Some of the most expensive items in your life after your home and transportation are technology related. That’s why each year, before Black Friday, we dive into our favorite technology items with CNET’s expert Bridget Carey. This year Bridget shares what to watch out for in tech (there’s always some sneaky “gotcha” waiting around many “great deals.” We talk about household items, security, dive DEEP this year into the world of televisions, dip into the toy department, and more.
But that’s not all. Before that we get you up to speed on headlines about Dave Ramsey’s eight percent solution to taking money from your retirement portfolio AND a headline about obscure investments. What could happen if you find a quirky but great-sounding investment opportunity? While we share a horror story, we also offer solutions and strategies to help you not get burned if you do decide to take the plunge.
Of course, we’ll also answer a question from a lucky Stacker AND we’ll share Doug’s incredible trivia question.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/black-friday-tech-report-bridget-carey
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- GWG bond debacle reveals limits in investor protection (InvestmentNews)
Bridget Carey
Big thanks to Bridget Carey for joining us today. To learn more about Bridget, visit Bridget Carey – CNET.
Doug’s Trivia
- The principal owner of a big tech invention that debuted in 2001, died using their own product. What was the product?
Need life insurance? You could be insured in 20 minutes or less and build your family’s safety net for the future. Use StackingBenjamins.com/HavenLife to calculate how much you need and apply.
- Stacker Jessica wants our thoughts on target date funds. OG has thoughts.
Have a question for the show?
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Mentioned In Today’s Episode
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
Dear
Santa Claus, How have you been? Did you have a nice summer?
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today you’ll learn which hot new tech trends to invest in and which to avoid with cnet consumer tech reporter Bridget Carey in our headlines, what happens when you get esoteric in your investment strategy? We’ll share one recent horror story and some big lessons. Plus, we’ll throw out the Haven Lifeline to Stacker Jessica, who’d like to know which is the better investment between Target Date Funds and S& P 500 ETFs.
Oh boy, this is gonna be good. And then, I’ll share some moving trivia. And now, two guys who’d never pass up a chance to bring you personal finance. Steps. It’s Joe and oh,
that’s right Doug. The guys that can keep you informed, keep you entertained, keep you motivated. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Saul Sea High average Joe Money on Twitter, man. Are we gonna inform you today about technology? ’cause OG the Bridget Carey joins us.
Sweet love me some
tech.
I know if you’ve never witnessed any Bridget Carey’s videos, there are a few people in technology who are funnier, who are more knowledgeable, and who just bring the truth. I mean, the number of brands she’s dissed on our show for good reason, she’s going to save some people a lot of money by avoiding making a huge tech mistake on Black Friday, or this week, next week, whenever.
We’ll also hear about her. cool new hot stuff coming up. I actually, I have Hugh and Sonos OG largely because Bridget Carey said, you’re going to pay a lot for those, but they’re really good brands. And I’ve had phenomenal success with both of those good stuff, but plenty before that to get you on the right track.
What, what exactly are you drinking? Well,
funny you should ask, because today happens to be the number one drinking day in America. So, to start out this morning,
I have… Wow, you’re already two in? What are you gonna have
next? Oh, well, that’s easy. Roughly around nine o’clock, I schedule a full pitcher.
But doesn’t that much hot chocolate before noon just make you just feel horrible?
Well, I’d get the non lactose milk.
Oh, good. All right. Bridget Carey coming up. Big headline. So let’s go.
Hello,
darlings. And
now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking
Benjamins headlines. So many headlines to choose from this week. OG, I’m sure you saw the big, uh, Dave Ramsey hullabaloo.
Thought about talking about that. Think that’s been maybe talked about enough.
I didn’t see it. Oh, so,
oh, the Dave said an 8 percent withdrawal rate was a good idea. Well, you know, because all those people at mom’s basement, he references us all the time. He says those nerds in mom’s basement doing spreadsheets, they’re using junk math, OG.
Now, to be
fair, to be fair, maybe he also read the article that I read in the wall street journal that said male 73 years old in the United States. So you know, if you take out, if you retire at 65 and you take out 8 percent of your money every year until 73, you’re fine.
I saw a comedian who, because before it was 73, it was 76, right?
Wasn’t it 76? It’s gone
down a lot in the last, uh, three years, largely due to COVID.
Yeah. I saw this, uh, comedian just a couple of days ago say that he’s 73 years old. He thought the life expectancy for men was 76, for women was 82. So he was going to transition. So that he’d be able to just live longer and just take the 82 number.
Smart, smart move. Your results may vary there, but Dave, Dave had his own math OG, which was this, uh, his math goes like this. You get 12 percent on your mutual fund every day. Yes. And then inflation’s been 4%. That means your withdrawal rate from your portfolio is 8%. It’s just simple bath.
Okay. I mean, he’s using words that are not actually the right meaning of those things.
But, uh, but yeah, what
gets me is, is that I don’t know. And we did an episode that people can hear with Sean, a game, uh, Paula, Pat and I, uh, that came out on Monday, but her show is called everybody’s talking money. The thing I don’t get is what’s in it for him. You know, like the 12 percent thing I think is like his little jab because people go crazy 12%.
And that doesn’t really hurt anybody. You know, it gets people invested thinking it’s going to be whatever. So, and, and then the algorithms take off, everybody’s talking about Dave. Okay. I get that. That’s, that’s just his little thing, but I don’t know what the upside is to this. Like, is he. Is he specifically trying to have people run out of money or is he…
He’s actually a shill
for Chase credit cards because he knows if you run out of money, you’re going to have to put it on your Discover card. Dave Ramsey, brought to you by discovercard. com
He’s got this smoke screen that’s, that’s up.
Don’t Doth protest too much, Dave.
If people want more, by the way, on that, I wasn’t going to do that headline.
I didn’t know that you hadn’t seen
it. No, well, I mean, to kind of button this up and some people might be asking, you know, well, if you get 12 and inflation’s four. You know, okay, I get that there’s eight leftover. Why, you know, why can’t I, why can’t I spend the eight? And the answer is, you absolutely can.
If you get 12 and inflation’s four, that’s, that’s exactly right. The problem is, is that when you get used to, so let’s say you have a million dollars and you’re like, all right, I’m gonna grow at 12 inflation’s four, I’m gonna spend my eight, which is $80,000 a year. That’s totally fine, except for when the market goes down 20%.
And then you go, well, I had a million, now I have 800,000. Now I gotta take my 80,000 out. So now I’m at seven 20. And now my 12 minus 4, my 8 percent of 720, it’s roughly 57, 000 bucks. The problem is, is that you’re not going to go from spending 80 grand in year 1 to 57, 000 in year 2. And more likely what happens is you get lulled into a good year, good several years of the market because generally the market goes up.
And so you get those 80, 000, 80, 000, 80, 000, and then BAM! You need 57, 000. It’s like, pfft, I can’t spend 57, 000. That’s 30, 000 less, 25, 000 less than I’m used to. I’ll spend 80, 000 this year. And now, you’re in this spiral. It’s unrecoverable. And that’s what the 4 percent rule was designed to offset, was to say, well, there’s going to be years where the market’s not going to behave in the manner in which you had hoped.
And so how can you design a lifestyle income that has a high likelihood of not running out even with the ups and downs? And the 8 percent rule, if you want to call it that, has a high likelihood of running out. There are some circumstances, and I would argue maybe even the last decade, you know, say 2010 on, where the 8 percent rule would have been just fine.
But if you apply that in the 1970s, you’d have been broke. Your mileage may vary.
I love what Paul Merriman told us when he came on, which was that he will dynamically change his budget based on he’s got this core budget, which he tries to keep really low. And then depending on how well his portfolio does that year, he either has a staycation if it, if things suck and he lives in the Pacific Northwest.
So he just goes hiking and goes to the national parks in his area. And in years that he does really well, he takes, you know, he goes to Europe, he takes world vacations, he goes to Asia, he does all these cool things that are much more dynamic. I like the dynamic idea much more than getting stuck on a number.
Sure.
And to be fair, Paul Merriman’s got a couple of extra commas in his network statement than, uh, you know, than you or I together. But I think to some degree you can apply that. You can a little, but you know, if you’re living on 60, 70 grand a year, if you’re the guy that’s got a million, a million and a half dollars in your retirement account, which is a good sum for retirement.
There’s not a boatload of wiggle room. And that’s Dave
Ramsey’s core audience. And I don’t understand his win if he tells him to take 8 percent because that person’s going to be hurting in a hurry. I just don’t, I just don’t understand.
Slowly at first, then suddenly at the end.
Well, I wasn’t going to talk about that.
The thing I really did want to talk about was something that I found in Investment News. Pumpkin Pie. This is, yeah, Pumpkin Pie in Investment News. Uh, this is written by Bruce Kelly. Bruce talks about GWG Bond Debacle Reveals Limits in Investor Protection. This is going to be a little nerdy here, OG, but hang with me.
So there’s this defunct company in Dallas called Titan Securities. They’re a small broker dealer. They don’t, they don’t manage a ton of money. They manage about 70 million. They closed their doors in June and declared bankruptcy when they closed their doors. They were selling some of these funky bonds called GWG bonds, and they’re a company that does these life settlements, right?
So they’re bonds based on life settlement. Basically what happens is if OG has a life insurance policy, I take the ownership of the life insurance policy and become the beneficiary for X amount of money. And by the way, if you have a life insurance policy that might be going bad and you don’t need it anymore, there are these companies out there that will buy your life insurance policy.
You could actually OG cash in and maybe make some money on this policy. Instead of just letting it lapse, but that’s a whole
different. Yeah, there’s two different transactions that are happening here. A life settlement company will take an insurance policy from somebody who is older. It wouldn’t work for somebody in their 40s, a young, strapping young man who is, you know, full of vim, vigor and vitality like someone like me, but take somebody like you or Doug, there’d be a line around the block for people like that.
And, um, boy, that just, whoosh, whoosh. just went right over both y’all’s heads. Okay, cool. And, uh, it’s good. Good for me. The, uh, Ninja. Yeah. Super. So you’ve got a policy. It’s a, you know, generally a whole life or permanent type policy that you don’t want to pay on anymore. You can sell that and say, Hey, I don’t need this anymore.
To your point. And somebody will buy it from you for pennies on the dollar. And then that same company will package all those together and sell that as a security or sell it as in this case, a bond and say, Hey, we’ve got 25 people in here. They’re all fixing to die soon. You know, you know, we’re going to cash in all this life insurance money and we’ll split the pot.
It can pay out big. I have a problem with this though, as I bet you’re about to find out.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, just based on the amount of time it took you to explain that to our stackers, you can see how esoteric this investment type is. And GWG Holdings, OG, went bankrupt. Shocking. When a company doing life settlements goes bankrupt and you own the bonds, you have the right to go knock on the door at GWG Bankruptcy Court and say, Hey, I want my money.
I’m a creditor. Here’s the problem. Your money was invested through a brokerage firm that also went bankrupt that is supposed to be representing you. Your ability, because you’ve got two bankruptcies here, you invested in this weird ass thing through Titan Securities. To buy the GWG bonds, there is no way, according to this piece, for investors in Titan Securities to get around the Titan bankruptcy to be able to get their money out of GWG.
And I know what people are thinking, what does this have to do with me? But how many times have we had you know, investments that sound really sexy, sound really, I mean, you know, Hey, old people, life insurance, they’re going to die pretty soon. Sign me up for that. Sounds pretty neat. Sounds great.
If we could just get old uncle Smith to kick the bucket sooner than later, we’d all be rich.
Well, and this thing in particular gets a little dicey because you know, the premium, how much is insurance? How much is a million dollar policy on an 88 year old? The answer is a heck of a lot of money. a whole bunch of money, especially if it’s not paid and, you know, paid up over their lifetime. Right? So you got to make these premium payments.
So every year is a gamble of like, well, you think the old man’s going to kick it this year? Should we throw another 200 grand of premiums into this thing? And then you got to raise money and you can see how that can spiral out of control pretty quickly. This is a great example, I think, of Knowing what you’re invested in and recognizing that anything outside of generally accepted publicly traded companies or your own property, which I have my own belief system around, you know, single home ownership and all this other sort of stuff.
But let’s just set that aside publicly traded companies that are subject to broad diversification and broad, uh, regulatory oversight. When you start getting with, into private equity things, or, or buying ice cream shops, or, you know, whatever, you have to understand what you’re doing. You are investing in the smallest, you said esoteric, the smallest possible sliver of a thing.
It’s a binary outcome. There are no in betweens. You will lose all of your money, or you will make a sh out of it. Those are the only two choices. I’ve never seen anybody who has invested in something Odd. That came back and went, yeah, I average like 8 percent a year for 10 years. It’s always like, yeah, that thing took a total dump.
I bought it for 10 bucks a share and it’s got out of it for 27 cents a share. Or, rarely, less, significantly less frequently, I bought that thing for 10 bucks a share, got out of it for 2. 8 million. Who knew? Red Bull was a thing. Who knew? You know, I mean, it’s those things. And we want the story to succeed so badly.
It’s no different than going to the casino. For some reason, you know, YouTube has this algo that like, whatever you watch, you start watching more of. So you have to be careful like what you, you’re like, no, no, no, no, no. Scroll, scroll, scroll. Even though somehow I got looped into the casino slot machine guy.
And so like all the videos are like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Hey, you won, you won, you won. And we all have that, you know, I’ve got a mega millions ticket here. I buy, you know, we all want to swing for the fences and have the home run, but that’s not going to work for your retirement plan. You want to invest in something like this or you want to buy a, you know, share into your.
Brothers tire repair business have at it, man. That’s awesome. It’s it’s binary.
I love that you said that because I remember my opinion changed a couple of years ago when Kevin Rose from Modern Finance was on the show. He had been a big crypto investor, early crypto investor, made tons of money on it. And I asked him about, you know, do you invest in crypto?
And he said, well, invest is really a strong term. You speculate, right? It isn’t truly an investment because what are you really backing? Doesn’t produce anything. Yeah. Yes. But he did say, yes, you do speculate. And I’m like, do you use grandma’s money? Like, is this safe? He goes, oh, hell no, it’s not safe. And you don’t put any money in it.
You can’t afford to lose. He goes, but the wild west, and this is interesting though, G, because it, it, it parallels exactly what you’re saying here. Kevin said the wild west really is a two way street. That’s where people make bajillions of dollars and it’s also where you lose your ass. He said, but do you, do you not go there?
Yeah, you don’t put grandma’s money there. He goes, but by the time crypto gets safe, which is that ever going to happen? By the time crypto gets safe, all the opportunities gone from that market, all the speculation, all the, all the opportunities. So
if you want to All of the insanely out, you know, levered returns basically, right?
Like the, you know, the opportunity may still exist. I mean, you can go buy Coca Cola or the S& P 500. Those are, they’re so great investments for a long period of time. You know, you’re not going to get 6, 000 percent return in four
days. No, I’m not advocating taking money and doing this type of thing. I’m just saying that, Hey, if you want to, you know, you talk about your brother in law’s car repair shop.
Like if you think this is a great that take money, you can afford to lose and do it, but realize it’s binary. You’re investing in your brother in law is the Wild West and the chance of you losing all your money. That has nothing to do with. you know, brakes. It has to do with the fact that your brother in law took too many brakes and didn’t work on enough cars.
Could be the reason why
it went under. Yeah, you can say that, but there’s also so many other unrelated third party, uh, issues that you can’t even potentially foresee. Yeah. You know, using that small business as an example, you could have regulatory issues.
Some worker gets hurt and sues you.
Yeah, you could have a zoning issue.
You could have the city come in and go, we’re not going to allow tire repair businesses anymore in our city. So too bad you’re not a pro. I mean, there’s so many things that you can possibly foresee. And the same thing is true with any of this other sort of stuff. When it comes to a cool private equity investment or a cool, you know, whatever business development company or something like that, you go, Oh man, this is a great idea.
You get this pitch deck. I remember seeing one a little while ago. It was for, uh, it was for alcohol. It was like bourbon or something like that. And it was like these best bourbon makers in the world. We’re going to all partner together, make the, buy all this stuff today. I’m going, yeah. Yeah, looks cool, man.
I drink bourbon. I like bourbon. And this guy that was showing me, the pitch deck looked amazing. We’re going to get 22 percent return compounded into infinity. I’m like, well, you better. He says, what do you mean? I said, because this is a little teeny tiny business. It needs to generate 20 percent a year for me to be even interested.
So they’re smart. They know their audience, right? They’re not going to say, Hey, we can get you five to 7 percent a year compounded for the next hundred years. No, I’ll take my
money and put it with Coca
Cola. Exactly. So you got to look where the thing is. And so it looks really cool, but just remember, this isn’t, like you said, this isn’t your retirement money.
This isn’t your kid’s college money. Certainly not your mortgage payment for next month. But you want to do it, do it, but know that 99 times out of a hundred, I mean, that’s what VC firms do, right? Like peel back VC firms. They throw money like crazy around going, we’re looking for the one company that turns into a billion dollar company.
And we’re going to throw 10 other ones until we get the one that goes from 10 million to a billion.
We will link to our interview actually with Kevin Rose. We’ll link to this piece so you can dive in if you want. This is, there’s a lot of nastiness, uh, beyond even the quirky stuff that we. We’ll even link to, uh, the Dave Ramsey video for people that want to, want to see that, uh, little side discussion that we, that we took.
Also tomorrow, Kevin Bailey, who writes our amazing 201 newsletter, we’ll dive even more into the topic we talked about today. Not into the Dave Ramsey stuff. He will definitely dive into, well, what Bridget Carey’s talking about and into, uh, investment philosophy. here and getting into quirky investments.
Coming out next, Bridget Cary has been doing this segment for us for, oh gee, how many years? Almost a decade, I think. She does amazing work for CNET looking at the latest technology. She dives into all the new products, what’s hot, what’s not. If there’s anybody who can tell you in a consumer report slash CNET kind of way, It is Bridget Carey, where your hard earned dollars should go and shouldn’t go when it comes to the latest technology.
She’s normally a little busy here. She’s even busier at the beginning of the year, which is the Consumer Electronics Show. So we always try to get her ahead of time. To kind of see what wave of new tech is coming. Interested in a new TV, new game system, new, uh, new toys for the garage, the kitchen, whatever it is, we’re going to cover all that with Bridget.
But first Doug, I think you’ve got some day before Thanksgiving trivia for us.
Hey there, stackers! I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. I was wearing my Google Glass while I worked in the yard this morning, and, man, did I get a lot done! I checked my email, I listened to the news, finally found out what the hell a chupacabra is. Now there’s one more thing I gotta keep my eye out for when I’m night gardening.
Jeez, every year we see amazing advances in the tech world. Some change our lives forever while others, like the Microsoft Zune, make us think twice about buying 20 units the day it comes out. Not that I did that or anything, I’m just saying that would have been a bad idea. You know, like if someone had.
Nearly every invention debuts amidst a bit of skepticism. Everything from the television to satellite communication to personal computers came with a wave of criticisms from cynics. Now, the greatest generation, Joe’s generation, are some of the only people around who can actually imagine life with those things.
Today’s trivia question is, the principal owner of a big tech invention that debuted in 2001 died using their own product. What was that product? I’ll be back right after I figure out how to connect my Betamax to my smart tv. Do they make those connectors anymore?
Hey there stackers. I’m Betamax loyalist and Chupacabra catcher. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, for the most part, tech makes our lives easier and a lot of technological breakthroughs that appeal to the general public. were originally created to assist disabled people, like text to speech, the Roomba, and the answer to today’s trivia question, which was this.
The principal owner of a big tech invention that debuted in 2001 died while using their own product. What was the product? English entrepreneur Jimmy Hesselden Died after falling off a cliff on his all terrain personal pleasure craft, which was a Segway! That’s an unfortunate way to find out that it’s only, you know, like some terrain, not all terrain.
And now, wait for it, let’s Segway into a discussion about which new electronics are worth buying this year. It’s CNET’s Bridget Carey.
And you know… Thanksgiving in America is right around the corner when Bridget Carey’s back at mom’s basement. How are you
Bridget? Hey, it’s good to talk to you
again, Joe.
Great to talk to you. So on Monday, we talked everything but tech. We always save tech for you. What’s the big trend? What’s going on in the technologies zeitgeist this year, Bridget? Oh my
goodness. I feel like everyone’s just on edge going, is it, is now the real Black Friday? Is it now? Or how about now? Or how about, how about a week ago?
Because, you know, it’s always this, uh, amorphous, uh, giant season of, like, panic over if you don’t buy right now, you must be losing out. But I would say at least we can relax that we are in, finally. the good deal season. You just have to kind of do your math more. I think the real trend is that everyone’s going, okay, I have to do more homework.
I have to know exactly what store has the best deal. And because every store wants you to act so fast and feel like you might act now or it’ll sell out. You might not, they’re, they’re banking on you not taking the time, maybe to see that, Oh, Walmart has it for 10 less. Your target has it for cheaper. Some stores do price match, but not all of them.
I think that’s in our favor this year, that stores are so rabid for our business with inflation up with interest rates up. We’re seeing credit card debts up. I feel like stores are feeling the hurt. And if you there’s got to be deals all over the place because of that,
they are more competitive. But it really can get a little tricky when some started already and some waited for their Black Friday sales and they, you know, the commercials, like they kind of like sprinkle them constantly and you go, well, wait, when is the best deal?
Do I have to wait until Cyber Monday? The answer is no. You know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, they’re kind of the same, but will it get better? I wouldn’t say it gets better from here. I would say that you could probably still get a lot more different kinds of sales. That just kind of keep rolling out things as much as like free shipping at the very least.
But my inbox is just flooded from every kind of retailer.
Yeah. Well, then I guess that is the point, the, the big gotcha this year. And I love it, Bridget, when you tell us where kind of the gotchas are is the gotcha. Waiting might not be in your best interest. Like if you find the good deal, just go grab it at
this point.
Yeah, I would say so. And also the gotcha is the fact that everyone’s trying to kind of throw a different tool at you. And I would say now is not the time to start downloading new, new deal hunting tools for the first time, because you can get overwhelmed, but there are a lot of things out there. I mean, even Google has now.
It’s now saying, Hey, we can use AI to help you find the best deal. If you just plug it in and you know what, we’ll show you what the, what everyone else is selling it for. Truly though, the easiest thing is always the thing that’s just easier on your, your brain, your mentality, your soul, your happiness.
Just do a normal Google search and you’ll be able to see if the deal you’re getting is real a deal. But what, what does black Friday known for the televisions? Everyone’s like, okay, this is the time to buy the big stuff. I think when it comes to televisions and what you need to know, it’s that. Once again, you gotta do homework a little bit because you don’t know which direction to go to when there are so many TVs marked as a discount, and they all have different jargon.
Like, do you know QLED versus OLED, and isn’t that the same thing? And why does Samsung call it this and LG call it that? It kinda can be, well… Is that the best TV and every, every man, every, uh, retailer, I should say sometimes has their own different skew. So you can’t necessarily price compare. You can’t take that same exact, uh, Roku TV, compare it with the Amazon fire TV.
They’re all a little different, right? You know, so, uh, we do have a few though tips. I would say when you are hunting for a TV in general, OLED. LG’s OLED, it’s the best. You want the best, best, best? They actually, this year, have really good sales on their most expensive best tech. LG’s like 65 inch OLED is like down 900 on Amazon.
Like, okay, great. Like, that’s having the movie theater in your house. I would say, in general, go bigger. Even if you’re not getting the best tech, okay, maybe you don’t want to spend on OLED. QLED is Samsung’s tech. It stands for quantum dots. And basically, it’s not as good as OLED, but your eyes! Once that screen gets big, your eyes can’t tell.
Yeah, we have big, we have tech at CNET that can like get really close and tell in dark rooms, but you’re going to be real dang happy if you just get a larger TV. So I would say go that way. Cause you know, rather than going smaller with the better tech, go larger with the almost as
good tech. Bigger is better.
And you’re saying LG beats Samsung?
I mean, but there’s a lot of good ones out there. I mean, Amazon has a fire TV, 65 inch for 590. You don’t have to spend 1, 600, which is what the LG one is. Right. But it all depends on what you want. What, what flavor of smarts do you want? Right.
Well, does it matter if I have the Roku TV as much as it did five years ago?
The Roku TVs are great. I think what you’re seeing now is that all of that streaming stuff is just baked into every TV really. And so when Amazon has their own TVs, when Roku has their own TVs, they are partnering with good television makers, you know, to kind of sell it in that way. And I think the Rokus this year are also on our, like one of our best lists, you know, so, so you’re not going to
go wrong with that.
You know, in audio world, I’m a little bit in audio hell this year because. Sonos has taken their old speakers and I’d invested in old speakers and newer speakers. They updated their tech and they’re like, listen, none of your old speakers work with the new tech. And so I’m gifting to my friends that are okay with a used gift.
My beautiful, great sounding old Sonos speakers. Full well telling them, by the way, like my kids telling them you’re getting outdated technology that still sounds great when it comes to audio. What do we do to make the house sound beautiful?
You know, aside from giving them one of your hand me downs, I think it’s actually good advice that you don’t necessarily have to worry if it was the latest, latest one, because right now we’re in a state of like, Speakers just sounding pretty good, but it depends on what you need.
Like some of those Echo smart speakers. Yeah. They’re not going to be the best speakers, but boy, are there good deals? Like you get bundles. Now I would say, don’t just buy a speaker. Make sure your speaker’s got a bundle. If you’re going to do one of those cheaper, smart speakers, you know, make sure it comes bundled with a smart light bulb, at least that’s what I’m seeing for the deals, like 18 bucks or whatever, but it is hard to shop for speakers.
When it’s someone else, you want to make sure you get the best stuff. I have. The most of the sales I’m seeing though right now are all about headphones, earbuds, the kind of stuff that’s giftable. And it’s funny, like you go, okay, someone might want Apple AirPods pro two, right? Like, okay, I want the best of the Apple.
I’ve seen it go on different prices for black Friday, but because these stores stagger it. You kind of have to go, okay, well, yeah, Walmart’s got it best, but they started later. So if I got it now or versus if I got it a week ago, you know, uh, but, and Walmart doesn’t price match, but Target will price match.
So if you go to Target for those same earbuds, you can say, Walmart’s got it. You know, you kind of have to play these games a little bit with knowing what rules every retailer has. Um, but I do like Sony’s earbuds right now. 30 at Walmart. Sony makes good audio tech. It’s not as flashy as saying, I got Apple’s earbuds and I actually don’t use Apple’s AirPods.
I use Beats, which is owned by Apple, but we’re, you know, we’re all in the Apple world all the time. But yeah, Sony, go for Sony. Like they end up being really good quality. You’ll find a lot of good sales, but they have strange names like WFC 500. Oh yeah. It rolls off your tongue. But, but. 30 bucks, Sony does good audio.
So sometimes you just have to kind of scroll around on these websites where you could buy these
big discounts. It goes exactly where I was going. And we were talking yesterday, uh, on an Instagram live with a guy, Andy Hill from Marriage, Kids and Money and his kids put together their, their holiday list.
And he actually shows them the pages with the prices and they wanted the Apple earbuds until they saw the price. So I gotta, I gotta text Andy and say, Bridget says Sony, cause I’m sure they’ll love the 30 price much better, much, much, much better.
Good teaching kids lessons, you know, and sometimes these, these retailers, I should say, they also will honor if their own price goes down because that whole like, Oh, am I really getting the best deal?
If you bought something a few days ago, like Target’s going to honor the price within 14 days of purchase. So all you have to do is take your receipt. You don’t have to bring the product in. You just take your receipt to any register. So things like that can be helpful. Best Buy does the same thing too.
Um, so just go on their website first, know the rules, know what you got to bring in to prove it. But I kind of feel like that’s. That’s fair. Only when they’re bombarding us for a month of, you know, the word Black Friday is losing its meaning. So it’s nice of them to at
least try. Well, and it gets rid of some of the anxiety, right?
That we talked about earlier. Am I truly getting the best price at Target? Who cares? You know, if I don’t, I watch it the next 14 days, then, then, then maybe I go a different way. I remember a few years ago, you know, geez, Bridget, maybe several years ago when, when, uh, You know, screens on the refrigerator were for like a minute, a big thing, and it cracks me up.
And now you said, like, Google says, Hey, I, AI will help you. I feel like everything AI will butter your waffles this year when it comes to, when it comes to home appliances, what’s hot in 2023.
Everyone’s just kind of talking about different kinds of air fryers, always air fryers, like, like, there’s so many different sizes and shapes, you know, think about what your family eats before you, because a lot of people end up going, Oh, that’s the cheapest air fryer, but it only like feeds like two people, you know, you might want to get the larger one if you have a large family, but coffee makers are also always a thing you see on sale.
I haven’t seen as many sales this year on like those expensive Dyson’s because I think like this is the time to buy it. the really expensive tech. So now you’re seeing like maybe more kitchen stuff. I’ve noticed in the ads, like, like mixers. Uh, but there’s always also sales on those robot backs. You don’t always need to go with a Roomba branded one.
There’s a lot of good ones out there now that, uh, just aren’t Roombas, but you know, the, the tech has reached a point where you can find a good deal. If it’s a brand that you don’t recognize right away.
Is there some things to look for if I’m not going Roomba, if I’m going off brand? Because I, you know, a lot of people, they, they see those.
And I think about Tina on our team bought an off brand, uh, Roomba ish thing. And she’s like, it was horrible. I had to take it back in three days because it just didn’t work.
I think, okay, I keep, I feel like a broken record. There is a little bit of research you have to do on the review sides to be like, okay, you know, like sometimes.
The Amazon deals on some of these vacuums and stuff are so good, but they’re, um, you know, Chinese brands who you haven’t heard of before, and then you’re kind of making a gamble. I have found two, one is called like Rock, Robot Rock or something like that. I have to kind of look it up. There’s The word rock is in it and that’s a good one, but it all becomes like, okay, so who did the review and who tested it?
I feel like when you’re in the heat of the moment and you see that flashing like lightning deal, like you’re not really having the time to do the homework, but at least it’s at least that now we can do online shop and you can just pull up another tab really quick and see like, okay, like, is it
garbage or not?
Yeah. Hit pause for, for three seconds.
Yeah. You can breathe a little bit. I mean, the TVs go fast. But everything else I could breathe a little bit.
Let’s talk about alarms around the house. You know, you mentioned lighting earlier. I like the lighting and sound together. That’s pretty cool. The environmental stuff.
I know I saw a cool bird feeder online recently where the bird comes up and is eating the seed off a sensor and it takes picture of the bird and sends it to your cell phone so you can get all the fun of the birds while you have your bird feeder going on. cool stuff like that. You’ve seen, or is that, is that garbage?
This thing, have you seen this bird feeder that I saw? If it brings you
joy, it’s not garbage. If it can bring joy, but, but the garbage is, will you really open the app and use it? Like the garbage is always in the software because you’re always are like excited at the concept. And you’re like, wait, I need what sign in every time.
Am I not really using this? Yes.
Or does it work as, as expected? Does the camera get all blurry and dirty and you know what I mean? And I get this picture that. Supposedly, it’s going to be great, but it’s not. I
think the big problem is always like, what ecosystem are you going into? Cause some of these cameras obviously are more swaying on one system, Google swaying on another system, Amazon.
And it’s kind of like, okay, am I getting something that’s compatible? future proof. If I’m going to be on an iPhone, but someone else maybe wants to have an Android phone, like, like, let’s, let’s think about where, where the compatibility lies, what kind of accounts I need to have and subscriptions. A lot of them have subscription services.
How much is that going to cost in the long run? So sure. You’re being real sweet and gifting someone maybe, uh, or for yourself. A good camera system, but are you making them kind of go, well, if it’s only useful if you spend 100, you know, or 200 a year or something like that, I, I had to go do some research that I wanted a camera to, at least for the inside of my apartment for when I’m away, and I had to find which one had a system where I could just tap into it versus paying to have it record all the time.
So, uh, kind of weigh out what’s important to you before going in, because you’ll see a lot of bundles out there. But which one has a subscription service that actually works for you or maybe doesn’t need a subscription for everything you’re looking
for? Big search the last couple of years in online security companies versus the old, you know, down the street brick and mortar stuff.
Uh, good, bad, ugly.
I, I think we’re just seeing that everything is just, uh, working all right. I mean, I haven’t heard any to, I mean, some people have really big opinions with Ring and I, I understand all of it. Like it depends on where you sit in your comfort level. Like I, I haven’t personally tested a lot of them cause I’m in an apartment, but I have neighbors though with apartments too, who use Ring because they make it easy even if you’re renting.
And so it’s one of those things where, what kind of alerts do you want? But, and overall though. At least, you know, as a consumer, there’s a lot of choices out there, but I would go with a name brand with a company behind it, uh, if I was going to go for something like this, you know, so I can get, uh, customer service is important because when you’re in that moment, when you really want that footage, you want to know that at least the customer service is going to be
there for you.
My favorite Bridget Carey videos and, uh, my favorite question to ask, even though I’m 55 years old, tell me about toys, Bridget. Ooh, yes.
I have fun with this one. I do too. I’m always like, I can’t wait to hear about the new cool toys. I mean, tech is fun too. There are toys in tech, like, you know, all the game systems and everything.
By the way, Xbox, 50 off the Series X. Wow. But wait, but you have to go to dell. com. And they give you a 75 gift card to spend at Dell, but you don’t have to buy a Dell laptop. You just buy some accessories or something. Go, go buy a smart home thing. But yeah, you don’t really see a lot of game systems always on sale.
Like usually it’s a bundle, like Nintendo has some great bundles. They usually throw in a game and they have like a cool theme system that this year, I know they have a few of those that kind of saves you about 70 bucks on the game. And then when it comes to PlayStation, they’re throwing in the Spider Man game.
So this is the same cost as the PlayStation 5, but Spider Man is the game to get, but toys for you. just, just fun stuff. I mean, it’s Furby this year. It really is. I mean, I have the original Furby. I do, but the new Furby as someone who had the 1998 Furby, this one’s cute. It’s cute. It’s fun. And it’s, it’s, it’s having my kids go crazy and it speaks more English than Furbish.
But, um, also now it’s voice commands. So you go, Hey Furby. And then you have to like say one of the five commands and, and a big theme around toys. This year is having something that helps calm children, make them feel less anxiety. I think we need that too, but now you can ask Furby, uh, to chill out and he will go into some Zen meditation practices with you.
I mean, this is the real thing. So like, yeah, there are a lot of toys right now to kind of like fidget with or, or like have more bonds. One thing I love is when tech goes into toys and tech has gotten so cheap that they can do it in cool ways. There is this. Stuffed little cat. It’s called Magic Whispers.
Not that expensive. It uses bone conduction audio technology. So like when you have earphones that use bone conduction, I don’t know if you know this, like the audio can go through your inner ear, but you press, you press this little magic stone. It’ll tell you secrets that no grownup in the room can hear.
And it’s like, I love you and like tells you jokes and stuff. And, and like, Oh my, my kids are eating it up. Cause they’re just like using the bone conduction. I mean, it’s like stuff in our everyday tech. But they bring it to life. Another one, robot pets. You always got to have a robot pet, right? One is the hot one this year.
Doggy, dog dash the letter e. It uses what they call persistence of motion tricks. So, you know, when you move something really fast back and forth, it kind of, you can see an animation of lights. That maybe if you just took it like a still shot, it’s just like one dot of a light. But if it goes really fast, you can actually see an effect.
So this dog E communicates with you through a wagging tail that has lights moving so fast. You can see images of like, it’s hungry. It wants a hamburger. It has to go to the bathroom. There’s a little poo emoji. It wants you to be petted. And, and it also randomizes, cause we don’t know what you’re going to get out of the box.
That’s another thing. Everything has to be random and unique now, right? Because you can have the tech to do that. So you press this nose. What color eyes are you getting? What kind of bark are you getting? So they’re kind of like used to be, you had to buy a Sony. Ibo 2, 000 dog. Now it’s like, okay, now, now for like, you know, 60, 70 bucks, like, okay, I can have my own robot dog romping around the house.
So that brings me joy when I see to kind of like bring, bring that playtime to life more. In terms of deals, though, I’ve been scrolling around, Furby is on sale. It’s 50. I mean, you know, normally the big toy used to be 50 and it’d be on sale from there, but you know, right, right. So everything’s like 70 now, right?
The Barbie dream houses are already too expensive, but they are on sale here and there. So go, if you need that dream house, because it’s the year of the Barbie. As you say, I think Barbie’s going to
have a big year.
Oh, yeah, now’s the time to have that Barbie dream house. They’re like knock. I’ve seen it on sale for around 60 and normally it’s like anywhere from depending on what kind of dream house you want It’s anywhere from like 80 to 100.
So also now’s the time for Legos. I’ve seen sales on Like you don’t know what kind of Lego set you want I think Target’s giving away a 10 gift card if you spend 50 So like those kinds of things are always helpful But I have seen certain also sets on sale because Legos are always so expensive But the problem is with parents They know that we’re going to get what they want.
So there’s not that many like specific deals on these high tech toys. Cause they know that even when times are tight, we’re still going to spend the money for the Christmas joy and everything. We’re going to get the Legos. Yeah. You’re going to still, you’re going to, you’re not going to get that new, you know, a kitchen set for yourself.
You’re going to spend the money on your kid. So I think it’s hard to shop for kids when you want a good deals, but at least, at least some of the things. Makes sense on the deals like the Furby and the Barbies discount and the Legos.
That’s fabulous, but I’m still hooked on the robot dog. I think that’s awesome.
Speaking of walking the dog, let’s say walking, running, working out, exercise stuff. I saw a commercial the other day for Peloton’s treadmill now. So saying we’re not just a bike company. We now have treadmills that nobody will buy. I’m joking.
Sure. There is so much out there. I actually, right now we’re highlighting the Peloton bikes as your best workout deals, you know?
So yes, it’s a, it’s old by now, but that’s why they’re on sale the most right now. I mean, I’ve seen the Peloton bike. You can save. 450 on it. Um, and, and, and, and their plus version, you save 500 on it, but it’s still two grand you’re dropping for a bike. Uh, or in the case of the lower end one, it’s still a thousand dollars or so.
But yeah, like sometimes there’s these high end rowers, uh, that I’ve seen also discounted. So, you know, look around, get, get creative, right? Cause everyone’s really competitive now with the Peloton. Sometimes the deal could be in the subscription service. You just don’t want to forget about it. Like, Oh, first three months free.
And then suddenly, ah, it starts charging you. One thing that kind of took me by surprise this year. in the realm of fitness, so to speak. The newest Apple Watch I’ve seen discounted. The Apple Watch Series 9. Really? Yeah, by 50 bucks on Amazon. You never really see, like, Oh, the latest one is on sale. You know, so I got excited about that because I actually like the Series 9 a lot because a lot of people wait maybe several years before they upgrade.
So, and I think Apple knows that these updates are very incremental. Right. So you’re not always like itching to get it, but that’s why maybe this year is pretty good deal on it. That said there’s always some sort of, you know, wearable deal, but I, yeah, I’ve never seen on like the, the new, new one. Tablets.
That’s another case where like you are seeing deals this time on like the 2021 model of the iPad, the 9th gen is what they call that one. And go get that one if you’re looking for a tablet, because people don’t really need tablets all the time. But we’re still recommending a CNET, the old one, because of how small these updates are, right?
Sure. So it’s always good sometimes to get the last gen or the gen before that. I
can read it for less money or I can read it for more money, but I’m still reading the same book. When it comes to watches, let’s, let’s pause there for just a second. Apple, I love my Garmin watch. I think Garmin’s awesome.
Somebody has a friend of mine has the one that does a great job of sleep tracking anything to parse between the differences in these different wearables that will track our, you know, metabolic activity. Oh,
I always say you got to just make sure you get the one that works for the phone you got, right?
Cause you know, yeah, like the Fitbits will work with everything, but they, you know, when it comes to the Google pixel watches, they’re kind of more in the Android space, right? So, so right. But they are really great right now. It all depends on like, right, what you need. Like for me, I’m going to go with Apple because I’m an iPhone user, but the Garmin ones, everyone talks a lot about them.
I mean, it’s also battery life. That’s another shopping factor. So how important is it for you to have to recharge it all the time? Or, you know, do you want more battery life out of it? And do you want more of something just like, like your Garmin? You’re probably not here getting, getting dings all the time.
Like I am about my work. So like. How do you want to use the power on your
wrist? I actually can now in this garment. It surprised me. It’s, it’s, it’s a last year model, but I turned it off immediately because the thing that drives me crazy is when I’m talking to somebody and they’re going, and for people just listening to the audio version of this, I’m looking at my watch, looking at my watch, looking back at Bridget.
Watch Bridget. I’m like, come on, just stick with me for just a second.
Oh my goodness. It pulls us out for the silliest things. Like congratulations. You, you have a new email. Like I know I’m, I’m bad mannered and I’m distracted.
Yeah. You have a car warranty, uh, opportunity, something like that. My other favorite question.
And sometimes you’ve got a humdinger and sometimes you’ve got, you know, it’s just kind of a boring year, but anything crazy, fun, new, wild, weird out there in tech world this year, Bridget? You know,
we’re all just dealing with a lot right now and trying to be able to see what every deal is. So you are seeing a lot of basic stuff because they know we’re all a little frazzled, but.
The weird stuff. If you’re looking for something unique, a unique gift idea that has on sale, eye massagers, eyeball
massagers. Wait a minute. Eyeball. I don’t put those
two words together. Imagine if you will, a headset of sorts that kind of, it’s kind of like a sleep mask, but a little thicker. And what it’s doing, it’s massaging the area around your eye.
And warming it. The one that I’ve tried that is pretty good. It’s called Renpho, R E N P H O. It’s down 50 and I think these are like the hot because everyone always used to go to the mall. Used to go to the mall and sit in those massage chairs and get some sort of foot stuff, add some sharper image, you know, like, okay.
If you want to pull yourself back to those days and give, give some weird massagers, eye massagers now are the thing, because especially, I really mean this, a lot of us have, have headaches. Women, oh my goodness, that time of the month, just put this on and it kind of just warms your head, gives you a little bit of a rub, you know, makes you look crazy.
And, and you could just sit in silence and it’s, I have to say it’s crazy because. When I first saw it, I’m like, I’m sorry, nothing’s touching my eyes. What, what, what are you talking about, but I’m going to put a machine on my face. This is good for my, for my future. No, but it actually is comfortable. I’ve tried it and it’s pretty nice.
And, and you can choose how, if you want warm or no warm and that kind of thing. And they have some music options if you want to listen to that. So it’s funny what tech can do now, but yeah, you
enjoyed it a lot. It sounds like. I,
okay. End of the night, you know, when you’re burnt out, like, yeah, like it actually was, it actually was pretty
good.
You get to test the craziest stuff. It’s always so fun. You know, tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. We’re so thankful for you, Bridget. Thank you for helping us score some good deals. Know what to do, what not to do when it comes to this holiday. You and I have talked on this day every year for a number of years, but I’ve never asked you what happens at the Cary house on Thanksgiving?
What’s like the big Cary tradition? Oh
gosh. I mean, I remember growing up, it used to be like, all right, let’s wake up the next day on the Black Friday proper, you know, get in line at 4am earlier. I remember when the Wii was out and people would battle over the, over the little board you have to like stand on.
Oh yeah. If you, if you didn’t have a wrapping paper roll in your hand, you know, to just make way, no carts, no carts. The TV
station that I was at, that I was at back in the day during that same period. My favorite thing to do, because I was part of the team talking about Black Friday deals and not getting screwed on stuff.
I loved just the people wrapping around Best Buy twice around the, remember those days, like two, three times around the store, people staying out all night.
But now you don’t have to have a game plan. Like it used to be like, okay, first I hit Best Buy, then I hit Target. You don’t need that game plan now.
It’s like, well, how many tabs you got open? So in terms of shopping traditions, I’m going to have all that done before we eat. I’m going to be calm and cool and be in the moment with my kids. Cause that’s, that’s not my new thing. Right. Cause I know before I was running around now, it’s like, okay, let’s try not to burn the dinner and do our best to have that quality time and kind of have fun.
And of course, you know, see the parade
on TV. And if it doesn’t go well, then I’ll just use my eye massager later. That’s exactly. Thank you so much. Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving to you too, thank you. Hey, I’m Mr. Wow. And I’m Mrs. Wow, from Waffles on Wednesday. And when we’re not eating waffles, We’re stacking
Benjamins.
Oh gee, again, just like with Regina here on Monday, I saw you taking out your wallet. Just put it back. Put it down.
But I won’t.
I’ll tell you, every year. I think, uh, gotta have it. Gotta have some of that good stuff. But I also love it when I’m told, uh, beware, beware of that. Don’t, uh, isn’t it funny how some of this new tech you think is absolutely fantastic and then you hear Bridget and she’s like, yeah, that’s all smoke and mirrors.
Hey, let’s throw out the lifeline to a lucky stacker. This is a segment of the show where we help somebody out of a financial situation, uh, OG and I try to dive into your question and give you some good advice. If you would like to call us, head to stackingbenjamins. com slash voicemail. And this is a little bit of an exchange.
When you call in, because you’ve been brave, it’s tough to call in and ask your question live. But if you do, uh, well, live via voicemail, I suppose. But if you do, we send you a Greatest Money Show on Earth, uh, Stacking Benjamins shirt, which, by the way, I saw just today, somebody, a stacker, uh, Jeff, who was, uh, in Europe with his awesome Stacking Benjamins swag.
You might check out all our swag, by the way. Are you in Europe
right now? No, you look to be on the other side of the table. Just a
hologram. It’s not me. I said, Jeff, Jeff.
You
said you saw Jeff Stack. Oh, well, he posted a picture of himself in his, in his stack of Benjamin stuff
to the, to the face. It’s one of those hologram things.
I was stuck in the matrix again. Uh,
here we’re going to take a call from Stacker Jessica. Hey, Jessica. Hi everyone. Big fan. First time caller. I was just wondering
what your thoughts on target date
funds were. I’ve done a pretty good job of getting my personal finance house in order and I’m trying to do a lot of investing.
I’ve heard really mixed reviews about
target date funds versus something like a S& P
500 ETF. So. Any clarification would be really helpful. Thanks. Bye. Hey, Jessica. Thank you. And as Doug said, uh, Jessica, you’re in for a field day, uh, because OG might have an opinion or two about a target date fund. So let’s talk about target date funds, OG.
Well, what do you think? No,
God, no,
God, please. No,
no, no.
Is that, tell us how you feel. Tell us.
Here’s the thing with target date funds. And I think. I want to be, I want to be optimistic here. The reality is, is that it’s better than nothing. If you’re like, I’m going to put my money in cash or I’m going to buy a target date fund, which one of those two?
It’s like, well, it’s the lesser of two evils. The problem that I have with target date funds or any sort of age based things, and it doesn’t have to be a target date fund like You know, Vanguard, Target, Day Fund. People do this for 529 plans. They’ll say, Investor 529, and say, do you just want to pick the year your kid’s going to go to college, 2041?
And you’re like, yeah, sure. That’s great. That’s hands off. The problem is, is that it generally gets too conservative too early. The problem with most investors is not that they have too much money, but rather that they don’t have enough, generally speaking. And you’re taking your foot off the gas in the moment when you have the most opportunity to.
benefit from the compounding. So you take a normal, let’s say a 40 year old who has an age 65 retirement, you know, so you’re, so you’re looking at like a 2050 target date fund. That thing will start getting conservative in 10 years or more conservative in 10 years from now. You’re going, well, why? You’re only 55 and not only are you only 55 and you still have 10 more years to retire, but then you also have 30 odd years beyond that regardless of what the Wall Street Journal says about life expectancy.
You know, I mean, you have to plan for that. So you can have the same outcome as the initial part of the target date fund. So if you go, Hey, I just, you know, I’m gonna pick the 2060 fund. It’s the most aggressive one I can find. Just pick those funds. Just look inside of it and go, well, these four funds and just buy those four and then be done with it, if that’s what you want to do, you know, we were talking about Paul Merriman earlier, he’s got a great, you know, kind of, uh, uh, update every year that he talks about in terms of adding, you know, different asset classes and the impact to your portfolio of saying, well, I’m going to add S& P funds, and then I’m going to add small company funds, then I’m going to add some international and some real estate and emerging markets, so forth, and the impact of that over time.
But if you don’t want to go through all that work, you can just deconstruct the target date fund yourself, and be done with it. The other thing that it does, it gives you a little bit more tactical allocation around where you think the best asset class is for the type of investment that you’re holding.
Say, for example, you’ve got a Roth IRA. That money’s not going to be taxed ever again, if you do it right anyway. There’s no taxes or penalties or anything coming out of Roth. So, you know, you have the opportunity to say, well, I’m gonna make that be my most aggressive holding because I want that thing to blow out of the moon, right?
I want it to go up a whole bunch and the only way to do that is to make sure that the most aggressive holding that I have is, is in that fund. So, my big problem is, is that it gets far too conservative far too early. Now, Asterisk here. If you’re like, well dude, I got a hundred bucks a month to save. I’m starting at zero.
Then use a target date fund. You know, if it’s going to make your life easy, but just remember that at some point in time you’re going to have to do something with it probably sooner than later. And, um, the fact that you’re saving is the most important thing that, you know, so I don’t want to detract from that and just go like, you know, it’s not like, Oh, I don’t know what fund to pick.
So I’m just not going to do anything. If your choice is invest or don’t pick, the thing that gets you to invest, whatever that might be. If it’s like, okay, I’m investing or I’ve invested and I’ve already got money. Now I want to simplify my life. You can be simple with four funds or six or eight. Like that’s still simple.
The important piece about investing is to literally not touch it for the next 50 years. Like that’s the only thing. It’s so tempting to, you know, pay attention to what’s going on in the market. A friend the other day called and asked, he says, how, how often do you pay attention to the market? I said, well, what do you mean by that?
He goes, is it like every 20 minutes or more like every hour? I was like, Oh geez. Wow. More like once every two or three months I kind of glance and have an idea. I said, for example, I think the S& P right now is about 4, 200. He goes, no, it’s at 4, 500. And I went, huh, who knew? Good for us. Expectations were a lot lower.
Time in the market is going to be way better return than trying to pick asset classes and day trading and all that other sort of jazz. So. I guess my hierarchy here is if you’re like, I’m going to invest or not pick investing. And if you’re already investing, you’re like, I’m not going to, I just, I don’t want to deal with this.
That’s fine too. But I think an extra 30 minutes once a year, you can have a better
outcome. And that to me is truly the key. The difference between investing in a target date fund and not investing in a target date fund, 30 minutes of work. Probably even less than that. And so worth it. So absolutely worth it because you are not getting, you get conservative when you need to get conservative, not based on arbitrary decisions that had nothing to do with you.
And
one more thing about this, by the way, is that generally any fund of funds, which is, that’s what that is, right? It’s a, it’s a fund that has funds in it. It’s going to cost more anyway. Yeah. Even, even in the, you know, annals of Vanguard and BlackRock, which are pretty inexpensive, it’s still more and still there’s trillions of dollars that aren’t invested that way.
So it’s like. You’ll probably save yourself some money in exchange for a little bit of extra time. Just do the little extra work.
Thanks for that question. We have not answered that question in a while, Jessica. So I’m very glad that you asked it because, uh, you know, we think you can do it. We have a lot of confidence in your ability to just buy the right funds.
I think it’s, and by the way, once you do that, once you will say to yourself, you go, why was I even thinking about self? Why was, why was I thinking about a target A fund? This is so easy. It’s one of those things that seems hard. but is not nearly as hard as you think it is, which, you know, makes you very, you can walk around being very proud that you did this thing that a lot of people don’t do because they assume that it’s more difficult than it is.
All right. Uh, if you’re not here because you’re worried about target date funds, you’re here because of the fact that your whole plan could be better. You know, maybe you need better people in your corner. OG and his team are taking clients. So head to stackingbenjamins. com slash OG. That leads you to his team’s calendar, and you can schedule an appointment to talk about how his team can make you and your team make better decisions across the board, not just with target day fund or no target day fund, just across the board as you’re in decision making land.
StackingBenjamins. com. Time for our last segment of the day. We call this the back porch segment, and normally we have a community calendar, but OG, we are taking a break, bud. On Friday, we’ve got our annual board game episode. I know a lot of our geeks that, that really enjoyed board games, like the first half of that, where we talk about games that are really good, that involve money or economic systems.
They’re not trying to teach you anything. They are just games that are fun, that involve the stuff that we think is fun. But the second half of that discussion is, you know, you go to Target or Walmart, you see all these games, you’re like, what the hell, which one’s good? And you buy it based on the cover art.
No idea what it is. Well, Candace Harris, who is the host of the Board Game Geek podcast, Board Game Geek is a site where over 5 million people go a day, a day to look at board games, a lot of geeks. Candace is going to dive into those two lists for us. So if you’re playing games during the holidays, definitely listen to the second half of that especially.
Uh, all right. That is a Friday. I got, I got a report OG on something I watched on Netflix around Halloween, Cheryl and I started a show called Fall of the House of Usher. And if that sounds familiar, that’s because that was an Edgar Allen Poe story, right? It is a modern day retelling of Follow the House of Usher.
The family owns a pharmaceutical company and all eight of the episodes are named after other Edgar Allen Poe stories. So they’re taking Edgar Allen Poe and this family one by one. And by the way, there’s no spoiler here. They tell you this at the beginning, the family’s being killed off. One person gets killed off every episode and you know how it’s going to end.
So we started it around, uh, around Halloween and, uh, Follow the House of Usher, uh, a little gross, a little gory, very interesting story. Not my favorite story of all time, but I like, I like these stories that have multi layers and Follow the House of Usher has a couple different layers going on, so. I’m a fan of that.
I’d say, uh, thumb three quarters up. You really got to like the kind of horror genre a little bit to get into that. But if you do follow the House of Usher, I like. This is my
favorite retelling of one of the best Edgar Allen Poe The Raven stories of all time. The Raven.
The Raven, once upon a midnight weary while I pondered weak and weary over many acquainted, curious volume of forgotten law.
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly came a tapping as a someone gently wrapping. Wrapping up my chamber door, some visitor. Hi. Mad happy at my chamber door. Only dishing. Are we scared yet? But he’s establishing mode. Ah, distinctly I remember. It was in the bleak December, and each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow. They knee I had sought to borrow from my book’s surcease of sorrow. Huh? Sorrow for the lost Lenore. Oh, Lenore. For the rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore. Nameless here are forevermore. Ah! And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain frilled me, filled me with Fantastic terrors never felt before, so that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis a
visitor entreating entrance
at my chamber door,
this it is, and nothing more.
Presently my soul grew stronger, hesitating then no longer, Sir, said I, or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore. But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping on my chamber door, that I scared to be sure I heard you. Here I open wide the door. This better be good.
Darkness there, and nothing more. Huh? You know what would have been scarier than nothing? What? Anything!
Fabulous. The, uh, the first comment on this, of course that’s from The Simpsons from a long time ago, the first comment says, No joke, if Edgar Allen Poe lived in a modern time, he would be dropping the hottest rap album of the year.
And by the way, having, uh, James Earl Jones with the Simpsons, even, even, but what could be better, Doug? I know, maybe not better, but there was a lot to untangle here, maybe not the Raven, but, uh, What should we have learned in this episode? What’s on our to do list today?
So what should be on our to do list today?
First, take some advice from Bridget Carey, and if you’re in the market for technology, focus on the basics. It’s a big year for deals, so reading that review Yeah, you should pause and do that first before sinking money into that new vacuum or television. Second, open your investment portfolio and look at the line items.
Do you understand what you’re invested in? If it’s quirky or obscure, ask, is this money I can afford to lose? If it’s not, it’s time to move to waters that better fit your goal and that are less likely to leave you stranded. But the big lesson… Maybe ask someone besides a 13 year old if chupacabras are real or mythical before you, uh, uh, spend a day building a trap to catch one.
Thanks to Bridget Carey for joining us today. You can find out more about Bridget at CNET. com. We’ll also include links in our show notes 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 Youngkin 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.
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