Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug pull up a rickety basement chair and unpack a growing trend: people treating investing like a series of high stakes bets instead of a long term plan. Sparked by a recent Wall Street Journal piece on aggressive investing, the gang digs into where the line is between smart risk taking and straight up gambling with your future.
Using plenty of real world examples and a few basement metaphors, the crew breaks down how stocks, businesses, options, and even so-called innovative products can fall into very different categories depending on why you’re using them. The key theme? Good investing isn’t about being bold. It’s about understanding probabilities, controlling what you can, and stacking the odds in your favor over time.
Along the way, the team also tackles listener questions, including some strong feelings about Costco (because of course), and shines a flashlight into the dark corners of complex products like Indexed Universal Life insurance, explaining why “sounds sophisticated” doesn’t always mean “fits your plan.”
If markets feel noisy, confusing, or a little unhinged right now, this episode is your reminder that boring, disciplined strategies still win, and that you don’t need to bet the farm to build one.
What You’ll Learn:
• Why so many investors are confusing betting with investing right now
• How to tell the difference between calculated risk and speculation
• Why understanding probability matters more than chasing big wins
• Where options, businesses, and alternative investments can fit and where they often don’t
• The hidden risks behind complex products like Indexed Universal Life (IUL) policies
• Why compounding beats hype even when headlines say otherwise
• How small, consistent decisions quietly outperform flashy moves
• Yes, what Costco has to do with smart money choices
This Episode Is For You If:
• Markets feel confusing and you’re not sure if you’re investing or just guessing
• You’ve been tempted by strategies that sound sophisticated but feel risky
• You want to understand the line between smart risk and gambling
• You’re tired of flashy investment advice and want clarity on what actually works
• You need reassurance that boring, disciplined strategies still win
Question for You:
What’s the riskiest financial move you’ve ever considered, and what stopped you (or didn’t)? Share your answer in the Spotify comments or the Stacking Benjamins Facebook group. Bonus points if hindsight made you laugh or wince.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/probability-of-success-for-new-investors-1801
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
- When All Bets Are Off, All Bets Are On | The Intelligent Investor for Jan. 27 – WSJ (Wall Street Journal)
Doug’s Trivia
- Write trivia question here.
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Write listener question here
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
- Playing the five key probabilities for investment success | MASECO Private Wealth
- The Stacking Benjamins Show – The Vault
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when, in honor of Valentine’s Day, today we celebrate relationships and your money with a couple who literally wrote the financial book on the topic, Doug and Heather Boneparth!
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: The Worst Money Advice Ever (SB1800!)
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: It is Monday. And you know what happens on Monday? Normally I say let’s raise our glasses and salute our troops. But guys, I feel naked. I don’t have a glass. Well, what do you do when you need to salute the troops? And you don’t have a glass, [00:00:12] OG: uh, you have to do a thousand burpees, [00:00:15] Joe: or I can go get a glass. [00:00:18] Joe: Would that be No. Would that be [00:00:19] OG: a, a burpees? [00:00:20] Joe: Look at the time, [00:00:21] Doug: Mr. Opportunity Soldier. [00:00:22] Joe: Yeah, I think we just put our hand in the air and go, Hey, troops. On behalf of the men and women making podcasts in mom’s basement and all those stackers out there trying to do their thing. Thank you for keeping us safe all weekend. [00:00:35] Joe: Let’s go stack some Benjamins. [00:00:36] OG: Stack ’em, stack ’em. Let’s get some Stacking going. [00:00:45] Joe: Live [00:00:46] Doug: from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:00] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and I’ve got. Three to one odds that you are gonna love today’s episode. Today we tackle betting with your money and how to turn those bets into powerful money moves. We’ll start out with a recent piece from the Wall Street Journal about a huge uptick in aggressive investing and prognosticate, that’s a big word on where that might end up. [00:01:22] Doug: But we’ll also look at other assets and talk about betting on those investments. How would those work in your portfolio? But that’s not all. We’ll also share a TikTok minute featuring motivational speaker, Tony Horse, mouth, Robbins, and then I’ll motivate you with some of my incredible trivia. And now two guys who were motivated enough to put pants on this morning. [00:01:45] Doug: It’s Joe and o, ju Ju g. [00:01:53] Joe: You know I’m motivated when I’m even wearing pants. Hey everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome back to the Stack of Benjamin Show. Sit back, relax. You found us. Grab your favorite beverage and your favorite place to take notes because we’re diving into your investments today. It seems like some people are investing, well, maybe a little differently than, uh, we would recommend. [00:02:18] Joe: We’ll get into that in a minute, but first we’re gonna get into introducing you to the gentleman across the card table from me. Mr. OG is here. How are you? Dude? [00:02:26] OG: I’m in the middle of, uh, trying to transfer one iPhone to another iPhone. Otherwise, I’m doing great [00:02:34] Joe: to do that. Do you go in the transfer portal? [00:02:36] Joe: Do you have like the iPhone [00:02:37] OG: transfer? Yeah, they’re in the transfer portal right now. Yeah. They’re negotiating for starting positions at a D three school. [00:02:43] Doug: I’ll be taking my talents to an iPhone 17. [00:02:46] OG: Yes. [00:02:47] Joe: Did you see I was listening to a podcast the other day and, uh, sports fans, this is actually about money. [00:02:53] Joe: Even if you’re not a sports fan. This is about money and I didn’t know we were gonna talk about this, but on the rich eyes and. Show. They were talking about how there are still 1200 kids in the portal, 1200 athletes in the portal. The reason they went in the portal was because some well-meaning adult was like, dude, you need to get paid. [00:03:13] Joe: You need to get more money. There are maybe one of this analyst said there may be seven or 800 college athletes that ended their career. [00:03:23] Doug: Yeah. [00:03:23] Joe: With that decision, [00:03:25] Doug: it’s not like they can, they don’t get picked up and, well, I’ll just go back to my old team. [00:03:28] Joe: Yeah, you’re done. [00:03:29] Doug: Good chance. They’re like, now we found somebody better. [00:03:32] Joe: Yeah, you are done. So, uh, the money, the money train as it were, might not be as flowing with cash for everybody as people originally thought. It’s [00:03:42] Doug: one way to learn a lesson in college. [00:03:44] Joe: It, it is a tough, tough lesson. The grass, believe it or not, it’s not always greener. We’re gonna actually talk about that today when it comes to investments. [00:03:51] Joe: About investing in your portfolio, uh, what you choose to invest in to some degree, even if it’s an invest mint that makes sense. We call it an investment when the odds are so stacked in your favor that we think it’s worth putting your harder money toward. We call it a bet when it’s based on our gut. [00:04:12] Joe: However, even an investment to a very, very tiny degree is just a well researched. Well reasoned bat. So we’re gonna talk about a recent Wall Street Journal piece that talks about that today. Before we get to that though, I gotta tell you what was really cool. When I went into our new product, the Vault, I immediately put my phone number in and it told me. [00:04:36] Joe: That my phone number was on the dark web starting in August of 2024. So all these people that are writing to me, Doug, going, Hey, you coming over for lunch? Hey, are we still getting together later that I’m answering? ’cause I’m all excited ’cause I have all these friends that I didn’t even know that I had. [00:04:52] Joe: Well, it turns out that those weren’t really friends of mine and they were just trying to rip me off. Who knew? Who knew? [00:04:57] Doug: Back to reality, you’ve still got one and a half friends. [00:04:59] Joe: Yes. [00:05:01] OG: Plus the person from Firehouse [00:05:04] Joe: and the person from Firehouse Subs. That’s a story we may tell you about later. ’cause sadly, uh, my phone thinks I live at Firehouse Subs. [00:05:12] OG: So does your waistline. [00:05:17] Joe: What? [00:05:17] Doug: Siri? Gimme directions to my house. [00:05:19] Joe: I don’t like firehouse subs. Your waistline says that is a lie. Right stacky Benjamins dot com slash vault to see how our product, the vault works. It’s your bedrock piece of your financial plan. It is the privacy manager, subscription manager, and your credit monitoring superpower. [00:05:39] Joe: It’s really is does 15 things, does it all in one place. Benjamins dot com slash vault. Put all of your safety in the vault. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash fault gets you there. We got a couple more sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them, and then we are diving into betting on your money in just a minute. [00:06:00] headlines: Hello Darlings, and now it’s time for your favor, part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines, [00:06:07] Joe: our headline today. Okay. How many times have we said this line comes to us from Jason’s week? I think we’ve said that three or four times. Is he on staff here in the, he’s gonna demand royalty checks pretty soon? [00:06:22] Joe: Uh, we are fans of Jason’s, of course, we’re fans of a lot of people at the Journal and, um, we seem to have a few writers that just, man, they do a great job. And Jason in this one, in his column, the Intelligent Investor from a couple weeks ago. His headline is When all bets are off, all bets are on. He writes, fellow investors, financial markets work best when everyone knows the rules and we can generally trust other people to follow them. [00:06:49] Joe: That doesn’t mean we know what’s about to happen, but we do like to tell ourselves. It means we understand what is happening. That’s why investors hate Uncertainty is one of Wall Street’s most common cliches. But what’s funny is Jason Wrights, OG. He writes, uncertainty is a rarity in markets. It’s the norm. [00:07:09] Joe: And it’s funny because we tell ourselves all these stories that on a daily basis that we know it’s, oh, the market went down a hundred points today because of X, Y, Z. We have no idea if that’s actually why the market went down. But we love a good story. We love telling our ourself that this is exactly why the market quote market on a daily basis, did what it did [00:07:31] OG: as Che GPT would say. [00:07:33] OG: Volatility or uncertainty is a feature, not a bug when it comes to investing. [00:07:38] Joe: It is a hundred percent a feature. Jason says he wrote in 2008, investors hate uncertainty in quotes. Well, that’s just tough uncertainties all investors have ever gotten or ever will get from the moment. Barley and sesame first began trading in ancient Mesopotamia to the last trade. [00:07:55] Joe: That will ever take on planet Earth if tomorrow were ever knowable with absolute certainty. Who would take the other side of a trade today? I mean, this is really the key, even when you’re investing, is there’s somebody who thinks it’s gonna go up and there’s gotta be somebody who thinks it’s gonna go down, which really means what for you to decide which side of that trade you take. [00:08:15] Joe: You actually begin doing some research and you start looking into, okay, what’s the probability that this thing is going to happen? And I’ll give you an example. What’s the probability that your checking account is going to go down in value tomorrow? 0% chance. What is the chance that your checking account is going to keep up with inflation between now and 10 years from now? [00:08:39] Joe: Also 0% chance, right, that that’s going to happen. So we begin looking at, at the bets here. Here’s the scary thing though, OG about betting is, so we look at January and the stock market treasury yields rose and US stocks fell on January 20th. Because President Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Europe and didn’t rule out using military force to annex Greenland. [00:09:08] Joe: And then you saw on the glimmers of this vague plan for a greater US presence in Greenland prices bounce right back. You get all kinds of volatile things that happened in January, and yet we look at a double leverage rare Earth ETF. Which hypothetically might benefit Jason Wrights from Economic Development, Greenland. [00:09:32] Joe: It went up 63% in a day and a hundred percent in a week. Stocks in Denmark. At the time when we’re calling Denmark, our, our leaders are calling Denmark names. You would think, uh oh. Denmark sucks. Denmark, ETF source goes through the roof, does better than the s and p 500 over that same timeframe. Canada, of course, the president saying that. [00:09:57] Joe: Prime Minister Kearney booted out of his Peace Plan Canada stocks go up in January more than the s and p 500 does. Even though we think that it couldn’t, and in fact when you think, okay, well this is a Trump problem, anything that said truth, social, or was related to Trump, those things all went up more, more than the s and b 500 went up. [00:10:18] Joe: This is all in Jason’s piece. A new study of speculative financial behavior over more than two centuries finds exactly what anyone with common sense would’ve predicted. People take more risk when stocks go up and the economy is booming and it can last surprisingly long. So there is this thing, what’s the point here, og? [00:10:36] Joe: Is it the stock market’s been going up? Generally it’s had it’s nicks and its cuts, but just generally had this nice long run of going up and the more it goes up, the more people speculate. The more wild it gets. Like, why are we betting on Denmark? Why am I betting on a Trump ETF? Why am I betting on, on what, what was it? [00:10:56] Joe: Rare earth metals two x leverage, the betting escalates. The longer the stock market goes up, because we start feeling more and more we, we feel more, more confident over time. [00:11:08] OG: Is it that or is it because people have more margin of safety and they’re like, yesterday I had a hundred thousand dollars and today I have a million dollars, so I [00:11:16] Doug: betting the house is money. [00:11:17] OG: I can invest BET a hundred K right now and I’m still, if I lose it, I’m still good. [00:11:22] Doug: I assume that’s what Joe meant when he said have more confidence. [00:11:25] OG: Yeah. Maybe [00:11:26] Doug: equals. More money, more cushion for the pushing. [00:11:29] Joe: Well, yeah, I mean it, it definitely makes us feel, I hadn’t thought of that though, guys, that having more money would make me more confident because I’m so far ahead of the game. [00:11:35] Joe: I can afford to take the bet. But on the other side too, I’ve been winning so much lately, like there’s been so much winning, going outta my portfolio. I’m [00:11:44] Doug: really good at this. [00:11:45] Joe: Yeah. The chance of me losing, well, okay, wait, does anybody lose at this stuff? We’ve warned people about this a couple times, Oog in the past couple years, and in fact about a month ago. [00:11:55] Joe: We did a similar headline talking about gambling and about how scary this can be. This, uh, gambling mentality that people have, these prediction markets that we talked about at the beginning of January that were coming online and more, becoming more and more popular. And now I see, by the way, my social media feed nonstop, where you can bet on where markets are headed. [00:12:19] Joe: You can bet like anything, uh, like it’s DraftKings. So you’re not just betting on the NFL football [00:12:25] OG: game? Yeah, you can bet on any sort of thing that’s in existence right now. [00:12:30] Joe: The boom in these markets. Zeig writes, I knew that these markets were booming. I didn’t realize it was by this much. You can play short-term bets in just about anything and, and these markets, sci and poly markets alone, just two platforms. [00:12:43] Joe: How much money you think they’re doing right now in weekly trading? [00:12:46] OG: Oh, um, I would bet. Individually or together? [00:12:50] Joe: No, together. [00:12:52] OG: It’s gotta be a million dollars. $10 million. $20 million.Dude,
[00:12:55] Doug: it’s got, it’s crazy. It’s more like 500 million. Come on. I see these ads, like every time I finish playing a hand of euchre on my phone, [00:13:02] Joe: it’s a billion dollars. [00:13:03] Joe: What? A billion dollars a week. Just think about this. So this isn’t even quote investing. [00:13:10] OG: Well, none of that’s investing at all. [00:13:12] Joe: Right? Exactly. [00:13:13] OG: No, no. [00:13:14] Joe: Yes. [00:13:15] OG: And I don’t wanna call investing in Denmark betting. I don’t wanna call investing, you know, in precious metals betting, if you are doing it from a trading standpoint, if you’re saying, I think a great example, I saw this thing on Twitter or Instagram or something the other day. [00:13:33] OG: An investor, you know, it was like on unusual whales or something, an investor had bet $30 million levered five to one that the silver market was gonna go down. Pretty big number. [00:13:48] Joe: Pretty big bet. [00:13:49] OG: Pretty big bet. [00:13:50] Joe: Yes. [00:13:50] OG: Now that person, um, and this is, you know, alleged, I don’t know anybody who did it, it was just online, so it must be true. [00:13:58] OG: But I saw it the day before the nomination for the next fed chair came out, and that day that the nomination came out, silver was down 27%. So this person bet on the silver market going down five to one levered. Then the next day, the silver market went down 27%. Okay. I’m no expert, but that’s shady af, right? [00:14:23] OG: That’s not betting or investing, that is just pure manipulation. But if you’re looking at something and you’re saying, I think this company’s gonna do X, Y, and Z because of A, B, and c. I’m gonna make a short-term investment. I’m gonna make a short-term purchase of that stock or a short-term sale of that stock because of this news. [00:14:44] OG: That’s a bet That’s a hundred percent a bet. But if you’re saying I need to be diversified, and part of my diversification is to include smaller countries that I don’t generally have in my portfolio, because I have all my money in the s and p and I want to have some international companies, and because of that, I have a 2% position in Denmark. [00:15:06] OG: That’s investing. [00:15:07] Joe: Sure. [00:15:08] OG: You know, A two x levered ETF on rare earth metals the day before, the day after this press conference of ex, you know, whatever. Okay, that’s a bet. And you may win or you may lose. But don’t confuse that for investing. [00:15:21] Joe: If we just lay down something definitionally to agree on OG, which is that even though you don’t like the term bet, and I don’t like the term bet in a very, very broad way. [00:15:34] Joe: Everything we do is a bet. We’re betting that the thing that I had for lunch is gonna be cooked. Right? I’m betting that it’s gonna taste good. So I feel like there’s these degrees of bets, and I love the definition. No, no, no. This is investing, this is betting. I totally get that. But even when we look at the s and p 500 over a long time, or, you know, take what you said earlier, Denmark, I’m betting on the fact that. [00:16:00] Joe: Denmark is going to be around. I’m betting that the historical stuff that’s happened with Denmark that I could use to make my decision will help me. Gr how this is gonna help my portfolio in the future. I am betting that the instrument that I’m using is either diversified enough or so to do whatever it’s gonna do in the portfolio based on a hell of a ton of information. [00:16:24] Joe: So it doesn’t have to be a huge leap, but I do feel like, like an investment in a single economy is still much more of a bet than an investment in the total stock market index, as an example. An investment in the banking sector is more of a bet, even if I’m doing it from an investing standpoint, it still is more of a bet, I believe, than a broadly diversified across many sectors investment. [00:16:51] Joe: And so I kind of see this on one end. I’ve got DraftKings and the Poly market and all this craziness, and on the other end I’m betting. Some economy somewhere is gonna continue. So I do V-T-S-A-X, right? So I do the Vanguard Total Stock Market index. I’m just gonna buy everything. ’cause I’m betting that something’s going to continue. [00:17:13] OG: I don’t like the word, but I’m not gonna argue anymore about it with you. I think it boils down to timeframe more than anything. [00:17:19] Joe: The reason that’s important is because if somebody is new to investing and they’re listening to us, you really wanna do some calculations around probability, around risk management. [00:17:29] Joe: You know, Annie Duke said this, the poker player when she was on the show about thinking in bets. I want to think about probability and the difference in probability with a dollar when you invest in the s and p 500. Versus a dollar down at the liquor store at the, uh, Powerball or the Mega Millions. [00:17:49] Joe: There’s a huge difference in those bets. Some [00:17:51] Doug: of my best investing happens at the liquor store. I don’t think I like where you’re going with this. [00:17:56] OG: That’s not even the same thing. I, I don’t think those are comparable in any way, shape or [00:18:00] Joe: form. It’s gonna be use of a dollar. Well, no, they’re not. You know why they’re not? [00:18:03] Joe: Because the probability is so incredibly different. The probability of success is so incredibly different. Zweig writes, how should investors as opposed to Traders approach these markets where you can bet on everything? I like his next line, Oog with a 10 foot pole and a hazmat suit. It’s fine to do a little bit of speculative trading. [00:18:25] Joe: He says, for fun in a mad money account, but never, and I mean, never mingle that with your long-term accounts. Isolate your speculation. A separate account on a trading app, use only for that purpose. Give the account a nickname, like Play Money to remind yourself. This is the only place you’ll speculate. [00:18:39] Joe: Measure your gains and losses accurately so you don’t kid yourself about whether you’re good at it. But I think this is important, and the reason I love this piece is because for you, og, it’s clearly two different things, but that’s because you’re trained in this. To somebody who is brand new to investing and they go, oh, I could just bet ’em where the s and p 500 goes up and down today. [00:19:00] Joe: Well, why would I not just bet on it one day versus bet on betting on it long term? Like, why would I keep my money around every day? That just doesn’t seem to well. It’s because we know. We know how it works. We know how the probability game plays, but a brand new investor doesn’t realize the huge difference in probability. [00:19:20] Joe: This is why when we answer your question stackers, when someone says, well, should I get in front of this and put more money into AI stocks? OG will go, [00:19:31] OG: that’s stupid. Don’t play that game. [00:19:32] Joe: Don’t do this. And that’s because your probability of success, it’s so much lower and the juice not, not really worth the squeeze. [00:19:43] OG: It’s never worth [00:19:43] Doug: it. He says that about everything though. [00:19:46] Joe: Don’t do that. She’s like, don’t do that. You’ll go blind. We’ll link to this piece on our show notes page at stack your Benjamins dot com. After the break, what we are going to look at is your different probabilities of success based on different investments that you may make. [00:20:02] Joe: And, uh, some of these may be surprising if you’re a new investor. So we’re gonna look at not things as obvious as the Powerball versus the s and p 500. But all the nuance when you look down that whole scale that’s coming up next. But right now, I think, Doug, you’ve got something that happened on today’s date in history, right? [00:20:23] Doug: Sure do. Joe. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today we say Happy birthday to an actor who’s earned tons of Benjamin’s while starring in some of your favorite films like Creed. Black Panther and Fruit Veil Station. Who is this birthday boy? I’ll be back right after. I see if I can score an audition for the next Black Panther movie I could Please, brother. [00:20:44] Doug: By another mother, white Panther. Look, they make sequels out of almost nothing. This one is a no brainer. [00:21:05] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m budding actor and guy whose Hollywood dreams have been crushed because Joe’s mom won’t let me use the phone. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, I already told you, ma. I used up all my minutes calling Miss Cleo. Geez, Joe’s mom ruins all my great ideas, but that’s okay. That means I’m still here to deliver today’s trivia answer to the question, who is today’s birthday boy who starred in many of your favorite films like Creed, Fruitvale Station, and Black Panther? [00:21:35] Doug: The answer of course. It’s a guy who’s a big fan of the show, Michael B. Jordan. Happy birthday, Mike. And now back to the money superheroes at the microphones. Well, I mean, at least they enjoy wearing tights. Joe and OG [00:21:52] Joe: OGs a big fan of wearing tights. And, uh, Michael B. Jordan. Happy birthday man. Happy, happy birthday. Doug, you are a big fan. Do you see Fruitvale Station [00:22:02] Doug: that’s been on my list for a while? ’cause I know that is very well reviewed. Well reviewed, and I have not, I’ve not seen it. [00:22:08] Joe: You and I disagree on several movies. [00:22:10] Joe: We won’t disagree on that one. You will really like that movie. [00:22:12] Doug: Yep. Okay. Yeah, I got it. [00:22:13] Joe: Powerful movie. Good stuff. [00:22:14] Doug: Gotta get that one to float to the top of the list again. [00:22:16] Joe: Yeah, but that list is always just so long, isn’t it? It’s like 50,000 things I need to see. The enemy is time. Speaking of time, let’s do a TikTok minute. [00:22:25] Joe: This is the time in the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who is either doing something brilliant or air quotes brilliant. Our theme today is probabilities and whether you’re making good investments or bad investments. And what I love about this topic, OG, is even, even people you think should be really good investors. [00:22:46] Joe: Share bad moments. This is, uh, a voice that many of you have heard before. A motivational speaker named Tony Robbins talking about an investment he made that might not have been as great as he thought it could have been in your worst investment. [00:23:01] tiktok: When I was like 17 woman pulled up in a brand new Rolls-Royce Cornif convertible, I was numb enough to think I had a moment with this lady, right? [00:23:08] tiktok: So I talked to her a little bit and I said, wow, what’s your business? She goes, well, my husband’s business. I was like, okay, yeah, he’s in penny stocks and everything else. I said, really? I said, well, dumbest thing you can ever ask. Got any tips? She goes, actually, we do. And I took $10,000, which at that time was a huge amount of money for me. [00:23:22] tiktok: I afforded all in this stupid speculation, and sure enough it went up for about two months and then it went shoot the floor and I lost all of it. And that’s what told me, you don’t speculate. You learn to become an intelligent investor. [00:23:31] Joe: When you hear Tony Robbins say that, you’re like, yeah, not a great idea. [00:23:35] Joe: But it’s the exact same line that we just heard Jason Swig say in his piece. Uh, yep. I am not gonna speculate. I’m gonna learn to play a longer game. I [00:23:44] Doug: wonder if that penny stock was in like a dental company or toothpaste or something. [00:23:49] Joe: Why is that? [00:23:50] Doug: Because he would be a big fan. Have you seen the size of Tony Robbins mouth? [00:23:52] Doug: He’s [00:23:52] Joe: got the biggest [00:23:53] Doug: teeth. He’s got like 143 teeth. [00:23:55] Joe: He’s got monster teeth. [00:23:56] Doug: He’s just, he is equine in his, in his facial appearance. It’s just, just huge. It’s unsettling. God, [00:24:03] OG: you guys are haters. [00:24:04] Doug: I know, and I’m mostly doing this just to yank on on King OGs robe because he loves Tony Robbins so much and I do not. [00:24:11] Doug: Does [00:24:11] Joe: it mean I’m a hater Because he is got big teeth. I like a lot of the stuff Tony Robbins says, I think Tony Robbins makes a lot of sense. He just has some big teeth. What if I find that attractive OG that he’s got really big teeth, like I, I, why? [00:24:22] OG: Why are you guys coming at me like I’m the savior? [00:24:24] OG: You’re a [00:24:24] Doug: fan boy [00:24:25] Joe: because you just said we’re hating on Yeah. [00:24:26] OG: I didn’t know that you would, you know, basically fat shame a American icon, but Okay. Teeth [00:24:32] Joe: shame or teeth shaming? [00:24:34] Doug: I think it’s still okay. I mean, it’s the one safe area you can make fun of somebody these days they’ve taken everything else out of our queer their [00:24:41] OG: facial features. [00:24:42] OG: That’s [00:24:42] Doug: the thing that you [00:24:42] OG: can make fun of. [00:24:43] Doug: It’s okay to do it. Yeah. [00:24:45] OG: Oh boy. [00:24:45] Doug: If you have a cro Magnan jaw. [00:24:48] Joe: How did this go? Off the rails? [00:24:49] Doug: Yeah, and, and teeth that came straight out of the Preakness race. I think you’re just asking for it. [00:24:57] Joe: Let’s go back to this idea of thinking in bets and how seasoned investors really make good decisions. [00:25:04] Joe: And I think what we do OG, is we look at these different asset classes. As an example, early on I talked about how your checking count a phenomenally safe place for one day, but over 10 years, you’re gonna lose your butt to inflation, right? The s and p 500 are friends over at, uh, writ Hold’s Wealth Management. [00:25:20] Joe: Of course, both, uh, Josh Brown and Barry OL’s been on the show. On a daily basis, buying into the s and p 500 is a bet because you win. According to Writ Holt, this is since 1950. You win 54% of the time. So OG in a given day, if you’re gonna put your money in the s and p 500, you might as well go to Vegas ’cause it’s pretty damn close to 50 50. [00:25:45] OG: Uh, I mean, Vegas isn’t 50 50, so I was gonna [00:25:48] Doug: say that’s still better than Vegas, [00:25:49] OG: but [00:25:49] Joe: you are 5% better than the roulette wheel there, right? 49% chance of winning on the roulette wheel if you just play red or black, if you leave it in though for a month, right? That bet, which is 54% becomes 64%. But if you leave it in the stock market for a month, you now have a 64% chance. [00:26:12] Joe: Of that investment winning. If you invest for. A year what was 54% for one day now becomes a 79% chance that you’re gonna win. And that’s in one year. And OG I know you well enough to know, you know, if somebody says a one year goal, you’re still not gonna tell them to put money in the stock market. But if we’re thinking in bets, I got a 79% chance that I will win that bet. [00:26:37] Joe: Right. That’s still right. Pretty damn good odds. But look at why we call this investing. We call investing in stocks a good idea when you get past five years, because at five years, historically since 1950, any five year period, you came out ahead. 93% of the time, over 10 years, the bet goes to 97% of the time you came out ahead and get this. [00:27:01] Joe: There was never a 20 year timeframe between 1950 and now take any series of days you want. You didn’t come out ahead a hundred percent of the time you came out ahead. This, to me, is the point of what Zweig’s talking about. Why the hell am I putting my money in these predictive markets gambling when I could put a dollar in something where if I don’t need the money for 20 years, I’m gonna very easily make money. [00:27:25] Joe: And I think a lot of new investors don’t realize what a layup the stock market is over these long periods of time. And they’re thinking, I gotta get rich tomorrow, og. I gotta, I gotta make this happen now. [00:27:35] OG: Well, and that’s really the biggest issue is. Recognizing that the benefit of investing is the compounding that happens over long periods of time, and the problem is, is that it’s very, it’s very difficult to see in real time that happening, even to the extent that you have something that’s a little bit more fixed or guaranteed, like a high yield savings account. [00:27:57] OG: 29 of the 30 days, you don’t get any notification that you’re gonna get interest. It’s just the one day a month where they go, we deposited $19 into your account for interest. You’re like, oh [00:28:09] Joe: wow. [00:28:09] OG: Sweet. And then you forget that the other 29 days, it’s earning it. You just don’t manifest it until that 30th day. [00:28:18] OG: You don’t get to experience it until then. When you extrapolate that out and say, now you have something that you know you’re gonna put in your a thousand dollars, your, you know, your investment number, whatever it is, and if you happen to pay attention to it every single day, eat these wild swings of emotions from today. [00:28:34] OG: It’s worth 990 bucks and I lost $10 to tomorrow. It’s worth 1100 and I made a hundred, and then I’m back down to 1,050 and I lost 50, and now I’m back to 1100. That’s not as good as the first time I got to 1100, but it’s still cool. And now I’m back down to nine 90 and that hurts worse than the first time I was at nine 90. [00:28:52] OG: ’cause the first time I only lost $10, but now I lost $110. You get these wide range of emotions on a daily basis, and the best you can hope for is that that thousand bucks, or the average, I should say, that you hope for is that thousand bucks. At the end of all of that chaos, 365 days later is worth 1100 bucks. [00:29:11] OG: And you go, Ladi da. I made a hundred frigging dollars with all of that chaos for an entire year, just to have one year’s return of a hundred bucks. But it’s really not that. It’s the Stacking of those a hundred dollars. It’s the Stacking of the thousand dollars. It’s the Stacking and compounding of it over time. [00:29:27] OG: Which is the other reason. When you do your financial plan and you put it in an Excel worksheet and you say, okay, I’m gonna say I’m gonna invest, you know, 401k maximum is 24,500. I am 26 years old. So I can max it out. I can re, I’m gonna retire when I’m 66. That’s 40 years. I’m gonna say the market grows at 8% a year. [00:29:46] OG: Babu, Babu, I have $7 million. And you go, nah, that’s not right. But wait, it gets better. That’s putting 24 5 in every single year for, you know, for 40 years. But what happens when you’re 66 and you have $7 million in your bank account or in your investment account, right? And you don’t touch it for the next 30 years. [00:30:10] OG: So for whatever reason, you don’t need that money. You have other money, you have social security, whatever your 401k money, you just let sit. You retire at 66 with 7 million in the bank. Without thinking about it, guys, how much money do you have 30 years later? [00:30:24] Joe: Oh goodness. [00:30:25] OG: When you’re 96 years old, first number [00:30:29] Doug: in 30 years, it’s gonna double six times. [00:30:31] OG: I’d said First guess. [00:30:33] Doug: Okay, fine. First guess I’m gonna say is 94 million. [00:30:37] OG: Okay. Pretty close, like $80 million. It’s inconceivable that you can tell a 26-year-old. Hey, if you guys put $24,000 away in your 401k for the next 40 years, and then you retire, and when you die, when you’re a hundred, you’re gonna give your family a hundred million dollars or $80 million or $75 million or 92 million. [00:30:58] OG: Like that. Doesn’t that, we can’t make those numbers check in our brains, you know, because 24 5 a year for 40 years, you know, 800 grand, 900,000, whatever the number is, that’s the power of compounding. It’s the backend number. That’s why Warren Buffett was worth $60 million when he was 50 years old. A hell of a lot of money, by the way. [00:31:19] OG: Yeah. And that was worth a hundred billion at 90. That’s the difference. 60 million is insane amounts of money. A hundred billion is incomprehensible. You know what I mean? Like you can’t even, can’t even like fathom how much money that really is. But that’s the compounding. [00:31:37] Joe: It’s why the first thousand bucks is harder than the second thousand bucks. [00:31:41] Joe: Why the first a hundred thousand bucks is harder than the second, a hundred thousand. It’s why everybody says the first million, right? Millionaires like, oh yeah, the first million was hard. Then the second million just took off. It was like, bam. Yeah. All of a sudden it’s there. People going from 10 million to a hundred million, yada, yada, yada. [00:31:57] Joe: I wanna take a look at these odds that we’re talking about for stocks, because you and I have seen OG people going, you know what? I’m not gonna do that. I’m gonna invest in a business. Because a business gives me a much bigger chance of success or a much, much bigger win. But again, we take a look at owning a business the same way I just looked at stocks. [00:32:16] Joe: We can look at probability of success, survival the first two years. 70% of business owners, their business lasts two years. So your goal, og, when you start off is to have a business plan and have a business that’s going to be in that 70%. 30% of you are going to fail, but 70% of you are going to win. When we get to five years out though, instead of going up like the stock market where it gets better, the longer you keep your money in five years in a business, 50% of businesses survive longer than five years. [00:32:52] Joe: And then we take a look at long-term success. If you survive that first five years, 69.5%, again, nearly 70% of those will last 10 years. If you can last five years. Which is only one in two, then you have a 70% chance among those people of making it to 10. And by the way, if you make it 10, 76 0.5% of those people will last 15 years or more. [00:33:17] Joe: So there’s this, there is this clear delineation that you can see if you’re gonna own a business, if you’re thinking in terms of bets, there’s a much better chance that you’re gonna lose that bet if you win. You, you can win. However, what do you see in the stock market? We have to spend zero time working inside that business. [00:33:39] Joe: But for the average business owner, you’re gonna spend a ton of time, and based on these odds, those first five years, og, I wanna be in the trench because if I can make it five years, I’ve got a much better chance of making it to 15 years. But the only way that I’m gonna make it five years is to spend a ton of time doing it. [00:33:55] Joe: So this probability that owning a business is gonna be a better bet than stocks. I think it depends on what you’re, what you’re actually solving for. If you’re solving for more life, it’s gonna be difficult. And also the chance of success, not nearly as much as in the stock market, [00:34:11] OG: which is why the return’s better. [00:34:13] Joe: Yeah. Can be better. But how many business owners do you know that are just barely making it? You know? But you’re right. I wanna ask you about a few strategies, because you were talking about all that volatility. You know, there’s some strategies that investors use sometimes to make the probability of success, maybe higher dollar cost averaging. [00:34:32] Joe: Is that one of them? [00:34:34] OG: No. [00:34:34] Joe: Dollar cost averaging doesn’t make your chance of success higher. [00:34:37] OG: Nope. Statistically, putting the money in as fast as you can makes, makes your probability higher. [00:34:43] Joe: Yeah. Dollar cost averaging just evens out your return stackers. [00:34:46] OG: Well, it’s just more realistic. It’s like, you know what’s better? [00:34:50] OG: Investing 24,000 in your 4 0 1 KA year for the next 40 years, or putting in a million dollars today? Well, yeah, putting in the million today is better, but we don’t, we aren’t, we aren’t given the million on our 26th birthday. Yeah. You go, okay, here’s your choices. You put the million in today and get it at 60, or you can do 24,000 a year for the next 40 years. [00:35:10] OG: What do you wanna do? It’s like, well, yeah, I mean, given the opportunity I would put it in, you know, if you have the choice to put the 7,000 in your Roth, or it’s 7,500 I guess, this year, if you do 7,500 in your Roth on January 2nd, or should I do whatever that is, 600, 500 some odd dollars a month. If you can do the 7,500, do the 7,500, which by the way. [00:35:31] OG: It’s still dollar cost averaging. You’re just dollar cost averaging annually instead of monthly. [00:35:36] Joe: Yeah. [00:35:36] OG: You know, if your cashflow doesn’t allow that. Yeah. And you can only do it weekly, then do it weekly. The goal is to get the money in, not to be too precise about it. [00:35:44] Joe: Yeah. I think the less narrow G is just don’t hold on to cash waiting for a better day. [00:35:48] Joe: Right. Do it as soon as you can [00:35:51] OG: your people that’ll, you know, people say, oh, I’m changing jobs and I’m rolling over my 401k to my IRA, or, I’m rolling my 401k to my other 401k. You know, ’cause I changed jobs, maybe I’ll wait to invest it. Like why would you do that? Like you said, you got a 50 50 shot that’s higher tomorrow anyway, and a 70% chance is higher in a year. [00:36:10] OG: There’s some chances not gonna be, and by the way, it was probably invested yesterday when you had it in your old 401k anyway, so why wouldn’t you keep it invested, basically? [00:36:18] Joe: But to your point early on, this does not increase your chance of success. ’cause the underlying investment goes under, it still goes under. [00:36:23] Joe: I mean, you’re not gonna win or lose based on that. What about using options? [00:36:27] OG: Options are binary outcomes. You either are successful or are not. Options in the sense of trading them for purposes of making money, you lose more than you make, for sure. [00:36:40] Joe: Yeah, I think a hundred percent options can be used very conservatively, [00:36:44] OG: statistically using options on the upside because you’re worried about. [00:36:51] OG: If you’re worried about the downside of, of a stock and using an option to protect the downside there, more times than not, the volatility will, you know, get you out and then you miss potential upside, you know, future upside returns because you’re out of the market. So, [00:37:08] Joe: well that was my next thing, which is some people will try to use stop-losses, right? [00:37:11] Joe: And stop-losses is these triggers that you set below the price that the stock’s trading at now to try to prevent catastrophe, but. So often people will set a stop-loss OG, to your point, and the stock goes down to the stop-loss. The exchange trading fund goes down to the stop-loss you sell immediately, which by the way, it’s all programmed in, so you don’t have to sit and watch it. [00:37:32] Joe: It’s a put into a computer on your behalf and then, uh, you’re outta the position. And then. And then it ros [00:37:40] OG: back. Now you have, now you have a million dollars of cash and now you have to figure out when to get back in. [00:37:44] Joe: Yeah. And then it roars back. So options at stop-losses, I think are ways that you can get rid of the worst case scenario, but you also create a lot of worst case scenarios that would’ve never happened had you just decided, I’m going to stay in this for 20 years. [00:37:59] Joe: Like the statistic showed. Options. I think options, you know, if I’m using them to protect against my downside and what an option is, I mean, this could be guys an option to sell. So I’ve got this option to sell the stock market if it goes down right? So I can buy that option. But OG, when you look at the price of buying that option, ’cause it truly is you’re buying an insurance policy against what you have the drag on that over time, I can’t imagine how much money you’re gonna spend for this downside protection versus. [00:38:28] Joe: Just going, you know what, I’m gonna be investor for 20 years in this stock. [00:38:32] OG: Yeah. Options are trading, instruments are not investing. [00:38:34] Joe: Yeah. I’ve got one more piece on this, which comes to us from a private wealth company and I will link to it in the show notes, but I found this, this piece that was five key probabilities for investment success. [00:38:47] Joe: Probability number one, stocks are likely to be cash over most 20 year horizons. Actually, we just talked about over since 1950 over all of those, uh, 20 year horizons. Key probability number two, owning the market over trying to be clever is likely to pay off. The less you try to be clever, the better you’re gonna be. [00:39:05] Joe: It’s almost funny, we talked to George Newman OG a couple weeks ago about creativity and he was like, people get in trouble with creativity when they try to be clever. People get into trouble with stocks when they try to be clever. [00:39:15] OG: Yeah, don’t. [00:39:17] Joe: Third key probability number three, diversification is likely to deliver a better outcome than concentration. [00:39:24] OG: Hmm. I disagree with that. [00:39:26] Doug: What [00:39:26] Joe: I think it’s gonna more often deliver a better outcome than concentration. However, under diversifying can give you, uh, bigger chaching at the cash register. If you’re right. If you under diversified, just don’t be wrong. [00:39:40] OG: Yeah. Yeah, precisely. [00:39:43] Joe: Yeah, [00:39:43] OG: that’d be right. [00:39:44] Joe: Yeah. Key, key probability number four, holding sensible exposures to, well, research risk factors should pay off [00:39:52] OG: a bunch of silly words. [00:39:53] OG: All put together [00:39:54] Joe: and not all equities have the same risks, so having sensible exposures to, well, research risk factors. In other words, I could buy a single small company stock, or I can buy the small cap index. The small cap index is a sensible exposure to well research risk factor versus just picking five small cap stocks to purchase. [00:40:14] OG: Okay. [00:40:14] Joe: Key probability number five. If I’m looking at two investments to the same, the one with a lower cost is. Much more likely going to give you more money. What? A hundred percent of the time? [00:40:28] OG: Did they literally just say much more likely to give you more money? Is that what they wrote, [00:40:32] Joe: be more, much, more likely? [00:40:33] Joe: No. Uh, actually you’re [00:40:34] OG: just synthesizing that. Okay. Yeah, [00:40:35] Joe: I am, I am synthesizing the, [00:40:37] OG: if they were the same investment and one is less costly, it will provide ahundred
[00:40:41] Joe: percent. I will link to these on the show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. I would love to talk more about this either in our comments on Spotify or in our basement Facebook group. [00:40:51] Joe: And, uh, let’s talk about thinking in terms of probability, but clearly this betting that’s going on OG driving me. Drive me crazy. Just, just a billion dollars a week. [00:41:02] OG: Stop losing and it won’t drive you crazy. [00:41:05] Joe: Be better. [00:41:05] OG: Start winning some of those. That’s, it’s pretty fun. [00:41:08] Joe: That’s probably the point. Doug, let’s go out on the back porch because we’ve had some discussions lately around, uh, some of the episodes we’ve done. [00:41:16] Doug: Yeah, I can’t wait to talk about this in particular because we have uncovered a whole bunch of stackers who are in the. Costco Love camp with me. We got a lot of people responding to our TikTok minute back on episode 1795, where we talked about Costco or the TikTok Minute, talked about Costco [00:41:35] Joe: and that minute just for people who didn’t hear it, was about the TikTok or David said that people go into Costco and they think they’re gonna save money on a pallet of toilet paper, which they will, but there’s so many hidden savings to going to Costco that he had never considered. [00:41:51] Doug: Yeah. Right, exactly. And, and we, and then we got a couple of suggestions from goers on Spotify. Uh, goers says, Costco travel is great for hotels, resorts, and cruises. I’ll check the hotel’s website. And then Costco’s, I normally save substantial money. And now you are dealing with Costco’s cancellation policies and not the hotels. [00:42:09] Doug: That’s a big point. [00:42:09] Joe: Well, is it a big point because I don’t know Costco’s cancellation policy, is it better than the hotels [00:42:14] Doug: in most, yeah, in most cases they are. And that’s, it’s unusual because a lot of times when you go through a third party, if it’s Expedia or you, it’s worse, and the hotel just like backs away and like, sorry, not our problem. [00:42:26] Doug: Deal with Expedia, which means you’re not getting your money back. But Costco is incredibly strong negotiator, uh, for a lot of these things and, and typically. Have better policies around, around those things. Uh, then Costco throws in a Costco digital gift card. Often if you book through them, you can and use it in store and online. [00:42:45] Doug: Uh, the last reservation goer says they got $97 gift card back. [00:42:49] Joe: Wow. [00:42:49] Doug: Yeah. [00:42:50] Joe: That’s almost the, the cost of the executive membership is. What, 125 bucks? [00:42:54] Doug: I think they raised it. It’s like a hundred thirty five, a hundred forty five now. But it’s so, I mean, you make that back so fast. It’s easy. Well, one easy. Well, is [00:43:01] Joe: it just that $97 gift card alone gets you [00:43:04] Doug: right. [00:43:04] Joe: Huge part of the way there. [00:43:05] Doug: We got a great comment from Hope, uh, ditto on the travel. Also, the Costco credit card includes travel insurance, and if you have the executive memberships, certain rental agencies give you an extra discount. They got an auto program that works with specific dealerships and finding used cars and new cars with less hassle and bigger discounts. [00:43:22] Doug: You get a gift card there too, apparently hope also added. You can get pet insurance and water service and other things, and this is just one giant ad for Costco at this point. [00:43:30] Joe: Well, you’ve got the 2% executive membership rebate. Yeah, as well for all these expenses. So on top of that, [00:43:37] Doug: and I think I mentioned that back in that episode 1795, we just put every expense we can in our household onto that one Costco card. [00:43:45] Doug: We get a sizable, I never go to an ATM for the year because I get I, you don’t have to, you can get a direct deposit or you can get a gift card. Well, it’s actually, I don’t know if they give you the gift card over a certain amount, but I just take cash. I don’t go to the ATM pretty much for the rest of the year ’cause who really spends much cash anymore. [00:44:03] Doug: But it’s a great program in my opinion. And then hope also comments that Costco now has these things called business centers where you don’t have to be a member and they found out, uh, in her household that you can get some pretty inexpensive meat. Obviously in bulk, but divide it up however you need to cut it up, get it into a good Ziploc bag or whatever, and freeze it and you’ve got a, a big discount just using the business. [00:44:26] Doug: I think [00:44:26] Joe: she was saying that as a non-business member, you can still go in and buy from the warehouse. Right. Which includes like the, a lot of the same Costco stuff. [00:44:33] Doug: Yeah. So a lot of, a lot of ways to save money and people initially bristle at that membership fee, but man, you make that back so fast. ’cause there’s so many other things besides just buying a gallon and a half of mayonnaise and everybody makes that joke. [00:44:46] Doug: But. There’s so many other ways. [00:44:48] Joe: I saw a piece this morning of, uh, Warren Buffett being interviewed and he was talking about Kraft and all of the different products that Kraft has. You know, just think of Kraft and also how old they are, how in the zeitgeist they are, how many advertisements Kraft has had. [00:45:03] Joe: They’ve been around forever. And Kirkland Brand has been around for 20, I think 23, 24 years. [00:45:10] Doug: Is that all? [00:45:10] Joe: What’s incredible about Kirkland brand stuff in the same categories where they compete. Against Kraft, they’re beating ’em like two to one. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was close to two to one. [00:45:22] Joe: They’re doubling the amount of business, uh, Kirkland on private label, where Kraft spends all this money on name recognition, Kirkland throws name recognition out the window and is out Outselling craft. Pretty, pretty incredible. [00:45:38] headlines: Agree. [00:45:40] Doug: Why are we having, we’re having this major love fest for Costco, which is, [00:45:43] Joe: I don’t know, [00:45:44] Doug: it feels too good to be [00:45:44] Joe: true. [00:45:45] Joe: I dunno. [00:45:45] Doug: I usually get [00:45:46] Joe: the stackers run all over it. The stackers, the stackers, were all over it. What else we got? [00:45:51] Doug: Yeah. Also on Spotify, Joe Christian made a comment about our discussion about NASCAR driver Kyle Busch and his spouse, Samantha. We did a, you might remember, I dunno if you do, if you’re paying attention, Joe, we did a story about them back in episode 1792. [00:46:06] Doug: I’ve got this de memory for everything. Oh, he wasn’t here for that one. Every episode. [00:46:11] Joe: OG wasn’t here for that one. And our friend Dana SBA took us through, uh, kind of how these IUL policies work so that we could look inside of them. But yeah, Kyle Busch and his spouse Samantha, [00:46:22] Doug: they’re suing Pacific Life, calling life in the life insurance that they bought a retirement fund. [00:46:27] Doug: A scam, Christian says I Ls should be illegal or at least treated like private investments and restricted to accredited investors. Christian went on to also agree with me about how ridiculous their kids’ names are. Brexton and Lennox. [00:46:42] Joe: He, I don’t remember this part at all. [00:46:44] Doug: Well, he just sent that to me directly. [00:46:45] Doug: Yeah. Christian just sent that to me directly, but he was like, Doug, dude, you nailed it. All right. Brexton and Lennox. Ridiculous kids’ names. I think collectively they’re called Brexit. Maybe. [00:46:54] Joe: What do what? What do you think? That’s where the whole Brexit comes from. We just combine the kids’ names. Og, what do you think about that idea that I, I mean, I ls being illegal. [00:47:03] Joe: That’s one thing that’s like, okay, but IOLs for accredited investors only. There’s a piece of me that goes, you know what, these are complicated investments. When you look at the modified endowment contract rules, you look at how the inner workings of how you actually make money on these, how they work. [00:47:19] Joe: It’s so smoke and mey. It certainly seems to me that. It’s convoluted enough that accredited investor rules maybe should apply to IUL. [00:47:30] OG: They’re not investments, they’re insurance contracts. [00:47:33] Joe: Yeah. [00:47:33] OG: So you’re never gonna get, it’s like asking the DMV to regulate the airspace of. Nasa, it’s like a different thing altogether. [00:47:42] Joe: And that’s exactly the kicker because the story that Dana and I covered was how it was sold to NASCAR driver, Kyle Busch and his spouse as an investment, uh, as a retirement investment. Well, [00:47:54] OG: yeah, but didn’t they also not do their part of it, which was to put all the money into it? Like they’re supposed to. [00:48:00] Joe: No, they did. They were told that they needed [00:48:02] OG: to make, I read the counter suit from Pacific, and to be clear, I’m not saying that they didn’t get screwed on this. [00:48:08] Joe: Sure. [00:48:08] OG: But Pacific Life is counter suing them saying. First of all, you can’t talk trash about us. You signed all this paperwork. You can’t claim ignorance. [00:48:16] OG: Not only did you sign all this stuff, we also gave you 30 days to review it and then change your mind, which you clearly did not. And they’re saying, again, I didn’t dig into this at all, so I don’t have any idea. Yeah. But they’re saying, Hey, this thing was illustrated as if you were gonna put, I’m making the number up a million dollars a year into it for 30 years. [00:48:33] OG: You did a million twice. And called it good and then it blew up. [00:48:37] Joe: He did. They did it five times [00:48:38] OG: or whatever? [00:48:39] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. They did it five times. And that was the Bush discussion was that they were told they had to put money in it five times, and then when they got the bill for the sixth time, that’s when they went, this is not at all the way it was explained to us. [00:48:52] OG: Well, [00:48:53] Joe: and then Dana and I also went on to talk about that. The same stuff, og. Yeah. That we don’t know. We don’t know. And it’s a complicated thing. And I can see somebody saying, you know what? This is a scam. Or their friends telling them that it’s a scam when it’s just so damn convoluted how it works. And you could also. [00:49:11] Joe: Because you’ve seen these illustrations. You could have a guy who’s telling you something, you gotta put this in five times and having you sign a thing that is showing, I mean, heck, how many disclosures do you sign when you buy a car? Right? We were just at the Volkswagen dealer and it was amazing how quickly this guy’s just shuffling paper and he was so annoyed when I wanted to look at every page. [00:49:31] Joe: He was so incredibly annoyed that I wanted to look at all of them. But man, when you, when you buy these things, there’s 50 million. Disclosures. Waivers. [00:49:41] OG: I’m not saying he didn’t get screwed, I’m just saying like he had an opportunity to read it and review it. [00:49:45] Joe: Yeah, so to OGs point, Christian, if it truly is a life insurance policy, then it really wouldn’t be subject to accredited investor status. [00:49:57] Joe: The fact that it was marketed this, again according to the Bushes, not as an insurance, but a investment og. That’s always what makes insurance problematic. As we start crossing those two things together. Good stuff, Doug. Well, thanks everybody for those comments. We have had great chats on Spotify. We’ve had great chats in the basement, our Facebook group. [00:50:17] Joe: Go to stack Benjamins dot com slash basement for more of those. If you are here specifically, not because you wanna talk about life insurance or about probabilities of stocks winning or being a business owner or, or these, uh, bet on anything platforms that are bringing in a billion dollars a week now. [00:50:34] Joe: You really want to put together a comprehensive financial plan, OG and his team are taking clients, so head to stack your Benjamins dot com slash og and that is the link to their calendar. That’s gonna do it for today, I think, guys, so Doug. Let’s, uh, bring this thing home. What should be on our to-do list today? [00:50:54] Doug: That’s right, Joe. First, take some advice from our headline betting. At least think about the odds that you’ll win with your investment. That process alone would change how you think about your money. Second, if an investment could win big, but you aren’t sure and still wanna invest, well first that’s probably just a bet. [00:51:12] Doug: And second, ask yourself if you’ll still be okay if that bet goes sideways. But the big lesson, don’t give Joe’s mom two to one odds. She couldn’t guess Today’s trivia question, who knew she was such a big fan of Michael B. Jordan? I mean, how was I supposed to know that? Happy birthday Mike. Join us Wednesday when we talk relationships and your money. [00:51:37] Doug: Douglas and Heather Bonaparte. Join us with stories about relationships with your money, accountability buddies or your partner. You’re not gonna wanna miss it. [00:51:47] Joe: This show is the Property of SP podcast [00:51:50] Doug: LLC, copyright 2026, and 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. [00:52:02] Doug: And all the usual social media spots. 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. [00:53:23] Joe: As we’re recording this, uh, Doug, just before we started recording, you wrote to me that we found out that, uh, Catherine O’Hara passed away. [00:53:29] Doug: We did. We did. That one’s a bit of a shocker. She was only 71 [00:53:34] Joe: and, uh, on Schitt’s Creek. So funny. [00:53:37] Doug: Just nothing. She wasn’t funny in, [00:53:39] Joe: there was nothing, she [00:53:40] Doug: wasn’t other than maybe home alone where she wasn’t really supposed to be that funny. [00:53:43] Doug: But other than that. Wow. [00:53:45] Joe: I always forget that’s her in home alone because she was such the mom, you know? [00:53:49] Doug: Right. [00:53:50] Joe: Yeah. She played the mom so, so, so well. She was part of the cast of the show that won the Golden Globe that you and I both thought shouldn’t have. The studio, Seth Rogan show the studio. She was [00:54:01] Doug: right. [00:54:02] Joe: Had a big part in that. [00:54:03] Doug: I mean, she probably deserved it. I saw whatever, two episodes of that and yeah, she’s good in it. She’s good in everything. But you know, in Schitt’s Creek or in um. Is it The Mighty Wind? A Mighty Wind, the Mockumentary, and Best In Show? Best in show. Christopher Guest, she’s just a vixen, just a hussy, and everywhere she goes, she’s bumping into guys that she slept with and her husband just doesn’t get it. [00:54:28] Doug: Oh my God. Just amazing. [00:54:32] Joe: And it’s funny because you can’t think of her without thinking of Eugene Levy, right? Like those two you just think of, you know, even though they do a lot of stuff separately, those two, just from the beginning of their career coming up through what SCTV for both of ’em. I think [00:54:45] Doug: that’s right. [00:54:46] Doug: Yeah. [00:54:46] Joe: Yeah. And for our stackers that haven’t seen the old SCTV skits that that took at live, which is pretty [00:54:52] Doug: much all of them, [00:54:52] Joe: it took cter at live to another level, just just a whole nother level. [00:54:57] Doug: Right. It was on. Was it on like super late on Friday nights? It didn’t go head to head with Saturday Night Live. [00:55:04] Doug: I don’t think. [00:55:05] Joe: It did not. [00:55:06] Doug: But man, that, I mean that’s where the Bob and Doug Mackenzie skit comes from. There’s a lot of of stuff that made it into, I’ll use your word again, ’cause you were so proud to use zeitgeist [00:55:17] Joe: into the zeitgeist. Yeah. John Candy. [00:55:20] Doug: Yeah, John Candy. And uh, I’m trying to think who else. [00:55:25] Doug: It launched some pretty big careers and almost nobody saw it. I don’t think, [00:55:30] Joe: no, [00:55:30] Doug: I mean that was early eighties Canadian. [00:55:33] Joe: That was so early, not that popular and launched ton of careers, but Catherine O’Hara, man, gone too soon.
Leave a Reply