What if some of the “rules” you’ve been told about money aren’t rules at all, just assumptions that haven’t been questioned lately?
Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug pull apart a handful of deeply held financial beliefs and see what holds up when real life enters the conversation. From Social Security timing to investment return expectations, the crew explores where common advice works, where it falls short, and why context matters more than catchy rules of thumb.
Along the way, the discussion shifts from spreadsheets to behavior, because knowing what to do is one thing and doing it (especially in retirement) is another. The team talks through spending realities, inflation anxiety, and how small mindset shifts can make your plan feel less fragile and more livable.
Then, just when things get serious, Doug introduces a challenge that’s equal parts practical and revealing. The Survivor Pantry. It’s a simple idea that uncovers how prepared (or not) we really are, and why preparedness isn’t about fear but flexibility.
In This Episode You’ll Explore:
• Why popular Social Security advice isn’t one size fits all
• What real world investment returns look like over time
• How behavioral blind spots can derail otherwise solid plans
• The difference between planning for retirement and living in it
• Smarter ways to think about spending as prices change
• Why some financial myths refuse to die (and how to spot them)
• What the Survivor Pantry reveals about readiness and resilience
• How questioning assumptions can lead to calmer, more confident decisions
This episode is less about finding new answers and more about asking better questions, especially if you’re tired of feeling like you’re “behind” for not following every money rule to the letter.
Conversation Starter for the Basement:
What’s one money belief you’ve always accepted but now you’re not so sure about? Drop your thoughts in the Facebook group or comments and compare notes with other Stackers who are rethinking the playbook right alongside you.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our TikTok Minute
Our Headline
- Why claiming Social Security at 62 can make sense | Financial Planning (Financial-Planning.com)
Doug’s Trivia
- In 1906, a major financial index hit 100 for the first time. Today it’s “well over 48,000.” What index was it?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we sit down with THE Mel Abraham to discuss how to build your money engine.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Our Annual Magic 8 Ball Predictions for 2026 (SB1788)
Episode trancript
[00:00:00] Joe: Alright, one last time before I put these away for the rest of the year, well, until the holidays again. But check out this, uh, Christmas bug from one of the Christmas markets. Did I tell you guys I went to the Christmas markets? [00:00:13] Doug: You [00:00:13] Joe: travel a little bit, Joe, uh, slightly. Once, once in a while. Once every week. [00:00:18] Doug: Yes. Basel. And, and that’s the, uh, European city I like the best because they actually pronounce the herb correctly. It is the correct and preferred pronunciation. And yet we all say basil. Like it’s some dude in England. Settle [00:00:34] OG: down. Oh boy. Settle down. [00:00:36] Joe: Oh man, you gotta be started. It’s your fault. I hear this escalating. [00:00:40] Joe: We don’t want to alert the military. We do salute the military early on, but let’s not get the military involved in this escalation, [00:00:46] OG: Doug. Escalation. Deon too, right? [00:00:52] OG: It’s Basel. It’s like that big giant like lever that they gotta pull. It’s like Arga. Arga like take him down [00:01:02] Doug: a notch. Doug’s firing up his engines. [00:01:05] Joe: Well, let me raise the Christmas bug here one more time. And on behalf of the Men and Women making podcast to Mom’s Basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, who help our veterans and our active duty members, thank you for all you do. [00:01:18] Joe: Members of the military salute Go Stack and Benjamins. [00:01:21] Doug: Thanks everybody. I’m gonna go put some basil in my pasta sauce. [00:01:26] opener: Nervous. [00:01:27] opener: Yes. [00:01:28] opener: First time, [00:01:29] opener: no. I’ve been nervous Lots of times. [00:01:36] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:50] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Dug. And let’s challenge some assumptions, shall we? When people build money plans, they often make some big assumptions that might not be true. What ideas should drive your own plans? We’ll dive in, but that’s not all. I’ll also share a TikTok minute about planning a better retirement. [00:02:08] Doug: And then I’ll also share some fresh farm to market trivia. And now two guys who are the originators of the first. Farm to Market Money podcast. It’s Joe and OJG. Joe, you can’t laugh in the middle of what I’m saying. I’m just [00:02:28] Joe: thinking. No preservatives, no additives in this podcast. Definitely neither of those. [00:02:33] Joe: No filters, no filtering it down. Hey everybody, happy Monday. Welcome back to Stacky Benjamins, the Farm to Market Money podcast. I love that. That’s great. Farm to [00:02:43] Doug: table. [00:02:44] Joe: Yeah, farm to [00:02:45] Doug: table. Farm to table. Like we’re in some visa commercial and just living this wholesome life out. All the chickens are roaming in the nice green pasture. [00:02:54] Doug: We got our money out, wandering around the pasture. Everybody’s beautiful. They’re all uncomfortably well dressed for a farm. These are free range, a hundred dollars bills, free range, Benjamin’s. The whole thing’s a scam. The whole organic farm to market. It’s all built [00:03:14] Joe: for Hollywood. It is interesting. [00:03:16] Joe: That’s a whole side discussion, but Michael Poland, the food writer, talks about that how buying local. Is actually the way to go. The whole farm to farm to table is the way to go versus looking for organic in the grocery store. [00:03:28] Doug: Is it though? [00:03:29] OG: Doug prefers to have his avocados grown a thousand miles away? [00:03:33] Joe: Doug’s like it’s pronounced avocado after the town of avocado, avocado, Ecuador. It’s a super day. That voice you just heard was the OG and we’re off the rails already. How are you man? [00:03:47] OG: Okay. Just looking up the pronunciation of things, texting various people, [00:03:51] Joe: you know, different [00:03:52] OG: things like that. [00:03:53] Joe: I, well, I’m super happy Stackers. [00:03:55] Joe: You made it. You found us because today we are going into some of the assumptions we make. We build financial plans. So if you’re building your 2026 and Beyond Money Plan, this is the episode for you. If you know anybody else who’s building, invite them along too. Sit back. We’re gonna have some fun for about the next hour. [00:04:13] Joe: Some good news for you. Before we do any of that, finally the ferrets that spin the wheel here in Mom’s basement have made their master product talking about farm to table. We call it the Stacky Benjamin’s Vault because we know how important it’s to protect your identity. Stay away from unused subscriptions. [00:04:29] Joe: Get off the text and email list. Protect your credit. Run your credit What ifs? It’s finally here with help from the team at Array who helped protect millions of people. They helped us build the vault, Stacking Benjamins. Com slash vault, get you to the tool. I love these apps that, uh, you’ve got 10 of ’em on your phone. [00:04:46] Joe: They do one thing. We built a tool that does 10 different things in one place. Fewer mess ups, fewer logins. Get it all together. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash vault. [00:04:58] Doug: You know what I hear is on the developer’s list next. ’cause I slipped this in, into their Kanban board and they didn’t even realize it. It, it’s gonna toast your bagel in the morning for you perfectly. [00:05:08] Doug: Oh, it does 11 things. It’s gonna do 11 things in the next release. It’s gonna, you know how you just, you need it to have that crispy top so you get a little bit of crunch with the butter, but then it’s nice to still soft and chew on the inside. It’s hard. It’s like when you pour milk in your frosted flakes and there’s a moment when it’s perfect. [00:05:26] Doug: That’s what’s on the list next for the vault. Put butter [00:05:28] OG: on bagels. [00:05:30] Joe: Heck yeah. Yeah. Oh boy. Another fight about to break out. So we gotta move on before, before this gets heated. It’s pronounced Bogle. We, we got a great show. We’re gonna challenge some assumptions with the help of a piece from financial planning.com, but before that, we have a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on so that you don’t pay a dime for any of this. [00:05:53] Joe: Goodness, we’ll hear from them. And then let’s do a headline. [00:06:00] headlines: Hello Doling. And now it’s time for Your Favor, part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. Our [00:06:07] Joe: piece today comes to us from financial planning.com. This is, uh, written by Elijah Nicholson Messmer. Why claiming Social security is 62 isn’t a mistake. [00:06:17] Joe: I’m like, wait a minute. This seems to have been a battle that was fought and, and, and won by people saying, you know what? You should definitely wait until age 70. There’s been this debate, og, before we even get into this, I guess we should explain to people that are new here, what the debate has been, which is you got this sliding scale when you take social security and when should you take it? [00:06:41] Joe: And the math, the quote, more money math, the more money math still points to wait and take it later. [00:06:50] OG: Well, first of all, you just have to understand how social security works, right? So your entire work life, you put contributions in, and then based on your earnings, there’s a calculation that will be your social security benefit at your full retirement age. [00:07:04] OG: And I think now. I feel like this is the year, maybe this is the last year where full retirement age is age 67. And so that has been increasing from 65 to 67 over the last 25 odd years, where they’ve just slowly ratcheted the definition of full retirement. That date matters because if you claim social security before, then you get a reduction in your benefit because you’re taking it earlier than the government thinks you should. [00:07:34] OG: The other problem that happens is if you take it before you quote unquote should, before that full retirement age, then you’re also limited in other things that go on in your life, like your own personal income. So you can’t draw from social security and make money any meaningful money anyway. Um, at the same time, because the government says, well, then you’re not retired. [00:07:54] OG: You know, you’re just still working. This isn’t like a bonus. This is for you to use when you retire and then after retirement. Or after full retirement, I should say, which, let’s say it’s 67 now. The government says, well, if you wait, we will pay you to wait for three more years. So if you wait till 68 or 69 or 70, we will pay you a delay. [00:08:15] OG: They’re called delayed retirement credits, so we’ll give you extra money if you just wait to draw on that until you’re a little bit older. And that’s the trade, right? So you can, you got 67 as kind of this midpoint. That’s your full benefit that when you, when you go online and you go to ssa.gov and you log in and say, Hey, what, what am I gonna get for Social security? [00:08:34] OG: It says, your full retirement benefit. It also will show you age 62 benefit and age 70, and anywhere in between 62 and 70 you can claim. [00:08:44] Joe: And you look at those numbers, those credits end up being quite a bit of money. Yeah. It’s [00:08:48] OG: a big difference between 62 and 70. Yeah. Of course. That’s also eight years difference. [00:08:52] OG: Right. [00:08:53] Joe: Elijah writes, when it comes to social security, professional guidance often boils down to just one word, delay the argument simple. Delaying claiming social security delayed 70 maximizes a retiree’s monthly payout by 80% compared to claiming it’s 62. But a new study challenges that conventional wisdom suggesting that for the vast majority of households claiming benefits at age 62 is the rational financial choice. [00:09:18] Joe: I was like, wait, what? The study’s author is Derek Tharp, a finance professor at the University of Southern Maine. He’s also the head of innovation at Income Lab. What he wanted to know OG was if early claiming reflects mistakes or rational responses to preferences overlooked in standard analyses. So here’s the deal, English, please. [00:09:38] Joe: Yes, nearly one in four people claim benefits at 62. Right now, fewer than 10% actually delay until age 70. Most take it somewhere in between, probably at full retirement age or close to full retirement age. While traditional economic models often frame early claiming at a costly mistake, what Tharp says is that it’s likely a rational response to real world retiree problems and preferences. [00:10:07] Joe: What he did was he looked at three different behaviors. This is much more about behavior than about more money. Og. He says these are often ignored in standard financial planning, which looks at just the money aspect, not the behavioral aspect. So first of all is people want to spend more during active, early years. [00:10:26] Joe: They want to consume more, so having less money overall, but having access to an income stream, a social security, so I don’t have to tap money, which will come up here in a minute. That makes it. Something people wanna do. The second thing is there’s a reluctance. People have to spend down their personal savings. [00:10:44] Joe: People freak out when they see their savings depleting. So if I can have less social security, but I can use it to not deplete my savings, well then I wanna take it early again, behaviorally. And third is a desire to retire and claim benefits simultaneously. So I just wanna get the crap done, right? Mm-hmm. [00:11:04] Joe: The third one is behaviorally, I just wanna retire. I wanna know where my income’s coming from. I wanna get everything rolling and just have it, have it make sense? And it’s funny because I read those three things and I thought, okay, yeah, more money’s one thing. But I think for some people, I don’t know if for the quote, vast majority, but think for some people, this makes a bunch of sense to me. [00:11:26] OG: Well, I, I guess ultimately when you think about, uh, any money decision, if you’re gonna to use the crutch of, well, in my particular case, emotionally, this is better. Then ultimately you can do that with any sort of finance decision. I mean, you could say, well, for me, I’m emotionally better if I don’t have any volatility in my portfolio. [00:11:48] OG: It doesn’t mean that you’re gonna be better, it just means you may feel comfortable on the ride to bankruptcy. That’s what what’s gonna happen. The only thing that you can’t predict with any of this is your life expectancy. In my opinion, when it comes to this claiming decision, the only thing that really matters is if you have some sort of rational reason why you’re not gonna live to be 80. [00:12:17] OG: And it can’t be, well, mom and dad didn’t, you know, ’cause that’s, you know, it was a different generation, right? You know, you can’t use that. But if you have a health concern of some kind, you’re like, look, I’m 62, I’ve got this health thing. This is what it looks like in the long run. It doesn’t make sense for me to to wait to 70 because while it is true that you don’t spend your own money, I wanna reframe that a little bit because I think that’s probably the majority of people. [00:12:45] OG: If I think about the people that I talk to about this, the main group of them, of the categories that the professor was talking about here is, I wanna use their money instead of mine. And that’s somewhat true in the sense of, you know, you don’t get to carry on your social security benefit. That’s the trade, right? [00:13:01] OG: And, and so it isn’t your money, although it kind of is. But if you reframe this, if you just assume, Hey, I’m gonna live this normal life expectancy, and instead I have two buckets of. They’re both yours. One is my bucket of money that I invest. It’s gonna grow at some unpredictable rate of return, but I think it’s gonna grow at eight or 10%, right? [00:13:21] OG: Because that’s my asset allocation or it’s gonna grow at six or whatever. Whatever my asset allocation is, I’m fairly confident that’s gonna happen over a long period of time. However, it could be a minus 20, it could be a whatever, right? And then I have this other bucket that is guaranteed to grow, and once I get to 67, it’s guaranteed to grow at at 8% plus whatever the inflation writer is. [00:13:41] OG: This last year, I think the inflation number was 2.8 on social security checks starting in 2026. So the person who went from 67 to 68 got a 10.8% increase in their social security benefit. You do that a couple years in a row and bam, 2.8% is not like life altering inflation. Several years ago when the COVID adjustment happened and it went up 9%, that was almost a 20% increase in your social security benefits by waiting that one year, if you were in that group of people. [00:14:12] OG: So instead of thinking about it like, I wanna spend their money instead of mine, just think about it like, I have guaranteed money that’s gonna grow at a guaranteed rate, and I have another bucket of money that’s gonna grow at a, at a variable market rate. Which one of these two do you wanna lock in? If you went to the bank, you know, just think about it, retirement. [00:14:32] OG: So you’re 62 years old, you’re like, okay, I’m outta here ready to be done. And your financial planner says, guys, I have this great, I, I have this fantastic tool, it’s gonna guarantee 10% a year return, guaranteed for the next eight years. How much do you wanna put in? Well, you might look at that and say, well, s and P did 17 last year, so 10 would suck, but guaranteed 10 is pretty good over 10 years. [00:14:56] OG: Like, I might take that deal for some of my money. Right? And it’s kind of the same thing you’re saying, I’m gonna take some of my money, I’m gonna do that. Now the big if the big, what if here is what if I get to 72 and I get hit by a bus? It’s like, well you did the math wrong, but. Your spouse, if you’re married now, gets that greater benefit for the rest of their life, which is not inconsequential. [00:15:19] OG: You know, if you have an income discrepancy in, you know, in your, in your, uh, in your household, like many people do. So there’s more to it, I think, than just feeling of like, I just wanna be done. It’s like, that’s a lazy excuse. You’re giving hundreds of thousands of dollar difference. [00:15:35] Joe: He applied some math to this too, which I found interesting, which was. [00:15:40] Joe: He found that for people with $800,000 or less, the threat of going through your own money early, if you don’t take social security early, take less, but take it early, becomes greater if you try to have any go-go years early in retirement. But if you take that money early to supplement it and allow your, the other side of what you’re saying OG, is now you allow some of that 800,000 or less to grow. [00:16:09] Joe: So for people that, that are on the lower end of the savings bucket, taking it early is going to help them do more during the early years. [00:16:19] OG: I just submit to you that it’s two buckets and, and by looking at it and saying, I’ve got 800 K in this bucket, or zero. I say, you have two $800,000 buckets. And by choosing to take the money out of your social security bucket, you’re guaranteeing that that 800,000 bucket never grows to 1.2 million. [00:16:37] Joe: And it is funny because when you reframe it that way, you realize that something’s being sacrificed either way. Right? Absolutely. Either I’m sacrificing social security or I’m sacrificing my investment strategy. Yeah, like one of the two’s gotta go. Like, if you wanna go, something’s gotta go. And to [00:16:52] OG: give you some more real world anecdotal stuff here, the other risk that happens, and maybe this is kind of built into this person’s projections here, is let’s say that you’re the person who does rationally believe that social security later is better. [00:17:07] OG: And you also wanna have the go-Go fund now, right? So you retire at 65 and you’re like, I get it. I know that I have two buckets, blah, blah, blah, blah. I’m gonna wait, so I’m okay withdrawing from my personal portfolio at a rate greater. Than a sustainable long-term rate, because that’s the trade, right? It’s saying, Hey, I’ve got this million bucks, I got 800 K. [00:17:26] OG: The math says I should only take out 30,000 if I want it to last forever. But because I’m gonna let my social security sit, I’m gonna take out 60, but I’m gonna do that for the next, you know, four years. And then in the fifth year, I’m gonna go drop down to 30 and turn on social security, which is the other 30. [00:17:42] OG: Right? That’s the, that’s what you do in practice. On paper. What I’ve seen happens, unfortunately, and this is maybe getting to your point or to the, to the author’s point here, they say, okay, from 65 to 70, I’m gonna draw both. And then at 70 they go, whoa, bonus, another 30 K, let’s frigging go, bruh. And you’re like, no, no, no, no. [00:18:04] OG: That’s not what was supposed to happen. You’re supposed to stop the other 30. The extra 30, and, and, and, and keep cash flow the same. Wait, what? Uh, I mean, just this year I’m gonna take a little extra. That’s where this blows up. Yeah, because you’ve accelerated the decline of that 800 K in this example and, and then didn’t offset it with the income. [00:18:25] OG: You basically treated it as a 50% bonus at 70, which newsflash 70 ain’t old either, you know? So it’s not like, you know, 62 to 70 is this magical, like at 70 you can’t do stuff anymore. I, I feel like that number’s gonna, you guys will be like the canaries in the coal mine for me. Oh my God. You guys can try it out and let me know. [00:18:46] Joe: Aren’t we all ready? We should have seen this coming from by way. [00:18:48] OG: Oh yeah, absolutely. But I’m saying like further on I’ll be like, so how’s 77 fellas? And you’ll be like, well, well come my day when I was 65. Like you, I wish I would’ve taken some stupid. Have you noticed though, [00:18:59] Doug: Joe, that he doesn’t believe the canary indicators that we give him whenever we say, oh, when you get to this age, you’re gonna start feeling that. [00:19:06] Doug: And he’s just like, are you old man? No, I’m not. ’cause I do all these things differently. I mean. Never believes us when we start flapping around and bouncing off the walls of the cave. Uh, [00:19:19] Joe: Tharp, I’m gonna get back to the piece Tharp does, does warn people. He says The observation that claiming at 62 is optimal for everybody does not imply that everybody ought to claim at 62. [00:19:32] Joe: He wrote the results presented here apply to a hypothetical individual whose preferences precisely match every parameter that he specified, which, which also goes back to the point OG of what are we solving for, you know, what are we actually solving for? And I think what he’s bringing up is, I think sometimes people are solving for more money and they’re not solving for more happiness. [00:19:53] Joe: There can be a difference. There’s a person who is a older friend of mine in town who notoriously never spends money. Everyone knows that he has lots and lots and lots and lots of money, but he always says, I can’t afford it. It’s too expensive. I can’t afford it. And by the way, he talks about how it’s debilitating to his life, how expensive some of these things are, but he’s solving for more money and complaining about how much his life sucks. [00:20:26] OG: Yeah. [00:20:27] Joe: Because he wants a bigger pot at the end of some, you know, hypothetical rainbow. That’s never gonna come. [00:20:31] OG: Hypothetical rainbow. The interesting thing of course is you know, you don’t know when tomorrow stopped coming. That’s always the challenge with the social security decision continuum between 62 and 70. [00:20:43] OG: It’s the crux of all of financial planning problems. It’s like, if you can tell me when my last day on Earth is, I can tell you exactly how much money you need to have. Last penny. You know, and so you also have to recognize that when you’re doing these projections, I think on purpose we’re being conservative in projections, right? [00:21:01] OG: You don’t wanna, you don’t wanna be, you know, too aggressive. I like the idea as you’re debating and as you’re considering whether or not to make, um, this filing decision. ’cause once you, once you do it, it’s virtually irrevocable at that point. You’re some few outs that you can get, but not very many. And they’re very time sensitive. [00:21:20] OG: But as you’re debating this, like, eh, it’s, I’m 62. Should I take it? Maybe, maybe not. I like the idea of, if it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no. And what I mean by that is, let’s just take the last couple years as an example, right? So 2021 till present. So you retire in 2021, you’re 63 years old, and you’re like, I’m not sure, maybe I, and so you just wait. [00:21:43] OG: Well, what happened with your money? Your portfolio grew at a fantastic rate of return, 2022. Now the market’s down 22%. In that year or 20% that year, and maybe you’re that 800 K person that went from 800 down to 600, and you go, okay, I gambled wrong. Have the flexibility to say, I’m gonna wait, I’m gonna wait, I’m gonna wait. [00:22:06] OG: Oh, now is the clearest time. If it’s not a clear time, if the market’s grown at 16 or 20% like we’ve had the last couple of years, your money is keeping up with your increased spending. You know? Or it should be anyway, right? Like it’s growing at a rate faster than, than any projections you might have. But there could be a time 2026 could be the year where the market’s down 38% and it’s just a just chaos bomb. [00:22:29] OG: Everywhere you have that piece of paper that says, oh, oh, looky, looky. I got 2,500 bucks guaranteed income anytime I want. Woo. Hold onto that. Because the longer that you hold on it, it’s worth more and more money. And then when you go, okay, yeah, it’ll be clear. You know what I mean? Like it, you’ll have that feeling of like, okay, I need to put some stability in. [00:22:50] OG: This is too crazy. Then you can claim it. And they even let you go backwards in time, a period a little bit when you claim, you can say, Hey, I’m 67, I’m gonna go back and get a lump sum and pretend I filed at 66 and a half. And they give you a big chunk of money to kind of grease the skids. So there’s a lot of flexibility in there if you keep the flexibility. [00:23:11] OG: So if you’re kind of in that, like, I’m not sure whether or not to do this. I don’t know if this applies to me. I say, you’re a no, ’cause you gotta be a hell yes on this because it’s a one shot deal. [00:23:21] Joe: Well, and it, it struck me when I read this that people don’t think enough about what they’re giving up. They don’t think about the fact that, Hey, I’m giving up a potential 10% next year I’m giving up. [00:23:30] Joe: Like if you make that decision with your eyes open, you are like, yes, 10% less is great. Fine. I have enough. Life’s gonna be great. That’s fantastic to me. I was thinking as you were talking, by the way, some of the financial plans that you and I have seen OG over the years and, uh, some of the projections, you know, this struck me that Tharp in this case is solving for something different than the average person is making case that, you know, maybe it’s, it’s not ironclad. [00:23:59] Joe: I think, and you brought this up a second ago, I think I’ve seen a lot of projections that people have used where the returns from their money way too rosy, like way, way, way too rosy, way to return assumption. And I’ve also seen projections that people are going to level spend their entire retirement. [00:24:19] Joe: Like they’re just gonna spend the same amount of money all the time. And those are two, I think mistakes that as we’re building our money plan, I think we can help people avoid. [00:24:28] OG: On the rate of return piece, especially if you’ve been an investor the last 15 years, you’re like, I mean, everything just goes up at like 20%, right? [00:24:35] OG: It is easy just by, yeah, Doug idiot. What’s everybody such a big deal about? You know, you guys are way conservative. [00:24:42] Joe: Remember a few years ago we saw that financial planner, maybe it was in our TikTok minute going, all these older advisors are looking at 7% returns. That’s ridiculous. In our financial planning firm, we use 10. [00:24:53] OG: Let’s see how that works long term. Actually, I have a story about a client that, that happened, like basically retired in the first part of 2000 because his whole investing career was like 1985 to 2000. Oh boy. And it was like living the dream. I mean, let’s just use 10 to be conservative here, right? I mean, be conservative. [00:25:11] OG: Yeah. And then rolled into the lost decade, as they say. But anyways, I think that that’s the first place that I would stress test would be, would be rate of return. And I think it’s also, you know, interestingly I think about plans, the other side of it, you said level spending. The power of compounding is so profound. [00:25:30] OG: It doesn’t take very long on a, on Excel worksheet to say, okay, start with a hundred thousand. I put in my 401k and my Roth and you know, I mean you can just back of the envelope calculate this and say, and then I get X return, and you drag all those cells down and 30 years later it’s like you have 75 bajillion dollars. [00:25:45] OG: You’re like, okay, that’s ridiculous. I agree. That is ridiculous because your lifestyle will change as your net worth changes. For the vast majority of people, and even like the most conscious spenders and like the most well behaved people, like lifestyle creep doesn’t happen to me. It’s like, well, yeah it does. [00:26:05] OG: You still don’t eat like you did in high school. You know, you have more people in your house, and what happens isn’t necessarily consumption in the sense of like, oh, cool, now I get to buy a car every year instead of every five years. It’s not like frivolous consumption necessarily. It’s like, okay, what else can I do? [00:26:22] OG: Oh, I have excess. I’m gonna help my nieces and nephews out with college. That was never on my plan. I had never thought about that in a million years. But now I look at my net worth and I see this chart, and I see this every year, ballooning more and more. And I, and I, I’m at the Christmas dinner and I hear my sister not complaining, but I hear her talk about like how stressful it is. [00:26:42] OG: And I think I made like 25 grand in interest last month. Like that covers the whole, you know, like, I’m just using this hypothetically. I’m not saying me personally. [00:26:52] Joe: Whoa. It’s like I was like, wow, I need a loan. [00:26:54] OG: Yeah, no, exactly. Like, oh, now not us og we got, [00:26:57] Joe: we gotta start bitching more, Doug, you know, Clarkie feels bad for us. [00:27:01] Joe: No, my [00:27:01] OG: point is, is that people look at those, those net worth increases or projections and go, oh, I, I wouldn’t ever change my, I’m just like a normal person and I submit to you that your definition of a normal person will change. Oh yeah. Like you may not go like, I get to go buy a Gulf Stream now. Right. [00:27:17] OG: That’s probably not it. Or a Ferrari or something. But you might. Have the whole family on vacation, you might just say, okay, this, it’s more important to me to have all my kids and grandkids in the same place for a week than how much it costs, so I’m gonna use that, or I can, right, give more money away or whatever. [00:27:34] OG: So your spending does go up. [00:27:36] Doug: And I think what also happens, ’cause I’ve seen it, is well, I’m gonna do this one time because this is a special moment for me and we’re all going on a Disney cruise. But it ends up not necessarily being one time. That was so awesome, grandpa. Right. We should do this every Christmas, every, every year. [00:27:51] Doug: Or maybe it’s every two or three years. But it, but that’s the creep. We should spend [00:27:55] Joe: your money every year, grandpa. [00:27:56] OG: Yeah, exactly. [00:27:58] Joe: I’d be saying that [00:27:59] OG: I would too. [00:28:01] Joe: Or in our case, og. But there’s another point there too that I think is related. The assumption that you’re going to feel the same at 50. That you did at 40, that you did at 30, that you, you know, at 60, at 70, that you’re gonna feel the same. [00:28:16] Joe: I think there’s these assumptions, especially when you’re younger, that you’re going to work, oh, I’ll just work longer. You know? Uh, I’m not saving that much money ’cause I’m gonna, I’m gonna just keep working. [00:28:25] OG: That’s my plan. Live to 140. I don’t have to start saving for retirement till I’m a hundred. [00:28:30] Joe: Duh. If it only takes 30 years to save, I could start, I could start saving 110. [00:28:35] Joe: Exactly. That’d be fantastic. But I think these projections that assume your work, those go off the rails consistently because it isn’t about whether you want to or not. And sometimes it is your feelings change. Like you know, we see people when I was 25, if you would’ve told me that I could tent. Be retired, live in a tent and be retired. [00:28:58] Joe: I would’ve gone. Oh, that’d be so cool. I’d have all my time to myself. I’d just go hiking and be in a tent now. Bougie Joe at 57, it’s like there’s no way in hell yeah. I would be in a tent for more than the, the sleeping pad you need [00:29:12] Doug: gets [00:29:13] Joe: thicker and thicker, doesn’t it? [00:29:16] Doug: Even the custom mattress, I’m like, yeah, no, yeah, I got, I got the fin turn, a sleeping pad for Christmas this year, and I look at that and I’m like, NFW man, that’s so far in my rear view mirror. [00:29:29] Joe: Just everything changes your feelings about things. So I think projecting the fact that these assumptions that, that you’re gonna feel the same way 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I think you have to build that into your plan. We’re gonna talk about not just mistakes, I wanna talk about what some of the assumptions are that maybe. [00:29:47] Joe: We should start with as our baseline and then change it based on our preferences. We’re gonna do that in the second half of today’s show, plus a TikTok minute. Last week we had a TikTok minute that was actually helpful to new homeowners. We’re gonna do a lot of helpful TikTok minutes. Can we string two together in a row? [00:30:04] Joe: We’re gonna find out [00:30:05] OG: probably [00:30:07] Joe: we’re not the Cleveland Browns here. We, well, TikTok might be the Cleveland Browns not talking about us. Have you been on TikTok? We’re gonna find out about that. But first, Doug, you’ve got, uh, something big happened on today’s date in history. Important [00:30:24] Doug: information [00:30:24] Joe: for [00:30:24] Doug: everybody. [00:30:25] Doug: Joe. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and it’s a big day here in the basement. Joe’s mom has a lineup for our beginning of the year growth charting. Although instead of Mark’s going up the door jammed, she started going horizontally. I, I, I’ll just take it right to the end of this movie. [00:30:41] Doug: I’m still a growing boy. On today’s date, back in 19 0 6, 1 of the financial indices people use to measure money results reached 100 for the first time. Today it’s trading well over 48,000. What index was it? I’ll be back right after I go. A race last year’s mark on the wall. Sometimes you don’t wanna be reminded just how fast you’re growing, you know what I mean? [00:31:11] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m food goal setter and Weight sustainability. Novice Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Keeping the fridge devoid of leftovers isn’t a job for just anybody, and I am pleased to report that I have taken up the mantle on that grueling task once again in 2026. You are welcome, ma. But today’s trivia was about a stock index that’s grown from 100 back in 1906, all the way up to well past 48,000 today. [00:31:38] Doug: Which one was it? The Dow Jones Industrial Average clocked in at 100 way back then, but today it’s a collection of 30 stocks you’ve probably heard of. From American Express to Walt Disney and UnitedHealthcare to Amgen, the Dow Jones is meant to represent. The general US economy. And now two guys who represent the average investor. [00:32:01] Doug: It’s Joe and og. [00:32:07] Joe: Can you imagine the Dow Jones duster average at a hundred og? Yeah, just a hundred. [00:32:12] OG: I think it’s a fun exercise to know what it was when you were born or roughly, you know, about when you were born, so that way you can just be reminded how your parents had an opportunity for you to be insanely wealthy if they would’ve just like taken a thousand or $10,000, owe you how much [00:32:30] Joe: your parents sucked the day you were born [00:32:32] OG: and [00:32:33] Joe: what you write your memoir, something else to bitch about. [00:32:36] OG: Exactly one might add. And how much did you put away for your children on their, on their birthdays? Uh, none. Yeah. We just keep this thing going. Like this is, this is gonna be like family lore. It’s a family [00:32:46] Doug: tradition. I slipped a 10 into the birthday card. What are you complaining about? [00:32:50] OG: This is why you can’t. [00:32:52] OG: I mean, I always tell people you can’t see compounding in advance. You just because you don’t believe it. You just do not believe that something as simple as milk’s five bucks a gallon, right? Yeah. Something like that, give or take, like no one in the universe actually believes in our lifetime it’ll be $15 a gallon. [00:33:09] OG: Right? Like you just go, no, it’s, I I just won’t buy milk. Like, no. Yeah, you will. You’ll, yeah. You’ll still buy it. I mean, it’s 15 fricking dollars day on. Joe [00:33:17] Doug: remembers when you’d walk into a McDonald’s and the Big Mac was like 85 cents, and if you, that was [00:33:24] OG: the lowest price of gasoline that you guys remember paying for. [00:33:27] OG: Oh, well, that’s different. I just remember hanging out at a dollar forever. A dollar. I remember 79 cents. Yeah. But, but you didn’t pay for gas. That’s a part of your question. [00:33:36] Joe: Yeah. Gas hanging out at a dollar forever and just thinking, I can’t believe the price of gas is stated a dollar for Yeah, like when it went [00:33:42] OG: over a dollar consistently. [00:33:44] OG: Yeah. They had to like rework all the signs because. They all were like 0.89. Right. They didn’t have room for the left [00:33:51] Doug: side of the decimal. [00:33:52] OG: Yeah. [00:33:53] Doug: I got a question for you guys though about, uh, because I think there’s a, uh, misnomer is not the right word, but a false idea out there. Back to the in index basics, basil. [00:34:02] Doug: Okay. Back to the indices. Dexus. Okay. Both are accepted. [00:34:08] OG: Thank you. [00:34:08] Doug: I have heard people say over the years that the index of any given index, the number of any given index, Dow Jones, nasdaq, et cetera, is the total of one share of all of the companies in that index. So if it’s a Russell 2000, you took one share of every one of those 2000 companies and added it up. [00:34:28] Doug: That’s the number, but that’s not right, is it? [00:34:32] OG: I’ve never heard that, so I’m gonna say no. Okay. I mean, maybe it is. I hadn’t thought about it. I mean, [00:34:37] Doug: it’s not, but the reason I bring it up. Okay. I, the reason I bring itt, I doesn’t, it’s fine to give you guys an opportunity to be all big brains. [00:34:45] opener: Yeah. [00:34:46] Doug: It’s not, but that is out there like that I think is one of those urban myths. [00:34:50] Doug: Urban financial myths. Huh. Um, and I just thought this would be a good time as a huge 1 0 1 level podcast that we are to share with people what that number is. Now that we’re talking about it. Now that I’ve imparted this knowledge through my trivia, it is so your chance. [00:35:06] Joe: Yeah. But even when you get the answer, Doug, I mean, the answer still makes it even more esoteric. [00:35:12] Joe: Like it just, it doesn’t make it easier. This is a frustrating, the frustration when I started trying to learn about money was that, I’m like, what does that number mean? The fact that it’s just, well, you just kinda get used to where it’s at and then what it’s gonna be. But it is the average price of the 30 stocks that are in the, this is for the Dow Jones specifically, and then they divide it by this figure number they call the Dow Divisor. [00:35:39] Joe: And that’s used to adjust for stock splits and changes in the components of the index so that it. Reflects the true market value of the stock. So it’s a, it’s a price weighted index [00:35:51] Doug: and different indexes, indices can do it differently, right? Yes. Some of them are gonna be market weighted, some are price weighted, and see, [00:35:57] Joe: none of what I just said made it easier. [00:36:00] Joe: Right. Nor me. Right. I agree. It did make it easier at all. So, but I had never heard that it was, that, it was just the, it, it was one share of each, but the average price of the share, the average price, does factor into the calculation of the Dow Jones. [00:36:17] Doug: It’s one of the criteria in, uh, I’m bored. A piece of it components. [00:36:21] Doug: You’re bored. I just wanted to disabuse any of our listeners who might have heard that and thought, oh, it’s that simple. If I add up the 500 stocks, it’s gonna be, [00:36:30] OG: do it. Just buy one of each. [00:36:32] Joe: You know, it’s getting too technical when OG starts drooling. ’cause when we got the financial nerd going, can we move on? [00:36:39] Joe: ’cause this is so, wow. Sorry. No, that’s fine. It’s good. She reminds [00:36:43] OG: me of that, uh, Nikki Glaser bit when she was roasting Tom Brady. And she goes, you know, she’s talking about how did he lose money on. Lose money on crypto and the funny line was like, even grok. No, that, that not real money. [00:37:02] OG: That’s how I feel. [00:37:02] Joe: Before we get back to our topic, by the way of talking about setting up your own financial plan and what numbers should we maybe use as baselines? Let’s do our TikTok minute. This is part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either shining some brilliance into the universe like our TikTok creator last week, which Tina sent to us, or this week. [00:37:23] Joe: This is actually kind of funny because Jean sent this and the TikTok creator’s name is Jeanie who wrote this, but Jeanie has some retirement advice. So do you guys think that Jeanie’s retirement advice, can TikTok get it right two weeks in a row or is this TikTok going back up in flames? [00:37:42] OG: Oh, I’m sure it’s amazing ’cause everything on the internet is fantastic. [00:37:47] Joe: That’s a no from OG TikTok. Can’t do it two weeks in a row. Doug, you’re not allowed to lie on the internet. This is gonna be gold. It’s gonna be good. Well, well, let’s hear from Jeanie underscore retirement. [00:38:01] headlines: As of tomorrow, I will have been retired for four years. I spent my career in financial services in the 401k industry and I thought I knew everything there was to know about retirement. [00:38:11] headlines: But I retired when I was 54, which now I just turned 58 and there was so much I didn’t know about retirement. So yes, of course retirement, it is about the money. Do you have enough? But what’s actually more important that I know now, it’s not actually do you have enough, it’s how much are you gonna spend? [00:38:27] headlines: Because regardless of how much you have, if you outpace your savings, your and your. You know, investment growth, you’re never, you’re gonna run outta money. So you really have to keep track of how much you’re spending. So that’s like number one thing that I’ve learned, and I kind of knew that I write intellectually, but it’s quite different when you’re actually spending down your assets. [00:38:47] Joe: This goes on, I’ll link to it in the show notes. She goes on for a while at G and I like the fact that she says, intellectually, I already knew that. But when you’re retired and you see your money draining out, it’s different. Which is why I think another mistake I see people make before we get into what you should use is just this idea of I’m gonna spend every penny. [00:39:10] Joe: You see these people focus on safe withdrawal rates, right? Why? So I can potentially spend every dollar and I will submit that like Jeannie kind of is talking about here today. You kind of start freaking out in retirement when you see your money go down, when you’re like, oh, I think I’m, I think I’m spending too much. [00:39:29] Joe: I think I’m gonna run outta money. Like that feeling. Even if you’re not running outta money, I mean, how many conversations have you had with people? You’re like, listen, you’re fine. This is built so that you’re pile of money can go down. Unless you live to 180, you’re not gonna outlive it. It’s gonna be okay. [00:39:44] Joe: I get it. It freaks people out when they, when they’re cutting it too close. [00:39:50] OG: I was thinking as she was talking about a more sinister way for this to work, which would be because the market’s basically gone up for her four years of retirement. A if it’s going down, she is spending an insane amount of her portfolio. [00:40:06] OG: Right? Because assuming that it’s been invested, she’s gotten what an average of 15% a year for the last four years, which is so much more than what she should be taking out. I was thinking about this in the context of a retiree thinking like, oh, I’m still good. You know, I had a million last year and now I have 1,000,001. [00:40:27] OG: Like I’m good. And it’s like, well, if you had a million and you went to 1,000,001, that means you spent seven, 7%. ’cause the s and p was up 17% last year, which would be far beyond what you should be spending [00:40:40] Joe: if your portfolio was based on that though, because for a lot of retirees, as you know, you’re using a benchmark that’s gonna be an investment strategy. [00:40:48] Joe: It’s going to deliver a lot less than the s and p. Just so you have less volatility. [00:40:53] OG: I wouldn’t, but maybe some people do. I mean, last year the s and p didn’t do as good as other indices actually like international was. I mean, I think most people should have done better than 17 last year because of other asset classes. [00:41:08] OG: But I was just thinking about this in the context of like if the market’s going up, like where can you get in trouble if you’re. DIYing this and you can get in trouble if you go, I have more money today than I did 12 months ago, therefore I must be okay. Sound good? And and the reality is, is that you still have to like know what you should have been at. [00:41:26] OG: Because the way that the 4% rule works, safe withdrawal rule works, works any of these rules of thumb is you’re consistently applying them. So if you say, I’m only gonna take out the excess when there’s excess, then you’re not building the excess into the bucket so that when the crappy years happen, which are common, then you can still take your 4%. [00:41:51] OG: ’cause if you spend all of your growth, if you’re like, oh, well you know, I have a million bucks and I went up 10%, why can’t I spend the 10? Because you need to hold onto the six for the crappy years. You know, just like you can still spend four when you’re down 30 and you’re down 25 the next year you can still spend four. [00:42:08] OG: Like, that’s totally cool if you’ve only spent four during the good years Also. Where people get in trouble is they just go, oh, you know, everything’s golden man. I don’t have to pay attention to this. Which I think maybe is her point. You still have to pay attention to it. No, [00:42:20] Joe: I think that’s a hundred percent her point. [00:42:22] Joe: She’s like, you know, intellectually I know that [00:42:26] OG: it’s kind of an interesting dichotomy also because, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about working on the income side of your income statement, right? Like you can’t cut all your expenses to zero and all this other sort of stuff. And we’ve talked about that for years. [00:42:41] OG: However, when you get to retirement, unless you’re actually gonna have a side hustle in retirement, now you really have to manage that expense side. ’cause you can get yourself out of a lot of trouble. If you keep making more money. It’s not great, but you can stay, you could, your lips can stay above water if you’re an idiot with spending, as long as you keep making money and with all of a sudden that money train goes away and you can’t like out earn your bad spending habits anymore. [00:43:08] OG: That becomes a muscle that you haven’t ever exercised. So maybe that’s another piece to think about in that kind of five or seven years prior to retirement is can you control your spending? Can you budget instead of just going, ah, just spend like Paula’s approach, right? Paula’s got the, just save what you save and spend. [00:43:25] OG: Like who gives a crap? Yeah. You know, as long as you’re saving on track for your goals, you can spend, yeah, that works in the context of like, you know, reasonable earnings and reasonable spending. But if you apply that to, you know, I had a hell of a year, I got a huge bonus and I made 800 grand this year, but I still saved to reach my goals, which was 47,000, you know, and you blew 600. [00:43:48] OG: And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s pretty comfortable spending. If you don’t know how to tailor that to what’s really happening in your life, you could run into some pretty fun trouble early on in retirement. [00:43:59] Joe: I love this idea that you’re bringing up kind of just, it doesn’t have to be complicated, just this build a simple fence. [00:44:05] Joe: Can you build, maintain? Can you even do it? Like if you’re one of the people? Yeah. Can you, [00:44:08] OG: I, you know, very notably I’m on that side of like, just spend and it’ll be okay. Save money and your plan will be fine. But I was thinking about this in our group chat. We’ve got a group of people and, and we, we are pretty open with each other about our, our lives financially. [00:44:24] OG: And, uh, we were sending our spend numbers from Monarch over the holiday break. Like how much, like what was your total? And then you start looking at that and you go, I don’t really feel like there was anything I did that was extra special. But damn it, I spend a lot of money. Like, I, I just, I, I said this to my wife the other day. [00:44:42] OG: I said, we’re deleting DoorDash. Yeah, no, I’m serious. I know for like the next three months, the idea being, it’s fine, you go out to eat, but get your ass off the couch and go get it. Like you used to stop paying the 40% markup and like, how bad do you really want those tacos if you have to like put on pants? [00:45:04] OG: You don’t have to put on pants for that matter. You probably do it through a drive through, but you still gotta like get in the car and go somewhere and do it and fight all the traffic. Like, how bad do you want the tacos? He’s like, nah, I’m good. I’ll just eat soup at home. Like, exactly. [00:45:15] Doug: I’m just picturing the drive through person looking down at OG in his tidy whitey sitting. [00:45:20] Doug: Be like, holy [00:45:21] OG: moly, put that thing away. It’s just so nasty. We’re serving tacos here, not ham hocks. Oh. Oh, [00:45:31] Joe: geez. Like, like I’m not uncomfortable. That’s not a two weeks in a row. Stackers, you’ve actually sent us good stuff. I don’t Where’s the ridiculousness? Send us the, the, we need the ridiculousness back please, Joe. [00:45:45] Joe: At stack Benjamins dot com. Send that to me. What? What are we a serious show here? I know. Come on. But, uh, gene. Jean sending us, uh, stuff from Jeannie that actually made sense. How about that? Uh, let’s get back to our primary topic today, which was this idea of what, what do we use as we’re creating our money plan, uh, kind of as our benchmarks. [00:46:05] Joe: We talked a lot about the stock market, neither using two rosy pictures or maybe two gloom and doom pictures for the average person who’s a stacker out there. Like what’s a, what’s a number we should use? Og We, you know, we’ll often hear in financial planning organizations maybe around 7%. Is that a number? [00:46:26] OG: Seven? Is 7% is a number. Yes. That’s a number, [00:46:30] Joe: correct. It’s a hot take. That [00:46:32] OG: is a hot take. Yep. It’s a number. I mean, seven percent’s the after inflation return number. I saw a thing on, uh, Reddit a couple of weeks ago where a person updates his net worth, but only in after tax dollars or after inflation dollars. [00:46:49] OG: Like kind of interesting. Interesting, uh, approach of like basically taking out the nominal return and saying, yeah, my net worth went from a million to million one, that’s 10%. But it’s like, no, it really didn’t. That dependable number went up by the price. The [00:47:04] Joe: price of goods went up by X. Yeah. [00:47:06] OG: Offsetting it by inflation. [00:47:07] OG: Yeah. It seems like it’s too far the extra step, in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I steadfastly believe that the only way to beat inflation, which is the biggest risk in long-term portfolios or long-term wealth creation, is inflation. And the only way to beat inflation is to own the things that actually cause the inflation or can deal with it depending on how rosy a picture you wanna paint. [00:47:33] OG: But if you’re sitting on the sidelines and you have your net worth is in cash or your net worth is in fixed income because you’re scared of volatility, you’re scared of the wrong thing. The thing you need to be afraid of is that milk and 25 years from now is gonna be 15 freaking dollars a gallon. Your grandkids are gonna come over to your house and say, grandma, can I have a bowl of cereal? [00:47:54] OG: That’s what’s gonna happen. And if you go, well, I can’t because milk’s 15 bucks, you’re not gonna have the grandkids come over to your house anymore. That’s just what’s gonna happen. I’m telling you they wanna hang out where it’s cool, [00:48:07] Doug: but I don’t like oatmeal, grandma. [00:48:09] OG: And you know, you can have bread and. [00:48:12] OG: I mean, bread’s gonna be $3 a loaf. What is it? 99 cents now? I don’t dunno. 90. [00:48:17] Doug: Wow. Oh my God. Dude, it is $3 a [00:48:20] Joe: loaf. You’re off by huge magnitude. Og. I don’t grocery shop, so I don’t know. No. Wow. Say you don’t grocery shop without say, you know, grocery shop. It is funny though, Doug, I, we were talking about Chicken and Stars remember a couple weeks ago? [00:48:34] Joe: Yeah. [00:48:34] OG: Yeah. Another dollar a can thing, right? [00:48:36] Joe: Well, and I said a dollar 20 and then I go to super one in Texarkana. It’s a dollar 90. Mm-hmm. So basically [00:48:44] OG: the same. [00:48:45] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. But basically, almost double what I said, [00:48:48] OG: the biggest thing that you have to protect against is the rising costs of goods and services. [00:48:52] OG: And we’ve been lulled to sleep with like low inflation for a long time. And then there’s been a few times in the last five years where it’s gone up and people get uncomfortable with this. But the reality is, is you know, even normal inflation, two, 3% is doubling every 25 years. So. You just have to assume that that’s gonna happen and, and maybe at a rate greater than we want it to happen. [00:49:16] OG: So how do you protect against that? You own the companies that are part of the problem, but they’re also part of the solution. So in my opinion, when you look at your retirement assets, I don’t know why you would have money in a thing that can’t outpace inflation except for cash for your short term, two year cash or goal or whatever the case would be. [00:49:41] OG: I do think that your investment return should be similar to what the market is. Maybe it’s 80% of the market return. So if you’re saying, Hey, the s and p does 10, I’ll take eight as my number. If you wanna be conservative, sure, pick seven or six and see what happens. But I think if you’re investing correctly, then it gives you the flexibility to have life. [00:50:03] OG: And opportunity in the future. And that’s really the goal with any financial planning, right, is at the end of the day to say, how do I live my life the way that I want to right now? And also still protect the fact that I have some stuff that I gotta do out in the future because we’re all like selfish people at some level and we just wanna do, I wanna do me now, but I wanna like figure out how to like not screw up the future a ton. [00:50:28] OG: You know what I mean? So be careful. If you use too low of a rate, you’re gonna be forced to save more money, which you would think is a good thing, except for the fact that you’re foregoing stuff today and then you die with a fricking a hundred gillion dollars and you didn’t do any of the stuff you wanted to do. [00:50:43] OG: Like back to what we were talking about before. So you dunno what [00:50:46] Joe: tomorrow’s gonna give us. Yeah. Let’s talk about inflation. Here’s how I take, as a fan of Jim Rogers for a long time, good financial writer of a long time government statistics about inflation are a joke. I do think they are. I think any government statistic that’s not aimed at a political party, it’s not aimed at the United States like it is named at every government. [00:51:07] OG: The statistical way that, what was the book that, uh, what was his name? John Stossel wrote Lies Damn Lies and Government Statistics wasn’t the name of a book. [00:51:17] Joe: What is a realistic number though, og we should use for real inflation? Forget about the consumer price index. What it’s doing, what it’s not doing. [00:51:24] Joe: Ex food [00:51:25] OG: and energy. Um, yeah. [00:51:26] Joe: Yeah. What magic we’re putting into the sauce to make it say what we want it to say. What number should we use as a real number for inflation? [00:51:35] OG: I mean, I don’t know why you wouldn’t use three. Yeah. I can’t see why not to use three. What’s what’s really interesting, again, back to the profound nature of compounding, if you adjust that, if you make it say four, if your plan is good at three, it explodes, ma just, just at a ball of fire at four. [00:51:55] OG: Like it’s not even close because of how fast stuff compounds. Even with that extra 1% no different than if you put in your. Hey, I’m gonna grow at seven or eight. You know, my, my 401k is gonna grow at 9%. Oh, what’s, if it grows at 10? How much do I have? Well, a load more in 30 years. Yeah. It’s the same thing that happens when you go from three to four on inflation. [00:52:18] OG: So be careful. Again, back to like real world, real life type stuff. I think rational actors in their financial plans make changes year to year based on what’s really going on. And if you’ve given yourself a margin of safety and your lips just aren’t barely above water, then that’s a rational thing to do. [00:52:38] OG: You just, you have your known, known expenses and the things that you can get rid of that are the, the frequent contributors to your known expenses are debt and healthcare expenses. So if you can manage your income to take advantage of credits and that sort of thing on the healthcare side, or have that prepaid, whether it’s through, through a, a company program or something like that. [00:53:01] OG: Know, if you look at your mortgage payment and you say, well, my interest rate’s 2%, that’s fantastic. I’m gonna have my mortgage forever. Like, that’s great debt. It’s like, yeah, but your house pay was three grand a month. Dude, you gotta make $50,000 to pay a $36,000 mortgage payment. 50 grand. The first 50 freaking grand you make has to go to your house. [00:53:20] OG: Like I get it, you still have to pay it off eventually. But think about this in retirement, if you get rid of that 50 K withdrawal, like what does that do? It gives you so much more margin of flexibility, more, more margin of safety. So if you can make as many expenses as you can be variable expenses, then you have the flexibility as you get to this retirement time where. [00:53:41] OG: You know, you go, Hey, like your friend Paul says, up in the northwest, Hey, the market’s great, man. We’re going to Europe. We’re gonna summer in Italy. It’s gonna be fantastic. Or, uh, market’s not so great. We’re gonna summer in Oregon, you know, which is all [00:53:54] Joe: also cool, by the way. I love that plan. Just I’m gonna do a different, [00:53:58] OG: Warren Buffett did that. [00:53:59] OG: His, his wife famously would give him enough money to have the hash brown if the market was up the day before. If the market was up the day before, he got to have an egg McMuffin and a hash brown for breakfast. If he, if he got the market was down and he didn’t have to look. Mm, because he knew what was in his change jar when he went to McDonald’s. [00:54:16] Doug: I bet you if you looked at his productivity rates, the days when he got the hash brown, it plummeted because he spent an hour and a half in the bathroom later that morning. [00:54:26] OG: McDonald’s hash browns are delicious. [00:54:28] Doug: Yeah, they are going in, but they will, [00:54:30] OG: nah, [00:54:30] Doug: they will affect the system. Need [00:54:32] OG: to tighten up the, uh, oh boy. [00:54:34] OG: Kegels or something there. Doug Kegel. [00:54:41] Joe: I think we’ll end it on that. Thank you again. Talk about financial planning statistics and Kegels, you only get that on Stacking Benjamins. Uh, you know what, [00:54:49] OG: some exercises down under, [00:54:52] Joe: let, let’s chat more about this in our Facebook group, the basement. Uh, what type of assumptions do you use? You know what? [00:54:59] Joe: And, uh, we can even do this on Spotify. If you listen to us on Spotify, leave us, uh, your notes there. And I’d love to chat with you more about statistics and assumptions in your financial plan. And if you wanna dive more into topics like this, the 2 0 1 newsletter, we have available Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 to sign up for. [00:55:17] Joe: That comes out once a week. And, uh, we curate the best of the best that we find across the internet so that you can dive even more into this. Let’s journey out on the back porch. And Doug, I wanted to start the back porch segment. This is where we celebrate the things going on in our community. Speaking of the basement Facebook group, Zachary in the basement made a, made a stunning discovery, and that is that, uh, Doug Bowser, who was the COO and president of Nintendo of America retiring. [00:55:49] Joe: Yeah. And, uh, it’s tragic day, said that he looks a lot like you, but with less hair. I know. I wasn’t [00:55:54] Doug: sure how to take that. I mean, look at him. He’s a handsome man. Yes. I like his glasses more than mine. [00:55:59] Joe: Are you secretly, Doug Bowser and just neighbor Doug is your alter ego. [00:56:03] Doug: You don’t know. You don’t even know. [00:56:07] Doug: You have no idea. Uh, but yes, I am retired now. [00:56:11] Joe: Thank you. By the way, also to people who helped out stacker Chad, he said his wife and him are both visually impaired and they use voiceover on the iPhone. And he has an Apple savings account. He doesn’t like the fact she doesn’t have access to. He’s looking into joint high interest savings accounts. [00:56:28] Joe: But also, this is interesting for some of our stackers who need to use things like voiceover because they’re visually impaired what’s out there. And it’s interesting, we had a really good discussion about that. Uh, stacker Josh helped out by saying the fidelity CMA solved all this, and a couple other great suggestions. [00:56:46] Joe: So thank you much stacker’s, helping stackers, Doug. [00:56:50] Doug: Yeah, I love, I I really love to see. It’s fun. We have fun. Like, hey, what should the name of my new robot vacuum cleaner be? Clean Latifah, by the way, is the correct answer there. Uh, and those are fun. But I really do love when the community gets used for exactly those kinds of questions. [00:57:06] Doug: That’s, that’s what, what, when we’re at our best, that’s what the basement and, and our community is, is used for. So, uh, keep that stuff coming. Reach out to the hive mind and get some good ideas from, from everybody else. [00:57:19] Joe: I wanna play one more thing that, uh, stacker Carrie brought up. This was, uh, from our friend Gretchen Rubin, who’s been on the show a few times from her podcast. [00:57:29] Joe: And this is a game that Gretchen and her sister are playing, which is, uh, well just just have a listen you guys in for this. In January, [00:57:38] trailer: free January, my husband and I play a game. We have affectionately named Survivor Pantry. We do not purchase most groceries in January. We eat the food we have already purchased this year is year 17 for us. [00:57:52] trailer: Wow. Most years we spend less than $40 for the entire month, and it’s a good reminder not to be wasteful. [00:57:59] Joe: Can you imagine though, turning into a game of survivor? Like you take all your food, you put it in a circle at the end of the day and you’re like, frozen pizza that’s been in there for four months. [00:58:09] Joe: You’re voted off the island, tonight’s your night. [00:58:11] OG: I mean, we just talked about this at our house, not in this context, but that’s a fun way to put it. But we just talked about it like, you know, there’s frozen whatever in the back right corner of the freezer. It’s like either eat it or get it gone. Yeah. And I said, and how many cans of soup do we need? [00:58:26] OG: Like, like it just seems like, well it’s winter, we should get some soup. It’s like, but we have the soup from five winners ago. What is that still doing there? Some of it, right? These like caramels. How about we eat those? [00:58:38] Joe: I went a month ago to stock up on soup because we do a good job of pantry and food planning with just two of us. [00:58:44] Joe: I can’t stand, to your point, og just having food that isn’t planned for just sitting there like, like when is, what’s the deal with this thing? Let’s eat it. Or let’s, let’s get rid of it. [00:58:53] OG: Canned chicken. [00:58:54] Joe: But I went and bought because working from home, I, I buy some cans of soup so that I can just quickly get it done. [00:59:03] Joe: The freaking boy scouts came by with their canned good drive and I go, I go last week to grab a can of soup. We don’t have any, we got none. ’cause Cheryl decided, ’cause she doesn’t eat it, she’s like, I didn’t know why we needed these cans of soup. I’m like, I just bought, I just freaking bought ’em last week and she donated them all to the Boy Scout. [00:59:24] Joe: Did you get a receipt? Geez, you heartless. It’s the Boy Scouts. It is The Boy Scouts. People that good more than me. [00:59:34] OG: Yeah. I don’t think they’re the Boy Scouts anymore, but I had Planned Scout. They’re just the scouts. They’re just the scouts. [00:59:40] Joe: Thank you so much, just stackers for joining us today for another episode. [00:59:46] Joe: Coming up on Wednesday, Mel Abraham, the Mel Abraham gonna join us to help us create our money machine in from the Bible. [00:59:55] OG: Just, oh, his first name was Abraham [00:59:57] Doug: It. So, I mean, if there’s a, if you said from the Bible, if you said, is Mel Abraham a character from the Bible? I’d say, yes. Nine and a half outta 10 times someone needs [01:00:08] OG: to go back to Sunday school. [01:00:10] Doug: What was Noah’s [01:00:11] Joe: real first name? Jim Noah. What was his name? Jim Noah. Oh boy. Getting into trouble here. Alright, Doug, let’s end this thing. What should be on our to-do list today? Going to church. [01:00:23] Doug: Clearly. Clearly. Well, Joe, first take some advice from our focus topic. Just because something is an accepted assumption, doesn’t mean it’s right for you. [01:00:33] Doug: Begin with what you want and then build your plan. Second, our preference. Build a plan that encompasses the worst, but also gives you the freedom to celebrate your best years. By using realistic numbers and planning what you’ll do with excess money. You’ll feel gratitude and enjoy your retirement instead of worrying about every penny. [01:00:53] Doug: But the big lesson, uh, I, I wouldn’t ask Joe’s mom if she wants you to measure her growth, that conversation got awkward quickly. How do you answer the question? What do you mean by that, Doug? I meant nothing, ma. Nothing at all. Join us Wednesday when Mel Abraham helps us help you build a money engine. [01:01:17] Doug: Telling ya he’s in the Old Testament somewhere. This show is the property of SP podcast, LLC copyright 2026 at is created by Joe Saul Sea High. 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. [01:01:38] Doug: Come say hello and oh yeah, 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, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:02:54] opener: Our friend [01:02:55] Joe: Kevin, who writes the 2 0 1 and is always scouring the internet guys found this lovely thing in USA today. It’s written by Michelle Delrey back in, uh, late December. Women sues IRS. It’s always interesting. Uh, this woman’s an attorney, by the way. A New York attorney sued the Internal Revenue Service hoping to claim her dog as a dependent on her taxes. [01:03:23] Joe: Ballsy lawsuit filed by Amanda Reynolds seeks to claim her 8-year-old Golden Retriever Finnegan Mary Reynolds as a non-human dependent under US tax law. And her complaint, which has been reviewed by USA today. Reynolds states her dog is entirely dependent on her first survival. Duh. Yeah. Yeah. Reynolds lives in New York City filed the lawsuit on June 19th in the US District of court for the Eastern District of New York. [01:03:48] Joe: The attorney said she spends more than $5,000 a year on her dog, including boarding, daycare, transportation, veterinary services, grooming, food, and housing. And so according to section 1 52, the IRS code, Finnegan meets the qualifications of a dependent to count as a dependent, they have to prove they share a residence with the individual in question and the individual requires financial reliance and lacks in independent income. [01:04:12] Joe: This, this is a layup og. I just got a financial boon. Cooper is now going on the tax return. [01:04:19] OG: I don’t think this is gonna end the way that everybody thinks it will, but [01:04:21] Joe: okay. Isn’t it great these lawsuits? Does she really think she’s gonna win? Like if she’s an attorney, she knows where this is gonna go. [01:04:31] Doug: Is this one of those? [01:04:32] Doug: I got time. I’ll just, I’ll just make an example of this. [01:04:35] Joe: Maybe, maybe I get my name in in lights. You know, I’m gonna file this lawsuit to prove that I’m an attorney who thinks outside the box in [01:04:43] OG: lights as in like, here’s your prison cell lights. I dunno. Right? I [01:04:47] Joe: dunno. [01:04:48] OG: Orange might not be your favorite color. [01:04:50] OG: I do think about the, um, the context of dependence though. Like, there is that period of time where you know your kid’s making money and there’s always the argument of like, am I supporting you 50% at this point or am I not right? And like, should I claim you? Should I not claim you? I wonder how many people, did you guys go through that with your kids? [01:05:11] OG: Or was it like very cut and dry like outta college off the payroll? No. Is that how y’all did it? [01:05:17] Joe: Yeah. Well we definitely had a, uh, discussion about claiming you were not claiming you. And in our kids’ case, they moved outta the house. They were gone. They had income. So. They were done. Yeah. [01:05:28] Doug: PR pretty cut and dry as to like, yeah, it wasn’t, we didn’t have to have a discussion. [01:05:30] Doug: It just happened. We weren’t allowed to claim them, which is annoying. I [01:05:34] OG: mean, you could see that though, right? Like with the Boomerang kids and stuff. Like, you know, they’re working but they’re, you know, living at home. Maybe they’re paying some rent, that sort of thing. You know, because trying to ease ’em into adulthood, like how do you make the judgment call of that 50% number? [01:05:50] OG: ’cause that’s, you know, that’s really it. I mean, there’s some other factors like you mentioned there, but they could be your dependent and not live at home too, I think. Right? Oh, because you’re subsidizing if you’re paying [01:06:01] Doug: much their life, even though they’re, yeah, [01:06:03] Joe: yeah, yeah. Slippery slope. But taking it all the way down to the dog, I think is, is a hard, yeah. [01:06:08] Joe: Oh gee. Were you at, were you at American Express at the time that, uh, Jim Weiner, a business advisor, was there? Was Jim Weiner there when you were there? Yeah, I do remember him. Yeah. So Jim Weiner was this crusty, has seen it all, advisor. And I remember one day I’m in our Brighton, Michigan office. Jim gets a call and of course Jim was always happy to tell everybody about some of the calls and still maintain some privacy. [01:06:32] Joe: But if it was funny, it was, it was great. This was Jim’s sage advice to a couple, this business owner calls Jim one day and Jim always talked like this, if you remember og. He’s like, so, so I get this call from a guy and he goes, Jim, I got a problem. The IRS is in my lobby right now. What should I do? And Jim said, so I told him exactly what the strategy would be. [01:06:58] Joe: I said, bill, don’t go in the lobby. [01:07:03] OG: I have a funny story about the, something similar like that when I was at amex. My office was in Farmington Hills and Joe, you remember that office there was like a little bit of a lobby thing and then there was the reception desk. [01:07:16] Joe: Yeah. [01:07:16] OG: And then the, it was like just a straight hallway, long hallway, long hallway with offices on i, on other side. [01:07:23] OG: And so I was down one of the little cutouts, my office, I could like peer around the corner and I could see the front desk, but most of the time people who are standing at the front desk, you know, I was behind them and, you know, whatever. Anyways, so my client texts me and he works for the IRS, the criminal side of the IRS. [01:07:43] OG: So he is got a badge and a firearm and so he, he, he calls me and he says, Hey, I’m in the elevator. I’ll be up in, uh, two minutes. I said, ah, you wanna have some fun? He’s like, sure. And I said, I need you to badge Kim at the front desk because. We had a receptionist who was very protective of everyone and whatever, which was great. [01:08:05] OG: You know, making sure like solicitors didn’t bother us and all that sort of stuff. So my client comes in and goes, flips the badge over and goes, hi, I am special agent. So, and I’m here to see, uh, Mr. Uh, like flips open his book and Mr. Og, and she’s like, uh, hold on a second. And so she dials and she’s like, Hey, uh, it’s, uh, came at the front desk. [01:08:26] OG: Uh, there’s a, there’s a guy here from the IRS to see you. And I was like. I like, I could hold my phone like the way my desk was. I could like lean out the my, my office so she could see me and I was like, stall him. And I like dropped my phone and I like ran down the hallway the other direction as fast as I could. [01:08:48] OG: You should’ve seen her face like, so then I went out the back entrance and came around the front door and we, and she’s like, oh my gosh, I didn’t know what to do. I just saw you running. [01:08:58] Doug: And we laughed and laughed and then performed CPR on Karen. [01:09:03] OG: It was great. We had a good time and then I was arrested. It was so fun, so great.
Leave a Reply