number two, he can leave it alone if the company will let him just leave it there. Third thing is he could roll it to an IRA, which is generally usually the right choice, but he didn’t like any of those.

[00:53:04] Joe: Guess what he did? Took it out like this woman here, and he was happy. He took it out because he was buying, guess what? He was buying salami. Oat. Oh, close. It was a car. Yeah. So buying a car when you’ve got $14,000 in a 401k and you go to buy a car, a, that doesn’t cover the cost of a new car. B, it’s not even 14,000 bucks because you have the tax bill and then you have the 10% penalty.

[00:53:34] Joe: So you have all of this money. At the end of the day, he’s got what, maybe nine grand ish?

[00:53:41] OG: Yeah, 10 maybe. Yeah.

[00:53:42] Joe: Yeah. Maybe take the nine or 10,000 and he still has a car payment versus he could have left that money alone. This is why we weigh opportunity costs before we quote, feel good like this woman on TikTok, did Women on TikTok felt good Because it feels good.

[00:54:00] Joe: Hey, guess what? I didn’t put as much money down on the car. Let’s make you feel like crap because if you get 9% on that money, which over long periods of time, not tough to do, use this rule called the rule of 72. You take the interest rate you think you’re gonna get divided into 72, tells you how many years it takes it to double.

[00:54:18] Joe: So nine divided into 72 divided by 72 is eight years. So. His money would’ve doubled. He’s 25. His money would’ve doubled at 33, at 41, at 49, at 57 and again at 65, right? So five times by normal retirement age. Tom, who is the son of one of my clients who sent him to me goes, you just gotta go. You just gotta go see Joe about this.

[00:54:48] Joe: ’cause I don’t think this was a good idea. $14,000, that first doubling makes it 28. The second doubling makes it 56. The third doubling is 112. The fourth doubling two hundred and twenty four, four hundred and forty 8,000 bucks. He gave up almost half a million bucks. He gave up four between nine and $10,000 for a car.

[00:55:13] OG: It’s a sweet ass tourist though, bro.

[00:55:15] Joe: Now if this, if this woman on TikTok had done the opportunity cost, which she still quote, feel good about it, I feel great about it. ’cause I gave up half a million bucks so that I could take out a little today. I don’t think we weigh opportunity cost oji. If we did, we, I think we’d make different decisions.

[00:55:34] OG: Well, I mean, I’m guilty of this. I did this when I was a kid. I did dumb things with money. Some might argue I still do dumb things with money. I just have a lot of margin safety now. But the future feels so far in the future and reality is so close to today. I think a lot of this has to do with the language that we use.

[00:55:51] OG: I need to have a car versus I want to have a car. Like there’s a thousand ways to solve transportation problems. Buying a brand new car doesn’t necessarily have to be the answer, but we convince ourselves that it is. In this example that you gave. You know, I’m sure he convinced himself that well, but No, no, the new one, you know, there’s less maintenance and there’s, it’s got a warranty and you know, da, da, da, da, da, da.

[00:56:13] OG: This is better than spending half the money. They’re safer. Yeah. I, you know, actually you just used a word that sparked a thought, uh, og, which was transportation. I wonder if we rephrase some of these things and say, I need to solve a transportation issue, versus I need a new car. It might change how you solve the problem.

[00:56:32] OG: Because when you think about transportation, it’s just a utilitarian value of how do I get from home to work or something like that, versus a new car, which is something we see on TV all the time. You know, I wonder, I’ve thought about this, I, I, because of the car insurance issue and I thought about it with the pending car insurance issue, not knowing how profound the, the existing cart or the actual issue is gonna be.

[00:56:54] OG: But I, I wonder, and I don’t know that I’ve, I’d have to look and see if there’s a study that somebody’s done on this. Like, what if you just always used Uber, you or, oh boy, Uber black, you know, it’s like, oh my god, it’s a hundred dollars. Like, okay. Yeah. For every two weeks gonna the grocery store. Yeah.

[00:57:12] OG: That’s a lot of money. Do you what

[00:57:13] Joe: be fun about that versus

[00:57:14] OG: a $900 car payment, plus gas, plus maintenance, plus car insurance and, you know, I dunno.

[00:57:19] Joe: I think back to last Wednesday when Ted Denter Smith was here though, what I like about that OG is even if it’s less expensive, just going through the math as a life problem.

[00:57:29] Joe: What that does is shows you how much money you’re actually spending on the car costs versus what you think you’re spending when you’re comparing the two. And so doing that math is a, i, I think a fun way to see, you know what, I’m actually spending X amount on my car and if I add in depreciation on the vehicle, wear and tear, you know, uh, if I take my maintenance and spread it out over on a monthly basis, like what does that add to it?

[00:57:50] OG: That’s why you have to track all this stuff. ’cause you can’t eyeball. Yeah. That’s a whole, you know what I, fun language, you can’t just go, well, I think my, I think my food cost is this, right? I think my transportation cost is like, yep. If you track it, you can like literally just run a report and go, I actually spent this in 2025 on transportation.

[00:58:09] OG: I spent this on my house, I spent this on my, on Amazon. So tracking and then doing something with that tracking, I think is, is really the key to all of this.

[00:58:19] Joe: And that’s, I think, where the weekly meeting comes in. Another great piece from Manson will link to it on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins.

[00:58:27] Joe: Sadly, of course you need a Wall Street Journal subscription to uh, read Ann’s work. But I think you got the point stackers. I think, uh, number one, building that emergency fund outside of the 401k taking money from your 401k, I think that’s the leaves of the problem. I think what we’ve covered today is you gotta get to the root of it and it’s gonna be something completely different than just, uh, I want money outta the 401k.

[00:58:49] Joe: Hey, just briefly here, let’s answer a call from a stack crew who said I better call solve Cihi and og. Normally this is where a caller calls in ’cause they have a question for us. Today we actually have a stacker who’s going to help us. This is a fantastic contribution. Christine works in higher education and has some advice for families that are staring at college.

[00:59:12] Joe: Oh gee. This is for you. This is for you.

[00:59:15] OG: Staring at it. All right. Among everybody else. I literally got the bill two days ago.

[00:59:19] Joe: Here it comes. Hey Christine.

[00:59:22] caller: Hi, Joe OG and Doug. This is Christine, longtime listener, third time caller. I wanted to call in, uh, to talk about the student loan crisis. As someone who’s worked at a higher education institution for 13 years, I feel like I have a pretty good perspective on some cost saving measures.

[00:59:40] caller: At the same time, my husband went to community college and has a really successful business now, so I feel like I can speak to both sides of the coin. For students who are interested in attending college, I would say that’s great if it aligns with your career trajectory. The most important part is to try and resist pressure to do something that doesn’t align with what you actually want to do.

[01:00:02] caller: And if you do want to attend college, I’d recommend a few things. First, complete the fafsa. 20 to 30% of college students don’t actually do the FAFSA and could get aid if they actually completed it. The other thing is to look at the US News and World Report website in their cost section for the universities that you’re interested in, because you often get more financial aid than you would expect, and they provide this kind of information on that site.

[01:00:31] caller: And then you can also figure out the average amount of debt that students graduate with. For example, at the university I work at 68% of students graduate with no known debt. So it can be a better deal than you would think if it aligns with your career goal.

[01:00:47] Joe: Christine, uh, I think our minute and a half limit.

[01:00:51] Joe: I, I’d speak by bus Cut you off. Yeah. Yeah. Stopped her there and I would’ve loved to have heard more. Sure. She’s got more, so please write me and, uh, we can finish up your thought there, but, oh gee, that’s a big one that she mentioned, the fafsa. I remember my parents didn’t complete the FAFSA because my dad’s like, this is a pain.

[01:01:10] Joe: Like, this is horrible. We need to finish this. And then when I did it myself later on when I was paying for college on my own, just taking it one line at a time. Don’t look at how long it is, just look at one line at a time and get it done. And you’re so surprised by the huge amount of resources that are available just once you get that completed.

[01:01:31] OG: And the reality is, is that it’s profoundly simpler now than it was when you guys and I were in college. And it’s even easier, Joe, than when you were doing it for your kiddos. My kids, just a few years ago. I don’t think that it was, but 30 minutes, you know, if fabulous. And I know it was way longer before.

[01:01:48] OG: You’ve gotta fill that out. I I, I don’t know what else she was gonna say there, but I think the other piece that I would add to this on the front end of it is don’t discount the ability to have a good showing in high school affect your college. Also, there are a couple of universities that Alex applied to that just purely based on his GPA, they had a program of.

[01:02:11] OG: Like if your GPA is between this and this or your SAT score is between this and this, we will give you X dollars, period. There’s no application. I mean you still did do that, you know, whatever the fafsa, yeah, but it wasn’t a competition. Right? It wasn’t a scholarship. You’d write an essay four. It was just like if your GPA is between 3.7 and 3.8, we’re giving you 10 grand.

[01:02:30] OG: Miami of Ohio does the same thing. Yeah. And that wasn’t super public at the universities that he applied to. It was once we did the tour and we were interested in, and then, you know, you have the meeting. You know, as part of the tour and they tell you about this stuff. So doing well in freshman, sophomore and junior year of high school is also super important.

[01:02:48] OG: And I know a lot of people will also put an emphasis on AP classes or dual credit and that sort of thing. I’m personally a little torn on that. I think, you know, kids are kids for a period of time and then you have to be a freaking adult. Like it is, is there a rush? I’m a sophomore. Uh, you know, I already got my associates when I graduated high school.

[01:03:07] OG: It’s like, oh, good for you. You get to go to work at 20. Trust me, it’s not as great as you think. But I understand that from a cost standpoint, it would be helpful. And, and frankly, especially if you’re kind of undecided, if you’re not seriously considering knocking out a bunch of the prerequisite classes, the entry level ones, the freshman, sophomore ones at a community college, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be thinking about that.

[01:03:28] OG: So much less expensive.

[01:03:30] Joe: Thanks so much for the help, Christine. If you’ve got a question for us, that’s what the segment normally is. Head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail or email me Joe at Stacking Benjamins dot com. But we definitely prefer the voicemail. Let’s wander out on the back porch, Doug.

[01:03:43] Joe: Yeah, where we talk about our community. We’ve got a, we got a bunch of fun stuff. I got a bone.

[01:03:47] OG: I got a bone to pick with you, man. I can’t wait to get to the back porch. Every time you know this, you’re changing everything. Can’t you just let stuff just sit still for a little bit and just let it be great the way it is?

[01:03:58] OG: Why do you have to just mess with everything I heard you made changes to the tax guide. Change the HR guide. Come on,

[01:04:04] Joe: man. Every month you buy it one time. Every month we make changes to our guides. And if you tinker, just messing with it. If, if you get our guides, you go blind, stop touching it. If you, if you, if you get our guides, uh, you may have missed the email, so, which is why we’re gonna go over it here.

[01:04:26] Joe: If you don’t get our guides, you might want to know this as well. Speaking of college, Christine, our college guide is live. We’re super proud of it. Uh, Deb, who is in college here locally at, uh, Texas a and m Texarkana was helping us flip through it going, this is amazing. She loves it. But again, every month we’re gonna continue to make this guide better.

[01:04:46] Joe: But, uh, our tax guide, what do we put in there? A lot of the tax law changes that are coming, we’ve added to the guide this month. We put in the a MT changes, the senior tax deduction, the auto deduction, the salt deductions we put in there in the HR guide. We added mental health benefits. A lot of companies adding mental health benefits for workers lately.

[01:05:08] Joe: So we added a whole section on how to use your mental health benefits if you have those available, how they

[01:05:15] OG: work. So I haven’t had a chance to read those yet. Yeah. Do you say in there you’re good enough, you’re smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you, is that what the change you made in the mental health side?

[01:05:22] OG: We got a whole flow. We, we got a flow,

[01:05:25] Joe: a flow chart in there. We do have a flow chart, but the flow chart. Should have went. Are you smart enough? Yes. Darn it. Do people like you? Yes, it does. It does not. Do you give good hugs? We do have a flow chart in there of how, how to use it. Buy ’em once we update ’em every month.

[01:05:42] Joe: Stack you Benjamins dot com slash guides.

[01:05:44] OG: Joe, a second ago you mentioned salt deductions when you were talking about the tax guide. Uh, we got, uh, a great note from Allegra on Instagram who asked if we talked about the new salt changes in our tax guides. Uh, in episode, was it 1714? And she was wondering how that affects her og.

[01:06:01] Joe: Yeah, we talked about some of the lesser known things in there, but we didn’t talk about salt. Uh, state and local tax. Og, the state and local tax deduction has been expanded. There used to be a cap at 10,000. It’s been expanded to 40,000. It truly is for people making over six figure. If you’re making over six figures.

[01:06:20] Joe: And you’re in a high state tax area. I’m looking at you, California, Connecticut, and a couple others. These could significantly affect you because there’s not the big cap and it might make sense to itemize now, but definitely for more people, you’re gonna wanna start looking at itemized more carefully again.

[01:06:39] OG: Yeah. The only thing that I would add to that, Joe, that’s a really good summary, is that there is also, there’s a income cap on the salt cap, there’s a phase out, and that’s a really quick one. I think it’s five to 600. So

[01:06:52] Joe: yeah, the new labate even quicker.

[01:06:54] OG: Yeah, well if’s great. If you’re kind of mid six figures, once you get like above six fig, like mid six figures, it goes away again and no, no suit for you.

[01:07:03] OG: As they say in the, in the IRS. It will make a lot of sense this year to start your taxes early, start your tax prep early,

[01:07:12] Joe: but chance you directly Allegra if you live in a high state or local tax area. The thing that you do with this is starting this next year when you’re doing your taxes, you’re gonna wanna pay more attention to itemize again.

[01:07:26] Joe: A lot of people just went to sleep on itemizing. There’s a whole host of our listeners now who are going to want to do the math between itemizing and taking the standard deduction. But thanks a ton for that question. And uh, Doug, I think that’s does it for the back porch today, but it doesn’t do it for your contribution because this is a point of the show where Doug takes it from here.

[01:07:45] Joe: Coming up on Wednesday, we have another big mentor. We’re talking negotiation with, uh, Paula Pant on Wednesday, so stay tuned for that. But we’ve got your to-do list. Your takeaways from today, stackers. Doug, what are our top three?

[01:08:00] OG: Well, Joe first take some advice from Len Zo. There’s something I’ve never said before at the grocery all these years.

[01:08:09] OG: I know it had to be a first at the grocery store. You can save up to 40% by buying the store brand. Does anyone else know about this? Second, take some advice from stacker, Christine, if you’re applying for college, complete the fafsa. Don’t be among the 20 to 30% she mentioned who don’t even apply for aid.

[01:08:28] OG: You could receive more than you think. But the big lesson, don’t complain to Joe’s mom about hotdog buns. That woman will begin a joke about hotdog and buns that well, you straight up don’t want hear. I promise you don’t wanna hear it. Thanks to the Len Penso for joining us again today with this year’s sandwich survey.

[01:08:51] OG: Find the results in writing at lens site len penso.com. We’ll also share link. Link. We’ll share link. We give good link. We’ll also share a link to that and our Wall Street Journal headline piece, the link to our guides and more at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.

[01:09:18] OG: 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.

[01:09:40] OG: 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.

[01:10:46] aftershow: How was Park City? PC as the

[01:10:50] OG: cool kids call it?

[01:10:50] Joe: Is that what they call it? PC these days? I dunno. No, I dunno. They don’t,

[01:10:54] OG: they have, they have the, uh, I mean that’s what they have written on the mountain, you know, like just says pc.

[01:11:00] Joe: Sure. It’s spray paint, it’s rocks or something.

[01:11:02] OG: I don’t know. I think kids went up

[01:11:03] Joe: there on a Tuesday night.

[01:11:04] Joe: Got crazy.

[01:11:05] OG: Yeah. You know, it would be awesome. Come up with an abbreviation.

[01:11:09] Joe: The problem is, I can’t spell Park City. Let’s just do pc.

[01:11:12] OG: That’s where they did the Olympics in 2002. For the people that are, uh, young enough not to know that, but it’s a huge ski town. But in the summer, obviously there’s no skiing, but it’s where the, they, they do a lot of Olympic training and so there’s, uh, as you’re coming off of the highway from Salt Lake City into Park City, on the right hand side is where the mountain is.

[01:11:37] OG: And you see a bunch of Olympic stuff including, uh, where they practice. And then you can see the ski jump. I think this is where the ski jump thing actually was. It’s just there’s not snow there, so it’s kind of, it’s all green and you know, they have like, uh. Turf. Please describe more for us what the earth is like without snow.

[01:11:57] OG: No, no, no, no. I mean like, it’s like artificial turf. Yeah. Like

[01:12:00] Joe: Doug’s lawn, like Doug’s lawn.

[01:12:02] OG: What I’m saying is, I don’t know if this is the actual place where they do the ski jump or this is just where they practice the ski jump. Okay. But it makes sense that it would be the actual place. Sure, yeah. Like, you know, it’s very prominently displayed, but you can go up there and see the training facility and that sort of thing.

[01:12:17] OG: But what’s neat, I didn’t know this was the case. You know, they’re practicing and so they practice by skiing down this thing and doing flips off the ramp into a pool. Oh, wow. So, you know, these guys are wearing swim shorts and a weighted vests and a vest. Yeah. Not a weighted vest, a floaty vest. And they’re like, and just, you know, you’re like, oh, that dude’s going splash.

[01:12:41] OG: And everybody’s like, wow. And then, you know, he climbs his ass up the ladder and does it again over and over and over again. So that was kind of, that was kind of fun to see. But in that whole village area, you could do, they had zip lining, they had tubing, a little mountain coaster thing. Like a bobsled type of experience.

[01:12:58] OG: Bobsled.

[01:12:59] Joe: Yeah.

[01:12:59] OG: The tubing was probably the most intense because in the ski jump it appears, and I’m not a ski jump expert, but it appears as though they have two different variations of ski jump. They have. The scary one and then the

[01:13:12] Joe: less scary death defying one. Scary. Oh and the super, super scary one.

[01:13:16] OG: Yes.

[01:13:16] OG: There are two options. The death defying one you can’t go to, but the scary one, you can tube down. They like put your ass in a tube and they shove you off. You’re like, okay, this is an, oh my god, this straight vertical. Wow. Down you go.

[01:13:31] Joe: Remember when we had Olympian Taylor Fleming on a winter Olympian and he did the ski jump?

[01:13:35] Joe: I wonder if he’s listening today and listening to your description of Ski Jump. Just rolling. This is the way I describe it to everybody.

[01:13:42] OG: I’m telling like when you see it, you’re like, that is, I could do that. And then you get up there and you look down, you go, nah, I shouldn’t be here.

[01:13:49] Joe: So Teyl, which event are you in?

[01:13:50] Joe: I’m in the super scary one.

[01:13:52] OG: The super scary one

[01:13:53] Joe: where I go, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Splash.

[01:13:56] OG: Yes. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Splash. It does appear that uh, salt Lake City has the Olympics again. Mm-hmm. In 2032 maybe or something. ’cause they have all the signs up for it. Yeah. 20, 34, 32 something. I am absolutely.

[01:14:08] OG: In favor of the IOC picking like four different cities around the world, some limited number of cities, and just rotating between those, just having a high probability of quality snow or quality weather for that ’cause. ’cause wasn’t it a couple years ago where they had the. Winter Olympics, and it was like, well, there’s just not a lot of snow.

[01:14:30] OG: So, Ooh. That’s happened for the last several Olympics. It happened in Sochi, it happened in Beijing, it happened in, um, it happened in Vancouver. In Vancouver where they were stockpiling snow even back then. I mean, they’re notorious. You see all these great pictures of that part of the world with snow, but they’re notorious for having sketchy winters.

[01:14:46] OG: So, yeah, I mean, pick a few spots and we don’t need to get into the whole climate change thing, but maybe you do a winner in a summer in each continent, and then just rotate between those, you know, if only Doug Rain the Olympics. It’s just so simple. Well, we were actually talking about that with my boys too, because, you know, we were talking about like the economic impact of mm-hmm.

[01:15:07] OG: How, how huge it is. Mm-hmm. All the buildup to it, and then how everything goes in disarray after it. Yeah. ’cause it’s like, well, we don’t actually need 77,000 hotels. Right. We need 7,000 hotels. We don’t need. This big stadium anymore because that was

[01:15:20] Joe: fantastic. Uh, was the engineering feat of Paris, how almost all of that was taken down?

[01:15:27] Joe: 90% of that stuff.

[01:15:29] OG: Oh yeah. Okay. Did not stay up, but they built that for disassembly. Just DFD. They designed for disassembly, which is a whole engineering concept. They designed, designed it specifically,

[01:15:37] Joe: which I thought was fantastic.

[01:15:38] OG: That part’s great. That’s a recent thing, but you could go as recently as like the Rio Olympics and look at some of those soccer stadiums.

[01:15:45] OG: Sorry, football. They were growing weeds inside of a year. Yeah. After they were done using them. Um, anyways, it’s a really cool town. Weather was freaking awesome. Coming outta Dallas where it’s a hundred and something

[01:16:00] Joe: not as great as here in

[01:16:01] OG: the morning. It was 50. In the afternoon. It was in the upper eighties, so it was really cool.

[01:16:06] OG: So we did that. We went whitewater rafting. Oh wow. Cool. I to say whitewater rafting. We went rafting. Yeah. Yellow water rafting. We took the family version and about 20 minutes into the family version, we were like, yeah, we should have taken the, uh, teenage version. Oh, like this is cool and all, but um, maybe just a little more something.

[01:16:26] OG: Mm-hmm. You know, so that was neat seeing this topography of the different areas up there. And then, um, and the boys and I went not an A TV, it’s basically like a four cedar deal and you drive up the mountain and it’s guided Oh, cool. To go through. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll show you a picture of what we did there, but

[01:16:43] Joe: Wow.

[01:16:43] Joe: OG did all that cool stuff. I went to see, uh, how to Train Your Dragon, the live action movie.

[01:16:48] OG: Oh. And we watched as a family Happy Gilmore One and two. And how is two? Oh my god. Kidding. Wait a minute. Fantastic. Are you kidding me? I loved it. You loved that movie. I loved it. Happy Gilmore ii. You loved it was every bit as stupid as you would expect it to be.

[01:17:05] OG: You’re an idiot. Did watch it. I can’t believe I did watch it and it was freaking horrible. Oh, it was not. It gonna, it was so bad. It’s not gonna win any awards. That’s the point, Doug. Isn’t that the point? Weren’t there like 120 cameos? It was so fun to like find out what? Like, oh, that’s a cameo. Oh, that’s a cameo.

[01:17:20] OG: Oh, I know who that is. That’s a, this guy. There were so many of ’em and all it got to the point where we just had to realize, well, I can tell that’s not an actor. So that’s somebody famous, you know, famous golfer or somebody, but I can’t recognize who it is. I didn’t chuckle a genuine, even like, huh, until probably 40 minutes in when they were at the gold jacket dinner.

[01:17:39] OG: As he was walking into the gold jacket dinner and talking to the guy who’s supposed to be the league, you know, runs the, uh, the tour. That’s the first time that I laughed. Prior to that, I was just watching it for the cameos, such a stick in the mud. Wow. And I mean, and with Happy Gilmore one, I genuinely laughed a lot.

[01:17:56] OG: My, uh, my daughter was laughing at the variety of flasks your daughter was. You didn’t, you didn’t find that funny at all because Doug, she collects flasks. Yeah, right. That’s, I think we just got a good window into the OG house. No, dad, you could learn some things from him. Yeah. He’s just like you. You could do it in the TV room before he’s hiding that one.

[01:18:18] OG: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know the, the, yeah, you suck, Doug. You jackass.

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