What’s missing from your financial plan? Turns out, it’s probably not the thing you’ve been obsessing over. Today in Mom’s basement, Joe and Doug welcome Paula Pant (Afford Anything), Jesse Cramer (Best Interest, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors), and OG for a lively roundtable discussion about a Kiplinger article by Evan Beach, CFP®, that calls out the three most overlooked elements in most plans. Spoiler: it’s not “own more small-cap stocks.”
Instead of 50 pages of charts and disclosures, our panel digs into what really matters: having an actionable plan, making smart tax and estate decisions, and actually answering the big-money questions (like, “Will I be okay?”). You’ll hear OG share why a plan without goals is just a portfolio in disguise, Paula explain why we fear the “why” more than the “what,” and Jesse reveal how good planning boils decades of decisions into the next six months of steps. Sprinkle in skydiving estate-planning analogies, surprise Medicare premiums, and Paula’s first trivia win in forever, and you’ve got classic SB.
Plus, Doug takes us on a lasagna-tax detour during trivia as the year-long contest gets even spicier. Will Jesse hang onto his lead, or is Paula’s underdog run gaining steam? Tune in for laughs, wisdom, and a reminder that your plan needs more than investment charts to really shine.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic: What’s missing from most financial plans
Three Things Missing From Almost Every Financial ‘Plan’ (Kiplinger)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Missing financial plan pieces
- Charts versus actionable steps
- Substituting portfolio for plan
- Overfocus on investments
- Purpose and intentional living
- Fear of defining goals
- Quantitative vs qualitative value
- Avoiding “cotton candy” planning
- Making advice binary
- Short-term vs long-term focus
- Firing mismatched clients
- Planner as guide
- Spending time on experiences
- Tax surprises in April
- Medicare premium thresholds
- Roth conversions impact
- Severance and tax effects
- Estate planning importance
- Barbecue estate planning analogy
- Making estate plans habitual
- Age-based planning rules
- Advisors as people-pleasers
- Answering big money questions
- Balancing carrot and stick
- Interconnected financial decisions
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
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.
Paula Pant
Check out Paula’s site and amazing podcast at AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- How much is $4000 in 1913 worth in today’s dollar, adjusted for inflation?
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we dive into FIVE of the late Jonathan Clements’s shiniest pearls of wisdom that’ll help YOU create a better financial plan.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: 5 Steps to Your Best Retirement (with Jeremy Keil, CFP) SB1742
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] opener: Hey, shake and bake. Cal Woo. Shake, bite. [00:00:07] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:23] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan, what are the three things missing from most financial plans? We’ll dive into what one author suggests. Your plan needs to make it shine with our round cable panel today. But that’s not all. Jesse Kramer took the lead in our year long trivia contest. What? What? I know it right. [00:00:43] Doug: Let’s rewind that tape ’cause the world is upside down. Can he hang onto that lead? We’ll pause halfway through this. Discussion for my mind bending trivia question. And now a guy who loves the weekend because it means he gets to update his spreadsheets in peace and quiet. It’s Joe. So see I [00:01:06] Joe: ah, the weekend and if you’re a money nerd, you know exactly what I’m talking about. [00:01:10] Joe: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. Doug and I are super happy that you’re here, aren’t we, Doug? We’re super happy. So excited. [00:01:17] Doug: Yay. [00:01:18] Joe: Just sit back and relax because. If you’ve never been with us on a Friday episode, this is where we invite some of our friends to debate a topic that we found in the popular press, and we’ve got a great one today. [00:01:31] Joe: This is a financial planner, Doug, talking about the things that we, ccs in all these financial plans that are always missing. That he, I guess he doesn’t see in financial plans. The thing he sees that he doesn’t see, doesn’t see. Raise your hand if you’re [00:01:43] Doug: not here. [00:01:44] Joe: It’s that kind of an [00:01:45] Doug: article. [00:01:46] Joe: Yeah. So what do you need in your financial plan to make it work? [00:01:49] Joe: Well, let’s say hello to the people that are going to compare and contrast this stuff. Let’s start off with the gentleman who just got back from taking his eldest to back to college. Mr. OG is here. How are you man? [00:02:03] OG: Man, I’m just so happy to be here. [00:02:05] Joe: Yeah, so your son has Thanks. Thanks for having me [00:02:06] OG: again guys. [00:02:08] Joe: Hey, you’re welcome. Glad you could make it for the what? 1700th and whatever time [00:02:14] OG: I was on the phone driving back and I said, I’ve gotta do this podcast recording. And my buddy says, oh, are y’all prepared? And I just started laughing, like, I’m prepared. This is like number 1700 something. He’s like, who’s the we are, I’ll be fine. [00:02:28] Joe: Are they prepared? [00:02:29] OG: Are they prepared? Yeah. Is the audience ready? They are the ones that need to be [00:02:32] Joe: prepared because OG knows how to delegate Doug. He’s got this delegation thing down. If everybody else gets it ready, then uh, then he’s good. It does help quite a ton. It does. And somebody else who it helps quite a ton to have her here. [00:02:47] Joe: Podcasting with us from Manhattan. Paula Pants here. [00:02:50] Paula: How are you? I’m here. I’m here. Uh, this is the last week for those of you who are watching on YouTube. You can see the office around me. This is my WeWork office, and this is my last week in this space. So you see bare shelves here? Yes. [00:03:07] Joe: You see cardboard boxes over there. [00:03:09] Joe: Let this be a reminder, kids of what happens when you don’t pay the rent. I was gonna say, [00:03:13] opener: I know, [00:03:13] Doug: right? [00:03:14] OG: Somebody needs to have a financial plan on how to pay for rent. [00:03:20] Doug: Someone’s getting evicted out of her WeWork now, now has to go live in a storage unit. [00:03:25] Joe: Oh yeah. Again, I love that piece again. Yeah. May not be truthful, but it still is funny. [00:03:32] Joe: Speaking of funny, the guy who is, uh, and not truthful protecting us on the Canadian border all the way up in Rochester, New York. Mr. Jesse Kramer’s here. How are you buddy? [00:03:42] Jesse: Doing well, doing well. I think I caught some strays there during your introduction. I, I heard some comments on the side, I think, but, uh, we’re doing well, uh, protecting the Canadian border. [00:03:51] Jesse: Yeah, I don’t know about that. We’ve got a. We’re letting a lot of geese in over the border, so, uh, oh man. We’re dealing with them. Some, some illegal geese. [00:03:59] Doug: They’re not exactly pounding at the gates these days to get into the us, so I don’t think there’s a lot of work for you right now. Jesse. What’s that? [00:04:08] Doug: The geese. The [00:04:08] Joe: geese aren’t [00:04:09] Doug: no Canadian. [00:04:12] Joe: Yeah. Or, or the geese. Yeah. Well, you know what? People are pounding to get into a better financial plan. How about that? Everybody wants to get into what Paul is like. [00:04:25] Doug: Did that work, Paula? That in the Hall of Fame of transitions that might be so close. [00:04:33] Joe: That might be number 57 or 58 of the worst. [00:04:36] Joe: Transitions ever, but everybody wants a great financial plan. And so there was a piece I found on Kiplinger that was written by Evan Beach, CFP, and a WMA. He’s a financial planner. These three things are missing from almost every financial plan that he sees. We’re gonna dive into those. You don’t even need to read the piece. [00:04:56] Joe: We will link to it in our show notes, but you don’t need to read it. We’re gonna dive into all these today and help you. Get rid of those holes in your financial plan, but first we got a few sponsors that make sure we can keep on keeping on you don’t pay a penny for any of this. Goodness. We’re gonna hear from them. [00:05:12] Joe: And then og Paula and Jesse diving into how to shore up your financial plan. [00:05:26] Joe: We’ve got some stackers hanging out with us on YouTube live. If you wanna hang out with us, we’re here generally on Monday afternoons. Fee from Annapolis is here. Bee is with us again. Chris is here. Uh, hi guys. Your buddy from Texas. First time to see how the sausage is made. Glad you’re here with us. Chris. [00:05:44] Joe: We also have Indie, indie Tampa here. Case Sands is here. Jack Carlos, glad you guys are hanging out with us on this, uh, awesome day. Alright, speaking of awesome, let’s talk about this piece because I think this idea of a financial plan is frustrating for a lot of people because. Og, we’ll start with you. [00:06:04] Joe: You know, Evan starts off this discussion by saying that, you know, when you go to do a workout, the trainer goes, do this, do this, do this, do this, do this. When you go to get your financial plan, what Evan sees from a lot of financial planners is a bunch of charts and graphs that shows the probability that you might make it or you might not make it based on what you told them about what your tax situation looks like today. [00:06:27] Joe: And then maybe a few recommendations based on that. And then 50. I like the end of this 50 pages of disclosures. Why is it so difficult from the planner side of the table to. Create an actionable plan instead of just a bunch of projections? [00:06:44] OG: Well, I guess I’m kind of on Evan’s side here. I, I don’t think it is that hard. [00:06:48] OG: I would think that he would see much more investment management stuff as kind of the corpus of the conversation and a lot less, you know, and the things that he’s talking about that he feels is missing from a lot of ’em. ’cause I think in my experience, that seems to be the case. Substituting portfolio for plan is a very common. [00:07:08] OG: Easy thing for an advisor to do. And frankly, I think some of it’s also on the client, because unless they don’t have anything else to talk about, that’s the most fun stuff to talk about anyway. Right. It’s like the money, like, eh, what, what are we doing with small caps right now? That’s exciting and, and I heard interest rates are going down that really, that does something to something, right? [00:07:28] OG: So that feels like that’s the thing to do. I believe, and I, I’m, I’m guessing Jesse believes this as well, and I can tell that Evan does. The real benefit of the financial planning is the actual work of planning, not necessarily the, the little things that you do on the backend because of it. It’s the fact that you’re having the conversation, that you’re thinking about these things that are upcoming in your life. [00:07:48] OG: Not the, you know, what percent of my money goes in small cap or something like that. I mean, it’s an important piece, but it’s not the important piece. It did always drive me crazy back when I was a [00:07:58] Joe: financial planner, og, that that I would sit down and I’d say, so what are your goals? Like, oh, no, no, I don’t. [00:08:03] Joe: I don’t really care about that. Let’s talk about great investments. Like here, I wanna show you my portfolio. You show me what I’m doing. Yeah. But it’s funny, Paula, because people would often go into my office and OGs talking about this, Jesse’s nodding his head in a financial planning office. He sees this a lot too. [00:08:17] Joe: I’m guessing you talk a lot about intentional living. How does this lack of a real step-by-step plan instead of let’s just talk about the investments trip people up. [00:08:28] Paula: Mm. I think sometimes there can be an overfocus on the investments, meaning an overfocus on the product, the tactics. Um, not that investments are a product, but you know, the, it’s an overfocus on the what rather than on the why. [00:08:42] Paula: So sometimes the bigger picture, the what’s it all for can get lost because people get so caught up in the what, whether that what is your asset allocation or some insurance products or whatever else it may be. [00:08:56] Joe: Do you also think, Paula, that a bunch of us are afraid of the why? Going down that rabbit hole seems like a difficult thing. [00:09:04] Joe: I’m thinking about when Doc G has been on, uh, Jordan Grut. Mm-hmm. And him talking about purpose a lot and how he has all kinds of people that get mad at him when they start talking about purpose. Does defining these goals. Scare the hell outta people. You think that’s a piece? [00:09:20] Paula: I think that might be one of a multitude of things that are going on. [00:09:24] Paula: I also think that, generally speaking, we live in a society where things that are quantifiable are considered higher value than things that are qualitative. And so, you know, broadly speaking, the, the STEM professions and the STEM studies in school are considered higher value than. The humanities, for example. [00:09:44] Paula: Now that, you know, I’m not saying that I agree with that or disagree with that, but that’s just broadly how value is perceived in society. And so I think that people often perceive that they are receiving, delivering, and receiving value based on how quantifiable and mathematical that delivery is. [00:10:02] Joe: Gotcha. [00:10:02] Joe: Which, you know, goal-based planning is much more subjective. [00:10:06] Paula: Right. I, I think people are worried about being so subjective that they crossed the line into kumbaya rainbows and unicorns, right? At which point it just turns into cotton candy, and nobody wants to be thought of as delivering that, [00:10:19] Joe: which is frustrating because I feel like it’s, and I saw this all the time, that people thought it was cotton candy. [00:10:23] Joe: They’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever goal setting sounds cute, neat, whatever. Let’s get on with the hard stuff, right? Almost like in life where we talk about communication as a soft skill, when that’s. 90% of the time what trips people up. Jesse, you write often about making complex things simple, right? [00:10:40] Joe: Mm-hmm. Why do you think, well, number one, do you agree that a lot of advisors shy away from making things binary? Do this, then that, and then number two, if you do agree with that, why do you think so many advisors shy away from it? [00:10:51] Jesse: Uh, do I think that advisors shy away from making things binary? Probably, I mean, one thing, I don’t know if this is exactly what the author was getting into, but as OG can probably attest to, like sometimes it can be easy to get caught up in the weeds of things. [00:11:06] Jesse: It can be easy when you’re thinking about retirement, when you’re thinking, when you’re talking to a younger client who maybe they’re retiring in five years and then they’ll have social security decision, a Medicare decision, RMDs, Roth conversions, et cetera, et cetera. You can get caught up in thinking decades ahead when really. [00:11:22] Jesse: I mean, it’s fine to think decades ahead, but then you have to bring it back and boil it down to, here are the things that you ought to do, or that we as your financial planner are going to do for you in the next six months. Here are the simple things, nuts and bolts, logistics and mechanics, and here’s the easy stuff that you’re gonna do in the next six months. [00:11:39] Jesse: And then getting into some of the softer things, like, here are the reasons why we’re doing those things, and here’s how it fits into the greater plan. So I think it can be easy to get caught in in that trap where sometimes you’re thinking so far ahead, you forget about, well, what needs to happen tomorrow so that we’ve reached this goal 20 years from now. [00:11:57] Jesse: I don’t know if that exactly answers your question, Joe. And I also forget that the second part of your question. The curse of a podcast guest. Uh, forgetting the second part of two part questions. [00:12:06] Joe: No, it was, do you agree? And ostensibly, based on your answer, you do agree that advisors find it hard to make things binary. [00:12:12] Joe: And I think you answered that. Oh gee. How do you get around this in your practice? Like, how do you get around people that don’t want to talk about the goals or that uh, they just wanna go with the quote hard stuff, which are these more complex strategies over goal attainment? [00:12:26] OG: Uh, yeah. You just fire ’em. [00:12:29] OG: Yeah. That’s, you just [00:12:30] Joe: fire the client. [00:12:31] OG: Yeah. Sorry, it’s not what we do. The reality is absent something more important to talk about than the default is gonna be on the investments or on whatever topic du jour they read in Kiplinger, for example. You know, or wherever, right? And so I think it’s incumbent on us as professionals to keep the conversation largely focused in the areas that have the biggest impact. [00:13:00] OG: That’s the piece of our job that we have to do. I get it. If you’re spinning outta control, ’cause you want to talk about the market as you know, cratering and that sort of thing, we’ve gotta be able to like arrest that dissent, right? Like kinda get you back to neutral, to then be able to focus on the stuff that really matters. [00:13:17] OG: And on occasion, there’s something that’s going on in your life that really doesn’t matter so much, but maybe you just need somebody to talk to about it and just listen. And that’s part of our job too. But ultimately the biggest benefit I think that planners have, uh, advisors have for clients is giving them that space to think about the stuff that’s upcoming. [00:13:38] OG: Like Jesse said, these big giant 30 year decisions and 10 year decisions and that sort of stuff. And then for us to go, all right, how do we take all of this stuff and say, well, this is what we need to spend our energy on for the next six months. You’re gonna do this thing and I’m gonna do this thing. And then why don’t we talk again in, you know, six months or a year and see where we are and then see if there’s any adjustments that needs to be made. [00:13:58] OG: You know, we’ve talked about a lot things around asset allocation, rebalancing, but statistically, once a year is good enough. You know, so why would we wanna spend any energy on that? I’d, I mean, I love talking to people about money. This is what we do both professionally. And then in this little side project for the last, you know, decade and a half. [00:14:17] OG: But also I like to not do those things, you know? And it’s like if we’re just gonna talk about small cap value stocks and you know, I’m just going, let’s not, don’t you have something else to do? Like surely your life is important enough to like have something else to do and talk about small value right now. [00:14:35] OG: Like, yeah, I know I got, I would like go hit golf balls or go sit by the pool or do something, you know, I wanna do those things. But you know, in like little limited circumstances, right? I dunno. It makes me sound curmudgeonly, I suppose. But [00:14:46] Joe: yeah, I don’t know. I mean, if we substitute the golf balls piece for me with just spending more time on goal attainment to your earlier point board games, there’s so much there. [00:14:55] Joe: There is absolutely so much there. [00:14:57] OG: I would rather, let me put it this way, I would rather spend 28 minutes of a 30 minute meeting having you tell me all about all of your trips, where you’re going next, where you sat in the airplane, showing me pictures, then going cool. So I’m gonna do that again next year. [00:15:11] OG: Is everything good? Or do we have to make, you know, like, well, we should do this one little thing and this one thing. Awesome. I’m really excited. I’m booking the trip for next year. That is the best benefit of having somebody else, you know, with you along this path, not to spend the 28 minutes going, let’s finagle all this stuff. [00:15:28] OG: So then you can be like, well it’s all for these pictures. You get to, oh, we don’t have time for the picture. Okay. Alright. You know what I mean? Like the energy should be on the pictures. Energy should be on the experience and the stuff that you’re spending the money on and the stuff that you’re doing. [00:15:40] OG: And the two minutes should be on like, okay, we’re gonna like do this and this, and then you’re gonna do that, and then we’re good. Well, it’s [00:15:46] Joe: like Evan’s Point here with the workout routine. Do this, do this, do this, and you’ll reach your goal. Bam. Instead of here’s charts and graphs about your heart and, and the monitoring of your heart, here’s your, you know, blood circulation. [00:15:58] Joe: Here’s, here’s whatever missing. Piece number two Evan points out is text and estate strategies. He said that most plans skip taxes and estate plans, and yet those can have even bigger wins than portfolio tweaks. And even though there’s some. Planning softwares that he talks about that are emerging humans really are, have to interpret them and act on them. [00:16:21] Joe: So, Jesse, let’s start with you. If you were to explain the importance of estate planning at like a backyard barbecue and not bore your friends to, to, to help. Yeah. Like, you know, you’re in a backyard barbecue, you wanna talk estate planning, talk about killing the vibe. How do you, how would you do that? And talk about how important it is in kind of a fun way. [00:16:43] Jesse: Well, boy, in a fun way, you had to have that qualifier at the very, very end. How do you make it fun? No, I, I would just say if anybody can, [00:16:50] Joe: you can, [00:16:51] Jesse: I would just say, listen. Okay, I have to do it in a fun way. So there you are. You’re skydiving. You’re having the time of your life and your parachute breaks. Uh, don’t you wish you have an estate plan? [00:17:02] Jesse: I mean, that’s essentially what it comes down to, but no, it, it’s like, okay, let’s be realistic. We all die at some point. It doesn’t have to be that negative a topic. It happens, but there are just too many stories to count where. When you die, it’s, it’s important to understand how your assets pass on to other people in your life, your heirs who might be affected after you’ve gone to make sure that plans are placed to take care of them. [00:17:24] Jesse: I was just doing a bunch of research on special needs planning, which is a whole nother ball of wax, but Oh yeah. Where maybe you have to care for an adult child after you pass away. But the whole point is that there are so many situations we can point to, both famous ones and totally mundane ones that no one would’ve ever heard of where somebody died. [00:17:42] Jesse: And they left a mess behind them. Both in terms of like a, a, an emotional mess for other people to pick up the pieces, but then just a financial mess in terms of who received what assets and why and in what share? Uh, well I [00:17:54] Joe: thought you meant hitting the ground after skydiving. [00:17:56] Doug: Yeah. And that’s not the mess I thought he was gonna talk about. [00:17:59] Doug: Yeah. Plus, a lot of times you pee yourself. I’ve heard now when you [00:18:04] OG: splat, there’s nothing to pee. It just, [00:18:07] Doug: we’re putting the fun in funeral. Heart, [00:18:12] Joe: heart DP hanging out with us on YouTube says, bam. [00:18:19] Doug: Oh, [00:18:20] Joe: so many skydiving jokes. It’s so little time. It’s true. [00:18:23] Jesse: Yeah, it’s true. And, and you wanna come in for a nice soft landing, but you don’t always do. And, uh, no. And a estate hear that. A simple, a simple estate plan solves so many of these problems. It’s the problem that nobody thinks they’re ever going to deal with, and yet we here on this podcast can all point to examples where, yeah, lots of real people have fallen into this trap simply by not getting an estate plan done in time. [00:18:46] Joe: You know, Paula, here’s what I think. I think that bad advisors shy away from this stuff, tax and estate planning. ’cause they think taxes are gonna bore the client to tears in estate planning. Nobody wants to talk about it, so I don’t wanna talk about it. Frankly, I think that an advisor who’s a people pleaser, a bad advisor, but that’s still the majority I think of a lot of people. [00:19:04] Joe: I just wanna get along with others. Why do you think. Or how do you think we can make estate planning less scary for people so they actually act on it? Because ultimately, whether they’re scary or not, we gotta get it done. [00:19:16] Paula: Yeah, I think there are two things. One is sometimes people take things less personally if it’s just a rule. [00:19:24] Paula: And so I heard somebody say, and this is a little bit extreme, but I actually heard someone say, I believe that every single person, as soon as they turn 18, should have an estate plan. And I was like, whoa, that sounds extreme because it’s like 18 really. I think what they did, and you can debate the age, but what they did was they made. [00:19:44] Paula: An age-based rule, it takes the subjectivity out of it. It’s like when you turn this age, you get a colonoscopy. When you turn this age, you get an estate plan. You set like an age-based rule, and then that removes the decision making and it removes the question of, is it for me or not? It’s purely age-based. [00:20:04] Joe: I like that. Just this, uh, make it rule. I feel like in the nation we did this with, with seat belts. I mean, we started. Mm-hmm. You know, when I was a kid, I remember my dad going, I don’t wear a seatbelt. Nobody, you know, I’m too cool to wear a seatbelt now. It’s like if you don’t get in the car and put your seatbelt on right away, I feel like it’s kind of a you not always is it the law. [00:20:23] Joe: I don’t, it just feels like a rule, like just a thing that we do. Doug, I, [00:20:27] Doug: I would actually take that even further, Joe and say it doesn’t feel like anything because I don’t even know I do it. It is. It is such truly a habit. If you ask me, do you put it on or don’t you, I’d be like, I don’t know. Oh shit. It’s on. [00:20:39] Doug: Oh my God. Wow. How’d that happen? Well, [00:20:40] Joe: thanks Doug. We get to beep out another [00:20:42] OG: word. Now [00:20:42] Doug: we get to beep out another word. If they can say that [00:20:44] OG: on SportsCenter, we can say it on podcasts. Right? Like it’s kind of loosening the rules a little bit. They get to say it [00:20:50] Doug: on [00:20:50] OG: SportsCenter, now. They do. [00:20:52] Doug: Wow. Wow. Okay. [00:20:53] Doug: But, uh, I, I mean, I think that’s the great part of making this habitual is that you won’t even know it’s happening. [00:21:00] Joe: OG tax planning. Jesse and Paula covered estate planning, but tax planning, where’s a place that tax planning can really make a difference if people just woke up and thought about taxes a little bit instead of just the investment strategy? [00:21:11] OG: Every single solitary thing has a tax impact. I mean, it’s important to know the secondary and the the dominoes that fall beyond your decision making, and I think that one of the rules that we have is no surprises. I’m firmly convinced that nobody likes surprises of any kind, good ones or bad ones, right? [00:21:31] OG: Because if you have a good surprise, like it’s birthday, you’re like, surprise. The birthday party, you’re like, oh, I’m just, I’m wearing this grubby t-shirt. I could have done my hair. Is it good? Like I didn’t shave what? What? You know what I mean? Like it’s still surprise. It would’ve been surprised 10 minutes ago and I would’ve put a different shirt on and some deodorant. [00:21:48] OG: That also was a surprise. I just think nobody likes surprises of any kind, so especially bad ones. And certainly tax ones that come in April. So if you are finding that you’re surprised when you say you drop your stuff off at your CPA, your tax preparer and they go drum roll 3,200, and you’re like, uh oh. [00:22:09] OG: Or get back and they’re like, which one do you think, you know, you should have a pretty good idea. You pick, you know, you should have a pretty good idea of what’s happening with your tax situation. But I think what sometimes people do is they’ll look at like. A great one, for example, is in retirement with, with Medicare, the premiums for Medicare, which everybody is, gets some, some amount of Medicare. [00:22:30] OG: The premiums are tied to your income and there’s like different thresholds at which the premiums increase, and I think everybody would sign off on that and go, yeah, it makes sense. If you’re super rich, you pay a little bit more. All right, cool. But nobody thinks that Roth conversions count as being super rich, or you get a bunch of dividends that just stay in your brokerage account and you reinvest them. [00:22:49] OG: Guess what that counts, and not knowing how that all interplays or you take a buyout from your, from your company or a severance package or something, you know, like all this stuff has a secondary effect down the line. You think, oh, I got my taxes all squared away. Then two years later, your insurance premiums are, you know, $300 a month instead of 150. [00:23:08] OG: That’s a surprise that you didn’t know was coming. Yeah. And so when tax planning, where it becomes very valuable is reducing those surprises, number one. And then number two, giving you a runway to make changes in advance that you know are coming. We look at tax planning for clients in the fall because we think it’s a good idea to spend three or four months ago and Hey, I’m gonna owe that 3,200 bucks. [00:23:29] OG: Is there anything I can do about it? Sometimes there’s not. Like the facts are facts, right? You make money, you gotta pay taxes. Sometimes you make a bunch of money, you gotta pay a bunch of taxes. Sometimes you sell a piece of property and you’re like, I just sold this property that I got and I don’t have anything else to invest it in, so therefore I’m gonna pay taxes. [00:23:43] OG: Right? Like that’s just part of the deal. [00:23:45] Joe: But even if so, knowing in October that you’re gonna owe X amount of money in April. Yeah. There’s no surprise. [00:23:50] OG: Yeah. Amazing. There’s no surprise. Sometimes you can look at that and say, oh, well. I’m gonna have this tax bill, but if I, I’ve got three more months. I, I, I really haven’t maxed out my 401k yet. [00:24:01] OG: I could do that, pull that forward and maybe that’ll help reduce my tax billing. There’s like things that you can potentially do to lower or reduce that bill if you know it in advance. So I think there’s a ton of opportunity around tax planning. And this one I would agree with, if you’re just showing up in April or. [00:24:19] OG: February or whatever, and saying, here’s my tax stuff, or you’re dumping in TurboTax. Not having any idea. This is a big miss in your, in your financial plan. [00:24:27] Joe: Great discussion going on here live. Uh, heart DP said to check with your workplace if they offer legal plans as part of your flexible benefits. I like that. [00:24:35] Joe: And Jeff agreed with that and said, our work legal plan can be great. We had our entire state plan including a special needs trust done for a fraction of the cost using that. Some good discussion going on there. Well, we are going to talk about the third piece of what. Evan says the three missing pieces in a financial plan. [00:24:55] Joe: The first one was a plan at all this, just a bunch of charts and graphs and no real do this, do that. The second piece was no real estate planning or tax planning. What’s the third one? We’re gonna be back with that, but at the halfway point of every show, and man, this year it’s a barn burner as we are in October and. [00:25:16] Joe: The race is tightening. Guys. We have a year long competition between our three contributors here, Paula OG and Jesse, for this ridiculous dollar store trophy. And, uh, possibly, uh, our good friend Eric, the last couple years has POed up some, some, some cool gifts from, uh, milk bar, which is fantastic. Here’s the score. [00:25:37] Joe: Well, Doug, what is the score so far in October? [00:25:42] Doug: Joe, does Doug know what the [00:25:43] Joe: score is? Well, Joe, [00:25:43] Doug: Doug always knows the score. Doug doesn’t always know he is on mute. Uh uh. Now we got it. But what I can say is that Jesse has taken a resounding commanding. Half point lead. He has 11 and a half points. OG has just a poultry 11 points. [00:26:04] Doug: Paula has a minuscule infinitesimally, small seven and a half points, but she’s, she’s scrappy. She’s a fighter. I can see she’s fighting [00:26:14] Joe: her way back if she wins today, and it’s eight and a half. I mean, it is tightening here as we roll into the fourth quarter. Of this trivia game. [00:26:24] Paula: I’m just happy that there’s a, a coalition victory. [00:26:27] Paula: I’m just happy that a, a member of the coalition to defeat OG is now in the lead. [00:26:32] Joe: Let’s see if Jesse pulls ahead at that coalition continues. We’ll, we’ll see there. But first we need a question today. Doug, what do we got on tap for today’s trivia question? [00:26:47] Doug: Well, hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s date in history, the income tax was passed. Yay. I know it’s, it’s dark days, but there was some good news after the 16th amendment was most radical. Try that again. 3, 2, 1. After the 16th amendment was ratified in 1913, finally making income taxation constitutional. [00:27:14] Doug: Finally, Congress decided to only tax 1% of your income and to only tax those people making at the time more than $4,000 according to my handy dandy inflation calculator to the penny. What would that $4,000 threshold be in today’s dollars? I’ll be back right after I go fight Joe’s mom on her lasagna tax no second. [00:27:42] Doug: Helping to people who weigh over how much and charging non-residents, how much for corner pieces. Come on. This house is a prison. [00:27:52] Joe: Well, we’ll let, uh, Doug go fight the good fight. Jesse, this is weird. I’m calling on you to go first, my friend. Yeah. So after, uh. After the 16th Amendment made the income tax, constitutional, and nothing Doug likes better than a good constitutional, what is morning [00:28:10] OG: constitution? [00:28:11] OG: Morning [00:28:12] Joe: constitutional. How much would that tax be in today’s dollars? [00:28:19] Doug: I wanna correct you, Joe. It’s not how much the tax would be, it’s how much. Because they were only taxing taxpayers who earned, how much would the limit be, right? Yeah. They earned $4,000 of income. 4,000. That’s right. So we’re looking for what that $4,000 of annual income would be equal to. [00:28:34] Doug: Yeah. In 2025. Thank [00:28:35] Jesse: you. And was it 19? 1913, Doug? [00:28:39] Doug: Yes. We [00:28:39] Joe: can’t tell you when we allowed [00:28:40] Jesse: the use of calculators. [00:28:42] Joe: No, we can’t tell you what year. I think Jesse’s using a calculator right now. Jesse’s already using a calculator. [00:28:48] Jesse: No, no. I’m, I’m using a pen and paper. But the year was in the question, right? The year was [00:28:53] Joe: not in the question. [00:28:54] Joe: Mm-hmm. [00:28:55] Doug: I [00:28:55] Joe: said it, Joe. It was Doug. Doug said 19. 13. 13. Why did you do that, Doug? I took the date out on purpose and Doug put it back in. [00:29:03] Doug: I put it back in because I thought you made it a simple inflation discussion, which is why, what do you The clause? The clause to the penny is critical. Yeah. In the question. [00:29:14] Doug: Yeah. [00:29:14] Jesse: Oh my goodness. I’m gonna say, uh, 100. $34,600. 1 3 4 [00:29:24] Doug: 4 606 [00:29:25] Jesse: 0 0. [00:29:27] Doug: And zero pennies. [00:29:28] Jesse: And zero pennies. [00:29:29] Doug: Okay. Alright, [00:29:32] Joe: og, what are you gonna do with that? Why do I have to go [00:29:35] Jesse: next? Thought? There’s my calculator. Og, you see my calculations [00:29:40] Joe: because you’re in the middle. You are in second. Okay. What was his guess? [00:29:45] Joe: 1 34. 600. [00:29:49] OG: Hmm, I’m gonna make Paula have to pick here. I’m gonna say he said 1 34 6. So we got 112 years to to race to the 3 1 0 3 race to the hundred 12 power carry the Infinity. Uh, $109,599 [00:30:10] Joe: 1 0 9 5 99. Yeah. All right, Paula, 1 34 6 and 1 0 9. 5 9 9. What are you thinking? [00:30:18] Paula: Well, I will say my favorite comment from heart dp. [00:30:22] Paula: So for those of you watching on YouTube, my hands have been in frame the whole time, so you can see my face in my hands fully in frame. I’m not using any calculator. I’m not using any paper or pen, but I am using, it’s like Houdini. I am doing mental math in my head and apparently also in my hands, ’cause heart DP says Paula’s using her air Abacus. [00:30:42] OG: Ooh, somebody’s got a good comment there. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. [00:30:47] Paula: So Jesse’s was 1 34. 600. I’m sorry, Jesse. I’m gonna go 1 34, 5 99 and 99 cents. [00:31:00] Joe: Mm. She takes the middle 1 34, 5 99 and 99 cents, and that means, well, who knows what it means. We’ll be right back. [00:31:13] OG: Yeah, this would’ve been a lot harder. Not knowing that the income tax did you guys both know the income tax was in 1913? [00:31:19] OG: I took it outta the question and Doug put it back in. I know. I’m just asking if they knew. ’cause I knew it was, yeah, I had no idea. [00:31:23] Paula: I knew that the income tax was passed right around the time there was something related to tariffs and then we So [00:31:31] OG: 2025 ish. [00:31:35] Paula: No, I was thinking like the Smoot Hartley tariffs. [00:31:38] Paula: So I was thinking that era. Okay. [00:31:40] Joe: The Hooley era. [00:31:42] Paula: The Smoot. Holly. Holly. Smoot. Hawley. Smoot Hawley. [00:31:45] Joe: Yep. The Terre Haute era. Is that what, Jesse, you started this game off with 134,600. How you feeling now that Paula capped you at the kneecaps? [00:31:55] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah, I feel about half as good as I felt before. That’s okay. [00:32:00] Joe: Of course, just seeing the two of you in person, Paula, taking the under based on your relative sizes, was, was be, was, was, uh, decent? Yes. Pretty good move. OG 1 0 9 5 99. You got the big time. Downside, lower portions. Mm-hmm. Uh, feeling good? No. And Paula, you’ve got the middle. Yeah. Halfway between 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9 and 1 0 9, 5, 9, 9, whatever that number would be. [00:32:28] Joe: Feeling good? [00:32:29] Paula: Yeah. You know, my actual guess if I wasn’t strategic about it was about 125,000. So I, I feel good that, my guess is kind of right close to there. [00:32:38] Joe: How many times in a row could your gut go wrong? Paula, that’s that’s all we need to wonder. Well, we’re not gonna wonder for long. Doug’s got the answer to this one, Doug, who’s taken home this week’s trophy. [00:32:56] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m lasagna lover and guy who’s about to get yelled at by Joe. After we stop recording, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Truly. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with goal setting or incentives, but when the incentive to lose weight is to get to eat more lasagna, you know, so I can gain it all back. [00:33:15] Doug: I think we need a better plan, but I’m not in charge am I? One thing I am in charge of is today’s trivia answer the question. Was this, on today’s date in history of the US Congress under the new 16th amendment? Pass the income tax into law. They only taxed 1% of your income and only taxpayers earning more than $4,000 at the time, which was about 3% of the population back then. [00:33:38] Doug: How much, according to my inflation calculator would that income be in today’s dollars? Well, piece of information you were looking for was that while revenue generating taxes were levied throughout the late 18 hundreds, especially after the Civil War, you were the [00:33:52] Joe: one that’s, you weren’t even looking for this ’cause Doug already gave it to you. [00:33:55] Doug: The one that that stuck happened after the 16th Amendment passed into law with the Revenue Act of October 3rd, 1913. [00:34:03] Joe: Oh, 19, 19 13, was the key piece of information that who [00:34:06] Doug: knew we were [00:34:06] Joe: withholding but then weren’t withholding. I know [00:34:10] Doug: you’re having fun with this. I’m just gonna keep on going using my inflation calculator. [00:34:16] Doug: That means the answer is $17,362 and 4 cents more than what, OG guess $7,638 and 96 cents less than what Jesse guessed. 7,006, oh my God. Wait, what? $8 and 95 cents less than what Paul guessed because the correct answer. Is $126,961 and 4 cents making fah our winner. [00:34:46] Paula: Wow. I’m gonna [00:34:47] OG: need, I’m gonna need a source document on this. [00:34:50] Paula: Incredible. What’s even more mind blowing about that is that my gut feeling of 1 25 was like, you were [00:34:57] Joe: right there. [00:34:58] Paula: Spot on. Wow. [00:35:00] Joe: You were right there. How, how often does that happen? Wow. With the trivia. It’s a new [00:35:05] Paula: era. We’re turning a new page. [00:35:08] Joe: What? Huh? What is going on here? Paula Pant [00:35:11] Paula: incredible. You know, I think FinCon Marks a new year, so I think this is, this is new. [00:35:16] Paula: Here comes New Year. Yeah, new Year, new coalition, uh, coalition victories all around. [00:35:23] Joe: Paul is at eight and a half. Wow. She wins three more times. [00:35:27] Jesse: Yeah, she’s right [00:35:28] Joe: there. [00:35:28] Jesse: Never say never. [00:35:29] Joe: Yeah. Here it comes. Alright, let’s get into the second half of our discussion today. And these are the missing pieces in financial plans according to Evan, the CFP and this Kiplinger piece that we’ll link to in the show notes at stack Benjamins dot com. [00:35:45] Joe: But as you’ve heard the first half, you really don’t need it for this discussion. Evan. Next notes that plans. Often avoid clear answers to the big questions, but people wanna know like, can I retire? Can I take that trip? And yet Paula, we default to, well our buddy Carlos simulation says he has a 68.75% chance that maybe you can. [00:36:11] Joe: So good luck with that. What big money questions do you think people want answered besides that one? Can I retire? [00:36:18] Paula: What big money questions do people want answered? Yeah. I think at the heart of it, at the heart and soul, it’s will I be okay? You know, I think that that’s the emotional satisfaction that I think a lot of people are looking for. [00:36:30] Paula: Am I going to be okay in my old age when I’m in my nineties? Will I be focused on health and family and spirituality or will I be stressed about money? [00:36:42] Joe: So if he’s right here, Evan, then you’ve written Jesse about trading off risks, right? Why do you think so many plans Dodge just giving a straight yes or no answer. [00:36:55] Jesse: For the big questions. I mean, when I, when I read this article, Joe, I, I assumed that part three of this article was more theological than anything else. Is there God, what do mean God, what happens after I die? Yeah. I thought that’s what I meant. I mean, most financial planners, if financial planner doesn’t answer [00:37:08] Joe: that one, [00:37:09] Jesse: hey, they don’t wanna step toes with the clergy and, uh, so they avoid the question. [00:37:13] Jesse: I actually, I no, I, to be honest with you, I, I kind of disagreed with this one. Although devil’s advocate, maybe it’s going back to what OG said at the very beginning, which is. If you work, quote unquote financial plan is only a portfolio, then yes, the portfolio is missing the the answers to the big questions. [00:37:30] Jesse: Otherwise, if anything, what I would say is that most actual financial plans I’ve seen, they go straight into the big questions. Like that’s the easiest stuff to first target. It is. It’s that person who presents a problem to you and says, I’m not sure if I’ll be okay, like Paula said. And the reason why is because I don’t know if I can afford to retire at age 60 like I’ve always dreamed of. [00:37:49] Jesse: Boom. As a planner, like there’s the question that you go after. So if anything I, like I said, I kind of disagree. Most plans have some answers to the big questions. What they might be missing is the more like minute, step-by-step stuff to get you there along the way. Anyway, that’s my interpretation. [00:38:06] Joe: You’re saying it says yes or no, but it doesn’t say really clearly what you should do to get there. [00:38:12] Jesse: Yeah. Is that [00:38:13] Joe: what you’re saying? [00:38:13] Jesse: Well, what I’m saying is that it’s not missing answers to the big questions. It has the answers to the big questions. So it would say, oh yeah, you should feel really confident about retiring at age 60. And the reason why is because you’ll have $2.2 million by then plus some social security coming soon after. [00:38:29] Jesse: And we use a X, Y, Z withdrawal rule and, and you’ll be fine. [00:38:33] Joe: Gee, I wanted to bring you into this because I’m thinking about this idea that, uh, you know, often somebody’s new to this stacker community and they started late, and you need to give them the confidence to act. But by the same token, you want them to be realistic. [00:38:50] Joe: So if the answer is no, you’re not gonna be okay. Based on the goal that you gave me, how do you not scare the hell out of ’em and keep ’em rolling toward that big goal? [00:39:03] OG: Well, I think that you, when it comes to just general communication, you have to have a good mix of stress and not stress, right? Like certainty and uncertainty is what Tony Robbins would say. [00:39:17] OG: Even the most easiest financial plan in the universe, right? The person that’s got 3 million bucks. In a brokerage account and two social securities and you know, a paid for house and a paid for cottage and spends $50,000 a year, right? You just back of the envelope go, yeah, you’re good, right? You still have to go through what are the stresses around this, because if you say to that person, you’re good, man, you can’t even screw this up. [00:39:42] OG: If you tried, they might try. And so you still have to put some guardrails there. I think if you’re coming at it from the other side. Going, Hey, I’m 50. I’m a little behind. I feel like I’m behind. I want it to be done at 60. I think our job is to present the facts the way that they are, and then also say, here are the opportunities that you have to make this a reality. [00:40:01] OG: Or here’s kind of some common ground, right? It’s not 60 or never. It’s, well, sixty’s not happening probably, but you might be able to do 62. And that’s if you do these three things, if that’s kind of too far out of bounds, then you might be looking at 64 or 65, which also times out nicely because that’s when social security can, you know, you can turn that on without too much of a, of a penalty. [00:40:23] OG: You know what I mean? Like I think we have to provide hope and optimism in as much dosage as the realistic numbers and facts. It’s the bedside manner, right? Like we’ve all seen medical professionals that do this. They go well. The test came back. Um, could you call my office as soon as you can? Uh, we need to talk. [00:40:44] OG: Oh God. And you’re like, oh my God. Yeah. And you call and you’re like, oh doc, I got your messages. He goes, yeah, uh, your tests. Uh, lemme see here. Yeah. So they, um, they all came back very good. And, uh, we’ll see you in a year and you’re like. I feel like you should have said that a lot differently. You know, on, on your message. [00:41:02] OG: You know, I’ve got my priest here, my wife is updating the will. You know, [00:41:07] Doug: I hate when they also say, your test came back negative. Wait is negative good in this case? [00:41:12] OG: Yes, yes, exactly. You know, it’s just, so you gotta have a little bit of that too. That’s, it’s a, this is a personal, a personality based business. [00:41:20] OG: It’s a personal relationship I think. When you’re looking for somebody to work with for a long time, people ask me this a lot, Jesse, I’m sure they ask you this, Joe, I know they did for you. What do you guys look for in clients? You go, oh, really rich ones? No, don’t care. No, I want people that I want to hang out with for the next 20 years. [00:41:40] OG: That’s it. Like I just want to be friends with people and like along the way we talk about money and make sure that everything stays on track. That’s the goal. And if it’s too much numbers based, I saw one of the comments was like, I’d love to be able to talk, you know, about the trips, but I need to have the reassurance with the numbers. [00:41:57] Joe: Yeah, I did wanna bring that up. I’m glad you brought that up. [00:42:00] OG: Yeah. That’s your personality. I think then if, if that’s my job or that’s Jesse’s job to say, Hey, you know what, let’s spend as much time as you need on this so that you are comfortable, but I still wanna reserve enough time to talk about why the hell we’re doing all this. [00:42:12] OG: Because you can’t, I get that you can get excited about spreadsheets sometimes, but that just doesn’t carry the same emotion as a picture from the top of Kilimanjaro does. I’m sorry. It doesn’t. And so you need to have the confidence in the team that you have around you. And sometimes that’s an investment in that math up front to be able to go, okay, I, I know that, you know, these gals have it. [00:42:32] OG: These guys have it. I think it’s so much of a personal relationship business that. You’re gonna click with people and you have to be able to shoot ’em straight and also put a little velvet on that from time to time. Hey, this is a bad idea. You know, I don’t think you should have two. Ferrari [00:42:52] Joe: One ought to be enough. [00:42:54] Joe: I like your emphasis on telling people, not just you can’t do this, but also saying, you know what? You can’t do 60, but you can do 62 and we’re gonna start there and here’s how maybe we get back to 60. Like here’s, here’s the path forward that is showing them the roadmap. Everything has to have [00:43:09] OG: some hope and optimism. [00:43:11] OG: Yeah. Listen, it’s like, you know, using the fitness analogy, you don’t need to go to the fitness. Guy or gal and have that person go, wow, you are super fat. You are so outta shape. It’s insane. I can’t believe you can’t lift anything. You’re so weak. Your muscles suck. You’re, you know, it’s like, bro, I know that’s why I’m here. [00:43:28] OG: Right? I don’t need to get beat on the head anymore. I finally got to that spot myself. And so, you know, it’s the same thing with your doctor. Same thing with your financial plan. Well, you show up in the office, you, you’re like, my boy, you have a crap load of credit card debt, man. How are you even staying afloat, bro? [00:43:43] OG: Like, this is awful. You’re probably never gonna retire. Like, I know, that’s why I’m here. Like I need some help. I don’t need you to lay it on, like gimme some love, [00:43:51] Joe: man. But that said, it’s funny because I think Paula, like, I love what OGs saying, but I also think that you gotta know yourself a little Like for me. [00:44:00] Joe: You know, there’s the carrot and the stick, right? For me, an advisor who gives me a little bit of that stick, they might not say og, to your point. They might not go, man, you got a crap load of credit card debt. When people finally said to me, they’re like, when are you gonna face this? When are you actually gonna face this? [00:44:14] OG: That’s the personal relationship. You gotta read the room and be able to deliver the message Absolutely. To the person in the manner in which they’re gonna hear it the best. Sometimes people do need this stick, and sometimes they just go, tell me how you feel about this. [00:44:27] Joe: Yeah, yeah. Paula, the stick really worked for me, I think. [00:44:29] Joe: Is it about know, you know yourself first? [00:44:32] Paula: It’s probably about. The combination of carrot and stick, it’s gonna be situationally dependent. You know, it isn’t that person A jives with one and person B jives with another. It’s gonna be time dependent, it’s gonna be situation dependent. It’s going to also be dependent on the relationship between that person and their advisor. [00:44:52] Paula: So to OGs point, reading the room. Because there’s never gonna be the one size fits all, even with a given person. Yeah, [00:45:00] Joe: no, to your point, the next thing that my advisor said when I was turning my life around was, you know, when are you gonna face this? ’cause if we start today, here’s how we get, here’s where we go to, here’s what happens. [00:45:10] Joe: And they showed me the carrot, which was how my life could be so much better. It’s funny. Going back to Jeff, who’s the gentleman that, uh, OG was talking about online. Jeff said specifically, he says, sometimes I wish I could let it go to look at the pictures and give it to somebody and spend those 28 to 30 minutes talking about the trips for me. [00:45:28] Joe: I need to understand the nitty gritty people to sleep well at night, but I’m odd. Here’s what Jeff, for me, when I was a financial planner. I worked with a lot of engineers and I loved working with engineers who wanted to know all the numbers. So initially, Paul, at your point when we didn’t have a relationship, when there was no relationship there yet, I would go ahead and go down the rabbit hole with them. [00:45:46] Joe: Mm-hmm. Because I knew that the thing an engineer worries about more than anything is that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Mm-hmm. That I have no idea. So I would go deeper and deeper and deeper, and then we get to the bottom of the well. Once I knew that Jeff knew that I knew what I was talking about, then I would turn to Jeff and I’d go, and you know what? [00:46:01] Joe: None of this matters ’cause you haven’t saved a dime. And Jeff would then say, you’re right, but I could only be right once he knew that I had the knowledge base behind me, [00:46:11] Paula: right, to go [00:46:12] Joe: deep on the numbers. So that we could then look at the pictures. [00:46:16] Paula: Well, and this goes back to the earlier, uh, comment about not wanting it to be too rainbows and unicorns and cotton candy. [00:46:22] Paula: Like there is a level, especially when you’re talking about money, of needing to establish expertise because money is a topic that is consequential and also a topic that is full of charlatans and salespeople who are trying to part others with their money. Who claim to know things, but actually they’re just, they just have very refined sales pitches, and so because of that, people’s defenses are up as they should be, which is why establishing that credibility is so critical. [00:46:53] Joe: Yeah. They only come down with relationship. Oh gee, our friend Roger Whitney says the same thing that who he’s looking for is clients or somebody. He says, quote to walk life with that very. Similar to what OG says, and maybe Jesse, the reason why you don’t see the bad planning that Evan here in this piece seems to see is because you’re not around those salespeople a lot. [00:47:13] Joe: You’re not around the just insurance salespeople or whatever. Yeah. [00:47:17] Jesse: It could just be right. I mean, the, the different, we don’t have to get into the weeds of the different. Business models in our industry, but the ones that I’m familiar of that really are like the sales organizations, really sales driven. [00:47:27] Jesse: It tends to either have a specific product at the back end, like some sort of insurance product, or it might be more of that like broker dealer commission model, uh, where probably a minority of the clients are actually getting a financial plan done. The majority of them are probably only getting a, a portfolio built. [00:47:44] Jesse: So that could be it. I mean that very well could be why. And I don’t know about you og, but when a client comes to me and, and they’ve worked with another advisor before, I will say a lot of the time the question comes up of, well, do you have some sort of financial plan that they put together for you? [00:47:59] Jesse: Some document or just even in your head, you know, what this advisor advise you on from a planning point of view. Usually it’s, it’s pretty minimal, if anything at all. And it really just tends to be, no, but here’s what they did with my IRA, like, you know, here’s the portfolio. Yeah. So, yeah, I, I think that probably is the reason why. [00:48:16] Joe: Let’s stick with you as we wrap this up. Jesse, I’d love everybody to have a take home task, right? Something based on this discussion that they should do right away. What’s one thing based on this conversation today, our stackers should go out and make sure they have in their financial plan. [00:48:32] Jesse: Uh, I’m gonna say for most stackers, estate planning documents, but maybe not all, but for most, and definitely double check those beneficiary designations. [00:48:43] Joe: Love it. [00:48:44] Paula: Paula, how about you think about the Black Swan events? I mean, we talked about estate planning, which is of course a Black Swan event, but think about the ultimate. Yes, the ultimate. A very [00:48:54] OG: short tail event. [00:48:55] Paula: Yes, exactly. Ding. But generally there’s a temptation to focus on budgeting, investing, all of the standard of like the most popular hallmarks of personal finance. [00:49:06] Paula: Think about the Black Swan and Gray Swan events because those can derail a financial plan. [00:49:13] Joe: Og, you’ve got the final one. What’s a third thing people should, uh, go do right away? [00:49:18] OG: Is this kinda like Doug’s wrap up where he has two real serious ones and then one like No, no, no. You gotta do a serious one too. [00:49:25] OG: Oh, dang it. Bummer. It’s like, I was gonna say lots of small cat value, quarter point rate drop, get it. But who knew? Um. I just think that understanding how all of the different areas of, if, if I were to say, you know, Jesse said that sometimes when he sees people, they don’t necessarily have a clear understanding of what their plan was previously or you know what it is. [00:49:48] OG: I would say that the biggest thing that I see is people don’t understand how all the pieces work together because the decisions that you make in one particular area have. Additional effects with other things. We use taxes as an example, but if all you focused on was tax. Reduction strategies for today. [00:50:07] OG: You’re just building up a bucket of tax problems later, right? If you say, I’m gonna put all my money in IRAs and qualified plans pre-tax, then I got this tax thing down the line, it doesn’t mean that’s bad. It’s just knowing what that, that effect is. If I want safety and security, and I love the idea of an annuity, you go how I put all my money in annuity? [00:50:24] OG: That sounds great. It’s like, all right, cool. You got, you got that safety and security. What else did you get with it? What are the secondary effects you got illiquidity. Returns, Doug said. I can say it. [00:50:36] Joe: We get to be about two things. Yes. [00:50:39] OG: I think understanding how all the pieces, all the different areas. The CFP board says there’s six different areas of financial planning. [00:50:45] OG: See how they all work together and how the impacts of one are gonna lead to the impacts of the other. So very tactically, for for listeners, um, figure out just, you know, figure out what your tax bill’s gonna be for next year. Just do it this, this quarter sometime. That I think would go a long way to, to making, making you start inner, inner something. [00:51:08] OG: What am I looking for? I’m trying to inter intersecting. Inter intersect. No intersecting. I’m trying tail, I’m trying to put together dovetail. Let’s do that. We’re gonna dovetail our financial plan and our tax plan. We’re gonna just marry declining inter joinin. Intertwining, [00:51:24] Doug: intertwining, conjugal, visiting [00:51:27] OG: Easy. [00:51:28] OG: Wow. I was gonna say it sounds too Doug’s mommy, but then he went there. Alright, cool. And there it [00:51:33] Joe: goes. Alright, on that note, time for us to wrap this thing up. We are doing so well, guys. Speaking [00:51:37] OG: of conjugal visits and Doug’s mom, let’s wrap this up. OGs got a place to be unrelated. [00:51:44] Joe: Holy cow. Uh, og. First weekend in October. [00:51:48] Joe: What do you got going on this weekend? [00:51:51] OG: Same as every weekend, but um, this weekend I’m gonna do it with a pumpkin spice latte. That’s fantastic. As I wait till October. ‘ [00:51:57] Joe: cause [00:51:57] OG: it is that time. [00:51:58] Joe: Jesse, uh, besides the pumpkin spice latte, what’s going on at personal finance for long-term investors? [00:52:04] Jesse: October Marks our first three episode. [00:52:07] Jesse: We’re going to three episodes a month, and so we’ll have a an a MA every single month an a MA episode, and this month comes out, uh. This next, next week, this weekend, something like that. [00:52:17] Joe: It’s a slippery slope, Jesse? Three. Three a month. Three a month. I [00:52:21] Jesse: know, I know. It’s a lot. Easy. I know. Easy. I know. [00:52:24] Joe: Before you know it, it’s three a week and you’re wondering what the heck you’ve monster. [00:52:28] Joe: You unleashed what happened [00:52:29] OG: with the last 15 years? Why did I black out [00:52:33] Joe: Paula, beginning of a new month? How do we start the new month and afford anything? [00:52:38] Paula: So we start the new month, of course, with a first Friday episode because the first Friday of every month we do a macro economic update of the economy, interest rates, inflation, generally what’s going on in the economic headlines. [00:52:51] Paula: We always start the month. With that, we have a q and a episode, Joe, between you and I, where we answer questions from a variety of listeners, including a guy named Pedro who called with an update on a [00:53:04] Joe: great update. [00:53:05] Paula: Yeah, great update. He had previously asked us a question. We gave him some advice. He took it, and things went really well. [00:53:12] Paula: So we, uh, we air all of that. We also recently aired an interview with Andy Hill. Our friend Andy Hill. [00:53:19] Joe: The Andy Hill, my former neighbor. [00:53:21] Paula: Exactly, exactly. Your former neighbor in Michigan. We talked about how he and his wife have created a lifestyle where they both work part-time so that they can both be part-time with their kids. [00:53:35] Joe: And it’s great to see how that family dynamic works. They’re so intentional about it. Paula, it’s really cool. [00:53:39] Paula: Yeah, yeah, exactly. [00:53:41] Joe: That’s at the Afford Anything podcast. Alright, I wanna say a final thank you to everybody hanging out with us live on YouTube. You guys were great as always, Paula. A lot of people here that are, uh, saying, uh, shocking things like, shocking, like, wow. [00:53:57] Joe: Um. What [00:53:59] Doug: else I’ll be telling my grandchildren about this moment. I was there when Paula won. Finally, I’ll always remember where I was. I [00:54:07] Paula: mean, what scarce is valuable. [00:54:10] Joe: That is true. Alright, we should make an NFT to celebrate this moment, right? Alright, everybody. We won’t make an NFT unfortunately, but what we will do is what we do every Friday. [00:54:20] Joe: We ask Doug to encapsulate this in our final three things. Doug, what should be on our to-do list after today’s episode? [00:54:27] Doug: Well Joe first take some advice from og. You probably have more valuable ways to spend your time than diving into small cap returns in your portfolio. So next time you meet with your planner, have a 29 minute PowerPoint with vacation picks on the ready. [00:54:42] Doug: Second, take a note from Paula. Carrots are disgusting and sticks are dirty. I mean, maybe just figure it out for yourself so you don’t need rainbows and unicorns and cotton candy. And if you can’t take her advice and find a charlatan who can show you the path forward, what whatcha you talking about? I think she said all of those things. [00:55:00] Doug: I think he half listened. She said all of those words. I know she did. But the big lesson when going for the lasagna, second, helping. Don’t ask for permission. Just go for it. If you get Joe’s mom talking about the time she saw ZZ Top Live in 85, she won’t even notice. Trust me. [00:55:21] Doug: Thanks to the Jesse Kramer for joining us today. You’ll find his show, personal Finance for Long-Term Investors wherever you are listening to us right now. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to Paula Pat for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, afford anything wherever you listen to finer podcasts. [00:55:43] Doug: And finally, thanks also to OG for joining us. Looking for good financial planning, help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. This show is the property of SP podcasts LC 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. [00:56:14] 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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