What’s the right financial move for you… right now? If you’ve ever found yourself reading advice meant for a millionaire when you’re still trying to crack five figures—or following budgeting tips when your net worth is seven digits—this episode is your custom-tailored financial GPS.
In this installment of The Stacking Benjamins Show, Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Doug take you rung-by-rung through the wealth ladder—from humble beginnings at $10K all the way to $10 million—and explain how your financial priorities, risks, and strategies evolve as your net worth grows.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- How to avoid mismatched advice: Why taking financial tips meant for someone in a different stage can set you back instead of move you forward.
- Net worth brackets and behavior shifts: What you should be thinking about at $10K, $100K, $1 million, and beyond—and what not to worry about yet.
- When Roth IRA conversions make sense—and when they really don’t: With new legislation impacting retirement tax planning, Joe and OG break down the implications with help from Robert Powell of The Street.
- Diversification, risk, and behavioral pitfalls: What the pros get wrong and how to stay grounded no matter how big your stack grows.
- Community-driven insights: From listener milestones to new Stacking Benjamins swag sightings, you’ll hear how Stackers are winning in their own lives.
As always, the team weaves in laughter, sarcasm, and that unmistakable basement charm—complete with Doug’s new mug, a calendar confusion history lesson, and a household disaster caused by what can only be described as “revenge rain.”
Also Featuring:
- A Robin Williams–themed trivia segment to warm your heart (and test your memory)
- Batty Betty’s wild TikTok take on relationship finance
- Practical investing and estate planning ideas that don’t make your eyes glaze over
Why You’ll Love This Episode:
If you’re trying to level up without falling prey to the one-size-fits-all advice machine, this episode delivers a realistic blueprint. It’s equal parts roadmap and reminder: where you are right now matters more than where someone else thinks you should be.
Stacker takeaway? Clarity beats comparison. Especially when it comes to money.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/build-your-wealth-ladder-1711
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our TikTok Minute
Our Headline
Doug’s Trivia
- Mork and Mindy is a spinoff series from another even bigger hit show from the seventies…which one?
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Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’ll help you move faster with a guy who’s going to explain how we should invest differently depending on where we are in life, the man behind the popular Of Dollars and Data blog AND the COO of Ritzholtz Wealth Management, Nick Maggiuli.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: How To Waste Your Life (or hopefully, not) SB1710
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] OG: It’s Monday in America. It is Monday in, [00:00:02] Doug: how did you know? [00:00:03] OG: I can I just look a little, a little tingle in my spine? I can tell [00:00:08] Doug: because we have access to a calendar. I know. Wait a minute. Hold up. Spine [00:00:11] OG: folks in Gregorian times not only put it in order for us, how know, [00:00:16] Joe: by the way, when the ro wasn’t the Romans that came in and fixed the calendar. [00:00:19] Joe: Like why, why is October not the eighth month once they changed it to the 12 month calendar? Because they named it after T. Why is October the 10th month? Because they what Doug, is [00:00:30] Doug: it it’s named after Octavius Emperor. Not, it’s not after the number eight. It’s not a Spanish [00:00:34] OG: name, meaning eight? No, I think it is. [00:00:38] OG: I think it is. I thought it was named after the, the mom that was on, um, you know, like HGTB that had, that had all the children [00:00:45] Joe: tum. Yeah, she do pretty good from what I understand. Do you notice anything? Og Do you notice anything right now? You know what? Doug’s just casually holding out there. Like all braggy Bragg. [00:00:55] Joe: Look at him. All braggy bag with his mug. Did he [00:00:56] OG: finally buy one? We’ve paid him enough. [00:01:00] Doug: Oh, you’re talking about my coffee mug? This thing just showed up in the mail. I meant to ask you, are we sending these to everybody? Like, I have no idea why I would’ve gotten a Stacking Benjamin’s mug, but I thought that was pretty sweet. [00:01:10] Doug: We’re [00:01:10] Joe: testing out this vendor, but turn it around. Look at this. It doesn’t matter what side. If you’re left-handed or right-handed, you can still show off the logo to your friends. This is innovation in crockery. I know. Not on one side, but on [00:01:25] Doug: two sides. It says SB two sides. I didn’t even notice. It’s incredible. [00:01:28] Doug: I I didn’t figure that out. But it is, I mean, this is great. I think our ratings are gonna skyrocket if we sent these to all like nine people that listened to us. [00:01:36] Joe: We gotta see a how, uh, the vendor does. If this vendor is, I don’t know. I don’t make the decisions. We gotta talk to Tina. Tina, can we send these to everybody? [00:01:47] Joe: Can we send these to all nine people? You know what we can do though for free, we don’t have to ask Tina if we can do that, is salute the troops like we do every Monday here on the show. So on behalf of the men and women in Mom’s basement, make podcast And on behalf of the men and women, who are I I I’m pausing everybody. [00:02:06] Joe: If you’re not watching the video, ’cause Doug is like doing the extreme close to to the camera. What if I just [00:02:11] Doug: like to hear the whole episode? So it’s just [00:02:13] Joe: like a talking mug I think. Oh gee, that would be better. Just your mouth and the mug in front of you. Yeah, I like it better. So on behalf of the men and women, make a podcast to mom’s basement and the men and women at Navy Federal who serve our troops here’s to those troops kept us safe all weekend and we’ll do the same. [00:02:29] Joe: I’m sure this week. Let’s all go stack some Benjamins together now, shall we? Thanks everybody. [00:02:35] after show: You heard of this thing, the eight minute abs? [00:02:38] OG: Yeah, sure. Eight minute abs. Yeah. The, uh, exercise video Uhhuh. Yeah. Well this is gonna blow that right out of the [00:02:44] after show: water. Listen to this seven minute am. [00:02:55] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Chair. [00:03:09] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and advice all over the internet warns you about what you should and shouldn’t do. Today we dive into a concept called the wealth. Ladder and identify who should listen to which advice so that you can build wealth faster. And in our headline segment, new tax legislation in the one big beautiful Bill creates a potential new wrinkle in your Roth conversion strategy. [00:03:36] Doug: We’ll share how to avoid a potential landmine. I’ll also share a TikTok minute teaching you how to stack loads of Benjamins. And of course, I’ll share some absolutely mind bending trivia, mind bending. And now two guys who know that wealth isn’t built in a day, but it can start with payday. It’s Joe, oh and oh. [00:04:07] Joe: Happy non-specific time of the day. Stackers. I am Joe Saul-Sehy, and welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. You’ve made it. You’ve found us. Sit back and relax because if you don’t know what a Roth conversion strategy even is, as Doug was talking, don’t worry, we got your back. We’ll explain that and talk about what all the hullabaloo is. [00:04:26] Joe: Hullabalu. But first, the gentleman across the card table from me, Mr. OG is here. How are you, my friend? [00:04:32] OG: Happy to be alive. Happy to be able to do Roth conversion ladders. It is. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Actually, who knows? Maybe you’re gonna tell me. I can’t do ’em anymore. [00:04:40] Joe: If you wake up in the morning and you can do a Roth conversion ladder like you’re skipping to work. [00:04:45] Joe: You are skipping to work. It’s a good deal. We not only have that though Nick Majuli coming down to the basement on Wednesday. For those of you who don’t know who Nick is, not only is he the cheap, cheap, not only is he the Chief operating officer, I almost said cheap operating officer. Yeah, some companies need that outta their COOs. [00:05:04] Joe: If I can get help, get it cheap, that’d be great. Barry Riol, uh, probably said, I think that’s fiction because nothing about Nick Majuli is cheap. He has a fantastic blog called of Dollars and Data that we’ve referenced how many times on the show, and this will be Nick’s third or fourth time with us on the show. [00:05:25] Joe: But he talks a lot OG about this idea of the wealth ladder. So to get everybody warmed up to Nick’s appearance on Wednesday as he mentors us on good and bad investments, we’re gonna dive into the concepts and make sure that everyone’s ready. And even if you can’t catch Wednesday, you know what? Today we’re gonna help you make better investing decisions wherever you’re at on the wealth ladder. [00:05:46] Joe: That’s what’s coming up. OG excited [00:05:49] OG: beyond [00:05:50] Doug: just tickled pink as mom says, there is not an exclamation point anywhere in OGs being, I think, Hey, how you doing today, this Monday morning? Uh, og doing great. Happy to be here. [00:06:03] Joe: Well, I’ll tell you what does get to OG Excited, and that is talking about building the wealth ladder. [00:06:08] Joe: But just to calm him down, we, we have a couple sponsors we’re gonna hear from first so he can relax and kinda lean into this. These sponsors help us keep doing what we do, and you don’t have to pay a dime for any of this. Goodness. So sit back, like OG and relax. And coming up, we’re going to dive into Nick Ma Julie’s Wealth Ladder. [00:06:36] Joe: So let’s talk about why this idea is important. You have seen it og. I’ve seen it. Heck, Doug. You’ve seen it where people are fighting on the internet. Why would you do something stupid like that with your money? Or they’re giving some well-meaning advice. You know what you need to do? You need to go out and buy some gold or, I think that crypto is for you when I’m wrong. [00:06:54] Joe: When this person knows nothing about you, they know absolutely zero. And to your point, this could be good advice for the right person, but truly it depends on where you’re at in your journey. Somebody who 20 and just starting out should get different investment advice and tax advice and estate planning advice and insurance advice than somebody who’s 55 years old has done a great job of saving. [00:07:20] Joe: Maybe they’ve accumulated three, four, $5 million. Mm-hmm. Those two people should be invested in different things. [00:07:27] OG: Well, maybe, but you should approach it differently for sure. I think there’s, I think there’s a lot of people who want to look at the future, use that 20-year-old, for example, 20 is a little young, but let’s say the 28-year-old, they’re worried that they’re missing out on stuff, so they want to do all the stuff that the 50 year olds are doing. [00:07:47] OG: And it’s like, okay, well you, you have to do this the right way. If you do it in the wrong order, then you’re setting yourself up for the opportunity to have these wild swings in cash flow or results in your plan because you’re thinking that you’re behind. And I think all of this ends up stemming from the sensation of, I’m not, I’m not where I’m supposed to be. [00:08:08] OG: And one of my main messages is, you, you’re okay. You’ve got plenty of time to get there. You don’t have to, you don’t have to do anything extreme. If you are behind air quotes, you don’t have to do anything extreme. Just let the process work. [00:08:22] Doug: What I like the most, Joe, about what he just said is that he correctly stated that people in their late twenties are envious of all the cool things that people in their fifties are doing. [00:08:31] Doug: I think he nailed it, man. And I don’t think they realized just how good it is up here. [00:08:36] Joe: When I was in my twenties, that’s all I did, sat around and thought about, uh oh, I were only in my fifties. Look, [00:08:40] Doug: that 55-year-old dude, that dude’s crushing it. [00:08:44] OG: Slaying it. Yeah. He [00:08:45] Doug: gets to go to bed at seven 30. I’m thinking [00:08:46] OG: about it from the investing perspective, right? [00:08:48] OG: It’s like, oh, the, the number of people that I’ve talked to that are not maxing out their four one Ks, but want to know about how to do mega backdoor Roth conversions, right? And I’m like, you’re not at that spot yet and it’s okay. You’re saving 5,000 a year in your 401k. That’s awesome. Good job. You’re not at the spot where you’re gonna save 50,000 in your 401k yet, and that’s okay too. [00:09:11] OG: And I get like wanting to learn about it and educate and that sort of thing, but by the time you get there might be different. So focus on the stuff that you’re, where you know where you are right now. And make those small changes, make those small improvements, you’ll get to the spot where it’s like, oh geez, I’m maxing this out and I have extra and my spouse is maxing out. [00:09:30] OG: And we’re, you know, it’s like, and, and, and now I’m like, now what do I do? [00:09:34] Joe: I had a, uh, personal story. When I was first starting out. I was struggling and trying to begin climbing outta debt. And my father-in-law, a very well-meaning man and a smart guy, but didn’t know enough about money to discern where he was from, where I was. [00:09:51] Joe: He sits me down OG and tells me about this phenomenal thing that he puts money into every month where it’s for retirement and it grows tax deferred. And it turns out he’s, he, he’s investing in an annuity and he thinks that me at 25 years old at the time that you know what, it’d be a good idea if I started one of these two. [00:10:13] Joe: So I get on the line with his broker at the time and the broker, God bless him. Asks me a bunch of questions about myself and goes, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to keep focusing on your debt, and then I want you to build an emergency fund, and then I want you then to call me back and you, and I’ll talk about maybe setting up some mutual funds outside of an annuity, but well-meaning people will give you advice because it fits them. [00:10:39] OG: Oh. But even that advice that you got, the first part of that is you need to pay off your debt and build an emergency fund. That’s where you are on that. And if you would’ve, or where you were with that, and if you would’ve said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don’t understand. I wanna know about mega backdoor Roth conversions. [00:10:56] OG: Right? [00:10:56] Joe: I wanna know about this annuity thing. [00:10:58] OG: Yeah. Or the triple tax free nature of an HSA. Shouldn’t I be doing that? Right? And you’re like, well, I mean, yeah, but you also have $80,000 of student loans, so you can have all the tax free money in the universe while you’re paying freaking 8% on your student loans, you’re not making any progress. [00:11:14] OG: You’re net worth is going backwards, bro. Like do the thing where you are. It’s totally fine. [00:11:20] Joe: I’m gonna bring up some concepts that we’re gonna ask Nick about as he mentors us on Wednesday, just so that we all get these locked down. ’cause I think these are really important for us to get, and I know that we only get to spend maybe 30 minutes with people like Nick on the show. [00:11:35] Joe: What Nick is gonna talk about on Wednesday is what level of financial decisions in your life are trivial? A proxy for this on any level of wealth is if you take 0.01%, so not 1%, but one 100th of 1%. [00:11:53] OG: One 10th of a percent [00:11:53] Joe: of your net worth. Not not one 10th. One 100th. The 1%. [00:11:57] OG: Oh one one. Okay. So one 100th of a percent then would be a dollar on 10,000. [00:12:01] OG: Yeah. [00:12:01] Joe: Which is why for your first $10,000. Nick talks about og, there are no trivial decisions. Hmm. Because a dollar right on $10,000 a dollar is a big deal. Those types of decisions are, are every decision’s a big deal. And when you’ve got a $10,000 net worth, you need to worry about the emergency fund. [00:12:22] Joe: You can’t have any debt escalation to any degree ’cause you don’t have the wherewithal then to just wipe it out whenever you want. You, uh, need as much insurance as you can get because of the fact that if something bad happens that insurance companies are working on your behalf, when you get to a hundred thousand dollars, now you can make decisions at the grocery store and not worry about them that much. [00:12:46] Joe: Some people might go, well, that’s kind of conservative. I think Nick does this on purpose because if you start off with just what won’t harm you. Then work the other way versus the way most people look og, which is what’s my biggest opportunity? Oh, I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars net worth. I’m gonna take 25,000, loan it to my buddy who owns a restaurant. [00:13:07] Joe: That is a horrible decision because your trivial decisions should be at the grocery store, a $10 decision at a million dollars if you have a million dollar net worth. You know how everybody says that glass of wine is a waste of money at the restaurant at a million dollars? Who cares? Because you can blow a hundred bucks and a hundred bucks to somebody with a million dollar net worth? [00:13:31] Joe: Completely, completely trivial. You get then to $10 million, a thousand dollars extra on travel. Big deal. Not that big a deal. [00:13:40] Doug: Yeah. No matter how high you go up the ladder, it’s always a bad idea to lend that money to your buddy with the restaurant. Never, ever, ever do that. [00:13:49] Joe: If you’re being conservative and you wanna invest in companies, and of course you know it’s Nick’s, so he goes through all the data on this. [00:13:55] Joe: It is at $10 million that you can very easily feel comfortable with buying businesses. It is well within your comfort zone to go buy a business and it’s gonna be fine. And I know og again, to your point, you don’t have to buy a business to get where you want to go, but at $10 million, if you want to go invest in a business and maybe not dug the restaurant, that’s a fine idea. [00:14:17] Joe: But let’s go back to somebody with that first 10,000 bucks. I think for somebody with that first 10,000 bucks, like I think the emergency fund’s important, but I also think people with that first 10,000 for their long-term money. I think they also overthink diversification. I think that if you’re diversified in just an exchange traded fund or a mutual fund, you’re fine. [00:14:39] Joe: But I think, you know, somebody with less than $10,000 going into a target date fund or going into a, you know, bonds because they’re worried about the ups and downs. I think if you’re working on that first 10,000 bucks, OG that, um, just get into something like the s and p 500 or the total stock market, and I think that might be all the diversification you need with your long-term money. [00:15:00] OG: I agree. I think when you’re just getting started, the biggest components of building your plan the right way is making sure that you’ve got enough cash on hand, which sounds very counterintuitive to long-term investment growth, but the way that you get to invest money is by having cash to cover your emergencies and keeping it simple. [00:15:17] OG: The sexiness of fractional shares makes it seem like, oh, it doesn’t matter. I can just, you know, I don’t have to buy a hundred shares of this ETF to make a trade, you know, and it doesn’t cost anything ’cause everything’s commission free now. Why can’t I have 10 different ETFs? And it’s not that you can’t, it’s just there’s no, there’s no efficiency gained. [00:15:38] OG: You’re gonna lose energy on trying to maintain a portfolio of 10 positions when you have $10,000 in your investment account versus the simplicity of dumping into one, one all world fund or one. S and P fund or something like that [00:15:56] Joe: for somebody who’s, regardless of where they are on the wealth ladder, I think there’s a key box that I’ve seen people accidentally not have checked, and I just saw a great graph on this recently. [00:16:05] Joe: I’ll try to share it in the basement Facebook group this week. But it’s the difference between investing in the s and p 500 and investing in the s and p 500 and making sure that you reinvest dividends like over a 30 year period. Og the difference, having that reinvest dividend box checked and not having it checked is a monster amount of money on a $10,000 investment. [00:16:29] OG: Well, I think what they’re comparing it to is taking the dividends in cash, right? As you get further up, I guess what he’s calling the wealth ladder, I would argue that you don’t want your dividends reinvested and you wanna be in charge of where you wanna put that money. But from a simplicity standpoint, you, lemme put it this way, you, you can’t take the dividends in cash, not do anything with it. [00:16:49] OG: If you need to automate it so that you don’t let it sit there for a year, then automate it. [00:16:54] Joe: I think if you’re in step one of the ladder, step two of the ladder, reinvesting that dividend is a huge, huge thing. [00:17:00] Doug: Hey, can I pause you guys just to help reset this for some of our listeners, because we’ve been talking about rungs on the ladder almost as a factor of 10, 10,000, a hundred thousand million, et cetera. [00:17:10] Doug: How do I know where I am on my ladder? I can anticipate you’re about to say, well, Doug, it depends on what your policy statement is and where your goals are. [00:17:19] Joe: No, it’s your net worth. It’s a hundred percent your net worth. [00:17:21] Doug: So how do I know if I’m on the second rung or the 20th rung? [00:17:26] Joe: Add up your net worth. If your net worth is from zero to 10,000, you’re on according to Nick. [00:17:31] Joe: These are Nick’s numbers. So [00:17:32] Doug: these numbers are sort of absolute regardless of your end goal. These are Nick’s [00:17:38] Joe: numbers about how you invest your wealth. Okay, he’s gonna, on Wednesday, break it down, zero to 10,000, 10,000 to a hundred, a hundred thousand to a million. Just keep adding the, you know, the next, the next zero and that’s where you’re at. [00:17:50] Joe: Okay. Second ladder step 10,000 to 100,000. I’m trying to think, oh gee, what changes when you get to 10,000 to a hundred thousand, this might be the spot where you can raise your deductibles on your insurance, maybe to save a little bit of money. Did I say that right? Doug? Insurance? I think it’s in insurance. [00:18:11] Doug: Insurance. The emphasis is on. Sure. We’ll cover that loss. I think [00:18:16] Joe: it’s in insurance. It’s [00:18:17] Doug: not in, [00:18:19] Joe: does much else change between 10,000 and a hundred thousand for somebody that rung number two, [00:18:23] OG: I would argue that if you were at a month of cash reserve, you want to get to three. If you were at three, you probably wanna be at six and have that piece done. [00:18:33] OG: From a net worth standpoint or investing standpoint, I don’t see much of a difference between 10,000 and a hundred thousand. Again, you’re trying to keep your life simple, not complicated. [00:18:43] Joe: A a hundred thousand dollars to a million is I think, where the rubber starts meeting the road. I’m, I’m being a little more precise. [00:18:53] Joe: What changes do you think, and, and, and I think this is probably the majority of our listeners are in this area, don’t get me wrong, stacker. If you’re starting out, man, can’t wait to have you in that a hundred thousand to to million dollar net worth area. But for this group of people, if we’re just looking at that net worth, what am I really focused on then? [00:19:13] OG: Does he mean investment net, net worth, or total ’cause for a lot of people, this could be your house too included in this. [00:19:19] Joe: Yeah, it’s interesting because for people in these first three rungs of the ladder, a big part of their net worth is in their personal home. Mm-hmm. Is in their personal home and in their 401k, and then it’s actually when people get past a million dollars og, where you see that personal house becomes less rental, real estate becomes bigger. [00:19:39] Joe: By the way, these are statistics of people today, just the way things naturally happen to be. People investing more in that. But personal property is a big piece of that puzzle. Somebody between 10,000 and a million, maybe part of it’s what you talked about getting that mortgage paid off. [00:19:57] OG: Yeah. I think the difference between a hundred thousand and a million is so profound. [00:20:02] OG: It doesn’t take long to go that path, but I think the mindset is wildly different, you know, along the way. I would break this down into a couple different groups. I think the a hundred to 300 is where you start really seeing some acceleration of your investment portfolio. And I’m thinking not real estate, right? [00:20:20] OG: Let’s just exclude that for a second because obviously that could sway it quite a bit. One to three, you start seeing some really big traction going on and then that kind of three to five number. And then it seems like you go from five to a million pretty quickly. And for those who are in the middle of that, they’re going, it doesn’t seem very fast, but you know, measure backwards and look at how long it’s taken you. [00:20:39] OG: If you’ve been saving money and investing, like put a chart out and go. Well it took me 12 years to get to a hundred. It took me four years to get to two. It took me another two years to get to three. It took me 18 months to get to five. That shortens every time. ’cause you’re starting this snowball of compounding. [00:20:56] OG: Yeah, I think from an investment standpoint or kind of financial planning perspective, I wanna make sure that we’ve got a really good handle on debt and cash flow between a hundred and a million. If, Lord willing, the only thing you have is your house. I think it really makes sense to consider how you wanna pay that off. [00:21:14] OG: I’ve never met anybody who’s paid their house off. That’s like, dang it, I really wish I had a mortgage. You know? And I know that there’s the math, this is where my house was at 3%. Isn’t it better? It’s like, yes. However, look at that mortgage payment and how much money you have to make and how much money you’re not saving, you know, and not investing on an annual basis. [00:21:34] OG: And then I think from an investing perspective, maybe halfway through this, a hundred to 500, maybe somewhere in here, you start thinking about some additional diversification. It’s not gonna hurt, but I don’t know that it helps that much. And so I wanna be careful in saying, okay, at this level now is when you get to like play the game. [00:21:53] OG: Uh, ’cause it’s not really. That’s not really what you’re doing. You know, if you look at Paul Merriman’s thing, he’s like, okay, if you put it on the s and p, you’re good, right? Like you’re golden. But if you add 10% to this, you know you’re golden. Plus, you know, fractionally better, little bit better. Like you are adding so much little marginal benefit by adding diversification, that really what you’re doing is you’re trying to prevent a scenario where you’re gonna make a big mistake because the sector or the part of the economy that you’re invested in goes through a recession. [00:22:26] OG: You know, if you’ve been s and p 500 the whole time, right? 2015 you started investing, it’s 2025, you’re 10 years into it, you’ve only put money in the s and p. You’ve only experienced the US market going up, except for like a little teeny blip here and there of COVID in 2019, right? 2022. As these numbers become bigger, you know, the swings in your portfolio become greater from a dollar standpoint, the percentages are the same. [00:22:54] OG: You know, SSP is down 20% in 2022, it’ll be down 20% again someday. Right. But we don’t spend percentages. We spend dollars. And when you look at your portfolio and you go, you know, you had $10,000 and it went all the way down to eight. You didn’t think like, oh my God, that’s 20% right? You just went eh, down two grand this year. [00:23:14] OG: But when you have a million dollars and it goes down 200,000 to 800,000, still 20% right? The experience is profoundly different. And so the benefit of diversification at that point where you start adding different economies, international or emerging market, or big companies and small companies being a little bit more specific around that. [00:23:33] OG: The benefit is there’s likely to be a sector where it hasn’t affected it. That minus 20 and now it gives you an opportunity to start reinvesting. [00:23:40] Joe: People get excited about diversification because they think that it adds alpha, that it makes your portfolio grow faster. You’re saying it’s exactly the opposite, og, it’s, it’s because you now have something to protect now, now you, yeah, I [00:23:55] OG: mean, I think statistically it does help you, right? [00:23:57] OG: I mean you, you could look at the risk return curve and just say like, okay, if I wanna be the riskiest and the highest return, I would put all my money in small companies. But what’s the trade off? The trade off is every so often they lose two thirds their value. Whoops. And there’s not a lot of people around that have experienced it with any real money to see what that is. [00:24:17] OG: I talk about technology stocks all the time, and those of us who are investing in the late nineties and early two thousands. Remember this anecdotally, but never really experienced it. ’cause people who are, you know, 70 with tons of money in the market right now, we’re 40 with not tons of money in the market. [00:24:36] OG: You know what I mean? Like, like it’s been so long now that we really failed to appreciate how impactful and what, what it really means when you say, well I’m just gonna put all my money in tech stocks ’cause that’s the future. Just give yourself the dollar amount and track that. In the two thousands, the, the, the first decade the NASDAQ went down 78% and it took 15 years to get back to even money. [00:24:58] OG: 13 years to get back to even money from March of 2000. [00:25:01] Joe: I was thinking, yeah, just track it from 2000 to 2002 and see how you felt. [00:25:06] OG: I, well that’s fine because I think people will look at that and go, I could stay the course. Oh. You know, and it’s like, okay, cool. Good for you, but tell me, you’re gonna tell me you have a million dollars in tech stocks right now and you’d be okay with it going down to 180,000. [00:25:22] OG: 200,000, a million down to 200, and it stays down at 200 for the next 13 years, and sometime in 2038 you get back to a million. But I promise from 2038 to 2050, it’s gonna skyrocket. You know what I mean? Like, like we can’t conceptualize that there’s not a person in the universe that’s gonna watch 80% of their portfolio go down and not do something about it. [00:25:45] Joe: I think at half a million. I like how you break these up to og, but I think at half a million is where tax planning really can. Oh, from a planning standpoint. Yeah, absolutely. Half a million is where tax planning starts to rock. Looking at your tax triangle, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash tax triangle, if you wanna see, uh, graphic of what we’re talking about with the tax triangle, uh, starts to make sense. [00:26:04] Joe: Half a million, but then a million to 10 million og when you get above that million dollar mark and now you’re growing into 10 million, and by the way, a lot of us think 10 million is rarefied air. Here’s something I learned from Nick that I didn’t know. How many people the United States do you think have $10 million or more? [00:26:22] OG: 13 million. [00:26:24] Joe: 2 million, but still 2 million divided by 50 states. That’s 40,000 people per state. And what also strikes me about this too, where you know Nick is really focused on net worth here, but we will talk about income and the quickest way to grow your net worth. That Nick to save a lot of money, hammers. [00:26:48] Joe: Well, well make more money. [00:26:50] after show: Mm-hmm. [00:26:50] Joe: Historically, when he looks through all the data, and this is where Nick shines, when you look at the data, you and I have gotten a lot to pushback. Why do you focus so much on income? This is a finance show because making more money makes this so much easier. It makes it so, so, so much easier. [00:27:05] Joe: And all of Nick’s data proves it out even more than I thought. But if there’s 2 million people, 40,000 people in every state, if we just divide the states evenly that have done this before. I go back to our first interviews of 2025 with Alex Hermo and he says, og, if you don’t have $10 million, you’re paying an ignorance tax. [00:27:27] Joe: And I remember that like it was a slap across the face. Like what? He’s like, if 40,000 people have done it all 40,000 people in your state that have done it are not smarter than you. They’re not smarter than you. You’re as smart as many of those 40,000 people and yet they’ve done it and you haven’t done the research to find out how to do it. [00:27:45] Joe: I found that pretty powerful. [00:27:47] OG: You’re right, that is a little sloppy facey. It’s so smarmy. I’m not sure that I will drink all of the Alex Kool-Aid on that. Um, I’ll take a little sip just to see what it tastes like. Little blue raspberry, perhaps just the, just the tip. But, um, yeah. Um, just the sip. But I do think that the way to look at this is if there’s a level of success, whatever that means to you, whether it’s investment, career-wise, knowledge that you haven’t achieved that you want to, there is likely a recipe card already in existence, and there’s lots of different recipe cards to do it. [00:28:22] OG: You mentioned, Hey, if you’ve got a million dollars of net worth or $10 million, maybe you can go buy a business. Okay. That’s not a, that’s not like a normal common coffee table conversation with people. Like, Hey, so, uh, did you guys buy a laundromat this week? I did. You know, like, that’s not a thing, but you can learn about that. [00:28:39] OG: Hell, you can just let your million dollars compound in the market for a handful of years and you’ll get to 10 million. The thing that just blows my mind is, you know, we talk about Warren Buffett being one of the greater investors of all time. Mostly because in his words, he used a lot of time on his side, happened to grow up in the greatest country, in the greatest economic boom in that country ever. [00:29:01] OG: He got lucky, basically is what he talks about. But his net worth when he was 50 was $60 million. And that’s a lot of freaking money, right? That is a lot of money. His, his problems at 0.01% or whatever are like nothing. But he also still made the decision of which, you know, heg McMuffin he was gonna have in the morning. [00:29:19] OG: You know, was he gonna have a hash brown or not have a hash brown based on how the market was doing, right? So he was frugal even then. But now you look at his net worth and it’s whatever it is, I don’t even know, a hundred billion dollars or 10 I, it’s some insane number. How did he get from 60 million? [00:29:34] OG: Which is crazy to a hundred. It’s just time. So the faster that you let that compounding muscle work, the more likely it is that. Some of these higher numbers that you see or you hear about are realistic in your life. You know, you don’t have to spend all your money. You can save some of it along the way, but there’s a recipe card for it. [00:29:55] OG: And if you wanna be successful and your level, your definition of success is tied to, uh, a net worth number, and you’re like, how do I get to 10 million? There’s a path for that, [00:30:06] Joe: you know? And to reset again, back to the beginning, each of these wealth ladder points Nick is going through. If you wait until this point, you won’t blow yourself up. [00:30:15] Joe: So by focusing on saving as much as you can, but having adequate insurances and your emergency funds, zero to 10,000, you won’t blow yourself up 10,000 to a hundred thousand. Getting that primary residence down, throwing as much money into investments as you can now, maybe raising your deductibles to save a little bit of money, a hundred thousand to a million. [00:30:40] Joe: Begin thinking more clearly about more scientific diversification, both on from the upside and the downside at half a million. Looking at at tax planning. These are to not blow yourself up at a million dollars. And this is interesting ’cause you’ll see a lot of people get here before this OG buying individual pieces of real estate. [00:30:59] Joe: This is the point where Majuli goes, if somebody’s giving you real estate advice, you’ve less than a million dollar net worth. Good chance that that illiquidity could blow you up. If you’ve got more than a million dollar net worth, less likely, that’s gonna blow you up. So a million to 10 million is where real estate enters the picture for Majuli. [00:31:19] Joe: I remember [00:31:20] OG: seeing a, uh, I, it was a YouTube short or something. Do you know who Kyle Bass is or heard of him? [00:31:26] Joe: I have, and I’m scrambling to place how I know. So he’s a hedge [00:31:29] OG: fund guy here in Texas, uh, Dallas and Fort Worth. Of course. Fort Worth, yeah. Famously made a bunch of money. Subprime a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. [00:31:37] OG: But, um, you know, he’s, he’s got some, he’s, he’s been successful, right? He’s got a recipe card. Right. You don’t have to like. Drink all his Kool-Aid, but maybe just have a little taste. I saw this thing the other day that he goes to and he is like, you know, if I was investing, uh, you know, if I was starting out or whatever, he is, like, I would buy 105 hundred acre plots of land just outside major metropolitan areas and all the next 25 years, right? [00:32:00] OG: And it’s like, well, yes, of course you would, sir, you have $17 trillion. That makes a lot of sense for you to own a bunch of farmland just outside the city limits of all these big cities and in, in, in us of a and go, I’ll just wait for urban sprawl to catch up. Some idiot will wanna build houses here sometime in the next three decades. [00:32:20] OG: Also true, you know, but probably not the greatest investment for the person who’s got, you know, 800 K in their 401k going. You know, I, I think, I think I’m ready for the next thing. Probably not buying a hundred acres of farmland. Just outside Dallas to hold for the next generation, [00:32:36] Joe: and especially not for the people that are the vast majority of TikTok consumers, right? [00:32:41] Joe: Yeah. Somebody just starting out and they’re on that first rung of the wealth ladder. Kyle [00:32:44] OG: Bass said, I should take all my money and buy this, this plot of hunting ground up in, uh, sweetheart. Sweetheart, you’re 13, you’re watching TikTok, you’re acting like 13 [00:32:54] Joe: a million to 10 million. Tax planning becomes, I think, also crucial, not just the real estate portion. [00:32:58] Joe: What else between 1,000,010 million can you think of oj I mean, [00:33:01] OG: this is such a wide range. I think the thing that you wanna be cautious of is marrying the idea that I need to do something wildly different because I’ve hit this, you know, this pull up bar versus what got you here won’t get you there. [00:33:17] OG: Right? So you got these two competing thoughts of, well, you know, I, I’m, I’m, I gotta do something different. I got a million bucks now. It’s like, well, do you, I mean, you did a pretty good job to get to a, you’re 34 years old, you got a million dollar net worth. Like, do you Sure you wanna. Mess with the formula, like it seems to be working pretty good. [00:33:37] OG: Also, there’s an opportunity to do other things now. Right? And so how do you marry those two things together? I, I, I think you have to be really cautious on, on, uh, as grandpa would say, getting too big for your britches. [00:33:51] Joe: Yeah. I think the big thing here for me is I think it’s time to really, really, really focus on, and, and I know you should have an estate plan from the beginning, but I think your estate plan decisions begin to change as you get closer to $10 million. [00:34:05] OG: Yes. That changes your charitable giving changes. Hell, your time choices change. Like, uh, your closing, closing in on five or seven or $10 million net worth. Are you like, are you thinking, well, maybe now’s the time to really pull back, you know, if you’re 45 and you’ve accumulated $5 million of net worth, I mean, you’ve done so with pretty good discipline it, are you about ready to start trading your. [00:34:32] OG: Time back a little bit. You know, I think you have some really tough decisions to make as you’re crossing that, uh, you know, kind of marrying two concepts here. But as you’re crossing those fire numbers, you’re starting to get to like, well, what else do I want to do now? Because I don’t have to keep shoveling money into this plan because I’ve got 5 million bucks and I’m 40 years old, or I’m 45, or I’m 50. [00:34:54] OG: Life planning, I think becomes more important. There you go. That’s what I was looking for. [00:34:57] Joe: Yeah. And this is a danger that people face, which is when I’m on Wealth ladder point number one, I think some things are gonna make me happy. And when I’m on wealth ladder, step 4 million to $10 million, og, it’s, it’s a whole different number of things that make me happy. [00:35:16] Joe: Like, you know, if you go back to that 0.01% of your net worth. You are struggling. You know what camping is, is a lot of fun and you learn that camping can be a great time to just recharge and get away when you have a $10 million net worth. And a thousand dollars isn’t gonna change anything. You may decide to go different places and do different things, and you’ll often see people that give judgment to the way I’m gonna feel later on in my life. [00:35:46] Joe: They might make some long-term decisions that don’t pan out when your net worth begins to accelerate. Fascinating discussion. We’re going to dive more into this on our 2 0 1 newsletter and of course on Wednesday with a man himself, Nick Majuli, and I’m glad we were able to go into some of the concepts and hopefully. [00:36:05] Joe: For a lot of you make some, uh, start thinking really, where am I at on the wealth ladder and what am I paying too much attention to that maybe I shouldn’t be paying this much attention to? Or is there something that I’m avoiding that should be a part of my financial planning discussions coming up in the second half of today’s show, we, we’ve got a, a TikTok minute with some, uh, relationship advice and the big beautiful Bill has maybe a little Achilles heel. [00:36:31] Joe: We’re gonna cover those, but Doug, before we get there, you’ve got some trivia about today. State in history, is it a birthday today? Is that what it is? [00:36:42] Doug: Big giant question. I don’t know. I don’t know either. Joe. Let’s find out together. I haven’t read it yet. Hey, there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. [00:36:50] Doug: Today’s the birthday of the amazing late actor and comedian Robin Williams. Williams is known for a ton of roles, but the one which launched his acting career was arguably his role as. On the classic show, Mork and Mindy, as Mork Williams played an alien who’s trying to understand human culture. But here’s a question, Mor and Mindy is a spinoff series from another even bigger hit show from the seventies. [00:37:17] Doug: Which one? I’ll be back right after I go practice comb in my hair. I heard it makes me look great while I’m jumping sharks. [00:37:38] Doug: Hey there stackers. I’m old television show lover, but guy who’s never been comfortable taking a three hour boat ride anywhere. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. It’s Robin Williams’ birthday today and in celebration of the late actor and comedian, we are looking back to one of his early roles, Mork from the classic show, Mork and Mindy. [00:37:57] Doug: But. What huge Benjamin earnings show did Williams first appear on as Mork the answer? Robin Williams first appeared as Mork alongside well-known actors like Henry Winkler, Marion Ross, Tom Bosley, and Ron Howard on the show. You know, as Happy Days, this wasn’t the only series. Happy Days spawned while there were five altogether. [00:38:21] Doug: Laverne and Shirley and Joni loves Chachi went on to big success. Hey, speaking of success, let’s help you successfully manage money better back with Joe and og, [00:38:35] Joe: og Bork. Mindy, before your time A little bit. [00:38:39] OG: Not much. Not much. Yeah. I mean, I remember it being on, man, [00:38:41] Doug: that was must see tv. I wanted to move to Boulder as soon as I started watching that show, and that was before Boulder just became Denver. [00:38:49] Doug: Was it because of work or you just wanted to live closer to Mindy? Mindy, yeah. Yeah. She was something because you were 13 years old. Cute as a button. I don’t even think I was that old. In fact, I know I wasn’t that old when that show was on. You were already in love. I was so in love. Yeah. Oh my goodness. [00:39:04] Doug: Yeah. And then I found out she was a Michigander originally from Michigan. Well see, there you go. Even better. So was by the way, so was Robin Williams. He wasn’t born here, but he had spent a big part of his childhood here. [00:39:14] Joe: But he got to [00:39:14] Doug: Michigan as soon as he could, as soon as he could, and that’s where he got all of his humor and his intelligence. [00:39:19] Doug: Duh duh. Obviously, you know what’s crazy is the phrase jumped. The shark came from Happy Days, Fonzi, you know, late in the Sierra, I think it was like season eight or something. And they, you know, they get to California and Fonzie’s on water skis, literally jumping over a shark. That’s where the phrase came from. [00:39:38] Doug: But why? We didn’t all say, hold on, like three seasons before that they brought an alien on the show. That wasn’t the moment where the show started to lose its way. What are we gonna do? [00:39:50] Joe: We’re gonna bring an alien in. That’ll do it, right? That’ll [00:39:53] Doug: kick the ratings. The phrase should be, we’re jumping the Mork or something, but we shouldn’t have waited three or four more seasons to win. [00:40:00] Doug: Fonzi got on water skis in a leather jacket. [00:40:03] Joe: Time for our TikTok minute. This is a part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who is either saying something brilliant or air quotes brilliant today, og we have somebody giving, giving relationship advice. Do you think that this relationship advice is going to be brilliant or air quotes brilliant? [00:40:22] OG: Well, relationship advice on TikTok, lemme think about this. Um, I’m gonna say that the person has no idea what the F they’re talking about. [00:40:35] Joe: This is advice from a senior citizen who. Sits in her nightgown, in her bed. Your algorithm [00:40:43] OG: dude is something else [00:40:44] Joe: named Batty Betty, uh, Tina sent this to us and said, this cracks me up. [00:40:49] Joe: So, no, I’m not following [00:40:51] OG: the stuff. You guys, the stuff you guys search for on the internet just never ceases to amaze me. You know what? I’ll really get my gander [00:40:59] Joe: watching a senior citizen lady give relationship advice from her bed, and she’s wearing sunglasses. She’s like the, the Hollywood advice giver. [00:41:08] Joe: Betty. Betty. And you think it’s not that good? I mean, with that setup, how can this be bad? Betty is giving some advice to a young lady who is, uh, is having some difficulties and, uh, well, Betty’s teaching her how to turn this into a Benjamin Stacking situation. [00:41:26] TikTok: The guy I am seeing won’t commit to me, but he pays for everything. [00:41:29] TikTok: Should I stay? If he’s not committed to you, you’re not committed to him. Get yourself five other men who also pay for everything. Now you have six sources of income. [00:41:42] Joe: Bam, problem solved. Oh, og, if Mrs. OG isn’t committed to you enough, just find five more and, uh, you’ll have six sources of income. How great would that be? [00:41:52] OG: Yeah. It reminds me that, uh, you know, it was, uh, I don’t know if it was a joke comedian like where I heard this, but it was like, I could never have an affair because I can’t keep. One woman happy. How in the hell am am I gonna try to keep two? Yep. Amen, brother. So much work to [00:42:12] Joe: do. What? I just, uh, anyways, I’m the same idea by the way of advice. [00:42:16] Joe: That sounds good. Uh, stacker Bryan in our Facebook group, the basement shared a meme of a guy who says, uh, every morning I go to the most popular coffee shop in town. I wait in the line, which is a mile long. When I get to the front, I sell my spot to an impatient person in the back for 20 bucks. I do this about 15 times before the lunch rush. [00:42:36] Joe: It’s called line arbitrage. Makes money every morning, just selling the spot for 20 bucks. Sounds brilliant. Not the money making op, not the money making opportunity. Either of you are looking for. No, I’m okay. Brian. Thanks for sharing that. That was good. Just [00:42:49] OG: making your coffee at home, Brian. Right. Latte factor, bro. [00:42:52] OG: I hate to [00:42:52] Doug: break it to Tina, but that Betty character, she’s a hundred percent AI generated. Well come now, it doesn’t mean that the advice is wrong, [00:43:03] OG: it just means that the visual, it is my favorite AI thing right now. Absolute favorite is the Bigfoot on Reddit. Have you guys seen that? No. Oh my gosh. It is so awesome. [00:43:14] OG: I’m gonna find some stuff and send it to you guys. ’cause it’s so, it, it’s like a vlog, but it’s a Yeti. And he’s like, Hey, what up fam? Um, so, uh, we’re gonna climb up to this tree. Don’t do that. After I just put coffee in my mouth. And then the other one I saw, so I haven’t, I don’t do socials very often, but I have dipped my toe back into Instagram. [00:43:34] OG: But I found this one on Instagram where it’s a, it’s an AI of a young lady. Uh, doing the Oregon Trail, and she’s like, all right, day two. Uh, uncle Jack, uh, looks like he’s pretending to be dead so he can get on the horse. Like, uh, we’ve walked six miles so far, only 2000 miles to go. You know, somebody’s already engaged or they have dysentery. [00:43:58] OG: I’m not sure which, you know, like in the wagon next to me, I’m not sure what’s happening. Like, I found this farm boy, he’s really attractive. Like, it’s just, I think what they’re doing with the AI vlogging thing where they’re taking historical air quotes, historical things. Yeah. And putting, it’s like, like they got one for Moses and he’s like, guys, check this out. [00:44:19] OG: I can make the water separate by holding my arms up. This is amazing. He’s like running down the, the Red Sea, you know, all gr He’s like, it’s completely dry here. Watch what happens. Water. No water. Water, no water. [00:44:33] Joe: I like the AI where they take that sheriff. Who had his like 10 seconds of fame when he is like, let me break it down for you. [00:44:39] Joe: If you do this in this county, you’re going to jail. Yeah. But now they have him using ai say a bunch of stuff. Let me break it down for you. If you’re somebody driving slow in the left lane, I’m gonna pass you on the right and then I’m sending you to jail. Yes, absolutely. Amen. If you’re somebody that whistles in a grocery store, some tune that I don’t understand, you’re going to jail. [00:44:59] Joe: Let me break it down for you. So, so funny. Yeah. That makes, but it, the AI makes it [00:45:02] Doug: look so, so good. I just, as you gave that example of driving slow in the left lane, it just dawned on me, we are not using our considerable reach of this show to promote those kinds of the correct social norms. So I’m just gonna say it now, get out of the left lane everybody, if you think [00:45:22] Joe: it’s no big deal, well going fast enough. [00:45:24] Joe: You’re not, you’re causing so many wrecks too, or, or potential wrecks. [00:45:28] Doug: Yeah. You really are. And, and actually that, I just saw that, that, I don’t know if it was the. National Highway Traffic Safety Administrator. You know, if, if, if Nitsa, if they put it out, but somebody driving 10 miles slower, not below the speed limit, just slower than the rest of traffic, they cause considerably more wrecks than people who are driving 10 or 20 miles an hour faster in the left lane. [00:45:50] Joe: Well see everybody rush around them on the right and there’s all the people that should be in the right lane and, and then they try to get in line. I dunno. Let’s go onto our headline. [00:45:58] headlines: Hello doling, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:46:04] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from the street.com. [00:46:08] Joe: Before we get into this, this is gonna be about Roth IRA conversions, which we talked about earlier, og, but for somebody that doesn’t understand this strategy at all, let’s just break down. Speaking of break it down, let’s break down exactly what is a Roth IRA conversion and how does it kind of fit in your strategic thinking? [00:46:26] OG: Hmm. Well, when you put money in your retirement plan, generally speaking, if you elect nothing, or if you’ve been doing it a long time, it goes in pre-tax, which means that the money that you are putting in your, uh, retirement isn’t taxed today. It’s gonna grow tax deferred, and then when you take it out down the line, you’re gonna pay taxes on it. [00:46:45] OG: Well, you can do a conversion. You can say, I wanna pay taxes on this today in exchange for having tax free money forever. So a Roth IRA is a hundred percent tax free forever. So you can say, I wanna take my IRA money or my pre-tax money and I wanna make it tax free. And, uh, you check a box and, and magically it happens. [00:47:05] OG: Now the downside is that you get a tax bill at the end of the year for that conversion. So if you say, oh, geez, I got a hundred thousand in my 401k, I want this to be tax free forever, I’m gonna convert it to a Roth. Now it’s just like you made an extra a hundred thousand dollars this year. So you’re gonna have, you know, you’re gonna get a 10 99 that says a hundred thousand dollars of income. [00:47:24] OG: And then you put that on your tax return and that’ll work out to be, you know, whatever it is in your tax situation. But, you know, 20, $30,000 probably of, of tax bill, not a penalty to do this. So you’re not gonna pay a 10% penalty to a conversion, but you are gonna pay income taxes. So the strategy around Roth conversions is if you can time it when your income is really low, you’re putting money in your IRA at a high tax rate, and then you take it out at a low tax rate and convert it to a tax free bucket, you know, you can do some arbitrage there. [00:47:52] Joe: And that takes us back to a concept that I mentioned earlier called the tax triangle. Mm-hmm. And setting your investments up so that you have as much tax flexibility as possible. Yeah. So that’s at, uh, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash tax triangle to take a look at how all that works. Well, Roth IRA conversions just got more complicated. [00:48:13] Joe: This says, uh, CFP Robert. Powell, who’s the retirement senior editor at the street wrote this. Here is what this gets into OG, is that there is a new tax break that seniors get, which is a new senior deduction, and that is a $6,000 deduction for taxpayers age 65 or older, or $12,000 per couple. But here’s the kicker, og. [00:48:40] Joe: It comes with a phase out. The deductions reduced to zero between 150,000 of modified adjusted gross income and 250,000 of modified adjusted gross income. So if you’re somebody who is doing these over age 65, doing Roth conversions, doing a Roth conversion over age 65, and you’ve done the math on your tax bill. [00:49:05] Joe: You’re essentially losing this deduction, which means the amount of money that you’re actually going to be behind is going to be more than it used to be because you’re not gonna qualify for this deduction, which is brand new under the new bill. [00:49:19] OG: Yeah. So what you’re saying is you gotta be aware of if you’re retired and you’re receiving social security, you already have some income. [00:49:28] OG: And this is kind of part of the, uh, you know, the campaign promise that Trump had, right? Which was Social security’s gonna be tax free. That was his, that’s what he said. Um, they didn’t get it tax free, which I think probably honestly should be tax free. I don’t know. I don’t know. Do you have an opinion about this? [00:49:44] OG: I think if we receive a benefit, I mean, I paid taxes into the system. To get this thing later to pay taxes on it. I feel like it should just be tax free, you know, especially, but anyways, okay, I digress. We digress. As they say, this [00:49:58] Joe: is kind of a workaround though, is what I think you’re [00:50:01] OG: alluding to. Well, yeah. [00:50:01] OG: So if you wanted it to be a hundred percent tax free, instead they said, well, we’ll just give you another credit, which is gonna affect the taxability of this. But to your point, if you start adding additional income sources on there, you have a pension, you take money out of your IRA to live on, you wanna do a Roth conversion, be aware of this new bracket, air quotes that’s happening between one 50 and two 50 of, if you get between there, you’re gonna start losing this credit, uh, or this deduction rather. [00:50:28] OG: Um, that could be pretty impactful. So, you know, that’s, you know, $12,000 and a hundred thousand dollars of income is pretty decent, you know, pretty decent thing. So when you’re thinking about your Roth conversions, if you’re doing those, be mindful of this new. This new line in the sand, which will affect the calculations. [00:50:48] Joe: If you checked out on this discussion, because you heard it was for people age 65, I think you might want to go back and replay it because, oh gee, what this truly means is if you’re doing Roth conversions, you get those done before age 65. So it’s one less thing that you need to worry about. Like have that in your back pocket already. [00:51:05] OG: Yeah, I mean it’s certainly gonna change and people ask me all the time like, okay, so when I got my plan done, I’m good. Right? It’s like both, you know, planning is the thing. It’s not a plan, it’s not a noun, it’s a verb. These are two different things. The plan is the steps that you’re gonna take for the next six months or 12 months, but if you haven’t noticed, like stuff changes the market three months ago was down 20% in like seven days. [00:51:29] OG: Then rebounded so that it’s at an all time high. If that doesn’t make you go, Hmm, I gotta think about my plan, you know, I don’t know what will, and then here’s tax law changes, and now people are saying, oh no, no, these are, these are permanent tax law changes. Okay? Okay. Sure, sure, sure, sure, buddy. Everything the government does is permanent. [00:51:45] OG: Yeah, okay. No, no. You don’t understand. It says permanent Yes. Until the next Congress. Right. It’s very permanent for the next 18 [00:51:52] Doug: months. You know, we’ve talked about this before too, og, where a lot of times the value of the plan is the planning process. It’s the behavioral changes that come about as you’re working your way through thinking about the plan. [00:52:07] OG: Yeah. [00:52:07] Doug: And then step two is you can’t let it sit there and collect dust. It’s an, it’s a verb. It’s not a noun. [00:52:12] OG: Yeah. You have to be thinking about these things and, and as you’re working through your retirement income planning, as you start thinking about that in your fifties. This is a piece of it. To your point, Joe, of like going, all right, well hold on. [00:52:22] OG: There’s a new thing. There’s a new sheriff in town at this age 65 thing. This affects how I’m gonna think about Roth conversions up until 65 and beyond, honestly. But maybe it just slows your rolls just a little bit. A lot of calculations to be done on that. I think a lot of the, be careful, this is my only little caveat right now, be careful of the online tools that are doing the calculations on this already. [00:52:43] OG: I’m not aware that all of them are up to date quite yet. You know, it takes a little bit of programming and people have to read a thousand pages, right? You gotta read through that and get all this into the software. So be careful of the advertisements of, oh, the calculator’s good to go. I mean, it’s only been two weeks. [00:53:00] OG: They’re getting there. Give it a few more months to work out the bugs before you sign off on the free online calculator of tax credit. Yeah, the number’s around [00:53:07] Joe: 900 pages and most of it is, a lot of it is tax. So we’re gonna see over the next few months people working through a lot of these things. Yeah. [00:53:15] Joe: Coming up [00:53:15] OG: with different strategies and things that are, I, I just read about one today about charitable giving and how, you know there’s some good things that are going on in the charitable giving world in terms of tax deductions and some not so good things. A lot of stuff still to come on this. [00:53:29] Joe: We will link to this as well and our show notes page at stack Benjamins dot com and this piece, if you’d like to dig in more and see actually what Robert, the author this piece went into around this issue. [00:53:41] Joe: Let’s mosey out on the back porch. This is the part of the show where we talk about our community and lots of cool stuff. Doug happening in the community right now. [00:53:48] Doug: I’ve been sitting here chomping at the bit. I thought if I just wait patiently, let these guys talk about their tax planning and all of that stuff, we can get to the good part, which is the back porch. [00:53:59] Doug: I wanna shout out to a couple of our stackers. First of all, it’s congrats to stacker Nancy in Houston. You guys remember her husband? You remember meeting Nancy when we, Nancy was at our, uh, the [00:54:09] Joe: book tour Absolutely. Where we’re all at in Houston. [00:54:12] Doug: Yeah. It was [00:54:12] Joe: fun chatting with [00:54:13] Doug: Nancy. That was cool. And there was a cool venue too. [00:54:15] Doug: I drawing a blank on the name of it right now, and I remember that OG and I bounced, had to bounce a little bit early, but it was a great location. I just remember beer, remember talking to Nancy? I remember beer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and from where we were sitting, kind of where we had that makeshift stage set up, all I could do was see where they were serving the beer the whole time. [00:54:33] Doug: I was so distracted that whole time, like, ugh, like Homer with donuts. Hmm, beer. So what, what’s, whats Nancy up to? [00:54:42] Joe: Doug? [00:54:42] Doug: Yeah. So Nancy wrote that her husband is celebrating what she calls a milestone birthday. I don’t know why that’s in quotes. They’re all milestones, Nancy, but she writes, we are planning as party. [00:54:53] Doug: And it was so nice to see that our work and our processes were set up for our finances at the beginning of our journey is going to allow us to spend like og I see what you did there. And she’s got the, the emoji that’s like the smiley face, but instead of the smiley face, it’s dollar signs for the eyes and dollar signs for the tongue. [00:55:12] Doug: She put four of those in there. That’s how much she knows you spend og. And, uh, she says, and enjoy the experience with our families. [00:55:19] Joe: Oh, congrats to your husband, Nancy. And uh, great job from a long-term, long-term stacker, Nancy. [00:55:26] Doug: I got a couple more Joe [00:55:27] Joe: Deal. Let’s do it. [00:55:28] Doug: Can I keep going? Do it man. Also, congrats. [00:55:31] Doug: Stacker Care has done what looks like Duolingo for 500 days. She writes, she writes, while not life shaking, been working on brushing up on my French for a while, just like thinking in that way daily. I was nearly fluent as a late teen and I’d like to get there. And then some part of my retirement plan is to have good chunks of time in France whose isn’t Kerry? [00:55:54] Doug: In a recent trip, pardon? In France, I was struck by how overwhelmingly kind everyone was to me when I worked through speaking their language, confirmed my wishes to spend more time there. We, we met Carrie [00:56:07] Joe: also on that same book tour when we were in Chicago. We were in Aurora. Uh, Carrie came up and introduced herself and Carrie, congrats. [00:56:13] Joe: She was the one lingo for 500 days straight. [00:56:15] Doug: Yeah. Uh, I think I couldn’t understand what they were saying ’cause they were trying to speak in French, so I just tuned that one out. Uh, and then finally, thanks for the picks from stacker Jennifer, who took her SB swag to pictured rocks. Remember actually she [00:56:30] Joe: was asking you advice, Doug, about how she should go to Wisconsin. [00:56:34] Joe: You said go through Upper Peninsula, [00:56:36] Doug: how to Yeah, she actually has a, I think there were a couple other pics she posted too. Not, I think maybe near the Mackinac Bridge and maybe one other, but, uh, but yeah, that’s, uh, I was glad to be able to be, uh, travel guide for her. And then finally stacker Kate, who shared pics of their little baby Rio. [00:56:53] Doug: What a badass name by the way. Rio. So cool. His name is Rio [00:56:57] Joe: and he dances in the sand. [00:57:01] Doug: Okay. Eighties guy. Uh, so picks of their little baby Rio wearing a Stacking Benjamin’s onesie. I’m wearing one right now, Rio, so you’re not that cool. Uh, keep the photos coming as SB takes on the world. We’re taking over slowly. [00:57:15] Doug: You’ve got the mugs coming. We’ve got [00:57:17] Joe: onesies. Yeah. We’ll see how uh, people can get the mugs. The mugs are really cool with, uh, the logo on both sides. Tina’s working on that, but as part of our test, she said, should we send one to Doug? I said, oh, hell no. So she overruled me and apparently sent you one. [00:57:31] Joe: Anyway. All right, that’s gonna do it for today, Wednesday. This was the Prelude everybody, Nick Majuli is gonna be here to talk about the wealth letter. Super excited to welcome him. We also have DJI riding along as guest co-host of this podcast on Wednesday. So a ton going on, but still more to come today. [00:57:51] Joe: Because maybe the biggest part of the show is Doug condenses it all down and shows us what should be on our to-do list from today’s show. [00:57:58] Doug: That’s right, Joe. First, take some advice from our featured topic. While some investments are great when you’re beginning in life, others make sense when you are well on your way to riches. [00:58:07] Doug: Rather than taking generic advice from well-meaning people who don’t know where you are on the road. Take a minute to check how far up the wealth ladder you really are. Great news. We’ll have more on that soon. When the man behind of dollars and data. Mick, Mick, Mick Naje. Mick Naje, when Mick Naje joins us soon. [00:58:31] Joe: That’s good. [00:58:32] Doug: Wait, you don’t want me to do second in the big lesson? Oh, why not? I got more Joe. Second converting, converting your Roth IRA. If you’re receiving the new senior deduction, maybe pump the brakes and put a few more dollars in the till for the IRS. But the big lesson, don’t ask Joe’s mom about happy days. [00:58:51] Doug: She’ll remind you that the happiest days are when you’re rubbing her feet. Yeah, that’s his unhappy as it sounds, this show is the property of SB podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:59:22] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Moms Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:00:33] after show: So you know what the best [01:00:34] Joe: feeling on earth is, guys is when? Um, yes, [01:00:39] Doug: Joe, I absolutely know what that is. I have children. You’ve living proof. So now you wanna ask that again? What’s the second best feeling? [01:00:49] OG: I love my children a lot too, actually. I would say loving on your children. That’s, that is probably number one. [01:00:54] OG: Yeah. [01:00:54] Joe: 8:00 PM on a Sunday. Kind of severe thunderstorm rolling through and it’s raining inside your wife’s closet and down your fireplace. That is the best feeling a human being could have is, uh, all this rain inside your house. Call my builder. We’re doing some work on the back of our house. And he goes, yeah, we, uh, we were getting ready to replace the back of the roof so it matches the new addition. [01:01:20] Joe: So the roofing. And we found some rotted wood around your chimney. And so we took off all the flashing and we put in some tarp. We put a tarp over it and apparently the wind was high enough that it blew the tarp off. And our house, uh, just water damage all over the place. It’s great. But what is amazing, two things that are amazing. [01:01:41] Joe: Number one is everybody showed up. We had five guys at our house Sunday night at eight 30. I feel bad for all these people ’cause you know, you got a family, you got stuff you’re doing. And I’m very grateful. Should’ve [01:01:50] OG: done a better job. Well, very shouldn’t feel so bad if they’re like, yeah, you know, it’ll hold, you know, it’ll hold a bunch of rain, a piece of plastic. [01:01:59] OG: Well, I still do feel bad, especially if there’s like one guy in the group that was like, guys, I don’t think this is gonna hold. And then the other four like, no, it’s fine dude. This is what we always do. I don’t know man. New guy doesn’t think it’s gonna hold. Isn’t it supposed to rain tonight or something? [01:02:11] OG: I mean, should we, should we do something? Maybe we do this tomorrow after, no, no, no, let’s knock it out right now. He’s like, I don’t know guys. And then he is like up there going, you sons of bishop. I knew it. I knew. I told you guys. [01:02:21] Joe: Shut up. New guy. Our contractor, the, of course general contractor said, when I said, I just, you know, I feel gratitude and, and also just, you know, it kind of sucks for these guys. [01:02:31] Joe: He goes, the amount of money I pay them all year, they better be out here within half an hour. Like he was like, Nope, they better be here. But three of the guys were from one of these, uh, restoration companies, emergency restoration, where if there’s a fire or if there’s smoke damage or whatever the, the case was, they were out here working. [01:02:48] Joe: So for them it’s business as usual, but it also what a job to be in. So now there’s fans all over the entire house. They are going to be cutting out. There’s blue lines all over. The ceiling in different areas where they found water damage. They take this gun, this infrared gun, and you can see as they scam my ceiling where the water is on the other side of my ceiling. [01:03:15] Joe: It’s, it’s, it’s really fascinating. Hmm. But what’s wildest, most of our house is one type of a wood flooring that they don’t make anymore. And it’s one thing that I’ve hated since we’ve had our house. I just don’t like the wood, the wood flooring look. And, uh, the good news is they’re gonna be replacing it all because in one section of my house, it got wet underneath it and there’s nothing they can do. [01:03:39] Joe: So now we’re gonna be moving. Now not only do I have an addition going on the back, but we’re gonna be playing musical furniture as moving company comes and moves all our stuff to one room, whether they replace that floor and then all the stuff to the next room, whether they replace that floor, it’s gonna be a great time. [01:03:53] Joe: So [01:03:54] Doug: what, what color of deep shag carpeting are you getting? [01:03:57] Joe: Yeah. Bright red, like the brightest red I could possibly get. I like it. I like it. You know why Doug? Because that’s the shag carpeting I had in my bedroom when I was a teenager. It was this red and black. And not only did it go across the floor and under my watered, ’cause of course I had a waterbed. [01:04:15] Joe: Of course you did. That’s exactly what I was picturing. And not the new water beds where, you know, it’s a bunch of pockets and they don’t No, it was the one bladder. Oh yeah, right. Just one giant bag. They always had the one little uh, air pocket that you couldn’t find. So it was this slushy mess. But not only did it go across the floor, Doug, it went up the wall up one of my walls with shed carpeting. [01:04:40] Doug: Did it stop at the mirror on the ceiling? The disco ball? [01:04:45] Joe: Yeah. Did you see that? Did you see that? Was it an Airbnb listing where these people rented a house from somebody that apparently was a bachelor or bachelorette and it was a beautiful house except in the master bedroom where there would be, you know, some stupid phrase like gather or whatever. [01:05:06] Joe: It literally said pound town [01:05:14] Doug: and there was this strange swing hagging in the corner. Imagine renting. You’re with your family. Maybe the grandparents come along for the trip. Come on in here. Kids. I think this is where the puppy pound is.
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