From Burnout to Fully Charged: Building Energy To Create Wealth SB1411

You have one money-making engine that’s greater than all the rest: you. Many of us duct tape our health, popping pills for symptoms and covering up the root causes of our energy depletion. Burnout shows itself in a myriad of ways, and today, Dr. Neha Sangwan dives into the clues that you might just be burning the candle at both ends. We talk about the stages of burnout, the horrible ways we neglect ourselves, and how to write a prescription for a better bill of health that will help us not only avoid future burnout, but thrive!

In our headline segment, a recent Wall Street Journal piece purports to list where you should put your money now that interest rates are higher. Does it matter that rates are higher? Have your goals changed? We just might have an issue with this premise… something that you (ahem) rarely hear from us.

Plus, Doug provides another dose of his incredible trivia. You can never get burnout from that!

Enjoy!

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

Our Headlines

• Where to Put Your Cash Now for Every Income Level (Wall Street Journal)

Dr. Neha Sangwan

Big thanks to Dr. Neha Sangwan for joining us today. To learn more about Dr. Sangwan, visit intuitiveintelligenceinc.com. Grab yourself a copy of the book Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life.

Watch On Our YouTube Channel:

Doug’s Trivia

• Which is more likely to catch fire, an electric or a gas powered vehicle?

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• Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).

Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday for a special roundtable episode where we learn how to achieve long term success while living a rich life with investor and author, Certified Financial Planner Eric Brotman.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Surprise! I’ve Achieved Financial Independence (plus young entrepreneurs LIVE from Camp FI) SB1410

Episode transcript

 Can you fly this plane and land it?

Shirley, you can’t be serious.

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan, are you feeling burnt out today? We’ll cure what ails you and give you the tools to regain your serenity with internal medicine doctor and engineer Dr. Neha Sangu. In our headlines, the Wall Street Journal says it’s time to put more money in cash. We’ll have thoughts. Plus, we’ll throw out the Haven Lifeline to a lucky stacker, and I’ll share some, hmm, uh, how do I put this, uh, TRULY INCREDIBLE TRIVIA.

That’s how I’ll put it. And now, two guys who’ve got the money. The most gas on this show, it’s Joe and oh

Serenity. Now

it depends, Doug, on how much ice cream I’ve had completely. It depends. Lactose

intolerant you are

maybe slightly talks about an every week. Welcome to the Pull My Finger Podcast. I’m Joe Saul Sehy. Average Joe Money on Twitter. And happy Wednesday to all of you. And happy Wednesday also to the man sitting across the card table from me today.

Mr. OG is here with

Doug and I. Just a continuation from the end of Monday into today.

Oh boy. Oh yes, yes. Hopefully not as painful as that was for all parties involved. We’ve got a great show today, uh, as Doug so eloquently said. We’re going to solve your burnout problem today, OG. Fixed it. I know how. Just gonna do it.

Nope. Fix it today. You go through these, uh, I go through these patterns where sometimes I’m like, Oh man, I just don’t want to do frankly anything. And then other times when I’m all excited. I’ve been talking about this interview that’s coming up today. To my friends for the past two weeks, when I read this book and heard Dr.

Neha on other interviews, it was absolutely fantastic. So we got that OG. We also have a great headline, but before that, I think you and I need to talk about, um, are you doing fantasy football? You know, I do. Yeah, me either. Well, let’s talk to Doug about his lineup for this week. Hold on. And then, you know,

I was thinking about sitting, uh, golf, but now I’m not so sure.

I’m not so sure if I should sit golf

or not. I don’t think you can hold on. I got a better idea. Okay. And that trade means you’re going to win the entire league. Thank God I

got that tip here on the show.

You’re welcome. We got Doug, his fantasy football lineup. We’re getting you your cure to burnout. So let’s get moving.

Hello, darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking Benjamins headlines.

Our headline today comes to us from The Wall Street Journal. You’re going to love this one, OG. Oyin Adedoyin wrote this, Where to put your cash now for every income level. This sub headline, rising rates may mean it’s time to put more money in savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and treasury bills, no matter your income.

So when interest rates go up, does that mean that no matter how much money you make, that it’s time to put more money in savings accounts, CDs, and treasury bills? Your

income goes up. I don’t, I don’t, I disagree with the premise. Why would it be related to your income?

Well, this whole thing that when interest rates go up, everybody’s like, Ooh, okay, I need to go there.

I believe headlines like this. And we do a lot of, a lot of headlines to the wall street journal OG that I don’t disagree with. But this one where we’re just going to move our money around. kind of chasing whatever the hot thing is today, which happens to be interest rates. Not loving that.

Well, I mean, if there’s anything that’s easy to do, it is easy to move your cash from one place to another.

And if you have to move something, if you feel like itchy fingers and you need to do something, I guess, I guess it’s probably best to move from one bank to another or one. It’ll do less damage. Yeah. Then trading your

stock portfolio. Don’t move your money out of the stock market. If it’s long term into cash accounts, just because you can get a guaranteed 4.

5. Oh yeah, no, no, no, this is optimizing your cash return, not getting a guaranteed return because the market went down for two months.

I’m glad you said that because what truly for people that were confused by my consternation with this title, oh gee, my consternation is just around the word more. We should move more money, meaning, hey, take it away from these other places and put it in cash instead.

And immediately my head went, Oh God, no, start with your longterm goal. put the money in things that reach it long term cash will never help you reach your long term goal. It won’t. Well, I mean, cash

rates have to be lower than market rates because they’re guaranteed. So the more, the more guaranteed your outcome is, the less return you’re going to get.

And the longer it’s going to take for that money to double. And the longer that it takes for that money to double or grow, uh, the worse off you are for, for a longterm standpoint. Now, if you’re looking at using the money in the near term, you’ve got a project in a year from now, you’re going to buy a house in six months from now.

You know, kids starts college in two years from now. That’s a great place for cash. That’s perfect. And how lucky are you that interest rates are high enough right now that it actually is meaningful, you know, 25, 50 grand sitting in a savings account. You know, if you’re earning four or five percent, that’s, you know, that’s some pretty decent golf equipment, you know, that’s a vacation.

Oh, yeah. We’re talking some real cash now, which is really for the first time in 20 years something that is worth looking at. But if you’re looking at your retirement plan and you’re saying, oh, well in July and August and first part of September here, the market’s gone down, I, I, I I don’t like that. I’m going to take money out of my stock account and put it in cash.

You’re, you’re going to miss out in the long

run. I’m glad you brought that up because there is a positive side of this. Uh, I like what the place OEM begins this piece, stop dwelling on what you’ve lost. Thanks to rising interest rates and take advantage of the opportunities. They present rising interest rates.

OG to that point are a double edged sword. If you are in debt, rising interest rates are absolutely horrible. But if you’re a saver, if you can put yourself on the other side of that equation. And now you’re the person people want to borrow money from. Now, this is a, this is a boon for you. Like higher interest rates creates a big, big difference between debtors and savers.

And a day like today is a day that you want to be on the saving side of

the equation. If you can help it. Absolutely. I mean, it doesn’t matter what the interest rate is. You don’t want to have consumer debt anyway. You know, people, people say, well, you know, I got this at 0 percent or something. It’s, it’s such a slippery slope.

You’re trying to time out the interest payments, you’re trying to time out the actual payments so you don’t have to pay interest. It’s such a hard thing to do right all the time. Eventually, you’re going to mess it up by missing a day or missing a month or something bad’s going to happen and all of your lifetime of zero percents are going to go away.

But if now you’ve got consumer debt, the interest rates are destroying you. If you’ve got consumer debt and cash, you’re a fool if you have cash. You need to pay off all of your consumer debt.

And it is interesting because the wall street journal goes through, you know, what your different situation is in level one is if you’ve got nothing to spare, Oh, Ian writes living paycheck to paychecks.

Now the norm for most Americans, financial advisors urge those holding large amounts of debt to first pay down high interest balances. About half of people carrying credit card debt. Allow those balances to roll over into the next month, according to a recent bank rate survey. Credit card interest rates are at record highs, making that debt even more expensive to maintain.

Putting money in a savings account with a 4. 5 percent rate will help little if you haven’t paid down your visa balance that has a current average rate of 22. 16. Exactly, OG, I think what you’re referring to. I

mean, if you think about it, a 22 percent interest rate, and the average credit card balance in America right now is…

I don’t know, 000, something like that. 22 percent of that, say 20 percent of 8, 000, 1, 600 bucks a year. That 8, 000 in your savings account, if you get 5%, you’re getting 400. So you’re upside down 1, 200 a year by having money in your savings account.

They say if you’re living paycheck to paycheck that you should have some money that’s in an emergency fund.

Rob Williams though at uh, managing director of financial planning and wealth management at Charles Schwab said try not to keep more than one month’s worth of expenses sitting in a checking account. Research shows money sitting in checking accounts more likely to be spent than money in a savings account.

Move your emergency fund over to a savings, get a little bit higher rate. Level two for people with zero to a thousand dollars, For those who can sock away at least a little bit every month, even putting 25 in a high yield account can make a difference. Says, Mitchell, if you contribute 25 a month to a savings account earning 4.

5%, you’ll have roughly 300 in a year, including interest. What’s funny is, what I like about that

Wait a second, did he just say, did he just say 25 a month for the, for 12 months? And I’m glad You roughly have 300? Yes, you have 300. That’s the 25 times 12. And then the interest is a whopping other 8, or whatever it

is.

Right! What I love about that statement though, O. G., think about that, is that people with no money in savings, it doesn’t matter if you evaluate the difference between 0. 1 and 4. 5%, you still are going to have roughly, just do the work to get more money saved so that this 4. 5 percent actually makes

a difference.

Yeah, no, that’s a good observation. You know, we get, we get wrapped up in these, in, in all of these decisions to optimize things. And meanwhile, we’re not saving enough money to begin with.

And then level three, if you’ve got a thousand dollars plus that you can save, once you’re comfortable with your emergency savings, you can set aside money for holiday gifts, vacations, other short term goals, like a down payment on a car.

I frankly would. Put the extra money though, put the extra money in cash, put enough to get your emergency savings going. And let’s make sure those long term goals are good. The thing I don’t like about this piece is we’re focusing on the short term, not the long term, which by the way, that’s level four investing for, for the long term they put after all of these, after all these goals, I think we wait too long to do that.

I’ll, I’ll link to this and our show notes at stackybenjamins. com. I will also. Make sure that, uh, Kevin dives more into strategies toward your long term goals and cash strategies in our newsletter, the 201 tomorrow. Today’s show is the 101. Tomorrow we give you the 201 with a bunch of curated links to take you to the experts who have even more to say on this, help you get your cash reserves where they should be.

StackyBenjamins. com slash 201 for our free newsletter that comes out twice a week. Coming up next, uh, Dr. Neha Sanguin is, uh, just a force of nature. She is not only a medical doctor, but she is also an engineer. She’s got all the above going. Even more than that, she addresses the root causes of stress, miscommunication and interpersonal conflict, and she can help people heal chronic conditions like headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and burnout by going to the root cause.

Her, uh, TEDx talks have been some of the biggest on the TED stage, and we’ve got her here coming to the basement. She’s, but before that,

wait, wait. She’s a, she’s a medical doctor and an engineer. an engineer. She does, she like found orphanages and launch rockets too, when she’s bored.

I know. I gotta ask her about that.

When she, when she comes down. Uh, clearly sounds lazy. Clearly knows her stuff. I know, right? What does she do in her spare time? Oh, and I publish books. Well, and the sad news is Doug, and I’ll definitely ask her about this. I know doing my research, she knows about burnout because of all that, because she did so much stuff that she experienced this huge burnout.

This is a personal crusade of hers now for that very reason. But I know Doug, a personal crusade of yours is getting us some good trivia. So bring it,

man. Absolutely, it is. And for those of you who haven’t been listening for the last 1400 episodes, I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. You know, lately, Joe’s been telling me I seem a little burned out.

You know, I think he’s just jealous of my work ethic. I run a well oiled machine. Look, I get a solid 3 to 5 hours of sleep a night. I start my day with 6 cups of coffee and a couple more in the afternoon. I go to the doctor a couple times a week and… What was that other thing I was… There’s something else I…

Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway, it’ll come to me later. Anyway, I saw someone do a really cool burnout in a Chevette in our cul de sac the other day. Man, you should have seen the smoke! Oh, hold on, wait, it was a Chevette, so was that from the tires or the engine? Well, either way, I bet that guy really impressed Joe’s mom.

Kind of reminded me of this one time I saw a car go up in flames. It was the craziest thing. One minute, there was like a tiny little fire. The next, the whole car was engulfed. It was like a scene out of the… Fast and Furious franchise. Today’s trivia question is, which is more likely to catch on fire? An electric or a gas powered vehicle?

I’ll be right back with the answer after I show Joe’s mom how I can do burnouts on the riding lawnmower.

Hey there stackers, I’m lawnmower stunt driver and car crash scene fanatic, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Cars have been known to catch fire from time to time and electric vehicles are no exception. In fact, EV batteries burn nearly twice as hot and are harder to extinguish than gas powered vehicles batteries.

But today’s trivia question was, which is more likely to catch fire? An electric or a gas powered vehicle? The answer? Gas powered vehicles! Although EV fires get a lot of press, gas powered vehicles are nearly 20 times more likely to catch fire in the first place. And now, here to help extinguish your personal burnout, see what I did there, and reconnect with your inner peace, it’s Dr.

Neha Sangwan.

And I’m super happy we finally have her here at the card table, Dr. Neha is here, how are you?

So good. So good to be with you.

Well, I’m super happy you’re here and I never realized just all the stages of burnout. And I want to get into that. But first I was listening to your podcast recently and I was at first amazed because you have a background, not just as a medical doctor, but before that as an engineer too.

But I love when you say, don’t be too impressed because that just means that I’m a good Indian daughter.

Yeah, it’s the truth.

Why do you go back to school to get your MD after you’re already an engineer? How did that happen?

Well, I think for several reasons, first of all, I was quite a people pleaser growing up.

I wanted to make sure every, you know, I got an A that everybody loved me and you know, everyone was proud of me. And so in the Indian culture, really from, I don’t even know how young I was, everybody was saying, are you going to be an engineer or a doctor? Like those were the only two choices. Well, I’ll be both.

Well, then my dad said. I overheard him speaking to a friend saying, well, the second one was a girl too, like what I wanted was a son that was an engineer that would follow in my footsteps. And I remember being pretty young, not even realizing how much that impacted me, that somehow my father would be disappointed by this thing.

And so I thought, well, I’m going to do as much as I can do to right that wrong. And I was pretty good. I was pretty good at math and science. I could pick up patterns and things like that. And then. My mom would say, you know, my parents never let me be a surgeon. I wanted to be a doctor and they said, what kind of wife and mother are you going to be if you are always on call?

I thought, okay, everybody can stop. My father will say, no, but she’s going to be an engineer. And I said, everybody can stop. They’re not mutually exclusive. I’ll take care of both of them. And so I did become a mechanical and biomedical engineer. And then I went to work in the nineties for Motorola. I liked it.

I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I was missing, everyone was in their cubicles. I lived for meetings and everybody lived in their head. And they lived for going back and working on their CAD program or something. And so, when I got into medical school and started medicine, what I got was the problem solving and I got the big thing that was missing, which was the chance to interact with people and really see how solving their problems could help them.

But I can still see though, I can still see the burnout coming like this wave. Right? I mean, the people pleaser. And now I’m, I’m on this second career and I want to be great at this. And I’m so, so you can see it. I know that this project though is not just something that you, you spent just a ton of time studying burnout, but it really comes from a personal place.

Can you tell us your story

of burnout? Well, I was 33 years old. I had finished all that training you talked about, which is not normal for any human being. And I never really stopped. I went right into the hospital. One day I walked in at the end of a five day rotation. I had 18 hospitalized patients. I was holding the pager, which means, for the hospital, which means all incoming traumas, transfers, all of that.

You’re also doing that. And by 11 a. m., uh, I had only gotten through two out of my 18 patients. And I turned to the nurse and I said, Hey Nina, would you mind giving 40 mEq of I. V. potassium to the gentleman in 636? And she looked at me and she said, Dr. Sangwon, are you okay? That was like my first clue that I might not be.

And I said, yeah, why? And she said, because that’s the fourth time you’ve asked me that same question in under five minutes. And I’ve answered you every time. Oh my God. I think what happened in my training and my quest to please the world was that I tuned out of the signals that my body sends me. I didn’t know who I was.

I didn’t know what I wanted, but I sure didn’t know what my parents and grandparents and the Indian community and the wider society thought success looked like. And I was chasing that. And I think because I was so tuned out of myself, that’s why I hit the brick wall of burnout. I was

also, I was talking to a friend this morning on a run.

I run with a gentleman who’s a doctor and I was talking about the fact that you and I were going to be speaking this morning. And I said that you also, on top of all those things that you, that you mentioned, you also have these people that are relying on you for their health, which must also create this internal stress and internal pressure.

Yeah, it’s kind of the way that we, uh, listen, I’m going to speak for myself. It was the way that I justified. My nobility. People depend on me. So how could I be so ridiculous as to want to sleep? Like, people could die here, but really, when you look a little bit bigger, it’s, it’s about the systems that we’ve created.

You know, if, if you have hospitals or medical systems that they understaff hospitals or systems as a way of maintaining budget, and then you take people who are noble and really want to help and do good. You almost manufacture crises and I come in because my thing is saving humans from a heart attack or saving this situation and making it better.

I don’t really know the difference. I just jump into gear and so I’m, I’m one of those adrenaline, all or none, you know, type people who sometimes isn’t really thinking, slowing down enough to think about what I’m doing. I just automatically go into that mode that it must be my job to save this situation.

And I think that was a big mistake.

Well, and I think that doesn’t matter if you’re a medical professional, the receptionist at work, like the client, the client relies on me, like no matter who it is. We want to be good at what we do. So we put that pressure. In fact, you have, you have an analogy of a car that I really like.

Do you mind telling our stackers about the car analogy? Cause I think this really fits.

Yeah. I just say that we are the equivalent of a high performance machine. In fact, I think mother nature made the highest performing machine that there is. If your check engine light, came on in your car as you were barreling down the highway?

What do you do? Are you someone who pulls over, pops the hood, and gets to work? Are you someone who says, Oh, if the low fuel gauge, uh, says goes to empty, do you think to yourself, Oh, I’ve got another 40 miles? Or are you someone who, when you see that check engine light come on, that you literally slap a piece of duct tape on it?

Oh, I don’t see that. Like, keep going. We do that with our bodies. Our bodies are these fine machines that develop, like they really rely on feedback loops. In order to function optimally. So really, instead of independent organs, you’ve got systems. Like, the hormonal system. The immune system. But we don’t think of it that way.

It’s like, something’s wrong with our skin, we go to the dermatologist. We’re feeling a little short of breath, we go to the… Heart doctor. We kind of dissect it all and make it separate, and we’ve missed the interconnectedness of, let’s say, uh, our relationships. So let’s say I get in a fight with, with my partner, and I then have a bad night’s sleep.

Well, maybe that goes on for one or two nights, and then suddenly I’m feeling under the weather and I catch a cold, but it’s not like me to catch a cold. Having difficulty communicating, let’s say, in our social world then might lead us to not sleeping at night. Well, there’s lots of things that go on in your body when you sleep.

Most people think, oh, I’m going to shave off some time from sleeping so I can get more of my external to do lists done. But what they don’t know is, there’s an internal to do list going on when you sleep. And one of those things is repairing your immune system so it can fight infection. That’s why two days later, when you got in that fight, didn’t sleep for two nights, and suddenly picked up the cold that was going around the office, it’s all connected.

And I’m not sure that we actually look at things as connected systems. And so the car analogy also I say, that you have an inner GPS. And how crazy would it ever be to have a GPS that you’re helping, you know, guide you in the world? And ever, like, not pay attention to the, you are here now. Blue button, you know, that or the dot on the on there.

Well, that’s what the equivalent of people who don’t listen to their emotions. So there’s people who say, Oh, I don’t have time for that. Like, you’ve got to be kidding me. That’s ridiculous. Or a lot of people who are raised, like, that’s not a very manly thing to do. Like, don’t show your emotions. Or it depends on what was said in the environment that you grew up in.

But just think of emotions as the blue dot on that GPS. Is it important for you to know how you’re relating to the experience of your life in this moment? That’s all it is. It’s nothing like, would you even be able to navigate to where you want to go if you didn’t know where you are? So I kind of take your physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual energy and I talk about how the physical part is like The car and how the mental part is like the dashboard and the operating systems that run the car and how, you know, the emotional piece is in the GPS world, the blue dot on the map, telling you where you are.

And then we move into social. There’s other cars on the road. You know, sometimes they crash into you. Sometimes they wave you on. Sometimes they pull over and help you. Sometimes they exit on a ramp. And you don’t even know why they left. Then there’s the spiritual piece, which is really kind of the integrated, uh, bigger GPS network, which is telling you, where are you headed?

What do you value? What do you, where do you want to go? What matters to you? Is it family? Is it work? Is it money? Is it success? What is it to you? And so I kind of break those all down and to try and demystify this global overwhelm that a lot of people are feeling. You know, I’m an engineer and my uncle and I used to work on cars when I was little and it just seems easy.

To me to think of it that way because that, that was tangible.

Well, I’m from Detroit, so we’re together on that one.

Well, I grew up in Grand Blanc, so there, there it’s, yeah, so this is why my dad works for General Motors, right. So, yeah, my dad too. So it just comes

naturally. Let’s dive into burnout and really get into these different areas, the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, and all those.

Just a little bit, because I think this is so important because when you’re talking about the signals, like the check engine light coming on, You say that we miss those, and we miss those because in the old days, we used to, we, like as hunter gatherers, you go through this, how do we get to this place where we’re missing all these signals that our quote car is giving us?

Well, in the hunter gatherer world, like our ancestors… All they had to know whether danger was around was listening for a rustling in the trees. Their awareness of their senses and knowing about their surroundings and listening to what their body was saying to them was their technology. And now we have rings and watches and all these devices.

We don’t even have to check in to see if we’re tired. We just need to look and see what our readiness score is on our technology and see if we had a good night’s sleep.

By the way, you wrote that, you wrote that. And I started laughing because every day on my Garmin watch, I have, I have my body battery score and, and Cheryl, my spouse and I are always comparing our body battery score for like, Oh, let’s see how I get.

I never get it above 70. But it’s so funny when you wrote that because I do that, but to your point, it makes us less aware because I just look at my watch.

That’s right. And I think what’s going to take people to the next level in their lives to be able to really Respond rather than react in this fast paced world that that seems to be getting faster by the day When things are changing this quickly, we can’t just rely on the external world We need to also use the data from this sophisticated machinery inside of us Because, think about this.

If you and I were with a bunch of friends having a conversation and you say something that upsets me, okay? How do I know the first thing that might happen is my heart might start racing, my stomach might start turning, my throat might constrict. I don’t know what the signal is. Each of us has a unique way that our body communicates with us.

But it’s in constant communication with you, giving you the earliest signal before anybody else knows that something went wrong. Your body knows, and so do you want the earliest signals so that you have a chance, you have more time, more ability to change course? That’s pretty valuable in a world moving faster and faster if you want to be able to adjust.

And so it’s becoming more and more critical for individuals, teams, you know, groups of people to be able to do this.

You give us three stages of burnout, these signs that our bodies are giving us, and I’d love it if you wouldn’t mind walking us through. Let’s start with that first stage that we get into.

It’s like an alarm going off.

Yeah, so let me give you the triad of burnout. So burnout itself, let’s demystify burnout. The way it’s defined is three things. Exhaustion. So physical and often mental emotional exhaustion. The second pillar of that is cynicism creeps in. So you’re not just tired, but you start thinking things like It doesn’t really matter.

What I do doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t matter how hard I work. Nothing’s going to change. So it’s the cynicism that just starts creeping in. And everybody around me

sucks too.

Yeah, and everybody around me sucks. And you know what you start doing just to survive? You start distancing yourself from other people because it’s too much energy to engage.

Right. So you’re not doing it because you’re, you don’t like them or you’re mad at them or it’s really just. It’s, it’s literally survival. And then the third piece is ineffectiveness, and that was what I described to you, me, that day in 2004 when I burned out. So it’s exhaustion, but it’s not just that.

That would be everybody in healthcare and a lot of the world. It’s when it goes… That cynicism and depersonalization starts creeping in and then you hit the wall of ineffectiveness. Now the three phases, it’s interesting because people say, oh yeah I was fine on Monday but by Tuesday night I was burnt out.

That’s not exactly how it happens. It happens in these three stages and it, these are patterns that occur over time. What I want people to know is there’s strategies we use at times in our lives because it’s the best we know how to survive. something. When I was doing 36 hour shifts in the hospital, I was so freaked out that if I wasn’t alert, what if someone died?

Like, that would be just awful. So I developed this time tested strategy that got me all the way through my residency, two ice cold 16 ounce Mountain Dews, plus a king size Snickers bar, and you could get me to stay awake for 36 hours completely wired. When I look back, I realize I wasn’t trying to hurt my body.

I wasn’t trying to undermine myself. I was actually trying to meet a goal, which was to get through residency and do a good job. So the strategies that we use to numb and override the signals coming from our bodies, Often are done for good reason.

I’m laughing, by the way, because my first job in college, or one of my first jobs…

was raising money for Michigan State. And at that time we were, you know, I basically was a telemarketer. I’m calling alumni and asking them for money. My addiction, people not watching us on YouTube don’t know I’m drinking a coffee right now as we talk. My addiction to coffee, Dr. Neha, happened right then because I would have days when I’m not up and people on these phone calls, alumni could hear if I wasn’t up and whatever.

So I wasn’t trying to hurt myself by getting addicted to coffee. I was trying to create better stuff in the moment. Same thing you were doing on these 36 hour shifts.

I am so sorry to tell you that I might be one of those alumni that you were busy calling. Cause I got my engineering degree at Michigan State.

I love you even more.

Yes. Yeah. So these three phases, what, what happens is phase one, is the alarm phase. And that’s almost the experience of you jumping on a treadmill that’s going too fast, slightly too fast. You know how it just puts that, it’s a little bit of a shock, and then you catch your bearings, your heart might start racing, you might break out in a little bit of a sweat, blood pressure up, all of it.

Now, that can happen at any transition in our life, anytime we’re taking on the next step, or making a big change, whatever it is. But your body, your physiology, your biology, it can adjust to that. Most people, though, once that happens, they continue on that treadmill, and it keeps turning up the volume, you know, up the speed.

1, 1, 1, and it just keeps escalating. Now, if you stay on that alarm phase, and you stay on that faster pace, you move into the second phase, which is called Adaptation, which is you are now trying to get your physiology to adapt to something that was startling to it, and now you’ve made it your way of life.

And so if you’re missing those breaks, you’re missing the rejuvenation, the rest, and it’s all about, you know, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Right? That will, when you move into that space, your biology thrives on routine and rest and then exertion. It likes that cycle piece, seasons, right? Nature. Your body thrives that way.

But what does society tell us is success? Grind. Pedal to the metal. Crank it out. Get over the finish line. And so we’re at conflicting odds here with whether or not we belong to these ways that society has taught us that faster is better and we have to do more with less and you make profit over people and you do all these things.

And so then we treat each other like machines that actually are not humans. And when we treat ourselves that way. We start to undermine our own ability to function well over a long period.

It is wild that because we won’t change, and this is what a great complex system we have to your point earlier, that, uh, our body starts to try to change.

It’s like, okay, she’s not going to do it. So now, now I got to do it. But that leads us then to the third phase, right? To this meltdown nuclear.

It’s a lot of people live their entire life. in chronic adaptation phase. And all it takes is one more thing, one more thing. And you’re like, what happened to me?

But it’s not about the one more thing. It’s about how before that you’ve been in chronic adaptation, adapting, adapting, adapting, and then your body’s out of strategies. And so that day, when I walked into the hospital, I had been fueling myself with sugar and caffeine. I had not been sleeping. I had been driving my own adrenaline, used up my own adrenaline and cortisol in my body.

My body had used up every coffee stimulates that cortisol, but here’s the thing at some point There’s no more to stimulate. It’s not sustainable. It’s not sustainable. And so that’s the exhaustion phase. And that’s when you start sliding down the slippery slope of exhaustion to ineffectiveness. And so it’s the alarm phase, the adaptation phase, and finally something that tips you over and you go into the exhaustion phase, which has you become ineffective.

You talked about the different types of the car, the systems, and you go in depth into each of these systems and really what the prescription is. But let’s start to dive into that. Where does the prescription lie if we feel like we’re, we’re there in the middle or we’re starting to spin out of control?

How do we, how do we begin to get ourself out of burnout?

Well, first of all, now that you understand a little bit more about what burnout is, if you’re in the exhaustion phase, I want you to make a call to your health professional and go straight there. If you are in the alarm phase or the adaptation phase, or let’s say you’re doing well.

If you’re doing well and you’re saying no burnout here, well then your job is to pay attention to those you love and lead. If you are someone who’s struggling, you’re noticing the alarm phase, you’re noticing the adaptation phase, , what I give you, , it’s like an emergency exit. I say, if you need to calm your own system, if you right now want to figure out how to do something I call a guided imagery, I explain to you why breathing is not just one of those things like take a deep breath or do some yoga, right?

In fact, how your own body’s physiology. calms your heart rate down, slows your breathing. If you realize that you can use your own body, even in a tense meeting, even when you’re in feeling road rage in traffic, even when you want to have that kind of command and control over being able to navigate your emotions, so they don’t control you.

So there’s literally exercises that I put into the book of videos and things that I’ve just said. If you need to get grounded again, here are three different ways you can do it. Find one that really works for you. And I take people through videos and, uh, tools and, and I also ask them to do a little survey.

So some of the questions I’d be asking, like in your physical energy would be on a scale of one to 10, how satisfied are you with your Food. How well you nourish yourself regularly with whole foods throughout the day. Sleep. Do you wake up feeling rested? Energy. Do you have consistent energy throughout the day or do you have that three o’clock energy dip after lunch?

Movement. Do you have A fun way to move in your body multiple times a week. And so, it’s not about what I think about them, or that they should do three cardio twice a week with weight training and yoga. No, no, no. It’s about how satisfied are you with your physical energy. Because you know, you’re in your body.

You know. Better than I do how well that’s going and then the second one when I talk about mental energy I ask questions like write down the three thoughts that are on repeat in the back of your mind Like, you know when you’re up at night or driving down the highway or in the shower What’s going on on repeat in your mind when you write those three thoughts down?

I want you to pay attention to your body Is it constricted, heavy, and tight, or is it open, relaxed, and at ease? Because then you can figure out whether these thoughts that you’re having are giving you a net gain of energy, or a net drain. Then I move to emotional, and I’m like, alright, tell me where in your life you’re avoiding challenging emotions or conflict.

And tell me where in your, which area of your life, personal, professional, social, financial, other, tell me where it’s showing up that you’re avoiding something, and where do you find great joy? Right. Where do you find joy in play? And then socially, what I ask people is write down the top five people or groups of people that you spend the most time with.

And when you’re leaving that group or person, do you have a net gain of energy? Do you feel inspired, open, relaxed? Do you feel constricted, tight, and heavy? And then you look at those five. And you can then tell me whether you have a net gain or a net drain of social energy. And then lastly is, uh, spiritual energy.

And what I mean by that is what matters to you. What are your highest values? What’s most important in your life? Do you know what that is? Because that’s how you make effective decisions. If you know that health, family, and money matter to you, it’s really important for you to know in what order they matter.

So, if health is number one, family is number two, and money is number three, let’s just say. If I have to make a decision about getting a procedure that will help my health, and if I’m willing to pay out of pocket for it, Instantly, I would say, yep, willing to pay, because health is number one, family is number two, and money is number three.

Would I do it for my kid? Would I do it for my dad? You bet, because health and family are above money for me. Yeah. But for some people, it may be a different order, and that’s okay too. It’s about knowing what matters most to you. what you value and in what order so that you can make really clear, effective decisions that align with who you

are.

I felt like as I was working through the project, that it’s turning back on those dashboards, going back to your car analogy and the fact that we have all the, like, I got my body battery, but instead of just looking at my body battery, really looking at what affects that body battery and paying more attention internally, like we’re so external all the time.

That’s right. This is, this is how am I responding to this? And one, one huge takeaway that I got was Often, avoidance is creating more burnout than just working through whatever the thing is. At least for me, uh, with something big I got through it, like, I’m spending so much energy avoiding whatever this, this situation is that I don’t like, that if I just got rid of it, things would be better.

Okay, so now what you’re talking about is our biology. So at the very base of our brain’s function, okay, I’m going to simplify it like beyond belief, if a neuroscientist or someone in science is hearing me, they’re going to be like, I cannot believe you simplified it to that. Here’s what the brain’s job is.

In that space, if conflict in the past has ever brought you the loss of a relationship, betrayal, discomfort, unease in your family, lack of closeness, lack of belonging, you’re going to avoid that like the plague. Unless you have spent time learning how to communicate and you feel confident about that not being the outcome again.

So there’s something called a choice point that I talk about later in the book, which is in the social section. And what I say is, many times a day we come to something, imagine an ex in a circle. Okay, a choice point. Which way are you going to go? Am I going to speak up and tell you what’s bothering me or am I going to hold it in?

And you have, you have two choices. You can take the short term high. Imagine like I’m making a, a hill. The short term high, which by the way, is going to turn into the long term low. It means I’m going to avoid any discomfort in this moment. I’m going to hold it in. I’m going to hold it in. I’m not going to say anything, but guess what I get after that?

Every time I see you, I’m like, Oh, every time I look in the mirror, I’m like, why didn’t you say something to him? Why did you? And I start undermining my own ability to trust myself. Now go back to that same choice point. And instead, let’s say you took the short term dip of discomfort, meaning maybe your throat constricts, your stomach turns, it’s you’re sweating, but you say something like, Hey Joe, I didn’t like the way things went last week.

Can we just talk about that again for a moment? I just want to do a take two, and can I try it again? I think I wasn’t very, you know, kind, and I don’t think I really appreciated you the way I should have for all the effort you’ve put in. It’s going to be uncomfortable for this short term discomfort and dip that I would need to go to, but that’s the only chance I have of the long term high in our relationship.

And so I think a lot of people don’t understand that what they need to do if they want a different outcome. is not get hijacked by their biology, but in fact, unhook from their biology, learn how to communicate, and then once they learn this, boy, you have an advantage in every single conversation in your life.

It’s

fabulous. It just, I, I just think about my 55 years on this planet and how I wish I met you like, uh, 45 years earlier.

The

goal is to get this to children, to get this to the next generation. The goal is it is our job now to learn this and to make sure that the next generation doesn’t have to learn this in a crisis when they’re in their fifties or beyond.

You know, you have a, you have a great, uh, to that point, a great discussion about pharmaceuticals and about how many of us will bury our quote burnout under a ton of pharmaceuticals and just the side effects that that causes, uh, for clearly there’s some people out there that need. pharmaceutical help. So I don’t want to downplay that too much, but still the number of people just bearing it.

We had a guest on just a couple of weeks ago who just a friend said, Hey, uh, take this pill because you seem to be out of control. She was clearly burnt out. And she, she had no idea why she was taken. She was just trying to suppress it. And to your point, that goes nowhere. The book is called Powered by Me from Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and Life.

And it’s available everywhere yesterday.

Oh, yay. Thank you so much. I appreciate you sharing it with the world.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your expertise here for a few minutes and. Let’s create people that are a little less burned out and a little more fulfilled. That’s fantastic. Thank you so much.

You’re

so welcome Hi, I’m Derek and when I’m not working on the hook for Joe’s mom’s next greatest rap album, I’m stacking Benjamins,

baby

Big thanks to dr. Neha for joining us. How about that? Oh gee, I think you’re burnout all the time. You’re you’re level two

Yeah, I mean Not, no, I mean, sort of. I do get a lot of sleep.

That I got going

for me. He just said all of

the answers. But that is, I actually, it’s funny, I thought about you when I was talking to her because I think that is finally listening to your body. At some point you must have changed that. You haven’t been doing the 26 hours of sleep a day routine forever.

You must have changed things to make sure that you Get out of that. Uh,

I don’t know when, but yeah, I mean, I do pay attention to sleep quite a bit. I mean, there was a study, uh, completely, not completely unrelated, but there was a study of that after one day of sleeping four hours, the amount of cancer fighting, you know, super cells in your body basically, like all of the whatever they’re called, the attack cells that make it so you don’t have cancer go down by like 90%.

So, uh, huge predictor of cancer potentiality is how well you sleep and how often you sleep.

I swear the main times I get sick are when I’m burning the candle at both ends, right? I mean, that’s when I get the cold, the, I think there’s a reason when I go to conferences and I’m exhausted by the last day of the conference, I always come home with a cold.

I mean that, and I’m shaking everybody’s hand. Licking

doorknobs. Getting on an airplane. Licking

doorknobs. You don’t do that? That’s not a thing? I thought that was a thing.

Actually, you know why? Maybe. Almost all doorknobs are made out of brass because it is self, uh, like sterilizing. Yeah. Stuff doesn’t grow on bra.

Even the stuff that’s like coated in Chrome, but the core of it is, is a brass for that reason. Like,

well, that’s why I look at Doug. That’s exactly what I like.

That’s the safest thing you could do at one of those conferences.

I think there’s so many people operating though on too little sleep to the, it’s, it’s hard OG to make decisions.

And I know that. It’s funny how, you know, I’ve, I’ve heard some smart people say that when you hear something once it’s, it might be somebody’s shtick, but when you see the truth come out over and over and over from four or five different people, and it’s part of what they say is a, is success, you should really pay attention to those things.

And it’s amazing how much what Dr. Neha talked about aligns with what you and I learned at Strategic Coach, which is if we actually take off some time for ourself, the business is going to run better. And you’re going to make better decisions.

Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you’re the supercomputer, you know, we, we don’t run our computers nonstop without turning them off and resetting them and all that other sort of stuff.

Right. Everybody, everybody, I haven’t turned my computer off in two months.

Well,

and it’s going to figure out why your

internet sucks.

Yeah. I mean, you got to feel yourself. You have to do all of those things. And if you don’t take time away, then you’re going to end up in this weird, weird funk. I don’t, I mean, she says it way better, but yeah.

Burnout just, man, if we can realize this as a marathon, it’s a, you’re going to do far, far better. Hey, let’s throw it to Haven Lifeline guys and tackle some of life’s most important questions. Our friends at Haven Life Insurance Agency, Doug, they put what you value first.

Um, probably, uh, Available funds in my account and then being able to be around the people that I care about the most, more

often.

You thought it was your money and your time. It’s your loved ones and your time.

I mean, you could say it shorter, more quickly, sure. But I mean, where’s the joy in life in doing that?

That’s why they made buying quality term life insurance actually simple, Doug, so you can spend more time with your loved ones.

You go to stackofbenjamins. com slash havenlife. Now, for a free quote, that’s stackingbenjamins. com slash havenlife. You don’t have to wait several weeks for a decision. They have these great online calculators for people that don’t know how much they need, affordable prices, and all their policies issued by their parent company, MassMutual.

More than a hundred and sixty year old insurance. I just realized I

said it backwards, Joe. I screwed that up because what I want to do is spend more time with my available funds and then Sock away my family in a locked up account. That’s

exactly that’s wrong There are days. I’ve had days where that is absolutely true today.

We’re gonna throw out the lifeline to Amanda. Hey, Amanda

Hello, Joe. Oh, Jean. Yeah I’m not nearly clever enough to come up with something funny,

so I will just start with that. I

have a bone to pick about a little bit of math. The way that I see a mortgage, you’ve been

saying on

advertisements and throughout the show over the years that when you get a mortgage, they rip you out on the front end, and it just, it bugs me.

To me, in my mind, it’s just like a credit card. The only thing that they don’t do is they don’t decrease your payment as your balance goes down. So, if I owe 100, 000, I’m gonna be paying interest on 100, 000. When I owe 5, 000, towards the end, I’m paying interest on 5, 000. So a lot less. I guess I don’t understand how that’s ripping people off.

It’s math. So I guess maybe math is ripping people off, but in my opinion math can do no wrong. It’s the best. This is your friendly neighborhood homeless person from the Iowa Meetup. I, uh, enjoyed my time there and thank you for the good times.

Amanda, that was fun and, uh, great to hear your voice again.

And this is what I like about the show, OG. Number one, I didn’t say ripping you off. I just said that banks get their money first. And Amanda, the cool thing is you’re about to learn something from us, which is that a mortgage, OG, does not operate the same as a credit card. There is a difference in the way interest gets calculated.

I think the easiest way to think about this is it’s not a straight line. It’s not like for every dollar you put in, the same amount goes to interest versus principal the entire way down. It’s a curved line. I just found this great calculator on bank rate that has the, um, uh, it’s just the bank rate amortization schedule calculator is what it’s called.

And I just put in, you know, you can just put in whatever terms you want, but more specifically, it kind of shows graphically how that loan balance doesn’t go down straight. It curves and you increase your rate of payoff on the back end, which

to be clear on a Credit card. It is a straight line on a home equity Line of credit.

It is a straight line. Whatever amount you have outstanding that month. You’re gonna pay interest in that amount What Amanda’s talking about is the case for a credit card and for a home equity line of credit It’s it’s that for a car loan. It is not that with a mortgage,

right? And you can see that on your credit card statement.

So if you get your credit card statement, it will show Here’s what your minimum payment is and your minimum payment is calculated as the interest plus Usually one and a half percent of the outstanding balance And so you feel like that interest or that minimum payment is going to go down as your balance goes down.

But the payment that you pay is always going to include all of the interest and you know, the decreasing amount of principal. An amortized loan starts out in a kind of a backwards relationship, right? Where it’s like all of that interest is front low and not all of it, but the vast majority of that interest is front loaded.

on the front end of the loan. And then that ratio is flipped as you move through the loan of how much goes to principal, which is why when you graph it, the principal balance goes, it slowly goes down for the first five, you like take a 30 year mortgage, slowly goes down for the first five or seven years and then accelerates.

And even though your payment’s the same, the last bit. is where you, uh, where you have massive payoff. So it’s not that it’s a rip off, like you were saying, Joe, it’s, it’s not a rip off. It’s just, I think it’s all there. No, no, I know you, I know you didn’t say that you were saying that you didn’t say that, but the bank gets all of their money up front.

It’s not an even trade.

Yeah, here was my point, Amanda, was, was not that the banks are ripping you off. We rip ourselves off because we don’t understand how this works. And here’s, here’s how we do it. We’ve got an 8 percent interest rate and interest rates, let’s say, Oh gee, they go down, they go down to six.

We think we’re saving 2 percent by refinancing our mortgage. If we only paid the first three years of our mortgage. We may be paid 80 percent interest. Like I haven’t done the math for this particular episode, but we may be paid 80%. We lock that in by refinancing over and over again. So people thinking, well, dude, I refinanced four times going from eight to seven to six to five.

No, you didn’t. You paid 80, you paid 80 again, you paid 80 again. And now you’re finally going to get started paying a lower interest rate if you let that mortgage go toward the end. So if you pay the mortgage directly on schedule and your interest rates at 6 percent you will pay 6%. Over the lifetime of the mortgage, but those late payments to your point, OG, are going to be closer to one or 2%.

And the early payments are going to be most banks get their money up front. Well, to

kind of prove what you’re talking about here, I just went back to that bank rate calculator. They’ve got a nice little breakdown here. So assuming that you had that, you know, that same number, it’s a hundred thousand dollar loan with 6 percent interest.

In the first year, the interest payment is 5, 500. The total payment is 600 a month. So 7, 200, right, is the total payment for that loan. 5, 500 goes to the bank. By the end of year two, you’ve paid 11, 400 of interest. And by the end of year three, 17, 200 of interest. Meanwhile, your principal balance has only gone down by 4, 000.

So, in three years, you’ve made… 7, 200 annual payments, right? 600 a month times 36 months. So that’s 21, 600 bucks, right? So you’ve paid 21, 000 of payments. The bank kept 17, 200 of it. And now to your point, you go, Oh, Well, what a great deal. The interest rates are down. I’ll refinance back down to 4 percent and I’ll refinance my 96, 000 loan at 4 percent for 30 years.

Well, my payment drops, which is great, right? You go from 600 payment to 460 payment. So you’re down 140 a month of payments. but you’re back to square one from your interest versus principal number. The principal payment, again, starts over and you’re back to, you know, now paying 460 a month of payments by the end of year three, 11, 000 of interest and a whopping 5, 000 of principal.

Not saying that it’s a bad idea to have a lower interest. No. But you got to understand what you’re getting yourself

into here. You don’t lock in the higher interest rate. until you actually do the refinance. If you don’t refinance, you will keep whatever interest rate you started with going. If you pay it off early, especially in those early years, OG, you can bring that interest rate down significantly by making principal payments in the early years of your mortgage.

Um, that’ll bring it down a lot. Cause you fast forward

on that table. You, you basically go like, Oh, well. Now let’s say you had that 100, 000 loan and you make a 20, 000 payment, right? Bam! And you go down to 80, 000. You go all the way down that table to 80, 000 is the next payment. It doesn’t stay at the next payment, you know, as payment number two.

It’s payment is now number 222 or wherever you would fall on that

list. And if you can’t find 20K to throw at

it… Yeah, you suck. Oh,

that’s not where you’re going.

No, that’s probably not the positive vibe we’re looking for.

But I’m sure I’ve heard you guys say before, keep paying at the previous rate. That was in your budget before, right?

The 600 payment was in your monthly budget before. And even if you refinance and now you’re at 460, Keep paying at 600 and you’ll also accelerate your way through that table. If you don’t have the

20K to throw at. Wonderful. Yep. Absolutely. Wonderful. The other thing is, Amanda talked about in, in some of our advertisements, she’s specifically talking about Navy Federal.

OG has this no refi rate drop where when rates go down, you don’t have to refinance. And I. have said during those ads. That’s phenomenal. Not because of the fact that the rate dropped, but because of the fact that you don’t have to refinance. I think, I think not having to refinance to get the rate drop is a much bigger win than most people think that it is.

And that’s exactly what she’s referring to. By the way, You can only get that one if you are eligible for Navy Federal. I would look for, if you’re not eligible for Navy Federal, look for other banks that do that. I don’t see that very often, OG. We used to see it all the time. Yeah.

Well, I’ve seen it now lately.

There’s a lot of. A lot of different places are like inflation protection, inflation buster or something. Yeah. Yeah. Come, come get your loan and we’ll refinance it for free, you know, out in the future or something like that. And that’s another piece of this whole refinance thing.

We’ll, we’ll drop the rate for free without having to do a full refund.

Without

having to do it. Yeah. So that’s the other piece of this, which is the, the costs associated with refinancing. You know, it’s not just simply like the rate changes and you kind of go back to square one and all that sort of stuff. That’s why I was such a big proponent when, when interest rates were going down and people were talking about refinancing and like how great it is to lock in this low rate.

And I, and I was so adamant about take the rate and the term, go from your 30 year mortgage, you’re eight years into it. Drop it to 15. Like, buy yourself those seven years and get a lower rate. The payment’s about the same, to your point, Doug, that you were previously paying. And now you just lopped off eight years and cut the bank out of the deal.

Which is, you know, banks suck, so.

Amanda, great question. I always get excited when we get these questions, guys, because of the fact that so few people understand that. And Amanda and I met in Des Moines in person. Super, super smart. And the fact that we can help people get this stuff is, uh, really super exciting.

Thanks for that question, Amanda. And you know what? I don’t know if Amanda has a t shirt. We, Amanda lives in so many different places, Amanda. I don’t even know where to send it, but we clearly have to send it somewhere cause Doug’s eyeing your shirt, uh, right now. thinking that it’s for him and we know it’s not.

So stackingbenjamins. com slash voicemail if you’d like to ask a question and we’ll send you also a greatest, uh, money show on earth.

You know that, uh, it’s not a meme, but it’s just that little video clip of the little girl who just says. This is Bull . Every time. , every time I hear you say that, I’m not getting the shirt, it’s in my head.

It’s that little girl saying it’s bullshit. Well,

it’s just the way it works. It’s not, it’s not any BSS at all. That’s it for the Haven Lifeline. Time for the community calendar. What’s going on? Uh, this week, OG with our Stacky Benjamins community. Well, I have

absolutely no idea. So I would like to bring in my colleague, Doug.

Why don’t you tell us what’s happening on the community calendar, Doug? I

think I might’ve thrown that the wrong way. Why did I think

OG You’re just flailing. Have you ever done this hosting thing before, Joe? Why

does OG have any idea what’s going on? Why did I think that?

Well, that’s a good question. I got no idea.

He’s just here so he doesn’t get fined. Uh, we got a bunch of stuff going on, uh, Joe. First of all, we should point out, we’ve got some great participation going on in the Basement Facebook group. One of my favorite posts recently was from Stacker Brian, who posted this screenshot of a, uh, Somebody asking, are you financially better off than your parents?

Oh, from

Reddit. That was a Reddit thread.

It was from Reddit. It was just so appropriate for the basement. And the first responder said, that’s a good question. Let me go upstairs and ask them.

Am I better off than you? By the way, if the answer is yes, I’m kicking junior out of the basement, which is why we, we always, uh, don’t tell mom. We

love to see that stuff. You know, the basement’s awesome because you get the humor side and you get some serious questions in there. It’s frankly, it’s just like.

The podcast. I think, you know, we’ve done a great job of sort of cultivating that kind of culture about how to have fun with your money. The other thing that you’ll see a lot in both the basement and coming up on Spotify are polls. Either our stackers will create a poll in the basement, or Kevin, the amazing writer of the 201, he puts polls out in the basement, so look for those, but Spotify recently created this capability, right?

This functionality that we can now do polls. And, uh, I think our first one we’ve got going out soon, right, Joe?

No, this one just finished up. It was a Sammy and Michelle, an episode a few weeks ago. They were the sisters who moved way out to the middle of nowhere for more money. in nowhere, Nevada, two and a half hours outside of maybe even three hours outside of Las Vegas was the closest big city.

And now they’re moving to South Carolina. They’re moving to Charleston, South Carolina. So we asked, we asked this question. Could you

move to a new city with only a single friend there, as Sammy and Michelle

did? Imagine, oh gee, could you move across the country to… Charleston, South Carolina, if you didn’t know anybody in Charleston.

I moved to Dallas, I didn’t know anybody in Dallas.

Usually the government requires that he picks a city where he doesn’t know

anybody. OG’s like, that’s the specific reason I moved someplace.

Those were the stipulations. I know

somebody, I know somebody, I’m out, I’m out there. What were the results of the Spotify poll?

Yeah, Joe, the results are kind of surprising. 79 percent of our responders said they could do that. They could go to a city super far away if they only knew

one person. Maybe this is OG’s fan club.

Maybe we attract more OGs. It’s OG’s family saying we’ll move to wherever he is because that dude buys

steaks.

That’s the one person.

And then of course, 21 percent said they couldn’t, but that kind of surprises me that almost 80 percent of our respondents said they could do that. They could go to some city across the country for one

person. It’s fantastic. I think that’s, that’s great. Living life is an adventure.

For people that missed that, that was, uh, Sammy and Michelle. Uh, that was, uh, Stacking Benjamins 1401, if you want to go back and listen to, uh, our interview with these two amazing sisters. By the way, Spotify coming out with a bunch of new functionality. So if you’re looking for a new home to listen to Stacking Benjamins, uh, Spotify, I found out at Podcast Movement Conference.

Only going to have more of this type of stuff. Uh, polls on nearly every episode. If we want them, we’re trying to put polls on every episode or at least discussions on every episode there. We’ll be able to also put in other podcasts we recommend to our Spotify page. Going to be able to do a lot there.

Spotify really investing some money. And I had to find a new home myself because I was at Stitcher. So, uh, September 1st. Actually turned on my Stitcher app accidentally. And it went, uh, yeah, we told you to move like 9, 000 times. Yes. Where do people go, Doug, uh, to find out

more? Joe, if they want to find all the places we’re having fun with stackers, go to stackingbenjamins.

com slash

welcome. And we just redesigned the welcome guide. Same stuff inside of there, but it’s prettier now, Doug. The new and improved prettier. That matters. Yes.

I have been told. First impressions matter.

Here’s what happened, OG came to me and he’s like, this isn’t pretty enough. I just need, need something pretty.

That’s ironic. It may be a little untruthful as well. All right. Uh, that’s going to do it for today. Thanks everybody for hanging out with us. We know your time is valuable and uh, we’re glad that you spent it with us. But we always finish the same way. Doug, what are what are our takeaways today? Well, Joe first take some

practical tips from Dr Neha and address your burnout so you can be happier, healthier, and more productive.

Second, cash? Sure cash is king, but you should be worshipping those long term goals, not some little dude with a Napoleon complex and a castle. But the big lesson? Doing cool jumps on a riding lawnmower is tough, unless you involve the neighborhood kids. Wait, you think I’m… Gonna jump over the neighborhood kids?

No, no, no, no, I’d never do that. As the adult in the room, I’m gonna lay on the ground so they can jump over me. Jeez, I’m not an idiot. Thanks to Dr. Neha for joining us today. You can find out more about her on our show notes page at stackingbenjamins. com This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, copyright 2023 and is created by Joe Saul Sehy.

Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast, with help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn Invest podcast. Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 201.

You’ll find the 411 on all things money at the 201. Just visit stackingbenjamins. com slash 201. Wonder how beautiful we all are? Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t check out our YouTube version of this show, engineered by Tina Ichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.

Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want to chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Yunkin are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.

Say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the basement fun with other stackers type stackingbenjamins. com slash basement. 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 Benjamins show.

A

couple of things on Paramount Plus, if you haven’t subscribed, you know, because you have to subscribe to 55 million different, uh. Services now in order to order to watch your shows But Paramount Plus and Showtime seem to be merging and it’s also where Yellowstone is and all the stuff So finished Yellowstone 20 or 1923, they’re gonna have a new series or a new season I should say so that’s good because it ended like pretty abruptly and you’re like wait Is this the end?

This doesn’t set anything up for the future. What the heck? But, uh, what came upon this one, I thought, was, uh, definitely right up my alley.

You have no family. You have no friends. God, this is you. You wear a beard.

This is wow are they’re talking

about you. You have a purpose, and it’s noble. I’m

doing everything different

this time. She’s your field

agent to

what you think’s best. I have to be sure

if she’s able. to make contact with the

target.

What are our directives then? Neutralize the target. Mr. President, we have a situation unfolding in real time. Are you close? Closer than we’ve ever been. You up for playing outside the lines? Ready to do my job, ma’am.

If your cover

is

blown, there is no saving you. You have to save yourself.

Do it quiet

and you do it clean.

Be careful poking that bear. Or

the target will be on you.

I said he’s in bed. The mission is launched.

We can’t stop it now.

Homeland

finds out, it’ll end up in the news. Did you hit the target? I’m not trained for this.

This is our mess.

We clean it up. How do we shut this down? I need you to understand the risks.

I understand the risks.

That sounds phenomenal! Oh my god. That sounds fantastic! It’s

great. Co produced by Taylor Sheridan, because everything on Paramount Plus is… Yeah, he owns that network. He is head cook and bottle washer, but the writing is from the, uh, writer of Sicario, which, uh, I really liked those two.

That was one of Taylor Sheridan’s movies

as well. Did he write Sicario? Yeah. Oh, yeah, this is, this is just like that. So, uh, anyway, it’s called The Lioness or Lioness. Basically, CIA operation, they embed a person to get close to the target. So instead of trying to go after the target, they go after the target’s inner circle.

Get close and then see how it, how it unfolds.

I can’t go get another network.

It’s just, it’s great. It’s worth the, it’s, you get 30 days free trial or something. You can burn through nine episodes in, uh, I don’t know if they’ll do another series of this or season. And you said it’s Showtime

and Paramount Plus together

now?

Yeah, just under Paramount So you can also get billions. You can, you can catch up on billions. Well,

what’s the other one we just talked about a couple of weeks ago? Oh gosh. Starts off with the car crash, the guy’s son witnesses, uh. Your honor. Your honor. Thank you. That’s on there too,

right? Because that’s Showtime.

Season one is significantly better than

season two. Well, there’s another one on there that I saw on a plane that I have been resisting Paramount Plus because I don’t want to… Tulsa King.

I’ve started watching all the… I don’t pay for another one. Tulsa Kings? No,

the one I like. What’s the, I got Sopranos on the brain and I can’t get rid of it.

The, the, the, the great movies from the seventies with the horse, the godfather, the one about the making of the godfather, the behind the scenes that, yeah, I’ve got that on my list. That one with Miles Teller was amazing. I watched four episodes of that on airplanes and then I’m like, oh, okay, I want to watch the rest of that.

Oh, it’s on Paramount Plus.

Yeah. Get your free 30 days. And just binge watch the hell out of Paramount