What if the secret to enjoying your job isn’t grinding harder but stepping back and rethinking how work fits into life? In this episode of The Stacking Benjamins Show, Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug welcome special guest Shemin Nurmohamed to unpack the Paris Paradox: balancing work and leisure without sacrificing ambition. From cultural perspectives on downtime to the productivity perks of unplugging, Shemin shows why working less might just help you accomplish more.
But that’s not all. What happens when your financial advisor suddenly jumps ship to another firm? The team digs into what it means for your money, your relationship with your advisor, and how to evaluate whether it’s time to follow—or finally shop around. Add in Doug’s trivia, a few stumbles down random rabbit holes, and our community’s contributions, and you’ve got a lively mix of practical advice and classic basement energy.
Whether you’re plotting your next vacation or just trying to figure out how to stop your inbox from running your life, this episode offers real-world strategies (and plenty of chuckles) to help you reset, recharge, and refocus.
The “Two Beers and a Puppy” test: a surprisingly effective tool for evaluating relationships.
Why time off is not laziness but fuel for better work and sharper decision-making.
How cultural differences around leisure can reshape your own approach.
What to do when your advisor changes firms (and how to spot a keeper).
Practical ways to build stronger connections and communities.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/how-to-work-less-live-more-and-love-your-job-1739
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Monday Mentor: Shemin Nurmohamed
Big thanks to Shemin Nurmohamed for joining us today. To learn more about Shemin, visit Inclusive Leadership & Work-Life Balance. Grab yourself a copy of the book The Paris Paradox: Embracing French Ideals of Leisure to Transform American Work-Life Balance
Our Headline
- UBS loses $1.6B advisor team to LPL Financial (FinancialPlanning)
Doug’s Trivia
- Giant is one of the top five biggest sellers of bicycles worldwide. Annie [Londonderry] wouldn’t have ridden one because they were founded in 1972, in which non-giant Asian island country?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday when we’re joined by a few of our friends to help you tweak the knobs on your retirement accounts.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Stop Making Simple Investing Mistakes With an Investment Policy Statement (SB1738)
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] opener: Good morning, Christopher Robin. [00:00:02] OG: Oh, good morning, [00:00:03] Doug: Winnie The Poh. [00:00:09] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:23] Doug: I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Doug. And how would you like to work less? Enjoy life more and still love your job. Shaman Ur Mohammed has lived that life and will share with you how she created a well-rounded existence. So you can as well, and in our headline segment, what should you do if your advisor moves firms? [00:00:44] Doug: We’ll share a current case study of one firm on the move as we speak, and as if that’s not plenty of fun for you. I’ll also share some of my soon to be world famous trivia. And now, here come two guys who know that while seasons change, smart money moves never go outta stock. [00:01:05] Joe: And if you didn’t get that from the Monday show and investment policy statements, good money, it is all weather like a good tire. [00:01:12] Joe: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. Hi. You know what? I was just out west in Oregon, guys. They had, how west were you? Oh, [00:01:23] OG: is that not? [00:01:23] Joe: I was so far west. I was by Mount Hood and they had arms tired from the flight back. They had areas where you can stop and put chains on your tires. [00:01:33] Joe: Like that’s how up and down these roads were. Exciting. Huh, cool. Yeah. Wow. Neat. Thanks for sharing that. Joe. Do you want me to email you the rest of that story please? God. Was super good. We got a great show today, guys. It’s gonna be an hour of financial goodness, so sit back and relax. Oh gee, how you doing today? [00:01:54] OG: Um, just living the dream, buddy. [00:01:57] Joe: Doug, I’m satisfactory. They’re so on. Just, just gimme the Monday guys back. Can I get the money? Can you replacements? Go back in your hole and bring back the, the Monday guys who were so charming and so great. So let’s get into it. Today’s mentor is a very, very special one because we talk often about how it’s not just about having more money, it’s about having more life using this money. [00:02:23] Joe: As a tool to give you more life. And a woman who has lived that is Shaman Hamad. Not only has she been a senior executive at both Pitney Bowles and at IBM among others, she also has. A phenomenal Ted video on this very topic of creating more life. She has a new project out and I, I had to dig by the way to make sure that she could come on our show. [00:02:53] Joe: You have no idea how we were able to finally get this interview hooked up for today, but I’ll tell you who this is for. If you’re somebody that feels like you’re working too much, you feel like you’re burnout, and maybe you’re somebody that thinks that when it comes to the fire movement, the best option is just to drop out, but you also have this doubt that dropping out is really what you’re looking for. [00:03:17] Joe: Well, shemen is definitely the mentor for you because she has explored some relationships between work and money and how to make that much less toxic, a hell of a lot more fun and. To increase your ability to have a lot more fun outside of work. So how about that for today? Can’t wait for you to hear it. [00:03:41] Joe: She hamad coming down to mom’s basement, but before that we have some sponsors that keep us keeping on, keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them. And then Shemen and I are going to dive into the paradox of working less, enjoying more, and still getting more done. [00:04:12] Joe: Ed, look who’s coming down the stairs now. I’m super happy she’s here with us. Uh, she Mohammed is here. How are you? [00:04:18] Shemin: I’m great, Joe. Thank you for having me on the, in your basement here, [00:04:23] Joe: you don’t get to say that often, do you? [00:04:25] Shemin: No. [00:04:26] Joe: I’m sure. Highlight, highlight of your career. I have a stat specifically from your latest project. [00:04:32] Joe: I knew we waste a lot of vacation days. I didn’t realize how many vacation days a year we waste. This is according to Forbes, Americans waste 765 million million vacation days a year. Lemme say that again. 765 million vacation days a year we waste. What’s the real cost of that? [00:04:56] Shemin: Well, having been a president now in Europe and in the us I think it’s mental health, right? [00:05:01] Shemin: I think it’s burnout. I think it’s a much more personal cost, which then costs also the business billions of dollars in various ways. One of the experiences I had as I moved here was the team I was given was completely burnt out, and when I asked about when their next vacation was, most of them hadn’t even planned it. [00:05:24] Shemin: I actually had to go individual by individual, making sure they took some. So that we could work as a group correctly. But I do believe that the cost is not only personal, but from a business perspective is in the billions of dollars for the US alone. [00:05:39] Joe: Well, the reason I wanted to talk to you was, and you specifically is because you have lived, I’m gonna call it an experiment. [00:05:45] Joe: I don’t think it is an experiment as much as I think it’s very proven ’cause a lot of other people live this way, but you’ve been able to bridge American and French lifestyles. But this whole journey, this whole journey, and I laughed when I read this, by the way, started with your husband, surprising you with what you thought was just a trip to Paris. [00:06:05] Shemin: That’s right. We were supposed to move to Vancouver to be closer to his family. I was finishing up an assignment in London and coming back and everything’s packed. And I think we’re going on our first year honeymoon anniversary kind of thing. And on the trip he had already signed a contract. And that was actually our move into Paris. [00:06:28] Shemin: He signed a French contract, not speaking French, and in the contract it actually said that I had no right to work there. [00:06:35] Joe: Oh, no. [00:06:36] Shemin: Mm-hmm. [00:06:37] Joe: Yes. I was just thinking about in my own relationship, if I had done that with Cheryl, she would’ve strangled me on the plane. Like on the plane. I mean, she would’ve, I I wouldn’t have made it out alive. [00:06:51] Joe: You make a point in your book that your husband is a wonderful man and you have a great, great relationship, but I gotta believe at that moment you wanted to throttle him. [00:06:59] Shemin: I did. I did. The stewardesses were definitely concerned on that flight. However, it, it does turn out to be a, a great experiment. We have improved our level of communication. [00:07:11] Shemin: In fact, he’s the director of communications now, I think, with all of the lessons we’ve learned through our lives. [00:07:17] Joe: Wow. That’s cool. So you get to France, you can’t work. What do you do? [00:07:23] Shemin: I don’t take no for an answer. I start sending out resumes, knocking on doors. And all of my experience, even though I was a chemistry major, all of my experience was in finance. [00:07:34] Shemin: So of course I’m knocking on doors of banks. I, I think I sent out 300 resumes, got rejected by all 300, laughed at, you know, and then I was told, but you’ve never studied finance. There’s no way you can work in finance in France. So when that didn’t work, and because they said I also needed a work permit, I tried going and getting a work permit. [00:07:55] Shemin: But of course, what do you need for a work permit? You need a job. So it was a bit of a catch 22. Um, it’s a complete catch [00:08:01] Joe: 22. Um, [00:08:02] Shemin: it was, yes. And what wound up happening is through a confluence of unexpected events. I wound up meeting the principal of a school and she just lost her chemistry teacher to the ban. [00:08:17] Shemin: And when she asked me if I could teach chemistry in French and English, and I said yes, even though I hadn’t. You know, looked at a chemistry books in college. The interview was teaching a class the following day, which I did, and that’s how I got my permit. [00:08:31] Joe: What were your first impressions of, uh, French culture? [00:08:35] Shemin: Well, when you get to France, and we went there in August. August is a very interesting month in France. First of all, half the stores are closed. They have this huge sign on the door saying Conge, or basically their annual leave. And I’m thinking, how can a country like this work? Right? Where half the people are gone. [00:08:56] Shemin: Our furniture wasn’t coming. Uh, you can buy furniture and get it moved on time. So I just thought, what kind of backward culture have I come into? But you did feel a lot more laid back. People were enjoying time with each other. You felt maybe a slowness, like people took the time to smell the roses, or in this particular case, the pound cholas and ants from the bakeries. [00:09:22] Shemin: The second one, and I know when I meet people, often they’ll say, I went to France and the French are rude. That’s actually not true. I think if you go to France expecting everyone to treat you like you are in the us, then yes they are rude. But if you make a small, even like just a tiny attempt of a sentence, you know, something that shows that you’ve made an effort. [00:09:46] Shemin: They are the nicest individuals around, [00:09:49] Joe: I’d never found them to be rude either, except in the highly tourist areas. And my, my takeaway is if I went to Times Square and people were rude, I would just shake it off and go, it’s Manhattan, you know, it’s, it is Times Square. I go to Paris. I think maybe Americans take it the wrong way because they’re rude to us in a different language. [00:10:11] Joe: I don’t, I don’t know. Yeah. [00:10:13] Shemin: I, no, but I think if anyone just tries to, you know, take a lesson or two on Duolingo and use it, they’re the nicest people. They’ll actually walk you to where you’re trying to get to, even in the Shali. So I just think it’s that small effort that they’re hoping people are gonna make. [00:10:30] Joe: Well, speaking of effort, you’re looking at this perceived lack of effort as an American. You see these people and they seem to be not working nearly as hard as the Americans, and yet mm-hmm. You, because of your business experience, you’re looking at the productivity numbers and productivity numbers are are really not much different. [00:10:50] Shemin: That’s right. In fact, the reason that I started looking at the subject was because when I look at this paradox that I see, and I would say it’s the second one. The first one is why? People aren’t obese in France given their diet. But the second paradox is I did expect people to enjoy life. I did expect them to have the vacations. [00:11:13] Shemin: What I didn’t expect that systematically they’d been the top 10 productive countries in the world. And so that was a very complex problem for me to solve. And as I sat down and started noting the small things, the small tweaks they did day to day, which really helped in long-term productivity, I was shocked. [00:11:36] Shemin: One of the examples that you know, I’ve shared Joe, is around the first time I was pulled into a lunch at IBMI [00:11:44] Joe: was just about to ask you about this, because I think this encompasses so many of the lessons you learned all in one lunch. [00:11:49] Shemin: Exactly. I mean, first of all, I will tell you that not going across the street, getting a sandwich and coming back was already stressful enough. [00:11:58] Shemin: But when I was pulled down and just the time in line took me the same amount of time, I would’ve finished my sandwich. My palms actually started to sweat. Well, [00:12:07] Joe: and this is, can I stop you for just a second, because it does seem strange hearing it, that as Americans were so used to, and this is even for a Canadian listeners, I don’t think it’s much different there either. [00:12:18] Joe: You’re sweating because you feel like you’re wasting time. That’s right. You think about what is less stressful than having a nice leisurely lunch, and yet you can’t enjoy the leisurely lunch because you’re thinking, I got so much crap to do that I, that’s right. I gotta get, I gotta get back. [00:12:34] Shemin: That’s exactly right. [00:12:35] Shemin: Even deciding on a main entree and a Maine and a dessert, I was like, how are we gonna finish this? Like less than a half an hour as I sat down and there were almost like benches, so you’re blocked in. You can’t really move unless you’re taking everyone out. I just decided to kind of give in and I thought, okay, we’ll just talk about work so at least it will be productive. [00:12:58] Shemin: Right? This whole notion of productivity was there and people just didn’t wanna talk about work. They wanted to connect in some way. Right? So I kept getting questions around, did I own pets? What age were my kids? Where, where did I take my last vacation? Can someone help me with this allocation methodology that I have to go solve? [00:13:20] Shemin: What I noticed later is they were just trying to find a connection point, and for me that became the anchor conversation with that individual. So for example, I had a golden retriever and so did, uh, someone else. And so. Pets became kind of our anchor conversation. And if we found something or realized something really cool, we would share that with each other when we met. [00:13:42] Shemin: So in each particular instance, they’re trying to find that connection point, but then what’s happened quite by accident, there’s almost like a 70 30 rule, you know, 70% of the conversation’s really around a personal subject. And then 30% is around work. So as I started talking about a problem, someone said, Hey, you just have to talk to Pierre right there. [00:14:04] Shemin: And, and they called him and I was like, waiting. They said, no, no, no. Later. Okay. After he finishes, well, uh, you know, we’ll talk about it. And what was really shocking is because the table was cross-functional, right? A lot of people from different departments, they weren’t all from finance the way I was. You really got a broader sense and a deeper knowledge of the company as well. [00:14:29] Shemin: And not only that, you understood the why of different things, uh, so that you actually just became much more productive and you knew who to go to. So rather than having a meeting or 10 in some cases, or 20, to really get to that person who actually has the knowledge, we got it done in one seating. So it saved a lot of time in the long run. [00:14:51] Joe: Did you write that you had two more weeks to go to come up with this answer and you had no idea how the heck you were gonna do it in two weeks and yet in a 90 minute lunch, really what sounds like a five minute conversation after a 90 minute lunch, you’d solved it? [00:15:07] Shemin: In fact, not only I, I had even longer to be able to solve it. [00:15:11] Shemin: My predecessor couldn’t solve it in four months. They couldn’t get to the bottom of it in four months. And yet, you know, within a couple of minutes it was solved. I didn’t have an idea I was gonna spend a lot of time on it. I had sectioned, you know, probably close to 10 hours of meetings around this subject in every possible iteration in order for me to be able to get to the right answer. [00:15:36] Shemin: But I didn’t need any of that. I just needed someone who understood the problem and actually took the time to understand the question I was trying to answer and why? [00:15:45] Joe: And it’s funny you write that we experience so much loneliness. We feel isolated. And in our work, clearly if I grab the sandwich in 20 minutes, I’m isolated. [00:15:54] Joe: If I have a conversation that’s not about work, which you were, you freak out, you’re like, we should be talking about work ’cause I’ve got so much work to do. And yet it was the personal connection with a person you’d never met who was able to introduce you to another person that you would’ve never met had you not met this person that did it. [00:16:11] Joe: It’s funny, I had a, I had a mentor recently who said to me, this is maybe seven or eight years ago, and I wish I’d learned this before I was in my fifties. They said, ask who not how. Don’t ask how to do something. Ask who is the person, because then they will know your learning style, don’t know a little bit more about you. [00:16:29] Joe: They’ll know about the the problem more and they can kind of cut to the chase. And yet I think about the work life that we have in America. It’s very difficult to have those who’s, because we’re so focused on the problem and we’re not focused on my new friends Golden Retriever. [00:16:46] opener: Mm-hmm. [00:16:47] Joe: As an example. [00:16:49] Joe: There’s so many different things to unpack. I wanna start with the first one in, in this 90 minute lunch you talk about, one of the first paradoxes is, is that time away is really important. And we started this discussion by talking about just a huge amount of time off that we waste in this country. We get it and we still don’t take it that time away. [00:17:10] Joe: How long should we aim for to try to take as a vacation, if at all possible, to actually begin recharging? Is it a couple days? Is it the 90 minute lunch? [00:17:22] Shemin: I think each mini time off is good, but the French have a rule. Actually, sometime between May and September you have to take three consecutive weeks. [00:17:34] Shemin: That was a huge surprise to me, and in fact, I wasn’t doing that for the first few years of my French working career. There are various historical reasons as to why that’s true. But after you’ve taken your first three week vacation, it’s very hard to go back because what you notice is the first week, it actually almost takes you a week to unwind completely, to get to a complete relaxed state where your parasympathetic nervous system is the dominant one, and that’s where all of the repair and the healing of your body occurs. [00:18:08] Shemin: The second week is bliss. There is no other word for it. It is simply bliss. It’s where you aren’t thinking about what’s coming up because you have enough time. You aren’t thinking about what you just left because you’ve just unwound and it is spectacular. And I think that is where the true magic happened. [00:18:27] Shemin: And then the third week, you’re kind of preparing mentally to come back. What I noticed around that is. When you’ve had those three weeks, it is incredible, the breakthrough thinking, the innovative thinking that occurs because your two hemispheres of your brain start to connect in a different way. It creates those unexpected and the quantum leaps in terms of new thought versus incrementalism. [00:18:55] Shemin: So I think the three weeks is ideal once a year. I know that people, when I told them that here, they looked at me like, I, I don’t even get three weeks. What are you talking about? So like the way I [00:19:06] Joe: just looked at you when you said that. Yes, [00:19:07] Shemin: exactly, exactly. But most people do get at least two. You can sometimes buy a third week. [00:19:14] Shemin: So for example, at Pit Vose, the company where I work, you can actually go and buy a week. And I think it’s worth it to be honest. But as long as you take it, I would take at least two thirds of it consecutively. Whatever vacation you have. And try to manage it that way and, you know, revolve your family vacations around that because it becomes such a great bonding event. [00:19:37] Shemin: It also creates the memories and the happiness and, and just the community that you need both a familial community, but also to your, your extended community as well. It’s just you interact differently. So again, taking the case of when I first came into the teams here in the US what I noticed is people got triggered very easily. [00:20:00] Shemin: You know, you’d make a comment and people would take it very personally. And I think when you were exhausted, it’s very hard to think clearly. It’s triggered easily because you’re just tired. So once I had everyone well rested, the type of team that we created together was a powerhouse. One, because you could engage in really active debate without taking it personally. [00:20:28] Shemin: Understanding the context and the why of why we’re trying to do this, and it was so much more collaborative because people came from a place that was much more centered and secure and happy. To be honest, [00:20:43] Joe: I’m thinking about our stackers who are out walking the dog, listening to you and me, and they’re going, oh, this sounds great, but there’s no way my boss would let me take two weeks in a row. [00:20:53] Joe: My role is way too important to take two weeks in a row. So I think there’s some, there’s some shifting that may have to happen. How do we set the stage with our boss that this is going to be in my boss’s favor as well as in all of our favor, to have me take two weeks in a row. [00:21:11] Shemin: One of the things that’s really important, so I’ve given a couple of pointers of how a leader can do it, but one of the things that’s important, if you are the one who wants to take it. [00:21:20] Shemin: Is, you can’t put the onus on your boss, right, in terms of doing the work for you. So I think the first thing you have to do is make sure that your team or your peers know enough to be able to handle a particular workload while you’re away, because there has to be some kind of a backup, right? It’s bad for the company if there isn’t. [00:21:44] Shemin: In fact, with certain banks in the uk, they force people to go away for the three weeks because they wanna test whether all of the systems work. I think it’s actually a month, because otherwise there is an issue around the continuity of the business in the guise of business continuity. It’s a really good framework to give the boss. [00:22:05] Shemin: The second is they get to know the next generation of leaders and get to know their capacity, especially if you wanna move up. This is another question that comes up. In fact, one of the people who worked for me, they were surprised at how quickly I was moving up. And the reason was is because I always had a great series of deputies who could take over my role. [00:22:27] Shemin: So my boss never had to worry about what do I do without her here. Instead, they’d say, oh wow, she’s trained someone else here. I can move her here. Right? So they didn’t have to do the work. And part of it is because when I was on vacation, this person could take decisions. Now, I also had a very clear understanding with the individual to say, I’m not going to look at email while I’m on vacation. [00:22:50] Shemin: That has been a standard practice with me and my team. First, they were very shocked around it because who doesn’t wanna wake up and look at their phone? I don’t, by the way. But what I said was, of course, emergencies can occur. I will look at my SMSs and I will have my phone, but tell me exactly the time and the day of when the email came through. [00:23:13] Shemin: ’cause I will only go to that particular one to solve that particular piece. Now, what’s interesting is teams will never wanna contact you because that means they can’t solve it for themselves, which means that they aren’t ready for the next step. So in my five years now working here in the us. I’ve only had that call a handful of times. [00:23:33] Shemin: It’s incredible. If you also show that respect to people, they’ll do the same. And then one of my key tricks is to pair people up. For example, I have a CTO and A CPO. Uh, effectively they can never go on vacation at the same time. One of them’s the backup of the other. So I said, whoever wants to go on vacation, it’s fine. [00:23:56] Shemin: You can take all of your vacation, you can take a little bit more if you want. But the thing is, you can never be out at the same time. So it’s first come, first serve. So by end of January, everyone’s vacation’s planned for the year and they get better ticket prices, they, because they’ve planned for it right in advance. [00:24:13] Shemin: But it works. It also builds. Great teamwork between the two teams that often have the most conflict because their leaders are representing each other with the teams, and so there’s a natural amount of trust and confidence that gets built. [00:24:29] Joe: I love that this ability of people being able to step into, into other roles, being able to, to ask people to step up as a leader, to help out kind of to play, test them for a little bit, give them a little bit more responsibility for a short amount of time. [00:24:43] Joe: I also like something that you mentioned in, in the book, and you kind of mentioned it here too, which was this idea of a work buddy that I’ll cover your vacation if you cover mine. And I think if you’re not the leader to suggest that to your boss, that A, we can help each other by learning each other’s roles and we can also cover for each other. [00:25:02] Joe: I think that’s fantastic, but I also love your point that there’s gotta be some strategy. You can’t just leave for three weeks and go away and not have the team set up ready to succeed. [00:25:13] Shemin: That’s right. And it’s your responsibility to set that up. It’s not someone else’s. The other thing that I found really interesting, Joe, is in the US the biggest pushback I get is from small businesses. [00:25:25] Shemin: They say, well, I’m running a small business. There’s no way I could go on vacation. I can’t afford it. I would lose, I can’t afford it. I’m gonna lose money. So I actually thought a lot about this and I often do my thinking with, uh, French bakeries because I find that chocolate tends to, you know, the magnesium or something in chocolate just, uh, does wonders for me. [00:25:46] Shemin: And my favorite one I, one is I think it’s [00:25:48] Joe: just that I’m sorry. For me, it’s just that smell when I walk in. [00:25:51] Shemin: Oh yeah, you [00:25:51] Joe: just have me at the smell. But anyway, [00:25:53] Shemin: that’s it. So my favorite one is Raphael’s, which is around the corner from me. There are French bakery. The thing that struck me as odd was when I went there, and August is kind of one of the most beautiful times around here. [00:26:06] Shemin: We have a lot of tourists. It’s very, very busy. And I went for my, you know, my regular Saturday morning found chola. And, uh, I saw a big notice that reminded me of Paris. Like, you know, we’re on our annual leave for, you know, three weeks. And I said, how is that possible here? So when they came back, I was talking to them and I said, well, I don’t understand. [00:26:30] Shemin: How could you leave? Right? Or why don’t you replace someone or train someone to take care of it? And they said, well, we don’t wanna compromise on the quality. We like, you know, our customer service, we wanna make sure one of the family members are here. And, uh, we notice that if you take the average of the three months, you know, uh, before and after, and that month where you had the, the vacation, it kind of averages up. [00:26:54] Shemin: Yeah, we might make a little more, but that little more is not worth our health. [00:26:58] Joe: That’s wild. And if you’re making a quality product, like apparently they are because mm-hmm. You swear by them, you’re gonna buy more when they are open, when they are in town. And so they end up making it back. Do you think it it has to do, I’m not gonna get the maximum. [00:27:11] Joe: Right. But it, but it strikes me there’s this maximum, my learned along time ago that the work expands just to fill the allotted time. And so if we shrink that time box, we’ll become more efficient in the time box. And also, to your point, because of the fact that we’re not so tired, we’re much more able to click through the things in a more efficient manner because we feel rested and ready to go. [00:27:34] Shemin: Yeah. I think the maxim is correct and in fact, one of the great pieces of advice I, I had from a female mentor. Who was amazing, her name was, she said, you have to stop saying yes to everything. If you say yes to everything, no one’s gonna value your time. You have to start saying no to things in order for people to value your time. [00:27:56] Shemin: So anything you can delegate, you should, but only the things where you can personally make a difference. Those are the meetings you should be in. And another story that I tell people is the time I was with IBM and I was on one of these next gen leadership meetings for young talent. I went to breakfast and there was a lot of young talent in one area. [00:28:19] Shemin: And I wound up sitting next to this, you know, this little old man who seemed lonely, you know, I asked him his name, he said, my name’s Lou, what’s yours? And I, I said, how long have you worked here? And he said, about 10 years. And I said, oh, that’s surprising. Most people, you know, I was thinking most people your age have worked here 30, 40 years. [00:28:38] Shemin: And I said, so what was the most difficult part of starting with IBM? He said, you know, I was in back to back meetings all the time. And so I said, yeah, I mean that’s the nature of the job. He said, yeah, you know, I told my assistant that she has to put like two hour slots just for me to think and to be able to, you know, decide what I wanted to work on, like empty slots and then I could start functioning correctly. [00:29:04] Shemin: And I’m looking at him saying, there, I could never do that. My stuff is too important, you know, I have no idea what little thing job this guy does. And then I went to the meeting room because the CEO was going to do the first presentation and he turns around, and of course it’s him, the guy next to me and he says, you know, I was having a lovely chat, which, and everyone thought I had staged this. [00:29:30] Shemin: Meanwhile, I was trying to be nice to the, trying to be lonely. The old guy. Yes, exactly. Luke Ner. I [00:29:35] Joe: spent some time with Lou. I never met him, but he was at American Express when I first started my career at American Express. So it was, it was funny to hear Lou’s name in the, the old guy at IBM. [00:29:46] Shemin: Yeah, and he’s a wonderful guy. [00:29:48] Shemin: I mean, he, and you know, having heard him say that, and I, I read this other book called 18 Minutes, which is a great book. Between the two of those, I really started to be very maniacal around my calendar and make sure I had time one to meet people, make sure I understood what was being worked on, understood the culture, anything happening around it, and just having time to think about, uh, specific things. [00:30:15] Shemin: I think that’s what helped us move forward and create new products in a different way. [00:30:20] Joe: Speaking of your calendar, I love just to go back for our stackers, planning your days off and your weeks off in January. There’s also the financial benefit you mentioned that we’ll get the cheaper prices on stuff, which is a finance nerd we all love here. [00:30:33] Joe: Having the vacation buddy and covering for each other. Let’s talk about just the weekends because you spend some time talking about, you know, in the US a weekend really isn’t days off for a lot of us. We, we spend our weekends planning for the week to come. How do we reclaim our weekend? [00:30:53] Shemin: Yeah, so I had the same issue when I first came. [00:30:57] Shemin: You spend so much time around work and then your weekends just becomes catch up, laundry, all of these things. I don’t know if people have read Tony Robbins or others like him. They really talk about leverage, right? Leveraging your time and making sure that you’re spending it really around things you should be spending it on versus others. [00:31:17] Shemin: Anywhere you can use leverage, I would use it. So right now in our digital world, it’s really, really great. For example, if I go to the grocery store and I’m just wandering, I’m probably doing it at the worst time. Because I’m a working mom, I’m probably doing it spending a lot more time than I have to, and I’m probably buying things that I shouldn’t be because I haven’t really planned for those meals. [00:31:42] Shemin: And then I wind up getting waste. So what I started doing is creating lists, and I would just go and buy them online and have them picked up directly into my trunk, and that was it. So I would do that on a Thursday or Friday evening, and that job was done. Then anything that I started working on in the weekend, I would either split them between friends. [00:32:07] Shemin: So if for example. I’m gonna go back to my younger days when my kids were younger. But if we had kids going to the same game, we would actually alternate games. Oh, fabulous. So one weekend would be off, one weekend would be on. And the kids actually built a lot more friends that way because they were always in these two groups. [00:32:25] Shemin: Parents became friends because we were relied on each other. I had a great friend named Hillary. Our kids would often be in the same kind of activities, and we would, we would share the workload. So it’s just finding those moments and really being thoughtful around and asking. Right. Because a lot of times I find here in the US people don’t wanna ask for help. [00:32:47] Shemin: I’ll give you an example. People had no problem asking me for help. Like I had one person who I’d met at my son’s school for one day, within a week. She was asking me to take care of her son for a weekend. I was so shocked at the ask. I couldn’t say no, and she wound up getting a free weekend. But I also knew that at some point in time, if I needed the favor reversed, you know, I would have it. [00:33:12] Shemin: But there is this give and take around that, and I think if you’re willing to take some responsibility, you’ll find that others will do the same and it will just give you a little bit more of a me time back that I think is important. [00:33:26] Joe: You mentioned people asking, and earlier we talked about this idea of connection and how lonely we feel We we’re in the most connected universe ever. [00:33:35] Joe: My device sitting right next to me, wherever I am, you and I can be a different cities having a conversation. We diff different countries having conversations and yet we feel so isolated. You have a whole chapter where you talk about connection, and what struck me was not just the fact that you were able to, in your story earlier, solve a problem that was a huge problem through this miracle of connection, but also. [00:34:01] Joe: You were able to feel more connected and, and have these people that I can now share, you know, carpool with kid events or people help you with different things. There was one sentence that you wrote that I found very striking that I’d like you to, if you could explain for a minute, you said that connection is often closer and easier than we think it is. [00:34:25] Joe: We think it’s gonna be very difficult, and yet you write it isn’t nearly as difficult as we make it. How do we, how do we simplify this? [00:34:33] Shemin: Well, I’ll, I’ll give you a simple example, and again, I’m gonna use a US example because this is primarily the audience here. Sure. So when I moved into my house here, the previous tenants had told me one of my neighbors was really not kind. [00:34:49] Shemin: I don’t take people’s word for it. I always wanna experience things myself. And I had seen my neighbor, uh, his name’s Andrew. He’s a little gruff and maybe at first blush, uh, might have a talking style that’s slightly different. So I went and asked him about my mailbox because I was planning to move it closer to his side and we share a little patch and I said, would he mind if I did? [00:35:13] Shemin: And he said, no, this is the line. So as long as it’s on your line, it’s fine. But that’s how the first conversation started. And you know, I started building from that. I will tell you, I now, every time I go to Europe, I’m bringing back Cadbury chocolate. ’cause I know his wife is English and she really misses that. [00:35:32] Shemin: So, you know, there’s connection being built. I also noticed that my neighbors had never actually met each other. So I hosted like a breakfast. I mean, they’ve met each other, but they don’t really know each other because I said, oh, you should talk to Andrew about it. You know, he’s a contractor and, and they’re like, really? [00:35:48] Shemin: Like, is he good? Is he, you know, so I had everyone come to the house and it was supposed to be a small get together for, you know, an hour. We wound up spending five hours together. Wow. It was wonderful. I brought Raphael’s pastries, I did no work around it. Just coffee, tea and some pastries and five hours flew by. [00:36:08] Shemin: And we are so much more connected as a community together. And I find that. Beautiful. And I will tell you when my, um, basement flooded, I gave my first call to Andrew. He came, he fixed stuff. He told me who to call. He put everything together for me. He got me cheaper material so that I could do things I, I wanted to do there. [00:36:31] Shemin: He told me how to work with insurance ’cause I’d never had an issue like this here. I will tell you above and beyond, and had I not just talked about that mailbox, that that conversation would never have happened. I think it’s often taking the first step, which is the hardest, but once you get over that fear, because everyone wants to be connected, it’s a natural human response to want to feel connected. [00:36:55] Shemin: So the more you do it and do things consistently, it’ll be easier. So, you know, another great example, you know, I talked to a lot of people around museums in Paris, right? And what I did with my kids at the Luv Hook, my kids are, I think, wired to try and find inexpensive ways to, to have fun here in the us. [00:37:16] Shemin: One of the things, because my son goes through every contract, he noticed that one of the benefits at Bank of America, no matter what card you have, you don’t have to have a gold or platinum. Just the basic card, uh, debit card will actually get you into many museums for the first weekend of every month for free. [00:37:36] Shemin: So we go to the museums and we’ll often go to the same museums and you’ll see the same people and you’ll start striking a conversation and suddenly you’ll find these connections that you never knew you had. And friendships are built that way. They were always built that way. We just have to find moments that allow for the connection. [00:37:54] Shemin: And you can’t do it from behind a screen. [00:37:57] Joe: And I love how you make a reference to, while we’re busy in cubicle land, trying to work, work, work, work, work, and not connect, you’re actually gonna be more interesting. To customers, to other people on your team, to collaborators if you actually take some time to get to know them. [00:38:18] Joe: You talked earlier about golden retrievers if you’re in sales. I mean, there’s two salespeople, one that knows the product, A to Z, and the other person knows the product, but also knows people and has spent time trying to connect with the people, and people buy from people. And you even make a reference to a guy named Remy who is going into retirement, and he spent so much time. [00:38:40] Joe: Connecting that he’s super happy. We talk about that a lot here on the show about these connections really help you go from one job to another job to another spot. In fact, you told us just before we hit record, you’re in transition right now, but I gotta believe you have a fair share of connections too that, that, that may help you during transition. [00:39:01] Shemin: That’s right, and the connections can come from anywhere. You know, there’s some principles that I’ve always grown up with and I teach my kids, which is, it doesn’t matter what walk of life someone’s in, you treat the CEO the same way you treat the cleaning. You just have to be kind and considerate and do the basics and everything else will kind of work out themselves. [00:39:24] Shemin: You’d be surprised at how some of these connections occur. I would never have met Forbes had it not been for a connection, and it was. You know, a neighbor connection, right? It was so unusual to have met through the leeway, but she’s a landscape developer and she happened to be developing somewhere and. [00:39:44] Shemin: It is these type of connections, which again, you can’t assume, you can’t be transactional. You cannot go into a conversation saying, this is the outcome I want. You have to go into the conversation really wanting to understand, wanting to see the other person, wanting to understand the other person, and you’d be surprised at how infrequently that happens. [00:40:06] Shemin: I find that many connections here tend to be transactional. You know, I’ll do this, what do you do for me? And the more you can be the antithesis of that and the more French like you can be in that. I will tell you that the first contacts after this transition, uh, were from France because they kept a lookout. [00:40:26] Shemin: They were watching, they were hoping, right, like that I would, I would come back. So it’s, um, this relationships will be long term. I find that often in American companies, it’s unfortunate, but. You spend so much time in a company and when, when, and if you decide to leave it or taken out, it’s, you don’t wanna lose those friendships that you’ve built eight to 10 hours a day for years and years and years. [00:40:54] Shemin: But if your conversation is only about work and only superficial, you’ll never be able to get to that other level. And I think that’s what creates more of a sadness if you leave. So I had, you know, speaking of great salespeople, there was a great salesperson who, who retired, still is like, you know, gungho for life. [00:41:14] Shemin: I’m, when I go into the city, I’ll be going to visit him. It’s, it doesn’t matter whether he’s in the same company or not. You know, that relation was created as a parallel, not just in context. [00:41:26] Joe: He’s just a super connector. [00:41:28] Shemin: He is. [00:41:29] Joe: Yeah. That’s so Well I think we all are. Well, and I, and I love your point about treating the maintenance guy like the CEO. [00:41:36] Joe: Heck. You thought that the CEO was the maintenance guy. I think Lou Gerner. Yeah. [00:41:41] Shemin: I’m not necessarily the man. His shoes were too good for that. But yeah, [00:41:45] Joe: the cute old guy. I love the fact that you have explored this in depth so much. I think this is so helpful. I think so many of us feel burnout, stressed out. [00:41:56] Joe: And you know what, now that we’re getting close, we’re, we’re coming into the fourth quarter and you’ve got all the year end things plus the holidays. I feel like this is coming up the time that we feel more burnout than any other time of the year. Chauvin’s book on this topic is called the French Paradox, embracing French Ideals of Leisure to Transform American work life balance. [00:42:17] Joe: And it’s available yesterday, everywhere, right? [00:42:20] Shemin: Paris Paradox. And yes, it’s available everywhere. [00:42:23] Joe: Oh, that’s funny. I said the French paradox, didn’t I? [00:42:26] Shemin: Yeah. I think because we had talked about it and I had actually based the book based on business, but based on a great book that was written before called Why French Women Never Get Fat? [00:42:36] Shemin: Yes. Or something like that. Initially, the title was supposed to be Why the French Always Have Time for Lunch. But, uh, based upon, uh, Forbes recommendation, uh, we went with the Paris Paradox, which I love. [00:42:49] Joe: Well, it has nice alliteration, right? The Paris Paradox. And you know what? I’ll go back to Paris anytime. [00:42:54] Joe: That’s my favorite city. [00:42:56] Shemin: I would never miss an opportunity to go to Paris. I recommended wholeheartedly. [00:43:01] Joe: Thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today. I appreciate this so much. [00:43:05] Shemin: Thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate it too. [00:43:13] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s. Bob’s neighbor, Doug, and today marks the anniversary of the first bicycle trip around the world by a woman. That’s right, Annie London Dairy. That’s got a nice ring to it. Annie London Dairy, arrived back in Boston and collected a $10,000 prize, which was a nice start on a Roth IRA. [00:43:32] Doug: You know, if, if there’d been such a thing at the time, if you’re thinking Annie had a cool last name. Well, I was thinking that actually, well, Annie’s birth name wasn’t actually London Dairy. Her real name of Annie Cohen Kovski. Yeah. That, that, that doesn’t really roll off to say does it not good for marketing and so she was happy to change it when New Hampshire’s London Dairy Lithium Spring Water Company paid her, which also is a really long last name, paid her a hundred dollars to carry their advertisement on her bike and go by the name Annie London Dairy. [00:44:06] Doug: Oh, I see what they did. They shortened it. Okay. Most impressive about Annie’s journey around the world. She’d never ridden a bike until a few days before her journey. Wow. Wow. Hey, we’d like to pay you to swim across Lake Michigan. I don’t know how to swim. You’ll figure it out. It’s [00:44:26] OG: gonna be amazing. [00:44:29] Doug: Here’s today’s question. [00:44:30] Doug: To celebrate Annie’s trip and learning how to ride a bike, let’s ask about bikes. Giant is one of the top five biggest sellers of bicycles worldwide. Annie wouldn’t have ridden one because they were founded in 1972, in which non giant Asian island country. I’ll be back right after I ride my bike around the block. [00:44:54] Doug: You thought I was gonna say the world, didn’t you? No. [00:45:10] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m bicycle lover and guy who loves it. Sounds so awkward when I say bicycle instead of bike. I’m bicycle lover and guy who loves the warring noise of baseball cards in the spokes. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug Annie London Dairy, rode around the world on a bicycle back in 1895, finishing the trek in just over 15 months. [00:45:33] Doug: But we won’t take 15 months to get you. Today’s answer to this question, giant is one of the top five bike manufacturers on earth. What bicycle crazed non-GI Asian island country is home to giant? It’s Taiwan. And now two guys who are bicycling this podcast toward the second half. Here’s Joe and og. Oh gee, [00:46:00] Joe: you’ve been a [00:46:00] OG: madman on the bicycle lately. [00:46:02] OG: Uh, it ebbs and flows. I find that from a cardio standpoint it is so easy to bang out an hour, hour and a half on a bike versus a treadmill or going for a walk or something like that. It’s like, uh, [00:46:16] Doug: so [00:46:17] OG: and just so [00:46:17] Doug: lemme get this right. Yeah. Putting on the special shoes that have the clips and your awkwardly tight outfit and the helmet. [00:46:25] Doug: So sn and getting the water bottle ready. All of that and the goo packets. And the little pouches in your back. Yeah. All of that’s easier than just walking out the door. Yeah. And walking at a 14 minute pace. [00:46:36] OG: Oof. Yeah, [00:46:38] Doug: that’s what I do. Sweet. [00:46:40] OG: I mean, I’m not a marathon walker like you bro. I just like to pedal. [00:46:44] Joe: It’s [00:46:45] Doug: just so much easier. Just jam out to do it on a bicycle. [00:46:47] Joe: I get done training for this last thing in January, my last marathon. And then I’m, uh, joining you on the bike og. ’cause it’s just so much better on the. Joints in the back and much, much, much smoother. And to your point, nothing more fun, by the way, than riding around the neighborhoods. [00:47:05] Joe: You know, I’ve got a couple hills, big hills on my usual route when I cycle, that are just a pain in the ass. And I get myself pretty worked up for those. I get the heart beep pounding. It’s a good, good time. What kind of bike do you have? Do you have a giant? Do you have a giant Uh, I have a trek. A trek? [00:47:21] Joe: Yeah, mine’s a trek as well. Specialized, by the way, is the number one seller of bicycles worldwide. You know, [00:47:27] Doug: it’s a whole lot cheaper than that. A pair of shoes. I think you’re gonna say a huffy. You’re huffy. No, no. I can get a pair of good shoes for 150 bucks. Is huffy still a thing, by the way? Oh yeah. [00:47:41] Doug: It’s still a thing. All the high school kids are totally huffing and puffing. Yeah. I mean the Whippets. That’s what I’m talking about. Whip it. Good. Bono Bon. [00:47:52] Joe: Alright, time for our headline. [00:47:54] headlines: Hello darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:48:01] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from financial planning.com, the website for the financial planning. [00:48:09] Joe: What is it? Og? The Financial Planning Association. Financial Planning Council. Financial Planners Anonymous Financial Association of Planners, also known [00:48:17] Doug: as the fs. The [00:48:20] Joe: Fs. Oh boy. I think it’s Fapa. Fapa. Okay. What happens when your advisor changes companies? This was written by Dan Shaw early this month. [00:48:31] Joe: 1.6. Dan must [00:48:32] OG: be changing companies. [00:48:34] Joe: $1.6 billion. UBS team jumps to LPL, quote, forced out by comp changes. Dan writes, UBS advisors keep heading to the exits. Following the firm’s recent compensation changes with a prominent team departing for LPL Financial in California. Golden State Wealth Management. A group with roughly 1.6 Baba BA billion dollars in assets under management, and 7.1 million in annual revenue production in Merced, California has moved with various staff members to LPL. [00:49:09] Joe: Tells who the team is led by. They came in at the number 20 spot this year and forms list of the best wealth management teams in California, og. You get a letter from your advisor, you get a call from your advisor. First of all, how do you know when your advisor is changing companies? Or do you know? Are there times when you don’t know and you just go in and all of a sudden there’s a different sign on the door? [00:49:32] OG: Well, a lot of this depends on where you are and where you’re going. So a little behind the scenes baseball, depending on what type of firm that an advisor’s affiliated with. And basically, there’s a couple of different options here. There’s a brokerage house, so brokerage company would be your Merrill Lynch’s, Morgan Stanley’s UBS’s. [00:49:53] OG: This’ll [00:49:53] Joe: be the ubs. Yeah, [00:49:54] OG: I think that’s basically all of ’em at this point. Edward Jones. So a straight brokerage company is gonna be different than a hybrid, which is your, uh, Ameriprise’s LPLs. It used to be Commonwealth Cambridge is, you know, that’s kind of more of a, a hybrid structure where it’s a brokerage and a investment advisory firm versus a complete investment advisory firm that’s a registered investment firm that might be like Fisher or, um, creative planning or like our firm is a straight RIA firm. [00:50:26] OG: And, you know, we have advisors. So generally speaking, there’s rules around what information advisor teams can bring with them when they leave. So they, you know, in this example they say, Hey, we’re going from UBS to LPL. The LPL guy has, or gal has recruited them and said, Hey, bring your clients over here. [00:50:43] OG: We’ve got all this cool stuff that you guys don’t have at UBS. We’re gonna pay you a bunch of more money. We’re gonna save your clients a bunch of costs. It’s a win, win, win, win, win for everybody. You know, you gotta move all this money, we’ll help you do the paperwork, all that sort of stuff. That’s all behind the scenes. [00:50:55] OG: And then when they leave, there’s some stuff that they can bring with them. They can bring contact information, they can bring your name, your address, your phone number, generally speaking, your email. Every company’s a little different. They can’t take your account number, they can’t take your statements, they can’t take, you know, your financial planning documents. [00:51:13] OG: That’s all owned by UBS in this case. And so they can take contact information, we call it phone book information, right. Name, address, phone, you know, email. And so yeah, usually you’ll get an email. The way you know that your advisor left is you get two phone calls. You get one from the branch manager at UBS going, Hey, uh, you know, Jack left. [00:51:31] OG: And uh, but UBS is really awesome and Jack sucks and, and, uh, you should probably stay here. Jack sucks. And then you get another phone call from Jack and goes, Hey, uh, it’s Jack. Uh, UBS sucks. We’re gonna LPL, you should come with me. You know? And those are, those are the two phone calls. And one is, do you stick with UBS and have a new broker or do you go with your old broker and go to lpl l and but the advisor, what I’m hearing though, the [00:51:53] Joe: advisor can’t tell you ahead of time. [00:51:55] OG: Yeah, there’s no. There’s not supposed to be, maybe you can read between the lines in terms of teeing it up. You know, if your, if your advisors first six months going, Hey, you know, just so you know, we’re always shopping, you know, our back office, just like we help you with your investments. Uh, this is what I would say if I was gonna do it, I would have meetings with all of our clients and I would say, you know, just like we do for you in terms of trying to find the best investment solutions and custodians and products and services and stuff like that, we also have that, you know, we have back office support and we have technology and we have things that we pay for. [00:52:25] OG: We’re always shopping that out. And there may come a time, you know, in the future where, where we might be shopping it a little bit more aggressively, [00:52:34] Doug: wink quick in the future. In September. [00:52:37] OG: Yes. As of September 18th, hypothetically. Hypothetically, for sure, maybe, but they gotta be careful in what they can take. [00:52:44] OG: And there’s, you know, there’s lawsuits that happen around, around that all the time. For a period of time. There was like this, um, it was called the broker protocol, where it was, if you. Everybody participated in it, UBS, Merrill Morgan, like everybody said, Hey, we’re all gonna play nice with one another. You don’t sue us for taking your clients and we won’t sue you for taking, you know, uh, you taking ours. [00:53:05] OG: That last, everybody played nice. That last five minutes. It lasted 10 years. Um, so there’s still some that are participating, but a lot are like, nah, screw you. We’re coming after you. But anyways, more to the point about how this affects you as a consumer, I don’t think it really does. Products are very commoditized at this point. [00:53:25] OG: Yes, there’s some proprietary stuff. UBS probably has some sort of product or service that is unique to them, no different than LPL does, or no different than Merrill Lynch does or something like that. But generally speaking, if you’re investing in ETFs and mutual funds and some stocks and bonds and money market and that sort of thing, it’s pretty much the same whether you have UBS on your statement or Schwab or Fidelity or LPL. [00:53:50] OG: And really what you’re thinking about here is. Is the relationship that you have with your advisor team and whether or not you want that to continue, there is generally a financial incentive for the advisor to leave. You know, these guys make $7 million a year of of revenue. They got a big check to go to LPL to bring that revenue over because LPL goes, Hey look, you know, we’re gonna make money on these people. [00:54:13] OG: We can share some of that back with the people who are bringing it in. In this case, the team that’s coming over. So they got [00:54:19] Joe: like a one-time signing bonus. [00:54:20] OG: Yeah, probably a significant amount. And with some backend requirements of, hey, here’s some money, now here’s some money in a year and money in two years. [00:54:28] OG: Yeah. Type of deal based on what happens. So they’re motivated to get you to move your accounts over. But I think more importantly as you look at it from a consumer standpoint, if you have a good relationship with your advisor or your advisor team and they say, Hey, we’re gonna move from Schwab to Fidelity because we think it’s a better solution for our clients. [00:54:47] OG: You should say, okay, you know, or we’re moving from UBS to LPL because we think it’s a better solution. Yeah. They get, do they get something out of it? Absolutely they do. But I think, you know, it’s a fair question to ask what’s in it for me as a consumer, but hopefully it’s something very simple. Like, well, we can do this at a lower cost for you. [00:55:04] Joe: They said, even in this piece we were quote, forced out because of compensation changes. [00:55:08] OG: Okay. Well what that means is we didn’t like the changes. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. We were gonna make less money and the hell with that. Yeah. Hey, [00:55:16] Doug: og, if my advisor moves, can that ever create taxable events for me as the client? [00:55:20] OG: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think one that you definitely wanna ask your advisor team and this, and, and honestly you should ask this, anytime there’s transactions that are happening, right? Obviously IRA to IRA, if you’re doing a rollover, you got an i A at UBS and you’re gonna an i A at LPL, you know, tomato, tomato, that’s gonna be the same. [00:55:37] OG: Same thing with your Roth, with your brokerage accounts. As long as you don’t sell anything, there’s not a tax event. Right? If you have a hundred shares of apple at UBS. You say, I wanna transfer that over to LPL LI have a hundred shares of Apple at LPL L there’s, there’s no taxable event. The situation where you may run into an issue is if there’s a proprietary product, right. [00:55:55] OG: If it’s like UBS has the UBS fund, that’s what I was thinking of. LPL l’s like, well we don’t have a UBS fund. Obviously we have LPL funds, you know, it’s better and you Yeah, yeah. ’cause ours are better. You gotta sell it to move that over. But then there’s also no reason. Could you keep both? I mean, do you have to have, like if you have a small amount, is it worth the sacrifice of the tax bill to have it consolidated Or is it better to say, well I’m gonna keep that 50 grand at at UBS ’cause I’m not, I don’t wanna pay the taxes on that. [00:56:24] OG: I think it has to be case by case. And that’s a really good question that you should ask. We have a, a pretty blanket policy in our firm of no surprises. That would be a terrible surprise. You know, like, Hey, I moved over with you at LPL and then like April, you go, what’s this 20 grand I owe? Yeah. By the way, you know, in taxes, it’s like, [00:56:42] Doug: oh, remember you were totally cool with it, right? [00:56:44] Doug: Remember when I said we were moving? It was all good. [00:56:46] OG: Yeah. So that’s a really fair question of, you know, is this a taxable event? Does, is this gonna cost me any money? Honestly, I think if you’re moving, you gotta be moving for a reason, right? Because it’s a pain in the ass, right? It sucks to have to move your accounts from one place to another. [00:57:00] OG: It’s paperwork. There’s time delay, new platform that you gotta get used to and stuff. So if you’re doing it, it’s gotta be worth it. So hopefully as a consumer, you get a little something outta the deal too. I, I [00:57:10] Doug: mean, I heard all of your answer and thanks for that. But what I really heard, here’s how I distilled it down, was check out the big brain on Doug. [00:57:17] Doug: That, that’s what I, when you said, good question. That’s kind of what you were trying to say, right? Yeah, [00:57:24] OG: that’s a hundred percent. Oh, it’s gotta be about him. It doesn’t, it, it’s just like [00:57:26] Joe: og, it’s like petting your puppy. He just pet the puppy and he’s good boy. [00:57:33] Doug: Me, [00:57:33] Joe: me, me, me, me, love me. It’s always about me. [00:57:36] Joe: Love [00:57:36] Doug: me more. [00:57:37] Joe: As I was thinking about this initially when I saw this piece, I was thinking if we were trying to talk to stackers about this, how would we, like, what’s the rubric we’re thinking from? And I think OG just a hundred percent of what you said, rubric piece number one is not about the change, it’s is this relationship important to me? [00:57:57] Joe: Is this person a valued member of my team? Because for me, if the advisor moves from UBS to LPL, and it is a valuable relationship, it should be a no-brainer. It should have nothing to do with UPS or LPL. They’re way in the background. Who cares? If it makes my advisor’s job easier, then of course I’m going, if they’re a valuable member of my team. [00:58:16] Joe: But I think og, if you hesitate there, you’re like, ah, do I move or do I do? I talk to the district manager, Bob, who called me and said that, that my advisor’s a loser. I think your relationship already wasn’t in the right place. If you’re contemplating that. [00:58:31] OG: Sometimes that’s the impetus, right? To search for a different team. [00:58:35] OG: Yeah. Which [00:58:35] Joe: is okay. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you gotta have, gotta have a great board of advisors around you. So if you hesitate for a second, maybe one of two things, either a schedule a meeting with that advisor and talk about what you need from them is the CEO of your financial quote company for your financial life to get them where you actually need them or be the time to time to find that person who is a good member of the board. [00:58:59] Joe: Speaking of, [00:58:59] Doug: speaking of petting your puppy, that’s a good litmus test maybe for picking your advisor. And I did not create this, somebody smarter did, but it’s the two beers and a puppy test. Have you heard about this? No. You think I’m setting up a joke? I’m not. But they, they say after a couple of meetings, if you feel like this is a person I want to have a couple of beers with, or I would trust to take care of my dog over the weekend, then that’s probably somebody that you’re, you match up well with. [00:59:25] Doug: That’s good. They should be part of your team. That is a great, what happened there? How [00:59:29] Joe: did he do that? Og? How does it go from pet to puppy? It’s all about me to a great, I I have no idea. It’s amazing. We will link to this piece on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com because advisors are moving all the time and it’s a little interesting. [00:59:44] Joe: Thanks, OG for the peek underneath the hood to see what’s going on in the advisory side of that, that we often don’t get to see. [00:59:52] Doug: Hey Joe. Uh, are we ready to go to the back porch? [00:59:54] Joe: Let’s do it. This is a community part of the show where we dive into, um, what’s going on in stacker land. [01:00:00] Doug: Yeah. We’ve had so much activity out, uh, uh, on the, the basement out, down, down in the basement. [01:00:07] Doug: The basement of Facebook in the nether regions of the Facebook offices where us stackers hang out, nether regions. Oh boy, that’s my bathing suit area. Uh, [01:00:20] Doug: but this guy named Joe made this great post a little while ago, and this is the kind of stuff that we all wanna know. This is the valuable. Financial personal finance type info that everybody’s craving, and it was really helpful. I was glad that this guy named Joe posted it where he said, here’s how much, well, he didn’t say it, but he reposted this thing that said, here’s how much you should have for retirement by age to this maybe so angry, which just like, just get right to the point. [01:00:46] Doug: It’s [01:00:47] Joe: so good. It may, I was sitting at the airport in Portland getting ready to come home and of course I’m just scrolling Facebook and I immediately dug when I saw this piece, I, you lost your shizzle, didn’t you? I hit copy, went over to the basement. And said, this is garbage. And we’ve all seen these pieces before. [01:01:08] Joe: Oh, you heard the show. And they drive me crazy because especially if you’re new here, like it drives you nuts. It’s by, I’m not gonna say who the, who the piece was by, I’m not gonna give them any more publicity. It says, here’s how much you should have for retirement by age, by age, 30 x amount, by age, 40 by age 50 by age 60, by age 65. [01:01:26] Joe: And this is how do you stack up? And I mean, if you’re behind on their completely arbitrary graph, I don’t know. It worked [01:01:35] Doug: out well for me. I kind of like it. [01:01:38] Joe: But if you’re sweet, [01:01:39] Doug: I’m in great shape. [01:01:39] Joe: Let’s say that you’re a big spender. You might high five yourself, and you’re like, Hey, I’m, I’m doing great. [01:01:43] Joe: And you’re not. Like, it doesn’t take into account anything. Your goals, the amount that you can save in the future. Maybe you just got, uh, raises. You look at how quickly, as an example, physicians, right, get this long, long, long, long delayed spot on their income stream, which if you use those appropriately, if, if you’re somebody who early on gets a nice head start over, a physician who’s putting all their dollars into the machine to get this degree, or anybody who gets an eight year degree, frankly. [01:02:14] Joe: It takes a long time for them to catch up with you. Settle [01:02:17] Doug: down. You’re getting all serious about this. I was just making fun of this Joe Loser who posted this thing and lost his grapes over and you’re like, we get it. We all get why it sucks. Can we move on? Who is that? Joe Loser. But I like [01:02:32] Joe: stacker Andy, by the way, who, uh, says you need aji dollars. [01:02:36] Joe: One Jill dollars. One jillion dollars. By the way, it was so nice to actually meet some stackers. I met Andy. You met Andy. I met Andy. What a great guy. I heard Andy was he told you [01:02:46] Doug: some good stories about somebody you know [01:02:49] Joe: about [01:02:49] Doug: how that one guy [01:02:50] Joe: who he knew from earlier in his life was such a loser. Yeah. [01:02:56] Joe: Who He may have common theme. It’s common theme. Theme. May have, may have known before. [01:02:59] Doug: Yeah. Andy’s a great guy. Here’s another great post we had from uh, Kenneth Westervelt. Sounds like he’s like from an old English. Moneyed family. [01:03:10] Joe: Kenneth, [01:03:10] Doug: weve, [01:03:11] Joe: Hey, by the way, Kenneth, whatever I say, and I love Kenneth. And Kenneth and I have hung out a little bit online before, but every time I see Kenneth’s name, I think winter is coming. [01:03:19] Doug: Oh, yeah, it’s that too. That’s right. Immediately Kenneth, he’s got this big robe made out of like Wolf El, he’s Kenneth [01:03:27] Joe: Westervelt from the Westervelts [01:03:29] Doug: hair blowing in the wind who Defend the Wall. Yeah. There was another great post by Kenneth. Kenneth posted a piece from Fast Company, which was a great way to blend fan fiction with personal finance. [01:03:43] Doug: I thought this was incredibly creative. And fan fiction’s. So fun. Like what would’ve happened to these characters after the movie or the connection to three other movies that you think are totally unrelated. All of that kind of stuff is so, I think, uh, a, a little bit weird that people like think that much about it, but b, super creative. [01:04:00] Doug: Here’s the only piece of it I that I didn’t like was what she thought would happen to Brian, which Brian was, Brian was the character in Breakfast Club who was portrayed by Anthony Michael Hall. He was kind of the nerd. I think he was supposed to be the geek or the nerd in the movie that, you know, had, that historically had been picked on or bullied and, uh, she really felt like he was gonna completely screw up his. [01:04:23] Doug: Personal finance journey and, and go all in on the wrong things or sell at the wrong time. And that just didn’t seem to me like a guy who was so obsessed with doing the right thing that he would stress out about. You know, he tried to make a lamp out of an elephant and you pull the trunk and the light goes on. [01:04:39] Doug: Like, he was so obsessed with it that that sent him over the edge in the movie. But you [01:04:42] Joe: could see, you could see that character. Um, and apologies, people haven’t seen the Breakfast Club, but I think Doug, you nailed it. He’s the, he’s the young nerd just sucking up to everybody wants to be all their friends. [01:04:52] Joe: Um, but he is the guy that then would fall for the next hot thing because he wants to be loved so much. Uh, [01:04:59] Doug: maybe no, maybe, but otherwise it was a great piece. The author did a great job on. Well, and what’s [01:05:04] Joe: funny about the author is I saw that it was Fast Company and I saw, which is the publication, and then I saw the fan fiction Breakfast Club. [01:05:15] Joe: Just when I saw that headline, Doug, I went, this has gotta be my co-author, A stacked Emily Guy Birkin. And I clicked on it hoping and I scroll down underneath the picture and it was Emily Guy Birkin. [01:05:27] Doug: So like if I ever see a piece that’s somehow merging personal finance and Disney, I’ll automatically assume you wrote it. [01:05:34] Doug: It’s gotta be Joe, when did Joe start writing for Forbes? Like, or whatever? [01:05:39] Joe: Yeah. Wow. They were hurting for content that much. I was so proud of myself. I’m like with Emily’s love of movies. And I knew that she writes, uh, sometimes for Fast Company. So that was fun, but great one on Kenneth. We got any, anything else? [01:05:51] Doug: Yeah, the last one I wanna bring up was, uh, Shane Rocker’s. Amazing name. These sound like I, I think our listeners just make up cool names just to sound cool online. It’s like, [01:06:00] Joe: Monday was Joan Jet’s birthday and she’s got nothing on Shane, [01:06:03] Doug: right? No, no. Shane, I’m kind of disappointed that there isn’t some major rock and roll artist named Shane Rockers. [01:06:11] Doug: But anyway, Shane pointed out, uh, how weird it is. Every time they hear OG do a sponsored ad instead of Joe. [01:06:18] Joe: And it is funny because that only happens from time to time. Normally what happens is is uh, Steve tells me, Hey Joe, you gotta make sure that the pieces are done. And so then I’ll record those and send them off to Cumulus, which is our network that we’re on. [01:06:34] Joe: And in this case I was in Portland, so OG did it. But what always lights my fire is whenever OG does it, Doug sends me a note going, you know, I’m available. [01:06:41] Doug: Yeah, I wanna do it. You know, I [01:06:43] Joe: could do those. [01:06:44] Doug: If you’re gonna let OG do it. So we haven’t [01:06:45] Joe: dug yet. [01:06:46] Doug: Yeah. God, how desperate are you if you’re letting [01:06:50] Joe: OG do it? [01:06:50] Joe: So he’s wearing me down peeps. Don’t be surprised if you hear, uh, mint Mobile presented by [01:06:56] Doug: neighbor Doug. I think you’re terrified of how I would ad lib and we would get sued by the advertiser. I love Mint mobile, by the way. [01:07:04] Joe: That’s a great one. I know The fire community loves MIT Mobile and it’s so inexpensive. [01:07:07] Joe: So yeah, 15 bucks a month when it came to us asking if they could sponsor the show, I’m like, heck yeah. We’re all about that. The people [01:07:13] Doug: listening now are like, oh, this is like the oval teen thing in Christmas story. This whole back porch was a lead up to another man that’s mobile ad. [01:07:21] Joe: MIT [01:07:21] Doug: mobile [01:07:21] Joe: was like, could you just work this into a comfort? [01:07:24] Joe: You know, I love Cass. I love sleeping, Doug. That’s why I love Casper mattresses. Remember when we had, who was it? It, was it Michael Creighton? Somebody had written a new. Like, think it was a little outta their genre, but it included a murder and the whole ad read was about a murder. And I was like, oh, I love this author. [01:07:42] Joe: Yeah, this would be, this would be super fun. One night over beers. We were, I mean, we were playing golf online, Doug, but we, we start talking about the bad segue. Oh, you know, yeah. This show is, this show is just murder today. Speaking of. As one does have, have you read the new book on Murder by so and so. [01:08:02] Joe: It’d be so, so bad. This is the [01:08:04] Doug: longest back porch [01:08:04] Joe: ever. I’ve gone through two [01:08:05] Doug: beers already. [01:08:06] Joe: I think that’s it. Thanks everybody for hanging out with us. Uh, not just today, but also in the Facebook group. If you wanna join some of the fun that we have over there, the URL to get there is fairly long. So here’s a shortcut that we created just for you. [01:08:19] Joe: Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement, and that will take you to our Facebook group. You just apply to get in and, uh, Gertrude, our community manager will let you in. That’s just to make sure apply, to [01:08:31] Doug: get in. Is there a down payment? We just get so many scams. You join the [01:08:33] Joe: country club. We get so many, so many people that try and, and still to this day, we’ve still people that are there now, once every four or five months, somebody all of a sudden wants to talk about Bitcoin nonstop and you just link to them. [01:08:47] Doug: Well, yeah. And the other thing that happens a bunch, I’ve had this from both e Conno, me. Paula pants where they hijack the account and then you get a friend request. Well, in those cases, [01:08:57] Joe: they’re just spoofing the account. The regular account is here. They set up another one that has one letter different. [01:09:03] Joe: Like speaking of that, one of the 20 people that were spoofing, Paula called themselves Paula a pants instead of Paula. What a mess. ’cause saying Paula’s pants. Yeah, that’s the better place. We talked to her about this. That’s a business she could have gone into. Yep. Just lended her name. Alright, anyway, Doug, get us outta here, man. [01:09:23] Joe: What are the three things that should be on our to-do list today? [01:09:26] Doug: Here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list today. First, take some advice from shemen. Wanna enjoy work more, spend more time away so that you’re rested, motivated when you are at work and charged up to meet your next challenge. Second, did your advisor change? [01:09:43] Doug: Companies? Don’t adjust your journey because theirs is changing, but rather whether they’re actually helping you on your journey. But the big lesson, get out on your bike and ride with Joe’s mom. Sure, she might make fun of your banana seat, but your street cred will skyrocket because you’ll be riding with a woman wearing leather chaps. [01:10:07] Doug: Thanks to Shaman Ur Mohammed for joining us. Today, you’ll find the Paris Paradox embracing French ideals of leisure to transform American work life balance wherever you buy books. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SB podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. [01:10:32] Doug: 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. [01:10:54] Doug: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Moms Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:11:57] opener: Doug, what are [01:11:57] Doug: you [01:11:58] opener: watching? [01:11:58] Doug: A bunch of stuff. A I’m watching the Tigers slide slide slide that is driving me crazy, what they’re doing to give up what was once like an 11 game lead in the, uh, in the division. But what we’re watching creatively is task. On HBO task. Yes. And it’s somehow, I have not figured out how yet, but it is sort of part of the universe and or related to Mayor of East Town. [01:12:24] Doug: Mayor of East Town. Great show from a couple of years ago starting Kate Winslet, where she is a police officer in kind of a, a rust belt city. Actually no, that’s not true. Not rust belt, but like a factory town that’s fallen on hard times in Pennsylvania. So would highly recommend Mayor of East Town, MARE, not mayor, but mayor, her name. [01:12:46] Doug: She won a bunch of awards for that. Yeah, and, and deservedly so. She was great. So Somehow Task and honestly we’re like three episodes in. ’cause they only get released stupidly once a week. I hate that. Like it’s a regular show on broadcast television. What’s the point of having a streaming service if you’re gonna make me wait and I can’t binge. [01:13:06] Doug: But the lead in task is Mark Ruffalo and he’s an FBI agent who’s a great character, super well written character because he is got, you get the backstory, he’s got a lot of internal conflict going on, lot going on in his life outside of the investigation. So a very well written character. And I gotta say, I’m not always a huge fan of Ruffalo, but this character works for him really well. [01:13:31] Doug: So great casting I’ll say. I think he’s got wide range though. He plays so many different people. I would say he used to, lately I’ve seen him be. More one dimensional, I don’t know. Just ever since the Hulk? Yeah, probably since the superhero days. I think he’s sort of gotten into as he’s aged. Maybe that’s it. [01:13:51] Doug: I don’t know. But this is really good. It’s either really good casting or they wrote for him, but nonetheless, it’s really good. And I’m drawing a blank on the lead antagonist. I don’t know him as an actor. He’s been in some stuff, but he’s not a major name. But you love this guy. Like you, you actually start to root for so far three episodes in you root for the antagonist in this one. [01:14:15] Doug: ’cause he’s a great, likable, bad guy. [01:14:18] Joe: That’s what I liked about that was for me, the big hook of, uh, Teron is when the man who was chasing her became an empathetic character. Where I got his motivation and where he was. It was it, it became an even better series than I thought it was at the beginning. [01:14:36] Doug: This is one of the, I mean, again, early returns, sure. [01:14:39] Doug: Hard to judge this early, but three episodes in, I was actually just, I was drawn in in the first probably half hour, which is, it’s been a while honestly for me to have discovered a, a limited series where I got pulled in that quickly. [01:14:53] Joe: That sounds like one I’d really like it dark. We are finishing, you know how much Sheryl and I really like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, the, the newer version, like really campy halloweeny stuff. [01:15:04] Joe: So of course when they came out with season two of Wednesday. Yeah, we had to watch that. And I gotta say, and I think everybody that watches this feels the same way. Not a great series. Can’t be fun. Fred Armisen is so, so funny in his limited role and just seeing Katherine Zita Jones, just, just these people that, you know, play these, these parts. [01:15:26] Joe: Steve BMI is a new character this year and he’s amazing, but of it’s just Tim Burton at his best. It’s weird, it’s uneven. It is, uh, a solid six and a half on a scale of one to 10, but that’s what I’m looking for from Wednesday. I’m not looking for high art. I’m just really goofy. Good time. That’s [01:15:45] Doug: disappointing because there’s, to hear you say that because well, and okay. [01:15:49] Doug: I’ll qualify this by saying there are times where you just want some popcorn and you don’t want to, but there’s so much amazing material out there across all of the streaming platforms. Sure. I don’t feel like we should be settling for six and a half. [01:16:02] Joe: No, but I’m in the mood for that. It’s really fun. [01:16:05] Joe: Wednesday’s really fun. If you’re looking for fun. It’s, it’s, it’s [01:16:09] Doug: stupid and it’s fun. You could go for a, just a guaranteed 10 out of 10 with like a Love is Blind uk Well, here is, are you not? That’s as good as streaming gets. That [01:16:21] Joe: sounds like a solid four and a half. On a scale of one a 10. Last one I have is my friends, uh, Nathan and Catherine who took us to. [01:16:29] Joe: An amazing dinner at the end of our, uh, time in Portland. So big thanks to them. Nathan told me there’s a series on Netflix called The Law, according to Lydia Poet. Oh, that got a hundred percent. It is a hundred percent Rotten Tomato score, and he said it may be the best thing he’s ever watched. Wow. I know. [01:16:48] Joe: I’ve never heard of [01:16:48] Doug: it. [01:16:48] Joe: The law, according to Lydia Poet. So I can’t wait to dig into that next. Yeah, [01:16:53] Doug: yeah. I’m intrigued.
Leave a Reply