Happy Halloween, Stackers! Today we dim the lights, light the virtual campfire, and swap true tales of financial terror. Think ghosts, goblins, and… overpriced luxury cars. This roundtable features Doc G, Jesse Cramer, and special guest Emily from Hey Friend, It’s Em — each bringing a frightening personal money mistake and the lessons learned.
From nearly catastrophic estate-planning fails to $11,000 hot tubs and cars that cost more than your salary, this is a spooky stroll through real-life financial regrets — with a silver bullet for each money monster along the way.
Plus, Doug pops in with Halloween trivia that will make your blood run cold (or at least mildly uncomfortable).
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic: Scary Money Stories & Halloween Horror Finance Lessons
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Financial horror stories
- Estate planning mistakes
- Power of attorney issues
- COVID caregiving crisis
- Term life insurance urgency
- Wills and directives
- Guardianship challenges
- Leasing luxury vehicles
- Lifestyle creep
- Opportunity cost math
- FOMO and YOLO spending
- Hedonic adaptation
- “I deserve it” mindset
- Leasing vs buying cars
- Luxury maintenance costs
- Sales pressure tactics
- Hot tub regret
- Impulse spending psychology
- 24-hour pause rule
- Take pictures instead
- Emotional buying triggers
- Rent your fun
- Regret and lessons learned
- Mortgage payoff debate
- Building long-term financial freedom
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Emily (from Hey Friend, it’s Em)
Another thanks to Emily for joining our contributors this week! Learn more about Em’s money resources and tools by visiting Self-made millionaire & certified money coach. Check out her TikTok page by visiting Em 💸 Financial Freedom (@heyfrienditsem) | TikTok. You can see her Instagram page at Em 💸 Financial Freedom (@heyfrienditsem) • Instagram photos and videos.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest, on Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
Doc G
Another thanks to Doc G for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Doc G on his podcast, Earn & Invest, on Apple Podcasts.
Check out his latest book The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- In what year will the next full moon fall exactly on Halloween?
Mentioned in today’s show
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when the government shutdown prompted us to ask, “How do you squeeze more money out of your savings when no cash is coming in the front door?”
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Banishing Money Monsters: How to Talk Money With Anyone (Partners, Roommates, or Coworkers) SB1754.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] bit: Kids, how many people you think are dead in that cemetery? [00:00:04] bit: Not again. [00:00:05] bit: All of ’em [00:00:12] Doug: live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:28] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and gather round stackers while we share ghoulish tales of financial horror. What goes bump in the night in your wallet portfolio, or worse your credit? We’ve packed a silver bullet for each of them, and of course, nothing could be darker than a dose of incredible Halloween themed trivia. [00:00:49] Doug: And now a guy who was nearly buried alive. In debt. It’s Joe Saul Sea. Hi. [00:00:59] Joe: That was a horror story, Doug. I was super happy that I lived through to be here with all of you today. Happy Halloween everyone. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Saul Sea. Hi. And do we have a treat for you? This is gonna be like the virtual campfire where we sit around and we tell. [00:01:15] Joe: Just ghoulish money stories and maybe we’ll even get one from Doug. You think? Doug, do you got a, do you got a ghoulish story? I, I’ve just gotta figure out which one to pick. Joe. That’s gonna be my challenge and they’re all about me. I’m sure. Actually, it’s not gonna be all about me today. We’ve got a fantastic panel. [00:01:33] Joe: Let’s introduce you to them. Uh, first of all, the guy we collaborate with consistently each and every week, just back from Bali, so we could make this recording. Doc G from ER and investors here. How are you, Jordan? [00:01:45] Doc G: Oh, I’m doing well, Joe and I first wanted to compliment you. That is mighty scary Halloween outfit you have on Thank. [00:01:53] Doc G: Thank [00:01:53] Joe: you. Are you talking about my face? You’re talking about my face. Thank you. It starts already. We’ve gone three minutes. Let’s, we don’t pull any punches here [00:02:01] Doc G: on the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:02:02] Joe: Let’s see if we can do better if we go north of you in, well, not northeast of you in Rochester, New York, where our friend from the Better Interest blog be Better interest. [00:02:12] Joe: Ooh. Ooh. It’s like the old [00:02:14] Jesse: days. That’s spooky. [00:02:15] Joe: That’s fair. The better interest. That’s a callback, the best interest blog and, uh, long term investing for. Long term something personal finance. In the spirit [00:02:26] Jesse: of Halloween, you are butchering this intro. [00:02:29] Doug: Wow. This is like a slasher movie, wherever he is from. [00:02:33] Doug: Jesse Kramer’s here. How are you band? [00:02:35] Jesse: I am doing great. I’m excited to be back. It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve been here on a recording. Really excited for this one. And, uh, you know, in the spirit of Stacking Benjamins, I got to meet a Stacking Benjamins celebrity yesterday in person. Wait, what? I got to meet. [00:02:51] Jesse: Do we tell ’em? We tell ’em. Neighbor Doug and I got to meet in person yesterday. No way. Essentially at a, uh, interstate rest stop, which is where all good meetings take place. [00:03:00] Joe: Yeah. That’s where Doug meets everybody in the restroom. [00:03:03] Jesse: It was, uh, outside of a Panera bread. So the bread wasn’t the only thing that was stale, but it was worthwhile. [00:03:09] Jesse: It was worthwhile. He was, Doug went out of his way to stop. He was [00:03:11] Joe: positively swooning. So good. Well, you know what, I’m swooning Jesse. You know why? Why is that? Because we have a very special guest with us today. Oh, we’re super happy she’s here. She is a star of TikTok and Instagram. She also is one of the people I was geek to meet at FinCon this year. [00:03:32] Joe: Emily Ra from Hey friend. It’s them. A KM is here. How are you? [00:03:36] Emily: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I’m. So excited to jump into this fire chat and talk about all these scary money stories because I have my own to contribute to this because we all start somewhere with money. So I can’t wait to see what everyone else thinks about the crazy thing that I did many years ago, [00:03:53] Joe: which is, which is by the way, funny em because, and you’ve said this before on your TikTok channel, which I love, and we’ll have links to your TikTok channel and Instagram and everybody’s. [00:04:02] Joe: Work on our show notes page of Stack You Benjamins. But people think that for you to get as far as you have with your money, like you’ve just done everything perfect m everything’s perfect for M and her family all the time. [00:04:14] Emily: Yeah. Well, we sometimes have to make those really big mistakes that rock us and, and bring us to a rock bottom and you’re like, wow, something’s gotta change. [00:04:24] Emily: And well, when you throw some zeros on the end of it. That’ll get you motivated. Oh man. That’ll, that’ll get you changing. So, [00:04:30] Joe: and I said, as far as you’ve come, our stackers might not know how far you’ve come. So tell everybody about your channel and about your story. [00:04:37] Emily: My name, I go by m and I am a personal finance content creator. [00:04:41] Emily: I’m also a certified money coach, and I talk about my journey from poverty to becoming a self-made millionaire in my thirties, completely debt free, including our home. A pretty incredible journey that my husband and I took to get here. And it, there was no like overnight Bitcoin lotto, there was no trust fund. [00:04:58] Emily: It was just good old common sense wealth building tips and strategies. So I Oh, that’s crazy [00:05:03] Joe: talk. That is crazy talk. [00:05:05] Emily: Yeah. So I share my frugal life and I, I share how rich it is and how I can help other people, you know, learn about money and inspire them to hopefully be de influenced in a world that is like so influencing when it comes to like over consumption. [00:05:19] Emily: So. [00:05:19] Joe: Well, maybe he’ll be a good influence on Doug ’cause he needs all the help that he can get. So I can’t wait to hear everybody. We’re picking on Doug today. I see. All [00:05:26] Emily: right. Oh no. Okay. This ISS just [00:05:28] Joe: another episode, not just today. We have a, we all have a role to play in this world and you notice how Talk Chi started it off by talking about my Halloween costume and it was downhill from there. [00:05:38] Joe: We’re gonna be telling our best or maybe our worst, Doug. I think it’s our worst, isn’t it? Our, our scariest money Halloween stories. If it’s gonna be a good episode, they better be the worst. Gotta, gotta, gotta bring it. Yeah, I can’t wait. We’ve got M here. We got Jesse here, we got Doc G here. We’re gonna hear their stories in just a moment, but first we have a couple sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on. [00:06:00] Joe: You don’t pay any money for any of this goodness today. So we’re gonna hear from them and then it’s time to gather around the campfire kids. Alright, dji, do you mind going first, stepping up to the fire and making the spooky face and tell us the scariest money story in the earn invest repertoire? [00:06:22] Doc G: I actually have a really scary story and it’s no joke because the consequences were actually profound. [00:06:29] Doc G: So most of you guys know that I am a physician and I’m a hospice physician, so I take care of people at the end of life. I had this guy Dan, come in town because we were having a family meeting ’cause his mom had really end stage bad Alzheimer’s. This guy, Dan was really, really thankful because his dad had done everything right, like he had organized the care and he had all the medical powers of attorney and the financial power of attorney and everything was settled. [00:06:56] Doc G: And so when we had our family meeting, I met Dan, his mom, his dad. His dad was totally with it. His mom was getting to end stage dementia and Dan was just so happy and I felt good as the doctor ’cause I’m like. You can go back to California. We’re in Illinois. He lived in California. I’m like, you can be rest assured when things go bad. [00:07:13] Doc G: We have everything in place. Well, this was right around COVID and he goes back to California and two weeks later, not his mother but his dad, I. Gets COVID and gets put on a ventilator and Dan comes to town and guess what the problem is. Well, his dad had the financial power of attorney. Dan didn’t have any financial power of attorney, but now his dad was on a ventilator and couldn’t speak for himself, and Dan had to not only figure out what to do for his dad, but who was gonna pay all the bills for his mom who had around the clock care at home. [00:07:47] Doc G: Their finances were completely frozen. Oh no. It was really scary. And here’s the really sad thing that happened. It resolved, but the only reason it resolved ’cause dads day and died of COVID, and then all of the contingent will and everything kicked in, and then he was able to take over the finances and pay the caregivers for his mom, et cetera. [00:08:10] Doc G: But it was really, really sad. But if his dad had remained alive, but on the ventilator and incapacitated. He would’ve had to go to the court systems and try to take over their financial control, and that can cost lots of money and a lot of time, and his poor mom had very expensive care at home that they had to make sure that they could keep supporting. [00:08:30] Doc G: But not only that, he would’ve had to do that while his dad was critically ill in the ICU. It was just a really sad story and it reminds us how important that financial power of attorney is. If something goes wrong and your family member lives, they haven’t died yet, uh, but they’re incapacitated. You need to be able to make financial decisions for them. [00:08:52] Joe: A story goes from horrible to worse when the best thing that could happen was he died. [00:08:58] Doc G: Yeah, it was really sad. I mean, the whole thing was sad, but I hate to say it as the physician, I, I had a, a moment of. Relief for him that at least he could get his mom the financial care she needed and that we weren’t facing down him going to court and trying to wrestle control of their finances. [00:09:16] Joe: This is always so hard. Em, I mean, I just think, especially when people are younger, they think, well, death is something that happens later on. Right. But for our stackers that are in their, yeah, let’s say their thirties, I mean, now’s the time to get all this stuff done. [00:09:30] Emily: Yeah, no, absolutely. And like, it’s funny that that was brought up because just the other day I was talking about. [00:09:36] Emily: Like term life insurance and we always, it’s always something that’s like, it’s on the list, but it’s so low on the list and like I’ll get to it one day, but one day is never, we all know that. And sure enough, like I actually, my husband has a policy and I was like, you know what? I think I’m gonna get a policy. [00:09:51] Emily: So I started walking like people through the process of me actually applying. Oh, cool. For term life. And, um, something else that I’m gonna be doing too is like we’re talking about, like you said, estate planning and like getting those directives and, and things in place. That is something that I really feel like we need to teach that in school because that’s something that we need to get set up and we need to get it set up as young adults. [00:10:13] Emily: And I think people just think that like, oh, I have time. I’m healthy. I, oh, maybe it’s not until I have more money, but to Doc G’s point. We don’t know what’s gonna happen and, and we don’t wanna put ourselves in a place like that where now you’re scrambling and you have to go deal with courts or, um, I mean, it just makes the situation a hundred times worse than it already is. [00:10:34] Emily: And so it is so, so important. And I think one last thing I’ll say too is that it’s not complicated. There is actually. We are spoiled now with the internet in that there’s so many different websites and tools and that you can use to set up these wills and these trusts and these different documents within like minutes online. [00:10:51] Emily: Yeah. And they’re very affordable. Like you don’t have to go old school and go work with like an attorney. This is something that you can do on your lunch break and be like, Hey honey, I thought I’m, I’m just gonna go ahead and start working on our will or I don’t know. You know what I mean? Yeah. It doesn’t have to be like, as scary as it sounds, [00:11:05] Joe: but it’s funny, when my kids were two years old, I think you have a young child at home. [00:11:10] Joe: I remember just feeling so vulnerable. I’m a financial planner. My kids are two and I don’t have a will. I don’t have that done. I remember it. It still took until they were like four for us to get all that stuff done. And it shocked me how much better I felt. I was blown away by how all of a sudden we walked out of, we did work with an attorney and I walked out of his office and I felt so good. [00:11:31] Joe: I was like, I never thought I’d feel this good. I thought I’d feel morbidly bad ’cause I was acknowledging death, you know? But instead, I felt great. [00:11:38] Emily: Yeah. I think for some of us, we don’t wanna think about it because it makes it more real. It makes us feel like we’re not invincible and we don’t wanna face it. [00:11:45] Emily: And like, I’m not gonna lie, I even feel that way thinking about this planning. And you have to ask yourself really hard questions about what would happen if and, and. It’s overwhelming sometimes, but it’s absolutely critical. [00:11:56] Joe: Mine’s super hard. Um, I always think about how do I make sure I just exclude Doug from everything? [00:12:01] Joe: Like how do we, how do we, you, you, you have to write it in. I don’t know if you know this, but if you want to specifically exclude somebody, you have to write. Doug gets nothing. So that’s letter for letter in my will. It’s, oh, Doug, that seems like he [00:12:12] Emily: works pretty hard. I, he might be entitled to his fair share. [00:12:15] Emily: Oh, but don’t start him, please. God. [00:12:17] Joe: No, no. Jesse, you also have a young one at home. This is a big area for you too. [00:12:22] Jesse: It is, we’re a little bit tardy. I might have even shared it on here, on the podcast before we’re tardy because we’re, the guardian’s conversation for us has just taken longer than we anticipated. [00:12:30] Jesse: It’s so hard in terms of, I’m writing. Yeah. Who, Jesse. I’m volunteering. Exactly. Doug. Doug had a tryout yesterday and, and the baby was not impressed. Baby was not impressed. If you haven’t seen the picture on the Stacking Benjamins Facebook group, you need to go check it out because she’s one of the happiest babies I’ve ever encountered. [00:12:47] Jesse: Unless she’s within like six inches of Doug. Apparently she tried running away from [00:12:52] Doug: me at least 11 times, just kept s sprinting away. She wanted to run through the parking lot, [00:12:56] Jesse: through the parking lot, through traffic toward the stale bread of Panera instead of being close to Doug. [00:13:02] Doug: That’s how bad she wanted away from me. [00:13:05] Jesse: But no, it’s. It’s funny in the spirit of Halloween, right? Brains like, what is it? The zombies, brains like our brains. Exactly. Like Emma was saying, like the thought of death. That concept of death planning around death, having to face our own mortality is not something that we, we necessarily like want to dive into head first. [00:13:24] Jesse: And also it’s this kind of thing, like it’s very real. Like there’s this very binary like series of things that can happen in your life where either you’re totally healthy, in which case why do you even need an estate plan, or you are so incapacitated that you wish you had your powers of attorney like Doc Jay pointed out, or you’re dead, in which case you wish you had your estate plan. [00:13:42] Jesse: And like none of us want to think about the way that the light switch can flip in those directions. So the easier thing is just to let inertia continue on and, and not get it in order. But, um, so many of the horror stories that I’ve encountered firsthand through client work are related to someone at some point in time not getting their estate planning docs in there. [00:14:03] Joe: Over and over. You see it over and over, [00:14:05] Jesse: yeah. Correct? Correct. [00:14:05] Joe: I used to, when I was giving, uh, speeches a lot when I was with American Express, I would always, I would always just point out that if you don’t have a will, the state has a will for you. You do have a will. And then I would point, do you really want the state you live in to be in charge of your estate plan? [00:14:24] Joe: It’s, it’s absolutely horrible. The Guardian thing was tough for me as well. Doc, how old were you when you got your estate plan done? [00:14:31] Doc G: We did it when the kids were young, so it must have been what, 10, 15 years ago. And then we just revisited it again about a year ago. Um, just to make sure Doug is named, is not in the, well just make sure that Doug is named, is not a recipient. [00:14:45] Doc G: But you know, my kids, so my, my son is turning 21, my daughter’s turning 18, so, you know, it’s not a bad time to revisit it ’cause they’re older. So guardianship is no longer an issue, but. You have to start kind of thinking about how things change as, as their life cycles change as well as your own. [00:15:01] Joe: Yeah. [00:15:02] Joe: It’s a big thing and I just can’t believe how that horror story could all be taken away. [00:15:07] Doc G: Yeah. And you, you don’t wanna deal with conservatorship. You wanna avoid conservatorship at all costs. You do not wanna have to deal with financial conservatorship. [00:15:15] Joe: Yeah. I just can’t believe the guy’s name. Was Dan. [00:15:17] Joe: Dan trying to petition the court to help out his mom to get the finances moving. Like that is just a, that’s a horror story on its own. So nice job doc. Starting off with death at our Halloween episode. My pleasure. Good work. Understand the assignment. M [00:15:34] Emily: Yeah. Okay. Are you guys ready for this one? No, this is not a moment I’m proud of. [00:15:39] Emily: But you know what, this was a learning moment. I’m curious to hear what everyone thinks. So, before my finance journey, I was, I was 24 and I was, um, dating someone who was really into cars. I was like, oh yeah, I wanna go get a new car too. I had a totally fine car. My current car I had bought new, I almost paid it off, but we walk up and we pull into an Audi I’m 24. [00:16:04] Emily: We pull into an Audi and I’m like, I want this show floor model. Better yet. I was like, I wanna lease it. I don’t wanna buy. I don’t wanna lease it. I remember sitting down with a representative, I was making 60,000 a year at the time, pretty good for 24, and the car was $60,000. I was gonna lease a car worth my salary. [00:16:26] Emily: I actually. Emily now, I wish I could have told her I had like $12,000 of equity of value in this other car I had, and I was like, let’s just roll it over. And then I also made like $2,000 towards the lease agreement to lower the payment. So my lowered payment was $550 and this was almost 10 years ago. [00:16:46] Joe: Just on the lease, which is the depreciation and interest on the car. [00:16:51] Emily: I ended up paying about $35,000 over the course of that three year lease. To just rent a vehicle? Uh, yeah. That was a really tough pill to swallow and you look good driving that car. [00:17:03] Joe: I was about to ask you that, Adam, what? Did you feel like a badass the whole three years you were broke driving that car around? [00:17:09] Joe: Yeah. [00:17:09] Emily: I mean, it was a nice car, but my budget was saying otherwise, you know, I mean, it was bleeding my budget a little extra [00:17:17] Doug: far. [00:17:18] Emily: I had the mentality of if I can afford the payments, I can afford the car. And that is such a common theme that we, I see and hear a lot nowadays with people, but the reality is. [00:17:28] Emily: You don’t take into account everything else. You don’t take into account all the maintenance and the insurance, and I had to change out my tires on this car. I had to pay for OEM parts, so I couldn’t get aftermarket, I couldn’t get, I had to get Audi name, brand parts. And, and those are [00:17:43] Joe: inexpensive. Those are really inexpensive. [00:17:45] Emily: My tires alone to replace them were $1,200 for tires, which I mean, this again, 10 years ago. It was like inflation and just, I mean, we’re talking crazy money. And I’m 24, so that is my really scary horror story. Thankfully, after that I got on my personal finance journey that [00:18:02] Joe: that is a, that’s a frightening one. [00:18:04] Joe: Ooh. Jesse, why is it, why is it that we, yeah, we all think in terms of payments like we do, oh, I’m gonna do this third subscription. I only have one set of eyes. I’m gonna do a third subscription. ’cause it’s only $12 a month or whatever it is. [00:18:17] Jesse: Yeah. I mean, it’s so much easier to stomach. I mean that, I mean, m that car, right? [00:18:20] Jesse: That wasn’t a $60,000 car. That was a $550 car. What are we talking about? Yeah, I’m just saying, you know, I’m being facetious, of course, but like Right. I think so many of us it is, it is so easy, it’s so alluring. Just to think a little bit shorter term, right? Like why do we have to think about five years and 10 years and 20 years down the line? [00:18:39] Jesse: Like, that’s too hard. Why not just think about the next three months? In which case your payments m was what, three times? Five 50 and like it’s. Pretty easy to stomach. Mm-hmm. Or it’s very easy to say like, okay, you were making $60,000 a year. You were making $5,000 a month gross. Five 50. What is that? 11%? [00:18:55] Jesse: 11% seems like a smallish number. 11% of your gross pay went towards that car. That’s not that bad. Like we have these totally understandable, very human ways of like rationalizing these financial decisions, of minimizing certain numbers, especially when, I mean, have you seen the way a new Audi looks? It’s totally understandable. [00:19:15] Jesse: But yeah, it, it’s cool that you’ve reached this point. So many of us, we, we learned from these mistakes and 10 years later we’re like, oh, damn it. [00:19:23] Emily: Yeah. And I think like, especially with these younger generations, we. Fomo and not f and like, or sorry, YOLO too. FOMO and yolo. We like our abbreviation [00:19:33] Joe: all together. [00:19:34] Joe: Lots of bows, right? And [00:19:35] Emily: we’re living in the moment and it’s, it’s gonna be impossible to retire anyway, so I might as well enjoy life. I might as well buy the car. I might as well do this and that. And we don’t think about opportunity cost. And if Emily now knew what I knew back then and I invested $550 every month, I mean we’re talking serious money. [00:19:52] Emily: And so, and [00:19:53] Joe: you know what’s funny is you could have then later on easily. Easily bought an Audi later, you know what I mean? Oh yeah. Later on had all the ties you want. Yeah. ’cause your net worth is fine. [00:20:03] Emily: We don’t know what we don’t know. Right. And that’s why I made this like made my channels too, is being able to enjoy your money now while also still to Jesse’s point, breaking out of that short term view and start to see past that. [00:20:16] Emily: I’m like, okay, how can I balance my budget to enjoy both? [00:20:19] Joe: I had a mentor once who said, you gotta look past the short term and obvious to the long term and not so obvious. And I think for a lot of people. Leasing over the short term Jordan seems like the best thing to do, but long term, not so obvious, it can get kind of ugly. [00:20:32] Doc G: You have to put your hand on the stove once to know to avoid the stove later on in life. You wanna make these kind of bad decisions when you’re young and they’re recoverable, and so thank God this was a very recoverable mistake and the opportunity cost you missed was worth the lesson you learned. Yeah, it’s hard, right? [00:20:56] Doc G: Because we grew up, we work really hard, we get our first adult job and you know, I went to medical school, right? So a lot of times you get outta residency and you’re like, I’ve worked so hard, it’s time to enjoy the fruits of my labor. And so many doctors this too, so many doctors do too, but I, I deserve it. [00:21:13] Doc G: Disease. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And so we, and, and so you’re like, I work so hard. Other people have this stuff and so I should have it too. But we also know that. If there’s such thing as hedonic adaption, I mean, cars generally don’t also make you happy in the long term. So if you can, if you can start thinking about happiness, you know, and, and what really makes us happy, Doug’s like, I’ll challenge you [00:21:34] Joe: on that. [00:21:34] Joe: What is he saying? I should, my roommate in college loves cars, like loves Corvettes specifically, and they make him very happy, Jordan. [00:21:42] Doc G: I mean, there are cases in which a specific thing which you find a real sense of excitement, joy, and purpose in. So if, like, if that’s your hobby and you love that thing, but I’m gonna guess for m that she wasn’t like a real Audi enthusiast, that it was more the FOMO and, and she probably suffered from the hedonic adaption. [00:22:01] Doc G: She probably had some buyer’s remorse eventually and realized that this money spent didn’t really give me that much pleasure compared to buying a used car for something I could afford, and then using it for what it was meant to be, which is to get me from blaze to place. BM [00:22:15] Joe: did you have buyer’s remorse or in this case, uh, Lisa’s remorse? [00:22:18] Emily: You know, I think I wasn’t really aware of how bad of the decision was until I started to learn about money because I’m like, oh, people just, this is what people do. They get new cars and oh, it’s leasing is just a flexible option, but I didn’t realize. I’m paying to just rent something and then after this, I don’t have anything. [00:22:35] Emily: I have no car. It’s a lack of knowledge and awareness of what I was even doing. And like I said, I had really bad peer pressure from someone I was dating at the time. And so I was like, well, yeah, like, yeah, everyone deserves new cars and like I, I’m making grownup money now and like you get into this lifestyle creep, lifestyle inflation, and I mean. [00:22:55] Emily: It felt cool to be like, look at me. I made it. But it, it could have been worse. Could have gotten a cares what you drive. [00:23:02] Doc G: You could’ve got a tattoo. It could have been worse. [00:23:04] Emily: I, oh, I, I might have done that too. Well, we, that’s another, that’s another live stream. [00:23:09] Doc G: Thomas could be like, um, somewhere in your body. [00:23:12] Doc G: Like this is like, at least you know. You names, names. I didn’t get names. You, you paid your dues with the car and it was gone. Yeah. [00:23:18] Doug: No, Ertz. Yeah. Doug. M said something a couple of minutes ago that I, I wanna touch on a little bit more. I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts on it, which was, I think there’s a, a considerable number of people in their twenties and early thirties who are feeling like, I can’t afford those life goal. [00:23:36] Doug: Financial achievements anyway, so I might as well do a whole bunch of the smaller, more luxury types of things. Notably houses, it’s the, you know, I’m never gonna be able to do what my parents did or what my grandparents did, because I think that messaging is being crammed down their throats through social media. [00:23:54] Doug: Yes. Our houses at a greater premium now than they were maybe in the. Early to mid nineties. Yes, they are. But I’m worried that they just take themselves out of the game entirely and choose to, to do a whole bunch of the smaller luxuries, not realizing it’s not just the maybe $550 payment now, but what that money represents 10 years later and how that could turn into a home that they could very much achieve possibly. [00:24:22] Doug: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You take the possibility just right off the table. You do, and it then the messaging that is coming through the mainstream media even is driving me crazy because it was never easy for any generation. You can go back 150 years. Yeah. But it’s, it was never easy. [00:24:37] Joe: Well, yeah, but I mean, it is so much harder today. [00:24:40] Joe: I, I just had a discussion with the stacker in Southern California. He needed a $10,000. Down payment. He had to come up with now a house that he would’ve bought where he lives in the same general area, $1.1 million for that house. He’s like, my daughter is 30 years old. She’s never gonna be able, I mean, she’s gotta save over a hundred thousand dollars to get 10% down. [00:25:02] Joe: I think it is a whole different world, but I love the idea of. Why take yourself outta the game. Why Just go, yeah, screw it. I’m done. Not going that way, by the way. Um, it also strikes me that for you, you said you paid your house off already. Well you did. Yes. You know, they talk about quote, good debt and a mortgage is good debt. [00:25:21] Joe: You went from leasing a car to now I’m not even gonna have quote, good debt. [00:25:26] Emily: Yeah. Now, um, it’s so funny because we were just on the Money Guy Show. Our episode comes out soon and this was one of the things that got a little bit of a wrist slap of paying off our, our mortgage, but. I know it wasn’t the right thing to do for us on paper mathematically. [00:25:44] Emily: ’cause we had a low interest rate. Like I knew it and we talked about the trade offs, but our whole goal was being debt free. Yeah. Like I wanted freedom, total freedom. I didn’t wanna owe anything to anyone. I hate the feeling of owing something. We still balanced it out with some investing, but we just aggressively paid it off and we were earning the most that we had in our careers and it was gone in three years. [00:26:03] Joe: That’s why we had to have you on because. We actually have talked about this a lot. That’s not a mathematical decision. And Brian and Bo, they’re just morons. I mean, come on. Really, let’s be honest. I [00:26:12] Emily: totally forgot to say hello for you, but I, and give and say, uh, hugs and kisses or something. Right. Hugs and kisses to, [00:26:19] Joe: to my good for I, I do love those guys. [00:26:21] Joe: And when they say they’re total morons, but I’m being facetious. But we do often talk about how wealthy people, they’re not wealthy because they’re dumb, they’re wealthy because they’re intelligent. Yet you do, you see all these studies that show. Wealthy people pay off their debt. They pay, including the mortgage, including the ones where the math is, is bad. [00:26:40] Joe: By the way, whenever, whenever you have somebody at the auto dealership who is telling you about the car payment and about how all the things that you need to add and how cool you’ll look, I mean even back in 2009. Budweiser was telling us how intelligent not our team these guys are. Let’s have a listen. [00:27:00] bit: Bud Light presents real men of genius, real men of genius. Today we salute you. Mr. Used car lot auto salesman, Mr. Slick, back hair, a shark, skin suit, alligator boots. You cultivate a look that oozes. Trust me. I think that I can trust you. You stand behind every car you sell because if you stood in front and the brakes failed, you’d be crushed. [00:27:32] bit: You better watch out. Now, oil leak. What? Oil leak, that puddle under the car is just swept from. All that horsepower. Let the horses so crack open a nice cold bud Light, Mr. Pedler of the sheet metal. Because when life hands you lemons, you sell them Mr. Bud Light. I [00:27:56] Emily: love that. [00:27:57] Joe: It’s one of my favorite. That whole series was great, but that was one of the, one of the top ones. [00:28:03] Joe: We’re gonna pause right here. We got two more stories to go. Well, three stories to go. We got a story from Doug. We got a story from Jesse, and I have a short story as well for this special Halloween episode, but at the halfway point of every Friday episode, we have this year long competition between our three. [00:28:19] Joe: Frequent contributors. Jesse’s the only guy from that crew who’s here representing himself today. Em, you’re gonna be representing the Paula Pant from Afford Anything. Mm-hmm. And, uh, doc G, you are representing og, so we’re gonna keep the GS together, have the ladies on a team, and have Jesse play for himself. [00:28:40] Joe: M we’ve got some good news for you and some bad news. Which one would you like? [00:28:45] Emily: Let’s soften the blow here. Let’s, uh, how about the good news first? [00:28:49] Joe: Well, the good news is there’s no pressure ’cause Paula is failing like she does every year at the trivia contest, which also means it’s also the good news that you get to go last because of that. [00:29:00] Joe: So you Oh, okay. Will have. Final guess. Yeah. Okay. Jesse is in first with 12 and a half points. OG has 12 and Paula has nine and a half. So if somehow you’re able to help Paula win one, she’s still a long way away, so there’s no pressure. Zero, zero pressure, but there is some pressure on Doc G to try to help og. [00:29:20] Doc G: Always [00:29:21] Joe: retain his title. Yeah, it’s, it’s gonna be tough as we as we are last day of October, we only have a few more of these left. Everybody. We need a question though, Doug, special Halloween episode. I’m sure you’ve got some special, uh. Trivia on tap. [00:29:36] Doug: Oh, oh boy. Do I, Joe. Hey, there’s stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and I can’t wait for trick or treaters to arrive. [00:29:44] Doug: But here’s the thing, the thing that drives me crazy about the whole night, I’ve never understood why they call it trick or treat when it’s all treats. It’s all treats all the time. We all have that one annoying neighbor handing out full-size candy bars. No wonder, no kid ever picks trick. I mean, we might as well teach some of those noisy little thieves of joy to say treat or treat. [00:30:04] Doug: So this year I’m bringing back the trick, baby. I’m gonna turn some tricks. These little anchor bible probably shouldn’t say that. These little ankle biters are about to learn why Doug doesn’t lose. Now, don’t worry, I’m not a monster or anything. I’m not handing out raisins. That would be really mean. [00:30:24] Doug: Instead, I filled these fake candy wrappers with the 2025 tax tables. That way when one of these kids becomes a child TikTok star or hits the lottery, they’ll fake me later. Doug’s always thinking ahead. He always is. Something tells me these little whiners. We’ll still howl like a werewolf and a full Halloween moon though. [00:30:46] Doug: And speaking of full moons on Halloween, pause for a effect, that’s actually pretty rare. Like Doug admits he’s wrong about something rare, which is never, by the way, because true story. Never wrong. So here’s your question. In what year will the next Full Moon fall directly on Halloween? I’ll be back with an answer right after I finish helping Joe’s mom set up skeletons in the front yard Between you and me, I’m doing most of the heavy lifting here. [00:31:20] Joe: So you call the kids whiners. Oh my goodness. It’s a slight amount going on there, Jesse. You are First Halloween Full Moon. When’s it gonna happen again? [00:31:31] Jesse: It will happen. Uh, what? It’s 2025. It’s gonna happen in 2039. He clarifies the year. What is well, in the spirit of OG and Paula, I had to put in some sort of clarifying statements, mental math. [00:31:48] Jesse: So, uh, all I could think of is what year it is. [00:31:51] Doug: You did it about eight minutes faster [00:31:52] Joe: than they usually do though. Yeah. 20, 39, doc G. You think it’s gonna be before that or after that? Oh, it’s, it’s clearly 2056. 2050s. I mean, it [00:32:06] Doc G: totally [00:32:06] Joe: is market. And we got 2039 and 2056. What are you thinking? [00:32:12] Emily: You know, I’m gonna go a little like price is right action here. [00:32:14] Emily: ’cause I was like, oh, I’m gonna add one on the top or on the bottom. I’m gonna, I think it’s gonna be sooner. I’m gonna say 2038. [00:32:21] Joe: 2038. Good play. Nice job. We call that move by the way, m the Chelsea Brennan, Chelsea’s been on the show quite a few times and she was the first person who did those price right moves. [00:32:33] Joe: So you just, alright, you just, Chelsea Brennan, we thinker. Nice job. Alright. Uh, we’ve got 2038 for M 2039 for Jesse 2056 for Doc G. Who’s right. We’ll be right back. Jesse, you started out with 2039. How you feeling? [00:32:54] Jesse: I’m feeling not great ’cause I think M took all my downside and I think Jordan has a good amount of my upside ’cause follow my actual OG logic here if I may. [00:33:04] Jesse: Isn’t the lunar cycle 28 days long? So I, I think any given year. There’s always gonna be a full moon at some point between 14 days before and 14 days after Halloween. So I think on average, once every 28 years, you’re gonna get a full moon on Halloween. So I just took the middle. I added 14 years to 2025, boom, 2039. [00:33:26] Jesse: But M now has all my upside and I have up till 2053, except that’s when OG starts to, [00:33:35] bit: yeah. [00:33:36] Jesse: Starts to infiltrate on some of my guesswork. So. If I’m thinking about it the right way, my odds are not good. [00:33:42] Joe: Doc, you’ve got pretty good odds then though, being at the upper end of that. I’ve got infinity above. If it never happens again, [00:33:52] Doc G: you win. [00:33:52] Doc G: And hey, it’s rare. It might not happen again till 2136 for how we know, but that I got that covered too. And M 2038, you feeling good? [00:34:03] Emily: Yeah, I mean. I feel like this price is right. Move is, is gonna, I, I, I feel like Jesse used way too much math in mind Power in this one. Like you gotta just like feel it, you know? [00:34:13] Emily: You good. Just like feel the answer. So we’ll see. [00:34:16] Joe: And when you come back, the more times that you’re on, you’ll see that most of the quote math that happens during our trivia section is Smoke and mes, dogs and pods. [00:34:26] Emily: I don’t, Jesse sounded really smart with that answer so [00:34:29] Jesse: well, in your defense, um, I am much more astrology than astronomy in most of the things I do, so me trying to dip my toe into actual astronomy is probably, uh, not a good thing. [00:34:40] Joe: Well, let’s see how far Jesse got dipped [00:34:42] Doug: into astronomy, Doug. I feel like Jesse’s trying to pick us up at the bar right now, talking about Aspenal signs and stuff. [00:34:51] bit: Hey, [00:34:52] Emily: at the inner, uh, the interstate rest stop. That’s right. That’s right. Right [00:34:56] Doug: next to the Panera. [00:34:57] Emily: It [00:34:57] Doug: was a scene. Man, [00:34:59] Jesse: you look like a Capricorn. [00:35:00] Jesse: Doug. What can I say? [00:35:02] Doug: Doug? Who’s gonna win this thing? [00:35:08] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m your resident tricker and the only guy in this basement who actually gets Halloween. Joe’s mom’s Neighbor, Doug. Alright, it’s Halloween, which means it’s time to talk about vampires and ghosts, ghouls and full moons. And why? I am pretty sure I could take a werewolf in a fight. I’ve got the upper body strength. [00:35:27] Doug: Lemme just look at me. The question was, when will the next full moon fall Exactly? On Halloween. So let’s see how our so-called experts heavy on the air quotes there. Let’s see how they did. Well, I will tell you that it’s 17 years sooner than what Doc g guessed. One year sooner than what M guessed and zero years sooner than what Jesse guessed, because the correct answer is a frightening 2039 making Jesse our improbable winner. [00:35:58] Doug: No, I, no way. [00:35:59] Emily: Jesse cheated. Let’s be honest, cheated. [00:36:01] Doc G: I knew it all along. You know em, and I couldn’t win. He already got it. For the first guess, we were all that [00:36:06] Emily: astrology coming through. [00:36:08] Jesse: I learned that from og. Just take a guess. Hit it dead nuts on with no context. [00:36:16] Joe: I had to control [00:36:16] Jesse: my facial [00:36:17] Joe: expressions. [00:36:18] Jesse: Sorry guys. Sorry. That [00:36:21] Joe: was [00:36:21] Emily: impressive. [00:36:22] Jesse: It’s happened before MI think that’s the third time it’s happened. I think it’s [00:36:25] Joe: happened too many times, Doug. I think it’s happened too many times. [00:36:28] Doug: Yeah. It. I mean, he waited like what, eight or nine months? Between the first two times he nailed it. So he is playing the long con on us, that’s for sure. [00:36:38] Jesse: I think it’s been over a year since I nailed one. [00:36:41] Joe: I think it has. I think it was about this time last year, wasn’t it? [00:36:43] Jesse: Yeah. The first one I wrong me to. I dunno, [00:36:47] Doug: was it wrong for me to give him the question in advance? Should I have not done that? [00:36:52] Joe: Done? It’s amazing the favors Doug will do for people at a, at a rest stop. [00:36:57] Joe: In a, [00:37:00] Doug: Hey look. A sandwich is a sandwich, man. [00:37:03] Joe: I’ll give you the answer to the trivia. Oh boy. Let’s go to the second half of this discussion. Please, please, Jesse, get our brain off this and tell us a, tell us a horror story. Jesse Kramer. [00:37:16] Jesse: Well, when Doc G started this conversation on a deathbed in hospice, I thought, man, I, I’m gonna have to go even more serious than that. [00:37:26] Jesse: My story takes place inside of a hot tub. That’s a joke. Uh, but no, my horror story is probably the first really big stupid decision I made in my financial life, at least, I think was pretty dumb involved buying a five figure hot tub. It, it’s kind of similar in some ways to EM’S story where it’s like, I was young. [00:37:47] Jesse: To me, this was a cool thing and I had, at least in my mind, enough disposable income to make it work. But I, I, two major failings and like two major lessons that I would teach to anybody, and I’ve tried to teach to people before when I brought up the story. The first one is that. I made the decision because, uh, we were just coming off of a fun mountain retreat with friends up in the Adirondacks that involved a hot tub. [00:38:09] Jesse: And when it’s a cold winter night and you’re surrounded by friends and you’ve had a couple beers, like how much fun is it to hang out inside of a hot tub? The problem is, it’s hard to recreate that just in everyday life. There’s this great saying out there about like, rent your fun, but that like you, you don’t buy your fun, you just rent your fun because it’s hard to recreate those vacation vibes just everyday life. [00:38:30] Jesse: But then the second big lesson was, it was my first. School of Hard knocks lesson in the way that hard sales tactics work. And I can still remember this sales guy sitting in my kitchen and amongst some of the other tactics, I still remember him telling me about his daughter’s student loans and how every sale is meaningful to him and how like you know, everything he does is for his kids. [00:38:53] Jesse: And man, you know, this, you know, it would really help out his family. Every time someone buys a hot tub from him. And I still remember hearing that and at the time being like, oh man, what a tough, that’s an interesting story. And now after I read Robert Cialdini’s book Influence, I still remember reading that book and being like, oh my gosh. [00:39:10] Jesse: These are all the things that that hot tub sales guide did to me, which I fell for. Like, it’s not that he did it to me, right? I, I take responsibility for it, but those tactics really worked on me and it made me realize that professional sales tactics do work and if we can educate ourselves on, on kind of how our brains respond to them, I think it’s a pretty good defense system. [00:39:28] Jesse: So that’s my scary story. [00:39:31] Joe: Wow. How much was the hot tub? [00:39:33] Jesse: It was like $11,000. It was the Audi of hot tubs, if I may say so. [00:39:39] Emily: Was it worth it? Was it a really nice hot tub? I’m, I’m generally curious now. I [00:39:43] Jesse: mean, it was, it was a really nice hot tub. It fit like eight people. It had awesome jets. It was just very high quality. [00:39:49] Jesse: It was well-made. I’d better, [00:39:51] Doug: I’d better need to smoke a cigarette after I got out of that hot tub. That’s how good that would have to be for $11,000. [00:39:58] Jesse: That’s the thing. It would probably. I mean, at this point I’m over it. We, we, when I sold my old house. Hot tub stayed and it was kind of part of the deal. It was part of the, the price of the house, if you will, but still, no way. [00:40:10] Jesse: You, you might’ve gotten, there’s no way [00:40:10] Doc G: 11,000 more dollars for the house based on the hot tub. [00:40:13] Emily: It was an investment. It was an investment [00:40:18] Joe: as em winks at everybody. For those of you on audio, [00:40:21] Jesse: right? Oh, but if you were to take the number of times I was in that hot tub as a denominator, take $11,000 divided by X, whatever, how many times in the hot tub and just say like. [00:40:30] Jesse: Per, per soaking, how much did I pay? It is not a pretty number. That’s ugly. [00:40:37] Joe: Jesse was talking about some of the tactics that the salesperson used on him. Did you get any of those tactics at the car dealer M used on you? No. [00:40:44] Emily: Honestly, I can’t even. I can’t remember exactly how they tried to sell me on the car, but I remember it was very painless. [00:40:51] Emily: It was very VIP and yeah, like, we’re gonna get you in this car. They had a lot of catchphrases that you’re just like, oh yeah, okay, cool. And oh, well, yeah, you can absolutely afford the payment. These people have been trained to say all the right things and make you feel a certain way, and to, to Jesse’s point about how I would say there was a bit of an impulse purchase, right? [00:41:13] Emily: He’s, he was buying to feel a certain way or to evoke a certain motion. That doesn’t just happen with, with salesmen or saleswomen or like these one-on-one face interactions that’s happening every day online too. Brands and companies, I won’t name them, but very large ones that maybe start with an A. They are so good about taking the friction out of buying. [00:41:34] Emily: It is painless to buy these things. Your card’s already loaded up. One click buys it. It’s in your, it’s at your house in two hours. So my biggest thing in terms of a tip for that, you want to add space between you and the purchase. When you add that buffer room and that time and that waiting period, it gives you time to think about it more critically. [00:41:55] Emily: So like a common one is like the 24 hour, uh, roll, save it to your cart for later, give it a day sleep on it. I guarantee I, I’ve done this so many times, like 90% of what I save for later, I end up not buying because I’m, it’s in the moment that we get so excited. We want these things and so. You gotta give yourself some breathing room. [00:42:13] Jesse: Did you guys know this? And em, you, you reminded me of something there. ’cause it actually applied to my situation. Some states have consumer protection laws that for certain types of sales, especially if there is that in-person salesman, you actually have a, a short grace period. You’re allowed to literally like renege on the content, take it back signed, [00:42:31] bit: correct. [00:42:31] bit: Yeah. Yeah. And [00:42:32] Jesse: especially so it could be like cars. It, it applied in my case to the hot tub. I know. I just, I was excited and I didn’t wanna go back on it, but just for that reason, for some people are like, wait, I, I wish I had that 24 hour shopping cart period. But the guy really wanted me to sign in person. [00:42:47] Jesse: So for all the stackers out there. Interesting to [00:42:50] Joe: insurance products. Mm-hmm. Have that 10 day free look period where after the day real estate [00:42:54] Doug: does too. Remember that great scene in Glengarry Glen Ross where the guy went out and bought the real estate and his wife said, you gotta go get our money back. [00:43:03] Doug: And they just slow walked him to make sure the 24 hour period expired. But interesting. Real estate I think is one of those too. Yeah. [00:43:10] Emily: I believe, uh, that also applies even to like flights. If you buy a flight, you have 24 hours, you can get your money back. Refund it too. A lot of people don’t know that. [00:43:17] Joe: It is interesting. [00:43:17] Joe: I mean, I found that on vacations I used to always want a memento. I’d want a coffee mug or I’d want a, a beer. Glass or a t-shirt or something. And you know what’s funny? I found that if I found something clever or fun or just, just something that I thought I might want to take home, if I took a picture of it, if I just took a picture of it, mm-hmm. [00:43:39] Joe: It went away. It was incredible. ’cause I’m like, oh, I have the photo. I can laugh at the photo whenever. You know what? You know how often I look at that photo of the funny thing that I saw on vacation that I used to bring home that I don’t bring home anymore? Never, never, never once. It’s so strange how that just. [00:43:53] Joe: Completely neutered that, uh, almost like your 24 hour rule. I, [00:43:58] Emily: yeah. And you know, that’s actually a really good tip for, especially for people with children because, you know, kids are going in stores like, I want everything right? This, this, this and that. Okay. We’re gonna take a picture of this and we’re gonna add it to our list for our birthday, for Christmas for this. [00:44:13] Emily: So we’ll take a picture and then we’ll put it to the, on the list, and then we can go through the list of all the things you want afterwards. There’s something about it, I don’t know, it’s almost like you’re still capturing the item in some way. Right. It’s not like I feel like you get the topamine [00:44:26] Joe: hit. [00:44:26] Emily: Yeah, you still get to look at it and be like, oh, that was so cool, and it kind of helps you reminisce of it. I don’t know. [00:44:32] Joe: It, it dissipates. There’s some, [00:44:33] Emily: there’s some psychology Someone has to know in the comments. Maybe someone has to help us figure this out. [00:44:37] Joe: Jesse, in the hot tub money machine. That’s what we’ll call that story. [00:44:41] Jesse: Yeah, it was a, uh, I was not bobbing for apples in there. I can tell you that much. I mean, [00:44:48] Joe: Doug, I don’t dunno what he’s talking about either Doug. [00:44:52] Doug: I [00:44:52] Joe: just [00:44:52] Doug: threw up in my mouth a little bit. Just try to make it Halloween [00:44:54] Jesse: related. I don’t know. What [00:44:56] Doug: is Doug, what’s your scary story? Well, I’ve got several, uh, which will shock nobody. [00:45:02] Doug: One that, I don’t know if it had real long-term effects or not, but I was just feeling the moment very young. My wife and I were waiting, we were literally taking walks in the town we live in to try to induce delivery. Of our oldest son that, that we had been in the hospital for almost a week and he was not gonna show up. [00:45:23] Doug: So they actually sent us home. That’s a whole separate story. But they sent us home and they’re like, go take a walk. It’s almost Thanksgiving, you know? There’s a full moon coming. You know this is gonna happen. So we go, we’re walking around town. It’s a pretty nice town that, that we were walking around and we happened to stop into an eyeglass store, uh, that had some pretty nice pieces, and one of which were antique glasses that were at the time, in the early nineties. [00:45:47] Doug: Well, mid nineties we’re about $1,400. I think that’s roughly three grand now, maybe 2,800 bucks now. And we were just feeling great. It was this beautiful fall day and we were excited for the birth of our son and, and thought, yeah, that seems like a really good idea, that that’s an incredibly stupid idea. [00:46:04] Doug: And the thought of what could have happened with that, you know, $2,800 in today’s dollars, what could have happened with that? I still have buyer’s remorse. I didn’t at the time. It took a long time for me to have buyer’s remorse about that. I wore the glasses for years No one told me, including you, that I looked like a fat John Denver in these glasses. [00:46:23] Doug: You don’t. Why are you pointing to me? Because you, you, I knew you then that you, I never said there goes Fat [00:46:27] Joe: John Denver, though. [00:46:29] bit: We need a picture [00:46:30] Joe: now. [00:46:31] Emily: We need a [00:46:31] bit: picture of these glasses. [00:46:35] Doug: When I think back on it again, there are some stories that that aren’t horror stories for year until years later when you realize what the opportunity cost was for some of those decisions. [00:46:44] Doug: So that’s one, that’s an early one that come to mind. And you might have said this, I’m making adult money now. I feel like I can make adult decisions and adult purchases, and I think that probably fell into that category. And I would say to our younger listeners, don’t fall into that trap. It’s a super easy one. [00:47:00] Doug: I did the car thing like so many, I’m from Detroit. You’re supposed to have cool cars. It’s part of the culture. It’s so easy to fall into that early in your career. [00:47:08] Joe: It strikes me between M story, Jesse’s story, and your story, Doug. Uh, it just reminds me of when TikTok Star, Buffy Purcell was on the show and said, and m you, you kind of said this too, but she just said it very succinctly. [00:47:23] Joe: The most dangerous phrase for a broke person to say is, I deserve it. Mm-hmm. The most dangerous phrase. Just a hundred percent. Speaking of, I have my own sales tactic nightmare. I went to Midas muffler when I was a, when I was a senior in high school, I had this old Monte Carlo that was just falling apart. [00:47:43] Joe: In fact, it was so bad, you know how like the glue on the ceiling doesn’t stick anymore and so the, the ceiling just kind of hangs down. Yeah. I put my own stereo in the car and, uh, I didn’t understand what the ground wire was for. And so to get it to work, I had to turn on the car. I turned on the car. I didn’t realize I had all these, uh, electricity running through my body. [00:48:05] Joe: And then I turned the car off and I got shot outta the car. Just fell on the ground outside the car as the, uh, electrical system was no longer running through me. But that’s not my horror story. The horror story was I go into Midas with this horrible car. The guy who’s working on my, who’s gonna work on my car is like, you know, instead of just a muffler, I think this thing, you could really restore this car, like this car could be awesome. [00:48:31] Joe: And he goes, I’m actually working on my car out back. Come on out back. And he shows me and he’s got this engine he’s taken out of his car and it is all shiny. It’s so beautiful. And then he shows me his car that he’s restoring and he goes through it. He’s like, you know, you could be doing this with your car. [00:48:45] Joe: So I buy this package where I buy the sport struts and the sport shocks, and I get the upgraded muffler system. I get all this stuff. I have no idea what this guy’s doing, right? I get back to the waiting area and I sit down. The receptionist takes out the phone book. They’d have the old phone book, and she goes to the back of the yellow pages where they have all of the coupons in the back. [00:49:12] Joe: She cuts out a coupon for that place and hands it to me and just gives me this knowing look and goes, you’re gonna want this honey. You’re gonna, you’re gonna want this. Oh, no. She’s the, the receptionist is telling me I’m getting ripped off. I have no idea. I’m a high school kid. And so I’m like, wow, that’s, she’s so generous. [00:49:31] Joe: And that guy is so nice. [00:49:33] Doug: This is, this is [00:49:34] Joe: incredible. [00:49:36] Doug: I get home. She didn’t, she didn’t stop you from jumping, she just handed you a pillow to soften the land. Yeah, she did. Well, I think if she would’ve told me I was getting ripped off, the guy would’ve [00:49:44] Joe: fired her. [00:49:45] Doc G: Yeah. [00:49:46] Joe: Jordan. [00:49:47] Doc G: You know, it’s interesting. I find it really funny. [00:49:49] Doc G: Most of these stories are stories that really burn you because you spent when you shouldn’t have spent. But if we really think about it, the really scary stories often aren’t. It’s like I didn’t get the life insurance and I should have, or I didn’t change the beneficiary, or I listened to that guy who said that I should put all my money in this new business and I lost everything. [00:50:14] Doc G: It’s funny because most of these are really survivable and I guess in a sense it’s actually. It’s a blessing. Like we walk away from these feeling burned, but hopefully we learn from them. There are these really catastrophic things that happen to people when they just make, unfortunately, really dumb decisions or non-planned out decisions. [00:50:35] Doc G: I kind of like the fact that we can look at all these and be like, yeah, I got it. Some mega on my face. Yeah, but you’re all probably better people for it in the end. [00:50:43] Joe: I think it’s a great lesson there and and I think that’s probably a great place to end this discussion because I do think, you know, we’re all here. [00:50:50] Joe: We all survived. Jesse survived the hot tub. M survived the Audi. I survived the Mighty Mfl shop. My dad gave me hell when I got home, by the way. He’s like, you’re a moron. You just get that car where the ceiling doesn’t even stick. Has sport shocks and struts really. Like, uh, you can’t even sit in the car yet at Cornered. [00:51:12] Joe: Great. After that, it’s fantastic. We’d love to hear your stories. What are your money horror stories? Join our Facebook group, moms basement stack of Benjamins dot com slash basement’s. A good shortcut to get there. We set up a link that takes you right to the group. Let’s share some more of our stories. If you by the way, have a question about a money story that you have, head to stack your Benjamins dot com slash voicemail and call in with that question. [00:51:34] Joe: Love to hear those as well. If you’re not sure how to get out of a money story that you just, you wanna make it in, we will help you there too. Speaking of help, we’ll help you one more way. We’re gonna help you by sharing all the good places you can go to find out other stuff because all three of these awesome creators have things that you can follow. [00:51:54] Joe: Let’s go to our special guest first. Em, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a blast. [00:51:58] Emily: Thank you. I honestly, I learned a lot talking to everyone, and thank you so much for having me, and hopefully I can come back. Start getting those points for Paula because I was so close. I was this close. What away. [00:52:10] Emily: Thank you, Jesse. Uh, yeah. If [00:52:12] Joe: Jesse hadn’t cheated, you would’ve won. That’s, that’s, that’s your own horror story for, for Halloween. So what’s coming up on your channels? What kind of stuff do you have that people can look forward to if they follow you on TikTok or Instagram? Yeah. [00:52:24] Emily: Yeah. I have a lot of great resources, especially for, um, very beginner friendly resources because money can be really overwhelming. [00:52:31] Emily: Especially in the finance industry and all the jargon. So definitely come to my page, check out those resources. They’re completely free. I think the next biggest thing for me is next Monday, our episode on the Money Guy Show is gonna be live. So we’re gonna put out all of our money and we’re gonna talk about can we actually retire at 40? [00:52:50] Emily: And so like that’s gonna be a really big. Exciting update and hopefully it’ll help teach some people a few things in the process. [00:52:57] Joe: Your second best podcast appearance, that’s what you’re trying to say. [00:53:00] Emily: Absolutely. This is first and foremost, [00:53:04] Joe: Jesse Kramer. What’s going on at, uh, at the Best Better Interest blog at the, the Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors Podcast. [00:53:15] Joe: What do we got coming up my friend? [00:53:16] Jesse: A show about money maybe? Uh, what is going on? I think October, it’s what, today’s October 31st, right. October has been our best month ever on the podcast in terms of listeners, and, and I will say part of that is ’cause we’ve gone to three episodes a month. So when you increase your episode count by 50%, you tend to get more downloads. [00:53:34] Jesse: But still we had, uh, there’s a math there [00:53:36] Joe: too. [00:53:37] Jesse: There is some math there. We’re now doing one, ask me Anything a month, which are kind of the most popular episodes. Uh, one deep dive. This deep dive, this month’s deep dive episode was about special needs planning. Planning for a special needs child, which is a really interesting and, and, uh, topic. [00:53:51] Jesse: And, uh, for any parents out there who have a special needs child, you’ll know how much complexity goes into that task. And then upcoming next week, I’ve got an episode coming out with Professor John Dinsmore. Really interesting stuff about the marketing of debt. So he talks about like credit card marketing, the marketing of loans we even touch on like the marketing of sports gambling and stuff like that. [00:54:11] Jesse: And it kind of ties into some of the sales and and poor spending decisions we are talking about today. ’cause there really is this marketing and advertising machine behind the financing industry, which isn’t always targeted in our best interest. So that’s what’s going on over on some podcast about money, right? [00:54:28] Joe: Personal finance for long-term investors. I can say it right, I just apparently chose not to. Doc G, how about over at [00:54:34] Doc G: the Earn and Invest podcast? Invest. We just had Alana Golan on from the LEAP Academy. We talk about portfolio careers, the world of corporate America, careers making a living. It’s all changing. [00:54:51] Doc G: We used to look at iq, then we started looking at eq. She talks a lot about aq, your ability to have agility, to move, to change, to shift, to pivot. And so how do you build a portfolio career? We talk about it on earn and invest. [00:55:07] Joe: Wow, you guys are all working on such cool stuff. Can I come live where all three of you live? [00:55:12] Joe: It’s fantastic, and we will link to all them in the show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Alright, as always, Doug, you are wrapping up this baby for us. What should be on our to-do list today? I’m [00:55:23] Doug: not working on anything Cool, Joe. But I do know there were three things we should have learned today. [00:55:27] Doug: First, take some advice from our guest, auntie m. If you know you’re gonna look like a movie star driving around on a brand new El Camino, it absolutely makes sense to lease a car. In fact, go ahead and use your emergency fund to reduce those monthly payments. Oh God, no. Second, don’t forget the insightful lesson from Jesse Hot Tubs. [00:55:48] Doug: Will absolutely enhance your home’s resale value. But the big lesson, don’t let those little con artists take your candy corn without breaking a sweat. Make ’em do a trick by like cleaning out your gutters or changing the oil on your snowblower before you hand over the good stuff. Thanks to our good friend Emily for joining us today. [00:56:11] Doug: You’ll find her channel. Hey friend. It’s em on TikTok and Instagram. Follow her for great tips and financial fun. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. And thanks to the Jesse Kramer for hanging out with us today, you’ll find his fabulous podcast, personal Finance for the Long-Term Investor, wherever you listen to finer podcasts. [00:56:36] Doug: That’s the name Joe. Remember it. Long-Term Investors. Yeah. I mean, that could, that could work too. It sounds pretty good. Thanks also to Doc G for joining us today. You’ll find the Irresistible Earn and Invest podcast where I had to think about that, like, is it Irresistible? Nice pause. Nice pause. You’ll find the Irresistible Earn and Invest podcast wherever you listen. [00:56:58] Doug: Podcasts anywhere. This show is the property of S 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. [00:57:22] Doug: 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.
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