Last week we were all about focus and goal setting. Today? We’ll teach you how to tenaciously grip those goals when times get tough. Jenn Drummond knows what it takes to work through adversity. She was the first woman to scale each of the Seven Second Summits, the second tallest mountain on each of the seven continents. These mountains are considered more technical as a group than the Seven Summits (tallest on each continent), and also are harder because there are far fewer resources to help you scale them. We’ll walk through Jenn’s adventures in Antarctica, Asia, North America, and more, as she negotiates adversity around every corner. From dreaming to planning, climbing and celebrating, we cover it all. If you want big goals in 2024, Jenn will speak directly to you.
In our headline segment, some disturbing news on employment: it was harder to find a job in 2023 and 2024 doesn’t look like it’s going to be easier. We’ll help you build a to-do list of tasks to make sure aren’t on the outside looking in when it comes to your next job opportunity.
Our TikTok minute features MORE 2024 predictions…this time from Professor Scott Galloway and another from Dan Yang. Both are great predictions (Galloways is slightly better), and we’ll talk about home ownership extensively today.
Of course, Doug will still help you become king of the virtual watercooler with today’s trivia challenge AND we’ll answer an interesting question from Christian who calls all the way from Germany!
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/climbing-your-next-mountain-jenn-drummond-1461
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- Finding a New Job Is Getting Harder (Wall Street Journal)
Our TikTok Minute
Jenn Drummond
Big thanks to Jenn Drummond for joining us today. To learn more about Jenn, visit Jenn Drummond | Official Website | Home. Grab yourself a copy of the book BreakProof: 7 Strategies to Build Resilience and Achieve Your Life Goals (How to Reach Your Life Goals)
Doug’s Trivia
- On the one and only day the U.S. has been completely out of debt, who was the president?
Stacking Benjamins Lifeline
- Christian from Germany has a question about how to best pay down the debt on his rental properties while simultaneously saving for retirement at age 34.
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- Want to master your financial goals? Join the Stacking Benjamins Book Club and dive deep into all the lessons from the book STACKED once per week for 10 weeks.
- How to Win Friends & Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’ll ask the know-it-all futuristic mystic (a.k.a. Chat GPT) all of your questions about debt!
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: 2024 Magic 8 Ball (SB1460) » The Stacking Benjamins Show
Episode transcript
 It’s Monday. Didn’t show you guys this last week. Guys. Check out what, uh, what I got today.
Oh yeah, look at that. It’s, it’s one of those Amazon basics, the most basic coffee mug of all time. Congratulations, Joe. Nay, nay,
nay. It is not. Check out if I can without spilling it. Check out the bottom.
It’s got a bottom.
Congratulations. It’s a heater. It’s a heater mug. What’s the name of it? Starts
With A Heat. This is the ember mug Berber that I worried about buying for ever and ever. I had a bunch of stackers that when OGU and I talked about this before that wrote in and were like, buy it. You, you should buy it. I love mine.
So I bought it. You didn’t love yours, right?
Uh, didn’t buy it for myself. Bought it for the misses and she didn’t love it. No. Yeah, but she got the travel
cup. My mug is holding it 135 degrees. When I poured it into the mug, it said it was 155 and it said to play with different temperatures and see what you like best and keep your, your coffee warm all day for, uh, the price of a small Hyundai.
That’s about what
this is here. Here’s what I don’t get. Just drink your damn coffee. No. Like why does it, it doesn’t sit there all day. Like, oh, I gotta, I’m gonna take three sips and then wait until the afternoon to take another one. When my coffee gets to whatever the temp is that it doesn’t peel off a layer of my mouth, then I’m just guzzling the rest of it.
What? Why, why do people need a mug that lets it sit
there for the day? OG Doug’s like, you’re lucky I don’t just mainline this
and don’t give Doug hot coffee cup for birthday.
No, X that off. You know, we will do though. We will use this fine new coffee mug of mine and, uh, yours, gentlemen, to salute our troops like we do every Monday here on the show.
On behalf of those of us making podcast in mom’s basement and those people working hard down at Navy Federal Credit Union, a salute to the people that work way harder than any of us do. The people keeping us safe, our men and women are armed forces. Here’s to you. Let’s go stacks and Benjamins. Thanks everybody.
Good morning, Christopher Robin.
Oh, good morning. Winnie the Pooh.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s moms neighbor, Duggan. Last week we helped you set better goals and stay focused. So today we’ll teach you how to conquer those goals with a woman who’s taken on immense challenges and climbed literal mountains international speaker and author, Jen Drummond for our TikTok minute more. 2024 predictions following The Avalanche og.
Just loved last week and in our headlines. Climbing the job market is getting more difficult according to the Wall Street Journal. What should you do to enhance your career? When opportunities are shrinking, we’ll share plus we’ll throw out the lifeline to a stacker who needs help scaling Money Mountain.
And then speaking of share, I’ll share some relatable trivia. And speaking of mountains, here’s a guy who’s Pete and Joe Cel Cihi.
Hey there. Happy mug. A
t You nice one there. And we need get, get a smile. I don’t,
I don’t think he got him get a didn’t get a reaction out of Yeah. Right over his head. Nothing.
Hey, everybody happy? Uh, right over his head. Day on the podcast. I’m Joe Saul-Sehy. Hi over Joe. Money on Twitter on X. And across the card table from me.
Not the fake OG on X. It’s Mr. og. You’re looking a little tan, a little, uh, relaxed. Like you’re, you’re hair has been, uh, swinging in the breeze in Pasadena, California is.
Cloudy and rainy and very cool for all. But the last two
days, the game looked phenomenal. Yeah. And they, yeah, the game looked great, was great.
They kept talking about how amazing the weather was during the Rose
Bowl. The tour guide on the bus that took us from the parade to the game said this was her 35th time doing this tour. And she can remember it misting only one day in 35 years. She said it’s, for whatever reason, it can be smoggy and crappy and rainy and cold on the 31st, and it can be smoggy and crappy and cold and cloudy and nasty on the second.
But when those cameras come on, on January 1st at 8:00 AM Pacific time, it is. The sun’s coming up over the mountains, it’s perfectly clear. And everybody moves to California because of that nice
video. The universe knows how to light it up for the Rose Bowl. Hey, speaking of the universe, lighting it up.
Not a lot of mist on the top of, uh, the mountain she climbed. Well, maybe a lot of mist. We’ll find out. Jen Drummond has climbed, uh. Some literal mountains, as Doug said, og. And she’s gonna talk about being resilient when it comes to your goals. You know what’s funny? Uh, Kevin, who brilliantly writes our newsletter, I love at the top of our newsletter, uh, last week, uh, section we call the four one one.
This is just a list of statistics, third statistic down, I dunno if you guys saw this. The number of people that give up on their New Year’s resolutions in the first week. 9%, a hundred percent, no, 9%. But still it’s a big number. 9% of people can, it’s like, yeah, I can’t do that. Go, go to the gym. Uh uh, hard pass.
It’s day eight.
It’s
very tough. Yeah. Fantastic time to talk about getting more resilient, but man, we got the TikTok minute. We got a headline that are both, uh, juicy. So let’s jump in as soon as, as soon as OG you tell us about, uh, writing. You went to Disney, I think you wrote, it’s a small world and
you’ll never get this.
And then they sing the song again, but in different language.
Wow. Really? That’s the best. Wait a minute. Which language? Well first
and then finally it wraps up. That’s fabulous. Yeah. Yeah. It’s 17 minutes of
pure bliss. Unbelievable. You came out with both of your E Intact. That’s the amazing part. We got Jen Drummond waiting for us, but as I mentioned earlier, big headline today.
Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines Headline from the Wall Street Journal this morning. This is written by Gabriel Rubin and Harriet Tory. A little bit disturbing news og. Finding a new job is getting harder. They write, employers finished 2023 with far fewer open positions than at the start of the year, according to private sector estimates as businesses filled more jobs and decided not to hire for others, total job postings as of the end of 2023, declined more than 15% from a year earlier.
According to data from job listing site, indeed through December 29th, quote, the pace of dissent seems to have leveled off a bit in the second half of the year, said Nick Bunker and economists at the job site. So while jobs kind of have been level lately, 2023, not a great year for, uh, for the job market, and next year, a lot of people say isn’t gonna get a lot better.
I think it’s a good time OG, to really focus on, uh, maybe. Love the one you’re with as the old song goes.
Well that, or networking, right? I mean, at the end of the day, most professionals will find their next thing through people that they know, or people that know. People that they know. And if it’s not raining job opportunities, the next best thing is to make sure that your networking is up to date.
So make sure your LinkedIn looks good. Make sure you’ve updated your progress at the end of the year, that sort of thing. It’s a great time. Right now I was working on something for my side hustle that I do, and uh, just kind of sitting down and recapping, you know, just putting some bullet points of how 2023 ran with the side hustle, sent it to a mentor and said, what do you think about this?
He’s like, oh my gosh, this is great, except I would take this part out. You know, just kinda get a little refresh on keeping track of, of, of your network is a great way to spend the first couple weeks of the year. I think
I like the idea that you mentioned kind of casually there of having an outsider look at it.
Right? Somebody with fresh eyes. You’ve seen your LinkedIn profile a hundred times, your Facebook profile a hundred times. People come spy on you all the time, right? They sure do. Look you up. Who are you? What’s going on? So having somebody else look at that and go, you know what this needs is a great idea.
Yeah, absolutely. Especially, especially somebody that’s in the, you know, at a, at a higher level than maybe where you are and knows what the next level is looking for. You know, what are the, what are the buzzwords these days, right? You wanna make sure that that stuff’s included in your profile, so to
speak.
When I was at, uh, FinCon, which is an industry conference that we attended, as we’ve uh, mentioned to everyone back in 20 23, 20 22, 20 21, attending industry conferences. I don’t think for most of us it’s optional. If you get the opportunity, you really, networking is much better. OG face-to-face, right? Yeah. I don’t know what it is.
There’s some chemical thing. We’ve had experts on the show that have talked about this. Scientists talk about something different happens when you’re face-to-face in the same room that even on a Zoom call, way, way, way. Mm-Hmm. Different energy. But a guy named Brian Aldi, who has been on this show, uh, was talking about just looking through his Twitter profile, like what that looked like.
And for him, he’s trying to attract an audience. ’cause he’s teaching people about stocks. He’s like, you know, a lot of this doesn’t have to do anything with stocks. It’s kind of soft skills, right? Do I seem approachable? Do I seem like somebody, people wanna be around? Do I seem like a person that you would want to learn from?
Like, think about your role and then think about does your, does your online presence match your role? And I started laughing ’cause you guys remember that, you know, you hear about this all the time from HR people. The person who doesn’t get the job because their name was hot, sexy butt. 87 or whatever, you know, at gmail.com.
aol.com,
right? I said not to reveal that. Come on.
Like you, you just gotta clean that up and look at people. Look back now at 20 years ago, stuff that you wrote on Twitter, when Twitter didn’t even seem to, to be that big a thing was Twitter around 20 years ago, maybe, maybe 10 years ago. Let’s go, let’s go back a little less far.
But you get my point. You might have said something when you were young and stupid 10 years ago. They’re gonna go find that.
Yeah, it’s a good idea to audit all those things. It’s a great idea to have somebody look over your, you know, like you said, your profile. And I think it’s also important to recognize what if you’re trying to do something different.
If you’re trying to move somewhere, you have to tell people, it just can’t keep that to yourself and say, oh, you know, I really hope that promotion comes through. I, I think I’d be a real great fit for that, that new role up in Seattle. You know, I hope they pick me. It’s like, tell everybody, tell the world this is what I want to do and I think I’d be really great at it.
Let me tell you the reasons why, because. They don’t know either If you’re boss or a different company, they’re trying to put together a new role or promote somebody or find a new position. They don’t know what they’re looking for either. What they hope is that they get somebody that’s really excited about it.
And if you show up with a pretty good profile and a pretty good referral source and a really great enthusiasm level, I’d say you have a pretty awesome chance at at moving up. I had
to do that personally last year, and I don’t like doing that. And I know I’m, you know, I’m not the only one like’s going, Hey og, you know what I need?
You know what I really want. Like, I don’t wanna be that person. I don’t wanna be the needy person. Seems funky, doesn’t it? It it does. But you’re right. You have to. I had to put it out after several years of thinking, Hey, people are gonna call me because I’m a pretty good speaker. I used to give talks all the time when I was at American Express.
I do say so myself. Well, last year I had to tell people I’m interested in proving this part of my business. By the way, there is another story there, which is when I first gave a talk, the first talk I gave, dusting it off, thinking Joe’s still a good speaker. I was like the tennis player that hadn’t played in 30 years and used to be a semi-pro and come out like, I got it.
And then just completely crap. The bed, the first speech I gave, just absolutely, I’m like, wow, maybe I have to practice this stuff. So there were definitely some lessons there, but I had to tell people. And because of that, I did some great mc gigs. I did some great headlining. Speaking gigs, but I had to tell people, which was tough.
And then from those nobody, nobody can read your mind. No. And from those referrals came, but you gotta do it, you know? And to do that though, I think it’s a good time. Speaking of dusting off your LinkedIn profile, good time to dust off some of the basics and nothing more basic guys than Dale Carnegie.
When friends and influence people, if the job market gets tight, and I know sometimes they’re gonna lay off a whole department, Doug, you’ve seen this before, they’re gonna lay off everybody. So you can be the nicest person out there and your job still isn’t gonna get saved. Oh yeah. That’s got nothing to do with you.
However, being easy to work with makes it less likely that you’ll be the first person off the island. Right? Right. You wanna be the person whose name they wanna, oh, we really can’t let, oh, we gotta do it. So these are some of the big tips from Dale Carnegie that I just pulled up. Avoid criticizing, condemning or complaining.
Give, give. There’s so many jokes there. Give honest and sincere appreciation. I love you guys. This one arousing the other person an eager desire. Oh God. I think that’s 1920s writing right there. I was gonna say,
we need to update that language.
I, I would like to arouse in you guys an eager desire.
Well, I’ve got an eager desire about you right now, Joe.
It’s not what you
think. Talk in terms of the other person’s interest. I have a family member. You could tell them, you could go, Hey, guess what? Uh, yeah, I was on this plane and it started going down, so I had to grab a parachute and jump out. It was amazing. And she will go, oh, that’s good. You know, my back really hurts.
And I, and then you’re like, yeah. Then like Jen Drummond, I scaled one of the world’s tallest mountains. Oh, that’s neat. How’s your cat doing? Like, totally misses all the cues to be interested in somebody else’s life. Speaking of that, remember names I. Can’t remember your guys’ names. Become genuinely interested in other people, avoid arguments, be a good listener.
Those, those seem basic, og, but
OGs face is blank like this. None of these words are registering with OG. Never. Wow. Sounds like always a time to
me. Guys. Maybe I should look up this book. What’s it called?
Whatever your names are. I’m not listening. Let me tell you a little something about me though.
Just keep reading Harry, get on with it.
Uh, we will link to this book. If you haven’t read it, you know, you can. Uh, it’s so
old. It’s outta copyright. You could literally write the thing yourself and sell it on Amazon. Like the, did you hear? Speaking of things outta copyright. You know Mickey Mouse is outta copyright now. Steamboat Willie.
Steamboat Willie. Yeah. Steamboat Willie. Did you hear about, uh, the first fair use thing that they’re, that they’re doing with it? No.
It’s like a slasher movie or something, isn’t
it? Yes. It’s a slasher movie. It’s like a, it’s like a horror flick. It’s Steamboat Willie is supposedly the. Antagonist. I wonder if it’s
the same outfit that did the slasher movie for Winnie the Pooh
last year.
Oh my goodness. Really? How that one
out too? Yeah. And then Tigger. Tigger just came off copyright. So in the sequel, ’cause we have to have a sequel to that movie. Tigger is gonna be Tigger.
It’s Winnie the Pooh,
and Tigger too. I don’t know if Tagger gets it or if he’s a new protagonist. I dunno.
The only phrase you could have said there was in the sequel, like, what the hell are you talking about?
In the sequel, uh, you know, a book that needs a sequel CNN called Stack the book to read in 2023. And if you did and haven’t implemented the steps in that book, the Fantastic Steps, I should say, in the book, or if you haven’t, guess what? We’re gonna start. We’re doing an organized book club with Wait for it.
The author himself. I wonder who that is. I bet it’s some really good looking dude. It’s a her who wrote that book.
No, it’s a her. It’s a her. Yeah. Isn’t it Emily?
Emily’s somebody or another? Yes, it is Emily’s uh, co-author. Who, who I heard is just amazing. Oh. Head to, uh, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash book club.
For more on the book club to get registered, we’re gonna do 10 weeks, 90 minute sessions. We’re gonna take it chapter by chapter and go through, uh, the book stacks Stacking Benjamins dot com slash book club
is one of those steps. Have more money. It’s, that is, that is step. It’s that like step two. If,
just, just have more money.
If you have more money, you wouldn’t be broke. It’s a two page, one page book. We figured it out. Time for our TikTok Minute, the part of the show where we take a look at a TikTok creator and see whether they’re saying something brilliant or maybe air quotes brilliant Doug, we went to og. He’s not gonna turn over a new leaf in 2024.
Uh, last week, so this week I’m coming to you. Is this gonna be brilliant or air quotes, brilliant air
quotes. Quotes. Yeah, we’re going with air quotes. I’ve checked my panel of advisors
last week. Last week we got, uh, 2024 predictions from, uh, money Manager Jeffrey Gun Latch, right? Is it pronounced Gun latch?
Is it Gun Latch? Gun Guian? Uh, Jeffrey Gun Latch. This week we go to a friend of the show, uh, Scott Galloway, NYU professor, and commentator Scott Galloway. This is his prediction for 2024, A man I. It might be a sad one, guys.
I think the travel industry is gonna boom. And unfortunately there’s a very dark side to this.
And I think the reason they’re gonna boom is I think people in their twenties, a lot of them have just given up on the traditional, uh, dream of owning a home. And because they’re no longer saving 2, 3, 5 grand a year in hopes of moving into a home in the late twenties or early thirties, they’re gonna be, they’re gonna have more disposable income and they’re gonna decide to spend it on travel as the traditional American dream of buying a home.
It just becomes kind of out of reach for them. And I think the travel industry is gonna be the unfortunate beneficiary of all this additional disposable income that traditionally has gone into saving for people’s first home. 14 million homes have been formed in the last 10 years, and only 11 million homes have been built.
Average cost of a home pre pandemic was two 90, it’s now four 20, and then you couple that with interest rates going from 3% to 7%. The American dream is now an hallucination for most people when it comes to home ownership, and I think people are gonna spend more money on travel, travel stocks to
boom
travel stocks to boom in 2024.
og, what do you think about that one? I don’t
have any idea. Obviously Professor Galloway is a heck of a lot smarter than, uh, the three of us combined and multiplied by double well. But I still think that even if you have, uh, an idea, if you got a thesis, maybe you don’t put all of your ideas in or put all of your money into one idea.
You know, if you wanna put a little extra, a little sandbox money in your idea, and this may into travel stocks, okay, fine. Yeah, yeah. But maybe the rest of it should just be diversified and let it ride for
30 years. What’s interesting about this og, so I hear this story right, about how new home formation, not that many new homes built, cost out housing going through the roof, interest rates, of course, not anywhere near all time highs.
Not astronomical, but certainly higher than they were before. But because of the tight supply, seeing prices going up for the average person, like Scott Galloway just said, I turned immediately to the Wall Street Journal and this is what I get. This is a piece by Carol Ryan. Welcome to the Neighborhood.
Wall Street. Designed it. Listen to this, your new suburban rental has granite kitchen countertops built to withstand even the most hard-wearing tenant. The neighbors next door, the exact same laundry machine, welcome the community where every detail’s been designed to keep cost down for the Wall Street landlord.
So Galloway’s thinking this Wall Street’s thinking it too, og. They’re like, guess what? A lot of people are gonna rent now, so guess who they’re gonna rent from. How about us when Wall Street starts saying that? I think maybe we, maybe we got something here
with homes, again, way above my pay grade. But I have seen a neighborhood that’s near us that is all single family houses, that’s all rentals.
Like it’s owned by the developer. They never, they, you know, they built the Yeah,
we have one down the street from us as well. Isn’t that Yeah, just built.
Built the whole subdivision. But it’s all for rentals. None of ’em are for sale. All single family homes. So what the heck do I know?
It’s, it is an interesting, scary trend, but definitely I wouldn’t go, let’s talk about what we can do.
Don’t take your money. It was for your long-term goals, og, and just blow it on a trip to, you know, wherever some super expensive YOLO trip and just give
up. Don’t blow money on Rose Bowl trip. Hmm.
Well if you got it, but if this was, yeah, but if this was money that was for your retirement or your home purchase or whatever, like, don’t give up on your long-term goals and go put
money back in 401k from Rose Bowl trip.
Noted.
Please don’t. Please
don’t do that. No, you gotta have the future. But you also need to be thinking about now a little bit because, I don’t know, do you think that it’s that big of a deal that people don’t buy houses? I don’t. I don’t think it matters.
I don’t think it’s a huge deal. No. We rented
a apartment for a while, like in the middle of our thirties.
It was awful. And that was what was required at the time. You know, it wasn’t. It just is what it is. Well, and given
you don’t have to go buy a new house and given the number of times we’re probably gonna move for a new job opportunity, right. You know, maybe that changes here post pandemic as people increasingly work from home and your opportunities are online.
But, um, but still, if you’re gonna change jobs seven times, investing in a house and this neighborhood when your job might be across town, across halfway, across the us, across the world, why, why, why spend all that money on those huge transaction
costs?
I pay attention to the flying community on Reddit, you know, and there’s a lot of private flying stuff, but there’s also a lot of corporate and professional pilot stuff on there too.
People who are interested in getting into the field and people that have progressed and, you know, kind of a MA type stuff. So I like reading that stuff. And one of the overarching themes is, Hey, I just got a job working for Delta. Out of Atlanta, but I live in Sacramento. Yeah. What do you guys think? And everybody goes, move your ass to Atlanta.
You know, why do you wanna have a commute? I mean, even though you get a free airline ticket, it’s awful. You know, like, you don’t wanna have a commute that’s a half hour, let alone a day and a half, you know, because you gotta fly from, you know, wherever to Atlanta. It’s silly that pilots would consider that you would never do that.
Right. You would, if you got a job and it’s in Philadelphia, you’re gonna move closer to your
job. So, well, especially not three times zones away. Holy wow.
Yeah. So I don’t see the big issue with, um, because people still need to live, you know what I mean? Like, yes. It’s not like everybody’s just gonna go live in a yurt or something.
It’s like they still need houses, and it’s just who’s, who owns it? Who cares, who owns it? Owning a house is not all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a lot of. There’s a lot of maintenance and insurance and all that other sort of stuff that you have to deal with. I’ll tell a story a little bit later about some fun we’ve had in the last week about house maintenance and just how much of a pain in the butt it is versus picking up the phone and going, yeah, that thing that you have that’s here.
It doesn’t work. Come fix it. I mean, there’s, there’s some power in that too.
You know, we’ve now heard from Jeffrey Gun latch. We’ve heard from Scott Galloway. A couple, uh, couple of smart dudes, maybe the smartest dude of all is a guy named Real Dan Yang on TikTok. It’s a special TikTok twofer to help kick off, uh, the new year.
This is, uh, real Dan Yang’s, uh, predictions for 2024. How about these guys here? I think we’ll be in, in 2024.
First up, we have just sort of wandering
around, um, you know, going from point A to point B, maybe a point C even. I think that’ll be big. Second up, we have drinking 12, 13 beers. I think people are gonna really enjoy doing that.
I think having 13 beers is going to, it’s gonna be a big year for that third, we have kind of just looking at stuff, you’ll see a lot of people just looking, looking
around, looking at
stuff, things even. Um, I think that’s gonna be a trend you see a lot of in 20, 24 things
even. And finally, uh, I think the big
trend in 2024 will be, uh, just sort of sitting
around, you know, posting up probably
with bad posture,
a lot of cran, your neck.
I
think that’s gonna be a big year for that. So those are my predictions
that I am so far ahead of the trend line here. Once
again, I think Dan nailed it. I think Dan’s got it coming up next. Our mentor today is the amazing Jen, even
Fang Jen,
Jen
Drum, Jen Drummond. She might do more than just look at stuff.
Uh, she’s gonna tell us about a car accident she had in 2018, which really changed her life. She was in a situation where rescue workers couldn’t imagine any scenario where she came out alive. But not only did she come out alive, she came out transformed. And you know what? Hopefully we can learn from her today that, uh, it’s so much better to not just maybe sit around and look at stuff.
Maybe we need to get moving post up on those goals. Post up. Yeah. Jen Drummond mentoring us in just a minute, but while she’s getting situated as she comes down the stairs, uh, Doug, you’ve got, uh, today’s trivia. Sure do Joe.
Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug on today’s date in 1835, the United States achieved something it has never done since it was completely debt-free for that day and that day only, which means they’ve only got me beat by a day.
I’m gonna round it down and call it a tie. Today the national debt is over $33 trillion. Imagine the airline points on their credit card. Let’s see, like on American Express, that math would be oh, oh, oh. Even better. I know that $33 trillion equals at least three flights using Capital One’s program.
Cha-Ching. About a third of our debt is owed to foreign countries with Japan holding the highest percentage among them at $1.3 trillion. And here I’ve been stressing out over owing Joe’s mom a hundred bucks. Imagine owing someone a trillion dollars at some point, you’re just better off faking your own death and going into the Witness protection program.
I mean, can you just sign up for that? No, seriously can, can you just sign up for that? Asking for a friend any who today’s trivia question is on the one and only day the US has been completely out of debt. Who was the president? I’ll be back right after I come up with an alias and a cool backstory for myself.
Hey there,
stackers. I’m retired professional hockey player and a guy named Rodrigo Guacamole. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, who put my name in the script. Lisa, you blew my cover. I had a whole new life planned out for myself already. I was gonna move to Canada, work as a hockey coach, maybe do a little Tim Horton’s as my side gig.
Maybe I’d learned to track moose and even become a wildlife expert. I could even have my own TV show one day where I teach people survival skills if only someone had it blown my cover. Lisa, today’s trivia question is on the one and only day the US has been completely out of debt. Who was the president?
The answer immortalized on the $20 bill after ironically vehemently opposing the use of paper money during his lifetime. Andrew Jackson was the president on that one and only day the United States had no debt. Sounds like he was so happy to finally get us outta debt that he celebrated by going on a spending spree on Alibaba, and now here to teach you how to take on the seemingly insurmountable to achieve your financial goals.
It’s our mentor, Jen Drummond,
and I’m super happy she’s joining us at Mom’s Basement. Our mentor today is the Jen Drummond. How are
you? Woo-hoo.
Good day. Good day. Thanks for having me.
I’m so happy you’re here with us, teaching us to be resilient about your goals. But I just wanna dig right in, Jen, to your story. It’s 2018. How did your life change in 2018?
Yeah. Well, let’s start quick on the standpoint of, I read this book called The Surrender Experiment, and for two months I journaled the word surrender because I thought it was waving your flag and a sign of weakness. And then all of a sudden I realized like, actually it’s a sign of strength and how much power there is in surrender.
Fast forward, I get into a car accident On December 18th, 2018. I watch my car hit a semi, and the first thing that comes to my mind is, the only way I’m gonna survive this accident is if I surrender. Wow. So I literally put my hand on the steering wheel, put my head on the headrest, and I just try to stay as relaxed as possible, and I count through the flips.
I’m going end over end, and I’m like, I’m gonna flip once. I’m gonna flip twice. I’m gonna flip three times. And then I’m like, okay, I’m out of energy. Now I’m gonna start doing these sideways rolls. So I started doing sideways rolls about 10 of ’em, and then ended up upside down in the median. It was crazy.
How
did this even start? Was it an icy, you’re in Utah,
right? Yeah, I’m in Utah. It was my, like my fault at some level. Maybe the driver’s fault. I don’t know. No one was at fault for the accident, to be honest. Yeah, I was coming up a hill. I. I was paying attention to the reservoir. I had the green light, so I kept my speed.
A semi pulling a trailer must have hit the red light. So they were under the speed limit, probably only going 30 miles an hour on the highway. And so then all of a sudden I get see him, I go get into the left lane. There was something on the side of the road. So his second trailer bumps out a little bit and it clips the passenger side of my, my car.
And I go, end over end. Sideways. Sideways. And when the police got to the accident, they said, there’s no way there’s a human alive. Yeah, right. But I was alive and I got a phone call from that police station a few weeks later saying, listen, we have rebuilt that accident every way possible. We cannot build a scenario where you live, let alone walk away.
We just want you to know. And they’re like, buy that car again because that’s why you’re alive. And they said, you know, just be great at every moment since that moment. Has been such a gift. Like even the yucky moments, I’m like, Hey, at least I’m here to have this experience. Because my other choice was never to have whatever I’m experiencing right now.
I think
it takes a certain person then to think, okay, I’m gonna go from, I’m barely alive to go to climates where I could probably die again many, many, many times over. Like where did the obsession begin with climbing some of the biggest peaks on earth. Yeah.
You know, so I got into this horrific car accident and survive.
My good girlfriend goes running on a trail about three weeks after my accident, asked me to go with her. I said, I couldn’t that day. It’s wet out. She slips, she hits her head and she never comes home. And so I’m metabolizing these two extreme events and the only thing that can make sense to me is I don’t get to choose when I die, but I sure get to choose how I live.
If I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die living. Like I’m not gonna die eating bon bonds, watching a television show or walking down the street. Like I want my death to be epic, I guess. But I just truly felt that I don’t get to choose when I die, but I do get to choose how I live, and it’s time to start choosing to live.
It sounds like your kids were completely on board with this. In fact, I think the story goes, your son was the one that challenged you to take on Everest. Is that true?
Yeah. So I’m training for a mountain named Amma Lum, and my son hears it as I’m a dumb blonde. Oh no. And so one day he’s angry and he’s like, mom, if we do hard things, why are you climbing a mountain called, I’m a dumb blonde instead of a real mountain like Mount Everest.
And I looked at that little s, you know? Yeah. And I’m like, are you kidding me right now? I’m Ablo honey, not I’m a dumb blonde, but thank you. And we looked at Everest and then he went to bed and I was still looking at Everest and I thought, Hey. If this kid thinks Everest is the hardest mountain in the whole world, I’m gonna climb it and I’m gonna show him that whatever our Everest is, we’re capable of summiting.
And so I call a coach, he’s like, yeah, I can get you ready. He sends me a book about becoming an uphill athlete and in the front as a lady who got a Guinness World record, I was homeschooling at the time ’cause Covid was happening and I wasn’t feeling good about myself. And I told the coach like, if I got a Guinness World record, my kids would think I’m cool.
I wish I would’ve known about that one because that’s something I could have done. And the coach is like, oh, I’ll think of something, don’t worry. I’m like, okay, fine. He calls me back a few weeks later and he is like, Jen, I’ve got the perfect world record for you. He goes, I think you should be the first female to climb the seven second summits.
And that sounded like a tongue twister. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. Right, right. I’m like, what? And so then he goes on to explain it. He is like, they’re harder than the first seven. It’s only been done by one male. You’d be the first woman. And think about it, seven continents, seven mountains, seven children.
Sounds like a jackpot. And I thought it did. And I got one of those whole body yeses, which still makes no sense because I hadn’t slept in a tent before. Okay. And here I’m gonna go climb like the second highest summit on every mountain of every continent. Like, what am I doing?
I just can’t imagine the training, and I don’t wanna spend really almost any time on Everest.
But you know, a lot of us on social media, we’ve seen pictures from this year’s Everest season of just these lines of people, right? And some dangerous areas on Everest. Everest. Was it that packed when you went?
No. No. So we waited, right? Like a lot of people that go early, uh, you, if you wait, you gamble, maybe the weather window won’t open again and you won’t get up to the top.
We waited because we didn’t. I’m like, I don’t wanna do Disney World up Everest. That just doesn’t feel right. And so we summited on one of the last days and there’s 14 people that summited the day that we summited. So it was beautiful. You had the whole mountain to yourself and we, we played the gamble and won.
You talk about the seven second summit, which is a tongue twister. These are absolutely, when you said they’re harder than the first seven, they’re harder for two reasons. Number one is many of these summits that we’ll touch on a couple of them for our stackers here, they’re harder technically. But also you mentioned Jen, you’ve got a lot less support at these mountains.
’cause they’re not the they’re, they don’t get the fanfare of the first
mountain. Right. Which is kind of fun to be honest with you because it is authentic climbing. When you climb Everest, you’re on a fixed rope. So you walk up and you click onto the rope and you click onto the rope. Somebody else set it up, made sure it was safe.
When I’m climbing in Antarctica or Russia or in Canada, I’m tied to my guide. So my guide and I are tied to each other. So if either one of us makes a mistake, we’re pulling the other one down with us and we have to self-arrest to keep both of us safe and on the side of the mountain, not off the edge. So it’s just a different game that you’re playing entirely.
There’s a great comedian, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this guy, Nate Bur gaze. He just hosted, he just hosted Senator Live recently. You climbed, uh, Mount Logan, the second tallest mountain in, uh, north America. But let’s listen to Nate talking about the third tallest mountain. This is his appearance on the Tonight Show.
I
was in Seattle recently,
and if you ever go to Seattle, they have a Mount Rainier is, uh, about an hour away. It’s the third biggest mountain in America. It’s a good one to go to. I don’t know who number one or number two is, but maybe one day you’ll be number one. You know? Uh, do mountains keep growing? I don’t know.
That’s stuff that I don’t know, but it’s a good time to see it. It doesn’t have the attitude of a one or a two.
So
I think your, your mountains definitely had a little bit of an attitude. K two, which we’ll get to in a second, had a hell of an attitude, but hell of. But let’s talk just briefly about Mount Logan.
What was the biggest challenge you found? Climbing m Logan.
Oh my gosh. Like if I knew what I was getting into climbing Mount Logan, I’d be like, nevermind. We’re gonna find the seven nicest beaches in the world and call that a record. What happens when you climb Mount Logan is that it’s so far that you put skins on skis and you actually ski up large sections of it.
Wow. And you have to carry all of your gear on your back or in a sled. Okay. And it’s windy on Mount Logan. You’re exposed. We, we get there, we set up a tent, and then we dig a hole to put our gear in so it doesn’t blow away. And then the cubes that we pull out of the hole, we build an igloo around our tent because we’re afraid the tent’s gonna rip in the wind.
And there’s five camps that you have to establish every single one of ’em. You have to build an igloo around your tent. You don’t want the tent to rip and then you have to bury your gear and you have to go. I mean, it is just bananas. I’m so sick of building igloos. I’m like, I’m not in kindergarten. This isn’t fun.
I dunno who convinced us that it was, but this is
crazy. One of your takeaways from early in your project here, Bulletproof, and we’ll get to actually some lessons from the book here in a second, but one of your takeaways is always safety first. Like you’re, you’re worried about safety every second of the way.
I gotta imagine.
Yeah. No, you really are. And it’s interesting because when you climb the mountain, and I say this, and if you’re listening, you own a business or you run a family, you’re doing whatever. Getting to the top is only halfway. Like every step I take, I need to make sure I have enough energy to get all the way back home.
So when I get to the summit, I have to have enough energy to get back home and anticipate that something might go wrong when I’m coming back. That might take longer than I’m expecting. So when we’re building a company and we’re testing out a product or something along that line, and we’re going forward, do you have enough energy to make it home?
Because only when you’re home, are you still alive?
Let’s transition to K two for just a moment. How much preparation to go to a country like Pakistan, which isn’t currently, uh, a country that, frankly, most Americans would probably go to, number one going into Pakistan. Number two is it’s in remote area of Pakistan.
I was going to attempt to go to base camp once, Jen, myself, with a friend of mine who frankly changed my life because he said he had other mountains to climb and changed the, the course of my life. But I know that we were gonna fly into Islamabad and just plan it. Tell me about how long it would take you to plan just even getting to K two and the equipment and the, the who’s gonna take care of your kids.
Like, tell me about planning. Yeah, it’s
all of it. Right. So interesting for me is Everest was my training ground for K two because K two stows steep and aggressive and actually has climbing sections that you can’t test gloves or gear or make sure everything fits. And then, yeah, you have family at home that’s taking care of kids.
Nice thing is, is that K two’s climbing seasons in July, so my kids were shipped off to summer camps to have different experiences. You fly into Islamabad, then you take a flight to a town called du. This flight is 45 minutes. But because there’s an 8,000 meter peak in the flight path, if there’s not pure sun and no clouds, the plane won’t go.
So the plane goes less than 50% of the time. And if that plane doesn’t go, that 45 minute flight turns into a 31 hour drive, oh Lord, with like razor sharp edges on the side of the road. And anything you can imagine that you’re just like, this is real life. Like, are we sure this is where we wanna go? And then you like drive to another little town and then you start a 60 mile trek into base camp.
There’s no tea houses, there’s no little places along the way. You have to set up camp every day. Take it down. You’re acclimatizing. ’cause you’re gaining altitude. It’s just rough. I mean it is a rough trek in. It’s a rough mountain. I got sick on my second attempt. Right? Like I mean it’s just
all of it.
Was it two months, three months? Like how much time did it take to just prep for this?
So I’m lucky I do a lot of acclimatizing at home. There’s some technology that you purchase that allows you to convert your bed into an oxygen deprivation tent. And so then your body, yeah, like lucky me hu just wanna have a sleepover.
So
I’ve also seen those masks. Have you hiked, do you hike with those masks too?
I train with the masks. Or train With the masks. Yeah. So then that allows me to bop into base camp as fast as I can go. So that cuts out time. So I was gone for both expeditions at K two ’cause it took me two attempts, no longer than four weeks, but most people are eight weeks.
Wow. Yeah. When you attempted it the first time, what happened? What went wrong? And then how did you change the plan on the second attempt to make summiting
happen? Yeah, so the first time there was not a lot of teams that climbed in 2021, ’cause Covid ran through Everest base camp. So then Pakistan said, Hey, we’re not gonna do this.
So they limited the number of teams there. I joined another team then that was local. We were on the mountain. I was actually a day ahead of everybody because there wasn’t enough campsites on the mountain for everybody to sleep. So I’m like, oh, I’ll go a day ahead and we’ll catch up to each other once there’s more space on the mountain.
And I got a radio call. And when you get a radio call, you have 15 minutes to answer it before you call back down. I get another call and another call. I get four calls within five minutes. So then your brain’s running. Something’s wrong. I hand the radio to the porters. The porters are talking Pakistani.
I’m straining as if I can understand what they’re saying. They finally hand the radio over to me and something was wrong. One of my teammates was caught in an avalanche. Um, another one was injured in the avalanche, and another one was stuck until the weather would get colder so that if a helicopter came in to rescue him, the blades wouldn’t trigger another avalanche.
So here I’m on the mountain, I just lost one of my dear friends. Another one’s hurt. We get this news. I’m trying to metabolize it and understand how did this happen? What do we do? Another team comes up and they said, Hey Jen, we’re going up the mountain. Do you wanna join us? And I was kind of dumbfounded.
I’m like, do I wanna join you? Whatcha talking about my teammate just died? I’m not joining you. Like, I’m gonna put people over peaks like I’m going down to take care of my team. Thank you. The mountain will always be here. So we went down, we buried a human. We helped another one get rescued. Then we started the trek out.
I came back to the States. I didn’t come home right away. My kids weren’t back from camp yet. So I called the nanny that was kind of running the show if something went wrong and said, Hey, I need a little bit of time. And I just started metabolizing everything that was going on. I called a grump dump. I got everything out that didn’t go well.
And I started looking at it and analyzing what was the same thing, manifesting different ways because I knew I had to go back. Um, when I went back, I picked a different team that had different safety precautions, different experiences. But I wasn’t excited about going back, right? Like I had PTSD of what happened the year before.
Yeah, lucky for me, there was a phone call that I took about three weeks before it was time to leave. And it was an individual that was training to climb K two that didn’t have the resources to make it happen. I’m like, oh, I’m here. There’s tons of gear in the us. I’ll bring stuff over. Happy to help. And I tell you, when you don’t wanna do something, find something bigger than you, that gets you motivated to go do it, because then it makes it easier.
So I go back to K two in 2022. I bring gear for this person that’s on my team. I get sick, I got sick, I got sneezed down by a donkey. Apparently donkeys can carry anthrax in third world countries. Who knew no idea. It presents like Giardia. So we just thought I had an intestinal like thing that we couldn’t beat.
I lost 30 pounds in that timeframe. I mean, it was crazy. It was time to go climb the mountain. I’m so glad I was so sick because I think it kept me from thinking about my friend who had the tragedy. The year before I was just trying to get to the top. I got to the top, there’s a third American female to Summit K two and 30 minutes later, the first Pakistani female stood on top of her country’s prize peak.
Wow. ’cause I helped sponsor her to make it possible. And so like I was excited for two seconds, but I was more excited about what that provided for her for Muslim women around the world and just that story in general. And I came home so proud because I think a lot of times failure happens in our lives or in our story, and it’s a reason to give up or to not continue.
And that story is a speed dial story for me. Realizing, no, the universe is using me for more. Like I need to continue. I just don’t see the full story. What way is the universe gonna use me to make more possible for others? And that was that
scenario. You’ve anal an analogy from Antarctica and, oh man, your trip to Antarctica.
As I was reading your story on Antarctica, my stomach’s in a complete pit. Jen, just, I’m like, holy cow. I mean, they drop you off in the middle of nowhere. This is the second biggest peak. So literally nobody goes there. The information is sketchy. Nobody, you know, it’s, it’s, you’re relying on just your, your witts.
But tell me about blue Ice. And I love this for all of our stackers, Jen, because life throws blue ice at us all the time. Right? 2024 is gonna throw a bunch of blue ice in our way and we gotta find our way around it. But if you could tell everybody what blue ice is and how you change the game plan when you encountered, this would be
wonderful.
Yeah. Okay. So when you’re climbing in Antarctica, for example, we used Mount Vincent, which is the highest point to climb, first to acclimatize for Mount Tyree, which is the second highest point we get there. I. We know from previous records, like I think we were the 15th to 20th people at the summit. My team was five.
So we don’t have a lot of records. Like you said, we know from previous records that it takes 24 to 36 hours to reach the peak and get back. So we’re planning on this and we’re like, okay, well what’s the, you know, and we’re going up the mountain and we’re doing great. Like timing’s working out, everything’s going well.
We’re feeling really confident. And then we hit blue ice. And the blue ice is ice. That doesn’t have oxygen in it. It’s this solid hard brick that when you throw an ice ax at it, it gets rejected back because there’s nothing in the ice that’s not pure. So it just doesn’t have a place to grab. And we’re on 60 foot ropes, essentially.
And so you climb one at a time, so one person climbs to get to the top, they lower the rope and then you’re the next person to climb when you climb blue ice, like they put me last because I was the least qualified. Thank God. You have to be so precise. Like you, we lost speed. We lost momentum. Every single swing, every single kick into that ice counted because if you hit it wrong, you were sliding down until that rope caught you and then you had to start over again.
And so that section, like there’s blue ice in our pursuits, and that’s a chance to slow down, change the speed, get very deliberate, be very calculated, and just do the motion, get through it and understand that the whole mountain isn’t blue ice. There’s never been a whole mountain that’s blue ice unless you’re climbing a waterfall.
But then even that’s not blue ice, that’s regular ice. And we got through it and I’m the second female to climb that mountain and I was. I felt like my mom and grandma were with me that entire time saying like, come on girl. You’re doing this for all of us ladies, let’s make it happen. So it was
awesome.
That’s fabulous having that, just that voice in your ear, you know, the, the people cheering for you. But I think there’s a huge lesson there, because when I look back just on my career, Jen, I just think about everybody expects it to be this, you know, smooth up pass. Like I can take that sled, like you were talking about on Mount Logan, just sled up, but you know, this hill of my career, but it always is blue ice, followed by blue ocean, followed by blue ice, blue ocean.
Like it’s this stair step thing. It’s never straight
ahead. It isn’t. And it’s honestly like that’s the story you remember. The story you remember is the blue ice section, like the smooth sailing, making progress. Those aren’t like, you don’t tell stories from that section of your life. You tell stories from the struggle.
I wanna go over some of your takeaways here. Number one, and these are great stackers for your 2024. Number one, establish clear goals and milestones. Clearly, when you’re looking at all seven of these peaks, Jen, clear goals and milestones had to be instrumental to everything you did.
Yeah, definitely. Well, and I learned a quick on, because when you climb a volcano, which is Ojo del Sato, the second highest point in South America, it’s a volcano.
It’s like climbing an anthill. There’s no visual reference that you’re making any kind of progress for hours, and it’s exhausting and like, it’s amazing how much that can suck your momentum. Where you climb a mountain like Everest that has sections, you know, you have the ice fall, you have the LOE face, you have the balcony, you have these different pieces.
Just having those little milestones along the way that give you momentum of saying, Hey, I made it here. We’re making progress. Let’s continue. It’s really important when you’re setting goals to keep that excitement
about ’em. I love this idea you present of looking back. ’cause I feel like too many people look at the horizon and the horizon always moves anyway.
I mean, if it’s not a mountain, if it’s just going, like anytime we reach a goal, we just, what’s the, what’s the next thing? Like looking back shows you that you actually made your way up the mountain. Yeah.
And here’s the thing, like I climbed Everest. I was on the top of that mountain for 10 minutes. I trained 1,238 hours for 10 minutes on the top of that mountain.
And like if that’s not a lesson in enjoying the journey, I don’t know what
is. Well a second is learn from others’ experiences, which I have to tell you, I had trouble with this when I was young. And for our younger stackers, I wanted to reinvent the wheel, Jen. And if I would’ve spent more time learning from others who went before me, man, I would’ve gotten there faster.
Definitely. And it just makes it more possible. I mean, when I climbed Everest, when I first looked at Everest, I didn’t even know it was a possibility. I didn’t know anybody that had climbed it. I called a coach that did, I went out to lunch with some people that did. They spilled ketchup on their shirt.
All of a sudden it like humanized my ability to climb Everest. And I’m like, okay, we’re good. So then when I called mom to say, Hey, I’m gonna go climb Everest, I had the confidence that I was gonna climb Everest and she could hear it in my voice and wouldn’t, wouldn’t battle me.
We talked last week to, uh, Eric Kalman about focus, and one of your big points here is to minimize distractions.
What did you do along the way to make sure that you didn’t get distracted? Yeah, you
just, you you book it in, right? So like, and if friends wanted to go out and hang out with me, they’d have to come do a workout with me. They’re like, oh, if you wanna go with Jen, you’re going on a hike. Like if you wanna see Jen or whatever.
Or like, if Jen’s gonna go to a soccer game, she’s gonna bring a 12 inch step in a backpack full of water bottles. ’cause she’s gonna turn that into a workout as well as a soccer game. So there’s only so many hours in a day. I decided that I was gonna be an athlete, a mom, and a business owner. And so everything had to fall under those categories and then anything else was bundled.
You’ve got a lot of great lessons here, but I want to go to the last one, embrace the moment. I wanna talk about one moment, Jen’s June 1st, 2023. You become the first woman to scale all the seven second summits. I just can’t imagine you taking those last three. I can’t imagine you taking those last three steps, but I can’t get inside you and imagine what you felt, share with us how you felt those last final steps of this amazing journey.
Gosh, I
still get goosebumps. Like I still get ’em. I’m so grateful. Um, so you see the summit, right? And you’re these steps away and you just become more quiet and more intentional and more purposeful with each step. And then you get to the top and you take this deep breath in. And everything disappears.
Sound, sky distance, different like separation between the earth, the sun, the moon, me, all of it. Like you’re everything. In one moment you’re the feeling of awe. And then you have to breathe out. And you breathe in and you breathe out and everything starts to come back to the world. And you start separating and you stand there and you realize how magical this life is.
I remember taking my soul like out of my body and throwing it to the world and saying, I can’t wait to find you next. Like, where is that gonna be? Because it’s truly in these goals that we set for ourselves that we get to have these moments of really living. And that’s where it’s at.
I think it’s a great mantra for 2024.
Reminds me of Michelangelo, Jen. When he said something to the tune of, it’s not about setting your goals too high and not reaching them. It’s about setting ’em way too low and easily reaching them. Right. We wanna set ’em, wanna set those goals high. I do have one more question because this is a money show, is you have had a long career in the financial services industry.
You’ve, you’ve run a successful financial company. You know the difference in this arena between good help and bad help, right? Yeah. Yes. And you had some great help. Like your coach was great help along the way. You talked about how in Pakistan you didn’t trust your porters. That’s a whole different story.
Tell me about the importance of the help around you to the success of this journey.
Uh, big mountains take big teams. So if you set a big goal for yourself, it’s gonna take a big team to get to the top. You can’t do it all yourself. Why do you have Sherpa? Why do you have support? Why do you have these people in our lives?
It’s because they’re part of our story to have that success. When you don’t have a strong person that you can rely on, you’re carrying all that weight for that person and yourself, and you’re just not gonna get as far. So the team matters, probably even more so than you as the individual. How often did you
have to fire bad help?
Oh, you have to become expert at it, and it’s my least favorite thing to do. Yeah. Yeah. I believe it. I mean you, I mean, it is seriously, and I had to use the lens of my son, would I want this person watching my son or climbing with my son or taking care of my son? And if I couldn’t say yes, then I wasn’t allowed to risk my life with that person either.
I.
Man, there’s a great quote that begins your chapter two of your book, uh, which is Fully Commit or Don’t Climb the Mountain. And I just love that as a mantra as well, fully commit or don’t climb the mantra. This is all Jen goes over, not just this story, but has stories of all the different, it’s fascinating.
And then the way, Jen, that you tie these into our lives, whether we’re running the family, running the company, running our career, whatever it is, it’s, it’s called Break Proof seven Strategies to build resilience and achieve your Life goals. And I believe it’s available everywhere, right?
It’s, it’s, it’s buy
it.
Send me a message, let me know what you
love. Awesome. And we’ll also link to your website, jen drummond.com. It was spelled with two Ns. Jen, thank you so much for being our mentor today and helping us get those tough goals. I really appreciate it.
Thank you. Have a great day.
I am Liz, the Chief Mom Officer, and when I’m not busy being the breadwinner of my family of five, I’m stack and Benjamins.
Big thanks to Jen Drummond for joining us. Hey guys, let’s throw out the lifeline to, uh, stacker in Need Somebody climbing Money Mountain. I. If you’d like us to help you climb Money Mountain head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. And not only will OG answer your question, but we’ll also uh, throw in some swag for being brave Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail.
Today we’re gonna throw out the lifeline to a stacker partway around the world. Christian, how are you?
Hey, Joe
and OG
calling in from Germany and would love to hear your thoughts on a real estate matter.
Couple years ago,
I bought two rental properties, little condos with a 0% down. Of course not because I chose to, it’s just because I had no money at 25 years old.
My question now is how risky is the situation? How can I reduce my risk without going down
the full day of Ramsey rabbit hole, of paying
everything off and almost
not building any retirement on the side? What do you think
is a good savings rate to keep up before throwing money at the mortgages? I’m now 34 years old and would love to hear from you guys.
Thank you for your time and a big
fat kiss. Wow,
what just happened?
That ended a little differently than I expected. I’ll take it. I would say that Christian’s got down, aroused in the other person in eager desire. I think he has that down. Yes. Blowing a kiss all the way.
I feel like we just have to just, just answer his question.
og. Just answer the
question. So 34 now was 25. I don’t know anything about mortgages in Germany, but let’s just assume they’re 30 years like they are in America. Who knows? Maybe they’re 50. So you’re 10 years, basically 10 years into the debt repayment. So my guess is, is that the principal balance has gone down not by a third, because you’ve basically only paid interest, you know, in the first, if it’s a third of year mortgage, first 10 years, mostly just interest, but some principle.
And then you also have the appreciation of the properties over the past 10 year-ish period. And I’m guessing they must cash flow. Okay. Otherwise you might’ve sold ’em or thrown ’em back. So my question would be is what are you doing with the cash flow that comes from the properties? If it’s just breaking even, then no harm, no foul, right?
Because you’ve probably established a little bit of a gap of equity between paying it down the market appreciation if there’s been any. So you know, if you feel like selling ’em, you’re not out any money basically, if they’re cash flowing, a little bit of extra cash, I. Then, uh, maybe you’re using some of that extra cash to fund your retirement or, or to, you know, save for retirement or use for spending or whatever.
You could if you wanted to just experiment with accelerating a little bit of additional principal payment. One of the things that I found really interesting was the difference between the minimum payment and paying something off in 15 years or 17 years or 20 years. The payment isn’t that big of a difference.
A few hundred dollars, a few hundred euros, Deutsche Marks. I don’t think they use those anymore. Frank’s, they definitely don’t use Frank’s in Germany, but they eat Frank’s some sort of weird money that involves lots of coins and very few dollar paper bills. Monopoly money. Yes. Colored. It’s not green anyways.
Um, so I would say like, isn’t that true? It’s got different colors on it. It’s, I mean, how do you know it’s real? It’s too complicated. It’s like a comic book. They’re built.
That’s why I love going to Europe. Everything’s like free. I just, I’m like, how many of these do you need? Exactly. Like making
it rain in the deli
and they like, it’s weird ’cause I just, I show ’em all the money, I’m like, what does it take?
And they generally take all of it. So what’s wild? They’re like, that’s
the exact amount.
Correct. Yes. How did you nail it? Correct sir. I’m like, not my first rodeo buddy. It’s not
first rodeo. Exactly. Anyways. So if you’re thinking, hey, I wanna pay this off a little faster, then throw a little extra cash at it, you’d be surprised at how fast a little bit of extra principal payments will accelerate that.
Pay down. I’ve had this theory for a while that I don’t like paying the bank more than I like paying myself. So on our mortgages, even the ones that are not, you know, in our favor, the two percenters, you know, as we go through the year, I look at how much interest I’ve paid and I make sure that we pay as much in principle as an interest.
That’s just kind of a personal yardstick for me that, you know, I can just use to make sure that we’re. More aggressively paying it off, but with a quick calculation, you can see how fast you can pay it off by adding just a few extra dollars above and beyond your current payment. And if you’ve got any sort of extra cash flow in the property or at the next rent increase, just use that or use, you know, kind of build in a strategy for, maybe not this year, but the next time I raise rent, I will take that extra raise and allocate 50% of it to, to extra principal.
I don’t think that you have to blow the whole thing up and go all Dave Ramsey, but if it bothers you and it causes some sleepless nights, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t, you know, just kinda rearrange a
little
bit. I think there’s two factors here, OG, that we need to consider. First. One is, is if it’s, you know, you said you don’t know how long the mortgage is, also if it’s adjustable or not, right?
’cause if that mortgage is gonna adjust, I’m gonna adjust my strategy while that interest rate is low to maybe get as much toward Yeah. Paying it down as I can before the interest rate pops
up. Yeah. I mean obviously all those are, are characteristics there that we gotta be concerned with. Yeah. But I think the first thing that I wanna know is what’s your margin of safety right now?
How much have you paid down? How much is it worth? You know, where are you? And if it’s not a comfortable enough number, put together a plan to how, how can I widen that gap so that if anything happens or if there’s market decline or I wanna sell the properties or whatever, you’ve got some flexibility in there to, to withstand some fluctuation.
I think there’s also some room on the other end, which is when he talks about savings rate and saving toward financial independence, what does that cost like? I’d, I’d wanna know what that cost as well and maybe put that away, uh, separately before I even get into this. Don’t I, I mean, I think I wanna just put away enough to make sure I get that minimum financial independence away and then work this plan.
Yeah,
a hundred percent. Joe, I know times are tough. Uh, Stacking Benjamins, what, what kind of swag are we giving out now? Is it like one of those little pencil grippers you use in elementary school that says Stacking Benjamins on it? What do we got going out to our
callers now? It is still the T-shirt. We still have the Greatest Money Show on Earth’s shirt.
You told me
we ran out of those and we couldn’t
afford to get more. Well, uh, we can’t have any here because they’re now limited edition now that obviously, uh, uh, things have changed around the lifeline. So stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail gets you one of these limited edition shirts and, uh, please come and get ’em.
You’ve got, uh, limited time on this edition of the shirt. Hey, uh, that’s gonna almost do it for today’s show, but if you’re not here for just one question, you really have a question about your entire financial situation. You know what? OG and his team are taking clients. So head to stacky Benjamins dot com slash og.
That’s the calendar for OG and his team so that you can see how his team will help you make better financial decisions in 2024 and maybe get that plan moving not just on the mortgage, but more og. Does that come with a, with a big kiss? Would people go to stacky Benjamins dot com slash og? No, for sure, maybe.
Sure, sure. Probably not. Uh, stacky Benjamins dot com slash og. All right. Time to transition over to the back porch, man. We’ve got some, we got some fun stuff. First of all. Doug this joke competition. We’re doing the joke off. We’ve got some, we’ve got some hear that and
not laugh. We got
some great jokes for the joke off, the joke off these math jokes.
I was a little concerned though, uh, Kathy posted a fantastic math joke in the basement Facebook group. What are you doing? We’re giving away prizes for this and we only have a few spots left. We’re gonna wrap up talking about this, I think this week. Get this thing going here, hopefully this week so that we can, uh, in two weeks start having the competition here.
But. Kinda last call this week, guys, for the joke off, don’t you think? Doug? Yeah. Yeah. Gotta get here soon. Uh, email me, Joe, at stack of Benjamins dot com. Just put joke off in the, in the subject line and then, uh, and then tell your joke.
Hope your spouse doesn’t see it as you’re sending it. I
did have, I have had some that, uh, I think people need to remember that this is a family show.
I got a fantastic one from Mark today by fantastic. I mean, freaking horrible and definitely not a joke that we could use. So Mark, uh, mark send in, send me in another one. Send me in something we can use. All right. And, uh, we, we’ve only got a few spots left, but really what I wanna do guys, is I’d love to hear more about, uh, OG your trip to Pasadena.
Oh,
this little trip right
here. Oh,
that little trip.
Oh, you went to a John Phillips Sousa convention. It’s weird. Wow. I didn’t know you were
into that. og. So we went to California, went to the Rose Bowl, which was pretty awesome. All said and done. I mean, we were gone for an entire week as a family. We went to Michigan to see everybody for Christmas.
Had a couple days, flew across the country with the kids. Surprised them the next morning getting ’em up and saying, oh, I know we just got to LA but we have something to do. We’re gonna go on an adventure. Like, dad, we just got here. Like, we just wanna sleep. It’s like, Nope. It’s adventure time. In California, we’re going on an adventure.
We’re going on a California adventure. And Caroline was the one that got it. She goes, we’re gonna California
Adventure, we’re
gonna Cal. Oh my God. God. So we got there and their top seven rides were all down. Oh, inexplicably. The
Carsland stuff. I’ve always wanted to go to the Carsland. I
don’t think that’s the, I think that’s Disney World, not Disneyland.
No.
Carsland is in California Venture. There’s a whole section of California venture that’s called Carsland. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. No, that was fine. But we eventually did all the rides. So we did the Lightning McQueen ride, whatever it’s called, uh, which is kind of fun. Basically it’s you and you’re kind of trying to get to the town.
Yeah. And you get pulled over by the cop. Yeah. That’s the
the cars land ride that everybody like wants to ride that ride. Yeah. It’s
super cool. So you get pulled over, you go, uh, cow tipping all this stuff, and then finally at the end you do a race. So last little bit of it’s a race with another, with the other car that started.
So that was a cool ride. We did a, you have to do a fast best for that, whatever it’s called, genie Plus, we did the in Incre coaster, which is their best coaster there. Yeah, yeah. It’s all about the Incredibles. So we did that twice. When we first got there, it was closed. It was like a 20 minute wait. We’re like, oh gosh, this is great.
We’ll be able to knock this out a couple times. And we got there. Boom. Closed. It was closed for a couple hours. Ended up doing it twice, which was great. We did the Gardens of Galaxy Ride, which is very, very much like Tower of Terror. Yes. But way smoother than Tower of Terror. Caroline opted out, so did Lisa.
She was like, I don’t like these types of rides and all that stuff. It was very smooth. It’s very cool. It’s not scary. You go up and down like tower terror, but it’s a lot smoother than that. So, I mean, the scariest part is like walking through the whole thing to get in line. ’cause they’re telling this whole story and you know, like tower terror is, yeah.
And it’s all dark and dingy and there’s noises and kind of freaked out and you just get on the ride. It’s, I would
think that we go, gee, the park’s packed. I would think the park would be just insanely packed. Well we went, it was raining
like hell, uh, on the drive there, so we were hoping that it wouldn’t be so busy.
It was, it was pretty busy. But in California, adventure is incredibly small. And I understand Disneyland on the other side is also incredibly small relative to what you’re used to. Yeah, so we only had a park pass for the, for a California venture. We didn’t go to the other side either way. It was kind of an all day thing.
You know, we got there at, I dunno, nine o’clock in the morning. We left about at four after eating a little bit and buying some. Ice creams and whatnot. It was Okay, cool. We’re we’re good. Time to go. So, uh, so we did that the 31st was kind of a low key day for us. So we were there, we had Disneyland on the 30th and then, uh, the 31st kinda laid low.
’cause we had ly at four 20 al on January 1st. Oh. Turns out they’re a big fan of fireworks on, uh, new Year’s Day, huh. In Los Angeles. That also is really super awesome. At 3, 2, 1 12:00 AM whatever time they decide to do it, you were awake whether you wanted to be or not. Yeah. Well, what’s funny is, is that we had this big plan of watching the ball drop in New York.
We’re like, oh, we’ll just watch it on TV and be like, oh, happy New Year. It’s nine o’clock, let’s go to bed. But they delay the telecast in LA so in Texas you can watch it. It’s an hour ahead. Right. You know, when you watch the ball drop, it’s 11. You can go to bed like a normal person. In LA they delay it. So we’re watching, I go, why does it say three hours to go?
It’s like 18 minutes, you know, what are they talking about? So we finally figured out that they’re, you know, we had, we were like, we’re not gonna watch this whole thing. So we founded a, a YouTube stream, watched it at nine. I was asleep by nine 10, which is par for the course. Got a great night’s sleep. Got up at four 30 downstairs on the bus.
And, and so they take you to the Rose parade right at the beginning of the Rose parade, like the, literally the street where they’re all lining up, but they’ve got these passes where they can drive the buses right to the road. So our walk from the bus to our seat was a block and a half, maybe a block and a half.
Oh, more like a block. We got to the Rose parade maybe around quarter to six, 6:00 AM something like that. And the tour guide was like, just stay here. There’s no need to go out there and sit in the cold. They had a movie going on the bus. We’re like, when the movie’s over and then we can go. So about 7 30, 7 40, we wandered off the bus, got in our seats.
They kicked it off right at eight o’clock. So just like you watch it, you know, on the East Coast at 11, and it starts out, boom. Started and off they went. So parade was really cool. Exactly. Two hours later you could tell they were running way behind schedule because they had like the final two floats and a couple of bands.
So it was like a couple of bands of final two floats, and then the police cars and whatever that kind of wrap it up with like four minutes to go the parade director’s like shoving all the band people out of the way. So the last two floats could go by with the, like the celebrities on it, you know, the final two floats before the buzzer at, at the two hour mark.
And then we walked down, got back on the bus and they drove us right to the, uh, right to the Rose Bowl. So we were there from, ah, probably about 1130. Uh, and then kickoff was about two 15 local time. So you left the
hotel at four 30. Yeah. And then all the way through the game you had to be ready for the entire day away.
Yes. Which was kind of also the weird, stressful part of it because you know, at five in the morning or rose parade time, it’s 41 degrees and the bowl game was 65 mm. And you can’t bring backpacks, you can’t bring any of that stuff. And you can’t leave it on the bus because you don’t know what bus you’re gonna get back on.
So it was literally like pack or wear what you wanna keep or be okay with throwing stuff out basically. So, geez. Wow. It was fine. It was fine. It was good. We got a, you know, we had a bag that everything could fit in.
So what you probably did is you wore all your red and white outerwear. In for the morning so that you were warm and then you could just throw it away and reveal all of your maize and blue for the game.
Right. Am I right? I would
say where we were for the parade was 80 20 Michigan to Alabama fans. Yeah, that makes sense. And maybe it’s because Alabama has gone to semifinals like every year since it started, basically that they’re like, we’ll wait for the championship, whatever. This is another, just another one.
The stadium was probably 60 40 or 70 30. Michigan. There’s definitely the section of Alabama fans, but then, you know, sometimes you just see the interspersed, you know, it’s like, well, they got tickets last minute and they are where they are type of thing. All the people who got last minute tickets were all Michigan fans, it seemed.
So, it was definitely, definitely overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly Michigan at the game. But the, uh, the weather was perfect. It’s so beautiful out there with the, I mean, the hills and the topography and the bright blue skies and the mountains in the background. Some of the mountains had snow on ’em. Just, I mean, it was like a postcard.
It was crazy. B two bomber flyover for the parade, and then also for, uh, for the Rose Bowl, which was super cool. Oh, I saw the
Rose Bowl, uh, fly over from above it and it’s a really cool
photo. Yeah, I saw that picture. I saw it from below it, which is even cooler.
Wow.
Shh.
Scoreboard on that. Flex. You just got dunked on.
I did on that flex. Besides don’t, uh, don’t question. Oh, gee’s. Authority on Rose Bowl stuff. Maybe we should, uh, wrap this up and ask what we should have learned. Well, the coolest
thing out of this whole trip, by the way, we were talking about home ownership was the day before we left. So we left on the 27th.
We had Christmas morning, the 26th. We hung out and then we were leaving. Early, early, early on the 27th, 7:00 AM to get up to Michigan. And on the 26th I opened the refrigerator and it made a beeping noise, like beep, beep beep. Like, huh, that’s weird. Next time I did it, I did it again. I said, I should probably investigate what this beeping noise means.
And it’s flashing. There’s a little thing that’s flashing and I’m like, I don’t know. This is supposed to be flashing. I opened up the freezer and I went, why is all the meat warm? So, uh, whatever makes the, uh,
easy, easy. Doug’s teenage boy, Doug’s teenage boy is coming out right now. Yeah, exactly. Let’s
keep it on the freezer.
Why? Anyways, along the short of it was, was that our refrigerator broke. So in the final five hours that we were home, we had to figure out what we were gonna throw away, what we were gonna donate, what we were gonna like, send to a friend’s house to keep cold. What we were gonna, we had a small refrigerator, like beer fridge, outside to put like stuff that full of the stuff that we wanted to keep empty out the entire refrigerator.
And all I could think about was. A, this is gonna be a pretty expensive fix when we get back. And B, I’m so glad this happened on the 26th, at eight at night, and not the 27th, at eight at night. Because when we got home last night and opened up the refrigerator, which was completely empty ’cause we emptied it all out, it was 68 degrees of the refrigerator.
Oh. And I’m thinking if that would’ve been off by a day, I mean, all the ice would’ve melted, you know, the fridge, every, obviously everything would’ve been rotten. It would’ve smelled to high heaven. So. Home ownership. Yeah, I
think it’s cute in Texas how your beer fridge is just a little thing in the Midwest, our beer fridge are the two previous fridges we had in the garage completely full of all the old Milwaukee that’ll fit two pieces
full size.
Yeah. Well. It came up in discussion that we need to, uh, don’t throw it in the yard
yet, right?
Well, the third old fridge is on the front porch. That’s our front porch light. When we open the open the door. Yes.
And to wrap it up in case you care. Here’s the, uh, final play of the Rose Bowl,
which, by the way, Alabama’s got the ball trying to, uh, like
the three are guy.
Yeah,
I like the yeah. Guy.
Fabulous. I know what I learned this week. Doug, what did you learn?
Well OG what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today. First, take some advice from Jen Drummond and commit to your goals. Do it now. Go tell someone what you’re gonna do. Set milestones on a calendar. Pause this to-Do list right now and go get it done.
Second, wanna shore up your career working on your interpersonal skills, never hurt. Go back to the basics and win some friends and influence some people in your workplace. You won’t regret it and you’ll worry about your job less. So. What’s the biggest to do? Settle up your debts before you find yourself daydreaming about starting a new life under a pseudonym.
If you do, make sure you pick a cool name like Rodrigo Guacamole. Thanks to Jen Drummond for joining us today. You can find her book Break Proof wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. 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 Eichenberg. 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 Garb 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.
Thank you for your
time and a big fat kiss.
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