What would you ask about money if you had the mic?
Live from Texas A&M Texarkana, Joe Saul-Sehy, Paula Pant, and financial educator Jay Davis take questions from students facing real-world money decisions—like choosing between passion and paycheck, avoiding lifestyle creep, investing safely, and building a financial future from scratch.
If you’re in your 20s—or wish you could do them over—this episode is packed with the advice we wish we knew earlier.
Plus: Doug climbs into the rafters (again) for a trivia showdown you won’t forget.
💡 What We Cover in Today’s Episode
- Passion vs paycheck vs peace: How do you actually choose a career without regretting it later?
- Why “follow your passion” might be terrible advice—and what to do instead
- How to avoid lifestyle inflation when your income jumps
- The easiest way to “hide money from yourself” (and why it works)
- The real difference between 401(k)s, IRAs, stocks, and gold (finally explained clearly)
- What “safe investing” actually means (hint: it depends on time)
- The biggest money mistakes college students make—and how to avoid them
- Why systems beat discipline every single time
- Smart ways to manage student loans after graduation
- The underrated power of an emergency fund (aka your freedom fund)
- How networking—not your resume—can shape your financial future
🧠 The Big Takeaways
- You don’t need perfect discipline—you need better systems
- Your first few years out of school can change everything financially
- “Safe” depends on when you need the money
- The earlier you start, the more your money works (hello, compounding)
- Most people don’t fail from lack of knowledge—they fail from lack of action
🎤 Special Guests
- Paula Pant – Host of the Afford Anything Podcast
- Jay Davis – Executive Director of Financial & Entrepreneurship Engagement, Texas A&M Texarkana
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic: How students and young graduates can make smarter financial decisions early on.
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- passion vs paycheck
- peace trade-offs
- follow your curiosity
- Cal Newport
- passion development
- Dunning-Kruger effect
- marketable careers
- AI job disruption
- accumulation years
- emergency funds
- career regret
- career pivots
- F-off fund
- debt avoidance
- lifestyle inflation
- invisible raises
- roommate savings
- Roth IRA
- rule of 72
- account vs investment
- 401(k) match
- risk tolerance
- inflation risk
- index funds
- stock picking
- spending friction
- fixed expenses
- variable expenses
- networking value
- student loan planning
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Jay Davis
Another thanks to Jay Davis, the Executive Director of Financial and Entrepreneurship Engagement
Center for Financial Literacy at Texas A&M University for joining us! To learn more about Jay, visit Texas A&M Texarkana | Jay Davis.
Paula Pant
Check out Paula’s site and amazing podcast at AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- If an eagle flies at about 30 miles per hour and gets paid the federal minimum wage for 24 straight hours, how much money would it earn?
Mentioned in today’s show
Join Us on Monday!
Be sure to tune in on Monday when CFP® Anna Allem joins us for an extended visit again to help OG and Joe answer YOUR questions.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: The Mental Game of Money: What Elite Athletes Know That Most Investors Don’t (SB1829).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
Doug
We are recording. Live from the campus of Texas AM Tex Arcana, it’s The stacking Benjamin’s Accord Anything Show. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan on this joint episode. Wait, hold on. I get to share the stage with Paula Pant? Yes! We’re answering questions from the amazing Eagles. They’re getting back together. What questions do our next Next great generation of Sabers have? You’ll find out. Plus, halfway through this special episode, we’ll meet some of the brilliant minds studying in the greatest small city in the USA and have them compete in a special edition of of our trivia competition. And now a guy who’s not used to being let out of mom’s basement so we’ll see how this goes. It’s Joe Saul CI.
Joe
Hey there Texas A M. How is everybody? I am Joe Saul Seahigh, Average Show Money on Twitter. Super happy that you’re here, and I’m super happy that I’m here with all of you. Everybody ready to have some fun? We are gonna hear some some From some phenomenal, phenomenal students here at Texas AM Texarcana. This beautiful campus that’s in this very natural setting. It’s a great place to be. It’s so weird to not being with just Doug, who today we hit up in the rafters because we really we don’t want Doug, uh, you know, to get any ideas and hog the show. So we have a couple of guest hosts today. Let’s introduce our very special guest co-host. He is Executive Director of Financial and Entrepreneurship Engagement here at Texas A. I’m Texas Arcana. Mr. Jay Davis is here.
Jay Davis
Glad to be here. How are you, man? I’m doing great. We have beautiful weather here in Texas, and so we’re having a great time and glad you’re here.
Joe
Well, I am glad to be here and I’m so happy that when I said, you know what? We would have a fun partnership together, man, and you said, let’s do it. Thank you so much.
Jay Davis
Yeah, it was easy to do. You know, we we wanted to do something big with the RRCU Center for Financial Literacy and Investment here. And we’re really just wanting to focus on allowing our students to learn to manage money better. We can’t do it any better than doing it with you.
Joe
Well th thank you. Stop, keep going, stop. We we what what’s great, Jay, is You see building all over this campus, and most of our stackers have never been to Texarcana. People keep telling me this is a made-up town, that there is no such place. But there’s building all over here. You are building very quickly. What’s going on here at Texas AM Texarcana?
Jay Davis
So we are the fastest growing university in the state of Texas and arguably nationwide. And so we’re looking to have 4,000 students here on campus this coming fall and to get that to 8,000 here in the next six to eight years. I mean you create a bit without doing some building.
Joe
There’s a ton of building going on. Paula Pant, who’s here with me, who we’ll introduce in just a second. Paula was like, wow, there’s just construction all over this place. Let’s talk about you and your money journey. Because I think you and I had a conversation, didn’t we, Jay, that you you know, Paula, who we’ll say hi to in just a second, has been great with money for a long time. I was not. I think, if I remember right, you’re more like me, where you had to kind of learn this stuff yourself.
Jay Davis
Oh, it was disastrous. Um and and that’s one of the things that I do whenever I work with our students is I’m I’m up front. There’s some mistakes that I made whenever I was younger. And one of the scenarios that I give is if I were able to go back and download all of the income That I have reported to Uncle Sam from SSA. gov and then multiply that times the point eight to ten percent growth over my lifetime, I would have a very nice bank account and I didn’t And I don’t. And so right now my wife and I are playing catch-up to be able to do that, but I want our students to know these, you know, incredible formulas, compounding interest, that can get you there.
Joe
It is so exciting when you’re as young as many of the people in this room are, like the head start you have. And I didn’t know, you didn’t know what a head start it was.
Jay Davis
I didn’t and uh and a lot of these students their parents were just like mine. They really didn’t have a lot of conversations uh throughout the family and and let them know exactly what they needed to do. And so it’s fun to have them on campus so that they can learn these very, very valuable tips.
Joe
It is awesome, by the way, having you here. We had a little event at my house last night. And a lot of the people told me that you’re like the best cheerleader on earth for for these people. But you also give them hope because you’re very honest. You’re like, hey, I am playing catch up. But what’s cool is, and you already know this You can’t go back and and redo stuff, but you certainly can start today no matter what age you are.
Jay Davis
Well and that’s the that’s the thing. You have to start because if you wait till tomorrow, you’re gonna wait till the next day. And so by by starting, you can get something going Uh we just have communications about emergency funds. You can’t build emergency fund until you start it. And so even if even if we start with one dollar a day We can get to that $500 goal, then we can get to that $1,000 goal, and then we can get to whatever we can agree to, whether it’s three to six months.
Joe
And and I love that. And just get started. Come back and listen to the rest of the episode. Like do it now. Don’t put it off. Well, let’s not put off, Jay, meeting our lovely guest who’s here from Manhattan, this little town. Finally coming to the big city of Texas, Canada GA to join us. She is the star of the Afford Anything podcast, and our always Friday guest, Paula Pant, is here.
Paula
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’m excited to be here.
Joe
Welcome to the big city.
Paula
Why oh why thank you. It is it is a beautiful city Um the weather today was amazing. You know I was out on the porch all day today. Um yeah, I love it. And everyone’s so like kind. The hospitality is amazing. Um yeah, I I love Texarcana.
Joe
I told I told Apaula Jay that we’re just closed in July. Don’t come in July It can get warm. Slightly, yeah. But uh so uh and also the the head of economic development for the area Uh also was trying to get you to move here. Are you gonna move to Texar Cana?
Paula
I I will not be moving here, but uh one star. But I will be um visiting more often because you know you you’re gonna have a studio here uh very soon. We will downtown. A downtown studio and so when that happens I’ll be coming here regularly so that we can record our QA episodes in person. So Joe is on so my podcast is the Afford Anything Podcast. And Joe is our regular Friday, I’m sorry, Tuesday. Joe is our regular Tuesday co-host Um so Joe, you and I answer QA.
Joe
We’re doing what we’re gonna do tonight.
Paula
Yeah, exactly. So we’re gonna we uh answer QA on the Tuesday episodes of Afford Anything. And once your studio is ready, I’ll be coming back to Texarcana regularly so that we can do that recording in person.
Joe
Jay, you work with the city. uh as well you’re on the city council and uh this this initiative she’s talking about isn’t just me for our stackers around the country there’s a lot of development going on and part of that is this thing called the assembly line
Jay Davis
Yeah, super excited about bringing the assembly line online. We’re gonna have it open at at the end of this year. So we’re looking at probably November and the podcast and You know, audio visual area that you will be able to take advantage of is top of the world.
Joe
Can you tell everybody what this space is, what it means?
Jay Davis
So it’s going to be an incubator space for entrepreneurs here in East Texas and southwest Arkansas to come and basically expand. Their ideas and take advantage of the network that we’re going to build for them to bring in experts to be able to talk about just simple things of why you want to put your LLC in a company rather than your social security number. Um and you know why you need business insurance, you know, what is the next step that you want to take for marketing? There’s going to be all sorts of different workshops that they’re going to have available.
Joe
It’s super exciting. You can just uh well we’ll have a link in the show notes, but uh you can also uh just Google the assembly line Texarcana You’ll see it. Come down hang out with me.
Paula
Well and I gotta say I toured uh I toured through it yesterday, through the um, you know, it’s construction right now, it’s totally under construction. So, you know, you’ve got you you’re seeing tools everywhere, you’re you’re walking through the sawdust, um, but you can really see it take shape. You know, you you see um You you see the wall studs, you see the shape that it’s going to take, you see um you see that that the steps where there’s going to be a lunch and learn, you know, and you can really get a sense of like, wow, this This is going to be an incredible space.
Joe
It’s going to be really cool. First first class. Speaking of first class, let’s take some questions from these first class students of ours, shall we? While we get our first question up, uh, we’ve got a few sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them. Today’s letter, we’re brought to you by the letter A. A for awesome, the awesome students of Texarcana, of Texarcana at Texas AM Texarcana. Uh and brought to you by the vault. The vault very soon is going to give you the ability to track your net worth, to do your budget, to work on your privacy, to get rid of subscriptions. It is a Swiss Army knife, stackybenjamins. com slash vault. And we’ve got a couple more sponsors we’re going to hear from them. And then you’re going to hear just how awesome the bright minds at Texas A<unk>M, Texarcana are. And we’re back. And we have our first question. Everyone, let’s give your first name before you ask the question if you don’t mind, and maybe what your major is. And then uh ask away. Okay.
Q Hannah
Um my name is Hannah and I’m a psychology major. Uh my question is in regards to the passion versus paycheck versus uh piece trade-off. Um how can a student in their early twenties determine which trade-off is truly worthwhile without looking back ten years later with regards to
Joe
Wow. We are told thank you, Hannah. Thank you very much. So we are told a lot of the time, guys, when you’re in college, you know, follow your passion. That’s what you should do.
Paula
Paula, do you like that? You know, I don’t believe in follow your passion. So there’s a a more nuanced take on this, and it comes from a professor at at Georgetown named Cal Newport. Um, he talks about, rather than following your passion, he he talks about follow your curiosity. And his hypothesis is that, you know, passion is such a loaded word. Um and most people don’t know what their passion is. Most people aren’t like, oh yeah, I’m really, really into, you know, whatever. Um and so when you put that kind of a weight on a word, it it gives it it’s it’s just too loaded, it makes it too weighty. So he believes the pat his passion hypothesis is that passion is the consequence rather than the precursor. Um and so his hypothesis is that if you have a minimum viable level of curiosity about something, Then you go deep into it, you you start learning more about it, and the more you learn about it, the more you realize how little you know. And once you realize how little you know, that makes you want to learn more about it. And then as you learn more about it, you become even more aware of how little you know. So this is kind of the opposite of something that’s called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Dunning-Kruger effect is people who don’t know much about a field think they know a lot about it. Um the opposite of that is the more you get to know a field, the more you realize how little you know about it. And the more you want to learn more. And so as that cycle continues, that’s how passion develops. And so passion becomes the end result of following your curiosity rather than the precursor for it.
Joe
Jay, it’s so funny. Even here at our Target, I was walking through the aisles of Target. At the Target in Texarcana, we are selling ring lights. for potential uh uh influencers, right? Even here in town. Because listen, when you’re 18 and you hear follow your passion, what do you know? You know TikTok. You know, it’s very difficult to follow your passion when you’re 18.
Jay Davis
Well, and I think at this age you want to be able to find a marketable job that’s going to be marketable in ten years. And I think right now with the focus of EVIT AI that our students are really needing to, you know, understand exactly which which of those job fields are going to be able to be reliable in the next 10 years. And sometimes that’s changing quickly. It is changing quickly. And so when you start getting the passion, there’s a lot of incredible you know, well-meaning positions out there that are not going to allow you to do the things you want to do. And so when you’re in your twenties and you’re in your accumulation age bracket, That’s when you need to be making money. And in my opinion, you can let the passion, you know, hit you a little bit later. And really find out what your passions are later in life once you’ve started to experience things.
Joe
I I think it’s a great point because I had a client back when I was a financial planner. It’s been a long time since I was a financial planner, but back when I was, I had a client who was very passionate. But you know what he did? He made stop signs for a living. Like imagine getting passionate about stop signs. Like I’m sure there’s nobody who goes, oh, you know what, when I’m 50, I hope I make stop signs. Like that’s not something you get passionate about. But but he got passionate about the relationships that he had with cities, the the way that he would work with the cities and he would make sure that they they you know he got to be an expert in safety But he certainly wasn’t spending all day going, If I could make the perfect octagon, like how great would this be? Wow, that octagon’s way better than the last one.
Paula
Well you know the research shows that uh the three attributes that really determine how a person feels about their work. um are mastery, autonomy, and purpose. And so for with for example, if you make stop signs but you have autonomy over your work You can make decisions, you you know, you have autonomy over how you spend your days. Do you do you start at nine or do you start at nine thirty Um, do you check your email first thing or do you make some calls first thing, right? You’ve got you’ve got a little bit of autonomy over how you structure your day. You’ve got autonomy around some of the decisions that you make. Do you go with this vendor versus that vendor? Um You’ve you know you’ve got that autonomy. Because you’ve got that autonomy, you can start to improve your processes And so that gives you mastery, right? So now you’ve got two you’ve got autonomy, you’ve got mastery, and then the third piece is purpose. You need to be sure that what you’re doing, you know, like with stop signs, maybe you’re creating a great work environment for your team, you know? Um or maybe you are, maybe there are certain like practices within the industry that you find to be a little bit shady and you’re running your business in a way that doesn’t do that. Right? And so that’s how you have that purpose piece in it. And so as long as you’ve got those three qualities, autonomy, mastery, purpose. you’re likely to enjoy what you do.
Joe
Jay, I want to go to you for the other side of this because another thing Hannah talked about was regret, right? You get you get later on you get 10 years down the road and you regret. And we’ve all seen that before, where somebody goes into a field and you get into the field and then you realize, oh no, this is not at all what I want to spend my life doing. How do you, when you feel that regret, actually have the bravery to make the change, even later in life to go do the thing that might light you up more?
Jay Davis
Well the very first thing that I talk to the students about is developing that emergency fund. And when you have the ability to leave that job after ten years that all of a sudden doesn’t have the same purpose that you originally thought it was gonna have, it’s not providing you with that fulfillment, then you’ve got the ability where you can leave that job and you still have some financial you know, stability to be able to go and find that next adventure. And so for me just establishing that emergency fund early and that’s the importance of it. You are able to leave when you want to leave.
Joe
A friend of ours writes pieces for the New York Times. And she wrote a piece that the New York Times had at the front of the finance section that was talking about not emergency fund. She called it the F off fun where you’re telling your boss to to put it nicely take a hike.
Paula
Right, right, exactly. Yeah. And um, you know that that it’s it’s a powerful way to say it, but like yes, when you have the ability to uh to tell your boss F you, you know, um it there’s a certain level of freedom that comes with. And you know, it’s it’s just one of those cards in your back pocket that you hope you never have to play it But when you know that you have the ability to say that, um, then you don’t feel trapped. You know, even even if even if you love your boss, it’s nice to know that you have an out.
Jay Davis
And I may use that F off in my one-on-one sessions, but just not in my normal workshops on campus.
Joe
to the ability to switch and not regret. But there’s another thing there too, which is a lot of time when I speak to students, they ask 50 variations of how do I get into debt up to my eyeballs? How do I get my credit good? How do I forward my truck? How do I get a house? How do I do all these things? The more you stay out of debt, the easier it is also to make a mid-career shift.
Jay Davis
And I will spin it to the emergency fund and the budget every single time that they want to start coming and talking about other other topics. And so the big four that we talk about. It’s gonna be course you know budget, emergency fund, and then we’re gonna go with debt reduction and credit management. Those are the four things that we we we we pivot off.
Joe
Because credit definitely is important. Keeping it clean is a great, great way to go. Wonderful question. Thank you so much for that one, Hannah. We’ve got another brilliant question.
Q Hannah 2
I’m also Hannah, and I’m also a psychology major. Uh as someone who’s moving to a new job and making more, how do I prevent overspending and put the raise to good use?
Joe
Awesome. Thank you, Hannah. So here in Texarkana, we we just have everybody named Hannah That’s the that’s the rule. If you move here, you gotta change. Which is why Paula’s not moving here because she there’sn’t already enough Hannah’s.
Paula
Well well well I guess I could make my middle name Hannah. Couldn’t I add Hannah to my middle name?
Joe
Paula Hannah.
Paula
Yeah, yeah. Paula H Paula H Pant. Paula HP. Paula H. Pant.
Joe
That sounds great. Yeah, let’s uh uh uh uh let’s go there because All of these students, Jay, are going to graduate. I remember my best friend in college got a great job with MetLife right out of college. He immediately went to the Pontiac dealer. Remember that old brain of car, the Pontiac? Bought himself a grand am. got payments immediately because he had a full time job.
Jay Davis
Yes, uh I that may have been me. Uh I had a black grand damn. Did you really? I did. I did. And here’s the deal. I actually bought that thing off the truck and didn’t even test drive it I was the water cooler discussion for the auto dealership for years because they were like that guy right there, we got him. But I’ve learned.
Joe
Yeah. But but but that you see this every day, I’m sure, Jay, that you’ve got students and they’re getting ready to graduate, and that is the biggest threat.
Jay Davis
It is and and of course one of the discussions that I have and I’ll I’ll pick on our nursing cohorts. Um I jokingly tell them do not go and buy the sports car as soon as they’re about to graduate. And you know, because you don’t want to set yourself up with that seven hundred to a thousand dollar car payment. when you haven’t even found your place to live yet. Because if you do wrap yourself around with a lot of student loan debt and a very, very high car um payment, you’re gonna be living in an area that you may not want to be living in.
Joe
Well and there’s a big difference between renting in Texarkana and renting Polo where you are in Manhattan.
Paula
Yeah, exactly, exactly. But what I would say, Hannah, is You know, you’re already living at a certain, you know, certain spend rate right now. Maintain that for as long as you possibly can. So when you get a raise Pretend that you didn’t. Just pretend just ig and ideally you uh you almost want to play a game with yourself where you are tricking yourself into forgetting that you got a raise. So the best way to do that is to set up automatic transfers so that the the same day that the paycheck hits your checking account You have an automatic transfer that’s going to a Roth IRA. You’ve got automatic money going to a uh well prior to even when the paycheck hits, automatic money that’s getting pulled out into a 401k or a 403B. You’ve got if you have any debt or student loans or anything like that, you’ve got automatic money, ideally on payday, that is coming out of uh every single paycheck that is going to all to To anything that will improve your net worth. So when you talk about retirement savings, when you talk about debt payoff, when you talk about an emergency fund, what do what do those three things have in common? They all improve your net worth And so if you can automate that on payday, what you want to do is just set up a situation where when you actually check your checking account balance, it looks exactly like the budget that you’re already used to as a student. So that that way you just trick yourself into forgetting that you ever got a raise and and maintain that for as long as you can.
Joe
Yeah, I’ll give you permission to maybe spend a little more money. But what I would say is this and what I love about what Paula said is that Right now having roommates may be fun if you have roommates. It’s fun. Once you get rid of roommates, then you become a little bit bougie. And you don’t want to go back. So have roommates for as long as you can because you’re used to having roommates. Later on when you’re not used to having roommates, it will stink to go back to roommates.
Paula
then stopped having roommates and then that got really lonely. We were talking about this last night. Uh um that it was fun for a few months, but then it just got lonely. So then I went back to having roommates again.
Joe
Well, so maybe. Unless you’re Bola.
Paula
Yeah.
Joe
But I’ll tell you, for a lot of people, they’re like, I don’t want to have roommates anymore. For the vast majority of people, I think that is still true though, for a lot of people. Um lonely people. But but there also is this feeling which is not true that you were a failure if you go back, you know? And and you just don’t want to have that feeling like I’m doing it because I have to. And so the longer you can keep things the way they are now and funnel money into places, man, we get calls sometimes from people that are 30 years old. And the cool stuff that they’ve done that Jay and I did not do, because by 30 years old, they have so much flexibility built into their life. And it only takes two or three years of living the same lifestyle you are living as a college student to really achieve that. There’s this cool rule called the rule of 72. And I think it’s really, really fun to go through the rule of 72. You know, if you graduate and you’re able to make one Roth IRA contribution. This year. Let’s say you’re 22 years old. The rule of 72 is this mathematical magical rule. It’s just this great rule of thumb that says if you take the interest rate you think you’re gonna get You divide it into 72, that tells you how long it’s going to take your money to double. So let’s say that you think you’re going to get an 8% rate of return You make a $5,000 contribution when you’re 22. That means that’s going to double. 8 into 72 is every 9 years. So it’s going to double every 9 years. So it’s going to double when you’re 31. When you’re 40, when you’re 49, when you’re 58, and again, normal retirement age, 66, 67, so we’ll have a double one more time. So that $5,000 you put away at $22 isn’t $5,000. The first time it doubles, it’s $10. Then it’s $20 Then it’s forty thousand, then it’s eighty thousand. That one contribution at twenty two years old is a hundred and sixty thousand dollars, Jay.
Jay Davis
And at twenty two, you’re not gonna miss five grand if you’re putting it back every paycheck. You’re just not going to feel it. And you know, another thing that I’ll also work with our students on, and it’s a lot easier to say this than do it. But if you have that invisible raise for that first year, don’t even live off of it. Just go ahead and put that right back into your emergency fund or go ahead and and max out what you can deposit into your Roth IRA. Or traditional.
Joe
Yeah, that’s uh it’s an exciting time. But this time, this time, I think this is really an inflection point. When you graduate If you set up these systems, Paula, right away, it’s going to be great. If you don’t set them up right away three months from now, three months after you graduate, it’s going to be really hard. Because then you have to backtrack, you’ve already been spending the money. It gets much harder if you wait three months. Do it immediately when you graduate.
Paula
Right, right. And I think the key thing that he just said is set up systems because if you have to log in and manually do it every month Um, you forget. You know, you just you forget. So um the more that you can just set up the systems and automate it, like set it and forget it, the better.
Joe
Well I think I was joking about Hannah’s earlier. I think that’s the end of the Hannah’s. Let’s see if everybody else can keep up with the Hannahs, Paula.
Q Gabriel
Yes. My name is Gabriel and I’m a civil engineering major. My question is, what is the safer investment strategy? Stocks, IRAs, 401ks, or gold and silver?
Joe
Awesome. Beautiful. Thank you, Gabriel. Thanks for the question. And engineering. I would have been an engineer if I knew what Wome was, by the way. I thought an engineer just drove a train, Gabriel. I was sure. But uh I had no idea.
Paula
So I want to put a little context around this question because you you asked s you said stocks. And then you said IRAs.
Joe
It’s a great question though, because this is everybody who has questions like this.
Paula
Yeah, exactly. I hear this question a lot, and so I want to um To take a moment to elaborate on why these are different things. And so imagine that you’re at a bar And imagine there are all kinds of different there’s all sorts of These are students they’ve never been in a bar. You’re at a house party. Imagine you’re at a house party. They don’t do that either. Um and there’s all kinds of different glassware. So you’ve got A coffee mug, you’ve got a red solo cup, you’ve got a champagne flute, you’ve got a pint glass, you’ve got a shot glass, you’ve got um oh just a a water glass, right? You y like the n what what is this called? Glass just glassware?
Joe
All the breaking implements.
Paula
Right. You have all you have a mart you have a martini glass, right? You’ve got all of these things. Um You’ve got those, and then you’ve also got the liquids that typically go into each one. Um so an IRA is an example of one a piece of that glassware. An IRA or a 401k or a 403B um or a Roth IRA, like those are all different pieces of glassware. So that’s the equivalent of a coffee mug, a martini glass, a champagne flute, a red solo cup. Then the liquids that go inside of it are um stocks, bonds, gold, silver. um any type of asset. CDs. Yeah, CDs. Yeah. Cat just cash. Yeah. You know, those are all the liquids that go inside of it. And there are certain types of liquids that are generally better inside certain types of glasses that this is something that’s called asset location, like what’s the best liquid to put inside a certain glass? So like Generally speaking, you know, beer is drunk from a pint glass and champagne is drunk from a champagne flute and coffee is drunk from a coffee mug. But there’s no actual rule saying that you have to do it that way, right? So you could put coffee in a champagne flute.
Joe
Yeah.
Paula
Yeah. Yeah. If you wanted to. Um so I wanted to part of the reason that we chose the question is because um the first piece of it was that I wanted to differentiate uh between an IRA versus the other the other components of the question um between an IRA versus stocks, gold, silver.
Joe
So when you when you graduate, there’s going to be these different classes to choose from. I can put money in a savings account. I can put money at uh we should say at Red River Federal Credit Union, right? Since they have underwrited this. We can buy we can have a savings account, that’s a glass. We can drink out of that glass whenever we want. We can we can buy we can put have a brokerage account, we can have stocks, we can have bonds, um and we can drink out of that glass whenever we want. If you get a 401 glass or an IRA glass, there’s rules about when you can drink out of that.
Paula
Yeah, so a 401k or an IRA is basically an agreement between you and the government. in which the government says that they will give you a tax break if you promise not to spend that money until you’re a certain age. So a lot of people think of it as a quote unquote retirement account, and that can be a little bit misleading because retirement is In in many people’s minds, retirement is a job description or the lack of a job description. Like retirement is a description of your work status. And technically, a 401k or an IRA isn’t a retirement account, it’s an age-restricted account. So basically, you’re just making a deal with the government that If you don’t touch that money until a particular age, they will give you a big tax break.
Joe
It is a great way to segregate money though. I mean if you’re not gonna spend it for a long time, if you want to make sure that you have some money after fifty-nine and a half, which is the rule on most of these. Put it in those accounts because you’ll save money on taxes. But then inside of there, let’s answer Gabriel’s real question, Jay, which is this word safe, right? Which one is safer? I think safe has a lot of different meanings.
Jay Davis
Well You could eat you could have a 401k and it still not be safe.
Paula
Yeah, what what are the drinks
Jay Davis
What’s the mix of drinks and so even that can be a little scary when you start using the word safe and I think the students now understand the word inflation a little bit better than I understood it whenever I was their age because right now with inflation being what it is You start looking at your gold and silver, that’s not quite as safe as it was because of inflation. Um and so, you know, for me it’s it’s a little scary for to to be able to just talk about what’s safe and what’s not A lot of it has to do with what your comfort level is and what your risk tolerance is going to be. Yeah.
Joe
Well and I think for me the big thing is time frame. Because safe over the short run, if I need to spend the money in the next six months, putting money into the stock market is not safe. But if I am going to spend money twenty years from now, putting money in a savings account isn’t safe. It feels safe. But it’s going to get eaten up by Jay what you talked about by inflation. So you’re going to very safely never have any more money. You’ll actually have less money to spend based on the amount of bread you can buy than you had before. But stocks Stocks as a rule over long periods of time are very safe if you buy them in a diversified collection of them. Because of the fact that you are buying the economy. And if a company’s going to make money, they have to beat inflation. Right. They have to make money for their investors. And so if you’re investing in Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola is what makes inflation, right? The price of sugar goes up. The people at Coca-Cola don’t go, well, the price of sugar went up, we’re screwed They go, no, we’re going to find a way to make Gabriel pay more money for that Coca-Cola. And when they do, all the investors reap the benefit of the higher price that they were able to. you know, have better advertising. So owning Coca-Cola means by definition, if Coca-Cola succeeds, they’re gonna beat inflation. And that’s a great place to be and and pr a safe place to be long term as long as you’re diversified.
Paula
Right. But what but to be clear, that doesn’t mean that you should necessarily pick Coca-Cola or Pepsi or any individual stock because if you’re trying to pick winners and losers, um You might be you might be right. You might be wrong. And even professionals who spend their whole lives learning how to pick winning companies or losing companies More times than not get it wrong. Statistically speaking, yeah.
Joe
We did a show recently with a couple people that studied uh stock market pickers. It’s uh they have a brand new book out that’s great called Stock Market Maestros. The best of the best had a 45% hit rate, which means 45% of the stocks that they picked were winners. They lose more often than they win. And these were the best of the best of the best. These people have maestro in their title and they’re horrible. So they were saying the average person’s hit rate is about one out of every three. uh stocks.
Jay Davis
Professional gamblers fifty four or fifty five percent.
Joe
Right. So just take it to Vegas, Jay, and we’re done. That’s that’s the kind of teaching we do.
Jay Davis
Well and and I do want to go ahead and and share too, your four oh one Ks become safer when your company is going to provide a match. And so anytime that your company is going to be able to provide that match, I’m going to recommend that you’re going to at least take it Take advantage of that.
Joe
Absolutely. Right, right. Yeah, free money. You were talking about diversification though.
Paula
Right, right, exactly. So the 401k again, that’s the the coffee mug that you’re drinking out of. But in terms of what you actually put inside of that coffee mug, you don’t want to put individual stocks in there because you more times than not, you the probability is that if you’re picking individual stocks, you are likely to get it wrong. No matter how smart you are, no matter even if you’re doing this full time as a professional on Wall Street, you’re more likely to get it wrong than not. And so instead what you do is you buy what are called these broad market index funds. And that means that you are buying the overall market. So when you you know when you turn on the news and you hear like the Dow Jones rose or fell, or you hear that the S P five hundred rose or fell, um, or the NASDAQ rose or fell. That’s what you’re buying. You’re buying the entire SP 500. You’re buying the entire Dow Jones, right? And so you’re going to do as well or as poorly as the overall index, like which is essentially the overall economy. No better and no worse.
Joe
And over long periods of time, your return has been around 8% doing that. So and versus over the short run. You know, uh a savings account is is going to earn a couple percent, two, three.
Paula
Yeah, and so with an eight percent return, that goes back to the rule of seventy-two, if over the long term you’re gonna be earning eight percent. That means your money will double on average every nine years. Um, but the important thing to remember, and I got this wrong when I was in my twenties. is that the stock market is not a high yield savings account. So if you need that money in the sh you know, we’re talking about over the very, very, very long term, meaning like 20 plus years, it’s likely to do well. But in the short term, in the next three years, who knows? So if you need that money in the next three to five years, um don’t put it in stocks.
Joe
Yeah, so uh to to to circle around well and before we get there, it’s it’s funny because I know a lot of people, Jay, that y you brought up Las Vegas. I mean you brought up gambling, right? And a lot of people think the stock market’s gambling, which if you need the money tomorrow, the stock market is gambling. If you need a long time from now, Paula’s index is much safer.
Jay Davis
Well and and we had a discussion um a couple weeks ago at one of our workshops and it just talked about the prediction markets that are even starting to help hit out there, you know, Cauchy and some of the others. And you know uh there’s still a huge risk involved when you start playing with something like that. So you know for me it’s going to be, you know, your 401ks, you’re gonna put, you know, in your index funds. and not play with prediction markets in Las Vegas.
Joe
Those drive me crazy. It just, it’s such a, oh, that’s such a horrible thing. Um Those are three great questions. Those are fantastic questions. I’m going to pause right there because you know what I did forget to do at the start? We forgot to choose our three contestants. Because we’re so who wants the opportunity to win a great book? It can’t it can’t be you, Hannah. It it can’t be somebody who’s already participated. Do I need to pick? I think I’m gonna pick. How about the woman sitting in the middle? Yes, you. She’s looking off to the side. She’s like, not me. You just had your phone. Do you want to play? Yes, you in the middle of the three of you. Do you want to play? Yes? Yes, come on up. It won’t hurt. Yep. And then how about is it Steven? Thomas. So close. Now you’re gonna be Steven. Uh God, let’s come over here, guys. Yep, and then uh we need a third. Would you like to play in the blue shirt? Come on up. All right. All right. Well we’re gonna have a hand for them in just a second. All right We’ll pretend that we rolled right into this. All right, 3-2-1. We go from those We’re going to have three more fantastic questions in the second half of today’s show. But if you’re new to Stacking Benjamins, what you don’t know is on our Friday shows, we have a ridiculous Competition and the good news, Paula, for you, is you don’t have to compete today.
Paula
Woohoo! Because I always lose
Joe
Oh, every time. Paula will say out loud on our show, she’ll go, I think the answer is 100,000. And then she’ll bet something else. And then the answer is 100,000. She’s in last place in our year-long competition, but we’re gonna have a one-day competition between three of our Texas AM Texar Canada students for an amazing prize. Maybe the best book ever written, Paula.
Paula
You know, page thirteen is the best page of that book. I wonder who we reference on page thirteen. Paula Hannah Pant.
Joe
That’s so strange. Yes, we’re going to give away a copy of my book, Stack, your super serious guide to modern money management. And so we have three contestants Uh let’s meet our contestants. Contestant number one, who are you and what’s your major?
Q Hannah 2
Uh I’m Stephanie Sanchez, and my major is Nar Saint.
Joe
Stephanie in nursing. Big hand for Stephanie. All right, contestant number two. I’m Thomas. I’m an accounting major. Thomas at accounting. Contestant number three.
Q Payton
I am Peyton Perkins and I’m also an accounting major.
Jay Davis
Oh, and I missed your name Patent and also accounting. Gotcha. I’m sorry? And also accounting major.
Joe
Yes, okay. All right, three two one and we’re back. All right, we got Stephanie Thomas and Payton. You three ready for the question? All right, Doug. Doug’s up in the rafters. Doug, wake up. It is uh it’s your turn to shine, buddy.
Doug
Hey there, Eagles! I’m Joe’s Mob’s neighbor Doug and ah yes the classroom. I remember those days fondly. Yes, a nap in the back row hiding from the professor’s glare is truly a nap well learned. Am I right? I’m so right. Well, no napping on today’s trivia question. And in the spirit of being back on campus, I’ve got a little story problem for ya. We thought about asking a finance question, but instead we asked, what if your mascot? Needed a side hustle. So, okay, riddle me this. If an eagle flies at about 30 miles an hour and we paid it Federal minimum wage because apparently we don’t believe in paying the actual talent How much would it earn flying nonstop for 24 hours? Okay, Eagles, what’s your guess? Because one of you is about to win and two of you are about to realize that you wish you’d had uh your phone to Google what the federal minimum wage is
Joe
I think Doug forgot. We’re talking to university students. They may know very well, Doug, what the federal minimum wage is. I knew it very well when I was when I was this age. All right, uh here we go. It is uh Stephanie’s turn. Stephanie, if an eagle flies at 30 miles an hour and is paid the federal minimum wage for twenty-four hours, how much money would it make?
Q Hannah 2
One hundred and fifty dollars.
Joe
One hundred and fifty dollars. Nice guess. All right, and uh I gotta write these down. And uh Thomas, what do you think?
Game Thomas
I’m gonna go 160.
Joe
100 and so I see how this plays you guys have listened to the show, haven’t you? He’s like one step up. Yeah. Alright. And then Peyton?
Q Payton
I’m gonna say 170.
Joe
170, all right. I see how they work. All right, we’ve got Stephanie at 150, Thomas at 160, Peyton at 170, who’s right? We will be right back with the answer. And that’s where the commercial break is, and I gotta take one quick second. Just don’t chase my free clear. All right, here we go. Three, two, one. All right. Stephanie, Thomas, and Peyton going after it today. Stephanie, uh, so you guessed 150. You got to hear your fellow students guess 160, 170. You think you’re gonna win? You got it? Probably not. Probably not. I don’t know, man.
Q Payton
Lucky guess.
Joe
One one fifty sounds good. Uh uh Thomas, yours look good until Peyton decided to take away the upside. You’re the sandwich. But are you close enough that maybe you got it
Game Thomas
It’s simple, I just can’t do it on the spotlight.
Joe
It is, but we knew that you wouldn’t be able to have your phone and and you’re in front of a group of people, so it’s gonna be tough Peyton, you got all the upside. If it’s $1,000, you’re gonna win. You feel good?
Q Payton
I’m a competitor, so I think I win this one.
Joe
There we go. All right. Well Let’s see. All right, Doug, who is taking home the book?
Doug
Hey there, stackers. I’m underpaid bird advocate and guy who just learned OSHA probably doesn’t cover wildlife, Joe’s mom’s neighbor duck. So I was upstairs earlier talking to Joe’s mom about this question, you know, just normal conversation. And I said, hey, what if we paid an eagle minimum wage? Because that’s a normal question. And she just looks at me and goes Why would you do that? And I said, well, I mean it’s working 24 hours straight. And she goes, it’s not a job. That’s just it’s just like flying. And I’m like, yeah, but for the eagle, it’s working from home. Because it’s in the the air. And the sky is where it works Because okay, if you think about it, lots of people work from home. But like this eagle, it lives At work, so technically, I mean, it’s like it’s the most committed employee we’ve ever had Hello! Is this thing on? Alright, you know, it it it seemed better in my head at the time.
Paula
Uh I I think he just exited. I think he’s he’s out.
Joe
Yeah, I think the eagle just quit, Doug. The eagle just quit And Jay, aren’t you proud of this? Uh you’re uh you built this whole program just so Doug could have the world’s longest trivia question.
Jay Davis
Well, I th I thought it was a good question, so let’s uh Let’s see which one wins.
Joe
Alright, Doug, uh, if you can wrap this up, that would be this is supposed to be an hour-long show.
Doug
Yeah, so anyway, we asked If an eagle flies at about 30 miles an hour and we pay it federal minimum wage for 24 hours, how much does it earn? Well, the answer is $174, which by the way is less than a parking pass on a lot of campuses around the country. But here in Texas AM, Tex Arcana, you’re getting a whole lot more value than that. Congrats to our winner. Hey everybody, come on, bring it in. Let’s take a photo. Hey, Thomas. No, Peyton wins.
Joe
Peyton’s our winner. She got within four dollars.
Jay Davis
She got within four dollars. That’s pretty impressive.
Joe
I know. Nice job. And yeah, I saw Thomas light up and then I saw him go, damn, I got the math, but I don’t have it. Nice job, Stephanie. Good work. Nice job. Big hand for all three of them. Alright, let’s let’s take a let’s take a quick picture with our winner. Come on, guys. Alright, if you want to hold the phone, you does somebody wanna take the photo? Alright, we’ll do this on the count of three. Alright? Do we already? One, two, three
Doug
That was point. Congratulations. Congratulations.
Paula
Oh. That’s the that’s the consolation prize.
Joe
No, Stefano, you got a free phone. All right. Let’s get back to the uh now that we have the ridiculous minutes out of the way, our fourth question comes from
Q Stephano
Hello, I’m Stefano. I’m a business major and my question is what are a few common money mistakes college and grad students make that I should avoid now that I’m I’m still in school.
Joe
Awesome. Thank you, Stefano. What are some common mistakes?
Paula
I’d say a lot of mistakes come from going to one extreme or the other. So on one side, and I think this is the mistake that you hear about more frequently. You have people who spend too much and uh get into debt. But on the other side, you also have people who are too cheap um to the point where it is debilitating to the point where it holds back your life. So You know, there are certain things, even as a college student, you don’t have a lot of money, but um, or most, you know, most college students don’t have a lot of money, but if you can To the extent that you can spend some money um doing things that will allow you to uh build your career, you know, maybe that means that you get um What one nice shirt, just one, that you can wear to professional events, right? Um or maybe it just means that you’ve got gas money. to go to that professional event, right? That you’ve got you can put the gas in your car to go to that networking event. Um, those are the things that you don’t want to cheap out on. Because those are the things, anything that will allow you to build your network and increase the odds that you’re going to make more money in the long run, those things are worthwhile.
Jay Davis
Jay? Well for me there’s there’s two things that our students really talk about, and that’s you know using credit cards. And sometimes they use that either as a reward. Or they use it as maybe a supplement to their income. And that right there is a concern when you start looking at 20 plus percent interest rates. You’re basically taxing your future self uh whenever you get into that uh you know. Role.
Joe
Not good.
Jay Davis
And then the second thing that that our students can can do is at times they’re going to take out too much financial aid. So they’ll actually get what financial aid calls a refund. And to me, that’s not a refund at all. But you they’re they’re gonna you know end up having some extra money that they’re now gonna be paying interest on. uh whenever they graduate. So you know, not spending that money and just going ahead and turning right back around and paying that uh loan back off uh rather than using that refund to buy the latest iPhone or pizza or anything else out there.
Joe
For me, a common mistake that I see students make that they will continue to make, and this isn’t just in your financial life, it’s that you think that discipline is the answer. And discipline fades as the day goes on. You get hungry. Discipline gets replaced by bubas down uh on the freeway. Discipline gets replaced with splurging. So it isn’t about discipline. It’s about systems. Whenever you think I need discipline, replace that with systems. And it’s great. So how can I systematize my money? What can I do to make sure? As an example for me, I was a guy that used the credit card all the time. And so I had to cut up my cards. I’d have no access to credit cards because if it was in my wallet, baby, I was using it. Like that was that was going to happen. So I set up a system to make sure that I won. We talked about with Hannah, you know, putting money away, automating money, going into savings so that you’ve got that emergency fund that Jay talks about. Um having that as a system versus telling yourself that I’m gonna put some money away. If you tell yourself you’re gonna put some money away, you’ll never do it. If you have it automatically go into the account, it’ll happen like clockwork.
Paula
Yeah, exactly Um the other thing that you should you should systematize, and this goes back to the earning more money portion, because as a especially as a student, the most powerful thing that you can do is to increase your earnings capability. Oh you stole my next one. Oh, mind reader. Mind reader. Yes.
Joe
We don’t ask for raises enough.
Paula
And uh and even in that, there there’s there are systems that you can start to implement in your life. Like If you get somebody’s email address or or contact information at an event, follow up with them immediately. Don’t wait until the next day. Just do it. That night, do it in the car on the way home. Um or do it make a system for yourself like or this is wood this would really be more of a habit, but like As I’m brushing my teeth, that’s when I follow up with people. So that that way your brain links brushing your teeth to that follow-up.
Joe
That’s the thing, Jay, that that I think is so Important that I didn’t know. I don’t know if you knew it, but when I was in college, all these professors were people, I remember that they would reach out, they’d try to help. I didn’t want to bother them. I saw other people that networked with the professors, the great minds that were around them, some of the people that were maybe uh people they admired in their classes, staying close to those people. Like when you’re on a college campus, network as much as you possibly can.
Jay Davis
Absolutely. And the professors that I’ve been able to get to know here on campus love to be able to do that for our students. Yeah and to be able to share more than just what’s on the syllabus.
Joe
I regret not doing that more.
Jay Davis
And you know for me it’s going back to the professor maybe the next semester or that three semesters after you’ve taken them and just following back up and just saying, hey, appreciate what I learned in your class or You know, hey, can we go grab a cup of coffee? I’d like for you to introduce me to some industry people that you know um here in town.
Joe
And and they’re happy to do it like you said.
Jay Davis
That is a big mistake is I’ll start later in developing an emergency fund, I’ll start later in developing my budget, I’ll start later in savings. That fallacy of I’ll start later is big.
Joe
Yeah, and building building those habits right away. So important.
Paula
Oh, and just one one other thing I wanted to say on the topic of like following up with meeting people, following up with people, professors, whoever it might be, industry people. One thing that I did not understand when I was in college, that I only learned later in life, um, when I was in college, I thought that it was that what mattered was my resume. And in real life, what mattered, what has mattered are my rep are my relationships, my professional relationships, not my resume. And uh now being on the hiring side, you know, both Joe and I have hired people in our businesses. When we well, I d I can’t don’t want to speak for you, Joe, but when I go to hire, the first thing I do is I talk to the people around me and I say, I’m looking for somebody to fill this type of a role. Do you know anyone? You know? So it’s that word of mouth recommendation. That’s that’s the starting point.
Joe
And that is and there’s two sides of that. You still have to be good at what you do. Right. Because I do see some people that think it’s just all schmoozing all the time, and it’s not. Right, right, right. Yeah. You have to have a reputation for being good at what you do. We have another awesome question
Q Valarie
I’m Valerie and I’m an accounting major. Um what are some good money management tips to limit spending
Joe
Oh, good money management tips to limit spending. Man, that’s so hard. So I had to learn a lot of these, Valerie, the hard way. So Paula, you want to start?
Paula
Yeah, you know, so it when it comes to limiting spending, there are two categories of expenses that you have. You’ve got your fixed expenses. like your rent, um, your car payment, if you have a car payment. Um these are the things that are they’re fixed in your budget. Um your rent is this you’re locked into a lease And your rent is gonna be the same amount every single month. And it’s really hard until unless your lease ends, it’s really hard to get out of that Same thing if you have a car payment, right? It’s a fixed amount every single month and it’s really hard to change that unless you refinance that loan. So those are your fixed costs. And then you also have discretionary costs. Um and or variable costs I should say. Like you’ve got variable costs. Some of those variable costs are truly necessary, like groceries, and some of those variable costs are discretionary, like Um, you know, that that’s where we talk about the iPhone and the pizza and the um, you know, new sweater and all of those sorts of things I think the mistake that a lot of people make is that a lot of people, when they try to save money, the first thing that they target is variable discretionary spending. And the reason that people often target that is because it’s the low-hanging fruit and there is low friction Low there’s a low barrier to getting rid of those expenses. Like there’s there is not a lot of headache or hassle around not buying a new sweater. You simply don’t buy it. And I get that there are behavioral i you know, it’s there’s the psychology of that and there’s the behavior and there’s the habit formation, but ultimately at the end of the day variable discretionary spending is the lowest friction um category to eliminate. By contrast, when you talk about fixed expenses like your rent or your car payment Um there’s a there’s huge friction to changing that. To change your rent. You literally have to move out or get a roommate, right? Or an or get more roommates. Um but because those are because those are so high friction, once you make that change, as difficult as it may be, um it’s locked in.
Joe
And much higher impact.
Paula
Much, much higher impact. So if you really want to move the needle Go for the fixed expenses.
Jay Davis
Well, Paul, you mentioned friction a few times there, and for me it’s make it hard to spend money. I can literally go a day or two or even three and not pull out my wallet anymore because I do have payments on my iPhone and so I can just go scan a QR code and my groceries get paid. I can scan at the gas pump and my grocer and my gas gets paid. If I want to order online, I already have my debit and credit cards already in the system. And so for me, whenever I’m talking to students that really are Having an issue with spending, turn off the accounts. Make it to where you have to pull out your wallet and heaven forbid spend cash But even if not, you still have to pull out your debit card or you have to pull out whatever payment method rather than just rely on just walking up and placing your phone on top of something or just scanning a QR code.
Joe
Yeah, most people think of a budget and they think of a pain in the ass. Like it’s really gonna be tough. So I like gamifying it And I think turning this into a game and making it making it fun really really changes things. So there’s this cool app, and you don’t need the app to do it called YNAB, and it’s you need a budget. And I don’t want to talk about YNAB, but I want to talk about why it turns it into a game. So if you really want to do better with money, do what the YNAB people do, and that is before the beginning of the week, plot out how you’re going to spend it. So every dollar has a purpose ahead of time. So you begin your week and you’re like, okay, I want to go out to a restaurant with my friends on Thursday, so I’m setting them out this this much money for that. And then I’ve got my my rent due. I’m setting that aside for that. And before the week even begins, you’ve done all your spending. And because of that, you turned it into a game and you did it ahead of time. You’re still having all the fun you had, but now you know where every dollar went. Versus What I did, Jay, it sounds like what you did, you know, friends are going out and I didn’t expect it and I didn’t have any money in my budget for serendipity. I didn’t have any money set aside. Oh, if my friends asked me to go out, I’m gonna have 15 bucks sitting over here. Whatever the number would be. I didn’t have any of that. I would just whip out the credit card then and get myself further in a hole.
Jay Davis
Well I have some phenomenal programming that I’m wanting to do in the in the fall and if YNAB wants to contact me they can. But I will go ahead and plug them real quick because our AM students with their AM email address get one year free of YNAB. Oh cool. So there’s no reason for them not to to but YNAP can still call me. We’ve got some programming that needs to be paid.
Joe
I did not know that and I brought it up. I fed right into that. But it is a great program for that reason because it turns it into a game. Uh uh Cheryl and I have a have this weekly money meeting where we talk about how did we spend money last week, what are we going to spend next week, and it really makes it It’s a fun meeting. We cap it at 20 minutes. We have a timer. We cap it at 20 minutes and it’s done. And it makes it so much more fun. And we find in the weeks that we don’t miss that, because we do miss it from time to time. We do really well with money just because we talked about it. Yeah. Another thing another thing that I wanted to say though was this is a problem that I had with money when I was a college student. I would get really excited about this. And when you get really excited about personal finance, you decide I’m going to live on ramen noodles every day and save every dollar. And that’s awesome for like four days. So you have to build in splurges because otherwise splurges are going to find you. You’re going to get done with three weeks of doing great. And then you’re going to say the words that are death for any broke person, which is, I deserve it. I’ve been great for three weeks, so I deserve it. And what I deserve it means is I’m going to go blow up all the good stuff I did those last three weeks.
Jay Davis
No, that’s definitely a common uh mistake that’s out there. And you know, another um I guess tool that you can use is have that 24 hour rule. So if you’ve got something in the cart. If you’ve got something in the cart Leave it there and if you still want it 24 hours later, then maybe it could be the right decision for you. And you may even get a discount because they want you to go ahead and check out. But And have that magic number, and everybody’s is going to be a little bit different. It could be anything over $50, anything over $100, you know, whatever that magic number is for you and your family or your household. If it’s over that, think about it rather than just um go and do that. That was probably and is the biggest thing that my wife would say I had an issue with when we were younger. I’m getting better.
Joe
That’s well that’s me too, because I’m laughing because I have to do that with board games and my board game buddy Angelo is hanging out with us tonight and he knows it it can be a problem. You get the new hot game, you want it. You’re not even thinking about the budget. You think, ooh, this new thing came out. But putting it in the cart and waiting 24 hours, then you’re then you’re like, do I need it today? Do I need it now?
Paula
And and to your point earlier about increasing friction, um, I know people who, you know, because there are a lot of websites where you can have your payment information saved. I know people who intentionally will not save their payment information. Um so they won’t save it in a password manager, they won’t save it anywhere. So that you have to physically get out your card and type in all sixteen digits in order to buy something. Um and even just that little bit of friction. Cause you know right now you’ve got Like that that bright purple shop pay button, right? That makes it very easy. Um, even like the more you can not save your information in that So that you have to and your wallet’s on the other side of the room and you’re in bed and it’s cold, right? And you have to actually get out of bed and walk all the way to the other side of the room and get your wallet and punch in the numbers, right Creating that friction stops impulse spending.
Joe
It’s a great theme. It’s gone on all the way through the night. It’s funny because the world is making it easier to buy. Right. But they’re also making it easier to save. You gotta decide what team you’re on Yeah. We have one more question and he didn’t win trivia, so he’s back with the most amazing question of the night.
Game Thomas
I’m back. How do I manage my finances and student loans after college?
Joe
Awesome, Thomas. Thank you. Finances and student loans after college, and you’re a senior, right? All right, so let’s talk about this is a little bit like Hannah’s question to be at uh more toward the beginning of the night. But but Jay Thomas has his degree, he’s got his new job. What does he set up first tactically?
Jay Davis
Well the first thing you’ve got to do an inventory check and you’ve got to figure out exactly if you’re if you have student loans, what those balances are, what those payments are, and get that set up with your service. When they start. That’s that’s that’s going to be the first thing that you’re going to want to do. And then secondly, you don’t want to go out there and have that deserving aspect. You know, I’ve made it four years, so I’m now going to go and spend every penny that I have saved up. And we’ve already alluded to this, but just start. Start developing the emergency fund, start saving, start developing your budget and just start.
Joe
Hiding that money from yourself like we were telling Hannah earlier is so important, Paula.
Paula
Yeah, I think with uh with debt i p in particular with student loans Um, you’ll want to be thoughtful about how much of your money you want to put towards student loans versus how much of your money you want to put towards um starting your retirement savings. Because going back to what we said earlier about the rule of 72 you know, every dollar that you put towards retirement savings when you’re twenty-two, assuming that you leave it there until you’re 67, right? Um that’s gonna go through several compounding cycles. Five doubles. Yeah, exactly. And so Um while it can, you know, I I I had some friends who were like super focused on just paying off debt and wanted to be debt-free as fast as possible and that’s great. Like it’s coming from a good place But don’t let it come at the expense of retirement savings. And particularly, Jay, to your point, if you have a 401k match, definitely get the match. But if you don’t, um because many jobs don’t necessarily offer a match, you’ll still want to put some money aside, even if even if it’s unmatched, into a 401k. um or into if you if you don’t have access to a workplace 401k into a Roth IRA. And this all starts with general mindset.
Joe
We’ve had a lot of smart people that Paul and I have been able to talk to over the years that we’ve done our shows. There was a very brilliant guest we had on. I was very lucky to have him on twice. His name is Jonathan Clements. For a long time he was the personal finance columnist at the Wall Street Journal. He actually passed away recently, sadly. What was really neat about Jonathan was he was so brave. He even wrote uh columns about the process of dying and all the things that you need to do. But what he wrote, I think that’s important for us tonight, was he said you have this choice. You’re going to almost like Paula, you say you can afford anything, but not everything. Jonathan said you have two choices. You can party in your 20s. Or you can party later. You can work your butt off early and party later. Or you can party early and work later. You get to choose which one you want to do. And he said for most people, for him especially, he was very uh glad that he chose that he was going to work his butt off. those few earliers so he could party in the later years. But we all have that have that choice. And I think having that mindset when you retire that this is not going to be forever. I’m just gonna put my head down. I’m gonna have roommates for a while, like we told Hannah. I’m gonna I’m gonna keep living the same lifestyle just for a few years so I can get that doubling going. And then things get exciting in a hurry. And then uh Jonathan uh sadly didn’t get to party as long as he wanted to. But I’ll tell you, he lived a great life and in his columns you see that he lived a really great life.
Paula
Right, yeah. And and not only that, but like he he lived a great life and And towards the end of his life, you know, the fact that he was still saying, I’m still glad that I did it. That I did it. Right? You know, so so that his final years could be um more peaceful. Yeah. You know? That kind of goes back to your question about like how do you balance peace and uh purpose and you know all of that. Like There’s a certain degree of peace that you have when you know that your finances are solid.
Joe
Yeah. Man, great questions tonight. Let’s have a big hand for the people brave enough to ask questions. It it takes a lot of bravery to do that and uh especially in front of uh an audience of people in forty-eight countries are gonna hear your questions that you had today. So pretty pretty awesome that you did it Let’s find out what’s going on with my two wonderful co-hosts. Jay, thank you so much for this partnership. Thanks for doing this. And hopefully we have a lot of these uh these over the years.
Jay Davis
Nope, that sounds great and I I definitely want to give a shout out to RCU. We couldn’t have done that with the C.
Joe
Yeah big thanks to Red River Federal Credit Union
Jay Davis
So great great sponsor and and and they always um have a mindset of financial literacy and and probably one of the leaders in our in our region um getting that information education out there.
Joe
What exciting things are coming up with your program?
Jay Davis
Well, we’re going to be moving into a new building and we’re going to have a um Bloomberg uh terminal lab there. And so we’re coming up with Y’all Street coming to Fort Worth and the Dallas area here soon. So we’re hoping to uh have a large group of students that are going to be getting into investment banking.
Joe
And people that don’t know what that is, that’s a new stock exchange coming to uh Fort Worth. Correct.
Jay Davis
Yeah. And so the great state of Texas is going to be battling it out with uh New York. Yeah, watch out, Paula.
Paula
Wall Street versus Yall Street. I like that. But you’re gonna be front row of that.
Jay Davis
Absolutely. And you know, we’re we’re wanting to be, you know, the regional leader here in in financial literacy education and we want more people to know how to manage their money better so that they can enjoy retirement and do the things they want to do later in life.
Joe
And the cool thing about coming to school here, it’s an affordable education
Jay Davis
Absolutely. And you know, we’ve got all sorts of scholarships that are available and with our growing population and the fact that we’re adding um so many athletic teams here. You’re getting the full college college experience here at Texanium Texarcana.
Joe
And you get to hang out with me and Jay. Absolutely. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. Polapant, thank you for joining us in Texarcana.
Paula
Of course.
Joe
What’s going on in the past? at the Afford Anything Show.
Paula
On the Afford Anything podcast, so we uh every we have two episodes a week and on our Tuesday episodes This guy right here, Mr. Joe Sal Sehai, joins me and we answer QA. And so we have a wide variety of questions that we answer. from um covering anything and everything from debt payoff to A lot like today. Yeah, a lot like today. So um if you can find the Afford Anything podcast on your favorite podcast player like If you’ve got Spotify, Pandora, Apple Podcasts. So yeah, if you want to listen to uh to me and Joe answer more QA, um listen, tune in to Afford Anything.
Joe
And to all of you hanging out with us online, whether you’re forwarders, your stackers, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for spending the last hour with this very special episode from Texas AM Texarcana. Doug, you’ve got it from here, man. What should we have learned today?
Doug
So what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today? First, take some advice from Jay, Paula, and Joe. When thinking about financial issues, think how do I simplify the issue? Often The simplest answer is the best. Second, also when asking questions, think what is the question I truly should ask? Often we get a better answer when we challenge our own premise. But the big lesson. Really I narrate this entire episode way up here in the rafters, risking my life, and all you’re giving me for this is three Oreos and a Capri Sun. Seriously, I gotta get an agent. Which one of you students would like to get into show business? Thanks to Jay Davis for joining us today. Looking for a great financial curriculum? Come to Texas AM Texarcana and work with great people like Jay. We’ll include links in our show notes at StackingBentjamins. com. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast afford anything wherever you listen to the finest podcasts. This show is the property of SP Podcast LLC Copyright 2026 and is created by Joe Sal Seahid. You’ll find out about our awesome team at StackingBenjamins. com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube 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.
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