There’s another lawsuit brewing in the world of retirement planning. This time, participants in a 401(k) plan in California are raising concerns about how Qualcomm is handling the money forfeited when employees don’t complete their vesting schedules.
Vesting schedule? What’s that all about?
Today, we’ll break down everything you need to know about vesting schedules, so you can navigate your job benefits with confidence. Whether you’re dealing with a vesting cliff or a staggered vesting schedule, we’ve got you covered. We’ll explain how they work, the taxes involved, how to plan around them, and how to think about any money that isn’t fully yours yet. Plus, for business owners, we’ll discuss how to balance keeping talent with implementing vesting schedules. Get ready for a fun and informative session on one of the trickier aspects of financial planning!
In our TikTok minute, we’re sharing a clip from Fox News where a contributor predicts what will happen to the stock market if Trump is convicted after his recent trial. Spoiler: He was convicted. Let’s see if his prediction came true and how it might impact your money.
We also have a note from a fellow Stacker who thought, “I better call Saul…Sehy & OG.” He’s worried about contributing to a Roth IRA because his income is too high. We’ll discuss strategies like backdoor Roth contributions, Roth 401(k) plans, and some of the tricky rules around Roth IRA conversions that can trip people up.
And of course, we’ll share a fun trivia question from Doug, sit on the back porch, and so much more!
For deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions, check out our newsletter, The 201, at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- 401(k) lawsuits over ‘forfeited’ money got a lifeline (InvestmentNews)
- What are vesting schedules? They can turn your ‘free’ 401(k) match money into ‘pretend’ money if you don’t know.
Our TikTok Minute
Doug’s Trivia
- What was Stacking Benjamins first named?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker David wrote in with a question about converting from a traditional IRA to a Roth.
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] What a filthy job could be worse. How could be raining? [00:00:15] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:29] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And on today’s show, what happens when you leave a job early? Nothing. Well, maybe you’re right, but maybe you’re wrong. Today we’re gonna walk you through the finer points of a quote benefit that’s in the news because of some lawsuits. [00:00:45] OG: Wait, so I can leave without any issues. [00:00:47] OG: Give [00:00:48] Doug: it a shot, man. Let’s see. For our TikTok minute, guessing the direction of the stock market, some prognosticators did exactly that a couple of weeks ago after a big event. We’ll see how right they were. Plus we’ll answer a question from one stacker who thought, you know, I’d better call Saul, see hi and og, and then I’ll share some ne. [00:01:10] Doug: Nostalgic trivia and now two guys who wish they’d looked as good in swim trucks as I do. It’s Joe and oh Ju Jean. [00:01:27] Joe: Well, hey there stacker. Welcome to the, I just threw up in my mouth podcast. I am Joe Saul Sea. Hi. Average Joe Money on Twitter on X, and across the card table from me on this fine day while sitting. To my left is Mr. Doug sitting across the card table is Mr. og. How are you man? [00:01:44] OG: Oh, just as fantastic as always, especially now that Doug let me know that I can leave any time without any issues. [00:01:50] Joe: The vesting schedule is over. He is. He is. He is done. We’re gonna talk about how that stuff all works in just a moment and I can’t wait to get into all that. Before that though, this show is free and. Completely ad free in the second half because our sponsors have agreed, number one, to pay for this so we can continue podcasting. [00:02:11] Joe: But number two, to make sure they give us great stuff. And here’s a couple of them right now. [00:02:18] Doug: I like how you said our sponsors have agreed like we were like, look, you cannot advertise on our show unless you agree to only be in the first half of the show. Because the second half, the second half, that’s for our listeners, but we are holding strong on this point. [00:02:31] Doug: You cannot advertise in the second half State Farm. No matter how bad you want to that, uh, you shall not [00:02:39] Joe: pass. Remember? Uh, that’s right. That’s right. You shall not pass. We got a great show. We got a phenomenal headline that we’re gonna dive into because it is Wild Wednesday here on the show. So as we do every Wednesday, we’re gonna get a little nerdy in our headline segment. [00:02:55] bit: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:03:01] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from Investment News. This is an industry publication for financial professionals, financial planners, financial advisors, nerds, uh, even people in insurance. Yeah. This is written by my kind of nerds, Doug, written by Emile Halas. [00:03:20] Joe: Emile writes 401k lawsuits or forfeited money. Get a Lifeline. Let me ask you this, OG. Let’s say that you order a pizza and you pay ahead of time for the pizza. So the money’s outta your bank account. Yep. That’s what you do. The agreement is the pizza’s going to show up in 30 minutes. The pizza doesn’t show up in 30 minutes. [00:03:43] Joe: The pizza, it turns out, goes to somebody else 10, 10 minutes later, [00:03:48] OG: or it shows up without your taco shells. Oh wait too soon. Pizza and taco shells. I’m just, how many times have you ordered DoorDash? And you’re like, don’t forget the, to the, the, the, the shells. Oh, yeah. And they, and they send you all the great, you know, Tex-Mex food and you don’t have any tortillas. [00:04:05] OG: I want the red pepper. I need the dipping sauce. Ring the bell. When you’re here, please ring doorbell. You’re like, dang, my DoorDash has taken forever. And then you look on the nest cam, and it’s been sitting out on the front porch for 32 minutes. Yeah. [00:04:17] Joe: Yeah. They’re, they’re so attention to detail, but carry on. [00:04:20] Joe: Can we get back to the headline please? But [00:04:22] OG: I digress. [00:04:23] Joe: But in this case, og, the food never came. The food is long gone, and so you get your money back. Right? [00:04:28] OG: One way, shape, or form. [00:04:29] Joe: I would think you’re free to spend that money then on whatever the hell you want. You could order another pizza, you could order tacos. [00:04:35] Joe: You could do whatever you want, right? [00:04:37] Speaker 5: Margaritas? Yeah. [00:04:38] Joe: Yeah. [00:04:39] Speaker 5: Sure. [00:04:39] Joe: Order something else. Where are you [00:04:40] Speaker 5: going with this, Joe? [00:04:41] Joe: Well, on this lawsuit, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Listen to this. A new type of 401k lawsuit recently survived his first big challenge paving the way for others like it. There’s a law firm who’s cranking these out. [00:04:53] Joe: Now, the case alleges that communications company, Qualcomm ran afoul of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which they call, they call it erisa, or ERISA Doug. [00:05:07] Doug: erisa. [00:05:08] Joe: That means we’re gonna pronounce it arisa, then erisa. I’m gonna be the substitute teacher, a Aron a, a arisa. Listen, learned by using forfeited 401k money to pay for company contributions to workers’ accounts rather than offsetting some of the administrative costs at all participants pay. [00:05:26] Joe: Here’s what happened to og. These people left during what’s called a vesting schedule, and we’re gonna get into how vesting schedules work, what exactly they are today. So Qualcomm gets the money back because of the fact that the workers said, Bye-Bye. And they forfeited their right to this. Qualcomm turned around and used that money to fund other workers’ accounts that stayed around longer versus lowering the administrative cost, which they also could have done. [00:05:57] Joe: They could have used that money to, to make the cost of workers lower because of that. Uh, of course. Lawyers filed lawsuits, and surprisingly to many benefit lawyers, this thing might have legs. A benefits court has allowed, at first on May 24th, judge presiding over the case, denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss, which means the plaintiff’s cleared a major hurdle and now this thing is going to, uh, potentially get ugly. [00:06:24] Joe: Other companies that have been sued, hp, Honeywell, Clorox, Mattel, Intuit, and Thermo Fisher Scientific all got sued. Now, I don’t really want to talk about this lawsuit, uh, too much. What I do wanna talk about is, this is all over vesting schedules, right? Investing schedules are a big thing that to you and I, we’ve been around a while. [00:06:44] Joe: We know what a vesting schedule is, but, but let’s go into a vesting schedule because even if you are not working for a company that has one now, you might in the future, and I think it’s important to know how this actually works, [00:06:55] Doug: let me guess, is a vesting schedule, like late September, early October when it’s like. [00:07:00] Doug: Pumpkin spice latte season, and I get to wear the vest that you guys make fun of. [00:07:04] Joe: Yeah, you wore that thing before Labor Day. You’re off the vesting schedule. I like my vest. You get a penalty if that vest occurs in August, mid September. I think’s that [00:07:13] OG: you guys are matching today with your clads. It’s very handsome. [00:07:15] OG: It’s very good. Late Dad of you. [00:07:17] Joe: Oh, one of us didn’t get the memo apparently. [00:07:19] OG: Yeah, [00:07:19] Joe: but og, let’s talk about this. Maybe not the lawsuit, because who knows where the lawsuit’s going, but vesting schedules. What’s this all about? [00:07:26] OG: When you create a retirement plan, or more broadly a compensation plan, you have to balance out. [00:07:33] OG: Think about it from a business owner standpoint. You have to balance out the desire to reward your employees with the desire to make sure that they stick around for a while, you know, and continue, you know, helping grow the organization. If you err too much on one side or the other, then that backfires, right? [00:07:50] OG: If you say, I’m gonna give you all sorts of money today, people are like, sweet. See you later. If you say, I’m gonna give you a whole bunch of money, but not for 25 years, then you don’t attract employees, right? So you have to balance that out. So the way that employers, uh, help or way that they try to do this is through a vesting schedule. [00:08:08] OG: And basically what this means is you are allotted a certain amount of money, whether it’s in shares of stock or bonus or 401k matching or something, but there’s a little asterisk next to it. And the asterisk says You get this in this period of time, in this increment or, or in this increment over a period of time. [00:08:27] OG: So a very common vesting schedule for restricted shares. Let’s say you get paid in stock compensation, part of your bonuses, you know, you work at Microsoft and they say, great job. You did an awesome job. Here’s 200 shares of Microsoft stock. And you think, sweet, that’s 10 grand. I get to sell that today and I’m gonna have 10. [00:08:45] OG: No, no, no, no, no. You get 50 of those shares every year for the next four years. That’s how you earn it. So to speak. And so this happens in retirement plans as well and 401k plans where they say, you know, you get a 5% match on your 401k, let’s say, or a profit sharing, but you don’t earn all of that all at one time. [00:09:05] OG: We’re gonna put it in, it’s your money as long as you are here throughout this length of time that we need you to be here. But if you leave before then, then you give up the right to some of that money. So, so 4 0 1 Ks very common. You see like a five year vesting, different than stock options or something like that, which usually have an amount of it. [00:09:23] OG: Every single year is available, so to speak. A lot of times the 401k plans, you’ll see what’s called cliff vesting, which like literally nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then four years later, boom, you get it all, you know, or you have access to it all at that point. So it’s kind of an all or nothing thing. [00:09:38] OG: You need to be here for four years or five years, or seven years or whatever the vesting time period is versus in the example that I gave before about your, you know, Microsoft stock bonus. You might get a little bit of that. Every year or every quarter or something like that. [00:09:53] Joe: So you’re saying with Cliff vesting, I have a vesting schedule when I begin, but I achieve year number four. [00:09:58] Joe: Vesting schedules out the window. It’s gone. [00:10:00] OG: Yeah. Could mean that, it could mean that for all those contributions from that point forward. It could mean each contribution has its own vesting schedule. So this year’s sits for four years. Next year sits for four years, the year after that sits for four years. [00:10:13] OG: And you can think about it in terms of stock, if you get your RSU bonus today, very common way to give bonuses is to give RSUs that vest quarterly for the next four years. You know, so you get your, your 200 shares of Microsoft stock, you really get 50 a year. You really get 12 and a half shares a quarter. [00:10:32] OG: And what happens is, you know, for the first year you’re getting 12 and a half shares every quarter. Now the second year you get another bonus of another 200. Well, now every quarter you’re getting 25 shares every quarter that are vesting. You know, so you kinda ladders and eventually you have access to a bunch of money every, you know, every quarter. [00:10:50] OG: As you think about your total pay, you look at your, your compensation package. I think it’s important to look at, at that timetable too, because, you know, getting, saying, saying, oh, well we offer a 5% match in your 401k with a seven year vesting schedule. It’s like, well, do I want to lock myself up here for seven years to get this money potentially down the line? [00:11:11] OG: What if I wanna leave in four years? I don’t get any of that extra bonus, that extra match versus taking a lesser amount. But that’s, that’s guaranteed. [00:11:19] Joe: Well, that’s where that cliff comes in, right? You might get part of it, but not all of it. How much do I get if I leave in three years, in five years, in six years? [00:11:25] Joe: It could be lots of [00:11:26] OG: different ways that that’s put together. [00:11:27] Joe: It’s a fantastic question to ask how that cliff actually works, how long it takes. [00:11:32] Doug: I’ve always been a little bit befuddled when I’ve heard people get really upset about the, however the vesting works, whether it’s a cliff or, or something more. [00:11:43] Doug: Um, I. Staged. ’cause I’ve heard people say, that’s my money and that’s just the man trying to stick it to me and keep my money. And the way I’ve looked at it’s a little bit closer to the way you started out with your explanation, og, which is no, your salary is your money. That’s what you’re getting paid, compensated for the work that you’re doing. [00:12:03] Doug: This other stuff is the incentive for that employer to keep the best talent around. It’s still a win-win, but it’s a different mechanism. To retain talent. [00:12:14] Joe: Yeah. I look at it like a baseball player, a football player, some, some professional athlete who has to achieve a certain goal. Yeah. And then they get this additional payout. [00:12:23] Joe: Right. Number [00:12:23] Doug: games played. Yeah. [00:12:25] Joe: Which really is show up for seven years, that number of days. And we’re gonna give you X, like, [00:12:30] Doug: you know, don’t drop your pants on the field over the course of two seasons. [00:12:34] Joe: Have a minimum level of decorum. Right. Try to hold it together. Not throw, what was that Detroit tiger pitcher who just chucked a ball into the stands? [00:12:42] Joe: So they just happened. Set him packing. Oh yeah, he’s toasted. Yeah. How about the, and the guy for the Mariners threw his helmet in the stands. Yeah. And he, he was sent packing. [00:12:50] Doug: Yeah. [00:12:50] Joe: I’m a fan of it. Yeah. Just don’t do that and you can stay employed. I do like the idea, OG, of what Doug’s saying about when you’re doing your budget, when you’re doing your budget and you’re deciding whether to take a job or not. [00:13:01] Joe: Certainly look at the full compensation if you stay long term. But I think he’s got a point there too, which you shouldn’t be budgeting, I think any of that. Instead of money, should you. [00:13:10] OG: I mean, not even if it were cash bonuses, because they’re not guaranteed either. I mean, so you’re negotiating your compensation package with your employer and they say, we’ll give you, you know, a hundred thousand dollars salary and a discretionary 20% bonus. [00:13:25] OG: Well, discretionary means maybe we give it to you or maybe we don’t, you know, now you can work your butt off. And obviously what you wanna do is kind to, to kind of the, the repartee that happens there is hopefully like, well, what specific things do I have to do so that I’m likely to achieve this bonus? [00:13:43] OG: ’cause that’s, you know, I obviously want do that. You don’t want it to leave it to be completely subjective, but by the same token, there’s lots of things you can’t control. Nobody could see covid happening. And a lot of companies went, look, we, we totally want to pay you guys, but we literally don’t have the money. [00:13:58] OG: I know I owe you a bonus from last year. I don’t have the money because, you know, the economy took a crap and everybody stopped coming into our restaurant or whatever. It’s like. I, I, I don’t know. I don’t know what to tell you. I, I’ll make it up to you on the back end, I guess, you know, so you can’t count on that stuff if it’s not part of your regular, I mean, hell, some people’s gotta stop getting to their regular paychecks during that time too. [00:14:20] OG: Right. You know that, which is a whole different thing. But, but when you’re looking at your, at your pay, I think from a budget standpoint and from a, how you’re gonna spend your livelihood, I don’t like counting any sort of bonuses. Even if it’s happened for 10 years in a row. [00:14:33] Joe: Right? Yeah. I think you could still use that as an Doug. [00:14:37] Joe: And people are saying that as a negotiation technique, listen, that’s my money. I think people think they can negotiate that. Here’s the deal with vesting schedules. Vesting schedules are in the plan document. You can negotiate the RSUs, the restricted documents, the number you get. You can negotiate additional compensation. [00:14:55] Joe: You can negotiate all those things. You cannot negotiate the vesting schedule because the company is not allowed to discriminate one employee’s vesting schedule versus another person. So the vesting schedule itself ain’t your money, but they can [00:15:10] OG: discriminate on cash bonuses. So that’s where you negotiate. [00:15:14] Joe: Yes. Yeah. Well, and even if it has a vesting schedule, og, you can negotiate the number of restricted stock units that are going to be subject to the vesting schedule. Sure. Yeah. Or, or just give it to me all at once. [00:15:24] Doug: Yeah. [00:15:25] Joe: Yeah. [00:15:25] Doug: Yeah. And uh, that’s a really important piece of information. I didn’t know that, so thanks for sharing that. [00:15:30] Doug: But no, I’ve just heard people kind of bitching about it around the water cooler, that kind of stuff about, it’s like you’re just looking for something to be grumpy about. Yeah. It’s variable and it is not necessarily part of your compensation for the work you’re doing. It’s an incentive to keep the best talent [00:15:45] OG: around. [00:15:45] OG: It’s really weird because being on the other side of it and just kind of circling back to the lawsuit component of it, when I look on the employer side of our company, 4 0 1 KI see we don’t have a vesting schedule for matches. We do have a vesting schedule for profit sharing, which is above and beyond what we do for our normal matching for our employees. [00:16:04] OG: But it is kinda interesting ’cause there’s the section in there that says, here’s how much has been forfeited by employees. Who have received profit sharing, who haven’t met the vesting schedule, right? And so you put the money in. To your point, Doug, it’s, it is their money, so they get credit for it. It’s invested as per their asset allocation, and it’s gonna grow and do whatever it does over the seven year period. [00:16:22] OG: However, if they leave, we’re gonna take those shares back that they haven’t quote unquote earned, right? But that just goes into one big bucket, a big forfeiture bucket. And literally at the end of the year, the company that that manages, the 401k plan says, what do you wanna do with the cash? You’ve got X number of dollars in there. [00:16:39] OG: Do you want to distribute it out? Do you wanna pay our costs with it? Do you want to use it as profit sharing this year? Kind using your pizza analogy, they’re going, well, this is your money. What, what do you, what do you wanna do with it? Just let it sit there. Sit there and grow. Like there’s all sorts of things I can do with it as it sits there in that forfeiture account, so to speak. [00:16:56] OG: So. I guess maybe I should be using it to lower the fees. [00:17:00] Joe: Why is so, you don’t get to either that or don’t let people listen to this episode. Don’t let your team listen to any of this. [00:17:06] Doug: And I don’t wanna belabor the point, but I, I wasn’t trying to say it, isn’t the employee’s money just that it’s not there to compensate them for the Yeah. [00:17:15] Doug: Task or the, or the value that they’re adding on a daily basis. [00:17:19] Joe: No. Well, I love the point that you shouldn’t budget it and by saying it’s your money. You’re thinking, I got this money budgeted. You know, you’re Clark Griswold and you put the swimming pool in the backyard before you got the money. Oh. And it turns out you got jelly in the month Club [00:17:31] OG: reference. [00:17:31] OG: Yep. [00:17:32] Joe: Not the case at all. Don’t budget that money out until you clear the as gift the keeps on [00:17:35] OG: giving Clark. [00:17:38] Joe: Oh, wait a minute. That’s bad. When we talk about vesting schedules and getting back to this lawsuit, what’s interesting, og to your point, if, if somebody is an entrepreneur and they have some of these systems, they’re like, how do I make sure I don’t, uh, I, I don’t wanna file these lawsuits. [00:17:54] Joe: For most companies, they put what they’re gonna do with the money in the plan document. You don’t have to put it in the plan document according to this piece, but you can say, when somebody forfeits their money, this is what we do as a company with that money. Then obviously then you file the plan document lawsuit gone. [00:18:10] Joe: The bigger thing that they say, and I wanna address this because OG, you brought this up a little earlier. Experts say the best way to get rid of lawsuits like this is eliminate any vesting period in the plan. And that eliminates the issue. Just don’t give ’em [00:18:23] OG: any vesting or any bonuses for that [00:18:25] Joe: matter, which brings back, which you were talking about, the reason investing schedules are here in the first place, and I love the way you made this point, it’s to attract and retain talent. [00:18:36] Joe: Sure, this extra money attracts talent. But og, you said this earlier, that money could just go, bye-Bye. Oh, I’m attaching an extra 30 bucks to this pizza. Okay, guess what? It’s my pizza and my extra money. But if I gotta let the 30 bucks sit there for a while and I can’t touch it, well then it’s, it’s a different thing altogether. [00:18:53] Joe: One thing they do caution people on OG though, is to look at the other side of the vesting schedule, which is if a company offers a vesting schedule, that’s really, really, really long and you’re thinking about taking that job. You have to ask yourself why do they need to handcuff you to them for this long? [00:19:11] Joe: There may be something in the company culture that says, eh, we have to give you these, uh, the, you know, this, uh, this huge amount of money after a long period of time because nobody stays around. [00:19:23] OG: Well, and that’s the balancing act, right? Both as a, as the business owner, you know, the HR team, whatever, how, however big the business is, whether it’s just a, a few employees or a few hundred or tens of thousands, you know, you’re trying to balance that out. [00:19:36] OG: And then on the other side of the equation is the people that are being attracted to these jobs or recruited to these, these positions, like you have to look at it too and go like, well, why is, you know, I’ll just make up, you know, why is Facebook paying me $200,000 to be a software engineer, but Google wants to pay me 500,000? [00:19:53] Speaker 6: Hmm. [00:19:54] OG: I mean, obviously you look at that and go, well, obviously I went the Google job. It’s like, well, why is that Consulting’s another great example, or. Right. You know, investment banking or something, it’s like big law. I might be working 24 7. [00:20:05] Speaker 7: I got this great job. I work at one of the five biggest law firms in the world. [00:20:09] Speaker 7: It’s like, great, how I make $500,000 a year. It’s like, awesome. How old are your kids? Like, oh, I have kids. You know, I just, [00:20:17] Joe: I totally forgot. Wait, but the good news is I never have time to spend that money either. [00:20:22] OG: Yeah. So from an employee standpoint, that’s your job is to sort through that. And sometimes, sometimes you work really hard early on in your career and then kinda let off the gas. [00:20:32] OG: We’ve seen stories of people that have done that successfully and. You know, so [00:20:36] Joe: well, and that gets to the tactical side of this. I love how, you know, you gotta look at these with a skeptical eye. Why are they offering me this? What’s really happening here in this job offer? The second piece of this though, is in your financial plan, let’s say that you have restricted stock units or some form of compensation, which is on a vesting schedule. [00:20:54] Joe: og to Doug’s point, this truly is not your money yet until you stay the x number of years. Maybe partially over time, the vesting becomes better and better and you’re, you’re allowed pieces of it. Do you put that in your financial plan today that yes, I have these, this incentive income coming later, or do I ignore that in the financial plan until that money clears, vesting and I’m ready to go? [00:21:18] OG: Well, I think there, from a planning standpoint, there’s two things that you have to do. Firstly, is you have to keep track of it because every plan has its own schedule. But what’s interesting is that companies create new plans all the time. So, so you might have gotten three years in a row of restricted shares from your company and you go, oh yeah, I know this works. [00:21:35] OG: You get a fourth of it every year for for four years. And now the new document, ’cause they’re in the 2024 plan. ’cause they had to, you know, they’ve made some changes. Right now it’s one 12th of it every month for the next, or one 60th of it for the next five years, right? You get some vesting every month. [00:21:51] OG: You know, they change stuff like that. So if you’ve been at a place that’s been compensating you with something that, that has some sort of vesting, you have to keep track of it. Because what ends up happening is then 10 years from now, you show up in our office and go, I know this is a good thing, but it’s also a bad thing. [00:22:07] OG: I have a million dollars of company stock in these 20 different places. Now I don’t know what to do because I thought that it wasn’t a big deal. The company’s done really well. Now it’s gone up a whole bunch. Now it represents 80% of my net worth, but if I sell it, I pay a bunch of taxes. And I kind of, this, you know, all because I just kind put my head down for 10 years and didn’t, you know, didn’t have a plan in place. [00:22:31] OG: So the first thing is, I think you have to keep track of it so that you know when you have to make those decisions, whether it’s every month, every quarter, every year, here’s what’s available to me. I have to make a decision on what to do with it. The second thing in the plan, I don’t include the cash value in the plan until it is cash in my pocket. [00:22:47] OG: Until bam. It, it lands. I guarantee there’s a bunch of people listening to this show who have had non-qualified options in their company where they were early employee, they had a whole bunch of stock at next to nothing and iPod, but they had a big lockup for six months and by the time their lockup ended, the IPO price was back down to what they’re, it’s like I was worth $10 million and now I’m worth. [00:23:09] OG: $1,000 again. You know, so it’s like, I wouldn’t put that on my balance sheet ’cause it looks kind. Can I [00:23:17] Joe: use though non vested money to apply for loans? Like as, as a, when I do my net worth statement for a bank? [00:23:23] OG: Yeah, you can, it depends on the bank. Depends on how smart they are. Sometimes they just want a personal financial statement and you could just put it on there. [00:23:30] OG: Just be like, you know, I got a million bucks of Nvidia. Who knew? [00:23:33] Joe: Even as you’re answering that though, gee, I’m thinking, but if I need to do that to get the loan, should I be taking that loan anyway? ’cause that might be an over my head. [00:23:41] OG: Well, I mean, it’s funny because you will get statements that will say like, ’cause, ’cause again, back to Doug’s point, this is your money. [00:23:48] OG: It’s, it’s just not yours yet. It’s, it’s yours, but it’s not yours. You know, so you have a statement from your stock brokerage company that says you have, you know, a hundred thousand shares at 10 cents a share and today it’s worth $10 a share. You’re worth a $10 million. Like you, it’ll be on a statement so you can. [00:24:04] OG: Show that to the bank and be like, look, here’s my net worth. Here’s a statement that says I have 10 million of this stock. The problem is, is that it’s not 10 million of liquidity. It’s no different than us counting our homes. I think, you know, it’s like, well, yeah, my house is worth a million bucks, but, but kind of hard to get cash out of it if I need some cash tomorrow. [00:24:23] OG: I mean, it can do it. It’s just not, not super easy to do. It’s not selling off the [00:24:27] Joe: guest bathroom. Gonna be a little difficult. Yeah. One of ’em anyway. [00:24:31] Doug: One [00:24:31] Joe: of, [00:24:32] Doug: one of the, one of the five, especially after I [00:24:33] Joe: get [00:24:34] Doug: done with [00:24:34] Joe: it. Dear. That flex, especially speaking of tacos, uh, I had one more thing I wanted to ask you about OG with this, which is with these vesting schedules, when does it hit my tax return? [00:24:46] Joe: Because I think I gotta plan on that too. Does it hit when I’m awarded or does it hit when the money hits my, if it’s, if it’s gonna hit my account, which means it’s gonna be outside of like my 401k if it’s gonna hit my account, when am I gonna pay tax on that? [00:24:59] Speaker 5: Yes, [00:25:01] Joe: correct. [00:25:03] Speaker 5: Okay. [00:25:05] OG: Yes. You, you will at some point in time, pay taxes on every, this is another great question because every one of these types of products has all different taxation attached to it. [00:25:15] OG: You know, it could be a small private company that has a little deal that they set up that’s not as grand as a Microsoft or something like that, and that’s gonna be taxed a certain way because it benefits the small business owner in a different way than a big publicly traded company would. You can have different types of options. [00:25:32] OG: They all have different vesting schedules, they all have different tax schedules in terms of when you exercise it, they all have expiration dates. That’s another piece of keeping track of, oh yeah, you know, it’s kind of funny. I, not haha, funny, but like, isn’t that ironic, funny, horrible. Well, I mean, again, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have forgotten about 10 years of vesting and then find out that you’ve got a $2 million decision to make. [00:25:54] OG: I. Sometime in the next 45 days. You know, it’s not the end of the world to have that happen, but, but it’s, it is a little interesting ’cause people are freaked out about it, you know, it’s like, well, you know, you could have been doing this for the last 10 years. Yeah, I know. I just forgot about it. I just, I just, I just got this letter from such and such a company. [00:26:10] OG: And then the other part of that, not only the taxation and keeping track of it, but what happens when you leave? A lot of times, depending on your severance, whether it’s like you left because on good terms you left because you took a competitor job, you left ’cause you were fired ’cause you sucked. Like, all of that has different determinations of all the stuff that’s left over that you didn’t have access to yet. [00:26:29] OG: Does it pull it forward? Does it push it out? Do you forfeit it? Do you get some of it? And how long do you have to make a decision on this? We had a client one time who, uh, casually mentioned in a review meeting that they had changed jobs, an executive person, and we’re like, whoa, hold on a second. Didn’t you have a bunch of. [00:26:46] OG: Vested options from your old company. And she said, yeah, you know something, I don’t know. I didn’t really pay attention to it. We looked it up. She had three days left to make the decision on her options, and it was worth a million dollars. Now, not the end of the world, right? Cool. We just found a million bucks and lucky you. [00:27:04] OG: But guess what? That company that she left, they weren’t about to like notify her. They were going, Hey, by the way, we owe you a million dollars as long as you sign this form by March 31st. They didn’t care. That’s not on them to remind you that they, that they owe you money. It’s on you to remember that you have to have the money. [00:27:19] OG: Every one of these, by the way, every single stock award or anything comes with a grant letter. It comes with a, a packet of goodies. We all just go, okay, yeah, whatever, DocuSign, cool. A DocuSign, I’m good. Send me my money. But that DocuSign that you just signed has all the rules in it that’s has all the, all the ins and outs of that particular award. [00:27:41] OG: And, uh, and you should print that off and, and go through it with a fine tooth comb. [00:27:45] Joe: And you know what it, I know they look ominous, they look difficult. But if you just take the paragraph you’re reading right now and try to understand that and go onto the next paragraph, you’re through it before you know it, and it’s not nearly as difficult as, as you, most documents are nearly as difficult as you think it is. [00:28:00] Joe: If you’re like, man, I need all this in writing. You know what? And the 2 0 1, we’re gonna dive into this, uh, tomorrow, all about vesting. Subscribe to the 2 0 1 if you haven’t already. Stack Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 and we will have this in your email inbox, uh, tomorrow. Coming up next our TikTok minute. [00:28:22] Joe: You know, there’s big things that happen all the time, and sometimes those are on the calendar and the talking heads go, Ooh, this is gonna affect the stock market. Let me tell you how we’re gonna talk about just how right one prognosticator was, uh, in just a moment. But before the TikTok minute. We got something even better. [00:28:40] Joe: Doug, right? [00:28:42] Doug: It’s always better than TikTok. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, lots of well-known companies and people have changed their names over the years. Elton John’s birth name is Reginald Kenneth. Dwight MasterCard used to be Master Charge and Helen Hunt. Used to be Helen Gather Stacking. [00:29:00] Doug: Benjamin. Wait a minute, is wait. Nope. There it is. Wait. That was a joke. Anyway, Stacking Benjamins is another world famous entity that’s gone through a name change two actually, and we’re not even running from the Feds. If we were, we’d all have to change our own names, probably rebrand a bit, stop releasing videos and move to a different studio, probably somewhere outside of the US I proposed Bermuda. [00:29:27] Doug: Even if the feds did catch up to us, there’s like a 50 50 chance they’d get sucked up into the Bermuda Triangle. Now that’s a great way to get someone off your tail, but I digress. Just before Stacking Benjamins, this podcast was named Two Guys In Your Money, which is really a better name for an episode of this American Life. [00:29:44] Doug: About that time you were robbed while you were on shore leave. And tj, today’s trivia question is, what was Stacking Benjamins first name? I’ll be back right after I see how much it would cost to move this whole podcast to Bermuda. [00:30:09] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Beach Boy and definitely not wanted for any crimes in Texas. Anyway. Joe’s mob’s, neighbor, Doug, Stacking. Benjamins is undergone as many name changes in 12 years as the average celeb gets facelifts. Today’s trivia question is, what was Stacking? Benjamins first named the answer long, long ago in 2012 to be exact Stacking. [00:30:35] Doug: Benjamins first launched under a much less catchy name. One that I didn’t come up with for the record, the very first name of this podcast was The Worst of the Free Financial Advisor, which sounds like precisely the type of show you tune into right before you commit a federal crime. And now back to O, back to O and Joe, G, God, O, and Joe, G. [00:30:59] Doug: Thank you O and [00:31:00] Joe: Joe G. Yes. Wow. It’s the, the melting pot of this podcast. You’re like, fer. You know, OG people are like, why the hell would you name a podcast that we, we named it that because we knew that podcast was gonna die. We knew we knew nothing about podcasting. We finally wanted to get, how long did we talk about it og like a year before we finally started this show. [00:31:21] OG: Uh, I’ve blocked all those memories [00:31:24] Joe: after speaking with his therapist. He doesn’t want to go back there. It was just another reminder to get started. ’cause if we had anything that we could have done, would’ve started this a year sooner. But little things now that drive me crazy, that are super easy things at the time, I thought were huge roadblocks to actually us beginning this show. [00:31:45] Joe: Hey, time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we shine the light on, well, in this case, a news organization calling a big event og. Do you think, uh, we’re about to hear some, uh, brilliance from this news organization or, uh, some air quotes, brilliance. [00:32:01] Speaker 7: Uh, you know, [00:32:02] OG: it’s TikTok. So I think we’ve, we’ve established where I stand. [00:32:07] Joe: Well, that’s why I didn’t ask you about TikTok. I asked you about the news. Similar. [00:32:13] Doug: If it’s on TikTok, I don’t watch the [00:32:14] Speaker 5: news either. [00:32:16] Doug: Could be the London Times, and if it shows up on TikTok, OGs gonna say it sucks [00:32:20] Speaker 5: it’s trash. [00:32:21] Joe: A couple weeks ago on Fox News, the day after, uh, Donald Trump’s indictment, they predicted, they made a prediction about which way the stock market was gonna go. [00:32:31] Joe: You’re going to hear a different voice near the end. Uh, there’s gonna be a quick cut here, which might be a little difficult, but I think you’ll get it. This is, uh, the day that the decision is coming down about their prediction about the stock market, and then the day after. [00:32:46] Speaker 8: Tomorrow. Very simple. I think markets crash tomorrow if there’s a conviction. [00:32:49] Speaker 8: If there’s a conviction, you think there’ll be a crash. I, I think the markets will do very badly. What you talking about? A thousand point loss in the do i I I [00:32:55] Speaker 9: think we’ll see at least a 2% drop the Dow surge. 575. 5 75 for its best day of 2024. If might, might have done a little differently than that. I, I [00:33:07] Joe: predict a thousand point drop. [00:33:11] Joe: But remember for people going, okay, there’s that way. Remember it was og exactly the opposite. You may go, oh, people cheering Trump’s conviction. Remember afterwards, all the people saying the stock market’s gonna go through the floor, Trump gets elected. Remember what happened then? All those people that took their money outta the stock market, play that again. [00:33:32] OG: You are saying back in 2016 when he was current back in 2016, [00:33:36] Joe: remember the stock market’s gonna be horrible, gotta take all your money out. Stock market raged and here opposite thing happens Trump’s in trouble and stock market rages. [00:33:48] Doug: It’s important to note that we’re not espousing anything having to do with the political parties only the prognostications based on the news. [00:33:58] Doug: I thought I just said that. [00:34:00] Joe: Oh, sorry I didn’t pick it up. That you, that you’ve got it going one way where people said the stock market’s gonna go horrible and it went through the roof and then you get Trump in trouble and the stock market goes through the roof. Yeah. Tru Trump. Savior Trump in trouble. [00:34:15] Joe: It doesn’t matter. Don’t go either way. [00:34:17] Doug: Right. I was just trying to say it without the name Trump in it because it doesn’t matter. Insert whatever news headline you want in any of those things. [00:34:25] Joe: What you, are you saying that the name Donald Trump triggers people? Uh, I’m [00:34:32] Doug: there is, it’s impossible not to have a reaction, positive or negative, I think, these days. [00:34:39] Doug: And I just wanted to point that out, that we are not, we’re not bringing this up because of that. [00:34:43] OG: I did find this really great piece from JP Morgan just to kind of put a little wrapping paper on all the stuff going on right now. A little bow tie maybe. JP Morgan wrote this piece about, uh, uh, election year myths and says, uh, stocks don’t do well in election years. [00:35:04] OG: Well, based on all of their research since 1928, pretty much the same all the way back to 1928 through 2003, 7.5%. Election year is 8% non-election years. So kind of the same markets will crash if so and so wins. I love that. Uh, wait a minute. Boom. And bus in both side of the aisles. Economic who won in [00:35:25] Doug: 1928 because markets did crash right after that election, and we’ll blame it on them. [00:35:31] OG: Says, for instance, in the last presidential election in 2020, was the tides of lockdown, reopening of covid that impacted broad markets the most, rather than the differing ideologies of the two candidates. Or in 2008 when Barack Obama ran against, uh, Senator McCain, the unfolding global financial crisis was a predominant driver, not the opposing candidate views of, uh, healthcare and more. [00:35:53] OG: Uh, myth number three, the Federal Reserve doesn’t change policy in election years. The, uh, the reality is the Fed hasn’t shied away from hiking or cutting. They do whatever the heck they wanna do since the 1950s [00:36:03] Doug: as designed. Right? It’s supposed to be independent of that. It’s supposed to be independent. [00:36:06] OG: 2012, they said, was the only election year that the Fed did not either raise or. Lower rates. [00:36:12] Joe: If you or a loved one needs more on this, we have a great resource for them. Go listen to episode 1435. It was a special episode we did last year about investing in an election year and everything we said then, uh, just piles on to, uh, to OGs, uh, saying right now. [00:36:28] Joe: And I know there’s people gonna get increasingly angry no matter what side you’re on, about where it is. And, oh, my, I gotta move my money. I gotta do. Well, you’re gonna hear from three great minds. Tim Murray from t Rowe Price joins us, Ryan Victorian from Fidelity Investments and Behavioral psychologist Dr. [00:36:45] Joe: Brad Klotz joined us for that special episode to tell you exactly what you should do with your money in an election year. And I think number one, OG is don’t do what Fox News did on this TikTok minute, and guess which way things are going to go. After anything big with either an elected official, whatever it might be, [00:37:05] OG: have a plan, follow the plan [00:37:07] Joe: time for us to shine a light on a stack who said, you know what? [00:37:10] Joe: I better call Saul. See hi and og. And actually, much like on Monday, this person David, decided to write to us. We got a lot of people writing to us lately. And it’s funny because if you write to me, we’re gonna write back and we’re gonna go, Hey, you could hear your voice and get some swag. And what we had both people this week go, I, I I I would rather, uh, I’d rather you read it. [00:37:33] Joe: So David, my question is on IRA conversion to Roth IRA, my income prevents me from opening and funding a Roth IRA outta the gate [00:37:43] Speaker 9: scoreboard. [00:37:46] Joe: Bam. I make so much money that I might have to use Doug’s mom to get this done. It’s just great use in that sentence, by the way. Yes, [00:37:57] Speaker 5: indeed. [00:37:58] Joe: For, for people that don’t know what we’re talking about, we’re actually talking about the fact that the, the phrase mega backdoor Roth, IRA just sounds horrible. [00:38:05] Joe: So we came up with a new name, which is Doug’s mom. I’d like to open an IRA with my Schwab account funding it with about 5,000 bucks. From my savings account, which is already taxed. Then I want to click a button or whatever Schwab process to that IRA to convert it to a Roth ira that you just do a quick click button. [00:38:25] Joe: My question is, will I be taxed for making that conversion? The funds will not be invested in any funds while in the IRA only sit in the account and I plan to fund the IRA on one December, 2024, and then convert it on to December, 2024 or ASAP to prevent any interest earning activity. Follow up question. [00:38:44] Joe: If the above conversion is possible without incurring any additional taxes, would I have to follow this process every year or can I fund the Roth IRA mentioned above every year without Mr. And Mrs IRS having issues with it. Thanks David for that question. og, how does he get this done? [00:39:01] OG: Um, so what we’re talking about here is doing a IRA contribution and then a conversion from an IRA to a Roth. [00:39:09] OG: Those are the two separate transactions that’s happening. If you make too much money. Which obviously, uh, he does, then you don’t get a tax benefit for contributing money to your IRA. So what you’re doing is a non-deductible, IRA contribution. And those are reported by your tax preparer on a form called an 86 0 6 form. [00:39:30] OG: And if you do TurboTax or something like that, sometimes asks you and, um, asked you, you know, how you made the contribution. But basically you’re putting money into your IRA as he talked about, you’ve already been taxed on, it’s in your brokerage account or it’s in your checkbook or whatever. And, uh, you’re not claiming any credit for that. [00:39:46] OG: So that contribution is completely allowable. Now, if you decide to leave it there, you can, and the money will grow tax deferred. It’s an IRA and when you take it out, then you’ll be taxed on the earnings that that money made because you funded it with. Already taxed earnings. The key issue here is that you have to keep track of those dollars that you contributed every year on a separate tax form that you submit every year that says this is how much is in my IRA and by the way, this is how much I put in that I didn’t get a tax benefit on. [00:40:17] OG: So you are responsible for keeping track of your taxation of your IRA money, not anybody else. So to avoid that issue, you can do a conversion. So you put money in the IRA, just like you said. It sits there for however long you want it to sit there, and then you do a conversion. If you, if, if the money has grown at all, so you bought GameStop a week ago and it went up, you know, double, you put in five and it grew to 10 and you convert all 10, then you’re gonna pay taxes on the gain. [00:40:45] OG: If there were no gain or there was no interest, ’cause you did it a day later and there wasn’t any interest, then there’s no taxes due ’cause you didn’t make any money. So there’s no taxes due because the money didn’t grow and now it’s in a Roth. The answer is yes, you have to follow that same process every year because you can’t directly contribute to a Roth unless your income allows you to do that. [00:41:04] OG: Two other points of note, if you’re trying to get money into a Roth and you are not contributing the maximum to your workplace plan, a lot of workplace plans have Roth 401k options now, and I see a lot of people who jump through all these hoops to do backdoor Roth contributions. Doug’s mom who, who tried to do all this stuff and meanwhile they’re not maxing out their 401k and they can do a Roth 401k. [00:41:26] OG: It’s like, well, why just do that? If you’re gonna put 5,000 in your Roth by virtue of like opening an account, then transferring money and then converting and reporting all this on your tax forms and all this stuff, and you’re only putting 10 grand a year on your 401k, just up your 401k contributions by five grand, and tell ’em to put that five grand in the Roth side. [00:41:45] OG: Boom, ba bing. It’s the same outcome. You know, you have the same thing. So just pay attention to that. You might be able to accomplish the same goal here without all these steps. The other thing that you have to be specifically aware of, and this is where most people screw this up, and I would say if there were 10 people who I talk to who say, oh, I’m doing Roth, you know, back to a Roth conversions on my own, I would bet that half of them are not doing it the manner that they think they are. [00:42:14] OG: And that is if you have, IRA money already. So let’s say that you worked at, you know, another company and you had a four one K and you put money into it. Now you rolled it over to an IRA standard operating procedure for many, many people. And you try to do this, you don’t get the tax benefits. In fact, you’ll pay taxes to do this because the IRS looks an aggregate across all of your IRAs to determine the tax base. [00:42:38] OG: All this to say, if you have an IRA. You’re trying to do this, it won’t work the way that you want it to, in which case you have to just not do it or put money in the IRA and not convert it and keep track of the balances forever so that you can, you know, get some tax benefit on the backend. Or like I said, just increase your, your contributions in your 401k if you have the room there to be able to pull it off. [00:43:04] OG: The third option, fourth option, whichever option I’m on, is to make sure your IRA balance is at zero by December 31st. So you could roll it back into an A 401k if your company allows that. There’s a lot of reasons not to do that and a lot of headache to try to do it, but that could work too. So it can be simple or it can be super complicated. [00:43:25] OG: The first thing I’d check it with is, am I maxed out my 401k? And if not, just max out your 401k and just allocate some of those dollars to your Roth 401k. So the [00:43:33] Joe: Roth portion. [00:43:33] OG: Yeah. And yeah, hit the easy button. That is profoundly easier than, than doing it the other way. But it can be done the other way as long as you’re aware of the, the, uh, the issues on the tax issues on the backside. [00:43:45] Joe: Well just notice how long it took you to answer that question, og and you answered it in one sentence. If he does the, the Roth 401k, if you can contribute comma, contribute to the Roth 401k and that takes care of it done, or take the other many, many sentences in purpose. Yes. Or do all these other things [00:44:02] OG: and pay attention to all these other tax rules and so and so forth. [00:44:06] Joe: And, and that is purely David because the Roth 401k doesn’t have that income exemption. You don’t have that ceiling that you have with the Roth IRA. So the way to get money into a Roth is hopefully you have it available at work. Otherwise, og um, nailed it for you. If you’ve got a question [00:44:24] OG: for us. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. [00:44:26] Joe: And [00:44:27] OG: I have a parenthetical. A post script as it were. The, um, the new tax law. What was that called? Anybody remember? Secure 2.0? Sure. Well, let’s go with it. I don’t remember if it was that one or not, but anyways, that was one of ’em. That was a [00:44:43] Joe: big one. [00:44:44] OG: Yeah. Yeah. This way better than Secure 1.0, that’s for sure. [00:44:48] OG: Starting soon if it, I think it starts next year, 2025 maybe if you do extra contributions in your 401k, so you do catchup contributions in your 401k. So you’re, you know, you’ve done the 23,000, you’re over 50 and now you’re gonna do the, another 7,500 and you make a certain dollar amount. They’re gonna mandate that they’ll, that that extra 7,500 goes in the Roth side. [00:45:12] OG: Oh. Oh. Ooh. Which is bonus, good and bad, but like, think about it. So who are the people that are doing 30 K or 31 K in their form? High income earners, right? Sure, yeah. And so the government’s going like, look, you guys can’t defer all your income to all eternity. Fine defer the 23 K. But if you’re gonna do the extra that’s supposedly just for rich people, then we’re gonna make you do it on the Roth side of it. [00:45:37] OG: So you have to pay taxes on that. Uh, there, it’s, that’s the gimme. I gotcha. But that might be another way too, right? So if you’re over 50 and you’re going, Hey, I might do this, and you’re not doing the catchup, just do the ketchup and put it in the four, the Roth side of the 401k, there’s another 7,500 bucks. [00:45:51] OG: You, you can do a lot of stuff. I mean, with $30,000. Think about it. I mean that’s, and I’ll give you one more. And your spouse, by the way. Now this is a little trickier because you know, you gotta actually like your spouse and plan on, you know, doing a financial plan with them for the rest of your life. But a lot of times we see people who do this too. [00:46:08] OG: No, I mean, seriously, we see people who are like trying to like optimize this whole thing and it’s like meanwhile their spouse is putting 3% in their four one K. It’s like, what the heck? Just jack up their 401k contributions over there, it comes outta your paycheck. It’s super easy. You know, it’s kind of all our money, you know, unless that’s not how you do it, which is okay, right. [00:46:24] OG: If you’re, you know, doing his, you know, if you’re keeping things separate, that’s fine, but, but if you’re just change the [00:46:28] Joe: way you do payroll if possible. [00:46:30] OG: Yeah. Yeah. It’s all this, I mean, if you’re in the quote traditional way, you know, or everything goes into joint count and pay the bills, whatever, you know, you’re working on your plan together with your partner, then treat it all that way. [00:46:42] OG: You do that with insurance, right? It’s, it’s funny because. I just saw Doug. Si. But, but we do that with that, right? It’s like, you know, you evaluate your spouses, you evaluate yours, you go, okay, I think yours is better than mine, so we’re gonna take yours and we’re gonna decline mine, or mine’s gonna be, you know what I mean? [00:46:56] OG: Like we do that with that, but we don’t do that with the other benefits necessarily. So do the other benefits like that, like your 401k. I could go on and on. There it is, David. Cut the cord chatty kathy [00:47:09] Joe: stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. If you have a question for us, we send you some swag for being brave or feel free like David did today, or on Monday. Lori did to send us an email. Uh, there’s a contact form on the website at Stacking Benjamins where our show notes are, where we go into details with all of our links. [00:47:27] Joe: Or just shoot me an email, joe at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This brings us to the part of the show where you, you know, we haven’t done in a while, guys, we haven’t talked about what’s going on in our lives. And Doug as we record this, you and I got a, uh, some text from OG about a recent family outing that the OG family made. [00:47:48] Doug: Oh yeah. He was all in. I want to, I think everybody needs to hear about this ’cause you couldn’t get enough of the upper deck. Seating that you had? [00:47:57] OG: It was an upper decker. All right. [00:47:58] Joe: This is like sitting at the back of the plane for if OG C’S row 31 on his ticket. He’s like, yeah, not doing that. Just don’t [00:48:05] Speaker 5: go. [00:48:07] Speaker 5: I’m good. [00:48:08] Joe: And yet you went your family, you went to the Rangers game. Have you been to that stadium before? [00:48:13] OG: No, I have not. [00:48:14] Joe: What did you think of the stadium? [00:48:17] OG: I thought it was a lot of stairs to wear. Our seats were, I [00:48:20] Doug: was gonna say he still doesn’t know Joe because he just dropped his family off with the, with the peasants and went to the bar somewhere else in the stadium. [00:48:28] Doug: He has no idea what it looks like in there. We [00:48:30] Joe: got a photo of OG watching the game. From a screen? Yeah, from a screen. [00:48:34] OG: Here’s the thing, I don’t like sitting up high because I feel like I’m gonna tumble off the stadium. Like, like when? When my knees are the same height as the person, the row in front of me’s head, like that’s too steep. [00:48:47] OG: You get some vertigo, you’re a feared. Well, I mean, it’s weird ’cause I fly, I don’t care about flying, but for some reason. But, um, yeah, so it’s just not, it’s not super comfy. Like [00:48:56] Joe: I seriously og I get some vertigo in that situation. I get a little bit, I mean, I get over it. I’m okay. [00:49:01] OG: But yeah, I thought drinking a lot of beer would help. [00:49:03] OG: It did not, by the way, opposite effect. [00:49:06] Doug: I thought that would increase my stability and my sense of balance. I was gonna say, that might make it even [00:49:10] Joe: worse. [00:49:11] Doug: Why didn’t [00:49:11] Joe: it [00:49:12] OG: work? I was like, wait a second. This, this was a bad idea. I better just sit here. [00:49:15] Joe: Welcome to the Channel four news in today’s, uh, today’s news headline. [00:49:19] Joe: A uh, who knew somebody [00:49:20] OG: could do a gainer off the top deck. [00:49:22] Joe: Super drunk guy off the top deck. [00:49:24] OG: The deceiving thing was, so it was a part of an alumni group thing that we got tickets for and, and it was like, oh, it’s in section 2 0 2. We’re like, all right, that’ll be fine. Two, it’s not 3 0 2 or 6 0 2. I mean, and you’ve been to the Cowboys, Joe, you know, that like the three hundreds are like, you know, a but then you go four or fives and sixes and you’re like, you might as well be like, clipped in and like. [00:49:44] OG: You know, like the mission, the possible guy, like looking at it from above. I mean, you’re, you’re basically staring straight down to the field. So [00:49:50] Speaker 7: I’m [00:49:50] OG: like, all right, 200 will be fine. We get up there, no joke. If you look laterally, those are the lights of the stadium. So we were, we were at the same level as the jumbotron. [00:50:00] OG: It’s just how it was set up. I’ve never been there before. So I was like, yeah, no, I’m not sitting there. My kids were like, you’re such a baby. Like, yeah, well it is what it is. So I just sat there and they [00:50:10] Joe: got on the jumbotron, they got on the screen, they were on the jumbotron. [00:50:12] OG: What was funny was, um, so we have a family friend whose son plays for one of these teams that we were at. [00:50:18] OG: So they were there too, because, you know, it was kind of a big deal. And my kids were texting and, you know, so, so anyway, they texted, they go, Hey, why don’t you guys just come down here? ’cause we’re, we’re just all by ourselves in this row. We’re in section 1 0 5, you know, good seats. There’s two rows of empty in front of us, two rows of empty behind. [00:50:36] OG: There’s no one around us. You can come sit. We’re like, all right, cool. So go down there, plop down. We’re like, Hey guys, how’s it going? They’re, you know, everybody’s kinda high fiving whatever. This guy comes up and goes, uh, can I see your tickets, please? I’m like, excuse me? He goes, I need your tickets. Like you’re joking. [00:50:50] OG: Right. The stadium’s half empty. He’s like, gotta have tickets for these seats. Like, you have too much power, buddy. Yeah. And he’s like, wow. Gotta get outta here. I thought about fighting him ’cause I had just about as enough beer to do that [00:51:05] Doug: and vodka, liquid courage. [00:51:08] OG: I had, oh, I would’ve, I would’ve won. But it would’ve, it wasn’t winning or losing. [00:51:13] OG: It was like all the other dominoes that I was thinking about were happening. It’s like, yeah. It’s always a good [00:51:17] Joe: look. The father of a family of five. [00:51:19] OG: Well that’s, that’s what I was thinking. I did, I wasn’t quick-witted enough. Mostly because I, you know, had a couple pops, but, but I wasn’t quick-witted enough to be like, yeah, we’re the big troublemakers here with the 8-year-old girl. [00:51:28] OG: Right. Who dressed to the nines in the Texas gear in her little softball. mit Yeah. We’re the, you know, don’t let us sit by our friends, but it would put a. Pretty sour taste in my mouth. But, um, that could have been the limes from the vodka. What, whatever it was. One of those things was, uh, and then, and then the Rangers lost, which was equally crappy. [00:51:47] OG: But, um, was [00:51:48] Doug: the family friend, was that family? Jake Rogers family? [00:51:52] Speaker 7: No. [00:51:53] Doug: So the Tigers catcher, Jake Rogers is from Texas, apparently a some town not that far, apparently from where the stadium is. And he had two home runs. He was the Tiger’s entire offense. [00:52:05] OG: Yeah, I saw him and we ended up winning on tv. Um, no, it wasn’t him. [00:52:09] OG: It was, um, somebody else. Okay. [00:52:11] Doug: Yeah. [00:52:11] OG: So it’s home on tv. I just, I just don’t get that. Like, is that a, I would understand in a very full stadium, like full, full, big playoff game, right? Like, I need tickets, right? Yeah, dude, there’s like literally, if you’re displacing other people, the entire right field, seriously, if you watch the game from the first two rows of right field against the fence. [00:52:34] OG: You think about the foul poll, like just inside, like home run territory? Yeah. There was nobody in the first two rows. Then there was like a couple people in row three and four and then like the whole, that whole corner section. There wasn’t a soul. And I’m thinking if I was the guy who was running the Rangers or any baseball or any team at all, this is why the Cowboys have their team on the opposite side of the field because Jerry Jones thinks like a marketer. [00:52:55] OG: And what does he want? He doesn’t want the back of his team. ’cause you think about the, the, the angle of the camera, the home team is always on the home side, right? When you’re watching your football game, the Cowboys are opposite. He wants their faces, he wants the big star, he wants all of that stuff to be on tv, not the visitors. [00:53:13] OG: You’re at my place. I want, I wanna be on tv. And so it’s backwards. And so I’m thinking like if I was, if I was the owner of the Rangers and I got like a half empty stadium on a Monday. A Monday, seven o’clock game, I’d be like, yeah, fill up the bottom row. Get these guys some good experience. Let ’em have a good time so that they wanna come back. [00:53:31] OG: Yeah. They talk to their friends about it. Oh dude, we had these, you know, we came, yeah, we had these noses. We came down, it was okay. It was cool. We had a good time. And when you pan the crowd, it’s a full, it looks full, right? Yeah. You’ve seen the, like the freaking Oakland A’s when they pan, there’s like the one dude, oh, Earl Go team. [00:53:49] OG: You know, it’s like, that looks like crap. Like it’s a good thing. So when he, we hit the home runs, he hit the set where, where all three home runs were hit. Actually all three home runs were hit to the same section. And that was relatively full. If it would’ve been the other side, if they would’ve hit, you know, home runs on the exact same, but just like opposite side field, it would’ve been like the balls would’ve landed and bounced around. [00:54:07] OG: There would’ve been any, would’ve been like, oh wow. Hey baseball. I don’t know. I didn’t get it. It was stupid. I’m sure there’s some sort of, pardon the expression from last week, Karen reason why the guy was all. [00:54:19] Joe: Well, I feel the same way with these airplanes. It was amazing. There was a flight recently that I was getting on and we wanted to take a different flight, and they’re like, oh yeah, this plane is nearly empty. [00:54:28] Joe: Yeah, yeah. Feel free to change flights like we got to the airport. Literally they’re like, oh, we have ongoing sooner than your flight. If I tried that with American Airlines, here be a huge, huge fee. Be a huge fee. It just drives me crazy. Like the quick money grab when this other airline was like, um, uh, no. [00:54:44] Joe: We’ll, we’ll make it happen. [00:54:46] OG: Yeah. And I would also get it, like, if you’re going to the, you know, if there’s, there’s a bunch of families and here come the, the, you know, the frat boys, you know, they’ve been there since five in the afternoon, you know, you know, hooting and hollering, having, you know, whatever. [00:55:00] OG: Getting all crazy. Be like, all right, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta shelter this section. These are my, these are my people, people here in this section are my people. I gotta protect ’em a little bit. [00:55:08] Joe: It’s like, well, and then it becomes the eye roll, right, of, okay, well you let them do it. You’re not letting them do it. [00:55:12] Joe: You’re starting to draw lines around who can do it and who can’t do it. Who do we let in? Who did not let in? And then you’re, yeah. I don’t know. Just, I know. No, I get, yeah, [00:55:19] OG: fifth inning, right? One, one ball game in a half empty stadium. Like, it’s not like we like, we’re like, oh, cool, five seats. We’ll take the, we’ll just jump in. [00:55:28] OG: There’s like two rows on either side, like, get your together rangers, come on. [00:55:32] Joe: We went to visit Pittsburgh and we were on a, a college trip with our kids to Carnegie Mellon, and of course wanted to see that park because everybody talks about how that Pittsburgh Baseball Park is beautiful Doug. Have you been there? [00:55:45] Doug: No, I’ve never been inside of it. And that is a bucket list. I’ve been on the [00:55:47] Joe: field and is You’ve been on the field OG in Pittsburgh. Oh, wow. Is it it, I mean, it’s just gorgeous. The bridges in the background look like they’re staged. [00:55:54] Doug: Yeah, they’re the report. The Roberto Clemente Bridge is just amazing position. [00:55:58] Joe: When we went up to get into the park, by the way, uh, Cheryl handsome, our tickets we had at that point, this is a long time ago, printed them off and the dude takes his little gun and it, it’s supposed to make a beep. It goes, rp like makes the wrong noise. And he’s like, oh, that’s weird. Tries again. Merp takes the second ticket and Merp, and then he is like, gimme all the tickets. [00:56:17] Joe: So we hand ’em all of them and none of ’em are working. And then he looks at the tickets, hands ’em back to Cheryl and goes, these are for yesterday’s game. We had totally planned this two months earlier changed around the day of our tour. So then we go, and luckily it’s a Pittsburgh pirate, so there were plenty of tickets available. [00:56:36] OG: You’re like, that’s okay, I’ll just, how much are these I $18 [00:56:41] Doug: for all of them. [00:56:42] Joe: It’s robbery. We end up with these tickets in the first deck, uh, between home plate and first base for not a ton of money, but they’re getting killed. I mean, the Pittsburgh Pirates are just getting smoked and now we’ve paid, you know, for the game yesterday that we didn’t attend and the game today that we’re at. [00:56:57] Joe: And I’m just thinking about, okay, and I’m seeing a rotten game. But then I look around at about that fifth inning og it is clearly a blowout. Your game you went to wasn’t a blowout. This game was a blowout. Every bit is boring. As a blowout, the Chicago Cubs given it to ’em, by the way. That’s how bad it was. [00:57:14] Joe: So all these people are coming down and they’re sitting around us. And we’re like, why are more and more so we thought people were doing what you’re talking about, right? That they’re just, okay, we’re at the stadium. Let’s come down for the upper deck and let’s, let’s, let’s sit down here for a little bit, get a better experience. [00:57:27] Joe: So the first several people do it, and I’m not paying attention, but I look at the lower deck and it is filling in and I finally asked these people behind us. I’m like, I’m like, what are you, why are you coming down? Like, this game is, I like in the eighth inning. Why the game’s like nine to zero? What? Why are you doing this? [00:57:43] Joe: And they go, oh, the concert. Well, well what are you talking about? Train had a free concert after the game that we ended up at. So Cheryl and I decided that we would call the fact we paid double like the train surcharge. That was our, that was our surcharge to get the, they should have paid [00:57:59] OG: you. [00:58:00] Joe: W why, why you don’t like Trane? [00:58:03] Joe: I dunno. [00:58:04] Speaker 5: I dunno. I dunno who they are. [00:58:06] Joe: Train [00:58:07] Doug: Meet Virginia. [00:58:09] Speaker 5: Sorry. [00:58:09] Doug: No, true. Fans of the show are gonna know. You just hold this story, Joe, like in the last six months you’ve told this story on the show. And instead of OG being the one who harshed on train, I was the one who harshed on train. [00:58:24] OG: That’s awesome. [00:58:25] Doug: Did I tell you what? My train experience, I wanted this to go all the way through and God og you couldn’t have done it any better. That’s funny. I didn’t even, didn’t even message you about He doesn’t even remember. OG doesn’t [00:58:35] Speaker 9: remember. [00:58:35] Joe: Who knows? He doesn’t [00:58:36] Doug: listen. Yeah. I’ll blur you in. I’ll tell you what I do [00:58:37] Joe: remember. [00:58:38] Joe: I remember it says here on my thing. Uh, Doug, what were we, uh, supposed to take away from today’s episode? [00:58:47] Doug: Uh, first Joe train sucks. [00:58:52] Doug: Those are fighting words. No. Here’s what we’re supposed to have learned today. First, thinking about leaving your job and taking a seat with a new employer. Look at the benefits carefully and examine vesting schedules. You learn some clues about your future employer and find out leaving may be way more costly than you’d thought with just a smidge of research. [00:59:14] Doug: Second, take some advice from our TikTok minute. Don’t guess on which way the stock market is going to go next. Stick to your plan. So, what’s the biggest to do? I gotta do a couple of low level crimes to see if it affects my stocks at all. Just for, you know, research purposes. Just, just researching. No, too far. [00:59:34] Doug: Okay. [00:59:38] Doug: This show is the property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul Sea High. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:59:58] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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