Here’s An Easy Way To Save $3,000 Per Year (with Bryan Suddith) SB1688

Turns out, saving $3,000 a year might be easier (and tastier) than you think. This week, we’re dishing up big savings with Bryan Suddith, who turned his family’s runaway grocery bill into a budget-friendly game—complete with freezer hacks, local meat tips, and food waste strategies that actually work. He joins Joe, OG, and guest co-host Len Penzo (yes, that Len Penzo of LenPenzo.com fame) to share how mindful meal planning can make your wallet and your taste buds happy.
We’re also talking about a Wall Street Journal piece that reveals why high schoolers are ditching traditional degrees for skilled trades… and landing $70K jobs right out of the gate. Plus, Doug helps us navigate one of life’s most awkward questions: What do you call your friend’s mom? (Hint: it’s not “Linda.”)
What’s stacked inside this episode:
🧾 How Bryan gamified his grocery budget and saved thousands—with zero meal-prep burnout
🥩 Freezer hacks, locally sourced meats, and the joys of slow-thawed financial wins
🥦 Food mindfulness: the surprising connection between awareness and grocery savings
🎯 Why budgeting doesn’t have to feel like punishment (especially when TikTok is involved)
🎙️ Bryan’s bonus storytelling and public speaking tips for anyone who has to talk to humans
🔧 Trade school is trending: why $70K jobs are showing up before diplomas
🧰 Should your teen consider HVAC over Harvard? We unpack the growing case for skilled trades
🤷‍♂️ Conan O’Brien, Doug, and the Great Parental Naming Debate of 2025
💡 If you’ve ever overpaid at the grocery store or underestimated a plumber’s paycheck… this one’s for you. Bring your shopping list and your sense of humor—we’ll meet you in the basement.

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

Enjoy!

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Our Headline

• The High-School Juniors With $70,000-a-Year Job Offers (Wall Street Journal)

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Doug’s Trivia

• What government agency protects savers’ bank deposits, up to $250,000 per account type?

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Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?

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

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Other Mentions

• Bryan Suddith: The Road to Zero Food Waste
• HOME – Heavy Metal Summer Experience
• EconoMe Conference – March 20-22, 2026

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Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when we’re asking the question: is happiness really about more money, or about flourishing? A new study dives into this topic and we’ll cover the findings and much more with our roundtable contributors.

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Lies We’re Told at Work (with NBC Universal Vice Chairperson Bonnie Hammer) and Climbing into the Driver’s Seat with Your Money (with BeyondFinance’s Dr. Erika Rasure) SB1687.

Episode transcript

Are we going to let Len be all dad jokey to start or you just want me to dive in?

What do you mean?

What does that mean?

I mean, he always start whenever he’s on, he starts with like, he has this big joke set up and we’re like, Oh crap, here it comes.

Here it comes.

Is it going to be as bad?

Yes, it’s as bad as I thought it was going to be.

You’re totally stepping on his intro.

You’re stepping on like, Len’s like saving it.

I don’t jump in front of you.

I let you do your thing first, Doug.

All right.

Okay.

All right.

Nothing better than watching Doug do his thing first.

Len, they call that sloppy seconds.

I was just going to say when I watched Doug do his thing first, I don’t have to wait very long.

So, but you do get to, we’re talking about eating a cheeseburger, right?

Yes.

You do get to watch him.

I’m trying to order later.

All right.

Doug, let me know.

Please let’s start the show.

Please, please, please.

Live from Joe’s mom’s basement.

It’s the stacking Benjamin show.

I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug.

And how’s that refrigerator looking after the long holiday weekend full of leftovers you might not eat?

Well, today we’re going to cut your food cost and get inspired to meal plan better with a guy who’s cut his family budget to the bone, Brian Suddath.

Plus in our headline, some high schoolers are being offered $70,000 per year to go to work in what field we’ll share that news and our thoughts.

And because I like you better than all the other stackers, I’m going to make sure the guys play a TikTok minute and include some of my homemade trivia.

My homemade, I mean, I found it myself, not that I made it up.

I’ve never done that.

Definitely never made up trivia.

I just, I found it.

And now three guys who never have to make up painful money lessons because they’ve lived them all firsthand.

It’s Joe, Len, and Ojajajajajajajajajajajj!

Hey there, stackers.

Happy Wednesday to you.

You made it through half of your week, so sit back and relax, ’cause we’re about to have some fun talking food today.

Our favorite topic, we got the man across the card table from me, Mr.

Oji.

You had some food earlier.

Apparently cherry yogurt, not your go to. – Yeah, couldn’t do it. – Fake cherry flavor.

Almost even real cherries are like that. – And the guy who’s the cherry on top of this podcast today, Mr.

Len Penzo is here.

How are you, brother? – I’m doing great.

I just got back from walking my dog, so I had to rush here to get in, get in front of the microphone.

And sometimes I walk my dog and he gets, people get irritated.

Like this morning, we were walking, and my dog likes to smell so many things.

He’s a scent hound.

And he’s always constantly smelling everything.

Well, this morning he was smelling, he particularly likes cars that have covers over them.

People put covers over their cars, they leave them in the driveway so they don’t get rain.

So he’s always attracted us.

Well, this morning he was sniffing one of the cars with the covers, and he was really into it.

And the guy comes out the front door, and he’s like, “Hey,” he goes, “What are you doing?”

And I was like, “Oh, I’m sorry, my dog is, “my dog’s just interested in your car.”

He’s like, “What kind of dog is that?”

And I go, “Well, he’s a scent hound.”

I go, “He’s being trained to be a cadaver dog.”

So, and that kind of shut the guy up right away, so. – Wow, what neighborhood do you live in again, Glenn? – Are you insinuating there’s a body in the back of the car that worked? – Yeah, well, that’s what he did.

You know what, he went back in the house. – The guy’s done.

I’ve been doing that, I think we talked about this on the show earlier, but I’ve been doing that lately when you get those scammer texts.

“Hey, how are you?”

I’m like, “I’m fine, but where are you?

“We gotta bury the body.”

They always stop, they always stop.

So good. – That’s a good one too.

I’ll have to try that. – Well, I’m super excited for this episode.

Brian Suddeth is a guy that I saw at the Economy Conference.

He was one of the main stage speakers.

I got so excited by Brian finding these ways to control food waste and the things that his family did.

I can’t wait for all of our Stacker family to hear what he did because it’s super exciting, gamifying this idea of not wasting food.

And well, he took it a little more extreme that I think most of us will, but let us hear refrigerator running. (laughing) – You know, I’m laughing, probably nobody else is ’cause we’re too old to understand. (laughing) Anybody under 50 is probably wondering why we’re laughing. – No idea. – You have Prince Albert in a can. (laughing) – My favorite, these were prank phone calls, kids.

Well, let’s tell some old guy stories.

These were prank phone calls.

My favorite one was you call up, you call up and you go, yes, is Mr.

OG there?

And they’re like, oh no, you have the wrong number.

And you hang up the phone.

You wait three or four minutes, you call back again, is Mr.

OG there?

Like, no, you’ve got the wrong number.

I told you, stop calling me.

Okay, oh, I’m sorry, my bad, I’m sorry.

Wait five more minutes, call up one more time.

Is Mr.

OG there?

And the person on the other end gets just irate.

I told you, stop calling this number.

There’s no Mr.

OG here.

Okay, I’m so sorry, I am so, so, so sorry.

And then the piece de resistance, wait five more minutes and call up.

And you know what you say, Len? – No, tell me, I don’t know. – You change your voice, you made it really deep, ’cause you’re like nine years old when you do these things.

You’ve made your voice really deep and you go, yes, this is Mr.

OG, have there been any messages for me?

(laughing) You should hear how much people swear at that one.

Oh, that’s so bad.

It gets better– – So when you did your pranks, how did you do it?

Did you just open the phone book and randomly pick a name or did you just dial a number at random? – I just dialed a number at random.

Like you start saying area code and you had to make sure it wasn’t a long distance call back then. – Well, of course.

Yeah, mom and dad would not like that. – No, just pick numbers at random and you were good to go.

All right, there’s your one-on-one on prank phone calls, kids.

It gets better from here though.

We’re talking food waste, but before that, we got a couple sponsors that make sure that we can keep on keeping on and you’re not gonna pay a dollar while you’re saving yourself a ton of money by not wasting so much food.

So we’ve got a couple of our sponsors.

We’re gonna hear from them.

And then the Brian Suddeth, the most amazing guy when it comes to making sure that what comes into your house gets eaten, we’re gonna hear from Brian next. – And it’s about time we got him down in mom’s basement.

Mr.

Brian Suddeth is here.

How are you brother? – I am great.

It’s a beautiful day here in Ohio.

These are the days that those of us who live here look forward to and we have one today.

It’s just beautiful up here. – All of my friends in the Midwest are getting that change in the weather cold right now.

And here in Texas, we got that two months ago.

So we’re slightly ahead of you, man.

All right, we’re gonna get to my favorite topic and clearly your favorite topic here in just a minute.

But how do you get to become a barbecue judge?

Because I always joke with people Brian that I’m eating for two, you know, ’cause babies try in any day to come out maybe.

But like that just seems like a dream come true.

A barbecue judge or an ice cream judge or like how do you break into that? – I’d say it was by accident.

I was on a road trip with some friends to Kansas City to eat barbecue.

And I met a guy named Joe Pierce who owns a barbecue shop in Kansas City.

And he’s a world class competitor.

He’s a professional barbecue cook and competitor.

And he introduced me to the Kansas City Barbecue Society.

And like any big hobby, there’s a sanctioning body.

And the Kansas City Barbecue Society is the world’s largest competitive barbecue sanctioning body.

And they host classes and clinics around the country to qualify judges.

And you become a member of the society, you take a class and you learn the standards of the competition.

And you are really sworn in as a judge.

And there’s continued education and you can sort of move up the ranks.

I’m now a master certified judge with the Kansas City Barbecue Society. – I feel like I’m unofficially a master. – Right, right. – Just if you look at my body shape. – You’ve trained for this. – My whole life, man. – Yeah, but it’s a high stakes competition in those areas.

And the same for the world food championships or the Chili Cook Off Society or the steak championship series.

That there are these subgroups of food competitors.

And inside that are the competitors, the sponsors and the judges.

And I’ve just for the last nine years have really dug deep into the barbecue world and have found a real home there for like-minded folks who enjoy the craft and as well as the competition and business side of competitive cooking. – All right, we’ve got listeners all over the country and in 48 different countries, but let’s talk.

We’ve got Austin, people bragging in Austin, they’re number one.

Kansas City, it’s St.

Louis, North Carolina.

We’ve got Memphis.

I stop whenever I’m going between the Midwest and home.

We’ll stop in Memphis.

Which one of those cities is the Brian Suddeth winner? – Yeah, I think it depends.

Kansas City is the most hospitable.

I’ve been in so many kitchens and pits in Kansas City that they are so welcoming there to know that someone drove 10 hours to eat their barbecue.

Memphis is usually nonplussed.

Like, now people come here all the time for barbecue. – We’ve seen you before, pal. – Austin is just such a fantastic city for everything else and the brisket you can’t beat.

It’s the best in the world.

And the stuff that the folks have done in Austin is just top-notch.

You just can’t get a bad meal in Austin.

And we’ve loved it.

I just came back from Nashville.

There’s some great barbecue things happening in Nashville.

Just been four days there eating about at eight places this past weekend.

And it’s up and coming.

But Austin is fantastic.

Kansas City is so welcoming.

But Memphis, you can’t beat those ribs, but they don’t care you’re there.

They just, just one more line. – That doesn’t stop me.

And you’re right.

You go to the rendezvous in Memphis and it’s like, you know, just go sit over here, sit down, shut up, eat the food, please leave. – That’s exactly it. – But you know what, dude, I’m very happy to do that every time. – And get the sausage platter with the saltines.

You can’t go wrong. – The sausage platter is Cheryl’s favorite.

The barbecue’s fine, but the sausage platter is where it’s at.

Well, let’s talk about this because, you know, you and me and everybody else, we go to a restaurant, we do the Jim Gaffigan thing.

There’s a Jim Gaffigan joke about, “Hey, I didn’t finish my food.

So can you put this in like a styrofoam thing so I can put it in my refrigerator for five days and then throw it out?”

The little bit I know about your story is you got tired of just chucking food after four days, right? – That’s it.

And we’d always been in the habit of trying to throw away as little as possible with tight budget as a young family.

But as soon as we took notice of the volume that was going to the trash, it became this sort of internal competition with only ourselves to see if we could find a way to stop putting food into the trash.

And that started with takeout, but then later it was in our kitchen.

You know, we could make a protein that’s a mac and cheese for your kids and I had teenage boys at the time.

And then four or five days later, you throw the leftover mac and cheese in the trash.

And we just began in earnest at the beginning of COVID, we were both home all day, just putting a dollar figure to what was going in the trash, then challenge ourselves to drive that number down as best we could.

And it became a real over the top competition with ourselves to get creative and to pay attention to that cost.

And we drove that number to an insanely low number.

And then we began to tell people about what we’ve been doing. – Yeah, I can’t wait until we share what that number ended up being.

When you say insanely low, Stackers, you have no idea how insanely low.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

I love this idea.

Did you then start writing it down just to kind of piss yourself off to just go, you know what, if I got to write it down, I’m going to make myself angry enough that I’m not going to waste food? – At first we would just sort of just speak it out loud.

If I threw something away, I would just yell to the other room where my wife was probably working.

And I would say that was a dollar 35 of pasta, dairy, butter and cheese that we just put into the trash.

And after that year of just sort of keeping a mental tally, we put a post-it note on the fridge and we would write down what was wasted, what the cost was and what date it happened.

And I just remember like dropping an egg once and eggs back then were only like a book, 50 a dozen.

So it was like 12 cents for that egg.

And we wrote it on there and egg lost 12 cents.

And we just kept a running tally on the fridge as a reminder that everything that we bought and put in that fridge had a value.

And we didn’t want that value to go to the trash. – We talk about the fun a lot here on “Stacking Benjamin” is about gamification and about how that just, then it goes from a chore to being fun.

It’s funny for you, it was gamification.

For your spouse, it was much more of a mission, it sounds like. – It really was, but she’s a engineer by trade, former Air Force officer.

So she’s really process oriented, systems oriented and driving toward goals better than I am.

And so for her, once we had that first year dollar amount in our head, she just simply wanted to find the system that would drive that lower and put that system into practice in our house.

And not with the formal set of rules, but that first step of writing it down was to move in that direction, to build a process that held us accountable to drive that number even lower the second year. – What year did you start this? – We started keeping track in 2020, when we first were sent home.

We both worked typical nine to five office jobs.

We both went home, set up home offices in the same room with each other.

And so for somebody that married a long time by then, we spent a lot of time together that first year.

And this grew out of that time together. – It’s so funny, if we were all doing weird entertainment, like those happy hours that we got sick of in week number three. – I’m glad those things are gone, the virtual happy hours are a thing of the past. – Like I feel like you watched everything on Netflix, everything on Hulu, you got rid of the happy hours.

You’re like, you know what, let’s write down our food waste. (laughing) – Tiger King’s over.

Let’s move on to this thing where we calculate how much pasta we threw into the trash.

So yeah, that’s not far from it. – Do you remember what that number was the first year? – Yeah, the first year, since we kept it all mental that first nine months, so for April to December 2020, we landed at around 30 or $35 of food into the trash can.

You know, that egg dilemma was one of the turning points where we dropped the egg, it was an accident.

Do we count that?

And we decided we would, that the definition would be any food brought into the house to be consumed, that was not consumed and left the house in the trash would be counted.

So that broken egg counted.

And that year we were just a little over $30 of total food into the trash. – That’s still a phenomenal number.

We had Frankie Chilenza, who’s a chef on the show a couple of years ago, Brian, he was talking about the fact that, and you know more about this than I do, I believe the number Frankie said was the average American waste about a third of the food that comes into the house.

Is that still about the same today? – Yeah, the number we use is 32%, which is a third, that still holds true and it hasn’t shifted over much of the last decade. – Do you know what that means?

What’s the average family’s food budget then?

If we put that in dollars, how much money is the average family wasting? – The USDA says this year, the average family of four will spend $10,000 on the household groceries.

You’re talking that’s $3,200, which is the lead for my talk back at economy was what we do with $3,200, because that’s the average.

And average means there are houses like mine that do way better, but it also means there are households that 3,200 would be a neat goal, right?

That they’re beyond that.

That that’s just part of the cycle of lifestyle.

They shop, they use a little bit, they throw it away.

But 3,200 a year is the average that we’re not using. – I thought it was funny.

This was a stackers.

If you weren’t there the first morning of economy, and I begin by talking about being more efficient with your assets, that will save you some money.

Then you step up and talk about how we can do the same thing in our refrigerator.

Like these are assets as well.

I start off with what would you do with $4.5 million?

And you’re like, forget that.

What would you do the 3,200? – Yeah, I’m not ready to dream 4.5 million yet, but yeah, moving that way. – But it’s not either or brother, it’s both, right? – Exactly, exactly.

And that was the response that I got.

That 3,200 question had as much value as your question, which was really humbling. – And so what are some of those early moves that you and your spouse made, Brian, that our average stacker can do that will set them on the right track here?

Like when you began counting, what were a few of the kind of obvious swings that you took? – I mean, really that’s the first step, was just counting and drawing attention to it.

‘Cause it really was built into how suburban households like mine live.

So until you put it top of mind by giving a value to it, you’re not really thinking about it.

And so that was the first step.

Then the second was that everything that went into the fridge it had a plan that it was deliberately put there, that we didn’t shop just to fill the fridge, but that when we pick things up off the shelf at the store, put it into the cart, it had an immediate purpose or plan for the next week or 10 days. – This is gonna be Tuesday, let’s say. – Right, yeah, exactly.

We would sort of sketch out a light list of the week, like who has an engagement.

Do we need four night meals this week or we need five evening meals?

Are you leaving the house this week for lunch or are you packing your lunch?

What do you need for snacks?

So things were bought with intentionality so that we didn’t end up with things in the fridge without a purpose.

And when foods go into the fridge without purpose, they seem to languish, get pushed to the back, are lost and oftentimes wasted.

The same with the pantry, the dry goods. – Did you find still that you were buying too much food? – Yeah, like you, we mentioned earlier, the beginning of the call that we’ve just moved since the beginning of COVID from four people to two people, right?

And so that adjustment, how do you prepare a pasta dish for two people after feeding two teenage sons for so long?

How does that adjust?

There were times that we ate the same entree three nights in a week because I had to learn to scale our recipes down.

And I’ve spoken about in my talks before is that we didn’t make too much.

Think of it as you’ve just planned ahead.

So now I’m better at freezing a portion immediately.

So that’s a meal in the freezer ready for the future that it doesn’t go to the fridge to languish.

It was repackaged and ready to go for a future meal.

We did that for a long time until we learned how to scale meal prep to adults. – But still, it’s a great idea, man.

I love chili, but there’s always half a pot.

And then I eat it the next five days, I still throw stuff away, freezing it.

I mean, that’s still great.

You know, something I wondered even after I heard your talk, Brian, you don’t see by this sauce, you know, you eat half of it or a third of it or whatever.

Like how do you start bending the meals around so that the sauces go in a timely manner? – I was just pulling up some old pictures from our Instagram and there was a post where we had a little bit of fresh pineapple leftover, some bell pepper, some pieces of like a ham steak, and then a half a can of like your traditional red Italian sauce.

And we’re like, how do you combine these ingredients?

And according to the notes from Instagram, this is back a few years ago, we made like these Hawaiian French bread pizza loaves.

So not pasta again, but how do you repurpose that ham and bell pepper and pineapple together?

And it turned into a delightful pizza bread sort of thing.

And it does take creativity, but not too long ago, we had a half a can of sauce, some cream.

We just made this, I don’t even know how to explain it, but a very decent tomato soup that had some very unique flavors to it, but it worked.

You know, that sauce extended with cream, a little stock, something’s left over and it was a pretty decent soup.

It oftentimes does feel like a bizarre episode of “Chopped.”

You’ve got these mystery ingredients.

How do you prepare a meal that is appetizing and enjoyable, but at the same time using these four or five different leftovers that on the surface may not match or pair well together? – You must’ve been surprised by some of the matches it turns out that you like that you had no idea. – Yeah, and I will be honest, Joe, my wife is more game.

Like I think in the economy presentation, we showed a picture where she was eating leftover pasta one night, but then she had a side of like two pancakes, like two, you know, someone on a pancake.

So the boys had not eaten on a Saturday morning or something.

And for her, it’s easy to make that transition of a carb is carb.

So that pancake in her mind is just cousins to a garlic knot, right? – Separated at birth.

They were just separated at birth. – Right. (laughs) They’re not far apart.

And I think it is a mental shift where you have to decide that maybe the cultural norm for dinner is kind of silly.

Like there really isn’t a rule about having a pancake as a side instead of a dinner roll or a garlic knot or a biscuit, right?

It is a bread, it carries butter and jam or honey the same.

So it is shifting that mentality.

And I think that’s why this is so, this talk is received well by financial and independent people, FI people, because they’re used to bucking convention and doing things that may not be understood by everybody, but serves a purpose that we can’t see immediately, but will give return in the years to come.

So I think that’s where there’s a good parallel. – Brian, after I heard your talk and Cheryl and I had gamified this a little bit, we’d certainly have done it in the time between economy and the time you and I are talking much more because of your talk.

It is actually just the playfulness of it for me.

Let’s see what I think of eating a pancake with my pasta.

Let’s see if I like it.

Like, you know what?

Turning myself into a little bit of a science experiment and having a good time with it has been really fun.

You know, the same for us.

We’re two adventurous eaters.

We like to try new things, but it is that puzzle piece.

Like what can you create?

How will this go over?

And if it’s not great, it’s the one meal.

You could try again tomorrow, something else.

So it has been fun and we’ve looked at it that way and driving that $30 number down has helped feed that gamification has made it made it fun for us.

And that’s how we’re still living that way six years into this experiment. – How often though do you find yourself scheduling, like scheduled left overnight?

Is that twice a week?

How often? – We usually have one once a week and we both cross our fingers that there’s nothing left so we can order pizza or take out Chinese.

So we have one scheduled this week.

Our son is home for a short period of time.

So we have one scheduled and I looked at yesterday like we don’t have a lot in there.

And I’m just hoping that he is doing his job while he’s at home this week.

So we can order out Friday night. – That’s totally my son, like a human vacuum cleaner for the refrigerator. – Yes. – Yeah.

When Nick went to the University of Texas and they told us what the number was gonna be for room and board, they showed me the number that it was gonna cost for him to eat.

I was like, dude, I’m winning that battle.

University of Texas lost money on my son. – If he does it correctly and does it well, you will win.

Yeah. – Now the cost of the overall education, that’s all different thing.

But the board only, yeah, I made money on that thing.

There must be also an order of operations to like what you buy and how you buy it.

I mean, you made a comment during your talk at Economy about, hey, we’re like everybody else.

We buy the bag salad.

I know I’m not saving money with a bag salad, but you had a specific like order, like that bag salad’s gonna go bad quickly.

So I eat that tomorrow.

Tell us about kind of this goes first, this goes second, this goes third. – We’ve really found that most, that prioritization with fresh fruits and vegetables, you know, I’ve told the show before, a carrot can live a long time in your crisper.

It’s gonna be okay.

A bell pepper or tomato, there’s only a couple of days in a sweet spot for those things.

And same with fruits and berries and the way that we store them.

If we buy strawberries and blueberries from the farmer’s market, those are gonna get pretty early in the week, but there’s always apples or bananas, things that need to ripen that are gonna be there at the second half of our cycle, of our two week cycle.

But this bag salad’s another example.

It’s a treat.

It’s a $4 treat.

I don’t know who says those words, but it is a treat for us, the bag salad, but then we’ll get it that had a lettuce that’s still intact before we dive into that.

Again, everything we purchase has a plan.

So when we buy that bag salad, we know that’s gonna go with Sunday nights, grill, whatever, dinner, but we know that there’s leaf lettuce or a heavy lettuce that’s gonna carry us through for the rest of that week and fresh vegetables and the crisper.

And we’ve started to dig into how we store those things too, that it can’t just sit in the crisper willy nilly forever. – That was gonna be my next question.

‘Cause I just gave a talk to a group of veterinarians actually, and they were talking about some of the cool things they do to just make their fruits and vegetables last longer.

I’ve never done any of them except recently, Cheryl’s been hanging our, not just the bananas, but hanging our apples.

And my apples are lasting longer because they’re in this bag that we hang from a hook, which I never knew. – We’ve taken to like all of our berries and grapes are all washed and stored in glass jars.

They tend to last longer than jar they would, that plastic bag they come in.

So we try to get them out of that original packaging into glass containers.

And we find that’s extended the shelf life and the appealing nature of fresh berries longer.

Same with lettuces and the carrots, onions, the way we store those, again, on wire racks and things.

So there’s air circulation.

But again, we’re only looking at two weeks.

We’re not prepping, we’re not hoarding, we’re not stockpiling, especially fresh things.

What gets us into trouble is that we love the manager specials and we love the clearance at grocery stores to save that dented box of pasta.

‘Cause we think, well, that’s a dollar and it’s only $4.

We just saved $3 of bringing that box of pasta home.

But now we’ve got pasta on the shelf that starts that shelf life thing.

And then we need to plan for that pasta.

So we’re still learning five years in. – Well, let’s go back.

So 2020, you save $35. – Yeah, about loosely tracked. – Yeah, and then 21, 22, 23, like tell me about this number. – I think the second year, 2021 was the full year.

That was the post-it note year.

That was $18 total.

And I think we spent around, I believe it was $6,000.

So we’re pretty well below the average on expenses, but really low on the waste.

We bought a year long planner, a monthly planner where we tracked every purchase to the penny and every bit of waste as close to the penny as we could.

In that third year, which had been 2022, we were under $10 and then by 2023, we were at less than $4 waste.

So that took it down to just $3 and change. – It’s just so, so incredible.

When I told Cheryl that, she said the same thing, Brian, all your audiences say, the people around me were saying this at economy, I’ll do well, but I don’t think I’m getting to $4. – Yeah, and again, I don’t think that $4 should be anyone’s goal.

I think awareness should be the goal.

And once you’re aware of it, then you begin just to rethink about how you use it, how you purchase it.

The number will drive down organically, just by the awareness piece and making a conscious effort to think about it.

But for us, that game really took hold and it becomes something for us to drive toward.

And that was a lot of weird meals and a lot of weird concoctions, but a lot of fun as well, and a lot of leftovers.

But I think just being aware and thinking about it will change the way that you approach food and leftovers and you’ll see success pretty quick.

I know for us, the first time we realized we were saving some money, well, that’s extra money.

We love Thai food, we love good Thai takeout.

Like there’s extra money just to go outside the budget to go pick up some Thai food or pizza or something.

So for us, the rewards are pretty instant to see the impact that has in your household.

It’s weird, but it’s fun. – What also was interesting to me was that no plan goes perfectly all the time.

I recommend this budget meeting for our stackers where we have like a 20 minute quick meeting about our money every week.

And Cheryl and I often don’t have the meeting.

And then it’s funny that our money situation a few weeks later, like if we just don’t communicate about the little things, the big things then kind of blow up.

You guys had this go kind of sideways for a little bit when you made a big discovery, I know, that sounded really good at the time. – Yeah, you know, we do the same.

We do the money meetings we do every week.

We shop, we have meetings before we shop.

But we recently joined our first warehouse club and it’s overwhelming.

We’ve avoided it all this time.

And I found a snack that I thought I liked and you have to buy just pounds of it, right? – And you bought a pallet. – I just so much.

And it didn’t turn out to be as great as I’d hoped.

And we didn’t understand the storage of it.

And we didn’t understand the shelf life of it.

This year has set us back.

I think we attributed five or $6 a waste to that one purchase.

That’s not the disparaged warehouse stores.

We’re still a member, we’re still shopping there, but it really did cause us to evaluate.

We thought we were saving money, but in the end we lost money, you know?

And so we are learning and it’s a constant cycle of trying new things and learning how to do this. – You know, what I love about that story though, is that a mentor of mine a long time ago said that there’s the short term and obvious and the long term and not so obvious.

And while the warehouse store can save you money, it seems obvious.

You walk in there like, oh my God, look at the price of all this.

This is fantastic pricing.

The fact that you’re buying it in quantity, you know, and these lean corporations have already learned this and maybe we need to know it in our household just by being more conscious as a shopper, even if I’m shopping at Whole Foods, let’s say, versus the warehouse store, the conscious piece, which is more long-term and not so obvious, really it sounds like did better by you. – I agree.

And we’ve had that same conversation about like milk, you know, to buy a half gallon of milk is more expensive if you compare ounces to ounces of a gallon of milk, but a half gallon of milk lasts longer than a gallon of milk.

So is it worth the investment not to waste the productivity of bring that milk to the store to the rent of my house?

Or should I save money, buy the gallon, then get creative on how to use an entire gallon of milk, which we would never do in two weeks in our house anymore?

I think attention in households, you know, do you buy more expensive, smaller volumes so that you’re not sending to the landfill and you’re not wasting the resources it took to produce it?

Or is the dollar savings paramount and get creative with the volume that you have to buy to save that dollar amount?

And so it’s attention that I think, again, is different from household to household and budget to budget and priority to priority.

None of this is cookie cutter.

It changes if you have small kids or older kids or no kids, but it does have you thinking that way and it’s changed the way that we approach our shopping for groceries. – Well, it was a fantastic lesson and the gamification is so fun.

And I’m glad that you’re here right after Memorial Day because I know a lot of people have all those leftovers from the holiday weekend sitting in.

You just made all the stackers in Stack-O-Lamp feel guilty about all this food, which is not on you, by the way.

That’s totally on me.

You get creative.

I mean, I think you have to go back to the fridge and look but how do you repurpose those eight hot dogs that weren’t eaten because the kids didn’t have them that day, right? – Oh, well, you have me a hot dogs.

I will find a way.

I remember comedian David Tell talking about that one, Brian, saying, if you look at me, you can tell like 5K, I’m out.

Hot dog eating contest, I’m listening.

That’s the thing.

We’ll link to Brian’s talk at economy at our show notes page stackybegiments.com.

Brian, I got one more question that’s off the main topic. – Sure. – You have, and we didn’t talk about this earlier.

We didn’t mention it as we were introducing what a rock star you are.

You also are a person who is a TEDx speaker.

You have won the Moth Storyteller competitions four times, I believe, among other storytelling.

Being able to talk, being able to speak in front of people is a skill, I think.

They call it a soft skill, but man, if you can get up just in front of your group at work or the Kiwanis Club or whatever, just for 30 seconds, it can be such valuable time.

What are some of the keys you learned to being a good storyteller? – That’s a great question.

I think first is that if a struggling storyteller or a struggling speaker, I think the first thing is similar to what was talked about in the economy.

People want to hear your story.

And so when you stand up in front of a mic or in front of a room, people are interested in what you have to say.

First, if you could flip that switch to know what you have to say is important and has value, then a confidence will come from that and it will make you more comfortable.

For me, I think for a new speaker or somebody who has something to share, find that small trusted audience first and then learn to trust that they lean in and they listen.

And then that makes it easier when you speak to 50 people or 100 people or like we’ve gotten to hundreds.

So I think that’s the two things.

One is know that people want to hear your story, that there’s value in what you have to say.

When believe that and two, practice that in front of an audience you trust.

And that’s friends and coworkers or colleagues or fellow volunteers in a Qantas Rotary Club.

And then that builds that confidence and that’s what gives you that comfortability.

I know people say it’s a soft skill, but it is practice.

It is rehearsed and there is a self-talk to be able to be perceived as comfortable in front of a stage.

But that comes just from knowing that people want to hear what you say, trust that it’s valuable and that you’ve done this in front of small groups who will give you honest feedback and be encouraging in your corner. – Man, thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today, Brian.

I super appreciate the time. – Thanks for having me, man.

This is awesome.

I appreciate you.

I love the pod.

I’ve been listening more and more since Economy and what we’ve done in food, we’ve got work to do to other places and thanks for you and your guests for sharing that wisdom with us out here. – Hey there stackers, I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug.

And with Brian’s sonnets sharing how to reduce your food waste, let’s talk about the money you’ve got in cold storage over at your bank.

See how I got food to the bank.

See how I did that?

Because different than your fridge where food can still go bad with the bank, your money is protected.

That’s right, it was on today’s date way back in 1934 when a new government agency was tested.

The Fond du Lac State Bank of East Peoria, Illinois closed and for the first time in the US, a government agency began working to pay off depositors.

Which government agency that still protects savers today wasn’t.

I’ll be back right after I go check the expiration date on everything I own.

Time for me to get saving. – Hey there stackers, I’m the basement’s official mold tester and the guy with three car warranties on his El Camino, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug.

Those car warranty people are amazing.

How do they always know that my existing car warranty is no good and I’m gonna need another one?

I’ll tell ya, it’s great to have all these experts in my corner.

But I don’t think you need to be an expert to know the answer to today’s trivia question, what federal agency protects your money while it sits in a bank?

The answer?

Well, back in 1934 when it was founded, this agency protected up to $2,500 per account holder.

Today, it’s now 100 times that amount with each depositor receiving $250,000 of protection per account type.

But what agency provides this protection?

It’s the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or FDIC.

While this is helpful and makes sure your money is safe, it won’t be available right away if your bank goes under.

In fact, back in 1934, it took over a year for FDIC to get savers their cash and even today, it’s still a process.

I mean, come on, we’re talking about the federal government here, am I right?

But still, as mom says, late is better than never, especially when it comes to your money.

And now, back to Len. (laughing) Where’s you going to Len?

Is that, yeah, you can go to me because what is that, kitty trivia?

I mean, who doesn’t know the FDIC doesn’t protect your money?

Wow.

Way to make our listeners feel great.

I’m telling ya.

There’s like four of them out there listening right now who had no clue.

Another question would have been, what year was the FDIC?

Oh no.

That’s a Friday trivia question.

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

What is this?

Golf courses have easy holes and tough holes, Len, and this is meant to be one of those easy pigeon putt holes.

Joe, Joe, you’ve never seen an easy golf hole.

I never have.

Okay, so this was the putt putt.

This was the putt putt.

This is putt putt, yeah.

This was.

And if you’re the stacker that didn’t know FDIC, shame on Len. (laughing) Yeah, it’s the final hole of the putt putt where they want the ball back.

And so. (laughing) Yeah, like who’s stupid enough to do that, right?

You just go to the next course.

It’s just a funnel down to one, only one spot.

You give everybody a hole in one on 18 and go to the next course.

Play 17 holes and onto the next one. (laughing) Welcome to the How You Rip Off The Putt Putt. (laughing) So, by the way, if you are with the credit union, they have similar insurance, but it’s called NCUA.

So they’re not FDIC, it’s NCUA is the same thing.

And by the way, where was that first pay cat, Doug, that was in East Peoria, Illinois, not the major metropolis of Peoria.

Yeah.

It was in East Peoria.

And not around those idiots in West Peoria.

No.

No, no, no, no. (laughing) East Peoria.

I love how we’re even distinguishing which part of Peoria.

Is there East Peoria?

I’m glad I’m here today, guys.

Apparently there is. (laughing) This is the hard-hitting part of the show.

Is it like Connecticut?

You know, they have like New Haven, then there’s West Haven and East Haven and North Haven.

I think they have all the havans.

Yeah.

I think they have all the havans.

Tax havens.

Big thanks to Brian Suddeth for stopping by.

Len, we had a discussion at an Angels game, you and me and the honeybee, like all the stuff Brian talks about, like that’s cool.

You guys also have some fun things you do to control food waste.

Yeah, well, of course we do the leftovers, which, you know, a long time ago, I was calculating my leftovers.

And this was 10 years ago, I think I did this now, maybe 15.

And at the time we saved $1,400 a year, just making sure that we always ate leftovers.

So, I mean, that’s no big secret.

And the key is you gotta like leftovers.

I know a lot of people who don’t like leftovers.

Really?

And that’s a problem.

You’re good friends.

It was good when you ordered it a day ago or two days ago.

Or if you made it, they’ll make a meal.

And if there’s leftovers, it goes in the tray.

It’s a shame.

It’s a dirty shame, but it costs them a lot of money.

I tell them that all the time.

So leftovers, of course, that’s one.

I think some of the others we talked about at the game though, that maybe you didn’t know about is the blue apple that I use to extend the life of our produce.

This is the part that Brian didn’t even, I mean, he talked about, of course, order of operations, whatever you guys just heard, but eat the bag salad first. – Yes, of course you have to do that too. – And the carrots and the potatoes will last longer, but you even extend the life of your vegetables and fruits by using this. – Yeah, we can extend the life of our vegetables by one to two weeks by this.

It’s called blue apple.

If you go to Amazon or Google blue apple, you’ll see what I’m talking about.

What it is is it’s a blue plastic apple.

And then you put a little packet in there, kind of like those silica gel packets.

I don’t know what’s in there, but what’s in that packet absorbs, I believe it’s sulfur and other gases that are outgassed from your fresh vegetables.

I think it’s sulfur though, or some sort of sulfide, whatever combo, but that outgassing of the other fruits and vegetables speeds up the decomposition of your vegetables.

Those packets absorb that, and it truly extends the life of your produce by a couple, one to two, one week for sure, but sometimes two weeks.

And that has saved us $400 a year.

And that calculation was done probably six or seven years ago.

So I’m sure by now, with inflation, maybe six, $700, at least for us is what it saves.

We have those blue apples in both our crisper drawers, and we keep the blue apples out on the counter with our fruits and vegetables that sit on the counter.

And that works fantastic.

So that’s a huge one.

A lot of people don’t know about that, but- – That’s cool. – That’s a good one.

And the other one I do is, I just want to second what Brian said about menus too.

We’ve been doing it since our kids were five years old, roughly four or five.

We let them pick two meals for the week, and then me and the honeybee, we would pick several more each, three.

So we’d have 10, 11, 12 meals for over a two week period.

And if you pick those meals and then you get your grocery list to correspond to those meals, you don’t overbuy.

You know what you’re going to eat.

As Brian also said, you order your meals for those two weeks in order of which vegetables and fruits are going to go bad first.

So you want to eat those first.

But if you do it absolutely perfectly right, I mean, yeah, you can save a lot of money.

And that meal picking, it’s fun for the kids and everybody gets at least a little something of what they want to eat every week. – That’s cool. – And it saves you money.

And it’s foolproof, it really is.

And that way you don’t over shop too.

I know, I can’t believe people go shopping still without a list, but a lot of people do.

And that can be very wasteful. – Ever since I heard Brian on the main stage, and the reason I wanted to have him on today was for just that very reason of mindfulness.

I mean, the second that I heard him, it’s funny, my refrigerator has been so much better.

Like we have safe, and to this point, the average family loses over $3,000 a year in food waste.

And so Len, the $1,400 number, the 1,800, I guess, if you add both of those two points that you had together, just by cutting your food waste in half, you’ve got almost 2,000 bucks.

Like that’s it. – You don’t realize it.

Food is expensive.

One thing we don’t splurge on really is food.

I mean, to me, that’s one of the things about life that makes life worth living is eating.

So I always– – Try not eating. – I always say, hey, don’t worry about the price of the food.

Just make sure whatever you buy gets eaten.

All of it gets eaten.

But I don’t care about the price of the food.

If everybody wants to enjoy life, and that’s a great way, it’s a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy life.

Just make sure you don’t throw any of it into the waste can. – Well, and if you’re saving almost $2,000 a year on food, Len, you could buy the more expensive food. – Exactly right.

Yeah, you can get the more expensive cut of meat or splurge on the lobster for a weekend barbecue or something. – Well, speaking of that, oh, gee, I know you’re on this train.

I have been a big, big fan lately of buying locally sourced meats, obviously living in Texas.

We’ve got some fantastic local farms here with pigs and beef and just– – Are you just going to start listing off farm animals now? – And chickens. – That’s exactly what I was thinking. – And goats. – There’s all sorts of things like– – EI oil. – And giraffe. – Zebra. – Hippopotamus. – I actually met a guy.

We were at Big Bend.

He was a rancher, and he had zebras.

And he was talking about how zebras are nasty.

Just they don’t care about your barbed-bore fence. – The meat or their personality? – Their personality.

Their personality is just– they’re mean, and they also will go right through your barbed-bore fence without even thinking about it. – Wow. – EI oils. – But, oh, gee, you’re all about the locally sourced meats, I think, right?

Didn’t we talk about this? – We’ve talked about wanting to be all about it. – Gotcha. – We have a local farmer’s market that comes to the community.

And we’ll get some stuff if we happen to be in town and down there on Saturday morning type of thing.

But it’s on my list of things to do.

I got to believe, just like at Costco, you get a little bit of a discount for buying in bulk.

I got to believe that by having the whole cow at the same time, there’s some sort of marginal benefit to that.

But I’m also concerned with just sitting in the freezer for a long time, because we’re going through it right now.

We’re doing the freezer clean out, or it’s just like, what’s in here?

It’s like, oh, meat-like substitute.

OK, let’s thaw that and see what it tastes like. – You know, somebody on the Facebook, on the Stacking Benjamins Facebook, I can’t remember her name, but she talked about how to avoid waste in your freezer.

And she mentioned– or maybe it was a he– I’m sorry, I can’t remember– they mentioned they have a whiteboard on their plate board on their freezer.

And they keep an inventory of everything that’s in that freezer.

And we do, too, at our house. – Oh, yeah, that was a he.

I think that was Colin. – Yeah, I replied to them and said, yeah, we do.

Great minds think alike.

That’s a great way to make sure something’s not sitting at the bottom of your freezer for a year, because you didn’t realize that. – Yeah, if you have a chest freezer, man, it is hard to remember what’s down there at the bottom. – Yeah, that’s why you have a whiteboard and you keep an inventory.

And dates, you rotate.

It forces you to rotate.

So yeah, that’s another way to not– – And Brian did mention this, but Frankie Chilenza did a couple of years ago when he was on talking about Foodway chef Frankie Chilenza.

He said labeling, just have some tape and label the date that you put it in the refrigerator, the date that you put it in the freezer.

And that will help you remember to rotate as well.

Great stuff.

We’ll link to, by the way, Brian’s incredible economy video, as I mentioned earlier, and our show notes at stackybedgments.com.

Time for us to do– well, you know what?

Let’s do the TikTok Minute first.

Time for the TikTok Minute.

This is the part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either saying something brilliant or air quotes brilliant.

Len, you think we’re going to hear brilliance today from TikTok?

Or are we going to hear some air quotes brilliance? – I got in trouble last time we did this.

I was wrong, woefully wrong.

I’ll say brilliant. – You guys are going to recognize this voice.

This is a little known guy from Tennessee named Dave. – 100% chance that a year from now, we’re going to be sitting here smiling, those of us that did not take out our money.

The only person that gets hurt on a roller coaster are those that jump off in the middle. 100% chance that a year from now, we’re going to be sitting here smiling. – Oh, well, I accidentally– so good I accidentally played it twice.

It is funny, as we record this a little bit early, the stock market back to zero OG pretty much for the year.

And man, if you just kept investing in your 401(k), you didn’t change a thing, you actually took this downturn and you made money even though the stock market didn’t.

I think it’s funny, if you looked at your statement on March 31, you looked at your statement on April 30, and then you look at your statement in two days from now, or whatever, you would probably have an attitude of like, OK, whatever.

But like Dave said, if you did the roller coaster ride the whole time, you’re going like, oh my god, what is going on?

I mean, for us, we see– this is what I tell people, you feel the emotion of the roller coaster ride.

Now multiply it by 170 families.

That’s the roller coaster ride we get, because we look at everything in aggregate.

So I see that, and I have the same emotions, and I have to do the same thing, which is to go, yeah, nope, we’ve got a system, we’ve got a plan, stay the course.

And if you did that and paid no mind to the last two months of chaos, you don’t even know.

How do you get through the downturns, Len, without jumping off the roller coaster?

I don’t look very often.

That’s the beauty of once a year is kind of nice doing that.

And I have a very highly volatile mining sector IRA that I’ve let the experts do the managing for me, because I’m not an expert in that stuff, but I believe in it.

There’s been times– my entire portfolio, and it’s just in that IRA, has dropped 20%, 25%.

And it’s like you’ve got to say, well, look, I have strength of your convictions.

You know that you are correct that if you hold long enough, you’re going to be just fine.

But like I said, you’ve got to have that strength, and you just have to trust in the process.

Because if you don’t trust in the process, you’re going to mess yourself up.

People talk about the importance of exponential growth.

There’s also the importance of dollar cost averaging.

And dollar cost averaging, I mean, it’s great when things are going up in price, but that means you’re buying more higher price, too.

So you’ve got to look at it this way.

Prices are down.

You’re buying things on sale.

And stocks are the only thing I know that people get upset when things go on sale.

So it’s just kind of funny.

Just imagine– But you’ve got to look at it.

Yeah, if you didn’t touch anything and you’re doing that paycheck deduction at work and you just stayed at it, you’re looking at your US-based stuff now, assuming the stock market stays the same for the next few days until this goes live.

You’re high-fiving yourself.

You’re like, yeah, yeah, I stuck with it.

The only problem I have with this OG– and it’s easy to pick on Dave a little bit.

The only problem I had with that clip was 100% certainty a year from now.

I would much rather– if I’m an advisor, I would much rather tell people nothing is certain.

There’s a great chance– 10 years?

OK, I’m much more certainty.

But a year from now, I don’t know.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, one year is probably a little off.

But honestly, even if it is, in a year from now, you’re still going to be happy that you’re buying.

Right.

So to Len’s point, it goes on sale, and people freak out.

I prefer to look backward and see today’s price in the rearview mirror.

So you see that mountain chart, and it goes up, and then it comes back down.

I like to look back and go, OK, where were we the last time we were at this price?

Like November or whatever.

Yeah, I’m buying September of 2024 numbers.

I’m buying October of 2023 numbers.

I’m buying December of 2020 numbers.

Knowing what you know now, if you got to go in a time machine and go backwards, and they said, OK, we’re going to put you back in time to October of 2022, how much money would you like to invest?

If you knew the future, what would you do?

You borrow as much as you could.

All of it.

You would– like all of it.

Put all of it in right now on margin. 5x leverage.

You know what I mean?

Just– you know the future.

OK, champ.

Settle down.

So it’s the same thing.

You know the future.

If it’s gone up and gone down, you know it’s going to come back.

You just don’t know the time frame.

I like that phrase, the only people who get hurt on a roller coaster are the ones that get off in the middle.

That is pretty funny.

It’s really accurate.

And the end is– you guys use this phrase all the time is, when do you need the money?

That’s the end of the ride.

It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking, the money’s going down, and I need that money now.

So now is the end of the ride.

It’s not.

Stick to your plan.

The end of the ride for certain tranches of money are somewhere out in the future.

You don’t need that money now, or you would have never invested it.

If you needed it now for daily living expenses– Should not have put it in the market in the first place.

Right.

It shouldn’t have gone in the market.

So it’s probably five years from now, or maybe 35 years from now.

That’s the end of the ride.

People have been spoiled, too, the last decade or so.

The stocks have pretty much gone up, up, up, up, with very few pullbacks.

And historically, it hasn’t been quite that up, up, up, up, up.

It’s usually two steps up, one step back.

Two steps up, one step back.

And I think a lot of people have just been conditioned to think it’s five steps up, and maybe a baby step back, and then five more steps up.

That’s not how it really– Imagine that you started investing in 2009, and you’re like, I don’t think there’s going to be another pandemic, so we’re not going to have that bump in the road again, hopefully, God, anytime soon.

But besides that, heck, what a nice, fun ride that’s been for those people.

But you’re right.

I mean, that’s why people were questioning international.

We’re going to have international week next week, talking about, for those of you that have not invested internationally, let’s get on that.

Let’s get diversified.

Let’s go.

Good stuff.

We’ll link to that on our show notes page.

A little bit of Dave in today’s show.

But let’s do a headline, guys.

Hello, darlings.

And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s Headlines.

Our headline today comes to us from The Wall Street Journal.

And this piece was written by Tping Chen.

And Tping writes, “The high school juniors with $70,000 a year job offers.”

Doug, you found this one for us.

I did.

It jumped out at me as I was reading the news in the morning.

And that’s a headline that’s going to get your attention.

And I’m like, yeah, those are the basketball playing kids who are getting this NIL deals.

Hand it to them.

But it wasn’t.

How amazing was it that it was– well, you go on.

I mean, tell everybody about it.

It’s incredible.

Yes, this kid, Elijah Rios, they talk about.

And actually, Doug, to your point, he says that so many companies want him.

He said, quote, “It honestly feels like I’m an athlete getting all this attention from all these pro teams.”

As a high schooler, he’s a junior taking welding class at Father Judge Catholic High School in Philadelphia that works closely with companies looking for workers in the skilled trades.

Employers are dealing with a shortage of workers as baby boomers retire.

They’ve increasingly begun courting high school students like Rios, a hiring strategy they say is likely to become even more crucial in the coming years.

Listen to this.

So Elijah, when he graduates next year, he plans to work as a fabricator at a local equipment maker for nuclear recycling in other sectors, a job that pays $24 an hour plus overtime regularly and paid vacations.

And also, think about this ROI.

He’s being paid while he’s being trained.

So instead of paying for training at some university, he’s being paid as he’s getting this experience.

It’s a win-win all the way around.

The employers get to sort of test out a potential employee to find out if they’re going to fit well with the team on the floor.

It reinforces to kids and to parents, frankly.

College isn’t for everyone.

I mean, it is the right solution for a lot of people who have aspirations into certain professional arenas.

But it’s not for everybody.

And I love that this is hopefully going to take off.

Yeah.

I mean, Len, this idea that you have to go to college, probably not.

I’ve been saying this for 10 years.

If you’re going to go to college, you’ve got to calculate your return on investment.

What’s the college going to cost?

And what do you expect to earn when you get out of college?

And a lot of people didn’t do that over the last decade.

And it’s come back to bite them.

So the good news is there are so many jobs out there that don’t require a college degree.

And there are some jobs out there.

If you look at the ads for job positions, it’ll say they need a college degree.

But there are some jobs that you really don’t need the college degree.

If you can prove that you can do the work anyways– and I’ve talked about my son being one example.

He applies regularly for jobs that require a college degree.

And he still got hired.

He got hired by a major aerospace company that required an engineering degree.

And he got the job anyway.

Because he had the skills.

He proved that he could do the work.

You just have to be careful.

There’s nothing wrong with the vocational.

When we were in high school– Not even that wrong.

These are some highly paid jobs, Len.

Oh my gosh.

They’re highly paid.

And they’re highly skilled.

He’s starting out at the bottom out of high school with no college at $24 an hour.

And it goes up quickly from there as he gains skills in these– A pro welder will make $200,000 a year.

There’s a serious dearth of welders right now in all industries.

But I think there’s an odd corollary.

I’m glad you brought up the notion of trade school, Joe.

Because there’s an odd corollary between college and what we’re learning about here.

Because essentially, they’re both trade schools.

And that’s different.

That was not the case when we were kids in high school.

The three of us, the four of us were in high school.

That was not the case with colleges and with a four-year degree.

And I think as parents, we didn’t adapt.

So if you look at what was happening with kids coming out of colleges in the ’60s through probably the late ’90s, mid to late ’90s, was the employment market valued the four-year degree more broadly than it does now.

Just the piece of paper.

Yes, they did.

So we could get degrees in liberal arts.

And the employment market thought, look, they’re well-rounded.

They have clearly the aptitude and the ability to stay focused on tasks and work through a college degree.

Because that’s tough.

And they recognized that it was tough.

But it changed somewhere in the late ’90s to a sent college to essentially being vocational school for very specific skill sets.

And if you didn’t have one of those specific skill sets, you weren’t getting a job in the pharmaceutical industry or in the engineering industry.

And if you just came out with the more general degrees, your ROI plummeted to your point, Len, because there was no return on investment or very, very little if you came out with more of those generalized degrees.

And we didn’t adapt.

We were conditioned to think after high school, you’re going to college.

What college are you going to?

It’s the first question out of most of our mouths was, what college are you going to?

Or you say, what college is your friend going to?

And we didn’t realize that wasn’t the right question to be asking.

These are not the jobs they were before.

These jobs are also changing quickly as more professions are getting tech-infused.

The piece here says, employers say that as a skill trade, it’s become more tech-infused.

They anticipate doing even more recruitment in early age because they need workers who are comfortable programming and running computer diagnostics.

Quote, “I’m not looking to hire the guy I used to have 20 years ago,” says Bob Walker, founder of Global Affinity.

The Bristol, Pennsylvania-based manufacturer who offered Rios a job.

The equipment he uses is highly advanced, including a $1.7 million steel laser cutter.

And he says he needs to have tech-savvy workers to operate it.

So these jobs are also changing.

And by the way, there’s a resource here.

A woman named Angie Simon is the creator of this cool experience that now is across the country in Canada. 51 locations they have these.

It’s called the Heavy Metal Summer Experience, where kids between 15 and 18 can go for a few days to a camp.

And they’re just immersed in these different trades.

It was created because of the fact that contractors building houses were having trouble finding people to finish these housing projects.

So they decided, you know what?

I’m going to immerse these kids at a young age in it.

And we’ll link to the Heavy Metal Summer Experience in the show notes.

I’m not sure if enrollment’s up for this summer or not.

But certainly go and check it off.

You’ve got a kid– It’s just a shame now that the high schools– when we were in high school, at least my high school, and I’m sure yours too, we had every shop– we had wood shop, we had metal shop, we had welding class, we had Mechanics Bay.

So people did auto shop.

All of those shops were electrical, metal– I think I said metal.

They were all at my high school.

And it was a great way to pick up experience.

And I think parents today of young kids, maybe they should talk to their school board and start asking, hey, can you get this back in the high school?

Bringing it back.

Yeah, bring it back.

Well, it’ll more than likely– I mean, you’re right.

We should ask our school boards to do that.

But it may also happen naturally as fewer and fewer kids from most school districts go on to these super expensive four-year colleges.

They need to provide a training avenue for– There’s a thirst for it.

Yeah.

Yeah, because a lot of what this piece talks about is manufacturers are going to the high school going, give me kids.

Please, please, please, please, please, give me kids.

And the high school obviously wants to take advantage of that.

Great piece.

We’ll link to it on our show notes at stackybendjemons.com.

Just remember, folks, hard work pays off in the future, but laziness pays off right now.

Remember that.

Yes.

That’s what I think, Glenn.

Procrastination means I always have something to do tomorrow.

There you go.

Big positive.

Let’s wander out on the back porch, because we’ve had, I know, some reviews, Doug.

Also, we’ve had some great comments.

I had a great comment from someone, again, on Spotify.

We did our– related to this episode, we went back a couple of years to our grocery bill tips roundtable when Janice Torres joined Len, and we had so much fun.

Remember, Len, there’s no joke funnier than tuberculosis day, tuberculosis day humor.

Why somebody made tuberculosis– I can’t say that word– Tuberculosis day.

Stop trying.

A thing.

Say TB.

Yes.

Everybody’s call it TB.

You’re just ruining it, Joe.

A guy named Rich says, thanks for the tips.

Laughs.

That’s why I wanted to replay that.

And I also thought with Brian coming on, it was good one, two punch, hearing about tips that really held up even a couple of years old.

And then our friend SilentShade on Spotify said, cool discussion.

I’m also a frequent Instacart user.

Len, was it you talking about Instacart?

I don’t remember.

Somebody– maybe it was Janice.

I don’t think so.

Says, especially the pickup.

Listen to this.

I really like seeing the total cart price before I check out so I can make good budget choices.

So when you meal plan, you put it all into Instacart.

And then SilentShade says, the nearest grocery store to me is a Publix.

One hack I’ve started doing because Publix does raise prices on Instacart.

So not only are you paying the Instacart fee, you’re paying a higher price that Instacart has with Publix.

So Publix is gouging you a little bit.

You shop on Instacart without checking out.

Then you use the Publix app to load up on coupons.

And then you go into the store and use the Instacart app as the shopping list.

And then you cancel all the items in your Instacart.

So you get all the coupons you can get.

You can see what the prices are going to be ahead of time.

That’s like meal planning, 201 Len.

Yeah.

Hey, I can’t say enough about the Honeybee.

She uses our local grocery store app.

And you save so much money.

If you don’t use those grocery store apps, you are missing out on a ton of savings.

There’s so many deals in those.

Before she goes shopping every other week or so, she’s on that app.

And she’s just checking things off on that list.

And it’s just– I just boggles the mind how many people go into those stores and don’t use those apps.

And they’re really missing out on a lot of hidden savings.

So yeah, they’re talking about the Publix app there.

So I highly recommend you look into that if you’re not doing it already.

Yeah, it was a great episode.

Thanks, everybody, for the comments on that.

Doug, you also had a review, I think, that you wanted to read.

I did.

You know, I get so much out of these reviews and just thank people for submitting them.

And one of my favorite things is trying to decode who the real people are behind the reviews based on their name.

I guess it’s their Apple ID.

And this one, clearly– there’s no question in my mind.

This is from Stacker Blair, who’s obviously Lisa Welchill, the actress who played Blair on Facts of Life in the ’80s.

And I mean– Who else could it be?

Is that another old guy reference?

And trust me, I mean– I used to have a crush on her.

Oh, who didn’t?

Are you kidding me?

Oh, gee, did you watch Facts of Life?

Yeah, not a lot.

It wasn’t– it was not on the approved list when I was a kid.

What?

That was pretty clean.

That was a pretty squeaky clean show, I think.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Not for my age at the time.

Wow.

OK.

Well, Blair was something else.

And Lisa Welchill, who is obviously a fan of the show, writes, great show.

Highly recommend.

Long time stacker and first time reviewer.

Great for people new to personal finance, but also great for those wanting to continue building better financial habits.

Love the content and format.

And this is where it really heads south quickly, and she broke my heart, except for Doug’s lame trivia.

Only kidding, Doug.

Why are you laughing?

Blair knew you were going to read that.

That was a hurtful thing to say, and you’re laughing.

Only kidding, Doug.

Keep it up, guys.

It’s important work.

See ya.

It’s awesome.

Thanks, Blair, for the nice comment.

And by the way, if you send these to me, I’ve got all these books I really need to keep on loading books.

So send them to me, [email protected].

And we obviously don’t want you to do a review that you don’t mean, but if you’re leaving us a review anyway, thank you for helping us out there, help new stackers, the family, know what they’re getting into.

And I’d love to give you a choice of some of these stacks of books from people who’ve been on the show.

All right, that’s going to do it for today.

We’ve got a lot of people to thank.

Thank you, Mr.

Penzo, for hanging out with us.

Good seeing you again.

That’s been a pleasure, as always.

I love it.

Yes, it’s so funny.

We heard a ton from Len today.

Oh, gee, is OG asleep?

Yeah, I was just wondering why I need to be here today.

Provided absolutely no value.

I had some good commentary that I had in my mind about the going to work thing after high school, but apparently it was not needed.

Just jump in, man.

Jump in.

It’s all good.

Was a trade school ever something that your kids thought about?

No, I didn’t– no.

Nope, because we’re not going to talk about it now.

Too late.

Sorry.

My good ideas are gone.

So come back next week for my good ideas, I guess.

There you have it.

It’s a cliffhanger.

Doug, what should we have learned today?

Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today.

First, take some advice from Brian Suddath.

Want to make some easy money?

Focus on your food costs.

Not only can you quickly afford the little extra things, but you’ll also have fun gamifying the experience.

Second, big career money?

That may not mean taking the path you think it does.

But the big lesson?

If you want a food lesson, come share dinner with Joe’s mom.

I dare you not to eat all of her green bean jello casserole.

Double dog dare you.

Thanks to Brian Suddath for joining us today.

You can find his full talk from this year’s Economee Conference on the Economee Conference’s YouTube page.

We’ll also include links in our show notes at StackingBenjamins.com.

Thanks also to Len Penzo for joining us.

You’ll find Squirrels Gone Wild wherever you watch your spicy videos.

Or just settle for LenPenzo.com, the offbeat blog for responsible people.

This show is the property of SP Podcasts LLC copyright 2025.

And is created by Joe Salsihi.

Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends.

You’ll find out about our awesome team at StackingBenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.

Come say hello.

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 Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[MUSIC ENDS] >> It’s actually funny, OG.

I didn’t even think about the fact that we hadn’t heard from you.

I was just looking at the timestamp.

>> Thinking about what a nice, peaceful show it was.

I didn’t have any arguments.

Nobody made us feel stupid.

>> I didn’t even think about it and I feel bad.

But actually, Len, I didn’t know that you were going to be here for this particular episode when I found this.

I want to get OG’s take, but I do want to get your take on this too, because you have kids of a certain age and those kids have friends.

This is from Coda and O’Brien’s podcast and he’s talking to comedian John Mulaney.

Let’s get both of your take on this.

>> I asked you a question.

You have a friend of your daughter staying with you, correct?

>> Yes.

>> What does she call you?

>> She hasn’t said my name.

>> Oh.

>> She just showed up last night, so she hasn’t said, “Oh, hello, Mr.

O’Brien,” or– >> Do the kids’ friends call you Mr.

O’Brien?

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> Because that was something that started in grade school, is that apparently the word went out, you call parents Mr.

O’Brien or Mrs.

O’Brien.

And they do that.

And I used to think, that’s a little formal, I don’t know that I need that.

But the second a kid says, “Hey, Conan, I want to tear into their torso–” >> What the fuck?

>> “– with my sherpaned nails–” >> What the fuck?

>> “– pull their heart out and eat it in front of them.”

>> Yeah.

>> Maybe an overreaction or– >> Proportionate.

>> Thank you.

>> Yeah.

>> Proportionate.

>> So that’s the question, guys.

OG, do you feel like Conan does?

People say, “Hey, OG, kids, friends of your kids.”

>> There’s two things, and I think this is smidge generational.

So I’ve been educated to now learn that kids born after 2016, of which Caroline is in that group, is called Gen Alpha.

Do you guys know that?

>> Nope.

But I do now.

I was this many years old.

>> Yeah.

So that’s Gen Alpha.

And the boys are– so there’s X.

>> Gen Z.

>> Millennials are Gen Z.

>> The people who created these things were like, damn it, why did we start at the end of the alphabet?

They went all the way back to the beginning to give themselves to one way.

>> It reminds me of that Nate Bergazzi bit on Saturday Night Live where he’s playing George Washington.

And this is relevant because we just had this senior kindergarten thing at my kids’ school where the seniors gave a gift to the kindergartners, like the new generation upcoming.

And we’re out of here, and it’s your guys’ now type thing.

And in the bit, he’s like, “I dream of a country where we can educate our kids how we want.

And the first year of school, we’ll call it kindergarten.”

And then the guy goes, “General, what will we call the second year?”

And he says, “We’ll call the second year first grade.”

But anyways, it’s just all these idiosyncrasies.

But anyways, back to that.

So for the boys, their friends will call us Mr. and Mrs.

For Caroline’s age group, for some reason, and this drives me completely crazy, somewhere along the line, they got okay with saying “Miss” instead of “Mrs.”

And “First name.”

Or “Mr.” and “First name.”

And so now, so a lot of the- >> So Mr.

OG.

>> Yeah, Mr.

Josh or Miss Lissa.

And I’m like, “What the- who decided this?”

>> See, that’s a Southern thing.

I’ve never heard that happening up here in the real world.

>> We do that in California down here in my neighborhood.

First name’s- >> Same thing.

Mr.

This, Mr.

That, Mrs.

This, Mrs.

That.

>> First names or last names?

>> Mr.

Gary, Mr.

Mike.

>> Yeah, some kids call me Mr.

Joe, but that’s because they can’t pronounce my last name.

Like I fully thought that it was because they can’t pronounce my last name.

>> Wow.

Nobody’s called me by my first name.

>> Yeah, and I’m like Conan.

I would punch a kid if they did that.

>> I had read recently that the Mr. or Miss and then First Name was somehow a sign of respect that originated in the South, like kind of the deeper South.

And I think it’s moving now.

I mean, I’ve been on like customer support calls where I get, I’ll get that.

Mr.

Doug, they forget the neighbor part.

And I was wondering like, “Where’s this coming from?”

Starting to hear it more and more often.

And then I read that article.

I even have a problem.

You know, my kids are older.

They’re young adults now.

They’re off on their own, earning money, living by themselves.

And their peer group that I coached in baseball, because I coached a ton of baseballs, all these kids used to refer to me as coach or Mr.

Last Name.

Now they’re just calling me Doug and they’re grown adults and I still have a problem with it.

>> That’s funny.

>> They’re almost 30 and I’m like, “Meh.”

>> Yeah.

>> I kind of bristle a little bit.

>> Easy, cowboy.

We’re not quite that informal.

>> Right, exactly.

“Hey Doug, you want a beer?”

I’m like, “Whoa, whoa.”

>> Yes, I do.

But that’s Mr.

Doug to you.

>> That’s right.

>> Len, how about you?

Are you Mr.

Penzo?

>> I’m Mr.

Len, among the neighborhood kids, and most of the neighborhood kids now are grown up and they still call me Mr.

Len.

>> And that’s fine.

>> I will echo what Josh said about my kids’ friends.

The males will call me Mr.

Penzo.

But the females don’t.

They kind of don’t call me anything to my face.

But I did discover, and then my daughter has confirmed this, when they’re texting back and forth amongst them friends, they refer to, my daughter refers to me and my wife, the honey bee, as by her first names.

>> Your kid does that?

>> Then all of her friends refer to their parents in their text messaging by their parents’ first names, which to me I don’t like.

I would never want, if I ever heard of my kid, call me by my first name, I would go off the rails.

>> Absolutely.

>> We had an intern that worked here, a friend of mine’s kid that worked here that called his dad.

His dad’s name was Doug.

And he called his parents to me one day, Doug and Jenny.

And I was like, “Who the hell is Doug and Jenny?”

He’s like, “My mom and dad.”

And I’m like, “You got to stop that.”

>> Yeah.

>> You got to stop that right now.

>> That’s a younger generation thing.

I think it’s become acceptable now.

I don’t care as long as I don’t hear him talking or seeing text things about him.

>> I don’t think that’s ever acceptable.

>> I don’t know, man.

>> Well, but it’s our fault, right?

Because we’re not reinforcing the deferential sign of respect of the Mr. or Mrs.

>> Oh, I do.

>> Some people, parents are letting it happen.

>> I totally reinforced it.

>> My kids, my friends, parents, who, other than your mom, which she calls me daddy, there it is.

I thought we were going to make it a whole episode.

>> We were going to make it a whole episode without one.

>> That’s also a side of respect.

>> Other than that, I still call her Mrs.

Neighbor Doug.

Mrs.

Neighbor’s Doug’s mom, I still call her that.

But- >> Probably slows the whole process down.

>> I couldn’t let it go.

I was like, “There’s so much I could do with this right now.”

But no, no, no.

I’ve gone on vacation or been at a condo, like a vacation condo with my friend who, his dad’s there.

It’s still Mr.

I mean, his dad’s 75, I’m damn near 50.

I don’t even know what his first name is.

It’s still Mr.

Something.

I would never in a million years- >> I’m listening with my old teachers.

I have a still every once in a while keeping contact with an old teacher.

And she’s like 78 now, 70 or 80.

And I’ll still call her by Mrs.

Lewis.

>> Yeah.

>> And she just cringes.

It’s like, “I’m 60.”

And I was like, “Mrs.

Lewis.”

She’s like, “Call me Kathy.”

I’m like, “I can’t.

I can’t do it.”

>> No, I would have got slapped sideways if I had done that.

>> So my daughter’s first serious boyfriend in high school comes over to our house.

And of course, at our house, you’re playing games with us, right?

So this kid, Aaron, is sitting at the table and I’m doing something and he goes, “Joe, it’s your move.”

And I just kind of look at him.

And then I take my move.

And then a few minutes later, I said, “Hey, I’m going out to the kitchen to get something to drink.

Would you kids like something?”

And Adam says, “Oh, yes, please.

I’d like a whatever.”

And he goes, “Oh, yeah, Joe, I’ll have a Coke.”

And I just kind of look at him.

And I go back and kind of slam the Coke down in front of him.

And I hear my daughter lean over to him and whisper, “He doesn’t like it when you call him Joe.”

>> I thought you were going to say he was like 38.

>> No.

>> My daughter’s first serious boyfriend was out there smoking a cigarette with me.

>> And seen.

And cut.

No, no, no, no, no.

>> You want anything to drink?

Yeah, I’ll have whatever you’re having, but otherwise bourbon or something.

Whatever you got.

>> Yeah, like a Woodford.