You don’t have to command a cruise ship (or a boardroom) to lead with purpose. On this episode of The Stacking Benjamins Show, Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug welcome Richard Fain, longtime chairman and former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, for a conversation that’s not about corporate leadership… but about life leadership.
Richard shares timeless lessons he learned from decades steering one of the world’s most innovative companies—lessons that apply just as powerfully to parenting, coaching your kid’s soccer team, running a PTA fundraiser, or simply trying to create more joy at home. You’ll hear how to dream bigger about your own life, build a culture of kindness and excellence in small groups, and turn the ordinary moments around you into opportunities to “deliver the WOW.”
Of course, this wouldn’t be the basement without a few money detours. The crew also breaks down new 401(k) rules and annuity updates, debates whether tax flexibility beats fancy planning, and celebrates Doug’s birthday with trivia, laughter, and a few movie reviews along the way.
By the end, you’ll walk away inspired to bring a little more vision, creativity, and generosity into every corner of your world. No cruise ship required.
What You’ll Learn
- How to lead from wherever you are: Richard’s lessons on building strong teams, communities, and families. No corner office needed.
- Turning the ordinary into extraordinary: Simple ways to “deliver the WOW” at home, work, or anywhere people count on you.
- Dreaming bigger about your life: Why bold vision isn’t just for CEOs; it’s for anyone looking to create meaning and momentum.
- Financial updates you can use: New 401(k) rules, annuity insights, and practical tips to strengthen your plan.
- The lighter side of leadership: Trivia, birthday celebrations, and a few fun detours (because we can’t resist).
Questions for the Basement
How can dreaming a little bigger change the way you approach your next financial or personal goal?
What’s one way you could “deliver the WOW” in your own life this week?
Who’s a leader in your everyday world (at home, work, or your community) who’s made an impact on you?
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Mentor: Richard Fain
Big thanks to Richard Fain for joining us today. To learn more about Richard, visit Richard Fain – About. Grab yourself a copy of the book Delivering the Wow: Culture as Catalyst for Lasting Success
Our Headline
- A new rule means some 401(k) contributions will no longer be tax-deferred. Here’s who will be affected (CNN Business)
Doug’s Trivia
- “On today’s date back in 1860, Abraham Lincoln received a letter from an 11-year-old girl encouraging him to do what—which Lincoln said he would not do?”
Have a question for the show?
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Other Mentions
Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday when we’ll share tactics, strategies, and philosophical ideas on today’s roundtable discussion with our money geek friends!
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Gold Prices Hit All-Time Highs (What’s That Mean To Us?) SB1747
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] trailer: It is easy to grin when your ship comes in and you’ve got the stock market beat. The man worthwhile is the man who can smile when his shorts are too tight in the seat. [00:00:19] trailer: Okay, cookie to be honored. [00:00:27] trailer: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:41] trailer: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan, let me be the first to welcome you to the Good ship. Better Money Habits. Sure. Instead of the Lido deck, we have canned peaches and the hot water heater rattles so much. It gives a great spa experience. But today we welcome a guy who knows how to deliver the wow and will teach you the same. [00:00:59] trailer: He’s the longtime chairman and former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group, Richard Fa. In our headline segment, what do advisors think about options? We’ll share a recent piece on the topic along with a primer on how options work and whether you should think about using them yourself. And now two guys who had an option to podcast today and grabbed it because they’re excited about bringing the wow. [00:01:25] trailer: It’s Joe and, oh, [00:01:39] Joe: hey there stackers and happy Wednesday to you. So glad you’re here. Sit back and relax ’cause you just found your home. For the next hour we’re, we’re gonna have some fun as we hopefully with the help of Richard Thine, we wow you. But the guy who wows us every day here in Mom’s basement, it’s Mr. Og. How are you brother? [00:02:01] Joe: Well, what’s happening? Hey, Doug. Thought so. Certainly we were coming to him. [00:02:05] trailer: I did like what? [00:02:07] Joe: He’s gonna say my name. Wait a minute. So, og, did he say primer? Did you say primer? [00:02:13] OG: Yeah. That’s not, that’s not right, but, okay. [00:02:16] trailer: No, Doug, I did say primer. That is how, like, if you have an introductory book in an educational setting, it’s primer, not primer. [00:02:25] trailer: I, [00:02:26] Joe: I don’t know. Ochi, I think we’re, we’re off to bad start today. We had a great start on Monday by getting you all riled up. But this whole primer thing, I don’t think I’m done with that. I don’t think it’s right. Okay. I don’t know. But what I do [00:02:39] trailer: know, you guys talk your fancy financial stuff and I’ll go look it up. [00:02:43] trailer: Here’s what [00:02:44] Joe: I do know. I do know that, you know, a lot of people talk about they don’t like their job and they don’t like the work that they do. Richard Fain is a guy who believes in community and collaboration and, uh, built a company that’s known for wowing guests and customers and wowing even employees of the company. [00:03:05] Joe: So we’re gonna talk to the longtime chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean. You know, there, there’s a certain wow no matter what industry you’re in, og I think that even in financial planning, that people think, okay, well that’s all about the numbers. There still has to be a little customer service aspect to it. [00:03:23] Joe: There’s gotta be, there’s gotta be some fun. Yeah. I remember reading a book back in the nineties called All Businesses Show Business and talking about, you know, whether you drive a UPS truck, you’re working on a line somewhere. There still is a. There’s still a wow factor to working with your boss, working with a spouse, working with, uh, it’s like [00:03:43] OG: how Doug thinks every day. [00:03:44] OG: We’re like, wow, I’m, we’re working with Doug. Wow. It’s not the wow we’re looking for, buddy. [00:03:48] Joe: It is weird how we’ll put a different emphasis on the Wow. Wow. [00:03:54] OG: So, wow, wow. Can you believe Doug did that? Wow. [00:04:00] Joe: Richard Fain was for a long time the chairman and CEO of ROA Caribbean Group, but today he’s in mom’s basement talking about the, wow. [00:04:09] Joe: So before we get to Richard, we have a couple sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on. You’re not gonna pay anything for today’s mentor or the rest of the show, so we’re gonna hear from them. And then coming down the stairs to Bomb’s basement, Richard Fain. [00:04:32] Joe: And I am super happy. He’s on his way down to the basement having a seat. Richard Paint joins us. How are you man? I am terrific. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, I’m super happy you’d come down to the basement and talk about Wow. ’cause hey, what’s better than taking a cruise and getting some wow right [00:04:50] Richard: in your life? [00:04:50] Richard: Well, it, it’s absolutely true, Joe. You know, the whole concept of delivering the wow, it’s what we do. And the, the term came up by accident, but we really appreciated the fact that that is what our people do each and every day. It’s big things, but it’s small things and altogether it gives people amazing vacation. [00:05:10] Joe: When I think about, wow, Richard, I think about two things I think about. Good surprise, which is what you deliver. Surprise and delight, right? Have delivered. But I also think about bad shocks, right? There’s times when I go, wow, and there’s times when I go, oh, wow. Either one of us have both kinds of those, like the surprise bill that came up, or a job change on the bad side, or something unexpected. [00:05:32] Joe: When in your own life did wow go first from a reaction to something that you write about here. Something you could create. [00:05:40] Richard: Well, thank you for starting this with such a negative concept. Uh, [00:05:46] Joe: it’s all [00:05:47] Richard: uphill from here, but you know, it’s good because we do have to understand this is what life is all about and our ability to handle, I would say, woes rather than wows is just as important as our ability to do something special for good things. [00:06:02] Richard: So I’m really happy you’ve raised that. And clearly the cruise industry has had a lot of things. We’ve had nine 11, we’ve had COVID, we’ve had other bad things happen to us. One of the things that I talk about is how important, uh, the culture is to our ability to handle those and to take something which could be pretty, pretty negative and make it either hopefully much less negative or even a positive. [00:06:29] Richard: And I think if you create a culture where you’re, you’re never gonna accept that things can’t be made better. And, and that’s true. If they’re good, they can be made better. And if they’re. Uh, bad. You wanna make them less bad or even to turn it to good. So that’s what culture is all about. And I’ve been blessed because the people at Royal Caribbean are just so obsessive about creating the wow in a good way that that has made us been very successful. [00:06:59] Joe: It doesn’t happen on its own, Richard. I mean, you had to do a lot of stuff to create that culture. Certainly there was a culture when you first got there. It sounded to me like it was an unstable ship when you first got there, but how do you turn this, um, this, you know, laissez-faire thing into intentional culture where we’re building? [00:07:17] Joe: Wow. [00:07:18] Richard: Well, you’re right. And I love the fact that you use the word in intentional because intentionality is a key part of it. So many people say. Oh yes, we have this great culture as though this is something that just happens on its own. To get a a culture that drives success, you really need to go at it with intentionality. [00:07:37] Richard: You really need to say, I want our culture to be like this, and you need every day to keep working to make that happen. It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by intentional, consistent, focused effort and focused effort. Looking at a long term. ’cause in the short term, you can’t change the culture. [00:07:57] Richard: Actually, I was fortunate that the culture that I inherited was actually a very strong one and our focus has been on making it even better. Royal Caribbean was founded by Ed Stephan with a, a view to transforming cruises, and he was successful in that. And then we took that and we went one step further and said, we wanna do more than just be a better cruise line. [00:08:20] Richard: We wanna be a really strong provider of vacations for the vacation market. And the result has been that the company has gone from a market value of $550 million in 1988 to over $90 billion. $90 billion. That’s with a B. It’s hard to even say that today. And I really ascribe a lot of that success to the culture, the people that made that happen. [00:08:45] Joe: You mentioned in this work that a guy named Kenneth Tripp mentored you early on and really I think gave you real feeling for what culture could be and most of our stackers. Richard, they don’t have formal mentors, but they do have people watching them. Right. Maybe kids, maybe coworkers. What’s one thing that you learned from Trip That we can all apply to mentoring or being mentored in our everyday life. [00:09:06] Joe: To get more Wow. Or develop Wow. In other people. [00:09:10] Richard: Well, Ken was the head of the company in my previous employer and he really did focus on the longer term, and I think that’s something it’s very hard to do in in, in, especially in today’s world. It was hard to do way back then. Today it’s really difficult because the pressures, what are you gonna do about tomorrow? [00:09:29] Richard: What have you done for me lately? This is especially relevant to a cruise line because any decision we make, I never made a decision that had any impact on the next 12 or 24 months. You know, we wanna build a new ship that takes five years. We wanna create a new island destination that takes seven years. [00:09:50] Richard: Everything we do is so much in the future. He was one of the early ones that really focused on what are we going long term, what’s our goal? What’s our North star? [00:09:59] Joe: Well, and I love that because of the fact that, you know, I think about Richard in my own life, or even the stackers that listened to this. Like, you know, you, you’re looking at what am I gonna have for dinner next Wednesday, or, or what’s this next project that I’m working on, right? [00:10:14] Joe: You have this early thing, early decision in your book it well, and in your career where you have to make a decision. Royal Caribbean at that point has three ships. They are not very large, and the head of Royal Caribbean comes to you and I think Kenneth and says, Hey, I wanna cut this ship in half. Which, which by the way, I never knew this could be a thing. [00:10:40] Joe: I don’t know if you did, but I didn’t think this could be a thing. I wanna cut it in half. I wanna put a new middle in it, and then we wanna kind of fuse it together and make it bigger, which is crazy. But at the time. I felt like Royal Caribbean’s dealing with the same thing that our stackers are dealing with in their everyday life. [00:10:57] Joe: I don’t know if I can go without income from this ship for the next few months. You know, this might be the same thing, guys, in your life as a stacker of deciding to go back to college for six months or take some training classes or whatever. I’m gonna pay for this thing. I’m not gonna make any money during that time. [00:11:14] Joe: That’s the short term. But Kenneth, like you said, said, let’s think long-term. How difficult was that to make this long-term decision and forego the short-term, you know, cash cow you had going on? [00:11:27] Richard: Well, Joe, I think you’ve said it very well, the temptation to just say, look, we have this cash cow, it’s generating money every year. [00:11:34] Richard: Why? Why mess with success? If it’s not broken, why fix it? It is interesting you talk about it as a small ship At the time, um, that 720 passenger ship seemed like it was an enormous vessel, and to go to a thousand passengers seemed almost unbelievable. So the first issue, I mean, just the shock of the idea that you can cut a ship in half and make it bigger was mind boggling. [00:12:01] Richard: Frankly, it was mind boggling back then. It’s still mind boggling. I don’t know how they knew. Had you heard of [00:12:06] Joe: that before, Richard? [00:12:07] Richard: Oh, absolutely not. But it was so successful, we ended up doing it three times with three different ships. So it clearly worked. The guests liked it, it made more money, but it did mean making that short term sacrifice, and that was painful. [00:12:23] Richard: Painful for a while. You had to keep in mind where you were going because we could’ve carried on. But if we had, we would’ve been, we wouldn’t have had gone through that short-term pain, but at the end we’d be, eh, eh, we’re another, another cruise line. Maybe a slightly better cruise line, but nothing really changed. [00:12:45] Richard: If you want to really change things, you have to accept change, and you have to do that with intentionality. You also have to make sure that everybody is along for the ride, that it’s not something you’re imposing on people, that people understand why they’re involved in the decision. They may not get the final say, but they need to be involved in that decision, and that’s the culture that drives innovation. [00:13:08] Richard: That’s the culture that drives success. [00:13:10] Joe: I love how you painted that picture, Richard, because the feeling I got was there was this inflection point where we can be small and unique, which is pretty badass. We could be big and bold, which is the way you decided, but the way you were headed was. Middle of mediocre. [00:13:25] Joe: No, nobody on earth wants middle of mediocre. [00:13:28] Richard: Well, it would’ve been fine. I mean, we would’ve been an even more successful cruise line. We would’ve been fine. But fine in our vocabulary is not a compliment. And if you are going to really move forward, you have to have transformational ideas. And the result has been, we’ve gone from being an excellent small cruise line to today. [00:13:52] Richard: And we, we, as I said, our goal, our North Star was not to be a cruise line, but to be a vacation provider. And today we are larger than any hotel chain. We’re larger than any airline. We’re larger than any travel provider you can think of. And it’s all because we said, oh, what’s our focus is long-term, not short-term. [00:14:13] Richard: And our focus is to have a culture that drives long-term transformation. [00:14:18] Joe: What’s powerful to me though, Richard, as you say, that is in striking to me. Is that as a passion project on the side, a friend and I have a travel podcast. It’s not big, we don’t market it. It is just clearly a passion project. I don’t know Royal Caribbean that way. [00:14:34] Joe: I know, I don’t know. Royal Caribbean is huge and the biggest, I know them as good at what they do. Like that’s the reputation, not big. So to be able to fuse those two things together is pretty powerful. [00:14:46] Richard: Yes. But if you’re good, you get bigger because people want to go. And that was it. It’s not science for its own sake, it’s quality for its own sake. [00:14:55] Richard: It’s excellence. It’s excellence in all we do. And excellence and innovation drives growth and success, and that’s what I think we’re all looking to achieve. [00:15:06] Joe: It’s striking. New podcasters often ask me, how do I grow my audience? And my answer always is, have a better podcast. Right? I mean, it’s the same. It’s the same. [00:15:14] Joe: Same exact [00:15:14] Richard: thing. It’s exactly the same thing. How do we grow a cruise line? We have better ships, better crew, better operations, a better experience, and the growth comes. You were [00:15:26] Joe: asked to lead a steering committee to do at that time, which was the next big piece of magic at Royal Caribbean to build an even bigger vessel, right? [00:15:36] Joe: You get all these smart people in a room, Richard, that you have to lead. I love this idea of kind of a board of directors, a steering committee. I think we all need that in our life. We need to be the dumbest person in the room, right? But these people often disagree. How do you manage having these smart people with valid opinions disagree on where the company’s headed? [00:15:57] Richard: I think you really put your finger on something because we really value passion. We really do value where people care about stuff. The corollary to that is sometimes they care too much and they say, I’ve, you know, I, I, I’m really passionate about this. It really has to be this way. I think what we found is, this is an important part of our culture, is that we talk these things through, everybody plays devil with Advocate. [00:16:21] Richard: Everybody gets to weigh in on the subject, so there’s really good input into it. And then. Again, leadership does have to come to the fore, and leadership has to make an ultimate decision and a key to our success I think, is also that we don’t simply make compromises. We don’t try and please everybody. We look at it, we get everybody input, and then having everybody’s input, we make a decision. [00:16:48] Richard: And the culture is such that people trust that decision. One of the key metrics that we look at is how do our people trust their bosses? If you trust that your point of view has been. Considered and thought through, and the organization’s going a different way. You say, okay, that’s where we’re going. And we all understand that. [00:17:12] Richard: Just like on a crew boat, I may think that a longer stroke is better for me, but if I’m doing a long stroke and you’re doing a short stroke, this skull isn’t going very far. So the coxswain has to decide how frequently we should be pulling and we have to follow. And that’s the same thing in business. We can discuss later on whether we should have a longer stroke or a shorter stroke. [00:17:37] Richard: But when we’re doing it, everybody has to pull in the same direction. And fortunately, that’s part of our culture. [00:17:44] Joe: Is there a technique, Richard, that a good leader will use to make sure that everybody’s pulling in the right direction? Let’s say I’ve got a talented person and they wanna do things differently. [00:17:53] Joe: It’s easy to have hurt feelings, right? I had a friend one time early in my career when I was at American Express who said, Joe, you need to put a little velvet on your hammer, right? ’cause I, I had a pretty strong hammer, Richard. But how do you do that where you’re not acquiescing and trying to please everybody, but you’re keeping the talent on board when they still might disagree? [00:18:13] Richard: Well, it’s always a challenge. And you know, I think actually a key point and, and you touched on it, a key point is this isn’t a cookbook. This isn’t, here’s the trick of you say things to people in exactly this way and you effectively trick them into going along with you. No, you make them feel valued. You make sure because they are valued, you want that input and you do look at that input, but then you have to look at it all together because if we’re not aligned, we’re not gonna achieve our goal. [00:18:46] Richard: And we do it by example. So it isn’t so much. That we’re, uh, and I’ll give you an example of how we’ve done that. For example, at one point we were considering what became an ice skating rink on board the ships. Most of the people looked at it and said, well, an ice skating rink is pretty far out there. [00:19:05] Richard: People will like it, but it’s a horrific technical challenge and it’s ridiculously expensive. So we’ll sort of make a compromise and use artificial ice, which is essentially Teflon, and you can skate on those artificial ice, but you don’t get that magic, you don’t get that frictionless, smooth, graceful skating that you see on real ice. [00:19:33] Richard: And so we made the decision, no, either we’re gonna do this right, or we’re not gonna do it either we’re gonna do this with real ice. That real skaters will say is the white thing, or we’ll do something else. Once we made that decision, everybody came on board and everybody said, well, I, I hope this works, but this is what we’re doing. [00:19:56] Richard: And the imagination that went into making, overcoming the technical challenges and frankly overcoming the financial challenges was terrific. When it was done, people were blown away. I mean, who puts a ice skating rink on a cruise ship? It, it, it epitomizes what’s different about Royal Caribbean, and it was so successful that we are now, I believe, the largest employer of figure skaters in America. [00:20:24] Richard: So how do you convince people? Well, you do it by example. You don’t do it by using a hammer. [00:20:33] Joe: How fun is that, by the way? Doing something people say you can’t do, you can’t put a skating rink, Richard in a cruise ship. Are you crazy? Who gets [00:20:41] Richard: to do the kinds of things? I’ve had the best job in the world. Who gets to play? [00:20:45] Richard: You know, I like toys as much as the next person, but my toys cost $2 billion. I mean, who gets to do stuff like that? And one of the beauties of dealing with billion of dollar kind of assets is that you can attract the best talent because everybody wants to participate in that. And once you establish a reputation that you are willing to try weird and wonderful things, we are able to attract terrific talent that can help us overcome the technical challenges, the financial challenges. [00:21:19] Richard: We found a way to do it less in a call us costly way. So success breeds success. [00:21:25] Joe: Yeah, that’s what I was gonna, I wanted to pause there for a second, Richard, for our stackers to make sure they hear that, that. You might not get the best talent right away, but certainly as you build this reputation for being consistent and consistently good and looking for the best and and creating a great product, talent wants to work with you, [00:21:41] Richard: and talent is our key. [00:21:43] Richard: So the success also helped us attract the best people. And the truth is, it’s the people. It’s the people, it’s the people. It’s the people. And the people create the culture. It’s not a question of a few tricks or seven principles of successful business people. It is a consistency and alignment all towards us, a given North Star. [00:22:10] Richard: And it really does work. You see it all the time. [00:22:14] Joe: You do have a magical way of approaching this though, Richard, that you bring up that I thought was brilliant. We often surround ourself with. People that think like us, you have a contrary opinion to that you call it, I think cross-fertilization. Can you talk for a second about this idea of cross-fertilization? [00:22:32] Richard: Uh, actually that’s been a very important benefit to rural Caribbean and I, I think it somewhat reflects my own career. Uh, I started out in a fairly narrow field of finance and found that that really gave me entree to other areas, and that made my life more interesting, but also meant I could be a better contributor. [00:22:52] Richard: We’ve always said we want people not to go purely in a vertical way, not to. I go from this job and I get a promotion, and I now become my ex position’s boss, and I keep moving up the track, but I go to different things. And so you look at any of our people and you see that they have. Almost all been involved with other things. [00:23:13] Richard: So Bert Hernandez, who runs now a overseas, he started in finance in the planning department and then he went over to an operations role. Uh, then he became, uh, in charge of investor relations. And so one of the interesting things in that case was he went from managing a department of a whole bunch of people and everybody wants to manage a lot more people. [00:23:36] Richard: And he went to investor relations, which is a two person department. And he went to China of all places and started operating at the operation in China. That’s just one example. Uh, Laura Hodges, who runs, uh, the celebrity brand actually started as our accessibility expert. And so everybody goes from one area to another, and the moves aren’t always vertical. [00:23:59] Richard: They’re sometimes horizontal, they’re lateral moves. Then when we get in a room and somebody starts to say to me, well, in my area, this is the way we do it. And I’m able to say, um, I sat in your seat. I know what that is. Don’t tell me that this is how we can do it. And you can actually have a dialogue instead of each silo saying, this is my responsibility and don’t bother me. [00:24:28] Joe: It’s funny how, uh, successful people often, you know, if one person says something, Richard, as you know, it is their thing and it might’ve been great for them, but when you hear several successful people say things. It truly is, I think maybe a truism in life. And, and Oscar Munoz, the, uh, the former CEO of United said something similar. [00:24:47] Joe: His success in his career was starting out in finance, much like yourself, but then working as an engineer and going back to school and becoming an engineer. Now I could see both parts and then working in human resources for a while. And by the time he got to FritoLay, I believe he had all these different ways of looking at a problem and was able to be a better listener because he’d seen all these different areas of the cube. [00:25:11] Richard: And by the way, I’m, I’m sorry, Joe, if I could just make one more thing. Sure. Frankly, your, your life gets better. It’s more interesting if you’ve spent time doing human resources and investor relations and gone to China and now you’re in culinary, and next week you’re in marketing. It’s life’s more interesting and, and don’t we all wanna have fun? [00:25:34] Joe: It’s like a science experiment instead of a drudge, right? Uh, you know, often our stackers look at things. They look at retirement planning, they look at, uh, the next house that they’re gonna buy, whatever it is, of what is that going to cost. One thing I noticed in this project, when you’re trying to deliver, wow, you don’t start, don’t get me wrong, finance is everything right? [00:25:57] Joe: Can we afford it? I think it’s really important, but you begin with what will it deliver? And then can I afford the cost? I would love for you to talk about that. Uh, how do we flip that? How did you flip that? ’cause that I think is a big part of your culture too. How do we deliver and then how do we make the necessary cuts to the budget to make it work? [00:26:19] Richard: Well, the irony is the whole concept of continuous improvement applies not only to make things sexier, but also to make things more efficient. And so. Even though we work hard to provide absolutely the best possible service, the best possible product, our costs are at the best level in our industry. We are in the top rank of costs, and the reason is we put just as much focus on being more efficient. [00:26:50] Richard: For example, we’ve just been working on our project to win on waste. Well, we spend a lot of money on food. We serve 700,000 meals a day. So we certainly spend a whole lot of money on food and a lot of that food gets wasted. People take more. They have a larger, more on their plate. They don’t eat it all. So we started a project a number of years ago called Win on Waste, and we used AI and other materials to figure out how to be more efficient with our food budget. [00:27:21] Richard: Not only for, this was not only for money purposes, but this is also environmentally to be more sound and it’s been. Hugely successful. What we find is if you’re clear on what your objective is, you’re clear on that North Star. The people that we have who are just awesome, did I mention the people are awesome. [00:27:42] Richard: I’ve never heard that from [00:27:43] Joe: you. [00:27:44] Richard: These people, and they care. They might have insinuated it once, and they care. They care, and if they care, they make it happen. So the result is, yes, we are absolutely obsessive about providing the best vacation, but we’re equally obsessive about doing it in a way that makes our vacations affordable. [00:28:04] Richard: And we’ve been successful at both. [00:28:06] Joe: You’ve delivered so many wow moments over the decades, and I’m wondering if there’s one wow moment that makes you grin more than any other Wow you’ve been able to deliver for your customers. [00:28:20] Richard: Yes. It’s not for our customers. If I have to sue one moment, and by the way, it’s been 30 odd years of just, everything’s been wonderful. [00:28:31] Richard: But if I have to say one moment, it was probably in the middle of 2021 when we restarted operations after COVID and we’d gone 18 months with our ship’s idle with no revenue. Our crew at home finally desperate for us and for them to get back operating. And we were the first cruise ship back in the United States to be operating. [00:29:00] Richard: And the very first ship was Celebrity Edge. I went to the vessel that morning. The plan was I would enter through the crew gangway. ’cause of course the main entrance is not open. We’re not, we’re not taking guests at that point. We’re just getting ready for it. And I enter through the gangway and the, the plan is I’m going to go across from the crew gangway to the elevator lift lobby, which is maybe 30, 40 feet away, and then meet all the officers up in the plaza. [00:29:33] Richard: And that plan lasted about 10 seconds till I saw the first crew member. In the end, it took over an hour and a half to go from the shell door to the elevator lobby. It was packed with crew members who were back from vacation. Not vacation. [00:29:56] trailer: Yeah. Or [00:29:57] Richard: back from, that’s a terrible word. It was packed with crew members who had gone through the trauma of the last 18 months. [00:30:06] Richard: We had all gone through the trauma of the 18 months. Everybody had a story. Everybody had tears. Everybody had a camera and we took an awful lot of selfies that literally an hour and a half to get however long from the, the doorway to the elevator was mind blowing. And, and you know, there was a lot of things. [00:30:30] Richard: These people have gone through hell, we’d all gone through hell and you could see why this could be just a time for expressing bitterness. And it wasn’t. They were joyous. They were happy. They were, they were just everybody. And, and they were grateful. I mean, it was, it was just an awesome experience. And one person said to me, you know, these guests who are coming on in a day or so, these guests are going to have the best vacation any guests have ever had. [00:30:57] Richard: It was just so an emotional time. And by the way, yes, the guest ended up benefiting from that because these people came absolutely determined to provide that. Provide that. Wow. It just thrilling. [00:31:09] Joe: It’s fabulous. Well, we were able to get back together and the fact that not only are you getting back together, but in the service of others is so just, I can feel the magic and I wasn’t even there. [00:31:21] Joe: Oh, it was, yeah. Last question for me, Richard. If somebody wa listening wants to just start bringing more Wow into that everyday life that our average stacker has family work money, where’s the bedrock place that they start? [00:31:37] Richard: I wish I knew. I’ve been doing this for a long time and I don’t know the the, and there’s not one answer. [00:31:44] Richard: I think the answer is love what you do, do what you love, and have a goal. Have a goal that you can reach, not that you can achieve, but I keep using the term Go North Star. We navigate by the North Star. Nobody expects us to reach the North Star. I don’t know how many light years away it is, but the North Star is absolutely critical in navigating a ship and having a North star that takes you there is just as essential in family life. [00:32:13] Richard: I have been blessed. My first mentor I actually met in in college. And I married her. And, uh, we’ve had four terrific children and eight extraordinary grandchildren. And we’ve just had always been because we’ve lived life to the fullest and we’ve taken advantage of it, and we’ve been appreciative of all that we’ve had. [00:32:37] Joe: Richard, thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today. I appreciate it so much. Richard’s new book is called, delivering Wow. It comes out on October 21st, but good news, you can pre-order it now. You heard a couple stories here today, stackers. There’s about 90 more phenomenal stories that we couldn’t get to, but it’s available everywhere, Richard. [00:33:00] Richard: Yes it is. And thank you, Joe. I’ve been so incredibly fortunate to have this career and, um, I would thank, I hope they’re all cruising. And by the way, not only should they buy the book, their lives will be better when they take a cruise too, if they haven’t already [00:33:16] Joe: spoken like a guy who loves what he does. [00:33:17] Joe: By the way, what question? That shocked me. I know. I said we were done. It took you a while to take a cruise, Mr. [00:33:24] Richard: Well, it did, and I didn’t intend to, I didn’t think cruising was for people like me. I was, I was so arrogant. Oh, I’m too sophisticated. I’m, I’m too special. And, uh, ed Stefan, who founded the company said Richard. [00:33:38] Richard: This is nonsense. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve never taken a cruise. So we did it. My wife and I did it, and it was eye-opening. It really made us appreciate how special cruising is and why. It’s for everyone you can think of. [00:33:52] Joe: We did a case study a long time ago, back when I was with American Express, so this is maybe 20 years ago. [00:33:58] Joe: Richard, I believe the number was 92% of people that took a cruise at that time took a second one. So the goal with your marketing wasn’t to convince the people to come back just getting on the cruise ship. They came back. The goal is in your marketing back then at least, was to just get them to try it once. [00:34:18] Joe: Is that still the case today? Are those statistics similar? [00:34:21] Richard: Well, I don’t know the current statistic on that because it is different ways to look at it, but we do find that once somebody has taken a cruise, we own them. Yeah. People who’ve taken a cruise come back. They don’t just have a great vacation. [00:34:35] Richard: They become obnoxious about it. They become our, they, they, you know, I hate the guy because they won’t, it won’t shut up how great my vacation was. That’s actually how we, we are successful. And so people who do our satisfaction, I mean, chocolate doesn’t have the level of satisfaction that we do. So, yes. Uh, I think if we get somebody to cruise with us, they will come back. [00:35:06] trailer: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And how about Richard Fain and the pursuit of Wow. Huh? I’m inspired, you know, this got me thinking while on Monday we focused on some gruesome October worthy trivia today. Yeah, we did. We did one of my favorites of the year. But today, we’ll wow you by enlightening you with a heartwarming tale from the life of a man who had a much happier ending. [00:35:30] trailer: Abraham Lincoln. Nope. That’s not a thing. Alright, well, Lincoln, early in his career on today’s date back in 1860, the future president received a well-publicized letter from an 11-year-old girl asking him to do one thing that he said would be silly to do. But then he, he later did, I’ll be back right after I go check and see if Richard would care for some of chose Miles, brownies. [00:35:55] trailer: Wow. Starts right now here in the basement. [00:36:03] trailer: Hey there, stackers. I’m history lover and guy who loves a good play. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, too soon on today’s date, back in 1860, Abraham Lincoln, future president of the nation, received a letter from an 11-year-old girl encouraging him to do what, which Lincoln said he would not do. I think literally what he said was, I am not down with that. [00:36:28] trailer: She told him no. [00:36:29] OG: He said, homie, don’t play that, [00:36:31] trailer: homie. Don’t play that. [00:36:33] Joe: That’s right. Check the audio tape. I’m sure it’s on the audio tape. Check the YouTube of the moment. [00:36:39] trailer: What did she tell him to do? She told him he should crow a beard. And now back to the bearded guy and his co-host, Joe and og. [00:36:54] bit: Hi, it’s Chuck Jaffe and every day while I’m living the money life, I’m also Stacking Benjamin’s. [00:37:00] Joe: Huge thanks to Richard Vain for stopping by. You know Doug, though, the whole time I’m talking to Richard, you’re like waving your arms over his head. I’m trying to have a great conversation about wow. And certainly Royal Caribbean is, uh, known for bringing the, well it [00:37:14] OG: Doug’s all like man overboard, man over life. [00:37:17] Joe: Full drill. Well, he wants to go all the way back to the beginning of the show and this pronunciation guide for primer. [00:37:24] trailer: No, not for primer. For primer. Well, here’s the thing. I looked it up just ’cause I was pretty sure I knew this, but I had to look it up because if you don’t, OG is all over you and then he just lords it over you for weeks after that. [00:37:35] trailer: So here’s the thing, the word that is spelled P-R-I-M-E-R can be pronounced two ways with a short I like primer when referring to an introductory book or topic with a long or with a long eye like primer when referring to a base coat of paint. Or an explosive device that’s talking about, we’re talking about paint, [00:37:56] Joe: not talking about explosive device [00:37:58] trailer: or an [00:37:58] Joe: explosive device. [00:37:59] Joe: Yeah, we were gonna [00:37:59] OG: put an initial coat of paint on this topic. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Like Monday show was an initial coat of paint and now is the second coat of paint. Weak [00:38:09] trailer: sauce. That is weak sauce right there. [00:38:11] OG: There it is. Did you guys talk to each other ahead of time and make sure that your plaid’s matched? [00:38:15] trailer: I think my plaid’s like the inverse of Joe’s plaid. We, we, [00:38:19] OG: that is peak boomer is right there. Let’s do a headline. [00:38:24] headlines: Hello doling. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. [00:38:31] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from CNNA New rule means some 401k contributions will be no longer tax deferred, not a new rule. [00:38:44] Joe: Here’s who’s gonna be affected. This is written by Gene sdi. A new rule is going into effect next year. Gene writes that will affect high earners who make quote catchup contributions in their 401k. And no, we’re not talking about ketchup, like the thing that Doug Smothers all over his hot hotdog We’re talking about in, uh, catch up, like getting caught up in your 401k. [00:39:09] Joe: First of all, before we get into the rule change, og, let’s talk first about what that is, this ketchup contribution thing. [00:39:17] OG: Well, it’s precisely the opposite of the mustard contribution, and there we go. No. How does the mustard contribution work? Well, the mustard contribution is your normal contribution of the 23,500. [00:39:29] OG: That’s what we call it. We call that the mustard contribu most people put on. That’s supposed to be the way it’s supposed to be. Yeah, [00:39:34] TikTok: yeah. You don’t, the way it’s pick upon hot [00:39:36] OG: dogs and then you get a little sporty and if you’re old like these guys, then you can put a little extra into your 401k and they call it a catchup contribution as in K-E-T-C-H-U-P catchup contribution. [00:39:51] OG: And that is $7,500. So you can get to $31,000 this year of total contributions if you’re over the age of 50. Once you get to 60, you get a super mega catchup of some other number. That gives you even more, uh, for like four more years off the top of my head. Dunno the number, but it’s like four grand more or something like that. [00:40:09] OG: But we’re talking about the catch up from 50 to 60, the extra $7,500 and the rule change that takes effect next year for people that are super rich. All those people that make over $145,000. You guys are mega, hella rich, and so there’s a new rule that takes effect for you guys. [00:40:27] Joe: Yeah. Currently, if you’re over age 50 max out your 401k, you can make this catch up contribution, like you said. [00:40:33] Joe: Of course, those are adjusted every year for inflation. The numbers that you just said, og, so if you’re listening to this in 2026, numbers may be a little different, but increased by 500 bucks starting next year. OG said it. You make more than 145,000 in FICA wages [00:40:51] OG: if you’re ultra wealthy. That’s what this is for. [00:40:54] OG: This is for the ultra wealthy people who are making these contributions. Everyone above 145,000, so go ahead. Any so-called catch up [00:41:02] Joe: contributions automatically. Are going to be subject to income tax. In other words, they’re going to be treated like Roth 401k contributions. [00:41:11] OG: Yeah, they’re Roth contributions. [00:41:12] OG: And so how, how this all went down was this is part of the, uh, cost justification, you know, there’s a word for it in Congress, and I can’t remember the name of it now, where they have to, like, if they take something out of the tax law and say, Hey, we gave you this credit, they have to like offset it with some sort of other nominal increase to kind of make that tax neutral for the, for that, uh, tax period. [00:41:34] OG: And so one of the, one of the ways to do that was to say, well, these contributions that super, super duper rich people make, they can pay taxes on that today. And so now you don’t get a tax deduction on the 7,500. You can’t do those contributions pre-tax. They’re gonna be Roth contributions instead, which frankly is probably a good idea if you’re gonna be doing the contributions anyway. [00:41:55] OG: Let’s say that you’re 50 and you can do this for the next 10 years. You know, that’s another 75, 80, 80 $5,000 depending on how the inflation numbers work out over the next 10 years. That is on top of any other Roth contributions that you can do. And just saying that that 80,000, let’s say that that works out to be a hundred k after it grows, that’s 200 when you’re 70, that’s 400 when you’re 80. [00:42:16] OG: That’s some pretty nice tax free bucket. You know, 70 to to eighties to be able to utilize, uh, in the future. And there’s no require minimum distributions with that. So that’s beneficial too. So I actually think this is a good idea for most people. If you’ve been doing the catchup contributions and they’ve all been pre-tax, then you’re gonna have a little higher tax bill, you know, call it two grand. [00:42:40] OG: But in the long run, I think this works out for everybody. I [00:42:42] Joe: think that’s the bigger thing is just to note it, that now you’re gonna owe two grand. I would keep making the, the catch up contributions [00:42:48] OG: a hundred percent. [00:42:48] Joe: I wouldn’t change the plan at all [00:42:50] OG: because you’re super rich, because you make 145,000 according [00:42:53] Joe: the government. [00:42:53] Joe: It might change, might might change your after tax income. So if you’re spending every dollar of your after tax income, which you clearly wouldn’t be ’cause you’re super rich. Super rich, so much extra then, then your paycheck’s gonna look a little different next year than it does this year because they’re gonna take the tax out right away. [00:43:12] Joe: I mean, [00:43:12] OG: the total is gonna be like $75 difference. If you get paid twice a month, you’re gonna notice 75 bucks a take home per paycheck. Less so, hopefully not two. Not a big deal. I mean, it’s not zero, right? Sure, I get it. 75 bucks is not zero. But um, but before you go and change your catch contribution to like 5,500 instead, you know, to kind of offset the cash flow impact, see if you can make it work. [00:43:36] OG: Like I get that some people are gonna be trying to stuff every, every dollar they can and, and it’s right at the limit of cash flow. But see if you can make that 75 bucks a paycheck work. That helping long, right. [00:43:47] Joe: A position OG that you and I have really, I think we think of as foundational for our stackers. [00:43:53] Joe: You know, as you’re just starting to build that foundation on your stack of cash is to think about tax flexibility. And man, if you’ve had everything going pre-tax. Just to have some money that is flex, it, it, it’s not gonna be a bad thing. It’s not gonna be a bad thing to have some money that is being taxed now because A, we don’t know how tax rates are gonna go in the future. [00:44:17] Joe: And BI think this will let you maybe do some things down the road with tax brackets that you might not have thought you were able to do. [00:44:25] OG: Yeah, I mean, if you’ve got a bucket of tax-free money that you can draw from to fill up your spending without having to go in the next tax bracket or allow you to do conversions in a year because you have zero taxable income for a year or something like that, that’ll, that’ll pay dividends down the line. [00:44:41] OG: And it’s not so much about like trying to exactly optimize what the tax rates are in any particular year, because frankly we don’t know what they’re gonna be in 2027 or 2028 or you know, whatever we can guess. And we can say, oh, based on the trajectory of the spending and so on so forth, this is what we think might happen. [00:44:57] OG: But the biggest piece is if you’ve got the flexibility of some money that’s gonna be fully taxable. Some money that’s partially taxable and somebody that’s a hundred percent tax free, you can design that year an income stream that optimizes from each one that particular year. So if you’re 50 right now and you’re going, this sucks, I’m gonna lose 2000 bucks a tax, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m paying an extra $2,000 in taxes with this tax change. [00:45:20] OG: Yeah, you are. But I think in, like I said, when you’re 70 or when you’re 75 and you have to start taking RMDs and this tax free account is now worth 250 $300,000, this will provide you with that flexibility to say, oh, well I can only have to take a little bit out of my IRA and therefore my social security is taxed differently, or my Medicare premiums are more affordable and I can supplement my income with this little bit of distribution for my tax free bucket, or a little bit of distribution for my brokerage. [00:45:47] OG: Flexibility is, is the key here. [00:45:49] Joe: And if you’re somebody who’s, uh, just catching up on all of this stuff, must dirtying and you, you might not even know that at 75 you’re gonna have to start taking money out. But from your pre-tax plans, you will have to, the government’s gonna come and knocking and they’re gonna make sure that they finally get their money. [00:46:07] Joe: You know what? For 93% of our stacker audience, they’re gonna exactly 93%. Well, it is exactly 93%. You know how I know? ’cause a stacker audience reflects the, the populace and the vast majority of workplace retirement plans. Gene Wrights 93% offer employees the option of creating a Roth 401k. And this is according to the plan sponsor Council of America. [00:46:32] Joe: But Gene writes, if your plan doesn’t, you’re gonna no longer be permitted to make catch up contributions after age 50. If you’re in that bucket, you’re the 70, you’re the 7% of people that can’t do this og, what do you do? Then [00:46:49] OG: you go to HR and you go, what are you knuckleheads doing? Flip the switch to let us do this. [00:46:54] Joe: I can’t figure out why they wouldn’t have the Roth 401k. [00:46:57] OG: It’s that simple. [00:46:58] Joe: Flip the switch. But if HR says like a lot of businesses, oh yeah, we’ll consider that. Like ask your mom. You know, or we’ll consider it, which always meant no when you ask your mom stuff. [00:47:08] OG: But if they don’t, then you do it the next day and the next day and the next day. [00:47:16] OG: I think during that time though, you, until they stop, we’ll do it. We’ll just flip the switch and be done [00:47:20] Joe: there. I think you take 15 minutes and you set this up on your own. I mean, I think you set up, set up. Just save into a non IRA brokerage. Just set up. Set up just a savings into a brokerage account to still catch up. [00:47:33] Joe: I mean, I think we worry a lot about the retirement plans and about the ability to put money into a tax shelter, but still putting money into just a mutual fund or into an exchange traded fund is more money than you had yesterday. So let’s still keep the saving going. [00:47:51] OG: I’ll also add, uh, because I was thinking about this, not that I am anywhere near old enough to do it, but for those people that are, um, you’re just killing it. [00:48:01] OG: You’re like six months away, dude. Well, it’s not, it’s like a year and six months. But big difference, Doug. A very long time, but huge difference. But what I was gonna say is you don’t have to wait just as a a a a. No ene. How’s that, Doug? Oh, [00:48:17] trailer: that’s, that’s pretty good. Okay. [00:48:19] OG: Alright. Yeah. Give you that one. Just checking my Latin if it’s still active. [00:48:22] OG: Um, just a little note at the end here. If you are turning 50 at the end of a year, right, so my birthday is the last 11 days of the calendar year. You don’t have to wait until you turn 50 to take advantage of this. So if you look and you say, well, you know, my birthday is this Christmas, I can’t, you know, there’s no way I can stuff 7,500 bucks in my 401k in the last 10 days of the, of the, of the year. [00:48:45] OG: That doesn’t work. It’s the year in which you turn 50. So I’m starting to think about it. Although I do have a solid year to go in 2027 because my 50th birthday will be at the back end of the year. I can start planning for that in January of 2027 and say, I’m gonna do the, if I wanna do the catch up, um, based on today’s numbers, that’s 31,000. [00:49:06] OG: I can spread that out over the whole 12 months. You don’t have to try to try to jam it all in at the last half of your birthday’s late. So [00:49:13] Joe: anyway, [00:49:13] OG: just thought I’d put that in there. [00:49:15] Joe: We dive in deeper into topics like this in our newsletter, the 2 0 1, which is free and comes out every week, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 gets you to that. [00:49:26] Joe: And of course, we’ll have a link to this piece and related pieces on our show notes page for today at Stacking Benjamins dot com. That brings us to our wonderful community and what’s going on with you. And we’ve had a lot going on the community, Doug. Yeah, [00:49:41] trailer: I like going out on the back porch. You know, when you’re in a neighborhood, people are usually like yelling across the fences, across the backyards. [00:49:48] trailer: Like, Hey, turn your TV down. Well, we kind of the same thing with our Facebook group, the basement. And there were a couple of things that caught my eye recently. Uh, you know, I think it’s maybe once a week Gertrude will ask everybody to just post what they’ve been up to, what are they doing? And one of these caught my eye stacker, Shauna said, and this she considered, uh. [00:50:12] trailer: Achievement. I think I would too. ’cause she said, I operated on a dear friend’s mother-in-law. Wow. A huge honor and compliment that I was asked to care for her during a vulnerable period in life. No stress or pressure there. Oh, ow. Right? Like, oh, I read a book, I weeded my garden. Oh, you know what I did? I performed surgery. [00:50:35] trailer: That’s impressive. [00:50:37] Joe: It just kind of reminds me of this, uh, moment. One of our favorite comedians, Brian Regan references. [00:50:46] TikTok: Why do people need the top other people? I’ve never understood it, and I see it all the time. Obviously, people get something out of it. At best. People wait for your lips to stop. Yeah. As soon as, [00:51:00] TikTok: okay. Yeah. You, me, you, me. You see the difference. You see, you see that now I do. [00:51:11] TikTok: What is it about the human condition? People get something outta that. That’s why I have a social fantasy. I wish I was one of the 12 astronauts who have been on our moon. They must love knowing they can beat anybody’s story whenever they want. They can sit back quietly at a dinner party while some other person, some me monsters doing his thing and let him go. [00:51:35] TikTok: Let him run with the line while you be quiet. Really [00:51:42] TikTok: let him have his moment. Yeah. I’m a big traveler. I have my business all I got own global enterprise. I gotta check on, you know, driving in the Audubon. ’cause I keep a fleet of sports calls over in Zurich and I get this Swiss account, check Mount Kilimanjaro. But if you might have to cancel that, you know, runway’s an aspirin a lot shorter the first time you go in there. [00:51:56] TikTok: The Pacific Company gonna try to take that over global enterprise. [00:52:10] TikTok: I walked on the moon, [00:52:16] Joe: which winner every time. Every single time. Yeah. Coming over the top. So [00:52:21] trailer: I here, I don’t know what’s a bigger, like Shauna walked in the room on Gertrude’s post and she’s like, oh, I can dunk on all of these people. Yeah. But then Jonathan chimed in because. They had a baby. Oh, see. So we have a new stacker. [00:52:36] trailer: That’s incredible. I mean, that’s, that’s going toe to toe with Shauna. Like, I’ll see your operation. Yeah. And I’m bringing New life right into the [00:52:46] Joe: world and a lot less stress making the baby as well. Hmm. Well just that part. Oh boy. [00:52:55] Joe: But the stress comes later, Jonathan. Yeah. But congratulations on the new stacker in the family. That’s awesome. The, [00:53:01] trailer: the great thing is now Jonathan has 23 hours a day to listen to our whole back catalog because he ain’t sleeping anytime soon. No. Put those [00:53:10] Joe: headphones in so you don’t hear the crying Now, Jonathan, and we got you covered. [00:53:13] Joe: Just go back to the 2016 episodes and start there. And you’re good. By the way, Doug, we’ve got one more, which is, we had a very important day here in mom’s basement yesterday, but we didn’t record yesterday. So I think we have to, uh, OG gonna do the Marilyn Road impression. [00:53:31] OG: Yes, please. I, I was gonna get up the little to like, are you [00:53:35] trailer: gonna let your skirt blow up in the wind? [00:53:36] trailer: Is, that’s what’s about to happen. [00:53:37] OG: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to [00:53:43] trailer: you, to [00:53:45] Richard: happy birthday [00:53:48] trailer: to Doug. Is he making that awkward, happy birthday to you? It started out so nice. And now and many more. Thanks boys. How [00:54:00] Joe: old are you? Oh God. Not that, uh oh. Will you burn the house down? [00:54:06] OG: You just have to use the numbers, not the actual number of candles. [00:54:09] OG: Yes. ’cause he, [00:54:10] Joe: I feel bad because it’s his day and now we’re gonna delegate to him. Like what’s the big takeaway today, Doug? Besides the fact. That it’s the day after your birthday. [00:54:18] trailer: All right, Joe, I don’t know. Let’s see if I can just fall on my face on this one first. Take some advice from today’s headline. [00:54:25] trailer: Gold. No thanks. Diversification. Yes, please. Second, winning the Lottery or trying to control volatility. Annuities can be an answer, but watch out for who’s pedaling them. But the big lesson, maybe run your can’t lose trivia ideas by your boss before going live with them on air. Now I gotta go down the hall and see Gertrude and HR again. [00:54:54] trailer: This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:55:14] trailer: 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. [00:57:03] trailer: Gee, you and I both saw [00:57:04] Joe: movies. What do you got, man? [00:57:06] OG: Oh yeah, sure. Let me pull this up. This was a Apple movie that, uh, Johnny Appleseed. It was about apples. It was not about apples. It was on Apple tv. Let me get it here and I’m gonna crank it up the volume and here you go. Here’s the trailer. It is another dry and windy day in [00:57:26] bit: paradise [00:57:28] trailer: based to all drivers. [00:57:30] trailer: There’s a situation developing at Ponderosa Elementary. There are 23 kids who are stranded. Is there anybody in the area that can pick them up? Is there anybody that can go and pick these kids up? [00:57:56] bit: 9, 6, 3 [00:58:00] trailer: class. It’s just another brush. Fire. Nothing new. Hi. Hi, I’m Mary Kevin Kids. This is our bus driver. Kevin, [00:58:13] trailer: I don’t think you understand the urgency of our situation here. Quietly, calmly, one single line. You know, all of us who are gonna be there. It’s gonna take 10 minutes. [00:58:27] trailer: Do you have any safety protocols on this bus? Yep. You got that? Great. Yeah, that’ll make all the difference. [00:58:38] OG: You guys figured out what this is yet? [00:58:39] Joe: No. The kid’s trying to make it through out of a fire zone or fires in the well B2 and, and I bet the bus driver is evil [00:58:55] Joe: Joe. And 6:30 AM this morning a fire entered the town of paradise. [00:59:03] trailer: Where do you need to get to? [00:59:06] OG: So there with his grandma. This is the story of the Paradise Fire in California. Several years ago, there was a school full of kids that their parents hadn’t come to get them yet. The emergency system, the notification to evacuate didn’t go out correctly. And so not all the parents got it or they worked outta town or whatever. [00:59:24] OG: So finally. This bus driver was like, fine, I’ll do it. I don’t want to, like, he’s, he had other stuff on his mind. He is got a lot of family issues. I don’t know how much of that is real. I feel [00:59:35] trailer: like saving children’s lives today. [00:59:37] OG: But he, uh, goes and, uh, gets the bus full of kids and it’s just basically how do we escape as this fire is closing in around us and people are catching themselves on fire and cars are burning and, and all that sort of stuff. [00:59:51] OG: It was pretty crazy and I thought I didn’t have the emotion tied up and like, I wonder if they’re gonna make it, because I was like, oh, they’re, I’m, I’m sure it’s a busload of kids. Of course they’re gonna make it. [01:00:01] trailer: We would’ve heard about it. [01:00:02] OG: There was no energy around that. But then I remember thinking, there was a movie some time ago about the hot shots, the firefighters who go up into the mountains and, and fight all these wildfires and at the end of that, a whole bunch of people died. [01:00:16] OG: You’re like, oh, snap. They didn’t make it out. You know, it was not like how you expected it to end. Josh Brolin was in that movie. So then for a second I was like, well, maybe they do all day, but I figured out we would’ve heard about, it appears to be a true story, or at least, uh, largely based on a true story. [01:00:32] OG: Because at the end they kind of have the little note of like, Kevin does this now and Mary does this now, and whatever. But, uh, not a huge emotional rollercoaster. Not too much of like, you know, there’s, there’s some scenes and you’re like, boy, I bet that really sucked. You know, as they’re sitting on the bus on the side of a cliff with fire in all directions going Yeah. [01:00:56] OG: You know, so I could get behind watching it. I wouldn’t put it top of your list. No. Matthew McConaughey is the, uh, bus driver. Oh. And, uh, America Ferrara is the, uh, lead actress. Wow. So, um, yeah, it’s a bunch of, uh, you know, big names, high people, names in the directors and producers and all that sort of stuff. [01:01:16] OG: Uh, people you’d all recognize, they didn’t talk too much about pg and e although there’s a couple scenes in there where there’s like the fire captain, he is like, where’s the, you know, where’s pg e? And the guy’s like, Hey, I’m here. Sure. He is like, why haven’t we turned off the power yet? He is like, well, we’re trying. [01:01:29] OG: And he kind of gets after him for, you know, you guys started this, you knew the winds were coming and you didn’t turn the power off. And then there’s a little parenthetical at the end of the movie about how much they got sued or fined or whatever. Uh, but, um, anyways, like I said, eh, eh, six and a half out of 20. [01:01:48] OG: Outta 20 outta a hundred. It’s. It’s, it’s okay. It’s, it’s not McConaughey’s best production. [01:01:57] trailer: We haven’t gotten a movie review outta OG in what feels like years and this is what he brings us. That’s good. Yeah. I, I I like that they’re not [01:02:04] Joe: all great. I mean, I do. Otherwise, it’s just movie fandom, right? Like if, if you love every single movie. [01:02:11] Joe: I thought the movie was [01:02:11] OG: really good. I reviewed that inside of a year ago. You like every single movie? [01:02:15] Joe: So thank you for helping us not waste our time on that. [01:02:18] OG: Yeah, I saw one, I mean, I’d, I’d put it on the list. If you’re just sitting there going cow there, it’s nothing to do. I’d watch [01:02:24] Joe: it. I saw one at the theater last week. [01:02:26] Joe: Guys. This is starring Dwayne Johnson and, uh, Emily Blunt called the Smashing Machine. [01:02:35] trailer: Well, have you ever heard of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the UFC? That’s the bloody thing they’re trying to ban. This guy is the best he has ever seen. Do you hate each other when you fight? Absolutely not. [01:02:53] Joe: Uh, how do you know? So this is the story of one of the early UFC fighters, mark Care back around 2000. [01:03:03] Joe: Dwayne Johnson plays him. Emily Blunt plays his, his girlfriend. And it’s the story of, uh, the end of, uh, care’s career in UFC and kind of all the times when UFC’s just starting to become a big deal. Um, and I know there was a documentary around that. Mark Care’s life as well, but it was wild to see Dwayne Johnson in a role. [01:03:26] Joe: I mean, don’t get me wrong, Dwayne Johnson’s, UFC fighter. Okay? We, we can all imagine that, but I don’t know if, have you guys seen the previews for this? He doesn’t look like Dwayne Johnson besides the fact that he’s huge. The things that they did to change up his face. The things they did to change some of his body language and even just the part that he plays is a different Dwayne Johnson, and I’m a guy that likes watching Dwayne Johnson, but it’s the same Dwayne Johnson every single time, right? [01:03:55] Joe: It’s just, oh look it, Dwayne Johnson is a God in Moana. Oh, look it Dwayne Johnson in in this other, you know, top movie that’s just kind of a romp and it’s just kind of funny. This movie’s not funny. This movie is very slow paced, incredibly slow paced, a lot of artistic direction. It’s an a 24 film for people that know a 24 kind of an art house film. [01:04:19] Joe: And Dwayne Johnson’s a producer. I think he really wanted to make sure this got made because the storyline. Is very, very slow, very almost non-existent. But I’ll tell you, Dwayne Johnson as a guy that in parts of the movie that I really like and other parts of the movie, I can’t stand, I just wanna throttle him. [01:04:39] Joe: Emily Blunt is his girlfriend. Sometimes you’re like, what are you doing? She just seems like a moron. And then other times you’re like, wow, she’s saving his life. And you just keep going back and forth on these characters. I don’t know, man. I just love a movie where the characters are so, um, textured that it’s not a quote good guy or a bad guy. [01:04:59] Joe: It’s much more like real life, right. Happening to these people. [01:05:03] trailer: Joy, I can’t stop in my mind, I haven’t seen the movie, but I can’t stop drawing comparisons to a movie from oh 2008 called The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you see that? Yes. Yeah. That movie’s phenomenal. And it, and it seems. [01:05:21] trailer: To have a similar tone or vibe to what you’re describing? A hundred percent. Very. Talk about textured characters. Uh, who was a female lead in that was Marissa Tome. I think she got an Oscar for it. Kind of fallen from Grace Wrestler, played by Mickey Rourke. And if it’s anything along those lines, I might be in on this. [01:05:42] trailer: I, I wouldn’t have been until the way you just described it. [01:05:45] Joe: This movie is not gonna win an Oscar. It is a little too slow, but huge characters I can do without plot. A lot of people can’t. The plot is just, it’s just kind of plotting. But I really, really like this movie. It is in that same vein, Doug. It’s a different movie. [01:06:02] Joe: You obviously different stuff going on, but I thought that Emily Blunt. Just having her in the movie, you just see what a great actress she is and the writing back and forth and how we get these great clues about what a, just what an egomaniac mark is sometimes. And he’s so caring at other times and when he’s completely whacked out on drugs, one part of the movie like him, he’s just going after the high. [01:06:27] Joe: He’s chasing the high of what he does is huge. I thought it was a great, at the end of this is not a spoiler at the end of the movie, they have Mark care play himself. They no longer have Dwayne Johnson play himself. And I think it’s a little bit of a flex about what a great job Dwayne Johnson does because when they substitute the real mark care in the movie for Dwayne Johnson, you barely notice. [01:06:50] Joe: You are like, wow. They did a great job in his makeup and his work and his gesturing and the way he talked. It was, it was good. So for me it was solid. It was the second best movie I’ve seen this year. Wow. The best movie I saw this year was the one I talked about just a few weeks ago, which was Caught Stealing. [01:07:08] Joe: Caught Stealing was a fantastic movie. This is not as good as caught stealing, but really good. Now that said, many years I see a bunch of great movies. I haven’t seen any great movies this year. I saw movies I like, like Doubt in Abbey, but that’s just ’cause I like Doubt. And Abbey the grand finale, this movie I thought was fantastic, but you gotta be okay with a slow movie. [01:07:30] Joe: Doug, are you taking a look at the way they have Dwayne Johnson looking? He doesn’t [01:07:33] trailer: look like Dwayne Johnson. Uh, yeah, I was looking at that and then I actually looked at that earlier as we started talking about it, but then I had to go back and remind myself about caught stealing and I forgot to put that on my list. [01:07:45] trailer: And ’cause it has anything to do with baseball, I definitely need to watch that movie. I’m not a huge Austin Butler fan. Me neither. But, uh, the premise of the movie sounds pretty good and there’s maybe a little bit of baseball in it, so that part sounds great. I don’t know, I’m still skeptical on the Dwayne Johnson thing. [01:08:01] trailer: What’s movie you talked about The wrestler? No, [01:08:04] Joe: no, no, no. Og The movie you talked about. It’s called Paradise. Oh, is it called Paradise? [01:08:08] OG: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s called Lost the Lost Bus. The Lost [01:08:11] Joe: Bus, okay. [01:08:12] OG: Yeah, because uh, the communications go out, they’re trying to find this bus and yeah, it’s full of kids. And [01:08:17] Joe: this will be interesting enough, mine, the Smashing Machine. [01:08:20] Joe: I think Doug will be interesting enough for you that you start it. I’ll be curious, that was [01:08:24] OG: Doug’s nickname in college, the Smashing Machine, [01:08:28] Joe: but with Doug, it’s what he could do to a hamburger.
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