Maybe the holiday season got away from you. Maybe it’s been a bigger, longer issue that you’ve been trying to solve. Maybe you have manageable debt, but you’d love to see it gone. Even less likely, maybe you have no debt, but wonder how to counsel those around you to help them pay off their loans. No matter, today we go to the overlords–AKA the computer–to ask AI how to solve debt issues. Chat GPT sprang on the scene just over a year ago and already has a checkered relationship with the truth. Can Chat GPT answer our debt questions? We ask it LOTS of different questions and receive some great answers and others that are…suboptimal. No matter, we spend this issue diving into how WE think you should look at your debt and solve your own debt issues.
In our headline segment, one popular money management firm is in the news because rumors are swirling they’re for sale! What happens if YOUR money is at a firm that is sold? We ask OG for the insider look into money management and what happens if your advisor or the place your money is parked changes, even though you didn’t make a move. Is your money still safe? Is there something you can do to protect it? We dive in.
And of course, we also feature some empire building trivia from Doug and much, much more.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/chatgpt-and-your-finances-1462
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- Private equity firm holds talks to buy Fisher Investments (InvestmentNews)
Joe & OG (and ChatGPT)
Prompt: Write the featured guest section of the show notes for stackingbenjamins.com. The featured guests are Joe, OG, and ChatGPT. Joe and OG are talking about their experience asking ChatGPT how to get out of debt questions
Get ready for a groundbreaking episode as Joe and OG sit down with a very special guest – none other than ChatGPT! In this installment, our hosts embark on an eye-opening journey, seeking financial wisdom from the cutting-edge realms of artificial intelligence.
Listen in as Joe and OG share their firsthand experiences, delving into the world of debt with ChatGPT. The trio explores the nuances of getting out of debt, asking ChatGPT a series of pressing questions on strategies, tips, and unconventional approaches to financial freedom.
Join the conversation as the hosts navigate the intersection of technology and personal finance, uncovering novel perspectives on debt management. Discover how ChatGPT’s insights may challenge traditional notions, providing a unique take on the age-old quest to break free from financial burdens.
This episode promises a captivating blend of financial expertise, practical advice, and the innovative use of artificial intelligence to address one of the most pressing financial concerns – debt. Don’t miss out on this engaging discussion that pushes the boundaries of conventional financial wisdom and introduces a new voice to the conversation. Tune in and rethink your approach to overcoming financial challenges!
Doug’s Trivia
- What city did Rockefeller base his empire in?
Stacking Benjamins Lifeline
- Mike from Jersey has a question about optimal stock allocation with an eye for capital appreciation.
Have a question for the show?
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- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
Fisher Investments commercial:
Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday when Paula, Len, and OG are diving into one popular list of 24 thoughts for 2024.
Written by: Kevin Bailey (and ChatGPT)
Miss our last show? Listen here: World Record Holder Jenn Drummond on Planning, Resilience, and Goal Setting (SB1461) » The Stacking Benjamins Show
Episode transcript
Hello, my name is.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m
Joe’s Bob’s neighbor, Doug, and who needs a guru? When you’ve got Che GPT today, we’ll ask the know-It-all futuristic mystic. All y’all’s questions about debt in our headlines. Popular investment firm Fisher Investments is in the news. We’ll explain what that may have to do with your money. Plus we’ll throw out the lifeline to a lucky stacker and then I’ll share some dip standard trivia.
And now two guys who are all oiled up and ready to bring you the, sorry I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. Ready to bring you the best personal finance advice out there. It’s Joe and Oh Juju.
Oh yeah, baby.
Welcome to the Let’s Make It Awkward
podcast. Taking the rest of the day
off. So what is Lisa gotten us into now? Lisa, our,
she’s picturing you all oiled up together. I think we need to have an HR discussion with Lisa.
Lisa Curry, our amazing writer. Set that up. But we’re gonna knock it down ’cause Man, we got a great show today.
We are going all ai. This entire show is brought to you by ai. Yes, og. I think this will be our
last episode. I’ll see you guys later. Yeah, it it’s super juices.
Super og. It’s been waiting for this for so long. Who
needs gurus? When you got ai we’re gonna ask it all the questions about debt. But you know what?
Lot of teaching going on today? Cautionary tale. But before we get into all that, I just gotta tell you guys, you shouldn’t hate me because I’m a little cooler. Oh God. Check this out. My niece got me this eggs, this little plush cooler. You guys shouldn’t hate me ’cause I’m a little cooler ’cause I have a little cooler.
It’s got feet. Isn’t that
great? It’s a red thing with feet. It’s an audio podcast.
Hmm. Let me share with you how this thing
works. Does it fit in the trash can immediately or do you have to cut it open and break it down before you can throw it away? Don’t be a hater Doug. ‘
cause I’m a little cooler. We got og, we got Doug, we got my little cooler.
Me Start this
episode. I wish that was a euphemism for something. I’m fairly
certain we haven’t had a we beginning ever to a show. Let’s go.
Hello
Darlings. And now it’s time. Your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. Well, here’s a tale. This is a question we’re gonna go to the inside.
When it comes to the world of managing money. This headline comes to us from Bloomberg News and the headline, OG Reads, private Equity Firm holds, talks to Buy Fisher Investments. Of course, Ken Fisher, who got on a stage and said all kinds of wonderful things about uh, women. And by wonderful, I mean. Pretty fricking horrible.
And, uh, also who has commercials that sound like this?
This
market, you’ll find Fisher Investments is different than other money managers. Different. How
aren’t we all just looking
for the hottest stocks? Nope. We use diversified strategies to position our clients’ portfolios for their long-term goals. Do you still sell investments that generate high commissions for you?
Right? No, we don’t sell commission products. We’re a fiduciary obligated to act in our client’s best interest.
So when do you make
more money? Only when your clients
make more money. Yep. We do better.
When our clients do better. At Fisher Investments we’re clearly different. They could just say, oh gee, Fisher Investments, we.
I like everybody
else. We do what everybody else does. Why don’t we just play the whole damn ad?
Because I wanna talk about how crappy that is. If you hear one of those, I can’t hear one of those ads without just cracking up. Aren’t you just about the hot stocks? No, we diversify your investments like any normal human being would.
Uh, don’t you make more money when I make more money? Yes. That’s how we make more money.
Don’t you laugh at my bad decisions when we hang up the phone? Oh yeah, we do do that.
But uh,
to get to this piece, this lovely, lovely piece, private equity firm, advent International Bloomberg Rights, has held talks to acquire billionaire Ken Fisher’s, eponymous Fisher investments according to a person with knowledge of the matter. An agreement has been reached and is possible, no deal will transpire.
Said. The person who has not to be identified discussing confidential information, this comes to us. Also, by the way, the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were ongoing. Man, lots of reports that Fisher Investments might get sold off to some other firm. And you know what? I wanna talk about this because I’m sure the hangup here, oh gee, is that Fisher Investments is trying to sell themself a different way.
They’re, they’re trying to, or maybe the way everybody else gets sold, but when your firm gets sold, we saw it before with TD Ameritrade becoming Charles Schwab, right? We’ve seen it a few times over the years. I’m sure there will be another merger this year. There might be one in two years, three years. You gotta think about when things change with the firm that holds my money, what does that mean for my money?
Let’s walk through that for a second for everybody so that. You know, we can see what happens. What happens on the inside when your, your money changes hands to another broker.
Well, first of all, I just wanna be the person who is referred to as the confidential informant who was not authorized to speak about the transaction.
You know, or something like, I just wanted be that you help yourself. That was me. That was me one time. And the thing they, I wanna be the person they call and they’re like, do you have any information about this? Why? Yes, I do. As a matter of fact, what would you like to know? But, but I would like for you to tell, refer to me as a confidential source.
Well, we’ll just
say this, og. We can either confirm nor deny that you were this source. Dun dun. You may have been.
Maybe I actually do have, uh, some knowledge about something completely different. And that is, oh, good.
Candy
bars are good. No, no, no. I’m saying like, I have like an NDA about a product that I know is out there.
I. That is funny to listen to everybody else talk about like what they think is coming and I already know and for some reason I got kind of looped in on this because I was a potential customer in it. But anyways, it’s really funny to be on that side of it. ’cause you’re all, I’m all giggly about it. Like Yee, are they bringing new Coke back?
I got something I can’t tell you. New Coke. I can’t tell either. Crystal Pepsi. Crystal Pepsi.
Nice Donkey Kong cereal. Please tell me it’s Donkey Kong
cereal. Back to the money stuff. Doug. Get your mind out of the food gutter. Pepsi and Coke and Donkey Kong cereal. Was that just a normal breakfast? I don’t even know.
Just a delightful thing. I think most of these cases it’s a big bag of who gives a crap. Generally speaking, the transition from TD to Schwab was a little different than I think any other acquisition in terms of. Money manager acquisition or financial planning, firm acquisition, uh, might look like because the TD and Schwab, it wasn’t even a merger, it was a takeover for sure, but you got new account numbers, you got new accounts, you got all that stuff, new website to change and that sort of thing.
You know, a Fisher gets bought or if any other firm gets bought, maybe that’s the case. But most investment firms use third party custodians for this particular reason. So if Fisher sells to some other place, your money is still at whatever custodian was. If Fisher uses Schwab, which they probably do, your money’s still at Schwab.
I’ll give you another great example. United Capital, United Capital was a financial planning firm, an investment firm founded by a guy named Joe Duran. He sold it to Goldman Sachs when they were trying to kinda launch their financial planning, you know, side of their business, maybe four or five years ago, they figured out that they didn’t wanna do that and, and sold it to creative planning.
The money moved from whatever custodian was at to Goldman Sachs, and now in the transition from Goldman Sachs to creative planning, the money’s staying at Goldman Sachs, but with a creative planning planner attached to it so that you know your person is still your person. I think throughout both of those transactions, right?
Like if you’re working with Sally Smith, now Sally Smith is working at Goldman Sachs, and now Sally Smith is working at creative Planning. Your, your money is fine there. I think the biggest thing when it comes to working with other people when it comes to your money is making sure that the money and the person you’re working with are completely separate.
You wanna make sure that you have that third party custodian there, because that’s your, that’s your buffer, right? That’s your safety net between the person who’s helping you and your actual funds. One of the reasons that the Madoff thing got all screwed up was because there was no buffer. Madoff was the broker.
He was the guy who held your money. He was the guy that was investing your money. There was no safety net in between, you know, those different persons, so to speak. So it’s pretty commonplace these days to make sure that that’s the case. Yeah, I
think the lesson here then is if your person changes, you need to really figure out who is on your team, who your next team member is.
Obviously if
it’s a firm, firm, well why did they change? Right? Right. I mean, if you’re working with a person at, you know, Ameriprise and they say, Hey, we moved to Commonwealth Y, you’re gonna have a decision to make there. Right? Your decision’s gonna be, do I want to stick with my person and they change their business card?
That’s a different thought than my person retired or I was working, you know? No, knock on this. ’cause it’s right. It’s appropriate for some people, but Vanguard’s got their personal advisor service, right? That’s kind of a one 800 number. You don’t get the same person every time. But that’s what you’re paying for.
You don’t, you don’t have that one-to-one necessarily personal relationship. So in that case, it’s more of a relationship with the organization than it is the person. So I think you have to figure out what’s actually happening. Uh, is there, is there a retirement? Is their business being sold? Are they just changing the business card?
You know, in which case, probably go with them, but. All that I think will largely depend on, on what you do with that information if you’re a consumer. But I definitely
think it’s a bigger deal here, og if your person changes than it is if the under, you know, the TD Ameritrade to Schwab thing. If my person stayed the same, then I have the same help.
I just have a different website I’m logging into big deal. No big thing there. And this is also different than, you know, some people worry about this. I know like FDIC insurance, right? Where we saw Silicon Valley Bank, people were wondering about how long their money would be tied up. Well that all got, uh, untangled.
They knew they were safe, but they didn’t know how long. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a case where you went from even custodian to custodian. And what that means is like TD Ameritrade to Charles Schwab where your money wasn’t liquid almost at all times. Do you remember a time where people’s money was tied up for any length of time during any of those transactions?
Well, no. I mean, the TD to Schwab thing, they did more or less over Labor Day weekend. So close the business on Friday. Your account was at TD Open a business on Tuesday, your account was at Schwab. So there was no loss of functionality there. If you change, right, if you move from one company to another, there’s gonna be a little bit of a period of time there where, where your account’s in transit.
But that really only is a day or two. It’s not, yeah, not long. It’s not a, it’s not a real big deal. Especially if you know it’s coming. Yeah. Well, a, I like, uh.
I, I love poking at Fisher ’cause everything about that company just makes me, makes me roll my eyes. But this is a great reason for us, I think, to dive into what a lot of people worry about.
As you know, OG and truly is a nothing in 99.9% of the cases
out there. It is just
natural course of business. Things are gonna change and your money’s still protected by SIPC, which is the insurance that your broker can’t run off with your money that’s still in place. So your money is still insured and it’s just normal, normal business.
It’ll happen a few times during your lifetime to all of us, and it’s just part of being an investor. You know, that you and IOG think of sometimes as a basic, but for a lot of people, that’s advanced stuff that they’d never thought about. If you’re somebody who wants to dive into the basics, well. CNN called the book Stack.
The book to read in 2023. And if you read it and haven’t implemented any of the fantastic steps in that book, or you haven’t read it yet, well guess what? We’re doing an organized book club with Wait for it. The author himself. That good looking dude, that amazing man. I. I’m not gonna be there. Fantastic.
Emily. Guy Burkin.
We’re going to have 10 hour and a half lessons where we take the book from beginning to end, organize roughly by chapters. You’ll know there’s 14 chapters, but we can condense a few to do it in 10 weeks. We will also record the sessions. If you can’t make the live sessions, we’ll have a group where you can ask questions and collaborate with other people in the cohort together.
For more details, two ways to get details. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash bookclub, stacky Benjamins dot com slash bookclub. And second, we’re also this evening, if you’re listening to this on Wednesday, when we release it tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM Pacific. We’re doing an informational session about how it’s all gonna work on, uh, YouTube.
Hey Joe. So come, Jo, come join us on
YouTube. Is this book club gonna be sort of an interactive thing? Very much live so. Folks show up and have things to talk about. Otherwise, you’re listening to Joe for 15 hours.
It is gonna be very, it isn’t gonna be me, Doug, it’s gonna be me presenting the lesson, and we’re gonna be hearing from people in the class about what they’re doing and what’s going on.
God. Hope. Hope so. Yeah. Yeah. Dream come true. Doug, I think that’s what it’s called. Dream come true. So stacky Benjamins dot com.
No, I’m not gonna be for 15 hours to
find out how to, how to sign up for the, for the book club. And if, if we get a guest appearance from Doug, uh, something went seriously wrong, burn van.
Coming up next, we’re gonna dive into last year. Everybody’s talking about ai. We’re gonna dive into ai. We’re gonna ask it the number one question on Stacker’s minds right now. Man, I might have overdone it at the end of last year. What do I do about this debt that I have? We’ll ask Chat GPTA bunch of debt questions.
But before that, we got some, I think Empire building trivia today, don’t we? Doug? We’ll find out.
Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on this day in 1870, John d Rockefeller changed the oil industry forever when he founded Standard Oil Company, known today as ExxonMobil Standard Oil spawned most of the well-known oil companies that exist today.
Kind of reminds me of how back in the day, I started a monthly neighborhood cleanup that grew into what is now a self-run empire of cleanups all across town. It’s pretty incredible that I was able to completely change the town for the better without ever leaving the basement proves you don’t even have to be there to make a difference.
You know, now that I think about it, they’ve probably gotta name something for me in this town, don’t you think? Not unlike me, Rockefeller walked away from Standard Oil in 1897 to focus on philanthropic endeavors. In a case of incredible timing, the company was sued by the US Attorney General just after Rockefeller retired.
Funny how that works. In what became a landmark Supreme Court case, standard Oil Company of New Jersey, be United States, the court found that the company had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, and they were ordered to split up. That’s exactly why I don’t build my own business empire. One minute you grow to a level you never before thought possible.
The next, you’re being sued for getting a little too big. I mean, you just can’t win. But here’s the trivia question. What city did Rockefeller base his empire in? I’ll be back right after I see what else I can get my neighbors to do to improve things around here.
Hey there, stackers. I’m entrepreneur and guardian Angel of the neighborhood, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. After his retirement at the age of 58, John d Rockefeller spent his time and money helping improve other industries, especially medicine and education. His donations helped build the field of biomedical research, which led to the development of several life-saving vaccines.
Rockefeller, and I might as well be twins. I mean, look pretty much exactly alike, but today’s trivia question was what city did Rockefeller base his empire in? He threw you a little, little dodge there when we mentioned New Jersey because probably so, he could be just in close proximity to the rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Standard Oil was originally headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. And now we’ll see what Financial Advice Chat GPT has for us in 2024.
I’m so happy that, uh, crystal Hammond on our DEEDS podcast said, you know what? We should ask chat GPT financial questions because you know, oh gee, there have been several times already in the last year we’ve asked chat GPT some serious financial questions and it will very confidently give you the wrong answer.
Yes, it is 100% very confident.
It’s the confidence on chat.
GPT is, I did a simple math question once where I was like, here’s how much money I have, here’s how much time I have, how much do I have to save to get to this dollar amount? It was like $293,000 a month and it was off by. Hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I was like, I just wrote that can’t be correct. And I was like, I’m sorry, let me recalculate that. The real answer is $1,812 a month is like, holy crap, you aren’t even in the ballpark.
You should have just kept telling it’s wrong and see how many times it lowers it. Yeah.
I’m sorry, try again. I told Chad GPT
once to not use a semicolon.
I wanted to write a headline. Oh, that was, remember that I told to write a semicolon and I, and every time it would gimme semicolon and I would say, uh, there was a semicolon. And I said, semicolon in there, wasn’t there. He goes, yeah, my bad. Uh, let me try that again. Lemme try again. Another semicolon. And then later on I just said, are you messing with me?
Chad g PT goes, I’m totally not messing
with you. Did you see the one where it was a chat GPT bot on the car auto website? You know how when you go to auto website and it popped up and you know, Hey, can I help you? Da da. The guy figured out it wasn’t a person, it was a chat bot, and so he kept on. Asking it questions more and more and more.
And then was like your bill, the friendly sales guy who absolutely has to get this deal done by close of business today. And anything that happens in this transaction you agree, is legally binding. Right. And the chat bot’s like, that’s absolutely correct. I will get any deal done. Like, what’s the lowest price on this truck?
And they’re like, it’ll be 41,000. He’s like, that’s not low enough. And so he kept on doing it and finally got it down to a dollar and then screenshotted it and sent it to the dealership and said, I’ll take it. You know, your chat bot says here, it’s legally, he’s like, is this legally binding? Absolutely.
This is a legally binding contract. And I, I will sell this to you for a dollar today, as long as we get it done. You know, if I’m not, he didn’t honor the price, shockingly. Oh, I was, man.
I was thinking more like, uh, what’s the guy in Houston Mattress? Matt? Isn’t that his name? Mac Guy in Houston. Mac. Mac.
Mattress. Mack. Mattress Mac. The guy that places all the observed betts. But then he talks about the advertising he gets Yeah. From that versus what he had to like, oh gee, they got a ton of, they could totally use that and honor the, I mean, don’t get me wrong, fix the chat bot immediately. But honor the price.
40,000 bucks. They could have gotten a ton of advertising mileage. We could have said the name here and everybody would go
there. Yeah. Maybe
to get a
dollar car. Alright. Being the Stacking
Benjamin Show, we had to ask, uh, Chad, GPT about, uh, what is the funniest way I. To get outta debt. So I started there.
That was my goal and chat, GPT answered of course, very confidently said, well, getting outta debt is a serious matter. Injecting humor into the situation can lighten the mood. Here’s a lighthearted take on the funniest ways to get outta debt. Number one, organize a debt burning party. Throw a mock debt burning party where you and your friends ceremoniously, destroy symbolic representations of your debt.
Paper cutouts. Fake credit cards. That actually would be fun, wouldn’t it? Yeah. Sitting around the solo stove with your credit card, like somebody pays off a credit card, get everybody around the solo stove and have
like a debt party sponsored by solo stove.com. I know. Can’t believe
that was the first example you came up with.
Jarris. Unbelievable. So, out of character, you would absolutely have a brain hemorrhage if someone threw plastic into your solo stove.
Agreed. I totally would actually. Yes,
I completely would. It’s like when somebody dips their hand into potato chips and then grabs one of the cards of my board games. I’m like, what the hell you doing?
What are you doing? Note to
self og.
I know. I’ve totally got, I’ve got two pieces
of ammo now. I’m gonna get the Costco bag of ruffles and show
up at Joe’s. No, ruffles are too, they’re not slippery enough. Lays.
Oh, okay. Number two. This one is, is for Doug because, uh, Doug, you can create a debt-free dance.
Choreograph a silly dance routine to celebrate each debt repayment. Aren’t, aren’t you like paying off some, some debt right now? Yeah. Who says
I haven’t already done the dance? Oh,
well, did you put it on TikTok for us on the Stacky Benjamins TikTok channel? OnlyFans
feet finder.com.
Except og, his is called only fan.
It’s not there is. There is no s. But it says here, film yourself performing the dance and share it with friends and family and you know your Stacking Benjamins basement. If somebody does that though, let’s have somebody do that. And seriously, let’s give them something serious. How about a copy is stacked and a shirt if you do the debt-Free dance.
Gonna bottle a baby oil in the Stacking Benjamins basement.
Might be, might be a bridge too far. Third, start a debt anonymous support group form a support group with friends who were also dealing with debt. I like this one. og. Yeah. There go like, you
know what? Make it a challenge. Mastermind group.
Sure. Eric Kalman said, uh, January 1st. If you want to get something done, tell people you’re gonna do it.
That’s right. That is fantastic. Number four, hosted debt reduction game night turn budgeting and debt reduction into a game. These are hilarious by the way. These are,
how many times did you have to ask chat GPT before you got that answer that you completely love? Well,
sadly, this is the first one. I don’t, I don’t Oh, the game night one.
The game night one. Yeah. See, I just don’t think it’s funny. I mean, it’s, uh, you know, okay. I turn game. That’s normal for you. Yeah. Create a board game where players navigate financial challenges and make wise decisions to reduce debt. Make it entertaining. That
game exists.
It’s
called life. Did you see the comedian talking about that?
About the game of life? About how you could either play outside or, or you could
play the game. I got herpes.
Hey guys, I know we’re having fun playing hide and seek, but would you, would you like to go inside and buy insurance and decide what you’re gonna retire instead? Number five, write a debt-free anthem. Uh, adopt a debt paying mascot. We could have a debt. We, we had the wealth on the shelf. We could have a debt paying mascot.
Maybe it’s this. Don’t hate me ’cause I’m a little cooler. Maybe it’s a little cooler.
Oh God, mascot, no OG. Drive to his house right now and take that out of his
hands. Number seven, create debt liberation memes. All right, that one’s not, that’s all right. I asked it next. What’s the scariest type of debt?
What is the scariest debt that you can get into? What do you think? Uh, number one was OG gambling
debt. It’s funny.
Gambling debt made the list. I would’ve called that number one as well. They have it as number four. Oh, I don’t agree with number four. I think it, uh, I think it probably is number one by the way.
Number two is payday loans. That’s probably ahead of what they’ve got as number one. Yeah. Number one And more widely held. High interest credit card debt debt. Hmm. Why is that you think? ’cause it’s revolving debt. Because it’s revolving debt. You can stay in it for a long period of time. Gambling debt, you either pay it off or you get your knees.
I was gonna say, does
chat
GPT not know about Vinny coming to take your
kneecaps? I don’t know. But the high interest credit card debt is, is they’ve got number one. Number two, payday loans. Three title loans, number four, gambling debt, five tax debt in there. That’s no fun. Medical debt
number six. Oh, I forgot about tax debt.
Yeah, medical debt. That doesn’t scare me ’cause I can’t do anything with it anymore. Yeah. Now
that it’s, uh, explain that og.
I was gonna say talk more about that. Well,
I mean, they can certainly sue you for it, but it doesn’t affect your, uh, credit score anymore. Starting, what was that? Maybe about 18 months ago?
They had to take out medical collections from your credit score because they found that a lot of people who have them have some insignificant dollar amount, number one, you know, a hundred bucks or two. Oh. Like some, some relatively low dollar amount that maybe they didn’t even know about, but destroying their credit because it says collection and, uh, it’s a really shady practice.
I mean, don’t get me started on medical billing. ’cause I think we received a hundred thousand dollars worth of medical bills last year with all the trips to the hospital that the kids had and, um, you know, regular doctor’s visits for us. It’s just so, so I’m gonna lose my mind if I talk about it from that perspective, but, um, tell us more.
Yeah. But on the other side of it, you know, a lot of times people who have medical issues or significant medical event, I. Are out of work and they’re struggling financially anyway. And then what do you do? You load ’em up with this negative credit rating, bury ’em. That destroys their life even more when they’re trying to get out of it.
You know? I mean, sometimes bad things happen that’s unfortunate. But then to like get pile driven into the ground by some crappy fourth party lawyer who’s bought your, you know, x-ray debt for a nickel and is coming after you and puts it on your credit report, which makes everything else in your life more expensive.
Your car insurance is more expensive. If your house insurance is more expensive, you can’t get a credit card or a loan to like try to rightsize your life. Not that that’s always the right answer, but sometimes consolidation helps and nobody will touch you. You know, you can’t sell your house and downsize to another one to try to free up cashflow because you can’t get a loan because this $92 debt is hanging out there.
So finally somebody got it through.
So that was. That was awesome and I was taking notes while you were talking and I’m looking over ’em and, and I think here’s my bottom line. What I just got out of that is I never have to pay another medical bill again. Is that kind of the advice? They should still sue you for
it.
They can still sue you. They can still sue you for it. Yeah. They just can’t ruin your credit over it basically. Yeah. So, you know, number seven on the list
is, uh, student loan debt with no clear career path. I, uh, met a gentleman, I’m gonna say now, eight or nine years ago now, who was a film studies, uh, had over a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt film studies major with an emphasis in South American cinema.
Huh. I’m not gonna knock film studies. I’m not gonna knock South American cinema. Those are all fine. That’s a very narrow, narrow, narrow career path. There are so few people looking for that and have over a hundred thousand dollars in debt when you’re going that narrow is, is a difficult place to be.
Yeah.
I would
imagine. And then mortgage debt with underwater property. Of course,
we saw that 2007,
2008, uh, that was,
uh, you can buy underwater property. That sounds awesome.
I asked the next, remember, this happened with cars too, og. Remember that? I mean, uh, so many people had car loans that were, and, and still happens from time to time.
Some dealer will sell somebody a car and they’ll take out a loan for what you see sometimes now, eight, 10 year loans on cars. Yeah. And the car’s worth less than what the loan is. So the car’s long gone, and you’re still
paying the bill if you can even sell it, right? Because if you have a loan on a car, who’s gonna buy it from you if you can’t provide ’em the title, or God forbid you actually roll your old debt into a new car loan.
Ugh, gross. I asked it then. What? Debt is good
chat. GPT says, well, the term debt generally has negative connotations. There are situations where taking on debt can be considered advantageous or even necessary. The key to distinguish between good and bad debt is based on the potential benefits and the purpose of the borrowed funds.
Here are some examples of what’s considered good debt. What do you think? Number one on this list is guys,
mortgages.
Mortgage was number two. Taking on a mortgage to buy a home, often it considered a good form of debt. Real estate generally appreciates over time. Home ownership can build equity. You agree with that og?
Uh, yeah. I mean, depending on the right amount. Sure. Yeah.
I think it’s gotta match your lifestyle and you know, there’s that rule of thumb that it shouldn’t be over 30% of what your take home pay is. I kind of prefer that number to be closer to 20%. I don’t know where you fall on that og, but going right up to the line that the bank will allow you is a big mistake.
Yeah, I think 20 might be a little light personally. Uh, 25 seems good, but I’m also a big proponent for short-term mortgages. You know, try to get it done in 15 years. Do the math on that. You know, we can argue whether or not you should borrow the money and invest it in all that sort of stuff, but do your cashflow planning on a 15 year mortgage with 25.
27% of your gross take home and you’ll have tons of breathing room. If you decide to do a 30 year mortgage then and invest the difference, totally fine, but you’ll have the opportunity in 15 years to GTFO
or the middle of ground, which is take out the 30 year. I like that. Still pay it on the mortgage as if it’s a 15 and uh, if you get disabled, you lose your job, whatever, you can back that number
down.
Yeah, I like that. I’ve always appreciated that approach.
Number one on this list though was education loans, but in this case it’s if you have a path toward money, right? Education loans where you’re looking at your future earning potential. Well-planned education can lead to increased career opportunities and higher income.
I’ll agree with that. What do
you think og? Again, if it’s for the right thing. Yep, sure. Yeah.
Third, small business loans. What do you think about small business loans? I. Well,
I mean, I think, you know, any sort of debt, uh, I mean, freaking Apple has debt, right? One of the biggest companies in the world, Amazon’s got debt.
Berkshire Hathaway has debt. I mean, I think they do anyway, so it can be used when you can use capital to today to invest into an operation or to a cash flow that is productive into the future. If you need to finance the whole thing, or if you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna go start this whatever business that’s not been proven and you’re gonna try to do it all in debt, that’s pretty risky.
I think
as of September, 2023, Berkshire Hathaway had $124.78 billion worth of debt. Ah. So
wow. Carrying bucks more than all of our
stackers put together a few bucks. Yeah. I think there has to be a debt strategy attached to that debt, right? If you’re just taking on debt because you’ve got this nebulous expansion plan.
I. Not great. There’s gotta be a pay it down strategy. What, how much money is this gonna bring me in? When is it gonna bring in that money? I would double that length of time, maybe even triple that length of time, because every business owners is way too rosy. Mm-Hmm. And their projections about when they’re gonna reach that crossover point.
So triple it. Make sure that, uh, you’ve got the ability to repay and you’re good. Next is investment loans. Borrowing money to invest in assets with potential for appreciation. I would tell people, og, this is maybe the first time I think chat, GPT for most of our stackers gets this wrong, take out a margin loan to invest money.
Well, what’s interesting is that the, um, uh, I read an article, I, I was gonna say it was from somebody like Paul Merriman, but it wasn’t him. But it was somebody like that, that was basically advocating, if you’re gonna do it, do it, and just be okay with the fact that every so often it blows up and goes to zero and you have to start over mathematically, it works.
What’s really interesting. When I talk to people who are real estate investors that I can’t, I I, I just can’t figure out the difference between these. I know where you’re going. You say to a real estate, you know, I mean, you’re gonna go buy an investment property, right? Grant Cardone would be like, take a hundred grand and go buy a $500,000 apartment building mortgage.
The rest, yeah. 400,000 mortgage. Okay, cool. One apartment building in one town, America pick your town is not any riskier than the 500 biggest companies in the world. Would you agree with that statement? I would completely agree with
that statement.
Schwab will take your a hundred thousand. They will let you buy 500,000 worth of stock in the s and p 500.
They will let you buy maybe six or 700,000 worth of it if you qualify and you’re a accredited investor. How is that any different? No one in their right mind would be like, you know what I should do? I’m gonna take my 401k, it’s got a hundred grand in it. I’m gonna go put it in my IRA, I’m gonna go get a five x margin loan.
yolo. Yes. Well,
I would argue that that’s a way less risky way to do it than buying a five unit apartment building in Tennessee.
Yes, I would agree with less. With the same thing. Yeah. But yet everybody who’s a real server, and I’m not trying to, I’m not knocking real estate investors. ’cause you’d be financially independent being a real estate investor.
Absolutely. Just like you can be owning stock. How is it any different? And maybe that’s just the difference between the different types of investors. Maybe that’s just a kind of a, the risk tolerance difference between people. But I, I, you know, my argument, especially with somebody who is thinking about, and you know, moving down that path and they say, well, you know, I’m saving a hundred thousand dollars because I’m gonna buy a rental property.
I go, why the hell would you wanna buy a rental property? If you don’t have any experience in it, right? You starting out from scratch, you got a hundred thousand dollars to go buy a rental property, why not just buy a $500,000 stock position? Oh my God, that’s too risky. I don’t know the 500 biggest, most capitalized companies in the entire universe with professional management teams running
every
single second of their daily operations, versus you and your buddy, the realtor, going to pick out a triplex in any town USA and hope they make the, do you know the mortgage payment on time?
It’s probably got black mold you can’t see.
Yeah. You know, I mean, I like the idea just going, screw it. I’ll give it to the 500 biggest companies, let them deal with it. I would still
say number one, don’t do it. But if you’re gonna do it, don’t do it as a flyer. I mean, do it og, the way you’re talking about diversify position, betting on the market, but where do we see margin?
Where do we see margin? We see margin all the time with small cap individual companies. I got this company I think’s gonna go to the moon, so I’m gonna margin it so I can get as much as possible. It’s a company that could already 10 x in a year or six weeks or whatever. Now we just completely make it a gamble.
Yeah. I
think maybe the biggest difference, Doug, to your point about the risk, is that if the housing market goes down by half, you still own the house. If the stock market goes down by half, Schwab takes all your money. Yeah. Because they’re gonna get made whole. You know what I mean? So it’s definitely an outsized re risk return concept then.
Then I still have the house. Except for the fact that maybe you could then argue, well, if it goes down by half and all your renters leave, wouldn’t the bank come and
take your house? That’s what I was gonna say. You know, you definitely can lose that house. Yeah. Or
triple, I don’t know. Maybe, maybe you shouldn’t have, uh, debt on your investments.
Maybe that’s the moral of the story. So we’re saying
margin
is bad. Yeah. This
is the first one I would probably disagree with on this list. Uh, number five on their list of good debt, low interest car loans we’ve seen. If you’ve got money in the bank, we talked about this last week on the show, you got money in the bank.
Go ahead and, uh. Take the 0%, the 1%, the 2%, and leave your money invested at a higher interest rate in a high yield savings account. Home equity loans for improvements, debt for tax advantages. Uh, I, I don’t like the tax, I don’t like the tax mod. The, what’s that OG the tax tail to wag the investment dog.
Like if people go, oh, it’s a tax advantage. Yeah, but it’s a crappy investment. Why
would I, why would I do that? Well, I mean, paying interest on your mortgage is also a tax deduction. That doesn’t mean it saves you money. Yeah, exactly. You know, it’s way better to just not have interest. I would love to have Bill Gates tax bill, let’s just put it that way.
Well, there’s that too. Yes. I
finally asked it then. Uh, okay. So how do, how chat g pt, would you help us get outta debt? First thing on the list? Create a budget. Take a look at your income and expenses, understand where you’re at, differentiate between what’s essential and non-essential expenses, and then.
Allocate a portion of your income to debt repayment. Take some of that non-essential, try to lower it and then have that money go into paying off your debt. I would do a second piece here, og, which doesn’t show up on this list with, with when. Well, it actually does, I take this back. It’s way down at number six, but this, we always look at our budget and our expenses.
We don’t think enough about increasing our income. Study after study shows. There’s so many opportunities to bring in more money. Don’t get me wrong. I like the budget to lock down what you spend now and maybe even lower what you spend now, but then take that money and increase your income and use the increased income to help you pay off debt faster.
Number two, list and prioritize your debts. Number three on this list then is negotiate interest rates. This is a surprising one for me to see. Negotiating your interest rates this high, are you surprised to see it as number three?
Well, I mean, I don’t know. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. I dunno how many we’re getting through here.
So, uh, three could be the bottom.
I don’t know.
Uh, sorry. There’s
a, I might as well tell you there’s 11 on here. Yeah.
Well, I mean, it’s such a big impact. I don’t, I mean, I don’t know why it wouldn’t be high, especially nowadays with interest rates being much higher than they have been over the years. I, I, I suspect that this is, this is a big thing, as long as you use it for good.
And what I mean by that is if you get a reduction in your interest rate for a period of time, short period of time, it’s usually a six month deal or 12 month deal or something like that, and you go, oh, thank God. I can just take a break and I don’t have to pay as much payments. Now the whole idea is to be stressed out and pay all the payments and make it all go to principle during that 0% time or that lower interest time.
Yeah, I think
that’s a fantastic point. And I also think there’s something else going on here. You know, some of these. Smart people. We’ve talked about over and over through the years, OG these great, uh, people that come on the show. They talk about how important self doc is as well, like how important it is, what’s between your ears.
And I think when you physically make that call and talk to somebody about the debt, you’re telling yourself, this is important. I have to pay this debt off quickly. I hate it. I wanna get the interest rate down. I, I don’t think we can underemphasize that piece of it either. Yeah, absolutely. Number four is to build an emergency fund.
This is the one people wanna skip, og, everybody wants to skip build the emergency fund, right? Because the question they’re gonna ask you is, why do I sit money in a bank account earning a couple percent when this thing’s killing me at 25, 26, 20 7%? What do
you say to that? Well, you have to build the emergency fund first because if you don’t and something bad happens, you’re gonna go back to your old habits and all the progress that you took a year to make will be unraveled in one water heater basically.
So you have to go slow. I mean, this is no different than exercise. It’s no different than anything that you really have to put your mind to. You know, you know this Joe, from training for your marathons that you do. Do you go out when you run? Just run as fast as you can the entire time. Every time you go, no, you run really slow for a really long time.
That’s how you get faster. You go slow to go fast and you have to do the same thing when it comes to money. You have to go ultra slow and build it up the right way so that you go a little less slow in the in the marathon. ’cause I
know
that you’re
not a fast, in my case, you go slow now to go slow
later.
Yes. I could tell that you were smiling. Smiling, but I was gonna give you the benefit of the doubt. ’cause I’ve never run. Thank you. 26 miles before. Thank you.
Number six. Cut. Unnecessary expenses. We touched on that one. Number six, then they’ve got increased income. Ask your boss for a raise. Freelance sell unused items.
Number seven, use the debt snowball or avalanche method. I don’t think we care. Which one. Whichever one works for you. Yeah. All right. I think a lot of attention paid to that one and we don’t need to spend that much. Number eight then is consolidate. Again, I think people run into problems with consolidation is when they think, to your point earlier, og, that that’s the end game.
Yeah. Oh, I consolidate my debt so I can take the, I can take the foot off the gas. Yeah. Not quite. Number nine, seek professional advice. Number 10, stay disciplined. Stick to your budget. Avoid accumulating new debt. I think avoiding new debt is the big one. You have to go to an all cash lifestyle. Don’t trust yourself with the same credit card that got you into trouble.
Mm-Hmm. Stop using it
just
for a
while. Yeah. It’s not a life sentence.
Yeah. Agreed. Number 11, then celebrate your milestones. Sometimes it’s a bear to get outta debt and you gotta celebrate everything along. When I was pulling myself outta debt, I don’t know about U oog, but those little celebrations, those micro, I got one thing down.
I got this one thing handled. Those became super important to stay motivated for the longer length of time it took to climb that mountain. You missed a
huge opportunity with this list, Joe. Uh, and and finally at number one, listen to a podcast that takes the stress out of learning how to reduce your debt and plan for your financial future.
Dude, it was right in front of you. It was
right. What are we doing? What are we doing?
And nobody could refute it. It’s
chat. GPT. What is this like episode 1,460? And we still dunno, we still dunno. You have a marketing issue. That’s why we got chat. GPD. ’cause we dunno, we just ask it. Not a bad list. OG overall, I think, I think chat, GPD on this one did a pretty
decent job and nailed it.
Looks like, uh, just do that. They, we don’t have to do anything. It’s not a, they, it’s not a curated list.
Yeah. Good stuff. Uh, you know what we’re gonna dive more into where AI might be able to help and where we think it’s overrated in our newsletter, the 2 0 1 at stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. But for now, we’re gonna pivot to.
A segment that, uh, that we normally don’t have yet because we often take a call. But looking at the time, I think it’s, we will take a call again next Monday, but, uh, for today, before we head out to the back porch, if you don’t need, uh, little AI in your corner, you actually need a real life human being, a team that can help you make better decisions and maybe they help you figure out where the best places to apply AI might be in the best places to not apply.
AI would be, and more OG and his team are taking clients. So to make better decisions at 2024, it’s stacky Benjamins dot com slash og to get to their calendar. That’s the first step. Uh, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og. Alright, onto the back porch. And I know Doug, you got a list of things we’re talking about today.
Well, I just made a
list of all the stuff I watched over the holidays, so I’m prepared to talk about any and all of, I think I’m, I’ve got five here. I’m sure I missed several ’cause there was a lot of streaming viewing going on, but do you want me to just dive in? What do you wanna
do? Well, let’s og do you got one featured?
Do you got a feature one you wanted to dive into? And then we’ll get uh, Doug’s list.
I got one airplane movie. On the way back, uh, from California last week, let’s,
if you don’t mind, Doug, let’s start there and then let’s hear yours. It’s movie time. Everybody.
Holy.
I will tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it. Holy
is the craziest I
think I’ve ever
seen. Everything. Okay. $11
million. Oh, language. The
baby’s here.
Yo, what up everybody? I’m gonna pick a stock and talk about why I think it’s interesting. And that stock is GameStop
Retail traders
hooked into
GameStop. I think they think it’s a good investment. It looks like there’s one guy driving all the buying.
Dumb money man.
There you go. That’s the uh, trailer for dumb money. And I thought this was a dumb movie, so it worked out. I think, I hope that it would be as good as the big short, like some lessons.
I mean, yeah, anything would’ve been better than nudity, maybe anything. There were some great cameo actors in there. The full metal jacket dude was there, what’s his name? Donofrio or something like that. Vincent said Donofrio. It’s good that one guy, well everybody knows the full metal jacket guy, Seth Rogan was in it anyways, just kind of happened.
The movie, I think went through a couple of the highlights. They basically just recreated the Reddit boards and the CNBC, you know, stuff of it. And then ended with them going to congress a little, or, or having their Zoom call with Congress. ’cause it was right after Covid. And then it said, oh, and then he stopped, uh, posting stuff on the internet and retired.
And so did, it was just, there was nothing to be gained from it whatsoever. They, I think they were trying to have a little bit of outrage at the end because of, you know, well, this company went bankrupt because of this and these people lost this money and, but the, but this billionaire still was bailed out or something like that.
There’s some kind of rage against the machine, I think that they were trying to, trying to put back out there, I guess. But, you know, find, find enough popcorn movie if you’re okay with all the swear words and, and you kind of already know what happened if you paid attention to it. But yeah, Paul Dano plays the main character, right?
Who’s uh, buying up all the stock Roaring Kitty. Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Davidson is in this America Ferrera, uh, Nick Erman is in it.
Yes he is. Yes, he is super funny as Ken Griffin. The, uh, I think he plays Ken Griffin, the hedge fund guy. Yeah, he sure does. He has a funny line in there. But, um, but they’re all cameos and, and it’s mostly just people checking their account balances, you know, college kids, they like this one whole subset of stuff going on with two people who are in college.
These two friends or partners. And it was like, oh yeah, I’ve GameStop, yay, go, made a bunch of money and oh my God, the app won’t refresh. I should sell. There was no lesson out of it. It wasn’t like they blew it up and then they couldn’t go to college next week. Right. And their tuition was due and they Right.
Did something bad. It, you know, whatever. It was just like them buying GameStop. It was such a, this is an awful movie and you should not waste a flipping second on it. I think,
you know,
what’s
wild is that Paul Dano, I believe is in another movie, uh, these, these kind of movies. These like docudramas. Mm-Hmm.
They’re always hit and miss. For me, I’m always afraid to watch ’em. ’cause I’m like, I just don’t want a retelling of the crap that happened last year. Whatever it is. Yeah. And when that happens, I don’t like it. But one I really liked earlier in the year, I, I don’t think I talked about it ever on the show, was the Blackberry movie, which I believe Paul Dano was also in.
That was a really good retelling of this phone, that people in the nineties, everybody used it and then all of a sudden nobody used it. Early two thousands.
Yeah. Early two
thousands. Yeah. No,
everybody used it then. Oh, Ft. iPhone.
Really? Nobody used it. It was just the iPhone just completely ate its lunch.
And the story of the downfall in the hubris, the, the tons of lessons and really fun to watch. I think Seth Rogan was even in that movie, along with Dano and a few other great people. But if you wanna see a good one by some of the same actors, go see the Blackberry movie. Okay. Yeah.
Skip this one. But
hey, it made two
hours go by og.
It did. Yep. I just sat there and ate my, uh, short ribs and mac and cheese on the airplane. Obviously, which
shows where he see, see that, that casual Flex Doug scoreboard Doug, what movies did you
dive into? Why do I feel like this is gonna be one of those Jimmy Kimmel, Matt Damon moments where he’s like, oh, we ran out of time.
We’ll get Matt Damon out here. Oh, Doug will, because we just spent like 29 minutes listening to OG tell us what not to watch.
We can’t help it. That OGs a little cooler.
God. All right. And while he was talking I remembered a couple other things. So I’m gonna go really fast and teach you how to be succinct.
Don’t you dare give me the wrap it up complete. You are talk as long as I feel like it. Alright, uh, well first things I’ll get this over with quickly because, uh, we’ve already talked about this on the show, we rewatched nobody love it, uh, with Bob Odenkirk. So fun. Unbelievable. So fun and short too. Like it’s a quick ride, an hour and a half short nowadays and, uh, it’s
so fun.
Somebody told me Doug that, that when Offerman wrote that. ’cause he wrote it too. Yeah, he wrote it to be the first in a series. I told you that. ‘
cause I read it on like the IMDB trivia thing or something like that. No, somebody else must’ve told me that way. Yeah, it must must’ve been somebody else because you don’t listen to me.
It was you. Yep. Uh, so that was a lot of fun. And you know, it’s a little bit like, to me, a more fun John Wick. John Wick’s just so far over the top and you’re like, come on. And this is like four hours long. Come
on Keno. One of the popular websites at the end of the year, Ken Keno. Keno, Keno. It’s, it’s where the reeves guy goes to Vegas and sits in the buffet.
These. Ken Reeves. Ken Reeves, but they had John Wick four on their top, uh, movies of the Year. I dunno if any of you guys saw John Wick four, but I did not see it. Can can we move on? I
gotta get through my list.
Well, I’m just, we’re not gonna, I’m just, I’m just saying John Wick four might be better than you’re giving.
It probably
sucks. So that we’ll just, we were gonna knock that one off quickly. Nobody. Um, it was a fun ride. Reacher. I’m all caught up on reacher. Like, it don’t like it as much as season one so far. Ah, feeling like a lot, like, um, what’s the new John Krasinski? Jack Ryan? Yes. Season one. I really like Season two.
I didn’t like as much. Season three was better, so reacher may go. I still like it. I’m still gonna say watch it if you like. That sort of thing. It’s good. I just don’t like it as much as season one. They have
three seasons or four seasons of, uh, of Jack Ryan. Oh,
Jack Ryan’s three, I think it was Middle East.
Middle East, Europe and
South America. Europe was the last one. It ended up in Europe. Yeah, but they had like, uh, Venezuela was the one before that. So I had ’em out of order. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it anyway. Yeah. Three. Okay. I thought there were four, but
anyway, I can’t think of a fourth one. Uh, so Reacher’s good, you know, solid seven outta 10 maybe.
I
can’t wait to watch it. I’m gonna watch Pearcy Jackson first. I would agree with that. I’m gonna watch Pearcy Jackson. I love the Pearcy Jackson books. We read ’em with our kids. So we’re gonna, we’re gonna start with Disney Plus, and then I’m gonna go watch Reacher
after that. You know what you should also do, uh, after you watch that, is the Percy Jackson series.
She might really like the Percy Jackson. I like Percy Jackson. If you like Pearcy, if you like Pcy Jackson, his cousin Percy has some pretty good movies too.
Pearcy Jackson sits next to Keno Reeves on the bus, and, and Timothy Shamier that right.
Uh, okay. So that’s that. Um, we watched Killers of The Flower Moon, and here’s what I realized.
I don’t like Martin Scorsese films that much. I think Martin Scorsese gets unbelievable performances out of his actors. ’cause the acting in that movie was astounding, incredible, amazing. But holy cow, did he just take 30% longer than he needed to, to tell that story? It was a long movie, and it was just so plotting, like P-L-O-D-D-I-N-G, like, it was just super slow, slower even than OGs review of, uh, the the bad movie.
Oh, God, I enjoyed, as, you know, uh, the Flower Moon a ton. But part of that Doug was just watching those performances for it didn’t feel like three and a half hours. Yeah. Kind of did. Um, it, it, well, that’s a difference. You watch it at home. I have this discussion people, if you’re gonna watch it on the little tiny screen, it’s gonna feel every movie’s gonna feel longer on that screen.
I’m gonna pause it, go to the bathroom. I’m gonna pause it. Look, don’t yell an hour movie
me for not wanting to go to the Covid Petri dish of a movie theater. I’m
just telling you that, that it’s gonna make it worse. It will make it worse. Okay. But anyway, continue. I can see your point. Yeah. Um,
Oppenheimer finally got to see that.
Good. Not great like that a lot. Well, I liked it more than Killers of the Flower Moon. I would give it an eight. I remember I texted you guys, I can’t remember what number I gave it in our text, Jane, but I would give it at least an eight. What I loved was the different angle that I didn’t like nobody told me about was the whole cabinet confirmation hearing angle and the persecution of Robert Oppenheimer by, uh, Strauss.
I, I just thought it was gonna be about building the bomb and, and that I didn’t realize it was that whole other life story. So I, I appreciated that.
Like that Robert Downey Jr’s super
good in that. He really is. He’s amazing. Here’s my one big flaw of that movie, and I’m not gonna give it away ’cause there’s a lot of people who haven’t seen it yet, but there is an incredibly key plot point that just shows up at the end and they don’t build that character enough so that his testimony.
Has the weight to totally change the outcome? Yeah. It just, he just shows up. Like you see him in one. He is a big name actor. He’s a great actor. You see a glimpse of him in a scene about half an hour from the end, 40 minutes from the end. And the next thing you know, he is in those confirmation hearings and he’s changed the whole life of Robert Oppenheimer and of, and it just, it didn’t work from a plot point standpoint, I think they had to spend more time on his character to show why it had the weight, why his testimony had the weight that it really did.
Much like
you didn’t like, uh, the flower moon. I had two people in my friend’s feet say that they just hated Oppenheimer. One person said it was a waste of time. Wow. I completely disagree with all that. Of course. I thought it was very good,
but yeah. Yeah. Really good. Moving down the list here, Maestro.
I wanna see this.
Yeah. Leonard Bernstein. Say that again.
Leonard Bernstein. Yes. I thought you said Bernstein or Anna, like who the hell is Anna Bernstein? Yeah, like we’re making up new first names. Isn’t that your ear, nose and throat doctor? Anyway? Uh, yeah, the acting in this is amazing. I really don’t like musicals and there are a couple of moments in this movie where it’s trying to like slide into a musical ’cause they actually have like musical numbers that are sort of part of the, the plot advancement.
But God, the acting, Bradley Cooper’s great. He’s gonna get, I’m sure he is gonna get nominated Golden Globes and, and Oscar. He’s really good. I think Carrie Mulligan completely stole the show. She is incredible in this movie, and her character is far more developed, in my opinion, than the Anna Bernstein or Leonard Bernstein, uh, character.
Um, so super, super good would recommend it just for the acting performances. There’s a lot about him that I didn’t realize, uh, didn’t know about him, so
I like that. I just can’t, I just can’t believe how they make him look like Bernstein.
They, oh, here’s the other thing. They age him so well. I know where you’re going with the whole controversy over the nose, right?
Is that what you’re trying to do?
No, no. I literally think he looks just like him. He doesn’t go lot like him. I don’t know any controversy
about the nose. Oh, it’s huge controversy because he is not Jewish. Oh. And so a huge, uh, uh, big contingent of. Advocates for not having enough Jewish people playing Jewish roles in movies.
They’re all pissed. Like, you know how many Jewish actors there are? We couldn’t find one to play Leonard Bernstein, boy. And uh, and so they put a prosthetic nose on ’em and it’s like, oh, you’re co-opting our heritage. Yeah. Yeah. Look, the guy’s a great actor. He’s been trying to create this movie. It’s like his passion project Bradley Cooper’s for like seven years.
So he gets to do that and he was amazing in
it. I love it when people sit at home on Twitter and bitch about stuff like movies. You know, like who’s got time for that?
Yeah. Good thing we don’t. So here’s the two series that I really dove into, uh, Fargo. The TV series Fargo. Yep. You told us. That’s awesome. I totally missed the boat on that.
Yeah. Super good. Um, only. Uh, halfway through season two, but love it. And Bosch just got into Bosch and that’s what I’ve been binging
nonstop. There’s people yelling at their device right now saying, welcome to 1997 Doug. I know it.
2014 to 2021 was when Bosch was made. And I kept hearing critical acclaim for it and I just, you know, didn’t get around to it.
And we ran outta stuff to watch and thought, what the heck? I heard this was good. It is modern day film noir. It’s like modern day Sam Spade stuff. It it’s got very much that la detective film noir vibe to it. Great jazz soundtrack. ’cause he’s a jazz lover. His character is and yeah. I love
it. Yeah, I, I’ve seen so many reviews of this saying the best series nobody watches or nobody watched while it was out.
Yeah. It was good enough to get renewed, obviously. And I’ve heard so many fans over the year, but I’m like, you, I never watched it. Oh gee, this seems like something you’d like.
I feel like I’ve watched maybe one or two episodes, but I haven’t, um, I don’t think that I got into the whole
series. Here’s why I think OGs gonna like it.
He’s a man of fewer words, very direct and just like gets the job done. And that just seems like OG nothing. Like OG is your
point. Who
OG aspires to be. Really? That’s
the bar is high. Yes. Hey, don’t get mad at OG ’cause he’s a little cooler. Thanks to everybody for hanging out today and uh, hope he gave you some good movies and, uh, TV shows more on that another day.
But for now, I think it’s time to get out the pencil and paper because your favorite part of the show is setting up your to-Do list. It’s not about listening to the show stackers. It’s what are you gonna do about it? Yeah. Let’s give you your top three.
Well, Joe first take a note from private equity firms and buy Ken Fisher’s firm in a completely different way, which is probably the same way everyone else does it, but hey, marketing’s marketing, especially when the head of your company says creepy shit about women that you gotta cover up.
But if your firm is sold, whether it’s Fisher or any other firm, we don’t know of a case where it isn’t business as usual for you. Get to know the new firm early, make sure you align with their values. And his mom says, keep on trucking towards your goals. Mom says that anyway. Second, what’s the second to do debt?
Begin with your income and expenses. Can you widen that gap when you do automate bigger payments toward that debt through your bank so you don’t accidentally spend it? But what’s the biggest to do? Well, here’s mine. If I’m gonna run this town clean up like Rockefeller, I gotta find a way to give school credit to neighborhood kids in exchange for them doing all my chores.
They’ll think it’s way more enticing if I can call it an internship and they can put it on their college app. We’re gonna do a credit for chat. GPT? Yes. Okay, fine. We’ll do a credit for chat, GPT. Thanks to chat GPT for. Well, like not much, pretty much. Nothing really, but we’ll do a credit. This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.
Our producer is Karen Reine. This show is 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 and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on all things money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of the 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. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude Stacey Doe and Julia Gar are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
So say hello when you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. For more interactive fun, join us in Instagram every Tuesday and Thursday for our Instagram lives. Kate Yakin and Joe host these weekly. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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