Today, we’re joined by funeral director Scott Mueller, who shares invaluable advice on pre-planning your final expenses. Scott elucidates on the importance of making arrangements ahead of time and the benefits it brings to both you and your loved ones during emotionally charged times. Avoid common pitfalls and choose wisely to avoid turning your financial planning into a horror show. Trick or treat? More like protect your assets or weep!
In our headline segment, we delve into optimizing your homeowner’s insurance with critical features like replacement cost coverage, special personal property endorsements, and umbrella policies. Discover how these essential elements can guard your castle and your treasures from life’s unexpected frights. Finally, we lighten the mood with Doug’s hilarious trivia and some fun Halloween anecdotes, ensuring you end this episode both smarter and happily haunted.
RUN OF SHOW
- Introduction to the Witching Hour
- Halloween Special: Stacking Benjamin Show
- Meet the Funeral Director: Scott Mueller
- The Importance of Pre-Planning Funeral Expenses
- Personal Stories and the Emotional Impact
- Trust Issues with Funeral Directors
- Avoiding Funeral Scams and Making Informed Decisions
- Pre-Planning: Burial, Cremation, and Other Options
- Final Thoughts and Resources
- Iconic Horror Movie Lines
- Halloween Trivia and Chat GPT
- Funeral Planning Stories
- Umbrella Liability Insurance
- Halloween’s BEST Jokes and Wrap-Up
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Wednesday Mentor: Scott Mueller
Thanks again to Scott Mueller for joining us today! To learn more about Scott, visit Mueller Memorial Funeral Home and Cremation.
Grab your copy of his book What To Know Before You Go: An insiders answers to the most commonly asked questions about death, grief and funerals
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Our Headline
Your homeowners insurance policy should include these 3 items, according to financial experts (Fox Business)
Doug’s Trivia
- Which film included this line, “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m having an old friend for dinner.”?
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Turning Halloween Into a Fun Economic Game (with Chuck Jaffe) SB1593
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Opening bit: When the mailbox no longer shuts, when your credit report is a thousand cuts. When investment dreams become night mayors and clerks at stores admonished with glares, you can’t afford that, can you? [00:00:39] When vacationing days are far and gone when pets disappear into the night, that’s the time the witching hour. When all your dreams, your bills devour the horror of a bad field, nighttime, sky, the hows of creditors. Fill your ears. Spiderwebs inch from your Roth, IRA, your mutual funds. Well, they’ve seen better years. [00:01:09] It’s all gone a nightmare, it seems. But is it? It doesn’t have to be because on this night, so dark and weary, the boys on the microphone are making Mary like three ghouls around the boat full of lost balance sheets, lizards, pen toads, staring briskly bubbles, charge cards, maxed and filled. Insurances never attained, forgotten wheels on this night, so quiet, hand, slow, like a horrible dream. [00:01:49] It is the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:02:09] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s a special Halloween week episode of the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:02:27] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s terrifying episode, we are bringing on a. Funeral director, wait. The funeral director is gonna make things less scary since when is that a plot line? Do I have to write this stuff myself? All right. Well, today we’ll help you pull back the cobwebs on your final expense plans with St. [00:02:49] Paul Base Funeral Director Scott Mueller in our headlines. Hey, finally, here’s scary, bad Property Casualty Insurance. What we’re helping with that too? Okay, we’ll talk homeowners insurance and umbrella policies and quote, doing better on today’s episode. And in our TikTok minute we’ll share one treat. [00:03:13] That really seems like more of a trick when you think about it. This one’s actually scary. That’s good. And now two guys who make Frankenstein and Dracula seem well adjusted. It’s Joe and O Juju Jean, [00:03:34] Joe: happy day before Halloween. Stackers. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. Average Joe money on X or Twitter. And my partner across the card table from me. And I say partner ’cause he’s got on the straw cowboy hat. This particular day in Texas, it’s Mr. og. How are you? Cow poke. That is not why I thought you said partner. [00:03:56] OG: It’s a little, uh, late to be wearing a straw hat, but it is 90 degrees out. So 90 degrees in [00:04:01] Joe: October. Still summer. Sounds like, uh, north, north Texas. Dunno what you’re gonna get. Just come back tomorrow. It’s pretty hot. We can still bring the heat. We’re gonna bring the heat today og, because we’re talking [00:04:11] OG: your like fake Texas accent is awful by the way. [00:04:15] It’s horrible. Just, just go back to Texarkana or whatever your accent is. [00:04:20] Doug: Hey there partner. [00:04:22] Joe: Don’t [00:04:22] Doug: you know, [00:04:24] Joe: try, try to put a twang on the Wisconsin. Yes. Why [00:04:27] Doug: Milwaukee’s? Best [00:04:30] Joe: we, where’s Milwaukee’s best? No, I think they can do better. Fairly certain They can do better. I’ve always thought that’s a mislabeled. [00:04:39] The beer [00:04:40] OG: just a truth in advertising. There is there. [00:04:41] Joe: You talked about Prego when I learned enough Italian to know what Prego means. You know what Prego means? Please. It means you’re welcome. Like just, what are we gonna call it? Well, when they get done eating it, we’ll just say you’re welcome. We put this on the on on. [00:05:02] We, we, we should call this the Prego podcast today. Because we’re bringing Scott Mueller on. This is actually a big time of life, og that in all the years of doing the podcast, we have never talked about pre-planning your funeral expenses about these emotional times. And man, this is a, uh, I can verify with all the stuff that’s happened in my family this year, that’s an emotional time. [00:05:29] And pre-planning probably something you wanna do. [00:05:34] OG: Yeah, I mean, I don’t have anything to add there. It doesn’t sound like a really fun time to be like, thinking through all of your options. You’re like, I just, I’m out of decision making just right. You know, you’re, you’re not gonna make a good one when you’re stressed. [00:05:47] And when we do financial planning, we don’t really put this in the plan, but we talk about the fact that. You are not gonna make good money decisions when you’re emotionally charged. So think through some potentially not so fun situations like health issues or disability issues or sudden death of a spouse or something like that. [00:06:04] And let’s game plan that financially. So at least that’s already on the shelf, and I think that’s what you’re talking about here, is let’s have that plan on the shelf so that you’re not trying to mix good financial decisions with really highly emotional times. [00:06:16] Joe: The best person I could think of to talk about this was, uh, Scott Mueller. [00:06:19] I’ve known Scott Mueller for a while. He’s actually a guy in my strategic coach group, og. And what I love about Scott is a few things. First thing is he’s second generation funeral director. He’s literally grown up with funerals in his family. Second, he’s talked a lot as he gets older about how his motivation around being a funeral director has changed. [00:06:41] I’m sure he and I. We’ll talk about that ’cause he is very, very open about, uh, emotionally what it’s like to be there in those moments. But third, this guy has the best sense of humor. He shows up with all of these amazing entrepreneurs in the room the last time we were together and he has a shirt that I thought in the middle of summer was a Christmas shirt. [00:07:04] ’cause it has a bunch of wreaths all over it. You know, think about take your average, I’m sitting on a beach, hypothetically in where the hell are you While we’re recording this og. Way far away. Yes. [00:07:15] OG: On an island. [00:07:16] Joe: Yes. And I’ve got on that tourist shirt that has just a bunch of print on it. Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. [00:07:21] I’m totally tourist, but it’s a bunch of what looks like Christmas res. But you look closer and there’s caskets behind every single wreath. This dude has has this crazy thing that is funny to him. And it’s only funny when [00:07:36] Doug: you really, really look at it to the rest of us. But hold on. ’cause somebody at the shirt company thought We’re gonna sell a ton of these. [00:07:43] I know, I know. We’re gonna make money off of a casket shirt. What? [00:07:49] Joe: I’m gonna change into the shirt that uh, he got me the last time we were together ’cause we’ve been friends for a long time and um, I have to tell you, this shirt, this shirt is a, another shirt like that where it’s funny to me and it’s only funny if you know who it came from. [00:08:04] So we’ll, we’ll have that later. Scott Mueller coming up next, A guy who knows how to plan what the issues are and. You know, you hear all these things in the media about funeral directors taking advantage of you. I’m sure he’s going to address all that. But first we have some sponsors who make sure this is free for everybody. [00:08:24] So let’s hear from them and then we’re gonna talk to Scott Mueller. [00:08:41] And I am super happy to welcome this guy to mom’s card table. He’s the guy people are dying to meet. Ooh, Scott. Mueller’s here. Ooh, that [00:08:48] Scott: is, you’ve never [00:08:49] Joe: heard that joke before. That is painful [00:08:50] Scott: to hear. I’ve heard it so many times. I, I prefer not to hear it again. However, Joe, you put a certain tenor into that voice that makes it, that makes it acceptable. [00:08:59] I, I [00:09:00] Joe: don’t know. But you know, the, the better the dad joke. Oh yeah. Well, the worst the dad joke, the better. [00:09:05] Scott: Hey. In fact, these are becoming quite popular now, where you can tell these jokes and have everybody moan, but they’re writing ’em down, you know, so that they can tell ’em again. [00:09:13] Joe: Well, and a fabulous one. [00:09:15] Uh, you and I have been friends for a while, as I said in the intro, is that you were upstairs talking to mom, so you didn’t hear it, Scott, but you and I have been friends and acquaintances for a few years and we’re at Strategic Coach Together, which we talk a lot about on the show. But you are nice enough to send your friend, Joe, this T-shirt, and I’ll show it to people watching on YouTube. [00:09:32] It’s better to be seen than viewed, which is funny. What I like about this shirt, Scott, is that nobody gets it until I tell ’em my funeral director buddy gave it to me. That’s right. [00:09:42] Scott: That’s right. It’s a very limited edition. If any of your viewers or listeners want one, it should be available in our souvenir shop, but I, I don’t know that will be, but, [00:09:52] Joe: and that’s how different Scott Mueller is. [00:09:54] He, uh, has a souvenir shop. I do not, I do not. But, but if I did, do We Exit the last time through the gift shop as well, Scott always, [00:10:03] Scott: always, everybody needs another pair of dentures, you know? [00:10:07] Joe: Right. Two things I’d like to highlight about this conversation before we begin. First of all, this topic is super important to me stackers because both my dad and my mother-in-law died in 2024, and I saw firsthand two things. [00:10:23] I saw firsthand how a lack of planning and in some places bad planning, creates a lot of dysfunction and also just a lot of scrambling. I also saw firsthand on the other side of my family just how much pre-planning matters, and as a guy who was a financial planner for a long time, back in the day. I would tell people to preplan, but, and Scott, you, and I’ll get into this in a second, but, but the ROI, I’m like, is the ROI there? [00:10:51] Is it not there? And I would overwhelmingly change my view of, eh, maybe to, oh hell yeah. In a heartbeat. That’s the first thing. So I really, this is an important topic to me and, uh, much more important than it was 12 months ago, but second. This has also been very important to you in the past, but I also feel like on a personal level, Scott, this is very important to you. [00:11:14] You also had a family tragedy I believe in, in your family, and you’ve also had a recent health scare. [00:11:22] Scott: Yep. And there’s nothing like that to all of a sudden change your priorities and change your focus immediately. In the past three years, I found out I had cancer and Covid on the same day. That was a bad day. [00:11:35] And then, then my sister Debbie died and my mom died, and then my other sister Connie died. And then my brother-in-Law Doug, who was married to my sister Debbie, died all within that timeframe. None of us are immune from this and none of us are immune from the emotional transaction that none of us can calculate because we’ve never really allowed us to think about it. [00:11:58] Because for most of us, it is unthinkable to give up somebody that we love. But it is going to happen. It’s best to have a little preparation for it and to certainly have a conversation with the people that you love about what you would like to do. I’ve gotta imagine [00:12:14] Joe: holy the, the cancer diagnosis and covid on the same day. [00:12:18] You talk about bad day, that’s understatement of the year. But between that and, and all the death lately, like even for a guy, so you’re not even first generation funeral director. You grew up in a funeral director, family. I have to imagine just all of this happening in the last three years, Scott has really hit home much more for you. [00:12:38] Scott: It has. And then as I age Joe, I get more personal demand as I get older because my friends, their parents are dying and so they wanna have me in there. And so all of this becomes much more, much more personal for me, much more emotional for me. I am committed to this profession now in a different way than I was when I first came into it. [00:13:02] When I first came into it, it was about achievement and, and making a mark and that type of thing. And now it’s all about how can I help people relieve the, the stress and the anxiety that comes with grief. We’ve really worked hard on that and we continue to work hard on it. [00:13:24] Joe: You have a book on this topic and certainly I’m not here to be Barnes and Noble and sell books, and I know you don’t really care about selling books, but I do like, I do like the topics in the book and I want to organize our discussion. [00:13:37] So stackers what I’m talking about the book, I really wanna, and we will of course have a link on our show notes and talk about the name of the book and stuff at the end. But, but you start off with the fact that, so for you, this is personal. You wanna make sure that people feel good, but you present right away, Scott, the thing that all of our stackers are thinking right now. [00:13:56] We don’t trust you. That’s right. We do not trust you. Why don’t people trust the funeral director? [00:14:02] Scott: There’s a pretty rich stereotype of funeral directors. You know, people come in expecting an old man. I guess I follow that stereotype now with a dark suit and a stove pipe hat and a tape measure trailing out of his pocket. [00:14:13] You know, that’s kind of, he’s generally taller than you are, Scott. Oh, and his fingers are thin and cold, and yeah, the stereotype is very, very rich. And over the years it has been filled. With some of these stories that unfortunately are true, where people had been taken advantage of by funeral directors and kind of put the screws to them. [00:14:33] Now, that has really subsided tremendously because of the scrutiny that we’re under and because of the internet that is there and because of the Federal Trade Commission that passed a rule that said, here’s how we are to behave when it comes to pricing and things like that, that happened in 83 for all those reasons. [00:14:52] Anytime there is a rich stereotype of somebody, and it generally isn’t positive, the lack of trust is huge, and so you have to give people a reason to feel that you are trustworthy and that you can become a trusted advisor. [00:15:09] Joe: You, you said that you personally, uh, I don’t remember the exact phrase, but, um, you gotta see a lot of your competitors in action. [00:15:17] Yeah. I don’t remember exactly what your role was, but you said even looking at that, yeah, there’s a shyster out there, but it makes the stories even bigger because there’s so few of them. [00:15:25] Scott: Yes. And there really are, generally people are really cared for pretty well by the funeral profession now. There’s different elements of that and, and what’s happening in our profession is happening in the dental profession and in chiropractic and in eye clinics and in anything else where venture capital firms and public firms are coming in and they’re acquiring, uh, funeral businesses. [00:15:50] I can speak to this personally because I sold my businesses to one of these companies. I worked for them for 12 years, and I was in an airplane for three weeks, a month. The opportunity came back for me to buy the business back. I’ve never been happier because I think a profession like this where you need to think about compassion and not responsibility to shareholders is really important. [00:16:14] Joe: So how do we avoid, and I know we’re not gonna be able to get it all, Scott, but what are some of the biggest gotchas that we can make sure we avoid? To make sure we’re not working with one of the few unscrupulous people out there. [00:16:28] Scott: There are a couple of marketplaces like Florida, Arizona, where there are a lot of retirees that have settled in that area. [00:16:35] And uh, in those marketplaces especially, there are cremation providers that will put up on billboards at cremation for 7 95 or 6 95 or something like that. Don’t, don’t go to those people. You should, if, if you go to the least expensive in a professional kind of setting, there is some compromise that is being made and any compromise that is being made is usually not in your interest. [00:17:00] Joe: What’s an example of a compromise in cremation? ’cause it, it feels like your ashes no matter what, Scott [00:17:05] Scott: Yes, you are. But the biggest question that people have that they’re almost afraid to ask is, Hey, I want cremation, but how do I know that the ashes I get back are the ashes of the person I love? Oh man. [00:17:17] So we go over, in fact, that’s a conversation I have with every family that chooses cremation. I go over that with them and I only see somebody’s head nod about that, that says, yes, make me feel better about that. Because there are situations that happen from time to time that make you really question that. [00:17:36] There was a crematory in, in, uh, Georgia that hadn’t paid their natural gas bill in months yet they were cremating. Bodies for quite a few months. Oh my. There was quite a mess there. Forensic mess. I won’t get into the detail. That math [00:17:51] Joe: isn’t math thing, right? [00:17:52] Scott: It doesn’t math well, and uh, they told me there’d be no math on this, Joe, but that one I didn’t work out. [00:17:58] So there are instances like that recently in Colorado where Colorado doesn’t have any licensing law or didn’t. Now they are gonna have it. They didn’t have any licensing law regarding funerals, funeral homes and funeral directors, that there was a low cost provider who was not taking care of the bodies in the way that they should and they were decomposing in their facility. [00:18:21] Oh, now, yes, everybody wants to save a dollar, but at what expense do you wanna save a dollar? So I always look if you’re in a market where it’s being advertised as very, very cheap, look at that with a jaundice eye. Uh, second thing to consider is. Do you wanna work with a family owned funeral home? Is that important to you or not? [00:18:44] I maintain that it is because I think that we have greater responsibility to our community than a publicly held or venture capital owned, uh, funeral home. [00:18:54] Joe: Well, you know what a venture capital company is trying to do. I mean, we have that you were talking about hospitals. Our hospital Scott just went bankrupt. [00:19:01] And there’s a, uh, a, a federal investigation of this company because they go into small communities and take all the money out. Yep. And now a bunch of my friends who are nurses and orderlies, and here in this small town I live in, in Texarkana, they don’t have jobs anymore because of, and venture capital sometimes gets a bad rap, but a lot of times rightly so. [00:19:23] Scott: Well, I think a lot of times it’s rightly so because. I have a friend who sold his business, not a funeral business, but he sold it to a venture capital firm and he took two dips and two dips are the sale, the rollup of the sale to the, of that group, to the next bigger venture capital firm. And then they did it again. [00:19:41] And so with each sale of that, the culture of the business, the leadership of the business changes, he’s selling a commodity, which is, that’s easy to do within that environment. But in the funeral profession where people are depending on a reputation and these firms like to buy a firm that has a good reputation, they don’t change the name. [00:20:02] So they give the appearance that nothing has changed. [00:20:05] Joe: That was exactly what I was gonna ask because my understanding was was that you could see, you know, Mueller Memorial as an example, and this still is a venture capital backed Yes. Thing. It’s a big corporate entity. [00:20:18] Scott: Yep. Yep. In fact, we have one very active company that is out there acquiring and they’ve acquired in our market, but they’re not good at acquiring a full service funeral home. [00:20:30] There’s one that had a great reputation within two years. They are half of what they were before. Wow. And it’s very tough to do that in the funeral profession. It’s very, you gotta be almost intentional about it. So you just straightforward ask the question, are you family owned? I think that’s worthwhile because I think it’s important to know who is that person accountable to. [00:20:51] If it’s somebody comes in and asks me, who are you accountable to? I say, I’m accountable to you. But if it’s owned by a company like previously when I was owned by the public company, they’re a good company, but my responsibility was to them. Their responsibility is to the shareholder. It’s ultimately not to the it, it is to the consumer in a roundabout way. [00:21:15] Sure. But as you know, public companies have to provide increasing earnings per share in order to move that stock price up. Our business is a tough business to roll up into that kind of an ownership situation. So I think it’s important that it’s family owned. [00:21:31] Joe: I’m glad you touched on the billboards. I’m glad you touched on lowcost provider. [00:21:36] I’m glad you gave us the insight into family versus corporate owned. I. I wanna talk about another thing that I have not studied enough, and I’m sure our stackers haven’t studied enough, and this is if we decide on burial, the, the casket and, and I’ll, I’ve, I’ve heard, you know, tangentially at parties and stuff, stuff about the casket. [00:21:56] But as a way to get into this, I think the best way to get into this topic is, uh, in a related industry. And this is Scott, a comedian Brian Regan talking about selling refrigerators. And I’ll tell you what this has to do with caskets in a second. All right. [00:22:12] bit: Needed a refrigerator for our new place. And I, I’ve never bought a refrigerator my whole life. [00:22:16] I, I went into the appliance store, there’s like a 900 of ’em lined up. There’s a salesman there. What’s this guy supposed to say about refrigerators? Well, you have this refrigerator right here. This keeps all your food cold. For 600, [00:22:37] you’ve got this refrigerator. This keeps all your food cold for 800. [00:22:45] Check this out. 1400 keeps all your food cold. [00:22:54] So this guy’s working me on this one. I’ve never seen a guy work so hard. This one is a very nice refrigerator. It has a meat drawer. And, um, what you do with that, [00:23:08] you would, you would put, [00:23:13] Joe: but I could just imagine I am hanging out with you, Scott, and you’re like, this puts your body in the ground for 800. This puts your body in the ground for a thousand. This is for for 1200. How do we make a good, uh, casket decision? [00:23:27] Scott: Well. I’m gonna be the first one to tell you that all caskets do the same thing. [00:23:32] They all do. They keep [00:23:32] Joe: your body [00:23:33] Scott: cold underground. They provide a conveyance from place of death to the place of burial. I’m also gonna be the same guy who tells you that it does not matter what you buy, it matters that you say goodbye. And that’s really the heart of what’s going on the old days of us shoving a family into a room with 25 different caskets and saying, Hey, pick one and if you feel lucky, pick two. [00:23:57] You know, that’s what we used to do to people, and nobody had any knowledge of it. And so the, the knowledge was taught to us by the casket supplier. And so some of those caskets were sealed against the entrance of air and water. Who cares about that? Some of them had cathartic protection so they wouldn’t rust so quickly, and some of them ridiculously enough had a 50 year warranty. [00:24:23] Who’s gonna, you know, [00:24:26] Joe: it only made it to year 40 eight’s. We dug grandpapa [00:24:28] Scott: up. That’s right. That’s right. You know, and the FTC said, if you’re gonna make a claim that it’s gonna be sealed, you gotta be able to back it up. So they backed it up with this warranty, which was ridiculous. You can spend from very little to very ridiculous, but it really isn’t about that anymore. [00:24:45] Right now, in my marketplace in St. Paul, Minnesota, about 70% of people are cremated. And so casket isn’t even, isn’t even a decision that they talk about. There are still marketplaces where the cremation rate may, may be 30 or 40%. So a casket is still important. All it comes down to, I’d always tell people is, you know what you like and you know what you can afford. [00:25:10] That’s really what you should use. Nobody else who comes to the funeral has enough knowledge about that product to determine whether you scrimped on it or you overpaid on it. They’re just not gonna know. [00:25:22] Joe: You do make a good point about this. Well, you just made a good point about it, and you really emphasize this in the chapter on this topic, that the casket truly is for the living and really for the viewing. [00:25:34] And if somebody was a big Detroit Lions fan or Minnesota Vikings fan. Like having the Vikings casket really just is the last time to when you’re viewing them to see their personality. [00:25:44] Scott: Yeah. And we’ve had people that have made their own casket or brothers that have made the casket for somebody. I’m all for that type of thing as long as I get to inspect it and make sure it isn’t gonna embarrass us or anybody else that comes to the funeral. [00:25:57] Joe: Well, let me ask you about that. Yeah. By the way, yeah. Lemme cut you off there because, you know, brother’s making the casket. What about like a casket from Costco or some other place? Like do you go No, no, no. Can’t bring that in here. [00:26:06] Scott: Nope. I’m obligated by the Federal Trade Commission rule. I’m obligated to accept that I can’t charge the family a handling fee. [00:26:15] I can’t do anything, not like a bottle opening fee if I bring in my own bottle of wine. Nope, no corkage fee. But when you think about it, you think, well, I’m not gonna show up to a, uh, restaurant with a steak and say, Hey, cook this for me, and, you know, take that off of the bill. So the casket in the past has been a very big part of the profitability for a funeral home. [00:26:34] So those things were marked up. Multiple times now, it isn’t important anymore. The markup on that has come down dramatically, and the manufacturing, quite honestly has gotten wider. I buy direct from the manufacturer in Indiana, yet I can still buy Chinese caskets that are shipped from China here and pay less for them than I do buying directly from the company in Indiana. [00:27:00] Let’s, uh, boy, I’m peeling back all the layers here. [00:27:03] Joe: No, it’s great. It is fan. ’cause if, if our stacker Scott or anything like me, they know so little about this. And I think part of the reason is, is that we think that we’re not at the end of our story. Right. And I think the biggest misconception, I had a friend in the early days when I just wish, started financial media, a guy named Adam Baker who did a documentary on this whole topic. [00:27:23] And he said, as they were talking about dying, everybody thinks you die at the end of your story, which is not true. You die right in the middle. So many times he talked to people in this documentary, they were on their deathbed and they knew they were gonna die in the next 24 hours. And they’re talking about some bill that’s coming in two weeks and somebody needs to take care of that. [00:27:41] Or some family trip that’s gonna happen in three months. And all Adam could think of is, who cares? You’re gone. We don’t really process that. So I’m hoping that all of our stackers die a long, long time from now. Yep. But Scott, it comes for all of us, which is why I’d love to spend some time talking about this pre-planning because it happens in the middle of our story. [00:28:03] It sneaks up on us. My dad this time last year, was having some slight health difficulty. Not even slight. He was having some disturbing health problems, but not at the point where we thought he’d be gone now. And then very quickly, thank goodness for him. Thank goodness for all of us. He’s gone fairly fast. [00:28:22] I. Talk to me about pre-planning and how it works. What exactly are we pre-planning if we decide that we’re pre-planning? What are kind of the things that we’re pre-planning and how does that look if somebody decides to take on the task of pre-planning versus wait and let family members do it? [00:28:39] Scott: I’m assuming that we’re talking about getting the funeral director involved. [00:28:43] ’cause that’s how I look at it. Yes. ’cause there’s two sides to our business. There’s the at need side, which uh, clearly, uh, there’s a death test taking place and they need us right now. And that’s a different element. And then there’s the pre-need side. And that pre-need side are people that are planning for this and they’re either doing it for their parents or they’re doing it for themselves. [00:29:01] It’s pretty easy to get information out there. You can go to funeral home’s websites and you can get a pretty good feeling for the funeral home just in looking at their website. If their website gives you information about this and they’re free flowing about it, then they’re gonna be like that. When you meet with them in person, all it takes is a call to them, an appointment, and you sit down. [00:29:23] All the options are put out in front of you and you just systematically, the funeral director’s very good at this. The funeral director’s very good at putting questions in front of you that narrows your choices and gets you down to what you would like to have done. And then by, what are some of those questions? [00:29:39] What does that look like? The biggest one is, do you prefer to be buried or cremated? Yeah. And right now, this is something we, we should talk about, but not in the context of this question, but right now, for us, for our funeral, there are five different ways of disposition. It’s not just burial and cremation. [00:29:57] There are three others too that people can consider. And so it’s just being aware of that and making sure that your family is aware of that choice. So that’s number one. Number two is how do you wanna be remembered? What kind of service do you wanna have? Now, a lot of people will say that, Hey, I’m gone. [00:30:16] Doesn’t matter. Just throw me in the hole. Put me in the backyard. I’ve heard all this stuff, the hefty bag, all that kind of thing. That’s not what we do. These are people. These are people we love, the people that we love, and we’re gonna say goodbye to them in a dignified. Way. So how do we do that? So at our funeral home, five years ago, no more like eight years ago, we redid our funeral homes and put in a bar in our funeral home, first funeral home, to have a bar at, you know, when I started working here for my dad, I used to start by cleaning up the smoking lounge where everybody smuggled in the bottles of booze. [00:30:52] Now we just made it institutionalized a little bit. It’s really, really great because people come in and instead of being uncomfortable about coming in, signing the book, saying hello to the family, and then getting the heck out of there, they’ll say, well, maybe we’ll just have one. Maybe we’ll just have a glass of wine. [00:31:11] And then what happens there is like all situations, social situations that involve that. Is you feel more comfortable, you feel looser. You’re, you’re willing to talk with other people and you hear the person’s story like we used to do a long time ago, but we don’t do that because we’re all so busy right now. [00:31:31] So that bar thing has really helped us get people to connect. So that’s one of the options that you could, do. You, what kind of do you want? Well, can I, can I speak to that? Yeah, just a second. [00:31:41] Joe: With, with my dad’s death, I told a couple people this because people kept saying, this has gotta be really hard. [00:31:49] And I said, you know what I love is I get older. The thing that I love about. Either the viewing or the memorial, the time that the family’s together. A, I get to see all these people that I love ’cause we always come together for weddings, funerals, and even though it’s around a funeral, that part, you know, at first seems a little bad. [00:32:08] But then you think about it. I love the facts, Scott, that for whenever a loved one dies, I take a break from the madness and I’m not thinking about me and my selfish stuff. I’m taking some time where me and all of my friends. Are really celebrating this person’s life. Like how badass is it to have this time? [00:32:32] When I get to spend a day spending time thinking about this person and telling stories, and sharing stories about like, it really is neat if you think about it really is in a lot of ways fun. I re and my dad’s memorial service, which we had a couple weeks ago. We laughed. I never laughed so hard. We had What a [00:32:52] Scott: great life though. [00:32:53] What a great life that it leads to. Oh, we had maybe [00:32:55] Joe: 35, 40 people stood up and told stories. My dad’s cousin wrote a poem to my dad about how my dad moved from Michigan to Ohio and it made him sick that my dad became a Buckeye. And even though my dad’s dead, he still is angry. Some things just can’t be overcome. [00:33:15] No, it’s horrible. But it was great. It was so great. So to your point, making people feel comfortable. Sharing, man. We don’t, we, we don’t. I mean, on one hand it sucks that we do it after they’re dead, but the fact that we do it at all I think is such a blessing. It’s so cool. So to, to have the bar function that maybe loosens this up a little bit. [00:33:35] So helpful. And it [00:33:36] Scott: isn’t, that isn’t for your dad, that is for everybody there. [00:33:42] Joe: Oh, good point. [00:33:42] Scott: You hit the nail on the head where death is a really inconvenient thing. It happens at the wrong time. All of a sudden, I gotta change my plans. That’s the best thing about it, is that you have to lean into somebody else and suspend your own schedule and say, okay, I’m gonna change what’s going on with me in order to reach out to somebody who is hurting right now. [00:34:06] And we learned this painfully during the pandemic. There was a period there where we could only have 10 people in the building at one time. Most families have more than 10 people, so we had to have 10 people in, clean everything up, usher them out, get 10 people in. It was horrible. It was a horrible way to say goodbye to somebody that you love because there is something about being around a group of people for a shared experience that gives you an endorphin rush. [00:34:35] It is good for your head. This is why people still go to concerts when you can listen to music on headphones. Much, much better quality than if you go to a concert. But going to a concert is fun and you get the energy of the crowd. You do this with a funeral as well. [00:34:51] Joe: I interrupted you though for that you were on a roll. [00:34:54] There’s other things that we’re considering. [00:34:55] Scott: Yes. So on the pre-need thing, so the biggest thing is, is a form of disposition. Whether it’s burial, cremation, in our case it could be water cremation, it could be green burial, it could be, um, natural organic reduction, which is human composting, which is coming to a state near you soon. [00:35:14] And we’ve helped people do all these different things. In addition to that, it is about, hey, is there gonna be a religious element to this? Is there going to be a faith component to this? And for most people, even though most people now do not have a tight relationship with their church. That’s very much the way it is. [00:35:35] I’ll have a conversation with somebody, and it always starts off with, well, we’re not religious, but it’s not like we’re without faith. We, we believe in, okay, well then how are we gonna talk about that? How are we gonna show that in this kind of a service? What kind music might you want to have that’s part of this? [00:35:53] Uh, where is it that your remains are gonna be placed forever? Whether it’s going to be burial in a cemetery, or if the ashes come back home. What’s your plan for them too? Because for a lot of people, they don’t ever have a plan for these ashes and they end up sitting in the house indefinitely. 22% of all households have ashes of either a pet or a person in them that they used to love. [00:36:20] Joe: Wow. [00:36:22] Scott: That’s, that’s a, that’s a whole different joke. See, you never thought you’d get into this, did you? [00:36:27] Joe: I didn’t. But you know what’s funny is that, uh, as part of my parents’ planning, I’m just gonna move over here for a second. They did something very nice, which I, which I super like. So the group that we used gave my sister and I, this little piece that has a candle and I can change the candle out, but there’s just a little bit of my dad there. [00:36:47] Oh, nice. Just a little bit of, a little bit of his remains and it’s cool to have dad just sitting, I don’t know what it is. Yeah, just having just a little bit of, so I’m doing it on purpose today, Scott, with you and me sitting here in, in the basement with mom upstairs. Of course. With mom upstairs. Yes. But to your point too, you know, we just lost my aunt as well. [00:37:05] I. I was speaking with my cousins and for a while, Scott, he was taking Aunt Jean’s ashes with him everywhere he went. And that wasn’t healthy. [00:37:15] Scott: That isn’t healthy. There are certain things, and a good funeral director is going to work you through a plan for those ashes that have some kind of permanence to them, because keeping them at home and not making a decision is not that. [00:37:31] It’s, it’s your brain feels like there’s unfinished business and there is. Yeah. And so coming up with a permanent plan is important. Whether that plan means we’re gonna incorporate those ashes into the lake, the river, into the backyard, or we’re gonna bury them at the cemetery, or we’re gonna keep some on our desk. [00:37:49] That permanence, that kind of an idea for that is important. And all of that is addressed in this whole pre-need planning process. [00:37:59] Joe: Well, and I gotta tell you the upside of this, which I did not. I knew cerebrally some of it, but I did not, uh, get the emotion of it until I went through it with my parents. [00:38:11] The fact that my mom and dad sat down and did exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah. The day after my dad died, which I thought was pretty easy, so hooray to mom for going, let’s do this now. [00:38:23] Scott: Always a woman who starts [00:38:25] Joe: it. Yeah. Always. Always. Yeah. Because I would’ve delayed that. Yep. You know, for weeks and weeks. [00:38:30] But, uh, she took my sister and I, or she went with my sister and I, I drove back to the funeral director. We sat in her office. Her name was Angel and Scott. She was such an angel. This woman was so good at her job, and she just sat down and said to a very emotional woman, my mom, here’s what you already did. [00:38:47] You already took care of this. You already took care of this. You already took care of this. You already took care of this. You already took care of this. She had almost no questions for my mom at the time when she was most vulnerable and didn’t want to think it. Scott, it was so amazing. I think even for you as a funeral director, it’s gotta be a hell of a lot more fun pre-planning. [00:39:07] Oh, than sitting with my mom the day after my dad died, if they’d done nothing. [00:39:12] Scott: I met with a lady yesterday who’s 93 years old, and I told her, I said, you know, my mom made it to 95. And she says, well then I’ll see you in two years. We had such a great conversation, but she was planning her own, she was there with her daughter, her daughter. [00:39:27] This is very predictable. Her daughter was very concerned about the money, uh, how much is it gonna cost, all that kind of stuff. Mom wants to have a party. She says, I’m a party girl and I want to have a party. It wasn’t really about the money and I’m not gonna take advantage of that. But mom’s very clear on what she wants, and it was an education for her daughter to hear this too, now that when they walked out, the daughter says. [00:39:54] Mom’s gonna get what she wanted, what she wanted to have happen, and we gave her a complete breakdown of the cost, an itemization of the cost, and she decided to fund it too, which is to put money aside into, in our state, we put it into an insurance policy and that insurance policy gains a little dividends to try and keep up with inflation. [00:40:16] We’ve got other methods to do that as well, so that at the time of death, not only is it all planned, but it’s paid for, it’s already done. Yeah. [00:40:23] Joe: We talked about this a lot as a financial, when I was a financial planner, was just, you know, you have this money, your kids can do stuff with it when you pass away. [00:40:31] Mm-Hmm. Or you can spend it the way you want to. You take your family on a vacation, you can make life easy on them. [00:40:36] Scott: It’s So, Joe, here’s what’s really likely to happen though. We think like that. Because that’s the way we want it to, to end for us. The truth is, is that the last couple of years of our life are usually very expensive, and people who have a nest egg have the money that they think is gonna take ’em to the finish line and distribute some money to the kids all of a sudden gets eaten up in care. [00:40:58] bit: Mm. [00:40:59] Scott: And if this money is put aside for the funeral, it is untouchable. If a person applies for medical assistance from the state or the county, however, it’s determined in your home this money is untouchable. And so it’s a way of actually distributing money to your kids in advance because it doesn’t come out of their pocket. [00:41:22] Joe: There’s one more benefit to pre-planning that I like. So I’m gonna take the daughter side for a second. Yeah. You know, everyone to go back to the beginning of our chat, everyone’s worried about getting ripped off. Yep. When you are less emotional, pre-planning, you’re looking at the itemization sheet. I think you’re much more in your right brain and less likely to be taken advantage of because you pre-plan too. [00:41:44] So from the daughter’s point of view, I think the daughter’s happier too. ’cause she feels very comfortable with what’s going on. [00:41:50] Scott: Well and the daughter is looking at a value equation like everybody is and says, well gee, that’s a lot of money. Okay, let’s break it down and let’s see where if you wanna save some money, let’s look at other areas to do that. [00:42:02] But the way in which it was suggested that we could save some money were not things that were agreeable to mom because mom wanted that cushion in there for the bar. She wants beer and wine served at her services. So I have never heard of that. I still have. I, I can’t, that is fantastic. Even my priest knows that I’ve got a couple of beers in the fridge all the time, so he’ll come rapping on the door from time to time. [00:42:26] But it has made, you know, I’ve been in the profession for a long, long time, since 1980, and I am more engaged in the profession now than I ever have been, simply because of how we’re reaching out to people and the options that we’re providing people. We provide people with three more options than most funeral homes even talk about or even are aware of. [00:42:45] Joe: It’s such an important time of life and is, it gets closer for me too and for, I dunno. For all of us. We’re all terminal. Right. Somebody said that to me once. [00:42:53] Scott: We are, we’re all packing [00:42:55] Joe: our bags. It’s just a matter of one way depart. That’s right. As I mentioned, Scott does have a book on this, as you can tell from just talking to him. [00:43:03] This was a Amazon, uh, number one bestseller. What To Know Before You Go. It is not a thick book. It’s a very, very thin book. But like I said to Scott before we started talking, I just love how packed it is with information. I assume it’s available on Amazon since it says Amazon number one bestseller. It is. [00:43:20] We’ll link to it on our show notes as well. Do you have another resource, [00:43:23] Scott: Scott, that we should [00:43:24] Joe: point to? [00:43:25] Scott: Well, yeah. You’re welcome to look at our website. It’s mueller memorial.com and if you have any interest in green burial options, sustainable kind of options, you can go to interra. Burial, I-N-T-E-R-R-A inter burial.com, and that will give you a lot of information on what’s new in that realm as well. [00:43:46] Joe: Well, I’m a little disappointed, my friend, because our job on Halloween normally is to make Halloween scarier. Oh, hopefully we made it a lot less scary for people, so [00:43:54] Scott: Well, I hope so. Everybody who comes in and pre-plant has the same reaction. It is the same feeling that you do when you do your taxes. You put it off as long as you can. [00:44:03] You hate doing it. But when you’re done, there’s a great relief. The one thing about planning your funeral, it’s one and done taxes every year. [00:44:17] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan, with all the positivity here on our Halloween episode, I was thinking that it was time for the adult in the room to start writing these shows since they’re not here. Maybe I should step it up, huh? So, here we go. It was a dark and scary night. Oh, that’s, that’s original. [00:44:37] What do you mean it’s already been used? Alright, hook. Alright, uh, let’s try this one. Do not ask for whom? The bell tolls. Oh boy. Why are you laughing? You’re telling me that one’s taken too. Alright, I’ll come up with something, but let’s get you a scary line that helped a rare horror film make an appearance at the Academy Awards back in 1991. [00:45:01] Which film included this line? I’d love to stay in chat, but I’m having an old friend for dinner. I’ll be back right after I ask chat GPT to come up with something original for an opening for me. [00:45:22] Hey there, stackers. I’m seriously good writer and a guy who can write creepy, but is definitely not creepy. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we are celebrating Halloween inappropriate fashion with trivia about classic movie lines that won their writers tons of Benjamins. It turns out they also didn’t have chat GPT to help them, and even if they did, when I asked chat GPT for a scary Stacking Benjamins story, you know what it said? [00:45:50] I’m not kidding. Here we go. As the clock struck midnight in Joe’s mom’s basement, the sound of clinking coins echoed through the walls, but no one had touched the piggy bank in years. Wow. [00:46:07] Joe: Wow. [00:46:09] OG: That’s Edgar Allen POEs. [00:46:12] Doug: Maybe Chad GPT needs a job. [00:46:14] bit: I, I. [00:46:17] Doug: Okay. I gotta admit that. I mean, it’s pretty good, right? [00:46:20] Yeah. That’s not bad. Pretty good coins in the walls, but it’s slightly less good than a line from a film that not only scored lots of Benjamins from stacker’s wallets over the years, it also won five Academy awards. The classic line was, I’d love to chat, but I’m having an old friend for dinner, was uttered by the Sir Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter in the now classic movie, silence of the Lambs. [00:46:48] And now two guys who are here with the classic second half of this podcast, Joe N og. [00:46:58] Joe: Hey, huge thanks to Scott Mueller Doug. I know you went through this. With your dad, uh, as well. It’s not a time when you want to be, be, uh, making a lot of decisions. [00:47:08] Doug: No, and we, it’s funny, you know, my dad was ill with cancer for a number of years. We had plenty of time to plan some of those. I think my parents did the big picture stuff, but the details of like, what happens when you, you’re at the funeral home and you need to make some of those decisions. [00:47:24] They did not do that. And my dad was a guy who was very, you know, he didn’t stand on pomp and circumstance. He wasn’t into all of that kind of ceremonial stuff. And we’re sitting in the funeral director’s office. We knew that my father wanted to be cremated, cremated, cremated, cremated. We know that he wanted to do that. [00:47:42] But, uh, we hadn’t really talked about caskets and that sort of thing. And as my brothers and I and my mom are sitting there and the funeral director asks if we want a casket, I saw one of my brothers kind of a look on his face and he kind of shrugged his shoulders like, you know what, you only do this once. [00:47:59] It was just, it’s my brother. He is a funny guy, but I could tell that was what, and I’m like, hold on, he’s being cremated. Why are we buying a ca? And dad wouldn’t want this. Dad would say the do the cheapest thing you can do. And, and you know, but we almost succumb to that emotional side of this is a big deal. [00:48:17] This only happens once. Yolo, we should go, kind of go all out. Right. Yolo? No, exactly. Probably not. And uh, normally I, I at that time thought that same way, but I caught myself realizing this is not the time to spend money when I’m just gonna cremate that person. So, well by the way, [00:48:34] Joe: not just put any stink on it because as Scott and I were talking about this, for some people. [00:48:40] That’s a big moment. Yeah. I mean, it’s a big family moment. It’s not about the person that died, it’s about everybody. Everybody else. And maybe, you know, what do we talk about the, the coffin with their favorite football team all over it. You know what I mean? It’s a big part of their identity, except that we [00:48:54] Doug: weren’t having an open casket funeral Oh yes. [00:48:56] For everybody to see. So nobody was ever gonna see this. Yeah. What are we doing? Right? Hey, let’s buy that and burn it. Can I borrow one? Exactly. [00:49:04] OG: How about what, who’s coming in at four? Can we just use them? Exactly. We’ll be outta here by three 30, just pre-stage. The four o’clock guy. It’ll be our little secret. [00:49:15] Joe: How about the idea of turning this into a celebration? I know, og you, you have a story I think about a friend. [00:49:21] OG: Well, yeah. I mean, uh, I have a friend who, his father passed away. He was sick and. Yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve been to a funeral and, um, wanted to support him and his family and, and this guy was pretty influential in the community over his lifetime and it’s always nice to see, you know, a full service, you know what I mean? [00:49:40] Like, you just go, oh, this guy meant something to a bunch of people. And, and I was thinking about, uh, my friend and they mentioned that he was gonna have a little time to talk, you know, during the service. And, you know, it was obviously there were some somber moments, but when he started talking, all he did was tell stories about his dad and like the funny things that he remembered, and I don’t remember how long, it was probably a solid 20 or 25 minutes when he got done, people were crying because they were laughing. [00:50:06] That’s great. I mean, he did such a great job of. Focusing on all the stuff that everybody remembered about his dad. And I was just thinking, uh, I don’t wanna say I was taking notes, but I was like, that’s, this is the way it should be done. ’cause you’ve certainly been to funerals and it’s really sad and somber and you know, just like the worst day imaginable for you or for your family or whatever, and you’re like, this is the worst thing that I could spend any time doing. [00:50:29] You know, I don’t ever wanna do this again. And then going to this, I was like, okay, this is obviously still a really sad day, but he’s focusing on all the, all the cool stuff that, that he remembers from his, from his pops and, and the stuff that people in the community laughed about and remembered as well. [00:50:44] It’s almost like those, have you seen those? Like sometimes they go a little viral, like the obituaries where people write like the old battle acts finally, you know, it’s like, you know when they write the funny obituaries and it’s like, that’s a good idea if that’s your loved one’s style. You know, it doesn’t have to be like, it should be how they are. [00:51:02] Like Scott was saying about. Playing the music that they listen to and stuff like that. It’s like, could you imagine walking into a funeral home and hearing like. Little guns and roses Sweet child. Am my You’re [00:51:14] Joe: like, whoa. And somebody offers you a drink. Yeah. Oh yeah. The second you walk in. Hey, are you on something? [00:51:19] We got a full bar back here. What whatcha are you guys doing on Tuesday? This is a great [00:51:22] OG: idea. Drinking it, drinking on Mondays at one. This is awesome. [00:51:26] Joe: I don’t even know the people who died this week. I’m just hanging out the funeral home. Cheers, buddy. Yeah, huge, huge thanks. Thanks to Scott and what a great time to have Scott on Halloween. [00:51:38] Hey, uh, time for a headline. [00:51:41] headlines: Hello darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:51:47] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from Fox Business, and this was actually a topic OG that was requested by a stacker. Said, you know what, uh, I’m dealing with umbrella liability insurance issues right now. [00:51:59] Do I get an umbrella policy or not? Ella? Uh, this, Ella, this piece is written by Catherine Palmoy. You’re thinking. [00:52:06] OG: I was thinking [00:52:06] Joe: about the Rihanna song [00:52:08] TikTok: under the [00:52:09] Joe: umbrella. Umbrella. Ella. [00:52:10] TikTok: Ella. Ella, I gotcha. A [00:52:12] Joe: a Your homeowner’s insurance policy should include these three items according to financial experts. [00:52:17] Uh, number one, replacement cost. If you’re going through your homeowner’s or your renter’s policy replacement cost is a big thing. Uh, explain that [00:52:28] OG: versus residual cost. [00:52:30] Joe: What’s the difference here, og? [00:52:32] OG: Well, the difference is very simple. It’s like you have a TV hanging on your wall that you bought four years ago that was a thousand bucks. [00:52:39] Well, guess what It’s worth today? 150 and they’ll give you 150. ’cause that’s the value of it today. But it doesn’t replace the fact that you’re missing a TV on the wall. So replacement cost puts a new TV on your wall. You know, they don’t make last, you know, four years ago model. So they’ll give you this year’s model that’s the same size and specs or whatever. [00:52:57] So replacement is. [00:53:00] Joe: Important Second thing on your checklist. Special personal property endorsement. I know that when our house was robbed, there was a cap amount on any jewelry. Mm-Hmm. [00:53:12] bit: That [00:53:12] Joe: Cheryl had. And thank goodness we didn’t have any jewelry that was more than that. But if you’ve got any expensive, uh, art in your house or any expensive jewelry in your house, whatever it might be, you need a special endorsement on all those things. [00:53:26] OG: I think this is one of the bigger mistakes people make, is they have that endorsement, but then they don’t itemize it. I think you have to look at your carrier and see how they want it. They’re not just gonna take your word for it, that you have an antique firearm collection or grandma’s engagement ring that’s worth a bajillion dollars or something like that. [00:53:42] You have to go get appraisals and receipts and you have to do all those things to document. This is the thing I’m insuring. I’m insuring these earrings that I bought for this special occasion, or I’m insuring this firearm that that’s been in the family for a hundred years and here’s the value and here’s how it was appraised and and then you have to submit that to the insurance company too, to make sure that they know that that’s on the policy. [00:54:02] Because like you said, even with the special endorsement, it’ll have a cap until you actually say, here’s how much stuff I want to, or here’s the a list of items that I need to and watches. That’s another one. These numbers are relatively small, $2,000 or $5,000 in aggregate. I mean, it’s not unheard of for a woman to have an engagement ring that’s five, seven, $10,000. [00:54:26] It’s not unheard of to have a watch that’s $2,000, you know, or a set of earrings or grandma’s something or another, or artwork like you said. So if you have anything that’s above those minimums, that’s what having an agent, I think really helps with versus one 800. Call flow or whatever, you know, not to throw a lot of shade on that because you Sure. [00:54:44] 800 number. Having an agent to say like, explain this to me so that I know what I have to do. Like, oh, okay, I’ve got the coverage, but what do I have to do next? You know, is it simple enough just to say, here’s the receipt from the, from the watch I bought for a special, you know, I got as a 25th anniversary gift from my spouse. [00:55:02] Is that good enough or do I have to go get it appraised? Or who do I have to have IT app? You know what I mean? So every company’s gonna be different on how they deal with that. [00:55:09] Joe: Yeah, I think it’s, it is, uh, so important. And another thing that I didn’t know, it’s not on this list, but serial numbers of your tech items. [00:55:17] Get the serial numbers, your televisions, your computers, have all those, uh, just go around and take pictures very quickly, uh, because the thing that’s going to happen, the criminal’s gonna turn it into a pawn shop or it’s going to attempt to, and immediately you might be able to get your stuff back, uh, fairly quickly because that’s very common that, that they try to pawn it off. [00:55:37] Third is. Umbrella policy, which is exactly what our stacker was asking about. Hey, hey. What do you think about umbrella? Ella, Ella, Ella, Ella. [00:55:47] OG: Hey, eh, sorry. Can anybody say that word without thinking of that song? [00:55:51] Joe: Yes. [00:55:52] OG: Oh, not anymore. [00:55:53] Joe: Before today? [00:55:54] OG: After today? You mean? Can anyone after now think of the word umbrella? [00:55:59] I’m saying yes. Before today I [00:56:00] Joe: could. After today I probably can’t. [00:56:02] OG: Okay. [00:56:03] Doug: I still will be able to never think about that. You’ll find a way. Find a way. [00:56:07] OG: I know what album Doug’s getting for Christmas. Put that on your Spotify wishlist. Little Rihanna. [00:56:14] Joe: I love how this podcast marriage is just three guys talking about what can I do that would really, really get [00:56:19] OG: up under their cross wreck his day for the next, for the next 24 hours. [00:56:25] Joe: That’s how I spend my Monday, Wednesday, Friday. What can I do that will make sure that OG and Doug have just a me crappy morning? Hate [00:56:32] OG: me. Hate me. For the next few, few hours, [00:56:35] Doug: I’d like to talk to you about annuities had, [00:56:40] Joe: when we’re done with that, I’ve got a timeshare. I was thinking about, uh, Doug, not umbrella. [00:56:45] Doug. What am I talking about? OG umbrellas. Doug could duck umbrellas too if he wants to. But og, what do you think of umbrellas? Ellis. Ellis, [00:56:51] OG: I mean, so here’s the thing. If you have house insurance and you have car insurance, those two things come with liability. I. Attached to them some sort of liability coverage. [00:57:01] And the liability coverage is something that happens on your property or with your property that causes some sort of issue to somebody else. So you get in a car wreck and obviously your car is gonna be covered, their car is covered, and then there’s maybe some other stuff that happens. Maybe they have to go to the doctor’s office and you have to pay for that. [00:57:21] Or there’s a, some sort of injury, you know, you own your own home and, uh, you don’t shovel the sidewalks and somebody slips and falls or you know, the dog, which is a big one. The dog bites somebody. That’s a huge, you know, a huge liability. Uh, you have a pool in your backyard. Anything that can cause potential issues to other persons, that is a liability that you have. [00:57:44] And those coverages, those how that house and car insurance have liability coverage attached to ’em. So you’ll see it expressed in numbers. It’ll say, well, I have $300,000 of liability. And what you’re saying is. Any expense that the insurance or that the, that the other person has up to 300,000 will be covered by my insurance, assuming that they find me at fault with that, uh, issue. [00:58:06] So umbrella coverage covers you above that number. So it’s a, you say, well, I’m gonna have, the first 300,000 is covered from my auto insurance, so the first 500 k is covered my auto insurance. But if they sue me for 2 million, which is their right to do, you can sue anybody for any reason. It doesn’t mean that they have to pay, but let’s say that you lose that judgment, you are at fault in that accident, and you did cause a bunch of injuries. [00:58:27] That gap could be your responsibility. And what umbrella insurance does is it adds more liability coverage beyond what your stated policy amounts are. So some people might have a million dollars of liability, $2 million liability, $5 million of, of liability, your umbrella insurance. You just have to talk to your agent about what you think your risk is. [00:58:47] Then also you know where you are financially. I think the higher net worth that you have, the higher umbrella coverage you need, I mean, if you have a $10 million net worth and you live in a $4 million house and you have a big giant pool with a bunch of dogs, and all the neighbor kids are over all the time, there’s a lot of things that can poke a hole in that boat. [00:59:08] And by the way, you’ve got $10 million. So guess who’s, they’re like, oh yeah, I’ll just sue ’em for whatever, and they’ll settle. Well, if you’re, yeah, start [00:59:14] Joe: from, what am I trying to protect? [00:59:16] OG: Yeah, exactly. The higher your net worth is, the higher you might consider that. But this is a great question for an agent also. [00:59:23] Like, what? What am I looking at here? [00:59:24] Joe: Often we look at affordability, and the first thing, og, to your point, often agents will point you toward. Uh, discounts that you’re eligible for, that you might not have known about, where often when you call up the one 800 number, they won’t know. So get all the discounts that you can, that will, that will help pay for another way that a lot of people are able to do this, is they just because they’ve done it the same way forever. [00:59:51] They still have these very low deductibles. And if you’ve got a fairly high net worth, you’re not worried about a thousand dollars or the first 1% of your home value or whatever it might be, you’re worried about the big catastrophic thing. So assuming that you have a sizable emergency fund, mm-hmm. Begin self-insuring by making those small risks yours instead of the insurance companies. [01:00:15] Jack up your deductible. Do not do this when you don’t have an emergency fund. And by the way, as you know, oh gee, these are people that always jack up their deductible or people go, well, I can’t afford all this insurance, so the way I’m gonna do it is I’m gonna start taking some chances. And it isn’t insurance anymore, it’s Las Vegas, right? [01:00:29] ’cause I’m just hoping that things go well and that’s when the wheels come off. The bus is when you do that. But if you have the money set aside, why not raise your deductible so that you’re able to lower the cost of the primary coverage and then use that savings to buy the additional insurance, which better fits your need. [01:00:48] That’d be the umbrella. ’cause the umbrella policy is not that expensive. [01:00:51] OG: I mean, for the amount of coverage, no, but the likelihood of using it, again, insurance is all price, some magnitude and risk, right? Yeah. So it’s like, why can I get a $5 million umbrella policy for $2,000 a year, yet my house insurance is 12,000 a year. [01:01:05] Like, because, you know, it’s you, you’re, the likelihood of you using that $5 million of umbrella coverage is really, really, really, really, really low. That’s why it’s not likely to happen. Which is a good thing, right? That you wanna pay for the risk and, and I think what you said about increasing the deductibles is deciding how much of the risk you wanna transfer to a third party. [01:01:27] You know? And to your point, it’s like, if I can, I’m gonna eat the first thousand of a car claim, or I’m gonna eat the first 2000 of a car claim, or I’m gonna eat the first 1% of my house value, that’s me, and I’m gonna transfer the other 99% to the insurance company. In our situation, we have, I have a car loan, a really low interest rate, so I was happy to have it, but the lending company won’t let me have a deductible higher than a thousand. [01:01:48] And so finally I went back and forth and I said, if I keep 2000 in a savings account that’s restricted that, you know, I’m happy to just let it sit there. Will you let me go to 2000 on the deductible? And they said, well, if you put it in an account that’s secured that you can’t touch until the loan’s paid off, we’ll let you go to 2000. [01:02:03] You know, it was a credit union who had the loan, so they had the ability to kind of Great. Make it up on the spot. I was gonna do that anyway, right? To your point. Sure. I wanna, sure. I need to have that 2000 set aside anyway for an emergency in case the car does get wrecked. I’m on the hook for the first 2000, so here you guys, hold onto it. [01:02:17] I’ll earn interest, that’s fine with me and I can change the deductible a little bit higher. So a great, uh, especially nowadays, you know, there’s a lot of stories about different areas of the country that are having some pretty wild insurance increase pricing increases. This is the number one go-to, if you’ve got a healthy cash reserve, go back and look at your deductible for all the things and see if you can see if you, it’s surprisingly how fast it moves by changing that deductible from two 50 to 500, from 500 to a thousand or. [01:02:47] 5,000 to 1% for your house or something [01:02:50] Joe: big thanks to the stacker that sent in this topic. I apologize, I do not have her name right in front of me, but we had a great conversation about this and I was like, you know what? It is a good time, and especially on Halloween, you don’t want to get the ugly surprise of my insurance doesn’t do what I want it to do. [01:03:06] If you want more about insurance tomorrow, we’re going to have our special Halloween episode of the 2 0 1 newsletter, so sign up for that. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 and Kevin Bailey’s gonna dive even more into this topic if you’re not here though, because you’re worried about your insurance the way Doug says it. [01:03:26] Insurance planning, [01:03:27] Doug: no, the emphasis is on the sure like, sure, we’ll pay your claim. I think it’s [01:03:30] Joe: pronounced Emfa. It’s emfa. If you’re not worried about that, you’re worried about the fact that nothing’s dovetailing your financial plan. Really not. I. Existent. Well, OG and his team are taking clients, so head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og. [01:03:47] That’s the link to his team’s calendar. And it’s the first step toward, you know, taking all this stuff and making it dovetail in 2025 and beyond. Can’t believe I’m saying 2025 now. Whoa. Wow. Hey, uh, last thing I wanna do before we ask Doug to put a bow on, this is our TikTok minute. ’cause we got a very special one here on our Halloween episode. [01:04:10] This is something scary, which is when we shine a light on a TikTok crater. That’s very scary. It’s always scary. You never know what you’re gonna get. Sometimes they’re brilliant, sometimes they’re air quotes. Brilliant. Doug, is this TikTok or going to make a good point or not today? [01:04:27] Doug: Yeah, I mean, I think all of the nation’s best scholars are disseminating their information on TikTok, so it’s gonna be incredible. [01:04:33] While I may argue that [01:04:34] Joe: point, Doug, I will say that in this particular instance, this TikTok er has, uh, created or has thrown back to an old video of one of, I think, America’s favorite, favorite comedians, Mitch Hedberg and Mitch Hedberg is talking about [01:04:52] OG: The hell is Mitch Hedberg. [01:04:54] Joe: Are you kidding me? You don’t know Mitch Hedberg. [01:04:56] Mitch Hedberg is, uh, [01:04:58] OG: 1968. No, I don’t know. Oh my [01:05:00] Joe: goodness. 1990s. Big time. 19, which is now, you know, he’s not one of America’s [01:05:05] Doug: favorite. Whatcha [01:05:06] OG: talking about really? I mean the math suggests that I was 13 in 1990. Yes. [01:05:11] Joe: Well anyway, Mitch Hedberg really laying some truth on, uh, on some of the gift giving We’re gonna see in the fourth quarter. [01:05:18] Okay. [01:05:20] TikTok: I think a gift certificate is a bull gift. You know, what’s a gift certificate? You take money that was good everywhere [01:05:32] and you ruin it. You know, just gimme the 20. It was a universal gift certificate. You just want to dictate where I shop. [01:05:45] OG: Okay. That’s pretty funny. [01:05:46] Joe: That’s really good. I think Mitch. Mitch nails it again. It [01:05:50] OG: gave me a good idea for a gift though. ’cause you could say, I got you a gift certificate to anywhere. [01:05:53] Joe: That’s [01:05:53] Doug: exactly it. Give give somebody a $20 bill. [01:05:59] OG: Isn’t that like what a visa gift card is? A gift certificate to anywhere it is. Which is also another stupid way of giving money. Oh, it’s so bad. It’s like, here’s a credit card. You have to keep track of how much is on it. Right. And there’s no way for you to know, unless you call an 800 number and type the 16 digit code in, then it will tell you $12 and 37 cents. [01:06:16] And you’re like, cool. Great. Now I’m gonna do that things gotta sit in my wallet. [01:06:21] Doug: Yeah. And at some point you’re throwing it away ’cause it’s worth 72 cents. And you’re not gonna try to like piece together your payment methods at the grocery store. You just wanna dictate where I shop. I can’t believe we haven’t used that before. [01:06:33] That’s genius. It’s [01:06:35] Joe: so, so brilliant. I I was so proud of that ’cause it was a TikTok minute that Lucy stacker Lucy sent me that, uh, maybe changes my mind about some of these talkers. Alright, Doug, let’s put a bow on this special episode. What, uh, should be on our to-do list today? [01:06:52] Doug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from Scott Mueller. [01:06:55] Want to un horror your family’s funeral arrangements? Preplan that stuff. Second, the best horror story is the one you avoid from the beginning. Check on your homeowners and renter’s coverage. Add an umbrella policy. If you’re able, you won’t regret it. But the big lesson, don’t let Joe’s mom tell you Halloween jokes. [01:07:17] Seriously. I mean, here’s a real conversation we just had. If I had to live through this pain, so do you. So right before we started the show, she says to me, Hey, Doug, I have some skeleton puns. They’re very humorous. Like, oh God, please, please God. No. But she’s like, oh yeah, I got more. I have some vampire puns too, but they suck. [01:07:41] Oh God. Like, my God, why is this happening to me today? Like, you guys always make me go up there and get stuff outta the kitchen, and she traps me with this crap. You listen to this, better you than me. Yeah. She also says, how do you fix a broken jack of lantern? You use a pumpkin patch. Oh, wait, wait. I know. [01:08:00] Yeah, no, it wasn’t even good enough for that. And then why are ghosts bad at lying? Because you could see right through ’em. Oh my God, it’s horrible. Right? So horrible. But she kept going. She kept going, what do you get when you drop a pumpkin squash [01:08:20] uhhuh? I’m like, lady, just stop. Just stop. And she said, why did the ghost go to the bar to get some booze? Some booze? Oh gee. Almost cracked a smile there. Oh my God. And then she goes, oh, what does the vegan zombie eat? And I didn’t actually get this one at first, she says, grains. Oh my God. Is that like a play on brains or something? [01:08:49] I, yes, I believe so. It so bad, bad. I don’t know. Ask her so bad. I can’t, I couldn’t take anymore, but she kept coming at me like she was like a monster in a movie. She just kept coming at me. She goes, what do you call an empty hotdog? A h weenie. Oh yeah, to which I said, Hey, I’m out. And I’ll say to you, stackers. [01:09:12] Happy Halloween and be safe. Thanks to Scott Mueller for helping us celebrate Halloween by getting our final expenses in order. You’ll findScott@muellermemorial.com. And of course, we’ll also share a link in the 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. [01:09:37] Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. [01:09:59] 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. [01:11:03] Joe: og what’s happening with you this Halloween? [01:11:06] OG: Well, as previously mentioned, I am just a figment of your imagination This week as I am, um, still elbow deep in everything I. Pineapple and rum, and I will magically reappear on November 1st. So that’s what’s, that’s what’s going on. But you have an annual Halloween tradition here? [01:11:24] Uh, I, I do have my favorite, uh, my favorite Simpsons episode of all time. [01:11:29] Joe: While you’re queuing that up, we have a Halloween tradition we’ve talked about here, which is. Our friends, Rick and Stella invite people over and Stella. Stella. You can’t say Stella without doing that, by the way. Even to her face, it’s like umbrella. [01:11:46] Absolutely. How like umbrella. So they put up a big screen outside and we watch a horror movie and we watch Cocaine Bear like they have to be really bad. They’re so bad. That movie is horrible. Tucker and Dale versus Evil, which I think you’ve seen Doug, we talked about that. I never have. Oh my goodness. [01:12:03] That’s the one we saw a couple years ago that was just, it’s these two rednecks out in the woods and these fraternity bros and their girlfriends are right next door and they think these guys are evil. They. Through a series of comedic, horrible events, these fraternity bros and their girlfriends end up killing each other and killing themselves. [01:12:28] It is a horror movie because of the fact that it’s a case of just big misunderstandings. The entire movie is just big misunderstandings. It’s called Tucker and Carlson are what? Tucker and Carlson Wright on Twitter. And then, uh, last year we watched a great movie by a black director and a black writer called The Blackening. [01:12:49] And the subtitle is, we Can’t All Be The First to Die. And that movie also hilarious. So this year, in the spirit of that, I will play you a preview. This was today’s feast we just did yesterday, and this is called Mad Heidi. People need to look up the Heidi controversy with the NFL. We were talking about the NFL. [01:13:11] Yeah, yeah. The other day. Look up the Heidi controversy. Mad Heidi, by the way, as this comes up, the original Heidi, this cheesy movie about a girl in Switzerland. So now though Switzerland is being ruled by a new dictator, and Heidi isn’t having any of it, but this is Mad Heidi. Ah, [01:13:32] bit: peaceful Switzerland, beautiful mountains. [01:13:37] Delicious cheese. And of course Heidi, go, Peter, I love you baby girl, but you’ve seen nothing yet today we celebrate. [01:14:02] This man has been charged with the production of illegal dairy products. [01:14:17] Now the girl from the Alps is back with a vengeance. Get ready for beautiful Swiss girls, Swiss Army, catana, and of course fond. I. Smell of cheese in the morning. [01:14:44] Joe: I love the smell of cheese. So this guy who’s now the dictator, runs a huge, uh, cheese factory in Switzerland as you do, and they make tons of Swiss cheese jokes as people are dying. [01:14:56] They become Swiss cheese. Of course, by the way, her boyfriend, you heard the name Goat Peter, you might not have heard his full name, but her boyfriend is Goat Peter. Goat Peter makes illegal goat cheese because you can’t have cheeses that aren’t made by this conglomerate. They ask him, by the way, why his cheese is so great. [01:15:14] And he says, happy goats, happy cheese. And he winks, which is just absolutely, absolutely, uh, horrible. If you’re lactose intolerant, you’re an enemy of the state. And of course, the spirit of Switzerland comes to help teach Heidi how to defeat, uh, this evil. I gotta tell you this movie. Pick all the bad things from any. [01:15:39] Halloween horror movie, they’re all here. I mean, this movie is so bad. It’s brilliantly awful. ’cause you know, they’re, they did all of this on purpose. I mean, uh, zombies, women’s prison people being killed in the worst way possible, the worst puns of all time. Fantastic movie. Absolutely horrible, horrible movie. [01:16:03] That’s so, so bad. It’s good. Mad Heidi. And with that, you got a queued up og. Oh yeah, [01:16:11] OG: yeah. I mean, if it’s hard to beat that, honestly, that’s, you can’t beat mad Heidi just sounds like, sounds the worst hour and 50 minutes of my life. I long for the time that I have so much time in my day that I can just piss it away. [01:16:29] A movie like that once [01:16:30] Joe: a year at Rick and Stella’s house. I laugh my head off for about an hour and a half. Cocaine Bear was the same. Just amazing. Oh, [01:16:38] Doug: I actually didn’t even laugh at Cocaine Bear. I thought it was so brilliant. That movie was. I’m good with the whole notion of let’s just go so bad that it gets hilarious. [01:16:47] I don’t think co cocaine bear went far enough. You [01:16:49] Joe: didn’t think it went far enough? Oh my God, I love cocaine Bear. I thought that you guys are [01:16:54] OG: like really so bad. I mean, you’re just painting a picture of what future financial independence will look like for me to have so much time to just fill with nonsense that you can debate the merits of a movie called Cocaine Bear, which I didn’t even know existed until you just mentioned it three times. [01:17:11] But, [01:17:11] Doug: but hold on. What intellectual greatness are you about to share with us? [01:17:18] OG: Well, I mean some people might say the best intellectual greatness. Actually, [01:17:23] Joe: I thought he was gonna say before he plays it. Doug. I thought he was gonna say ’cause financial dependence is. I don’t have to sit and talk to you. Two idiots about cocaine Bear and mad Heidi and the blackening and, [01:17:35] OG: and Tucker in, what’s his name? [01:17:38] Fight Evil. I mean, Carlson. This is probably some of the best, the best writing ever conceived by man. Here we go. Happy Halloween, everybody. [01:17:46] bit: The Raven, once Upon a midnight weary while I pondered weak and weary over many acquainted, curious volume of forgotten law. While I nodded, nearly napping suddenly came a tapping as a someone gently wrapping, wrapping up my chamber door, some visitor hi, tapping at my chamber door. [01:18:11] Only this ing Are we scared yet? But he’s establishing mode. Ah, distinctly I remember. It is in the bleak December. And each separate dying ember rod, its ghost on the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow they I had sought to borrow from my books. A cease of sorrow. Mm-hmm. Sorrow for the loss. Leor. Oh, Leor. [01:18:37] For the rare and Radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore named this here forevermore. And the silken. Sad, uncertain, rustling of each purple curtain, thrilled to me, filled me with fantastic terrors, never felt before. So that now to still the beating of my heart. I stood repeating there. A visitor in treating entrance of my SA door. [01:18:58] This is, and nothing more. Presently, my soul grew stronger. Hesitating than no longer, sir, said I or madam. Truly your forgiveness. I floored. But the fact is I was tapping. And so Jesse, you came rapping and so faintly you came tapping. Tapping at my chamber door that I scared for sure. I heard you here. I opened. [01:19:19] Why the door? This better be good darkness there and nothing more, huh? You know what would’ve been scarier than nothing? What? Anything Back into the chamber turning, oh my soul, within the burning. Soon again. I heard a tapping something louder than before. Ah, Charlie said, I surely that is something as my window lads let me see than what their ad is in this mystery. [01:19:45] Explore. Welcome here. I flung the shutter when with many a flirt and flutter in their stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of your not the least OB matey, not a minute stopped or stady, but with mean of Lord or lady perched above my chamber door perched upon a busted palace just above my chamber door perched and sat. [01:20:03] And nothing more. Don’t I crispy short and shaven thou? I said, but sure. No. Raven, Caly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore. Tell me, tell me what the lordly name is on the nice poni shore. The Raven eat my shorts. Stop it. He says Never more, and that’s all he’ll ever say. Okay. Okay. [01:20:31] Hmm. Then we thought the gro dancer perfumed by some unseen center, stupid swung by Seraphim whose foot falls tinkled on the tufted floor. Rich, I cried. I got it. Let the by these angels he had sent the respite and the pen from th memories of Lenore quo. Oh, this kind. I forget this. Lost nar the raven. [01:20:54] Never more go be that word outside of partying. Burn our feet. I freaked up. Starting. Get me back into the tempest in a nice torian. So though leave no black bloom at the token of the th soul has spoken. Leave my loneliness un broken. Quit the bust above my door. Take thy beak from off my heart and take th farm from off my door. [01:21:20] The raven. Never more. Take th peek from out my heart and take th form from out my door. The raven. Never more. Why you little [01:21:33] are you Raven [01:21:44] go. [01:21:55] Go. [01:21:59] And the raven ever fitting still is sitting, still is sitting on the pallet busted palace just above my chamber door and his eyes have all the seeming of a demons that is dreaming and the lamp light or him streaming throws his shadow on the floor. And my soul mount that shadow that lies floating on the floor shelving shall be lifted. [01:22:20] Never [01:22:25] headlines: Lisa. [01:22:26] OG: My favorite thing on there says if Edgar Allen Poe was still alive today, he’d be dropping the sickest rap album of all time. [01:22:34] bit: He [01:22:34] would be.
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