What really derails retirement dreams? Spoiler alert: it’s not always the stock market or your 401(k). Sometimes it’s sneaky habits—like leaning too hard on your house as a retirement plan or ignoring how long you might actually live—that quietly gnaw away at your financial future. In this episode, Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug dig into the most common middle-class retirement killers and how you can sidestep them.
But this isn’t your average checklist of “don’t do that.” The team dissects questionable advice floating around internet forums, debates stock splits and diversification, and even finds time to unravel why owning a cat might make you a magnet for gangster-level problems. Add in Doug’s trivia about a famous singer’s real name, and you’ve got an episode that’s equal parts practical and delightfully unpredictable.
Whether you’re worried about stretching your retirement savings or just looking for sharper ways to think about financial advice, this episode offers both reassurance and reality checks. So grab your favorite mug (or maybe your cat), settle into your seat, and get ready to learn how to protect your retirement from the biggest threats—while laughing at the absurdity along the way.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- The habits that quietly sabotage retirement plans (and what to do instead)
- Why your house may not be the slam-dunk retirement strategy you think it is
- The risks of living longer than you expect—and how to plan for it
- How to sniff out sketchy financial “tips” before they lead you astray
- The surprising traps behind stock splits, diversification myths, and overconfidence
- Why even well-meaning advice can backfire if you don’t look at the big picture
Questions to Ponder (or Debate in the Basement Facebook Group):
What’s the worst financial “tip” you’ve ever heard online (or maybe even followed)?
Which retirement habit do you think trips people up the most—and why?
If you had to choose, would you rather rely on your house equity or a diversified portfolio to fund retirement?
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our TikTok YouTube (Shorts) Minute
Our Headline
- The No. 1 Habit That Destroys Middle-Class Retirement Dreams (GO Banking Rates)
Doug’s Trivia
- What award-winning singer-songwriter who owns a winery in Santa Barbara County celebrates her birthday today?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG—Our (unsolicited) second opinion
- “So SNXFX and SCHX through Schwab have split. Per share holder meeting, ‘Shareholders will receive ten shares in exchange for every one share they currently own.’ The distribution yield is 1.1368% for SNXFX, so I will have to claim the distribution as an earning. I now have 7,044.08 shares and will have to pay taxes on this. I’ll have to claim this on my income tax every year as distributions. Should I be reinvesting this money somewhere else?“
Have a question for the show?
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Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’re joined by the co-founder of THE Motley Fool. He joins us to talk about how to invest intelligently.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: How Will You Create “The Best Days of Your Life”? GREATEST HITS WEEK (SB1734)
Episode transcript
Joe: [00:00:00] Well look at you guys all rested and ready. Oh gee, you look very rested. How was your
OG: week off? Got my glow up. Was that a spray tan or is that real? Oh no, I just, I’ve been naturally a perfect level of melatonin.
Joe: I was telling somebody that, uh, I’ve been going to the gym a lot lately, but my catchphrase is sun’s out in you just walk in and walk.
Yeah. Yeah.
OG: Are you there for the Free Brownies
Joe: in the
OG: morning?
Joe: Yeah. Have you seen those Doc talk guys? They had one recently that said, oh man, I went into the gym because they have all these new machines. The new ones have everything like Three Musketeers, Snickers, everything. It’s incredible. We’re back for another eight weeks and you know how we start every Monday, not just the ones that start off a new eight weeks.
We raise our mugs. Then we say on behalf of the men and women, make a podcast to mom’s basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, here’s to our troops kept us safe. During [00:01:00] our week away, it’s time for us to go stack some Benjamins. Now together, shall we?
opener: Stacky
Joe: stack. Thanks everybody.
opener: Here’s the song that we’d like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers and what have you. This one’s called Vacation Over
Vacation
Over.
Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin show.
Did you miss us last week? Yeah, of course you did. Put good news stacker. We are back with another eight weeks of brand spanking news shows. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And to kick things off, there’s a headline ripped from the popular press. I’m reading the [00:02:00] headline now. Habits That Destroy Middle Class Retirement Dreams, destroy Middle Class Dreams.
That doesn’t sound like clickbait does it today. We’ll help you rebuild those dreams by walking through what this piece says you should fear and put that clickbait in reverse so you can build a happy retirement. Plus we’ll answer a question from one stacker who asked a question on some other financial forum and today.
Backed by popular demand. We’ll share a second opinion. They didn’t ask for it, but we’re giving it. Wait. All that A TikTok minute and my incredible trivia. Go ahead and do it. Yeah, go ahead. Just pinch yourself. And now two guys who are certain diversification means having. More than one streaming subscription.
It’s Joe o and o.
Joe: You know, there’s like positive correlation and negative correlation. There’s also positive diversification and negative [00:03:00] diversification, negative being you got too many subscription services. Hey everybody. Welcome to one subscription service for the win. I am Joe Saul Sea. Hi, and this is. The Stacky Benjamin Show.
So happy you’re here with us. Sit back, relax. Because the guy who always looks relaxed on a Monday is here with us today. Mr. OG joins us. How are you brother?
OG: Aren’t you supposed to get all the subscriptions that way? Yeah, you can watch all the TV all of the time
Joe: with all your eyes. It’s
OG: like A-V-T-S-A-X and Chill of subscriptions.
Joe: I thought it was called Subscribe and Chill. Yeah, I mean, I have all of them because what happens if Apple TV goes down or Netflix goes down or. Disney plus Tesla. That’s actually,
Doug: that’s actually the one I could live without is Apple tv. I could live without that one, and yet I get it for like, as part of my cellular Verizon subscription.
So I, if I were to cancel one, it would be that one. But why should [00:04:00] I, ’cause I’m not paying extra for it. But that’s.
Joe: Annoying. We just bought a new Apple product, so we have a free three months that we’re going through. Mm. But I had canceled it. And to your point, Doug did not miss it. And uh, yeah, there’s not much cutting the cord on lots of these
OG: things just after the, your friends and neighbors was a great show.
The morning show was a great show. Obviously I’m a little behind that tip myself. Show Season
Doug: one was good, friends and neighbors was mildly entertaining, but I’ve been bummed if I didn’t miss it. Teron, I know you rave about. Fantastic, fantastic. The Gorge was
OG: awesome. Movie. No. Did you even watch it?
Doug: I watched
OG: part of it.
Hey guys, we got a podcast to do. Yeah. Dunno if you guys know this, we should probably talk. No, I, I’m a bigger fan of arguing with Doug about his stupid tv horrible collections.
Joe: He’s got just the worst taste. I dunno. We get a great headline today that we need to get to, to kick off these eight weeks because Doug, I loved it when [00:05:00] I shared this with Doug and he put it right in the open, the number one habit that destroys.
Middle class retirement dreams.
OG: Yeah, it’s the good news is that there’s only one thing, your
Joe: wife will be miserable. Oh, no, no, no. Pretty quick. It’s called the number one habit that destroys middle class retirement dreams. There’s something really funny to kick off that whole segment that we’ll get to, but before we get to any of that and the TikTok Minute and Ducks trivia.
And our second opinion, man, we’ve got a couple sponsors who make sure we can keep on keeping on and you don’t pay for any of this, so we’re gonna hear from them. And then OG Doug and I are gonna look at the number one habit that destroys, destroys middle class retirement dreams.
trailer: Save yourself. Hello, doling, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines.
Joe: I feel like the way we’re saying it, it should be the number one habit that destroys middle class [00:06:00] retirement dream. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday
OG: makes me wanna get a recliner. Why? Why does this ad make me wanna buy a recliner?
Joe: It’s all gotta go. Lydia Kibet wrote this one. I don’t think she wrote the headline because I think the mission was to talk about different habits that might mess up middle class retirement dreams.
But whoever, I guess there’s a better
OG: ring to it though, doesn’t it? Please read my article of the different habits that might slowly mess up your middle class retirement habits.
Doug: Right? There are some things you should contemplate for chance. Exactly. ’cause the headline
Joe: says the number one habit and they proceed to give us five.
That’s when you know there was no communication between whoever wrote the title,
Doug: the headline editor’s job was on the line. They get measured on clicks. I gotta say something.
Joe: Yep. For many middle class Americans, retirement’s a time to finally enjoy the life they’ve dreamed of. Unicorns, rainbows, I added that in, but too [00:07:00] often.
Very nice writing so far, certain habits. Sabotage those dreams, leaving many stressed out about money instead of enjoying their freedoms. The, the word was freedom, but I put freedoms. While, while some of these habits like overspending are obvious, others are harder to spot until it’s too late. Here are the top four.
Oh, I said there were five. Well, that was me. Click baiting stackers. You’re waiting for a fifth one. There isn’t one, huh? That’s how we get you right there. Okay. Number one on this list, let’s dive into what destroys middle class dreams. Og Number one, carrying high interest open Optimism.
opener: Oh
Joe: yeah. Carrying high interest debt into retirement.
Does that destroy middle class retirement dreams?
OG: Destroys everything all the time, all dreams. Paying interest is awful. And having payments. I, I think having payments is worse than paying interest. I mean, I get that paying interest. You’re, you know, you buy something for a hundred [00:08:00] dollars and you end up paying $400 for it.
That is really crappy. But when you think about how much the payments and how they compound and how much money you have to make. In order to pay the taxes on the money that you make to have money left over in order to have money to pay the payments. Like how much work do you have to do to be able to afford all of the monthly payments that you have in your life?
If you have a mortgage or you have a HELOC or you have a car payment, or you have two car payments, you have student loans or, and you have credit cards, and, and so you add all those things up and go, all right, I’m spending. Whatever, $5,000 a month in all that, like that, that’s, that’s all stuff that I bought.
And I, I get that there’s good debt and you know, whatever, and I need a car and okay, fine. You know what I’m talking about. So you got five grand, you gotta make 60, well now you gotta pay taxes. So that’s really 80 or 82. But there’s benefits in your 401k. You gotta make like $90,000 or $80,000 a year. Just to make your minimum payments, and that’s not putting food on the table for you.
That’s not having any fun. That’s not [00:09:00] saving any money. You know how they have that chart or that graph that shows like, when do you pay the IRS, right? Yeah. Like you earn all your money all the way to like March tax free day. That’s IRS money.
Doug: Oh, it’s closer to mid-April than.
OG: Yeah, I mean, of course it is.
Doug: Look at OG bringing the Sunshine.
OG: I was like, do that with your, do that with your cash flow. Like look at like, I’m making 180 grand a year and my debt freedom day is like August 9th. You know? Like I get to finally put food on people in August.
Doug: You’re us. You’re worse than the article headline.
OG: Yeah. Well.
Stop paying payments people destroys isn’t as strong enough for that alliteration. It destroys everything.
Doug: Yeah. Maybe OG wrote
Joe: this article. It totally does destroy everything. It it’s funny on a podcast recently. I accidentally talked about, what if you get a 10% rate of return? And the host corrected me and said, well, I know there’s people screaming at their device going, no, no, no, seven or 8% rate of return.
Right? Like if you’re planning. And I went, okay. Do you know
OG: the last, so I saw this stat the other day. We [00:10:00] used 10% as the s and p, but what’s been the real s and p return, not real inflation adjust, but like what’s been the actual s and p return since 1950?
Joe: For a while it was 10.2, but that’s been higher now, so it’s gotta be over 11.
OG: Yeah, that’s I think 11.8. Yeah. In the last 75 years. And people are like you seven. Right. 10 conservative, the elevens, what’s actually happened? Oh, that’ll never happen again. Oh, yeah. 75 years is not a sample size big enough for you yet. I understand.
Joe: Well, and here’s my point, OG around credit card debt with this is that, you know, people are like, oh, 11 point something, whatever.
Yeah. Uh, 10, whatever. And, uh, you should use seven. Seven is realistic that you’re gonna get seven. Okay. Yet, yet a credit card puts in writing. 28.5, they are guaranteeing themselves [00:11:00] 28.5 on you. And we’re like, oh, back it down. Back it down. Not 10 or 11. Like that’s ridiculous to get 10 or 11. It isn’t ridiculous for Chase.
It isn’t ridiculous for City or Capital One, and we happily sign up for more and go, oh, you know, it’s not that big a deal. I need dot, dot, dot. Second on the list of things that destroy retirement. First one was right on second. Lacking a tax strategy for withdrawals, just kind of going at your money willy-nilly when you’re taking it out.
Og, is that a oh willy-nilly destroyer With what? Of middle class retirement troops.
OG: Everybody thinks it’s fun when, uh. Willie’s all nilly with everything, but then when you do it with your, uh, withdrawals, it’s not so great. I mean, at the end of the day, if you don’t have an idea around like where the, where the break points are, I’ve been reading some articles recently about how you can get so much, you know, how much money in dividends can you earn in a year without paying [00:12:00] income taxes.
Not knowing what that number is or how does social security and pension, if you’re fortunate enough to have that factor into your tax bill and where the other income should come from. And some of this is stuff that you set up 25 years earlier, which is, you know when people say, well, should I put all my money in my Roth, or should I put all my pre-tax, should I put it all in my brokerage?
And the real answer is the, the best strategy is to have a bunch in everything. So you’ve got a ton of flexibility on an annual basis of where you can take money from based on how the year is going. If you have a big withdrawal year because you have a big expense and you need to take a little extra out, well, it’d be great to take that last little bit out tax free and not take it out at 24% taxes.
If you have that flexibility or if you have a low income year and you can say, well, or a low expense year, I only need to earn just my social security, a little bit of dividend income, and I’m good for the year. I don’t have a bunch of expenses this year. You know, you take that out of the dividends of your brokerage account and you know you don’t pay any taxes and that [00:13:00] keeps your Medicare premiums low.
So and so forth. So there’s lots of give and take with all of these different things. And if you have only one bucket, you’re limited in your choices. So the time to kind of prepare for that is, you know, when you’re 30 or 40, although if you’re 60 and just thinking about it, there’s still a few things that you can do in terms of saving money in the different places, but you’re not gonna have as big of an impact.
Joe: Yeah. Setting this up when you’re young. For all our younger stackers, this is a great idea. It’s the reason why my bias, if you’re going to have more of one of the three sides of the text triangle, the Roth, uh, is gonna give you a lot of flexibility later. However, you might want some pretax today, which is why I think coach, you talk about having some heared, some there.
And of course the third corner of the triangle is the taxable brokerage account, which gives you. Ultimate flexibility. You can do whatever you want. You’re just gonna pay tax maybe as you go if it pays dividends, and then you’re gonna pay a tax when you sell, but you can. [00:14:00] Sell whenever you want. Uh, you don’t have to worry about any of the tax shelter gotchas that are behind the Roth or the traditional, uh, retirement plans that are out there.
I think there’s two things really to focus on here. Number one is your tax bracket. What tax bracket are you in when you’re pulling money out, and where’s the line for the next tax bracket? So as you’re pulling money out, number one, and then number two, oh, gee, there’s these, you know, these gotchas from the side, right?
Tax on Social Security and Irma. I think those are two kind of side gotchas that a lot of people, if they don’t have any tax strategy, if willy-nilly is doing whatever,
OG: Willie’s doing your tax stuff, Willie Willie’s taking your money out. He’d be crazy with your taxes.
Joe: Third on here is treating a home as a retirement plan.
Does anybody really do this anymore? Yeah, I felt like when I was a young advisor, I heard this all the time. Maybe it’s not that I’m in, you know, in meetings with people [00:15:00] like I used to be, but the number of times where people go, well, what I’m gonna do, see, I’m paid off my mortgage early, and that is my retirement plan.
I’m not using that thing at work. I’m paying off my house early.
OG: Yeah, I don’t think it’s so much that it’s one or the other. I, I see people who are falling into it. It’s not, it wasn’t a plan going in. Like, I can’t wait to have this thing paid off because then I’ll have all this equity that I can use for later.
It’s more like maybe at the very beginning of that decision, 28 years ago, we were overextended in our payments because we bought a house we probably shouldn’t have at the moment. That’s, you know, barely. Our lips were above water. All we could afford was paying our house payment. And then that transitioned as the years went on, we had that lifestyle creep.
Still no money to save because lifestyle creep happened. But I was making progress on this house. And oh, by the way, I happened to have bought in a pretty good area that exploded in value. I bought this house for 500,000 and now it’s worth 2.2 million. And now we’re thinking, well, [00:16:00] dang, this thing’s almost paid off.
2 million bucks is pretty good money. So I think the struggle that people have with this. It sounds great on paper, but selling the family home to fund your retirement is a little bit more mentally painful than than people think it is. And, and the alternative, like borrowing against it with a HELOC requires a payment of course, and a credit score and the ability to repay.
Um, and then doing a reverse mortgage, uh, is, is kind of the last resort. I think it’s a, I think it’s a fine option for somebody that’s in that situation, but it’s very unattractive, you know, rates and terms because, you know the bank’s gonna get theirs, right? So, be far better to sell it, buy something much smaller, in a much lower cost of living area, and then have the, have the asset, you know, have the equity, you know, in your investment account if that’s the way you’re going.
But I think that’s a great plan when you’re 50. Then when you get to 60 and you go, uh, do I wanna sell the house? I [00:17:00] mean, the grandkids are about to start coming over and we got that nice pool, you know, so it sounds like a great idea until you have to execute. It has been my experience with that.
Joe: The fourth on this list, well, as a lead in, do you guys wanna live to be a hundred?
Doug, do you wanna live to be a hundred years old?
Doug: I don’t think quite that old. No, I don’t think so. I may not have a choice, but I, I think I probably, you know, 86 seems like a good number.
OG: Og. How about you live to be a hundred? I wanna live to be 140. Yeah. I wanna see my kids turn a hundred and just think that’d be cool.
Joe: That’s funny. According to the Nationwide Retirement Institute, they had a survey recently that showed 29% of people I don’t wanna live to be a hundred either. So Doug, it’s funny, we’re 33% of this panel, 29% wanna live to be a hundred. However, 75% of people fear, uh, living their saving. The last one on this list is maybe one of the biggest ones, OJI, which is longevity risk.
Right? The fact that you will live to be a long time, and here’s some of the numbers. This is [00:18:00] amazing. A 65-year-old today has a 75% chance of living if you’re men to age 78. So 65-year-old living another 13 years, women living another 16 years, 75% chance if you’re 65 years old today. How about this one? 13 whole years?
Wow. 13 years longer than 65, 70 5% chance? Well, it reduces to 50%. To live to 85 if you’re a man. So if you’re 65 today, you have a 50% chance of living another 20 years women, 88 years old. And here’s the big one. If you’re 65 years old right now, you have a 25% chance of making it to 91 if you’re a man, and 93, if you’re a woman.
Those are some pretty good odds that you, you may see a hundred og. Mm-hmm. Much better than it was for generations before us.
OG: Yeah, and, and a lot of that obviously is health and some of it’s luck in timing and all that other sort of stuff as well. But this is [00:19:00] why, from a planning standpoint, we use a hundred as kind of a baseline number for a plan.
Because statistically, like you were talking about here, Joe, a couple who retires at age 65. That’s healthy non-smoker. One of them statistically is gonna live to be 92. And that checks with what your numbers say or what your with, with what we just had on individuals. Just, you know, your more recent study.
Mm-hmm. And so if it’s a 50% chance of a 50 50 shot of somebody being 92, you know, I get that 92 year olds don’t always live to be 93, but some of them turn to be 93 and all the 93 year olds, not all of them, turn 94. Some of them do. So you can’t prove to me that a hundred is an unrealistic number. The other side of this though, and we’ve talked about this, I don’t know, several weeks ago, was, or is that if you’re too conservative in that planning, then, is that the right way to think about it?
Conservative, if you’re, yeah. If you’re too conservative in your planning, you’re gonna underspend. Throughout your entire retirement life and not do [00:20:00] stuff,
Joe: you have to keep some growth in your portfolio. Well, you gotta
OG: balance it out that too, but I’m saying like, because 92 is, let’s say 92 is the 50 50 number for a couple.
If you’re saying, well, I’m planning to be a hundred, and then you kick the bucket at 88 or 86, like Doug’s number is, you have a lot of money left. For those 14 years we were planning that you’re not using that you could have used from 65 to 85 and so. I think constantly reevaluating where you are and evaluating your health and the people around you and that sort of stuff to get a sense of, you know, how are we doing on our spending versus our longevity.
And this is where sometimes those longevity annuities come in where it’s like they defer until 90 and then kick on. It’s like, spend all your money because at 90 we kick on this other stream of income that pays you from 90 to a hundred if you’re still alive or whatever the case may be.
Doug: OG is planning for a hundred become the norm now across the financial planning industry.[00:21:00]
And the reason I ask is because I think we have a lot of people who, uh, are stackers who listen to the show, who are doing it themselves, which is great. That’s part of what we’re hoping, or excuse me, helping some of our audience to do, but. If that’s become the norm in the industry, should people who are doing it themselves also change that denominator of life expectancy.
OG: Well, I think that it’s probably even between a hundred and 110. You know, life insurance companies go to one 20 as kind of their backend number, where at one 20 you win. Like if you still have a life insurance policy at 120, they go, we’re out. Just here’s the money. Like, we can’t, we’re not playing the, you know, we can’t, some of ’em used to be a hundred, but now they, they’ve changed it to one point.
They show up
Doug: at your front door with that big giant check.
OG: Yeah. They’re like, congratulations with balloons. Ed McMahon comes out of the grave outta
Doug: outta the grave. Yeah, yeah.
OG: You know, it’s like a big skeleton of Ed McMahon. Some people will [00:22:00] get that joke. Not many people. Not many. Not the younger many.
The younger stackers, not the younger stackers won. Who’s Ed McMahon? I think a hundred is the minimum. Honestly, I think one 10 or one 20 is probably a, a good number also.
Joe: Yeah, I do think for planning purposes, basing your planning on higher than average life expectancy, I think is a prudent thing to do. I think it’s an incredibly prudent thing to deal, sucks to
OG: plan into 90 and C 91,
Doug: right?
So much, so much of life expectancy has to do with healthcare in your, or like your first 12 years of life, and so our younger stackers have an incredibly likely, I think it’s in very, very likely. That they’re gonna live that long. A lot of the numbers you were talking about, Joe, were based on if you’re 65 now and, and healthcare has only improved for people who are now 35 and 40.
Joe: Oh sure. I remember the numbers from 20 years ago, Gail. She, he’s, uh, numbers about longevity then and thinking, oh my goodness, the number of people could live be a [00:23:00] hundred and these numbers are way more optimistic than, than Gail’s were back then.
OG: Well, I’m kind of curious and I don’t, and I’m not, I, I don’t really.
Know how this all works, but when they say like, Hey, if you’re 65 or whatever, and they say life expectancy of a, you know, a male in the United States is 77 years. Does that take into consideration the, to Doug’s point, the zero to 12 year olds who, infant mortality and all that sort of stuff, and once you take that out, it’s a much bigger number.
I’m not sure. I thought I had read something about that. My grandfather was born six days ago in 1919. Now he’s passed away, but he was 97. And you think about all the stuff that he had to go through as, as a, you know, as a, as a child that doesn’t even exist anymore. Not, not just the disease and, and all that other sort of stuff, but just the hard life.
How hard was it to be a 2-year-old in 1921, you know, versus a 2-year-old in 2025, you know? So to your point, Doug, there’s the [00:24:00] healthcare that happens in the first dozen years of your life and how that affects it. I think there’s also some longevity stuff, and if you look and you say, well, grandma lived to be 80, like Grandma was born in 1920, bro.
Like, yeah. Like how old would grandma live to be today? You’re gonna be that grandma. Right. 2020 where people are like, oh yeah, my grandma was born in, you know, 2004, you know, or whatever. It’s like, mm-hmm. Think of all the healthcare advances and the rate of change there. I think
Doug: you’re gonna be climbing the Matterhorn when you’re 78 years old.
OG: Time Magazine had a thing in the early two thousands that said that they thought based on healthcare rates have changed, that the first baby to be, or the first person to be 200 had already been born. That was a Time Magazine article.
Joe: No. Yeah, it’s so important. I think the strategies here on this one, again, planning on a higher than average, longer than average life expectancy.
I think delaying social security. For 99% of us, I see this woman on TikTok all the time saying, don’t delay your social security. I think everything we just talked about says you [00:25:00] should. Yeah, I wouldn’t. Social Security, creating some income floors. You talked about longevity insurances, OG for late in life.
I think, uh, we talked earlier about withdrawal strategy. You know, not being willy-nilly with your withdrawal strategy and your nilly God. Well look and then I think planning your healthcare in that long-term care. We’ve had a lot of great questions lately from stackers on past episodes about long-term care.
I think that’s, uh, super important. I thought the headline on this piece, as you guys can tell, was ridiculous. But I do think that the piece itself, not too bad from Go Banking rates, we’ll link to it in the show notes at Stacking Benjamins. Com, they destroy your retirement. Coming up the second half of today’s show, we go into popery mode.
We had one piece that we talked about the first half of the show. Well now we’re gonna do our TikTok minute, we have a second opinion for a stacker in the back porch. But before that, we always take a quick break for Doug’s trivia questions so you [00:26:00] can be smarter than everybody else at the virtual water cooler on Zoom.
Doug, what do we got today, man?
Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s Mobs neighbor Duggan. Today we’re celebrating the birthday of a famous singer and now entrepreneur. I’ll share clues and you tell me if you know who this Benjamin Stacking woman is. While she’s not known by this name, she was born Alicia Beth Moore in 1979 in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
She joined several bands in the Philadelphia area as a teen, but it was in 2000 that her career began to move with the release of her first album. Can’t Take Me Home, but it was her second album. Misunderstood, I think I said that right. There’s a Z in there and there’s exclamation points, but it was in 2001 that turned her career into a rocket ship.
She’s received multiple Grammy awards for her music and Billboard even called her [00:27:00] Woman of the Year in 2013. Today when not touring, she works in her Santa Barbara based vineyard. Okay, stackers, who is our mystery woman. I’ll be back with the answer right after I go dye my hair. What color should I go with?
Hey there, stackers. I’m punk. Rock trivia purveyor and guy who knows punks, don’t use the word purveyor. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we’re talking about a birthday woman who’s an award-winning singer and songwriter and who owns a winery in Santa Barbara County. Who is she? Well, that would be none other than Pink.
Big fan of the show. She is. Pink’s a fan of the show, Joe. Of course she is. That’s amazing. Happy birthday Pink from your friend Doug. The first appetizer today at the Sizzler is on me. ’cause I know you’re probably a little tight on money right now. And now two guys who are [00:28:00] just like a pill, Joe and og.
Joe: So fun pink working in the winery.
Could you imagine? Working alongside pink stomping grapes
Doug: like Lucille Ball
Joe: stomping grapes.
Doug: Did you
Joe: just like
Doug: that? Did, I mean, that’s a classic episode that, you know, even it’s way before all of us, right? The Lucille Ball thing. But we’ve all seen Christopher of Ec, but it, it, it comes up occasionally, like on reels or whatever where Lucille Ball in one episode and whenever they filmed the show, 1915 or something, but they’re in Italy and she’s in this huge.
Wooden vat of grapes, stomping grapes. And there’s another woman in there who’s Italian and Lucy doesn’t speak Italian. And allegedly they got into a real fight. Like if you watch that clip, they’re like smashing grapes into each other’s faces. That was a real fight that they just let it run because they were like, this is great tv.
But, uh, check it out next time. If you wanna see, uh, I don’t [00:29:00] know, early version of mud wrestling on tv. Maybe the first episode ever. You can cut all that. I just thought that was great trivia.
It’s, it is. Trust me. It’s great. I know.
Joe: And on that note, it’s time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we shine a light on a, uh, TikTok or who’s either saying something brilliant or. Air quotes. Brilliant. Uh, this one was sent to us from stacker. Colin. Colin, uh, well, I won’t tell you what Colin says about this one, Doug, before I ask you if Colin sent us brilliance or air quotes, brilliance.
Doug: Yeah, no, col. I mean, Collins generally are pretty smart, actually. Shockingly smart people as a whole, if your name is Collins. So I think this is really good. I think this is brilliant. Well,
Joe: let’s see. Did Stacker Collins send us something brilliant today? This is actually YouTube short, so same, same, but on, uh, YouTube.
Let’s, let’s [00:30:00] hear what, uh, this guy is talking about, which is some exchange traded funds you should hold for the rest of your life.
trailer: I only picked four ETFs to hold forever. Here are the four of the safest ETFs you can buy in 2025 and hold it for life. The first one is VTI. This one gives you ownership in the entire US stock market.
That’s every major sector, every big player, so think Apple, Amazon, Tesla, all in one fund. It’s average at eight to 11% a year over the last decade. And as the economy grows, BTI grows with it. The second is VOO. It strikes the top 500 public companies in the country. So think Microsoft Meta and JP Morgan returns are solid here at 10 to 12% per year on average.
The third one is QQQ, and this one’s tech heavy. I think Nvidia, apple, and Google. It moves Craker and the swings are bigger, but the upside has been massive 18% a year over the last decade. If you believe in AI automation and the next wave of disruption, then QQQ is your bet. Number four on the list is ibit.
Ibit is all about Bitcoin exposure. It’s designed to give you straightforward, efficient access to Bitcoin through an ETF structure. With ibit, you get to participate in Bitcoin’s upside with lower hassle. If you believe Bitcoin is digital [00:31:00] gold, then Ibit is your simplified play.
Joe: Oh boy. So he gives us four VTIV, o, o, Q, Q, Q and Ibit. Three of the first four, probably own 65% of the same stuff, maybe 70% of the same stuff. But hold these forever. Why don’t we do ourselves a favor and pick one of those top three, and then just throw the rest of your Bitcoin and you’re good.
OG: I am trying to think of a fun analogy here, but I was thinking, um, I, let’s have a, a peach, a peach pie, and some peach cobbler, and they’re all different. I dunno if you guys know this or not. One has a little extra sugar, one has a little extra, you know, crust, but one time the crust is crumbled up and added with brown sugar and all mixed together.
Mm.
Doug: It’s all different.
OG: That’s what
Doug: I want.
OG: No, me too. [00:32:00]
Doug: Gimme that one.
OG: So they’re all kind of the same. I think the return numbers are a little misleading. I mean, I, I
Joe: believe accurate. Well, and I also think, yeah, you know,
OG: seems a little misleading
Joe: in most markets. And for most investors, I’m using the top two of these fairly interchangeably.
And then the third. It’s just if I want it just slightly spicier, right? If I’m buying the Nasdaq and Tech, I’m still getting large companies, I’m still getting some huge companies
OG: and it’s the same stuff. Go. It’s in, it’s the same stuff that’s in the s and p. It’s, it’s still gonna go up and down. This, I would much rather see a small company position here.
I would much rather see some international fun fact about digital gold. This is, uh, I, I love that analogy. Uh, since 1980. Because why not use 1980? Seems like a reasonable timeframe. Gold has returned about four, 4.4 x, give or take since 1980. And the consumer price index since [00:33:00] 1980 is about what? What do you think about
Joe: 4.4?
OG: 4.4? Yeah. Weird. 4.4. So like it’s a great hedge for inflation. Of course, if you take stocks and don’t count dividends, because why would you wanna count those? Stocks are up 51 x since 1980, so. Which one is a better hedge of inflation, the thing that barely kept its lips above water or the thing that is 12 or 13 x what inflation is.
But I digress. I don’t know why that’s, uh, I, I, I don’t know that gold and Bitcoin are at all related to one another in any way, shape, or form.
Joe: Well, and we’ve seen, and there still isn’t enough data on crypto to paint a full picture yet. Like it’s still becoming more evident every day as we get back testing.
But man, it sure moves. Sure moves a lot when the stock market moves og. Yeah. Doesn’t seem to be the huge diversifier that people were hoping for.
OG: Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know what to think about it.
Joe: Let’s pivot to a [00:34:00] segment we have not done in a wild pivot. Pivot, cold, pivot.
OG: Some people.
Joe: You ready?
OG: Get that one too.
It’s
Joe: time for us to give a second opinion. You remember this sound effect, second opinion. Wow.
opener: Okay.
Joe: You thought the beginning was dub and gloom destroy
OG: right there. And then the second opinion is some coffee here. So make it snappy.
Joe: I was in
OG: another
Joe: online forum, and of course, uh, I don’t understand why people go to another online forum in instead of mom’s basement to ask questions like this.
Doug: How many online forums are you lurking in?
Joe: Uh, several. And they eat your soul, uh, questions like this.
So. S-N-X-F-X and SCHX through Schwab have split. Doesn’t matter, by the way, for the purpose of the story, what those are. You don’t have to go look up what they are. All right. Per shareholder meeting, quote, shareholders will receive 10 shares in exchange for every one share they currently own. [00:35:00] The distribution yield is 1.1368% for SNS.
XFX, so I’ll have to claim the distribution is earning. I now have 7044.08 shares that I’ll have to pay taxes on this. I have to claim this on my income tax every year is distributions. Should I be reinvesting this money somewhere else? The shares have split OG and the person is worried that now they’re going to have to pay taxes.
Well, let’s give them a second opinion. How many taxes are due og When a stock splits,
OG: the question is, do I owe taxes because it went from a hundred to 10 or 10 to a hundred.
Joe: The way it was worded, it’s a very long question, but the way it was worded was, I think I’m screwed. ’cause now I have to pay a ton of tax.
OG: Uh, no, that doesn’t have any effect. Your cost basis is adjusted equally. And if you were getting. $2 a share of [00:36:00] dividends, and you get a 10 to one split. Now you get 20 cents per share of dividends. It’s the same. You get the same amount. The company didn’t make or lose any money by doing this. They just made it more affordable for people to buy.
Actually, I think you’re gonna see less stock splits in the future because of fractional shares. Most of the reason companies mm-hmm. Make their stock price. The way they can kind of control that was because it made the most sense, or, or a normal lot of purchases was a hundred shares. So back in the old days when you said, Hey, I wanna buy a a lot of apple, it didn’t mean a lot like one word.
It mean it was two words a lot, which was a hundred shares of Apple. Right. So if Apple traded to 500 bucks a share, now all of a sudden, you know, you gotta come up with 50 grand. To buy a hundred shares. Well, if Apple stock was trading at 50 bucks, then your, your a hundred shares would be 5,000. Right. It was a lot easier.
A lot more. It was basically
Doug: like retail pricing for what the market would bear is the reason they would do it is to create a more palatable [00:37:00] price. Yeah. It
OG: was a easier number to swallow, right? It was like, oh, I can. I can buy $2,000 worth of this stock and I get a hundred shares. Or yesterday I could buy $2,000 worth of stock and I got 10 shares.
It feels better to have a hundred. I don’t know why, but it just, right.
Doug: Yep.
OG: It was just, you know, the gummy bears are smaller, but you have the same poundage of gummy bears. I was gonna say,
Doug: that’s what the Dollar store Dollar General does that they just reduce the quantity of gummy bears in the bag.
OG: Yeah.
So I think you’re gonna see that. Less, I don’t wanna say fee, you know, a lot less, ’cause I said a lot. But I think you’re gonna see that happen fewer times in the future because you can buy fractional shares now on most brokerage platforms. So the affordability issue doesn’t much matter, although there’s a little bit of a psychological issue here.
But no, at the end of the day, when you get a stock split that doesn’t do anything to anything, that’s just, uh, it’s a big non-event. It might freak you out for a second because it takes a half a day to update the, the systems across the board. So you might see that you. You know, have a 99% loss in your portfolio on one position for [00:38:00] a few minutes, and I’d be like, what happened?
But it’ll all get adjusted later. So no additional taxes on stock splits. Now if a company buys another company out. And so that’s what I thought you were talking about, Joe. I thought this was two companies and one bought the other one and they were giving some shares and some of it was, you know, now that’s a different scenario, right?
If your company gets bought out and in exchange for that buyout, you get some cash or you get some dividends, or you get a number of shares for the new company and some cash, then there could be some taxation there perhaps. But um, that’s a different thing.
Joe: Yeah, this is just, uh, stock splits Schwab doing splits with a couple of their different funds, so good news.
Good news for, uh, nobody because you have the same amount of money that you had before this point. Same amount, but it does sound really cool when you get it. Wait a minute, I’m gonna have 10 shares. Chaing, oh, bottom line. Didn’t change. Thanks for sending that in. I gotta thank, uh, Julie who sent that to me and said, Hey, you might wanna go take a look at this so that you can give a second opinion.
I just need an excuse to play that opinion. [00:39:00] To play the sound effect again. Uh, let’s move you out on the back porch. This is the community part of the show. And, uh, Doug, we’ve had some community involvement lately.
Doug: Uh, yeah, thanks for the cue, Joe, because one of the things I wanna talk about is stacker Janelle, who did something that we often ask stackers to do.
She wore her t-shirt too. Well, basically out in public, but she did it to campfire. Can I know how much you love Campfire It? It sounds like an amazing time. So thanks stacker Janelle for wearing a Stacking Benjamin’s t-shirt. We wanna see more stackers with photos of themselves. I was gonna say in cool places, but you know what?
Grocery stores pretty cool. From snack aisle. That’s a great spot, right? The car wash, wherever, man, I just wanna see Stacking Benjamin’s t-shirts. We’ve got some new ones that are out right Joe? Uh, it’s a great new logo. We’ve got the t-shirts are super high quality. I hear I don’t have one yet. That’s not something that I’m, uh, I.
Uh, [00:40:00] I’m, I’m afforded here as a member of the Stacking Benjamins team, but I’m told that they’re super high quality t-shirts. We wanna see more people like Janelle out in public, uh, with their Stacking Benjamins swag.
Joe: We may have an announcement coming up about Stacking Benjamins swag shortly. We may.
Doug: Hmm?
Joe: We may.
Doug: Um, one thing I know it’s not gonna include me.
Joe: Of course it’ll include you,
Doug: you’ll get to say it.
Joe: Oh, good. Duh. That’ll be fun. Perfect. But Janelle, I hope you had a great time at Campfire. I know that she mentioned that she heard about Campfire Here on the show you go to campfire.org and uh, sign up.
I know I’m signed up for one, uh, next year already to head back to Campfire, so I’ll be at Minneapolis on Labor Day weekend with my son. Nick again, just signed up to join my friend Steven and probably 45 other fun money geeks. Just exactly. Doug’s looking at me like the same way I thought about camp fight before I went.[00:41:00]
I’m like, yeah, a retreat center that’s made for middle school kids.
Doug: You get those watery eggs where like when you look at the tray, like the whole front edge of the tray is just full of that nasty water that leaks out of the powder. It’s like going
Joe: to camp. You’re like, yeah, no, I’m sorry. I’m bougie here than that.
And then I went and I had a blast. It was super, super fun. So. Anyway, camp Phi. Good times.
Doug: Speaking of money geeks, and this happened a couple of weeks ago now in the basement, but I gotta point out. Falcon Horowitz. Oh, this is great. It just sounds like a kid who wore his like leather biker jacket to his piano lessons.
Joe: I met, I met Falcon in Las Vegas and Falcon, you know, Doug just described you perfectly. Is
Doug: is he the, is he the rebellious grandson of Vladimir Horowitz? He’s, anyways, he’s
Joe: Falcon’s a badass.
Doug: How could you not be with a name like Falcon? And he posted in the basement what I thought was one of the nerdiest money posts.[00:42:00]
And, and here’s what I love about it. He’s so awesome. He said his, his wife texted and said, can you heat up some chicken Roth for me? And his reply was, is that where chicken save their post tax Retirement Money? Baba, you’re killing me, Falcon. Oh my god, you’re killing me. And I posted nerd. As was required, right?
Like I didn’t have a choice but to post the nerd, but Philip. Philip m had the right response. Like he just, he won the internet that day. When he said, I believe that is where the term nest egg originated. I’m like, damn, Philip M got me. Which means that
Joe: Philip is also my kind of person, which means both Falcon and Philip get the.
No.
From Homer. Awesome. Fantastic. Uh, stackers, thanks for being you. You guys make this so, so, so fun. And if you know somebody that needs, uh, to know the top four things that [00:43:00] destroy retirement, middle class dreams, or you need to know a little bit about what diversification is and what it is, and it might not be having three large company stock funds and a Bitcoin fund if they need that.
Or if they need to know who the singer is that owns a winery in Santa Barbara, I think they need to know that too. Well refer them to this episode. We end this episode the Way we end Every Stacky Benjamins episode by asking Doug, Doug, what should we have learned on today’s willy-nilly show? I wish you hadn’t have said that
Doug: first.
Take some advice from our headline, your Retirement Nightmare. Let’s change that. If you plot out a course, save money into accounts at work. If possible, make your own, if not, and then course correct. You’re well on your way to retirement dreams. Second, stock splits. If there’s no gain, you won’t owe any taxes.
Relax, but the big lesson. Whenever you’re talking about taxes, be sure to remind Joe’s mom to put a coin in the swear [00:44:00] jar every time she says bad words, because that jar fills up in a hurry. This show is the property of SP podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends.
You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds. Don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.[00:45:00]
opener: Yesterday.
Joe: Cheryl and I went and saw a movie, guys, this stars a gentleman named Austin Butler and a woman named Zoe Kravitz and it’s called Caught Stealing.
trailer: What the Hell Happened?
opener: So [00:46:00] last call, drink ’em if you got ‘
trailer: em. Let’s go back to your place so you can take advantage of my core judgment.
opener: I depend on your poor judgment.
trailer: I wanna know if I can take this seriously.
opener: What do you need to take this seriously?
trailer: Come on kids, get
opener: it rude. Sorry, miss Kitty. Oi. What you doing, Giza? Is that the best you can do?
I’ve gotta fly back to London. I need you to take care of my cat. I like cats. I like dogs. Hey, is rush home? Who are you? Ah, what’s the baby in my head?
trailer: Who did this to that I get what I want or my be stole? Talk from me.
Joe: So even with, uh, with the audio, they set that up beautifully. Austin Butler plays this character who has just a decent life going on. He’s a bartender and he’s got a great girlfriend. [00:47:00] They’re making out in a hallway. The, the old woman tells him to get a room and his neighbor says, Hey, can you watch my cat?
He’s like, sure, yeah, you gotta go back to, he’s gotta go back to London because his dad is dying. And so he takes care of his neighbor’s cat, and the second he agrees to take care of his neighbor’s cat, all of a sudden a bunch of gangsters show up and they’re trying to kill him, and he has no idea why. So he’s trying to avoid being killed while.
Taking care of this cat. No clue why. Everybody wants a piece of him. It’s by director, uh, Darren Aronofsky, who’s done so many phenomenal movies, and a lot of Darren’s movies start off. Uh, I mean our, our small projects, like he just takes this little slice of life and, um, you know, not a marquee. You probably haven’t even, maybe you haven’t even heard of this movie.
It’s just so good. It’s just they take this little thing, this little idea, and they nail it. And those are often my favorite movies, not where they have [00:48:00] this huge, huge budget and this monster, monster, you know, thing going on where they’re trying to save the world from all these superheroes or whatever it might be.
Dude’s just trying to figure out why the hell does everybody want to kill me? There are so many bit parts by phenomenal actors in this. I think Darren Aronofsky’s kind of the same director that, maybe a smaller version of Wes Anderson, where once people have worked with him, they wanna be in his movies, you know?
So you see all, in fact, there is a, there’s even at the very, very end, I think it might even be in the credits. This character that you’ve only heard on the phone over and over and over turns out to be Laura Dern. You only find it out during the credits that it was Laura Dern. These two guys that are part of the Jewish Mafia are big time actors that you’ve seen on huge TV shows.
There’s just all of these phenomenal actors all over the show. The script is great. It is tight. It is a violent [00:49:00] movie. This is an incredibly violent movie, but different than I’ve complained about in the past where, you know, some of the superhero movies, I’m like, oh my God. Just a gratuitous fight scene. I truly don’t care.
Every fight scene and every person that dies in this movie and a lot of people die in this movie, is worth it. The stakes are high and, uh, caught stealing. Caught stealing. It’s funny, it got an 84. On the critic score and it got an 85 on the popcorn score, the audience popcorn score, like they were almost, that’s rare.
They were almost exactly the same score. It’s, it’s because it’s what you see is what you get. And by the way, what would I give it on a scale of one to 100?
Doug: Probably about an 85. Thought it was really, really good. IMDB, it’s at a 7.3 out of 10 on IMDB, but usually there’s a, is there inverse? Ratio between the critic score, right.
And the popcorn score. Yeah. So it’s pretty rare that they line up like that. I’m not a huge Austin Butler fan. I, I think he’s [00:50:00] just, okay. I know they’re trying to make him the next thing. And so as you started to describe this, and as soon as you said his name, I’m like, eh, probably not gonna see this. But then.
You kind of pulled me in and the, you know how much I love trailers that have all the sound effects when we play those. That’s my favorite thing that we did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That’s why I did it. But I love some of the lines, like, let’s go back to my place and take advantage of my bad decisions or something like that.
I depend on your bad decisions. That’s a great line. And then you talked about, you know, kind of. British mob type movies. I’m a sucker for those. So yeah, I might have to put this on the list.
Joe: Well, and just to be clear, it’s not British mobs. This is gonna be New York mobs all coming together. I thought I heard there, it just happens to be a British neighbor, uh, who’s gotta fly back to London because his dad is dying.
Doug: Well, here’s the other thing. The description of this that I’m seeing right now in IMDB says, burned out ex baseball player. Boom, I’m in. Yeah,
Joe: yeah. And there’s, there’s some backstory going on there, but. Just the idea that he’s gotta take care of a cat and all of a sudden everybody’s chasing him. Like, what the hell’s going on is [00:51:00] is really good.
And so it starts off kind of funny. It’s funny ’cause somebody asked us at dinner last night, they said, so would you classify this as a dark comedy? Cheryl and I looked at each other and we said, yeah, really, really, really, really, really dark? Like unbelievably dark. Believe this, this sounds like a guy Richie movie.
It is very closely related to Guy Richie. It’s not as snappy dialogue as it’s a little more subtle than a guy Richie. I mean, guy Richie is a little over the top, right? So this is a little less over the top, A little more subtle, but man, good stuff. You guys would both like this movie. I think you both like caught stealing.
Doug: Put it on the list, og.
Joe: I have nothing to add.
I can either confirm nor deny that I might like this movie.
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