John Hope Bryant says that even if you’re a money geek, soaking up as much knowledge as possible, financial literacy for all (not just you) is YOUR problem. Today the financial activist takes aim at everyone to pitch in and help bring up our entire world by empowering people to become more financially literate. If you’ve never heard John speak, you may not know that he grew up in Compton (Los Angeles) in a very poor home, and struggled to find financial security. Now, as a frequent media contributor and one of the biggest suppliers of economic and entrepreneurial training in the USA, John spreads the word that even people who “didn’t get the memo” about being money savvy can help all of us grow our wealth. He makes that case today on the show (and we don’t think you’ll want to miss it!). You never leave a John Hope Bryant talk feeling uninspired and ready to perform better with your finances.
In our headline, we dive into the significant stock market tremor a couple weeks ago. What’s happened since? What lessons should we have learned? Should you take your money out of the market? Invest more? How should you handle it? We’ve spoken a lot lately about how to invest wisely, but with this case study right in front of us, you’ll see precisely why we’ve been driving home the point of economic security so much lately.
Of course, we also leave time for Doug’s trivia and much more!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- Don’t shy away from whipsawing markets (InvestmentNews)
John Hope Bryant
Big thanks to John Hope Bryant for joining us today. To learn more about John, visit Our Founder – Operation HOPE. Grab yourself a copy of the book Financial Literacy for All: Disrupting Struggle, Advancing Financial Freedom, and Building a New American Middle Class
Doug’s Trivia
- What percentage of students do experts expect to have some guaranteed financial education in America in 2030? Is it 81%, 53%, or 41%?
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: It’s 104 degrees. Even in the basement. It’s 104 degrees. What? Which is why I’m dreaming about M 22. I got my, I’ve got my Le La Peninsula mug out going, please take me someplace where it’s only 83 degrees. [00:00:15] Doug: You’re far enough away. You’re far enough away that I can’t make fun of you for that mug. Oh, here comes the peacock feathers. [00:00:21] No, I’m saying I can’t make fun of you for the mug because like that’s legit. You’re in Texas. You’re just too cool for the mug in Michigan. You better not sport any M 22 cracks. He looks down his nose at anybody that has anything [00:00:34] Joe: resembling love for his community. Somebody [00:00:37] OG: that’s too far away. What about the bumper sticker that says M 22? [00:00:40] Also an issue like the little window sticker. Yeah, big problem. Yeah, that’s not approved. I even have the T-shirt. I should get one that says M 55. I have the [00:00:47] Doug: T-shirt as well. Is the T-shirt bad? If you’re 1300 miles away, I’ll allow it. The judges will allow it. What if you’re [00:00:55] OG: tracking around Houghton Lake one summer and you’ve got a big shirt that says. [00:00:59] Intersection of I 75 and M 55. [00:01:04] Doug: Right? How’s that? No, I think you’re looking for a job [00:01:09] Joe: or og. What if it says I 75, [00:01:12] Doug: exit 69, big Beaver. [00:01:15] OG: Well, [00:01:16] Doug: there’s that. Well, yeah, I mean, I mean that’s a, that’s a brainer. That is, that’s, we should actually make T-shirts for that exit. I think people would buy Big Beaver just, it just needs to be the Green Road sign Exit 69, big Beaver Road. [00:01:28] That’s it. That’s all you need. You don’t need the I 75 part. That’s all it is. [00:01:33] Joe: Right? Everybody’s like, what the hell’s going on? I don’t know what’s going on. You know what’s going on? It’s 104 degrees here in Texarkana and I’m delirious. That’s what’s going on. It’s heat stroke, I think. So. Time to raise our mugs with hot coffee. [00:01:45] ’cause you know what I need in a hot day? More hot coffee. No, that’s [00:01:49] Doug: exactly what you do. ’cause it makes you sweat and perspire. And then, so that is. That’s an old ink in trick as tech in Maybe That’s right. [00:01:58] Joe: That’s where I got it. I am headed to Peru, so we’ll, we’ll, we’ll prove that on behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union and the Men and Women making podcast in mom’s basement, a big Monday, salute to our Troops. [00:02:11] Thank you so much for all you did for us this weekend and continue to do for us. It’s all go stacks and Benjamins together. Now, [00:02:18] bit: Stacking, Benjamins is not for everyone. Side effects may include euphoria, increased s ability to meet your goals and aggression from people wondering what the hell your secret is. [00:02:26] Stacking. Benjamins may be habit forming, especially if you stick around for the entire episode. Wink, wink. Please check with your doctor to see if Stacking Benjamins is right for you. [00:02:39] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamins Show. [00:02:53] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and Happy Aviation Day stacker. Today we’ll lift you up so you can soar with your money basking in the sun of your financial future, all of your hopes and dreams in front of you. We’ll literally be the financial wind beneath your wings. Now that kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? [00:03:13] Hey, did I mention John Hope Bryant is here? Talk about flying high. We’ll skydive into financial literacy with this iconic leader. But before that, what’s up with these financial markets? Lately? It’s like the propeller’s stuck and everyone’s running for the parachutes. So what do you do after a thousand point drop in the Dow Jones? [00:03:33] You listen to today’s headline segment, that’s what you do. But even better, I’m gonna regale you better than the pretzels and Sprite on a flight across the country with my trivia. And now two guys who are ready to apply the throttle on this episode. It’s Joe and o Ju ju g. [00:04:01] Joe: Hey, happy Monday Stackers. So happy you’re here with us. Sit back, relax. It is time for, man. We got a good one today. And you know what? The best part of every Monday is sitting across the card table from og. [00:04:15] OG: You say that with so much enthusiasm with, um, OG, I guess. And emotion. I [00:04:22] Joe: kept a straight face for as long as I could. [00:04:24] How are you man? How are you? [00:04:26] OG: I’m having a case in the Mondays. [00:04:27] Joe: You are having a case in the Mondays. It looks [00:04:29] OG: like it. Yep. [00:04:29] Joe: We’re gonna turn that frown upside down og. You know why? Because John Hope Bryant is here. Maybe my legit favorite American activist. You know, I like John Hope Bryant, because he’s a financial activist. [00:04:42] How many financial activists are there? Right? But you go to his Wikipedia page and it says, American Businessman, entrepreneur, financial activist. Financial activist. So John Hope Bryant does, he’s talking financial literacy for all. Even you, og even you can have financial literacy kinda need it. I believe that we can all use that every time John Hope Bryant’s been here. [00:05:01] You know, we all leave the basement with our hand held high, so he’s gonna cure the case of your Mondays. All right. Doug, you had something? [00:05:07] Doug: No, I’m just still stuck on Sprite and pretzels. Like is that your go-to on a plane. Really? Yeah. You know what, the only time I ever have Sprite and [00:05:15] Joe: pretzels is on an airplane psycho. [00:05:18] I’m not a big fan of Sprite. Yeah. Don’t particularly care for pretzels, but on the plane, um, really it’s the Sprite and the piss off cookie. Who am I kidding? [00:05:27] Doug: Whoa. I mean that’s, it’s the Go-to load up on the Sugar og. Straight vodka when you’re flying. [00:05:33] OG: Yeah, probably. [00:05:35] Doug: Duh. Okay. [00:05:36] OG: When I’m flying, no, no, no water. [00:05:39] Doug: I thought I’d catch him there. FAA. Are you listening? He’s just one handing it so it doesn’t spill his drink. Cut the hand. A pop [00:05:47] Joe: off. I’m bringing it down. The Eagle’s landing. That’s not good. You know what is good is, uh, obviously with John Hope Bryant coming up. We gotta get to him. We’ve got a great show. [00:05:59] We’ve got a fantastic headline. We’re gonna have John Hope Bryant first ’cause he’s talking financial literacy. And then, you know what, we’ll practice financial literacy. We’re gonna help you with your headline after that. And a call from a stacker who said, I better call sa See hi and og. But, uh, before all that, we’ve got sponsors who make sure that this show is free for you. [00:06:16] Uh, we’ve got a couple now that we’re off and running. John, hope Bryant waiting in the wings. Let’s say hello. [00:06:34] I’m super happy. I I get so pumped every time he’s back. John, hope Bryant with us. How are you man? [00:06:40] John Hope Bryant: I’m deeply honored. I’m, uh, you know, one thing people are not, today is bored. There’s somebody, but is there [00:06:46] Joe: something going on in America? [00:06:48] John Hope Bryant: Is there anything going on, John? Somebody said yesterday that there are decades where it seems like nothing’s happening and then there are days when it feels like decades are happening. [00:06:57] And yeah, I think we’re in the latter at the moment. If, if you want to feel relevant, if you wanna feel like you’re living in a moment in history, if you wanna feel like everything you do matters, including your vote. This is that time. I mean, whatever you wanna hire an intern, it’s gonna matter. You, you wanna start a program or a nonprofit, or you wanna fight for your rights or somebody else’s rights, it’s gonna matter. [00:07:19] You wanna raise children who are gonna be consequential to the future of America? Well, that time is now. We were just talking about children role modeling. These so-called adults are acting like children who are running for office. And do we really want our children listening to all this foul stuff and basically having people act like children who are supposed to be adults. [00:07:36] But whatever you’re doing right now, it’s obvious to everybody. It’s consequential. Look at the environment. This is not 50 years from now Alaska and, and that whole region is melting right now. The weather’s changing right now. We’ve got so many things. No matter what the issue is, it’s on the ballot. I don’t mean like literally on the ballot, but it is, it’s on the table for a decision and us making these decisions. [00:08:02] Artificial intelligence, it will change 50 years in the next five. If you wanna make a difference and be the difference, this is your time, which is why I wrote this book, financial Literacy for All, which I’m glad to say now is a, a national bestseller. I saw that. Nice work. Thank you. Because I believe this is a civil rights issue of this generation, and I think that if Dr. [00:08:22] King was alive today, this would be the work he’d be doing. [00:08:25] Joe: Well, let’s get into that because there are a bunch of stackers, you know, who listens to financial programs. You’ve been on C-N-B-C-A bajillion times, John. You know, people that watch that stuff are people that are not necessarily who people like you and I are trying to reach. [00:08:38] There are people that are fairly good with money. They find it fun to talk about, to get in the weeds around all this stuff. And I know there’s a bunch of our stackers out there saying, ’cause I wanna make this real for them, that they’re saying, you know what? I love hearing John Hope Bryant. I love this message, but this isn’t my problem. [00:08:54] This is somebody else’s problem and I’d like to help, but it’s not my problem. That’s the true. Let’s, well, well let’s tell our stackers, let’s start there. Yeah. Why is it my problem, John? [00:09:05] John Hope Bryant: Well, my God, I, I can answer that a half dozen different ways. Lemme do a couple. Even my rich friends need my poor friends to do better if only to stay rich. [00:09:17] This economy is the largest economy on the planet, the biggest economy, the biggest GDP, the sole superpower in the world. 70% driven by consumer spending. Not wealthy people, not rich people, not the stock market by consumer spending. And 70% of most Americans are living from paycheck to paycheck. If you’re making a hundred thousand dollars today, even, you know, if this was just a poor person’s book or a poor person’s issue, I think it would not get any attention. [00:09:44] But if you’re making a hundred thousand dollars a year today, 50% of those people are living from paycheck to paycheck. You’re making $250,000 a year today, and a third of those people making two 50 a year are living from paycheck to paycheck. You live in Manhattan, you’re listening or watching this. [00:10:01] From Manhattan, let me hit home. You make a hundred thousand dollars a year, it feels like $39,000 a year. Can I get an amen? And I’ll go one step further. I’m gonna go really radical here. If someone happens to be racist and they go, you know, I really don’t care about any of this stuff. It doesn’t relate to me at all, and I’m proud to be a racist, which is your right if you support a black person or the black community to become successful, which is the opposite of the current argument today around diversity, equity, inclusion, et cetera. [00:10:33] But let, we gonna put that aside for a moment. You support a black person to be successful. Even the racist wins because GDP rises for the first time in history and, and I just issued a pamphlet today that is a companion to the book, financial Literacy for All called The Business Plan for America. You people can go to the website, look at the stats and the facts, but God has a sense of humor, Joe, because for the first time in history. [00:10:58] You have a nation that is within 10 years, a majority of minorities. You have a nation that today is the first time in history where the majority of people are over 65 in our lifetime, those over 65 are baby boomers read, white, wealthy, prominent, older, trying to retire. They wanna go play golf, they wanna travel, God bless them, that’s their right. [00:11:22] They’re trying to leave the stage of economic activity and wealth creation. But you got folks who are the farm club, the G League, the the NFL Farm team, the NBA farm team, the baseball farm team. They’re trying to come on the stage. It’s 40% of the population, they assume 50% plus. And they have been given no tools whatsoever on how to continue to drive the largest economy on the planet, on income creation and income growth and wealth creation. [00:11:49] And if they don’t do that, we’re gonna be rearranging the deck chairs and the Titanic. The ship is sinking. We’ll be picking drapes. God has a sense of humor. We’re all in this thing together. For the first time in history, demographics are a destiny. I’ll say it even more pointedly. There are not enough college educated successful white men to drive GDP for the next 30 years. [00:12:13] And that’s not a racial comment. I’ll repeat. Let’s assume you killed somebody said, oh, let’s kill diversity, equity, inclusion. By the way, the phrase is dead de and I has been so maligned by those who hate the, whatever the phrase is, dead and, and not all the programs were great. And yes, there was some gaming and all that stuff because there is no perfect, there’s bums in my family. [00:12:32] I only to go look for bums in the de and I program. I got bums in my family. I believe in the bum factor, Joe. 20% of Republicans are bums. 20% of Democrats are bums. [00:12:43] Joe: I think every family’s got ’em. John, I look at my family, I’m like, yeah, there’s those people that are all in our [00:12:47] John Hope Bryant: closet, right? So let’s the bum factors everywhere. [00:12:50] Okay, but fine. Let’s assume you killed De and I, you, you do all this stuff. Where’s the farm club coming, given the demographics I just gave you that allow those who killed those programs to continue to live a life of wealth and comfort. According to Citigroup discrimination against Blacks alone between the year 2000 and year two 20, Citigroup. [00:13:13] Now, not the NAACP reported that it costs the US economy. Discrimination against blacks alone for 20 years alone cost the US economy 16 trillion, trillion. Don’t believe me. Go to the report. Go to Business Plan for America website. Read the report yourself. And if we just knock it off, Joe, we just stop doing it. [00:13:32] Not because we’re moral, although I hope you’re moral, but because you want self-interest, you wanna keep your party going of economic prosperity, you pick up a trillion dollars a year. Now we have a 26 20 $7 trillion economy that’s not inconsequential. A trillion dollars against 26 20 7 trillion is real money. [00:13:52] I think there’s two to 3% of GDP locked in the bottom of the pyramid of poor whites largest population of poverty in this country. Blacks, browns, others, women, but also middle class folks who feel that the ladder for them is broken, that no one is trying to help them go from the bottom to the top, which is why you have so many people saying they hate rich people, which is not true. [00:14:14] You hate rich people until you become rich. What you hate is a game system. What you hate is a system that you think is rigged against you so that you, no matter how hard you work, you can’t succeed that you hate and you resent. Is somebody telling you to bootstrap yourself when somebody stole your shoes? [00:14:30] Denied you shoelaces because two generations ago it was illegal for you to learn to read and write. I’m I, I, I’d laugh at some of this stuff because it’s like right in your face. Like my grandfather was a sharecropper, born in 1871. My grandfather, which is my great-grandfather, was a slave without question. [00:14:48] My second great-grandfather fought in the Union Army in response to the Emancipation Proclamation, and as a slave fought to protect those enslaving him in Memphis, Tennessee as one of 7,000 officers fighting in the US colored troops. I’m not emotional about this. Uh, I like math because it doesn’t have an opinion. [00:15:08] I know that people live through fear sometimes, and that’s what’s going on now, is they want a promise of the past. Can somebody please deliver me the past? The future scares me. The present terrifies me, but the future really scares me. Deliver for me a return to the past that. It’s a lie. It’s not happening. [00:15:28] It’s not coming back. And it wasn’t all that great, by the way, when you were in it, right? [00:15:33] Joe: This mythology of the past that none of us actually experienced. But you, you even say though, even if we take this math down to just financial stupidity, which generally, you know, I guess the word stupidity is, is not the right word. [00:15:46] The fact that we don’t have financial literacy cost us hundreds of billions of dollars. [00:15:51] John Hope Bryant: $350 billion is a conservative estimate of what financial illiteracy costs. The US economy every year, 350 billion is the conservative estimate. If you think about, uh, we have mapped every zip code in America by credit score Operation Hope has, and there’s a Hope Financial Wellness Index people can go to. [00:16:11] You wanna tell me your zip code? I’ll tell you your credit score. I’ll tell you how you live. And you go to a white, rural, poor neighborhood like where my wife grew up in West Virginia. Or you go to a black brown urban neighborhood like where I grew up. You’ll often see. The same thing, Joe. You see a check cashier next to a payday loan lender next to a rental own store and a title lender as in the title of your car that you’ve long, you’ve given them the title of your car for a short term loan. [00:16:40] Payday loans, rental own stores, pawn shops, liquor stores in a church down the street. That was your neighborhood psychologist. Trying to make sure you don’t go crazy once a week and you don’t go postal on Monday. That’s your neighborhood therapist. Now, black and brown folks, we go to church differently. [00:16:55] Black folks are very loud, we’re emotional, we’re passionate. My white folks, we a bit more structured, a bit more, more, a bit more left brained. We’re a bit more right brained, but we’re both going to church ’cause we’re trying to, to not go postal on Monday. We’re trying to not go crazy in this world of ours. [00:17:08] And black folks, again, we riot loudly. I mean, Dr. King said the violence was the, the voice of the unseen and unheard. But my poor white friends appear to be rioting at the ballot box right now. Hello. So they’re frustrated because the business plan for America walked away from them set in 1970 after the Industrial Revolution was coming to an end. [00:17:28] And no one gave them a new business plan. No one gave them a software upgrade. And they’ve sat around resentful for 50 plus years and they are right to be frustrated and upset. They have every right. By the way, 25% of my clients are poor whites in the deep South through Hope and inside programs that we have with banks like Bank First Tennessee and others. [00:17:50] So I serve all of God’s children and I’ve found what I’ve just told you to be true. All of the problems are the the same. And if I can get the credit score up 50 points to a hundred points, which is what we’re doing at Operation Hope, get the debt down $3,800 for somebody making $48,000 a year. Get the savings up $2,000. [00:18:08] The bank can say yes. To the home ownership loan or the line of credit, or the small business loan, they wanna create the bank. If you can get the credit score up to 700, my God, seven 50, the computer just starts saying yes to you, and all of a sudden you don’t feel resentful of other people or the world around you as much. [00:18:24] And so this affects everybody and it absolutely affects your listeners and theirs their way of life. Let me be blunt. We take America for granted. Everybody wants to be an American, but Americans we’re entitled and spoiled. The city of Los Angeles, as an example, where I grew up as a young man, has give or take 6 million residents and 10,000 police officers, give or take with a sidearm cuff links, and one round backup clip. [00:18:59] That’s not safety, Joe, that’s hope. Because if anything goes sideways, and it did after the Rodney King riots where I founded Operation Hope. The then chief of police told his officers to get out of South Central la. He told them to abandon. He thought there were people, go get outta there, you’re gonna be overrun. [00:19:17] And I thought it was a punk move by the way, but he was doing a mathematical analysis that here’s all these people coming at you. And he only had X number of officers. And so my point is that the city of la, which is one of the largest economies in the world, only works Joe, if people believe, if I play by the rules, I keep my nose clean, I do the right thing, I obey the law, I work hard. [00:19:40] I’m respectful of my elders. I stop at red lights. It’ll pay off in a reasonable shot of success and failure on my own merit. And that hope thing that if I can go from the bottom to the top that I’m gonna add to GDP, I’m going to make all these companies that they’re your investors listening to this. [00:19:58] Are investing in the companies that make televisions, the companies that make appliances, the companies that make and lease in finance cars. You know, the companies that make the materials that go into a house, the companies that own the restaurants, the companies that own the technology, the backbone, and the front loaded like Apple and Samsung, et cetera. [00:20:18] You’re investing in these companies. You’re investing in Walmart, great company. You’re investing in Target. We call it tar in our neighborhood. You’re investing in McDonald’s. McDonald’s, right? You’re investing in these stocks. Well, that can only works if people at the bottom who are driving the economy are healthy enough to actually continue to partake and trade up on their car and renew their lease and buy a new refrigerator over five or seven years or whenever they do it. [00:20:44] So you have all of you and a self-interest. There’s no investment stock called the police. There’s no investment stock called the US Army. There’s no investment stock called war bonds that you benefit from. We don’t in America. I mean, so you need to invest in peace in serenity and peace and serenity is prosperity for all. [00:21:05] So yes. [00:21:07] Joe: Well, and how we get there, John, you write is through education and I want to talk about some of the different people that we need to educate, but you start off by, by really going after credit and the way that we use credit, you’ve got a whole chapter called credit is a tool, not a toy. Let’s talk about how we’re misusing credit in America. [00:21:26] John Hope Bryant: Well, you first of all, people think credit is money. Start there. [00:21:29] Joe: It’s not. I had to learn that the hard way. By the way, I think a lot of us did that. I had to learn through the nineties that, you know what, this is not money. [00:21:37] John Hope Bryant: Me too. By the way, look, the most dangerous thing in my wallet today, Joe. I’m pulling my wallet out literally. [00:21:44] Is my American Express Black card, right? Because this thing here, and it’s sexy and it looks nice and it’s pretty, oh yeah. And it’s heavy. It’s heavy. It’s, you know, it’s got a little chip in it in case you wanna kidnap me. There’s no limit on it. And it’s like, oh, oh, I can, that means I can go buy the car in the car dealership and technically I can buy the car dealership, but that’s not even a credit card. [00:22:09] This is a charge card, which means in 30 days I gotta pay this payment. I gotta pay the whole balance. A lot of people get in trouble. You start seeing celebrities in their bankruptcies and people who’ve won the lottery, whatever, you see this credit card stuff because they thought this was an extension of their wallet and, and literally it’s just simply a way you, you’re supposed to park a charge until such time as you can now, or in a reasonable amount of time, pay it back. [00:22:36] It’s not meant to be an extension on your annual compensation, but when you got too much month at the end of your money. You’ve got low levels of financial literacy and high level and low levels of self-esteem and high levels of ego and insecurity. You start wearing your assets on your ass. And so that’s the easy sort of upscale example of this. [00:22:59] But what most people are dealing with in their life is they confuse good debt with bad debt, whether it’s a credit card or whether it’s a regular loan. Capital can be equity in debt, by the way. I’m not sure people know that. But the good debt, whether it be a credit card, consumer debt, or whether it’s another vehicle of capital provision, good debt is tied to something that appreciates and bad debt is tied to something that depreciates. [00:23:27] So if you’re financing jewelry or financing clothes at a department store at 28% interest on that credit card, you’re financing bad debt. If you’re financing a concert ticket. Financing. And people do this, they finance concert tickets, they finance car rentals. They finance vacations at 26% interest. [00:23:47] That’s bad debt. And you and the party’s over instantaneously, and you’re paying on it for years. I give an example of a credit card used to buy a card for $14,000. And in that example, if you make the minimum payment 10 years later, you’ll have paid double for that car and not a, a penny of principle and this. [00:24:06] And so, ambassador Andrew Young has said to live in a system of free enterprise. He’s on the, the balcony of Dr. King was assassinated in in 1968. He’s my dear friend and mentor. To live in a system of free enterprise and not to understand the rules of free enterprise must be the very definition of slavery. [00:24:22] So you, you have over a trillion dollars of credit card debt, almost a trillion and a half Now, um, you said [00:24:27] Joe: average person’s carrying over $6,000 of credit card debt, [00:24:31] John Hope Bryant: right? It becomes a noose around your neck because it doesn’t go away. You can’t shake it off. You can’t say, oh, I was just kidding. It’s easy to get it and hard to get rid of it. [00:24:40] And that is the biggest move of your credit score, by the way, is your consumer credit card debt. I used credit cards coming up, but I used them for business or businesses that I was trying to start when I didn’t have traditional capital. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people out there saying, John should not advocate using credit cards to, uh, start a business. [00:25:00] Well, yeah, we shouldn’t have poverty in America either, and that we shouldn’t have had slavery and we shouldn’t have had had. There’s a whole bunch of things we shouldn’t have today. We shouldn’t have racism. Well, all kind of things we shouldn’t have, but when you don’t have a lot of optionality, you’re gonna have to get creative. [00:25:14] And I used one credit card for my auto to get repaired at Pet Boys, and I only used it in an emergency. I only used it when I had to repair that tire or replace that tire, which by the way, put me on the road to making some money on contracts. So that to me, that was good debt. I, I’ll admit it. Early on in my career, I used to use my credit card to buy stocks. [00:25:35] I’m sure that people are gonna go crazy. Now, this guy talked about that the interest rates on the credit card outweighed the return on the stock on an annualized basis. That’s true. But culture is not only the most important thing in business, it’s the only thing in business and life and going public on Wall Street is storytelling. [00:25:52] So what story are you telling yourself? What is the culture in your household? What is the culture and story in your head? And the, the, the story I was telling was I’m an investor, not a consumer. I’m investing in myself. I’m investing in American stock because once I buy, uh, one stock, I got all the financials from that company. [00:26:10] So it was a very cheap bet for me to buy a stock, uh, share a stock or fractional share. I get all this data and information that made me smarter. You’re buying education. I bought an education, but I also bought aspiration because now I’m an investor and I have an investor mindset and Joe that gave me more energy. [00:26:27] Mm. And that gave me more optimism. It made me a believer in the American dream and that my friend was priceless. [00:26:34] Joe: Confidence leads to competence, which gives you the, the desire to take the next step. And it’s this wild cycle. You are one of the, if not the premier person who is, uh, educating so many entrepreneurs in America. [00:26:49] I don’t know any organization that’s, that’s, uh, educating as many people as you guys are at Operation Hope. Chicken or the egg, John, I mean, which one is it? Does this education start at home? Should we, our stackers out there, is it, is it time we’re not spending with our family, with our kids and digging into podcasts like this one or, or reading your awesome book? [00:27:08] Or is it a more of a systemic, this should start at school. Is it our schools? Is it our home life? Like, where’s the, where does this meter begin? [00:27:17] John Hope Bryant: I love your questions. You’re always so smart and you ask me questions that are not boring. They’re real hard ones. I hate boring questions. I love tough ones. So it’s a two part answer. [00:27:26] If you are a privileged class, which are most people probably that are stackers in listening to this, then your problem is first generation made it. Second generation’s gonna spend it. Third generation’s gonna lose it because you’ve made it. I’ve seen so many of my wealthy friends who don’t want their children to suffer and sacrifice. [00:27:45] What the hell are you talking about? You can’t grow through unless, unless you grow through legitimate suffering. Rainbows only follow storms. You’re good at what you do because you struggled, you hustled, you worked hard. An entrepreneur works 18 hours a day to keep from getting a job. What is this participation medal crap like? [00:28:02] You know, there are winners and losers in life. I don’t mind you giving somebody a medal for participation, but don’t say that’s just good. It’s coming in first, second or third. Because when you’re trying to get market share for your business, third is very different than first. Second is very different from first. [00:28:15] I mean, blockbuster was second. They’re also bankrupt to Netflix, and they could have bought Netflix for $50 million, but they were arrogant and they were presumptuous and they were out of business. Sears could have been Amazon, right? They could have been. They had a, a layaway book and you know, you could mail order catalogs 30 years ago, 40 years ago. [00:28:34] But lazy, arrogant, presumptuous. And just decided, you know what, this success is on remote control, but success only comes before work in one place. And that’s the dictionary because it’s alphabetical. So the wealthy people need to sort of low self-esteem is everywhere. So if you’re low self-esteem, uh, and high confidence, that can become arrogance. [00:28:55] And you see it in your political leaders right now. Low self-esteem, uh, insecurity, arrogance, overconfidence, money and wealth, extraordinarily dangerous. And I’m not gonna mention a name, but I just described somebody. Alright? [00:29:07] bit: Yeah. [00:29:08] John Hope Bryant: Now, if you’re a parent who has that mindset, you’re trying to flosser your kids, you’re trying to your wife, you may be living beyond your means, but what you’re not doing is requiring your children to go to work with you. [00:29:21] You’re not, you’re not doing, requiring your child to be the caddy at the golf place, which is where you learn how to build relationship capital. You’re not giving them, you’re robbing them of the hustle they’re gonna need. When they get from underneath your coverage. Now we can do a whole podcast on entitlement and how that’s a death nail for resiliency and success. [00:29:42] I was homeless. I grew up in the hood. Priceless. I dare anybody to come into a negotiating room with me. Come on, come on. You got more degrees, you got credentials, you got PhD. Come on, let’s set an appointment. I’ll run circles around you because I get up earlier. I hustle harder. I work later because I know I don’t have those credentials. [00:30:02] I grew up in the hood. I know. So I’ve had to overcompensate that insecurity tied to self-esteem tied to an understanding that nobody’s gonna give me anything and not gonna lose anything in any moment. The paranoia keeps me on my game. That should be passed down to your children. It’s a culture. Now flip it. [00:30:23] My poor friends, you hang around nine broke people, you’ll be the 10th. So it’s what they don’t know that they don’t know that’s killing them, but they think they know. Why do they wanna be rap stars, athletes and drug dealers. All you see in your neighborhood growing up is symbols of success are rap stars, athletes and drug dealers. [00:30:39] It’s rational. You’re modeling what you see. And all a drug dealer is, is an illegal, unethical entrepreneur. You understand? Import, export, finance, marketing, wholesale, retail, customer service, security, territorial logistics. I mean, NASCAR came from moonshine running. This is everywhere. It’s not just, this is not just poor black people, right? [00:30:57] So you have brilliance everywhere. Some of it gets, it’s easier to, to mine. So you have this brilliance in the stackers that gets thrown away in second to third generation because the right DNA was not emphasized. The right culture was not emphasized. So you’ve gone from a maker to a spender. You made it, your family’s gonna spend it. [00:31:20] See how long that lasts. Now you got people in the hood who. Can hustle but confused, making money with building wealth, and you build wealth in your sleep. 18% of black people own stocks. 41% of us, 42%, 43% own a home. We’re not making, we don’t own, we don’t have life insurance policies. We don’t have wheels. [00:31:39] We we’re hustlers. We, we over index on Wanna get that bag, wanna make that money? Wanna get this dollar, wanna get this cash? It’s, I mean, that is all money is, is an all currency, is an exchange of value. It’s nothing. It means nothing. It’s literally making a living Money today is making a living today, not building a life. [00:31:57] So Steve Jobs a Jordanian immigrant. People don’t know that his dad was Jordanian, his mother was Caucasian. They fell in love with each other and she was having his baby. And daddy of the lady said, oh no, no, no, no, you’re not having this baby, uh, not in this household. We’re gonna put this baby up for adoption. [00:32:18] So they did. And the requirement was, had to be an ultra wealthy family, highly educated. That first family Joe accepted and then rejected Steve. They rejected him at the last minute, so they had to find a new family to adopt him. So they scramble and now they find his middle class family in Silicon Valley names the jobs family, and by the luck of a zip code, not the brilliance or the entitlement of a superior race, the L of a zip code, Steve, who looked white, was actually white and Jordanian Middle Eastern, who saves the world. [00:32:56] Right? Right. He happens to live in Silicon Valley in his middle class family. And who’s around the corner? This guy named Wozniak, and they go in their garage and create a company that you and I love today called Apple. I’ve got my phone right here. [00:33:09] Joe: I got mine right here somewhere too. [00:33:10] John Hope Bryant: Yeah. They pioneered the touch screen and all this stuff before this was a Blackberry. [00:33:15] And everything was, it was, it was, you know, you touched it, you moved it, keys and all that kinda stuff. They changed the whole dang on world. But what if Steve Jobs was not in, uh, didn’t get lucky and adopted there? What if he’s adopted by a single mother on the south side, deep in the south side of Chicago, where drug dealers were all around him and mom was at work, working two jobs. [00:33:36] There was no father at home. He’d be the biggest, baddest drug dealer the world has ever seen because your talent’s gonna go somewhere. So in both situations it’s culture to answer your question. [00:33:51] bit: Yeah, [00:33:51] John Hope Bryant: and, and it’s intentional. Success is intentional. My wife Shacha would say, all behavior is learned behavior. [00:33:58] So when you go home tonight, let your children know you’re reading the Wall Street Journal. Let your children listen to the fact that you’re listening to this wonderful podcast with Joe. Listen to this one and listen to others. Talk about what you just experienced. Read the book, financial Literacy for All. [00:34:14] Have your kids have input on the review that I want you to make on Amazon, on the book, or wherever you’re happy to get the book, Walmart or Black Bookstore or wherever you happen to get your book. Put ’em, put a review up. Have your child contribute to that. Have a weekly meeting about money. Let them know that the lights don’t come on by themselves. [00:34:31] Do you know, I [00:34:32] Joe: thought it was funny, John, and by the way, not funny. I thought it was incredible encouraging people. With their kids not to be cool. Don’t try to be cool. Try to be, and I like this quote, intellectually dangerous. You had, you had somebody tell you that as you were growing up and I thought that was the most badass phrase. [00:34:49] Intellectually dangerous is something, man. I every kid should aspire to be intellectually dangerous. Forget. Cool. [00:34:56] John Hope Bryant: Yeah. That’s Tim Burt, who I just saw an hour and a half ago and we did a kickoff of the American Aspiration Tour. So good with Mayor Andre Dickens here in Atlanta. I, in conversation with mayors across the city, across the country on this American aspiration tour. [00:35:10] So he, this today was kickoff and Tim said, he’s a contractor, he owns a business here. Good man. He said, you know, I’ve decided that there’s a decision everybody needs to make you to decide whether you want to be famous. Or dangerous, [00:35:26] and he said, I decided I want to be dangerous mentally, intellectually dangerous. One is from the shoulders down and won’t last, but a minute. The other one is a neck up. It will last for a lifetime. Once you get educated, you’ll never be uneducated. No one can take your education from you. You can combine that with financial freedom, which nobody can take from you unless you screw it up and you are you bad. [00:35:45] I mean, financial freedom Joe, just might be the only freedom that no one can take from you. I mean, political freedom, clearly it’s on the ballot. Uh, the right to vote. Clearly it’s on the ballot. The very law that was created after the Civil War to protect black people from the vestiges of Jim Crow and slavery so they could have a fair shot and maybe even a little advantage ’cause they were given that they were disadvantaged for, uh, at that time, over a hundred years, that very law was flipped on its head, the very law. [00:36:13] And now people are saying, oh, white people are being discriminated against because this company called the Fearless Fund, is trying to raise venture capital money for a group of women who get 1% of all venture capital in this country. And because they, this fund was now targeted for black women, we call that discrimination and we’re gonna sue and put them out of business. [00:36:32] I mean, how small minded do you have to be? I mean, how ridiculous. This is surreal, but this is the world we’re living in. So, look, we’re sitting in a moment in history right now, but history does not feel historic when you’re sitting in, it just feels like another day. But that does not mean the moment is not historic. [00:36:51] Who do you want your children to look up to? Who do you want your children to be? Who do you want your friends and your mate? How do you want them to see you? Watch how you live your life. It may be the only Bible that anybody else reads and watch the toe you step on. It may be connected to the rear end. [00:37:10] You gotta kiss tomorrow because whatever goes around comes around. And my sense of this is fear doesn’t work long term. Repression does not work long term. Division does not work long term. The darkness is defined by light. Badness is failed. Goodness. If for those who are spiritual religions listening to you, Lucifer is a punk. [00:37:31] He’s, he is a fallen angel. God gives Lucifer the devil permission to exist. He ain’t nothing. So there’s never been a group of leaders who are bad in the history of this world who’ve done it for more than 20 years. Joe Caesar, that was about money and power. He came, he thrived. He ruled, he repressed, and then he was gone. [00:37:50] They cut his throat, senators cut his throat. Osama Bin Laden, Stalin, Hitler. Name the names. The names go on forever. They came. They went, they left, and light comes in the morning. [00:38:04] Joe: Prevailed [00:38:05] John Hope Bryant: we’re light. You and me are projecting light. This book is giving you the light of self resilience and self enlightenment and financial literacy, I believe is a civil rights issue of this generation. [00:38:17] When you know better, you do better, and we should want everybody to be financially literate. There is no downside to this conversation. You want. Yes. You want de and I, you don’t want me paying for people to be on welfare. You don’t want people stealing from you because they welfare’s not enough. They don’t want, you don’t want them carjacking you in your neighborhood, coming to you, in your neighborhood to steal from you because they don’t have enough for themselves. [00:38:40] And nobody wakes up in the morning and says, let me be a bum. Let me be a crook. Let me be a, a scourge to society. They wake up in the morning on survival mode and maybe angry at society, and then they wanna go take what’s not theirs. I’m not rationalizing it, I’m explaining it. You want people to have more than they need for themselves, so they leave you alone. [00:38:59] Right. I mean, I You can, I can talk about this more at the very least. [00:39:04] Joe: At [00:39:04] John Hope Bryant: the very least. [00:39:04] Joe: At the very least. Yeah. I just wish you were passionate about this. John, if you were at all passionate about this, it would be. The book is Financial Literacy for All. Disrupting Struggle, advancing Financial Freedom, building a New American Middle Class. [00:39:19] You have some great, um, and I’ll encourage everybody to read at the a at the beginning how it’s broken and why the system’s broken. And then the education piece that we had a little conversation about. You’ve lots of conversation about this, but also some models, a model in Singapore. What Delta Airlines have done some pretty powerful things that companies have done and countries have done to make the system better. [00:39:40] It’s it’s powerful stuff. [00:39:41] John Hope Bryant: And, and banks. Joe Banks are, and banks. Getting the banks out of the no business. Sorry, you declined for credit and back into the Yes. Business. You’ve been approved because your credit score went up, your debt went down, your savings went up because of our coaching at Operation Home. [00:39:55] Joe: Have you ever seen, there was a piece that I quote quite a bit a few years ago by a group called, UH, nonfiction Research, which goes through a lot of the statistics that you go through, John, about the number of people that have eaten out of a dumpster before. The number of people that have unfortunately had to trade sex for money, the number of people, just these horrible statistics. [00:40:14] Wow. At the end of this powerful piece, they kind of lay the blame at banks that banks do a lot of transactional business and not enough business in education, which is something frankly they could even probably charge for. Yeah. And that could be a huge revenue stream for them. And it creates a customer base that’s wealthier as a result. [00:40:35] Kind of what you’re seeing with Delta Airlines employees. [00:40:37] John Hope Bryant: Yes. Yes. Well, the Delta model’s a great model. Their CEO Ed bashing is promoting what I call stakeholder capitalism. He’s on my board. He’s the wealthiest airline in the world, most profitable airline in the world, biggest airline in the world. Even when they screwed up, it wasn’t their screw up. [00:40:50] It was a part of Microsoft and some tech era, but they were slow to correct. They even, I was over there yesterday doing a town hall meeting. They acknowledged it. They’re like, yeah, we, we blew it. We didn’t recover as quickly as we could. Most of our leaders here have only been here for three years. We should have gone and gotten some wisdom from people who were worked here for 30, you know, who used to use pen and paper before technology. [00:41:10] But I mean, leadership is not just doing the right thing. It’s also life is 10% what life does to you, and 90% of how you respond to it and responding with authenticity builds trust, and banking is a trust business. So anyway, the, the model is a great model. Financial coaching and counseling at the bottom. [00:41:26] A thousand dollars emergency savings account for anybody at Delta who goes through our coaching program. Ours, our Fidelity investments program, and then they do profit sharing at the top as a company does well, their employees do well, and again, most profitable airline in the world. And even when they screw up, they screw up in a way that’s admirable and inspirational. [00:41:45] The banks, I think, yes, need to renew their business model and upgrade their software. AI is going to drag them into the future. I think artificial intelligence, I thought about charging for financial education, but that actually is very smart to think about that they need to rethink everything. Are banks responsible for this? [00:42:04] It’s hard to say. The banks are not holding some responsibility because banking is arguably one of the oldest businesses in the world. It’s always been with us, and clearly you can’t finance anything. Uh, you can’t grow an economy without accessing bank capital. Banks in the 18 hundreds actually underwrote and secured slaves, human beings as collateral for loans for plantations. [00:42:29] That’s a little known fact. JP Morgan Chase had human beings in their asset list, truist Bank, and a bunch of any bank that’s over 150 years old, give or take. Probably had some interesting engagement with the wealth creators of that time, which were slaveholders so you don’t have to go very far back. To lay some blame in the banking sector, but I do commend them also because they’re the only federally backed private institution in America, and they’ve done a good job of honoring that through the Community Reinvestment Act, where half a billion, half a trillion dollars gets reinvested back in the underserved neighborhoods. [00:43:05] No other business model does that in America. No, no, no. One half a trillion dollars. Joe gets reinvested through the Community Reinvestment Act. So if you, if you’re getting all your deposits from the north of your city, you’ve gotta make some effort to reinvest investment lending and service in the south of your city on a safe and sound basis, which means you gotta provide financial literacy education for those residents so that you’re making a loan that does get paid back. [00:43:30] They’re not charging for it, but they’re paying for it. They’re paying organizations like ours to do financial literacy education, but I’m trying to get these companies and banks to mainstream this. As a business model, not a philanthropy model, not a, yeah. Right. Yeah. [00:43:42] Joe: And, and I think that’s, that’s very congruent with what they’re saying. [00:43:45] Use it as a business model, not, you know, look at us giving back. [00:43:48] bit: Right. [00:43:49] Joe: Again, the book is Financial Literacy for All. We will link to Operation Hope. We’ll link to the book on our show notes. Stacky Benjamins. I just gotta say again there, Mr. Brian, thank you. Not just for mentoring our stackers today, but for mentoring so many people across the United States and beyond. [00:44:02] I, so as you know, so appreciate your work. [00:44:05] John Hope Bryant: Well, I appreciate you and the answer’s always yes. When I see your name comes across my desk, I’d be honored to talk to you. Always your good people. I wonder for your listeners to know there are good guys and ladies. On Wall Street, we’re trying to get folks from the streets to the c-Suites. [00:44:19] And, you know, truist Bank, their CEO Bill Rogers, we’re almost half of all branches. Of their 2000 branches were 800. Because they’re trying to get folks from being in the no category to the yes category, they realize it’s an emerging market for them. Wells Fargo is ordered a hundred Hope Inside locations. [00:44:36] I deal directly with Charlie Shar, their CEO, they’re taking it seriously. Brian Moynihan, bank of America, I deal directly with their C-suite. They’re ordered a hundred locations. US Bank, Sunnova Bank, regions Bank, first Horizon Bank, Bunco Popular in Latin America and Puerto Rico. So most every bank in this country. [00:44:56] If your listeners know of a credible bank that they’re proud of, JP Morgan Chase is a partner. I, I was gonna see Jamie Diamond last week. We had rescheduled they’re supporters in some way of our work. And that’s reason to be proud. And, uh, my goal is to be in 10% of all banks in America. In the next two to three years. [00:45:13] So I’m working hard at that. And then going into the workplace with hope inside the workplace. Our partner with UPS Delta, and by the way, KKR and Wall Street Apollo, they’re hiring us to work with their subsidiaries. There’s a lot of good folks. Aries Management, Tony Ster, Michael Arge. There’s a lot of good people trying to do the right thing. [00:45:31] Joe: Well hope we can add to that number. John. [00:45:38] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and you have no idea how excited everyone is that John Hope Bryant just spoke. I even wore my best bow tie and jts for that. And wow. Mission accomplished, John. Well, I think after that it’s time for Joe and OG to get going on financial literacy, don’t you? [00:45:56] So let’s get you some trivia to prime the pump. As Joe’s mom says when she reaches for the beef eater gin just before cranking out the Boone’s farm, it’s like her pregame. While there’s lots of room for better financial education in the USA, things are actually looking up. In the last 10 years, we’ve gone from nearly zero financial education courses in America to 17% of students receiving some financial education last year, and that’s going up to 26% this coming year. [00:46:24] So here’s the question. What percentage of students do experts expect to have some guaranteed financial education in America in 2030? Is it 81%, 53%, or 41%? I’ll be back with your answer right after I figure out how to make this bow tie. Stay on my members only jacket. [00:46:51] Hey there, stackers. I’m eighties Chick Magnet and the guy OG calls our basement’s own financial disruptor. Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Doug. I can hear OG waiting in the wing. So let’s get you your trivia answer. The question was, how many USA students are expected to receive financial literacy education in schools by the year 2030? [00:47:12] Was it 41%, 53%, or 81%? The answer, according to experts, just over half or 53% of our nation’s yutes will receive some financial literacy training by 2030. You know, it’s not as, not as big as we’d like to see. That’s what she said, or hope. But as Joe’s mom says, it’s about improvement, not perfection. [00:47:36] Speaking of hope, here come two guys, helping John Hope bring you hope for your financial future. Joe and og. [00:47:45] Joe: What? You couldn’t hold back, could you? No. It’s just You saw the opportunity for the, that’s what she said. Yeah. And just had to, [00:47:52] Doug: it’s automatic. It’s like when you, when you’re at the doctor’s office and they whack your knee with that little hammer and your foot kicks out, it just happens. [00:47:59] Joe: Isn’t it funny how you just, you, and even as you’re saying it, you’re like, yeah, that’s kind of annoying, but, but I gotta do it. [00:48:04] Doug: Yeah. It’s expected. Now I gotta gotta go. Yeah. [00:48:08] Joe: Oh gee. I don’t think that it’s, uh. Lost on any of us. That what we heard from Judd Hope Bryant, that one of the reasons why we have so much more financial literacy in schools, probably a little bit due to him, his work with companies like Delta, Walmart, I mean, some of the biggest names in America. [00:48:25] Let’s get on to our headline. [00:48:27] bit: Hello Dobbs. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. [00:48:34] Joe: We have a big headline today, og. This comes to us for investment news. But heck, if you have a pulse, you know what happened in the financial markets early last week. This piece is written by big bag of nothing. [00:48:47] Chris Davis, don’t shy away from Whipsawing markets. I kinda like the name Whipsaw whipsaw. [00:48:55] OG: Uh, okay. [00:48:57] Joe: Wow. He really does have the Mondays in this piece. Uh, for those people that don’t know. Last Monday we had a market that, uh, went downtown. T re remember old MTV downtown Julie Brown. This market went downtown, Julie Brown. [00:49:11] I don’t know if that’s a thing, but, uh, but the market went way down. And, uh, then what happened? og? Uh, nothing, [00:49:19] OG: nothing really happened. My favorite part of last week’s articles were on Friday after the close when it just said, markets finish exactly where they started for the week. So basically nothing happened. [00:49:34] Joe: I know. Weird. We spent a lot of time lately talking about not buying in volatile markets. So I, I didn’t want this to be a thing, but this was the headline last week, all week long, this, this, why would, why wouldn’t you buy in Volatile Markets? Right? This was it. Excuse me. Not last week. This is two weeks ago. [00:49:49] Yeah. Uh, uh, was was big. Sorry. Yeah. Two weeks. And, and we have made this point though, OG over and over and over, but with John O’Brien just here, there’s still people, you know, one of his books was called The Memo. Still people haven’t gotten the memo. Advisors all over the place. This one will start off with this gentleman. [00:50:07] Jeff Inger President, CEO of all Seasons Wealth. He says he faces it head on quote with his clients, make sure they’re not in a position where they need to take out when the market happens to be down. He explains stressing the importance of asset allocation and liquidity. Boy, o gee, that sounds familiar. [00:50:26] Hmm hmm. [00:50:28] OG: Well, I mean, and that’s really the biggest risk when market fluctuation happens, whether it’s a short term, week long blip, Hey, it could be that last two Mondays ago was the high watermark for the year. We don’t, we won’t know that until the end of the year, right? Like until it happens, we don’t know that it happened. [00:50:46] That’s one of the weird things about the stock market. But, um. But if you, if you know that you’re gonna need some cash, I was talking to somebody a little bit ago and they’re, they said, well, you know, I, I, I think I need this money in about 18 months, but I should just go ahead and invest it. Right? It’s like, well, no, you have 18 months. [00:51:01] That should be sitting in. I should say that to me last week it [00:51:04] Joe: actually was, was my spouse. [00:51:06] OG: Okay. Yeah. Well, I wasn’t talking to Cheryl, but, but I mean, you know, just, no, I’m saying I had [00:51:10] Joe: the same thing. We’ve got this goal 18 months out and she’s like, is there something better that we could do than Ally? [00:51:15] We keep our emergency bonded ally and our short term money ally. She’s like, it just seems like we could probably invest that money and maybe make 10 or 15% [00:51:23] OG: no. Where on the gambling spectrum would you like to put it? I mean, we could make 500% if we hit a streaker in Vegas, you know, I mean, where, where do you wanna put this? [00:51:32] And that’s really what you’re trying to do with having a solid cash reserve. If you’re closing in on retirement or you know that you’ve got an expense coming up, that money needs to be liquid. Uh. You don’t get to gamble with that anymore and recognize that if you said, or if Cheryl said, listen, I don’t care. [00:51:48] I wanna invest the money. I’m okay with what happens then? Yeah. You are gambling, right? You’re saying, I’m willing to trade the predictability of this asset being there when I need it, for the chance that it was, is more or less than what I need when I need it. Right. I’m willing to trade the time, the time the, the 18 months in your example. [00:52:09] I’m trying to, I I’m willing to trade that away for an opportunity to make more money. Because if you don’t have the money, it’s like a house down payment or it’s the final payment on your vacation plan. You know what I mean? It’s like, oh, what we, we needed 30 grand. We only have 22. Guess what? You don’t get to do. [00:52:25] Your timeframe for buying a house isn’t 18 months. It’s now 36 months. ’cause you have 22. You have to get back to 30. You know what I mean? That that’s what you’re trading. You’re saying I’m trading away the security of the timeframe against the fluctuation or potential that maybe it’s worth more. [00:52:40] Joe: I should tell you actually what happened there because people that know my spouse know that she’s smart enough to know better than that. [00:52:46] She, uh, she wanted to raise the question with the market being down og, what if we took it and we invested it and, and hey, with the market being down like this, our probability that it might be higher 18 months from now is better. What if we took the chance? I’m like, we, well, we got construction dudes that we’re talking to right now and we’re, we’re starting to develop this plan. [00:53:07] And she’s like, well, what if we just push that off because it’s a great time for the market? It was cool that we were able to have that conversation, which I think is the opposite conversation that a lot of people have, because in this piece they say, what about the economic uncertainty? This is all based on, and you saw this in the headlines over and over, this is all based on economic uncertainty. [00:53:26] This gentleman again. So [00:53:27] OG: show me a period of time when there is economic certainty. [00:53:30] Joe: Jeff Housie Ger says exactly that OG quote. I try to remember. We always have economic uncertainty. He notes. And the biggest risk, you know, OG is when we’re certain there is no uncertainty. Like that’s the time. A biggest risk historically is when you’re high fiving yourself and you’re like, things are going great. [00:53:47] Look at how great I am. My God. We’re all geniuses. Yeah. [00:53:50] OG: I mean, in most investors’ memory right now, most people who are investing can remember the two greatest calamities that have happened in the last a hundred years in our country and in the world. The great financial recession in 2007, 2008, 2009, where basically banks stopped working. [00:54:13] I mean, it took quite literally an act of Congress to get banks to keep working, right? I mean, they were failing. I. And if you weren’t like of age during that time, I don’t know that you can really put yourself in those shoes and, and recognize how, how it felt to be in the situation where like literally the bank said, we don’t have it right now. [00:54:36] You could try again later. Maybe. I mean, it was complete chaos and the s and p closed at 6 66, kind of ominous, but it closed at 6 66 in March of 2009. Then about 10 or 12 years later, we have this huge event that kills off millions of people across the world and for the longest period of time. I mean, even the most ardent, like, it’ll be fine, right, bro? [00:55:06] It’s cool. It’s just a cold. I mean, even the most ardent people were like, I don’t know, man. I mean, Alice was pretty healthy and she’s gone. You know what I mean? Like that stuff was happening. The market went down 35% in 17 trading days. Those two things haven’t happened in a hundred years in the world. [00:55:28] And yet over that period of time, the stock market went up, your investment portfolio went up during that time. [00:55:35] Doug: Wow. Hey og, this is a legit question. [00:55:39] OG: Are you laughing different than all [00:55:40] Doug: the, I just like, you’re like, wow, [00:55:42] Joe: Whitney’s gotta preface it [00:55:43] Doug: with this is a legit question. Wow. I’ll take that as a compliment because you just assume everything coming outta my mouth is hilarity. [00:55:52] No, you said in the last a hundred years and I am, uh, I’m genuinely curious to know, were both of those events worse than 1929 and 1987? [00:56:01] OG: 1987. What happened in 87? Black Monday? Big jackknife down. That was like a day. It was like literally one day [00:56:09] Joe: literally came right back. Okay. [00:56:13] Doug: Yeah, 1987. I’m [00:56:14] OG: not trying to [00:56:14] Doug: challenge [00:56:15] OG: you, [00:56:15] Doug: I’m just, [00:56:15] OG: I’m genuinely curious. [00:56:16] During the depression, of course not the depression was, you know, a 10 year problem, black Monday. That’s why the circuit breakers are in place now in the stock market to kind of prevent that from happening. But yeah, I went down and went back up shortly thereafter. So yeah. If you got caught with your, as buffet would say, swimming naked, when the tide went out, you know, you were pretty exposed, uh, on that day. [00:56:38] So no, there hasn’t been a minus 20 in one day, but minus 35 in 17 days, I bet feels a lot like minus 20 in one day. Yeah. I wasn’t investing in 1987, so I don’t have any perspective on that. So I’m sure there’s people out there that can remember it, but the long-term, 55% market decline during the recession in 2007, 2009, the global pandemic of. [00:57:06] Unknown situation. And I’m not talking about the actual economic impact. I’m talking about the fact that it was purely, completely unknown. I mean, for a long period of time, what was gonna happen, you know? I mean, you’d wander outside and go for a walk and somebody would be a block away and they’d cross the street. [00:57:24] ’cause you’re like, I don’t, I don’t know. It’s maybe, maybe I shouldn’t be within a block of a person. I don’t know the rules yet. You know what I mean? Like it was, [00:57:31] Doug: why isn’t her dog wearing a [00:57:33] OG: mask? It would, I mean it can We got it squared away. It took some time. But my point all in all of this is, is whatever you think the economic issues are today can’t possibly be worse than they were in 2007. [00:57:45] And even if they’re like, oh, it’s just like oh seven, alright, I got that. We got through that. Okay. I mean, we got through Covid. Okay, money-wise, given it enough time. So I can’t see how somebody would have that in their mind and that experience and then go, but what if this person wins or this person doesn’t win? [00:58:03] Or what happens if. Oil prices go high or low. It’s like individual positions, individual stock positions. If you own individual stocks, there’s some chance that you get wiped out every day. All of a sudden, this company ceases to exist for whatever reason. But if you’re diversified, that’s the purpose of, of diversification. [00:58:23] You’re never gonna get completely wiped out. [00:58:25] Joe: I think it’s a good reminder. It’s a great reminder. Uh, and I know we’ve talked about this a lot lately, stackers, but apparently we need to, ’cause there’s lots of people out there that, that sold into this. You know, everybody’s, I, I mean, [00:58:35] OG: I had a conversation with a guy last week that on Monday sold his portfolio, uh, beginning the end, sell it out cash. [00:58:42] I’m like, dude, if you’d have just been on vacation for a week, and he didn’t sell on Monday, by the way, the morning, no, no, no, no, no. Sold Monday of the night. So he got all the decline on Monday. Never got any of the recovery. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. [00:58:55] Joe: And it might be worth it to explain to people why that is. [00:58:58] If you own mutual funds, mutual funds work like a subway where there’s exit stops at the end of every day, you’re on the subway for the day, no matter what time you sell. So if you decide to sell at noon and you have mutual funds, you don’t sell until the end of the trading session. Four o’clock in the afternoon, the doors open at four o’clock. [00:59:17] People get on, people get off, they close again, then you’re on for the next day. So even if you think, oh gee, that you’re gonna be smart and catch it on the way down at 10:00 AM you got mutual, it sounds like that’s what this guy had must have been mutual funds. [00:59:30] OG: He just, he just waited till the end of the day. [00:59:31] He [00:59:31] Joe: just saw the news at the end of the day and went, oh, it’s gonna [00:59:34] OG: get [00:59:34] Joe: worse. It’s gonna get worse. And it didn’t. [00:59:35] OG: And the reality is, is that that may prove to be correct. You know what I mean? Like in the short run. In the short run. Again, like I said, a couple Mondays ago could be the high watermark for the year. [00:59:47] It could be the high watermark for the next three years. We could have just a long-term, you know, minus 10, minus 10, minus 10, like 2000, 2001, half of 2002 and three. And it’s like, you don’t know that until you’re in it. But still, the problem with trying to time on the way down is you have to be right on the way back. [01:00:04] And it’s just, it’s just not possible. I don’t know anyone, and I don’t care who they say they are. I don’t know anyone who, on March 22nd, 2000, uh, 20 was like, oh, mark it down 11% today, down 34% 17 days. Bingo. Let’s get it. Let’s get it. No, you, you didn’t do that unless you were normally dollar cost averaging in. [01:00:27] You did not freaking do it. And if you did send me a, send me the trade slip that shows that you got a home equity line and you put 500 grand in the market. You sold on March 1st and you bought back in on freaking March 22nd, all your money. Not like I dabbled and I sold 10%. None of that stuff, I just don’t think it happens. [01:00:46] I don’t have any proof that somebody’s done that successfully and I, and I never saw anybody. In March of 2009, the market’s down 55% go, you know what? Today would be great. I got an idea. [01:00:58] Joe: This is exactly what excites me about indexing, is that for the average person out there, indexing is so cool during this timeframe because in, in these markets like a couple Mondays ago, og, what do we see? [01:01:11] I. The market’s pretty damn indiscriminate. When prices fall horrible companies prices fall, which is deserved, right? I mean, if a company sucks, then over time that company stock is going to go down this, the company will go Bye-Bye. To your point. Yep. If you own an individual position, there is a chance every day that you’re gonna lose your ass. [01:01:30] You, you could lose it all, but if the company’s really well run, that’s probably not gonna happen. If it’s mediocre, run, better chance, but still probably not gonna happen. But if it’s a crappy company, yeah, company could go bankrupt. But on a day like two Mondays ago, horrible companies, mediocre companies, and great companies all went down and almost all, because people were just selling the market by almost the same percentages. [01:01:54] Now some went down a little more and some went down a little less. But on a broad basis, it sank everybody. And the cool thing about owning an index is all you have to do is believe the economy’s going to continue. It’s all you gotta do. And the horrible companies, if a company OG sucks bad enough, I think a lot of people don’t realize this, you don’t have to sell it. [01:02:13] It’ll leave the s and p 500. Let’s say that’s what you’re buying the 500 biggest companies in America, big strong companies. And if it’s bad enough that it’s no longer one of those 500, the index cleans it for you. It’s like a self-cleaning oven. It’s a self-cleaning portfolio. So you’re like, oh my God, well look at this. [01:02:30] Stocks suck. Well, you know, if they really, really, really suck, the s and p 500 will sell it for you. And guess what? You can do nothing. You can do nothing and the crap will exit your portfolio on these horrible days. But you’ll hang on to all of the good stuff if you just do nothing. Love indexing for that reason. [01:02:49] OG: You know, this is a great conversation, Joe. And I’ve been working on a, a contest, a giveaway of sorts. Man giveaway. It’s a contest. This is straight up a race. We’re gonna launch it next week. I can’t wait to share it with you. ’cause I texted it to you last night and I was like, dude, I have the greatest contest ever. [01:03:09] ’cause I’m a money nerd. And, uh, this happens, [01:03:13] Joe: this happens as Doug knows about once every, I’d say, uh, five years, [01:03:17] OG: 11 months. I have an idea. I’m like, I have an idea. Stop the [01:03:21] Doug: presses. [01:03:22] OG: So it’s happened [01:03:23] Doug: two and a half times. This is my third grade idea since we’ve been on the air. [01:03:25] Joe: Actually, I take that back. You know, the last time that he had an idea like this, he called me one day. [01:03:29] He’s like, it’s been right in front of us the whole time. Oh yeah. I’m like, what? He goes, why wouldn’t we call this segment Better Call sa like the segment we’re about to do. Like what? Why would we call it that? [01:03:39] OG: Yeah. Yeah. My kids have been talking about that show for a hundred years. Anyways. I can’t wait to have stackers enter this. [01:03:45] We gotta figure out what kind of prizes you win and the mechanics behind the scenes of, uh, of entries. But suffice it to say, it’ll be a fun little gambit. A quiz, you get to partake a battle of wits. A battle of wits. [01:03:57] Joe: Yeah. [01:03:58] OG: Yeah. You get to partake in the, uh, kinda like in the Friday quiz. I mean, it’s a numbers based thing. [01:04:03] So anyways, oh yeah. More info to follow next week, uh, along these lines of investing and, you know, so and so forth. TBD [01:04:10] Joe: and as always, we’ll go deeper tomorrow in the 2 0 1. Our newsletter comes out twice a week. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 to sign up for that. Always free. And we always go into depth and give you curated links to best sources all over the internet, talking about the topics that we talked about on today’s show. [01:04:27] Whether you made it or missed it, it’s always a great ride. The 2 0 1. Time for us to shine the light on one stacker that said, you know what? I better call Saul. See? Hi NOG. This is the part of the show where we help you get your questions answered about your money. So if you’ve got one, send it to me. You head to stack your Benjamins dot com slash voicemail, and, uh, you then can sound as cool as Dan does. [01:04:52] Dan from Charleston, who’s asking today’s question, Hey Dan. [01:04:57] caller: Hey Joe and OG and neighbor Doug. This is Dan from Charleston, longtime listener, second time caller. I think, uh, and I have a procedural question. Assuming one was going to follow OGs, general retirement advice, and that is to be in a hundred percent securities, equities, uh, all the way up to and through retirement, and then to mitigate, uh, Rocky. [01:05:22] How do you recommend clients go about piling up that cash? Uh, have you found it to be better for them to, in the eight or 10 years before they reach the age in which they plan to retire, to divert their retirement savings into cash? For us at, at $30,000 a year, if we need to do that for about eight or 10 years to get to about 300,000, which is where we would need to be in cash. [01:05:44] Or do you recommend they go past 59 and a half and then at some point between 59 and a half and the age at which they plan to retire, they begin to pull that money out of investments and putting it into cash? And if so, is it better to do that from your Roth or from your tax deferred account? And I know, I know, I know the answer gonna be depends. [01:06:14] Joe: Uh, I love this question, Dan. I’d love the order of operations question. Thank you so much for that. So, OG you strongly advocate having no bonds in a portfolio and to, uh, Dan’s point then instead keep cash on hand. So when the market fluctuates, like it may have a couple weeks ago, we, fluctuates is a nice word. [01:06:36] We don’t have to worry about it, that we can stay invested. So how do we get to that cash position? And he used a number of $300,000 sitting in cash about how much cash are we looking at? [01:06:46] OG: Just to be clear about a couple of things, it’s not about the market fluctuating because obviously last week or, or you know, over the last month really since the 1st of July, the stock market’s generally gone down over that period of time, still up for the year, which is great, but we don’t remember the good times. [01:07:03] We only remember the bad when the market’s going down. It’s, it’s more around. Preventing your withdrawal from assets that have declined a lot. So say for example, that you’re the person who retired January 1st, 2008. You know you have a million dollars, you’re gonna withdraw $40,000 a year. That’s your distribution plan. [01:07:20] You’re gonna do the 4% thing by the time you got to September, and certainly beyond, as you got into March of 2009, your portfolio was down 40, 50% at that point. So somewhere along the line, you had to make a decision of when am I gonna stop taking money from this portfolio? And what we recommend is picking a dollar amount or picking, most people don’t spend percentages, so it’s tough to live in percentage world, but looking at your balance and saying, all right, I have a million dollars in my brokerage account. [01:07:52] I’m taking 40 grand a year. If this thing goes down below 800 K, I’m gonna not take any money from my brokerage account until it recovers. And statistically given yourself the opportunity for that to. For the market to have recession and recover and all that sort of stuff, you need about two years. If you wanna be conservative, you need about three. [01:08:11] So in that example, somewhere between 80 and $120,000 you’d have in cash to support your $40,000 a year withdrawal. So it’s not just, Hey, the market’s down this week, I’m gonna take it outta cash instead of my account. It’s once I’ve breached this point, then I’m gonna completely stop from withdraws from the equity portion of the portfolio until I’ve run through all the cash because it’s gone down and now we have to give it enough time for it to do whatever it’s gonna do, the recession to happen, the recovery to start happening, and for the market to recover. [01:08:42] So it’s a long process. And so the question that he had at the beginning was, when do I start building that excess cash and how do I get to it? So in that example of, Hey, I’ve got a million bucks. I wanna have $40,000 a year, that’s my spending and I wanna have $80,000 worth of distributions in cash. How do I get that 80,000? [01:09:03] I would have that $80,000 on the day that you’re retired. Now, there’s a couple of different ways to do it. One way he said was, well, should I divert some savings over the course of the preceding few years to kind of increase to 80,000? Should I just sell something when I get to retirement, boom, that day I rebalance and all of a sudden I have 80,000 in cash. [01:09:23] My preference would be for that option because you’re having your money be invested as long as possible. Now, there could be opportunities more tactically as you are getting close to retirement. Maybe you’re rebalancing, you’re two years away and a portion of your portfolio has gone up a whole bunch. [01:09:40] You own Nvidia stock or something and you go, I’m gonna take a little off the table. Maybe that’s a good time to tactically say, I’m gonna take a little bit and that’ll start building that cash. That’s not as much of a rebalance issue, but my preference would be when your situation changes, that’s when you’re gonna change your portfolio. [01:09:56] Not like I think it’s gonna change in 10 years from now. Therefore. And that’s what we’re trying to prevent, right? We’re trying to prevent you from being too conservative too early in your portfolio. And so if you go, well, I’m gonna take 10 years to build up this cash, well that’s 10 years that that cash wasn’t being invested. [01:10:13] And over the course of that 10 year period, that’s another doubling of that cash give or take, right? So my preference would be to wait as late as possible. Obviously there’s some situations where maybe tactically it would make sense to get a little ahead of that, but generally speaking, I would wait. The next part of the question he asked was, and so where do I put that cash? [01:10:32] Do I put that in my IRA? Do I put it in my brokerage? Do I put it in my Roth? That is gonna very much depend, unfortunately, based on, you know, where all the rest of your money is. If you have a whole bunch of money in a Roth and a little bit of money in a brokerage account and not very much money, that’s pre-tax, well then obviously your distributions are largely gonna come from your Roth throughout retirement. [01:10:54] I would look at where the distributions are coming from. Where’s the allocation of your portfolio in terms of asset location, and as you plan on your distributions over that period of time, over the next, whatever, three years, where are the asset locations for the distributions gonna come from? And that’s largely where I would have the, the excess, uh, cash reserve. [01:11:14] He said something about 300,000. I don’t know what that was tied to unless he was trying to give an example of how much, 300,000 in cash. To me, you would need to be spending 150 KA year to have 300,000 cash. And if you’re spending one 50 a year, 300 in cash, you probably have a three or $4 million investment portfolio, you know, give or take maybe a little bit more, you know, while 300,000 seems like a lot in cash, like, holy cow, what am I gonna do with all that cash against the backdrop of a $4 million portfolio? [01:11:43] It’s like 9%, a little under 10. So it’s really not that much as part of your overall portfolio. You’re not as cash heavy as it might sound to some people listening. I mean, it’s a lot of money, undoubtedly and absolute amounts. And you know, the whole purpose of this isn’t to optimize a bunch of stuff. [01:11:59] It’s to say, how do I stay invested as long as possible and then give myself the opportunity to wait it out? ’cause the last thing that you wanna do is be drawing money from a portfolio as the market’s in a recession and you’re down 30%. And Covid Iss a great example. It was down 30% in 17 days. If you executed this, if you’re the person who has a million dollars 80,000 in cash March 1st, you would’ve taken your money out like normal by April 1st. [01:12:30] Let’s say that your threshold was a minus 25%, the portfolio was down. If it’s all s and p portfolio was down. Roughly 30% by April 1st, right? So you’re gonna switch over to cash. And from April 1st, 2020 through March 31st, 2022, that two year period, all you do is spend all your cash, regardless of what happens in the market. [01:12:51] You spend all your cash. So you know, you had a million dollars, it went down to 700,000, and then by the end of that two year period later, you’re outta cash, right? You’re like, okay. Now what? Your s and p fund had gone from basically 700,000 back to 1,000,003, just by giving it time to sort out what was happening during that, during, you know, in this case it was covid, but that’s true in all the recessionary periods. [01:13:19] About 30 months is the time. So you just wanna give yourself enough time to ride out the wave, and that’s what the cash does. [01:13:26] Joe: Dan, thanks for the question. And if, uh, you’ve got a question for us, much like Dan’s. Stack Benjamins dot com slash voicemail is the way to get there. But if you are not worried about just, uh, cash in your portfolio, really you need to make sure that your portfolio dovetails with your goals. [01:13:45] And I know for a lot of people that doesn’t happen. We did a story og you remember the story just last week about too many people roll over the IRA and leave it in cash. I had so many people write to me after we put out the 2 0 1 the next day telling me they just hit reply on the 2 0 1 newsletter and told me, yep, this is me. [01:14:04] I feel like I’m seeing my, i a still sitting in cash, not sure what to do. [01:14:10] OG: Yep. A lot [01:14:11] Joe: of people, I mean, [01:14:11] OG: Vanguard said it was a third of people, right? [01:14:13] Joe: Yeah. Gotten caught in that trap. If you need to make sure you’re playing dovetails, so G and his team are taking clients, so head to Stacking Benjamins dot com. [01:14:21] Slash og, that’s the link to OGs team’s calendar. It’s the first step to see how you can find yourself skipping through the rest of 2024. Like it’s a field of dandelions and sunflowers and beautiful flowers with some wonderful music playing in the background. The rest of your life is just giggling, and [01:14:44] OG: that’s exactly what it’s [01:14:44] Joe: like. [01:14:44] Does that sound a little, a little over the top? No, I don’t. Stucky budgets.com/slash og ty to mosey out to the back porch and, and, and Doug. I know you usually take the reins here on the back porch, but I actually have something specifically for you. [01:14:59] Doug: Oh. Yes. Alright, I’ll hand over the wheel rains, whatever vehicle we’re driving. [01:15:04] Joe: Now, before we get to that, I should just tell everybody that my son, Nick, and I, next week going to be in Minneapolis. Next Thursday we’ll be in a town called Stillwater. Not exactly Minneapolis, just outside of Minneapolis, not Stillwater, Oklahoma. For details, Thursday night at the Laugh Factory, you’ll hear, Hey, come on down to the Riverside. [01:15:24] Uh, but hang out with Stackers and Financial Independence Money Nerds, because this is going to be the night before we head out for Camp Fire. So a bunch of the Camp Fire people joining our local stacker community, can’t wait to see Chris and Veronica and Dan and Mike and all of our fun, uh, stackers. [01:15:42] We’re just making up names. [01:15:43] OG: And Jughead, Billy and Tommy, Timmy [01:15:50] Joe: and Little Suzy. Uh. Stack your Benjamins dot com slash meetup to get your ticket to that so we can, uh, make sure that we’ve got room for everybody. So, so Doug couldn’t resist. He could not resist. That’s what she said. You see it right in front of you. [01:16:07] You’re a dude. You know, it’s annoying. You’re like, I, I I I, I have [01:16:12] Doug: to. Right? I almost said it right there when you said you see it right in front of you. I tried to squeeze in a, [01:16:16] Joe: that’s [01:16:17] Doug: what she said. [01:16:18] Joe: It’s exactly, and I’ve done that a hundred times. I get this stupid voice. I do sometimes that I, I think is funny and nobody in my family thinks is funny. [01:16:25] And I know it’s just super annoying. You’re doing it right now, right? I was gonna say, is [01:16:28] Doug: it the one you’re using right now? [01:16:29] Joe: Damn. OG Beat me. I walked right into that one. I’m gonna play this TikTok clip. That’s what she said. And, and now we’re just, now we’re off and running. I’m gonna play this TikTok clip. [01:16:40] I will say we are not going to swear there’s no dirty words in here, but I will say we had a president in the late sixties, early seventies, who is called Tricky. And so they’re gonna say that word a lot. Yes. They’re gonna say that word quite a bit. So if you’ve got, uh, young years, you might wanna fast forward about a minute and play this one on your own. [01:17:02] So, uh, this is an Australian couple on TikTok talking about exactly what, uh, Doug did earlier. [01:17:11] bit: So then my boss asked me to step into her office to talk about the Graystone account. Mm-Hmm. Yeah, it was really hard. Like my Duke, she said that she was worried about how long it was gonna be, like how much time it was gonna take out of my work day. I’m gonna need to come early, like my, didn’t you just stop that? [01:17:28] I’m trying to tell you about something important that happened in my day and you just being a pain in my look. I’m trying to legit have a conversation with you and you shoving it down my throat. Don’t you? Dear God. Okay. No, genuinely. I’m sorry babe. Sometimes I use jokes when I’m in awkward or uncomfortable conversations. [01:17:47] I know this problem feels gargantuan and for me the problem’s just getting bigger and and harder. And sometimes I feel like I wanna pull out. But then you can be so loving and our connection just gets even deeper. I, my [01:18:09] Joe: and he explodes. There’s times Doug, you just can’t help it. You see it in front of you and you gotta go. [01:18:16] Yeah. [01:18:16] Doug: It’s an involuntary reaction when your brain stops developing at 14 years old. You gotta expect this. That’s Steven Corre, man. [01:18:25] OG: Although I have, well, I don’t have a 14-year-old anymore. I have a 17 and 15-year-old and they do not, they don’t think that’s funny at all. [01:18:32] Doug: They will, yeah, give ’em time. [01:18:34] OG: They will give ’em Right. [01:18:36] When they’re, when they’re approaching 50, they’ll think it’s hilarious. Right? [01:18:39] Joe: When you get older and your life gets more boring, like ours is you long for the good old days, way, way, way. Funny. I think that’s it. Doug. I. Big show today. We, we start with John Hope Bryant. We end with like my dick [01:18:58] Doug: Doug [01:18:58] OG: on brand. [01:19:00] Doug: What? What should we have learned today? Well, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list. First, take some advice from John Hope Bryant help your community learn about money. And who knows, maybe other social problems might fall by the wayside too. Second, take some advice from our headline. If you are a new investor, take a cue from seasoned pros. [01:19:19] They don’t panic sell when there’s a shakeup in the market. And you shouldn’t either buckle your seat belts and pretend you’re on a rollercoaster at Cedar Point. And remember, you got big plans and selling. We’ll wreck all of them. But the big lesson, I can’t believe, I can’t copyright the phrase win beneath my wings. [01:19:40] Apparently there was like a song by that name at some point. Maybe I should just leave on a jet plane. I don’t know when I’ll be back again. [01:19:53] Thanks to John Hope Bryant for joining us today. You’ll find John’s new book, financial Literacy for All, wherever books are Sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com and if you wanna help John’s cause and help the show, you can even purchase a copy from Amazon using our link. [01:20:10] You are welcome. It’s a really big book. This show is the Property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul Sea High. Joe gets some 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. [01:20:35] Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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