Every money decision comes with a basement door. Sometimes you go down and find a great deal, and sometimes you should run. Joe Saul-Sehy and OG run a Halloween game show in which the panel rules on eight real-life dilemmas, including a stock that has tripled, a dream house that leaves almost no cash, and a car loan a parent is asked to cosign. The panel disagrees, and the reasoning behind each answer is the useful part.
Veterans Day Giveaway
Enter for a chance to win a Solo Stove at stackingbenjamins.com/veterans. Veterans and active duty service members get three entries, and everyone else gets one. If you’re already in the 201 email series, you get an entry too, and you can earn more by referring friends.
What You’ll Walk Away With
- What to do when your company stock has grown into a huge slice of your portfolio, and why a gains budget beats waiting for the perfect moment
- Why optimism about your employer is not the same as a good price on its stock
- How much house is too much, and why the bank’s limit is not your limit
- What a thin cash cushion after closing really risks, and when a plan to rebuild it changes the answer
- How to weigh a bigger paycheck against a boss who keeps losing people, and the airport layover test for judging a future manager
- Why a tax bracket jump does not cost you more than you earn
- How to say yes to helping an adult child with a car while keeping the title, insurance, and risk in your own hands
- Why many people treat family loans as gifts
- Emergency fund or great credit? Low fixed expenses or great insurance? High savings rate or diversification? High income or financial knowledge? The panel picks sides
Why This Matters Now
Big decisions rarely arrive with a clean right answer, and the fear of making an irreversible mistake can stall good choices. Hearing smart people disagree, and explain why, builds your own judgment faster than a rule of thumb does. Year-end is a natural time to look at your concentrated holdings, your housing costs, and your cushion.
From the Basement
Doug arrives in a tin foil hat to resist Federal Reserve brainwaves, the panel shows up as a genie villain, a wreath-wearing leaf pile, and an Oktoberfest regular, and Doug’s trivia asks where “I’ll be back” ranks among the greatest movie quotes ever. He also reports that the Terminator spoke very few words in the whole film and that he once lost an argument at The Sizzler over the senior discount on shrimp cocktail. OG explains his Halloween yogurt policy, and a new traveling trophy with an honest inscription makes its debut.
Resources Mentioned
Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors: a podcast from another panelist
Veterans Day giveaway: enter to win a Solo Stove
AFI’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes: the list behind Doug’s trivia
Afford Anything: a podcast from one of the panelists
Our Topic: Financial Nightmares: Avoiding Scary Money Mistakes
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Financial Nightmares
- Scary Money Decisions
- Concentrated Stock Positions
- Employer Stock Risk
- Portfolio Diversification
- Capital Gains Taxes
- Covered Call Options
- Downside Protection
- Home Affordability
- Emergency Funds
- Mortgage Payments
- Home Maintenance Costs
- Financial Safety Margins
- Toxic Workplaces
- Salary Increases
- Career Decisions
- Marginal Tax Brackets
- Co-Signing Loans
- Family Financial Obligations
- Auto Loan Liability
- Financial Risk Management
- Credit Scores
- Credit Card Limits
- Low Fixed Expenses
- Insurance Coverage
- Savings Rates
- Cash Flow Management
- Financial Literacy
- Income Versus Knowledge
Our Contributors
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest, on Spotify.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
Paula Pant
Check out Paula’s site and amazing podcast at AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- In 2005, the American Film Institute released its list of the 100 greatest movie quotes of all time. Where did Arnold Schwarzenegger’s famous line “I’ll be back” from The Terminator (1984) rank?
Mentioned in today’s show
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday, when we welcome one of the nation’s top money managers, Peter Lazaroff, to help YOU build your perfect investment portfolio. We’ll explore the strategies successful investors use and how to create a portfolio that fits your goals, your risk tolerance, and your financial future.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Why Everyone Needs an Estate Plan (and How to Avoid a Surprise ACA Subsidy Bill) SB1916 | Stacking Benjamins.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] opener: When the mailbox no longer shuts, when your credit report is a thousand cuts, when investment dreams become nightmares, and clerks at stores
[00:00:19] opener: admonish with glares. You
[00:00:29] opener: can’t afford that, can you? 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. It’s all gone. A nightmare it seems. But
[00:00:52] opener: is it? It doesn’t have to be. Because on this night, so dark and weary, the boys on the microphone are making merry. Like three ghouls around the bow, full of lost balance
[00:01:09] opener: sheets, lizards, and toads. Stirring briskly bubbles, charge cards, maxed and filled, insurances never obtained, forgotten wills. On this night, so quiet and slow. Like a horrible dream It’s the Stacking Benjamins show.
[00:01:48] Doug: Live from the scary-ass basement of YouTube’s headquarters, it’s the Stacking Benjamins show
[00:02:08] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s show, you’ve seen all the horrifying movies, you’ve read the terrifying books, but what financial nightmares are lurking in your shadows? We’ll shine a light and maybe help you exorcise them from your life. But that’s not all. It wouldn’t be a Halloween party without my ghoulish trivia question, now, would it?
[00:02:32] Doug: Will OG’s surge continue, or can Paula and Jesse reel him in again? And now, a guy who once scared the neighbors dressing up as a financial planner. Ugh, the horror. It’s Joe Saul-Sehy.
[00:02:51] Joe: Hey there, Stackers. Happy Halloween to you. I am your financial fitness instructor from the ’80s Chet or Joe Saul-Sehy. How is everybody doing?
[00:03:02] Joe: Glad that you’re here with us on Halloween. We got a very special episode for you today with a bunch of very scary characters. Boo. Very, very scary. Let’s meet the guy who always loves a good game of bobbing for money. Mr. Neighbor Doug is here, and he’s got tin foil cap on.
[00:03:22] Doug: The, yeah, the Federal Reserve brainwave, uh, transmitters have gotten extra powerful, and so I had to put on my tin foil cap to resist-
[00:03:32] Joe: Gotta resist
[00:03:32] Doug: the mind control
[00:03:33] Joe: devices. Gotta resist. You know, Bill Gates is out there infecting people’s brains, Doug. You, you just never know what’s going on. It is ugly. I’m
[00:03:41] Doug: protected from all of it.
[00:03:42] Joe: Yeah. How are you today?
[00:03:44] Doug: Feeling great. I mean, now that I’ve got my, my defenses up, I feel great. I might just leave this on for a while.
[00:03:50] Joe: For- I mean, probably sleep in it … just g- it’s no longer a costume. It’s part of who Dude Doug is. It’s
[00:03:55] Doug: function, function over fashion, Joe.
[00:03:57] Joe: And let’s meet our next very, very scary guest. She’s a woman in Manhattan who lives for the robust game of spin the way you were thinking about your money. Paula Pant is here.
[00:04:08] Joe: Actually, she’s not in Manhattan. She is in, uh, it looks like you’re in, in Munich, Germany.
[00:04:13] Paula: In Munich, Germany, of course, with the cans of beer. Uh, this time it’s simply a can of Coke Zero. But-
[00:04:20] Joe: You should be carrying, like, eight of them around- … and serving them to everybody.
[00:04:23] Paula: Yeah, right? Pint glasses. Uh, for the costume to be complete, I would need a bunch of beer steins.
[00:04:29] Joe: Y- y- you know, Paula, when I think of Oktoberfest, I think of, uh, short Nepali women.
[00:04:37] Paula: Just
[00:04:38] Joe: like it’s the first thing that comes to my brain.
[00:04:41] Paula: Well, I mean, just across the Caucus Mountains, a little, you know, east to west, like, uh, it’s one of the things that unites people from all over the world is, is beer.
[00:04:52] Joe: Well, you know who else unites people from all over the world?
[00:04:54] Paula: Ah, who, what else? Who else?
[00:04:56] Joe: The g- the guy in Rochester, New York whose favorite game is let’s diversify this portfolio. That’s what he likes to do on Halloween. It’s Mr. Jesse Cramer’s here.
[00:05:06] Jesse: Hey, what’s going on? This is a, uh… Doug, you look particularly scary right now. Why the three prongs on your tin foil hat, Doug?
[00:05:14] Doug: There’s three-dimensional brainwaves they’re sending- Oh … and I’ve gotta fight off all three dimensions.
[00:05:21] Jesse: That, that does make sense.
[00:05:22] Joe: Now, Jesse- Yeah … let’s explain- I could make it one … your costume, because it looks like you went out of your way. It’s- You’ve got- It’s a- You’ve e- either that or there’s some, there’s some house in your neighborhood that’s missing their wreath from the front door.
[00:05:34] Joe: Exactly.
[00:05:34] Jesse: There’s a chance that I walked around my office building- … found a wreath on a public door, and borrowed it for the afternoon.
[00:05:41] Joe: And said it might be mine. Yes.
[00:05:43] Jesse: That’s right.
[00:05:44] Joe: But actually, it’s, it’s, it’s like, uh, Halloween in Hawaii. That’s what it is.
[00:05:48] Jesse: Correct. There’s a little bit of that, like, autumny Hawaii vibe going on.
[00:05:52] Jesse: And, uh, money doesn’t grow on trees, so I’m wearing a, a wreath of some beautiful leaves that have fallen off the money tree.
[00:05:59] Joe: Yes, absolutely. Well, you know who else we got. We also have the guy across the card table from me who’s always, always loves a game of pin the tail on the tax deduction. It’s, uh, Mr.
[00:06:11] Joe: OG. How are… I
[00:06:13] OG: just don’t understand. Oh, man. Everybody else was… I, I didn’t, I didn’t know I was supposed to wear a costume. So.
[00:06:23] Joe: He had no idea. Okay. Backstage he was telling us that his camera wouldn’t turn on, and now we know the emperor is here. I couldn’t get it
[00:06:30] OG: to work. Yes. Now it works.
[00:06:31] Joe: Yes. How is Jafar doing today, OG?
[00:06:36] OG: Uh, I’m doing great, thank you for asking. Um, just, uh, trying to track down that rascally Aladdin and, uh, get myself a little genie time.
[00:06:46] Joe: It is a crazy day in mom’s basement, as you guys can all see. We are about to play some financial games, ’cause of course it’s a Halloween party in the mom’s basement. We gotta play some games.
[00:06:56] Joe: So we’re gonna get started on those in just a second with Jafar, the Hawaiian, the, the crazy Oktoberfest lady, and the, uh, conspiracy theorist. And I’m gonna put them through their financial fitness paces. But before we do that, we have a couple sponsors who help us. Make sure we can keep on keeping on. And even before we hear from them, remember, we have our Veterans Day 201 sign-up contest.
[00:07:20] Joe: You could win a Solo Stove. Stackingbenjamins.com/201 gets you there. Excuse me, 201. Stackingbenjamins.com/veterans. If you’re a veteran or active duty service member, you’re gonna get three entries. Everybody else still gets an entry. And if you’re already in the 201, you’ll get an entry, and you can also refer people.
[00:07:36] Joe: So stackingbenjamins.com/veteran is the place to go. All right, we’re gonna hear from those sponsors. And then this crazy cast of characters, we’re gonna help you play some financial games better.
[00:07:56] Joe: I’m gonna change out of those glasses ’cause I could not see in any of my notes. That’s when you know you’re getting older
[00:08:03] Doug: I think that outfit makes those glasses look better on you actually, Joe. It all
[00:08:08] Joe: works. They, they are. Those are pretty ’80s as well, I think. All right. You guys ready for game number one?
[00:08:15] Joe: Game number one. You know, in all of those scary movies, there’s the basement, and the door slowly opens on its own, and you have to decide, do we go down in the basement or do we exit and run for the hills? So let’s ask you the first question. Here is scenario number one. Your employer stock, your company stock has tripled.
[00:08:44] Joe: It’s now 38% of your portfolio. You know you’re concentrated, but the CEO says the company’s years are ahead. Paula Pant, do you go in the basement or do you get the hell out of that house?
[00:08:59] Paula: Can I say it depends? Okay, is this money that you need for retirement or is this just fun money that has no particular purpose?
[00:09:08] Joe: Oh, ’cause that makes the difference
[00:09:10] Paula: you’re saying. That makes the difference. If this is money that has, uh… If, if it’s earmarked for retirement, if it’s money that you need, um, then you sell. You get the hell out of the basement. You, uh, you go running for the hills, and you whittle that down to 10% of your portfolio.
[00:09:27] Paula: But if this is just fun money, if this is like- Not part of the plan? Uh, then go for it
[00:09:36] Joe: OG, do you agree with that? Does it depend?
[00:09:39] OG: I would say it kind of depends, but there is something about momentum that, that matters. I don’t like 38%. That seems like a pretty high percentage for your overall investment net worth, so that would give me a little bit of concern.
[00:09:51] OG: I wouldn’t sell it to get back to 10. I would just start building off of it. And maybe if it makes me concerned that it’s a high percentage, and it could go down, you could write some options on it or, or, or protect it some way, uh, doing something like that. So I don’t know that I would sell a stock that was up a whole bunch, and, you know, you said it was up triple.
[00:10:08] OG: Yeah, I don’t like, uh, paying the tax man if I don’t have to, so I would, uh, probably let it ride, and maybe build outside of it to get the percentage down but through other, other savings opportunities.
[00:10:19] Joe: Jesse, I’m assuming that you agree, so I’m not gonna ask you for a third yes. Let’s do that. Instead, I’ll ask you this.
[00:10:25] Joe: If you’re trying to get back down to a number that Paula said, 10%, or maybe a different number you have in mind, how do you do that? Do you sell it all at once? Do you do what Jafar’s talking about and maybe sell some covered calls until it sells itself or how do you get it down to 5 or 10%?
[00:10:41] Jesse: One of the issues is just trying to balance your exposure to the investment risk versus the very real cost of, of paying the tax man, as OG pointed out.
[00:10:50] Jesse: I’m usually just in favor of keeping things as simple as possible, but no simpler. And most of the time, I’m gonna… I would recommend someone set a capital gains budget that they have in mind and just be willing to bite the bullet, realize a certain amount of gains on an annual basis, and accept the fact that they’re gonna pay some taxes on that.
[00:11:09] Jesse: There can be some exceptions, but, uh, that’s usually the route that I would recommend.
[00:11:14] Joe: Yeah, Paula, you like that?
[00:11:15] Paula: Yeah. I don’t think that you should let the tax tail wag the decision dog, so in terms of, um, capital gains taxes, I wouldn’t let that be the deciding factor ’cause capital gains taxes are gonna be…
[00:11:27] Paula: they’re gonna be lower than the income taxes you pay anyway, and no one would ever make less income just to not pay taxes. I mean, if you really want to avoid capital gains tax, you could borrow against it, but I, I really hate that idea
[00:11:39] Joe: Let’s say, Paula, that i- it’s a smaller company and you know the upper management really well.
[00:11:45] Joe: You know that there’s more orders coming in the pipeline. Like, you can just see it. You don’t have any inside information, right, but you’re working at the company. You can see it right in front of you. Does that change your decision-making at all?
[00:11:59] Paula: No, it doesn’t. Number one, if it’s a publicly traded company, then it necessarily can’t be that small.
[00:12:05] Paula: The very fact that it is part of the public markets means it’s pretty big. There’s gonna be stuff you don’t know. I’ll get to
[00:12:11] Joe: Paula say, “I disagree with the premise. You can’t have that
[00:12:13] Paula: premise.” Yeah. And you think about Enron. There were only a very, very small handful of people who actually knew what was going on, and everybody else, even top management, outside of a small handful of people, didn’t actually know.
[00:12:27] Paula: In addition to that, you tend to have a bias towards, like, a bit of a confidence bias towards things that you work in because of all of the exposure that you have to it. So you might be unduly optimistic about your own company or your own industry, and so I would factor that into the equation as well.
[00:12:47] Paula: And so all of that is to say I would rank optimism about the overall industry higher than I would rank optimism about the company specifically Ah So industry optimism might change my answer or might make me a little bit more prone to holding. But overall, I think the, the biggest factor is what role does this amount of money play in your own life?
[00:13:11] Joe: Jesse, let’s say it’s an AI company right now. Paula talking about the industry, does that make you more nervous or less nervous?
[00:13:17] Jesse: Probably makes me more nervous if it’s an AI company. But on the whole, again, if this is a publicly traded company, there’s an argument to be made that the optimism within the company, the optimism that the CEO is, is, uh, telling to you as an employee, that that optimism ought to be already reflected in the price of the company itself.
[00:13:37] Jesse: And I think a very common mistake that investors make is they conflate the future prospects of a company, which might be good, with the idea that the company is a good stock to own at the current price, and those two things aren’t always the same. Mm. ‘Cause really the argument ought to be if the CEO says, “Hey, things are really, really good,” and if you as the employee think, “Oh, things are really, really good,” and also the stock price happens to be vastly undervalued, um, th- that’s harder to justify th- the undervalued part.
[00:14:07] Jesse: But, um, uh, to make a long story short, just because the CEO thinks that your company has good prospects doesn’t mean that you ought to own a large amount of that company stock.
[00:14:17] Joe: Oh, gee, I wanna finish this discussion with you on scenario number one, this very scary scenario. Boo. We, we have to… Probably not funny when you laugh at your own sound effect, is it?
[00:14:29] Joe: You mentioned selling options. Is there w- do you sell options to protect your downside? Do you sell options to maybe squeeze more money out of it? Like, how would you sell options to maybe exit this position or to wring out some more cash?
[00:14:47] OG: Based on the question that you asked earlier about, um, just kind of starting from that thesis of it’s 38% and what do we wanna do with it, the only risk that you have isn’t that it goes up, because that would be a good outcome.
[00:15:01] OG: It’s, I guess by definition, volatility, but, but it’s a good volatility. It’s the risk that the market goes down, or particularly that stock goes down greater than the market, and thus your net worth changes at a rate greater than the overall market changes. So what you can do is you can basically buy insurance on the stock and say, “It’s at 100 bucks a share, and I’m okay with it going down to 85, but I just don’t want it to go to 65.”
[00:15:29] OG: And so you buy some catastrophic insurance on the stock, and you do that through the option market. You are basically taking a little gain off the table moving forward, uh, because of that. Now, you can also do some more complicated things, and Paul was alluding to this, uh, borrow against it to diversify your portfolio with the borrowings, but you add a bunch of complexity there, which may or may not be worth it.
[00:15:51] OG: But, um, but it’s definitely a, a strategy that people use, especially those people who have sudden increases in net worth from, you know, a stock. And I’m not talking about it’s now 38%, I’m talking about people that, you know, now it’s worth, you know, 99% of their net worth- Yeah, yeah … and it’s a $20 million position.
[00:16:11] OG: And, um, yeah, I agree, you know, paying capital gains taxes is the lowest rate you’ll probably pay on anything. But still, if you’re paying 23 odd percent taxes plus state taxes on $10 million position, that’s a big number. If there’s a cheaper way to diversify, I’m, I’m interested in learning about it. All for it,
[00:16:27] Joe: yeah.
[00:16:28] Joe: All right, scenario number two. Do you go in this financial basement? Here it is. This is your dream house. It’s in a great neighborhood. I,
[00:16:39] OG: uh… Oh, sorry.
[00:16:41] Joe: You can technically make all the payments, but after closing, Jesse Cramer, you only have $4,000 left. Do you go in that basement or do you get out of the house?
[00:16:57] Jesse: I’m gonna get out of that house. I think that is too tight of a margin, and again, just thinking about what’s, what’s this house cost? You know, $500,000, maybe even more, and after all is said and done, you have less than 1% of the value of the house remaining in cash in your bank accounts. That doesn’t sound like enough for any sort of an emergency fund.
[00:17:21] Jesse: Just, I mean, hey, one, one, one big house project totally evaporates your bank account. So I’m gonna get out of that bank account. That’s just not enough, uh, margin for safety.
[00:17:30] Joe: Oh, Paula, but it’s the most beautiful house in the neighborhood. It’s been up for sale forever. You’ve been watching this house. Can…
[00:17:37] Joe: You’re so close.
[00:17:38] Paula: Yeah, so I disagree with Jesse. Assuming, ’cause we haven’t talked about what the monthly payments on the house are, and if you can reasonably keep up with that as part of your budget. So assuming it has ongoing reasonable monthly payments, and the only hesitation is the amount of cash that you would have left over after closing, then I’m assuming you probably have a taxable brokerage account.
[00:18:03] Paula: There’s probably some money in there You can-
[00:18:07] Doug: I love the assumptions … tap
[00:18:08] Paula: the money that’s in-
[00:18:08] Doug: I assume- … you have a really rich uncle that’s about to die. There’s money just waiting to, to pour over the mantel into your living room.
[00:18:17] Joe: If I assume you know the next six numbers.
[00:18:20] Doug: Right.
[00:18:20] Joe: There’s a conspiracy theory there, Doug.
[00:18:22] Doug: Yeah, and, you know, you’re generally supposed to spend 1 to 3% of your home’s value on maintenance every year. If you’ve only left four grand in your account, and even if you have the cash flow on a monthly to make the principal and interest payments, and you wrap your taxes and insurance into that, but if you got four grand of liquidity left, you’re not gonna be able to maintain that house.
[00:18:44] Doug: I’m, uh, I’m running from that basement.
[00:18:46] Joe: Jesse, let’s say you’ve got access to debt. You’ve got access to, you know, over the short run, let’s say Paul is right, and it’s a reasonable m- mortgage amount, so you can make the payment, and we’ll talk about what that means, Stackers, in just a second. But let’s say it’s reasonable.
[00:19:00] Joe: You can also begin building your emergency fund up, and you have access to a Home Depot credit card, let’s say.
[00:19:05] Jesse: Mm-hmm. I like how it was the Home Depot call-out. Well, I’ll say this. And, and this is where
[00:19:11] Joe: Home Depot- And it’s- … if you’d like to sponsor this. Yeah. And no shade on Lowe’s either. If Lowe’s wants to sponsor this, that’s fine, too.
[00:19:16] Joe: That’ll be great.
[00:19:17] Jesse: Bidding war. Let’s go. I like the idea there, Joe. The premise in your question is that the home buyer has this solid plan in place. Who doesn’t love a good plan? To get themselves… They, they recognize that they’re in a situation that isn’t ideal, and their plan is to get themselves extricated from that situation in the next 6 or 12 or 18 months.
[00:19:35] Jesse: Now, I like that a lot more. I still don’t love the fact that they’re in that situation day one, but I, I think there is a big difference between someone who finds themselves in a really bad financial situation, or just in a, in a, like, a less than ideal situation, a- and someone who says, “Well, I guess I’m just in this situation forever,” versus if someone says like, “No, no, no, in the next 6 to 12 months, I’m gonna get myself into a much better place.”
[00:19:59] Jesse: That, I think, is good. And so- I don’t mind sticking around in the basement for a little while in, in that situation, Joe …
[00:20:06] Joe: in that situation. You know, we talked about, oh gee, having a reasonable mortgage payment. Paulo mentioned that. What’s a reasonable mortgage payment look like? What percentage of your take home would that be?
[00:20:16] Joe: Oh, I thought
[00:20:16] OG: you were gonna give me a dollar amount. No. I was like, “Oh, this is gonna be great.”
[00:20:19] Joe: No, percentage. If people, uh, using like a rule of thumb. Which, ’cause you know, the bank will say what, 36% I think is, is the bank’s number. Yeah. And I think most financial people go, “That’s a ridiculous number.”
[00:20:31] OG: Yeah, I, if you can keep it to under 30 and maybe even under 25% of your gross income, I think that gives you a lot of wiggle room on the monthly living expense world and all that sort of stuff.
[00:20:41] OG: Uh, the bank will lend you 36 or maybe even 42% of your monthly gross income as, as debt service, and the reality is that that just gets really, really tight unless you have a huge prospect for increasing your income. Which I think is the other piece of this. While taxes and insurance are gonna increase every year generally speaking across the country, that mortgage payment is pretty flat.
[00:21:03] OG: And, you know, for a lot of people you get a deduction on the interest and that sort of thing, so that has some after-tax benefits as well. I don’t have a problem stretching for the house if it checks a lot of other boxes. I think what’s great about our country is that you can literally l- make a list of 20 different things that are important to you, whether it’s the local economy, the environment, the weather, the school districts, the outdoor activities.
[00:21:28] OG: You can figure out a bunch of stuff, and you might not be able to get all 20, but you can get 8 or 10 or 12 of them perhaps. And, um Nice. Yeah.
[00:21:42] OG: But I think that, um, um… I don’t know what I was gonna say the rest of that way, so whatever.
[00:21:48] Joe: Sorry about that. I did not mean to distract you with, uh, Doug’s little comment. That’s okay. It was impressive. For people on the audio podcast, Doug said, “I never noticed this before, but OG has a naturally evil left eyebrow.”
[00:21:56] Joe: You do have a naturally evil left eyebrow. It’s, like,
[00:21:58] Doug: raised up a little bit, like he’s, you know, giving you the… Yeah. Geez, yeah. Giving you the evil eye. There it
[00:22:03] Joe: is. There
[00:22:04] Doug: it is. I thought with the Jafar costume, I didn’t realize that just comes to you naturally.
[00:22:07] OG: It’s a l- it’s a little snug, honestly. I think it’s kind of pulling my face a little bit,
[00:22:12] Doug: but- And now I know why conspiracy theorists don’t wear these tinfoil hats out in public, ’cause my head is all itchy and sweaty in here.
[00:22:20] Doug: It’s, it’s rough keeping out all of the foreign government electric waves they’re sending my way. Paula,
[00:22:27] Joe: does the German outfit f- fit snug like his hat?
[00:22:30] Paula: It’s actually fairly comfortable. Kinda through the ribcage it’s a little bit snug, but then it flares out. So yeah, overall I’d say reasonably comfortable.
[00:22:41] Doug: Is this gonna go into the weekly rotation now, this outfit?
[00:22:44] Paula: Y- I mean, it, it might. It might. Like, uh, any time I want to, like, throw breadcrumbs for the birds, like Hansel and Gretel style. You know, this is clearly what I’m gonna be wearing.
[00:22:54] Joe: Yeah, when I tried on mine too, Paula, it was a little snug in the ribcage.
[00:22:58] Paula: It
[00:22:58] Joe: was pretty, uh, pretty tough. All right, time for our third scenario. We’ve talked about saving money, not getting into debt. Let’s talk about making money, the job. New job pays $40,000 more than your old job, but the boss you’re interviewing with has lost four people in the role in the last three years.
[00:23:21] Joe: Do you take the job, take the money? Do you go in that basement, OG? Or do you flee the house?
[00:23:30] OG: Do I get to ask the boss why four people have left?
[00:23:33] Joe: Well, you worked at the company, and the boss just seems pretty demanding on that position.
[00:23:38] OG: Were the people who left, like, crybaby losers and didn’t really wanna work hard?
[00:23:44] Joe: Or-
[00:23:44] OG: Well, you
[00:23:44] Joe: just think three in a row- … the, the probability of that is low. I would think maybe- Were they
[00:23:49] OG: all- …
[00:23:49] Joe: there could be one …
[00:23:50] OG: Can I, can I blast an entire generation? I was gonna say were they all Gen Alphas? But anyway.
[00:23:55] Joe: Wow. Too soon.
[00:23:57] OG: Too soon.
[00:23:58] Doug: Yeah, 9:00 AM doesn’t really work for me.
[00:24:00] OG: Yeah. I’m, I’m with that.
[00:24:01] OG: I’m with that. Those 2:00 doesn’t work for me sometimes. So I would, I would take the money and also simultaneously be looking for something else.
[00:24:12] Joe: Immediately make sure the resume’s ready to go.
[00:24:15] OG: Yep. Take the cash. Somebody wants to pay you 40 grand more than you’re worth, get after it. Take the cash.
[00:24:21] Joe: Jesse, uh, do you concur?
[00:24:23] Joe: Take the money or get out of the house?
[00:24:25] Jesse: Well, see, I’m worried that the extra income is gonna move me into a higher tax bracket, and I’m actually gonna lose on the situation. No, I’m just kidding.
[00:24:33] Joe: That’s how they get you. Okay, why is, why is that funny, Jesse? ‘Cause there’s some people who don’t know why we all laughed at that.
[00:24:40] Jesse: Sure. Well, it, it’s, it’s a good question, and a, a common misconception is that when you move up in a particular tax bracket, when you move into the next highest tax bracket, the misconception is that all of your money, all of your income is now subject to that higher tax rate, whereas instead only the, only the marginal dollars are subject to the higher tax rate.
[00:25:00] Jesse: And in about 99% of tax planning situations, the system is set up not to screw you. Once in a while you’ll find something that actually does screw you in that way, but, but almost always it doesn’t See, I don’t think I’m gonna take this job
[00:25:15] Joe: You’re not taking the job?
[00:25:16] Jesse: And I’ll, I’m doing it half for the entertainment value of opposing OG.
[00:25:19] Jesse: I appreciate what OG said, but I do think career-wise, if we zoom out to the, the hopefully, you know, maybe the decades and decades you have left working, the idea of, of running to grab more money and subjecting yourself to the situation where they say people… What do they say? People don’t leave good j- bad jobs, they leave bad bosses.
[00:25:38] Jesse: Yeah, right. Is it something like that?
[00:25:39] Joe: No. That’s exactly
[00:25:39] Doug: right.
[00:25:40] Joe: Okay. Yeah.
[00:25:40] Jesse: So there’s something, there’s something’s fishy in the, in the apple cider bowl here. Someone put chewed gum inside of the candy bowl, and I’m not here for it.
[00:25:50] Joe: Paula, what do you think? We got one I don’t take it, one I do take it.
[00:25:55] Paula: It would entirely depend on the vibe that I got from that boss.
[00:25:59] Paula: So I would not judge based on the fact that other people left. I would judge purely, like, if I’m sitting… You know, you’re doing the interview with the person that you’re gonna be a direct report to How well do you get along? Like, do you enjoy your, your 30-minute conversation? Would you want to… I, I use the, uh, the airport layover litmus test.
[00:26:19] Paula: Like, if you were in an airport, like, you, you’re going on a business trip, you’re at the airport, you get stuck on a layover. You find out you’re stuck for 10 hours at like, you know, the Texarkana Airport. Oh, God.
[00:26:33] OG: You and six other people.
[00:26:36] Paula: Yeah. Wou- would you want to be stuck at the Texarkana Airport for 10 hours with this person?
[00:26:42] Joe: You could have just stopped at, would you want to be stuck at the Texarkana Airport? Yeah. No, you, you’ve been stuck at the Texarkana Airport.
[00:26:49] Paula: I, I have been stuck at the Texarkana Airport. But yeah, I mean, if you and that person, if you and the boss have a good vibe, like if you get along, then it’s not really relevant that other people didn’t get along with them.
[00:27:01] Joe: All right, that’s gonna do it for the first half. Our first game, the Financial Basement. And in the second half we’re gonna do financial movies. We, we had a scene from a movie. In, in the second half of today’s show, the game is gonna be I’m gonna give you a financial scenario, a movie we’re considering, a premise, and all of our contributors are gonna complete the movie in the most horrifying way possible.
[00:27:23] Joe: But before that, at the halfway point of every Friday afternoon, you know what we do? We have this year-long trivia competition between these three folks. And, uh, Doug, we only have a few weeks to go in this competition. What’s it look like? We have maybe five weeks, six weeks?
[00:27:43] Doug: Yeah, I could count it up, but we have something like six or eight epis- depending on any off weeks we might have coming up.
[00:27:48] Joe: What’s our score?
[00:27:49] Doug: OG is kind of re-exerting his dominance a little bit, ’cause we… You remember a couple of glorious weeks ago we were all tied up and it was as exciting as we’ve ever had it. It’s still very, very exciting, but right now we have OG in the lead by two with 12 points, and both Paula and Jesse with 10 points.
[00:28:09] Joe: I don’t know if the bigger idea is that OG’s, uh, reasserted his, uh, lead, or that Paula Pant is not in last again. I’m not sure. Not sure which one.
[00:28:19] Paula: I’m tied for last.
[00:28:22] Joe: Jesse’s running out of time to defend his title. We need a question. Doug, what do we got this week?
[00:28:33] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. On October 26th, 1984, one of the greatest horror action movies of all time hit theaters, The Terminator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a killer cyborg sent back in time to eliminate Sarah Connor before her son could grow up and save humanity from the machines that were all coming to kill them.
[00:28:57] Doug: It’s a horrible premise. Nobody thinks that machines are coming to kill any… I mean, like, in the today’s day and age, it’s a crazy thought, right? Nobody’s thinking the machines are gonna take over. And here’s something interesting. Arnold was actually being considered for the good guy in the movie, Kyle Reese, but Cameron met with him and realized he’d make a much better killing machine, and apparently a very quiet killing machine.
[00:29:18] Doug: Schwarzenegger spoke just 58 words in the entire movie. 58 words. The guy became an international superstar saying less than I do ordering lunch at The Sizzler, and half of his words weren’t even about whether the senior discount applies to the shrimp cocktail. But out of those 58 words came one of the most famous lines in movie history, “I’ll be back.”
[00:29:38] Doug: Now, in 2005, the American Film Institute released its list of 100 greatest movie quotes of all time, and Arnold’s three little words made the list. So here’s today’s trivia question, panelists. Where did I’ll be back from The Terminator rank on AFI’s list of the 100 greatest movie quotes? I’ll be back right after I practice my Arnold impression in the mirror.
[00:30:04] Doug: Got the accent down, uh, I just need to figure out how to make my neck as wide as a Buick.
[00:30:10] Joe: You sound exactly like him, Doug. I know. Just exactly like him. So this, this movie, OG, stacked a bunch of Benjamins, but it also stacked up a bunch of accolades, among which the AFI’s, uh, list of 100 best, uh, quips of all time.
[00:30:24] Joe: Where does I’ll be back rank?
[00:30:27] OG: Of all time movie quotes, I think, uh, number one has to be, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Number two is, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” And probably number three is I’ll be back. So I’m gonna say that the answer is 19th.
[00:30:50] Joe: Wow. That took a left turn in Albuquerque. Jesse Cramer, OG says 19.
[00:30:58] Jesse: I’m just, I’m trying to think of the best way to, uh, drop, you know, get, get some drama in here. I will, uh, split the remaining difference and go with 59.
[00:31:12] Joe: Number 59. All right, Paula, we got number 19 for I’ll be back. 59 from Jesse. Tell me you saw this movie. I’m sure you saw this movie.
[00:31:24] Paula: I’ve never seen the movie.
[00:31:25] Joe: You’ve never seen The Terminator? Mm-mm. No,
[00:31:28] Paula: never
[00:31:28] OG: seen The Terminator. You should watch it. There’s some similar parallels to 2026.
[00:31:33] Joe: It is. OG, do you know what year they’re fighting the robots and they come back from? 2027.
[00:31:39] OG: I was g- I think it’s 2029, actually.
[00:31:41] Joe: Oh, is it? But- Yeah, yeah. I know it’s coming up. It’s, it’s, it’s scarily, uh, uh, here-
[00:31:47] OG: Yes
[00:31:47] OG: at
[00:31:47] Joe: that time. Yeah.
[00:31:48] OG: Basically, Paula, when do all the robots take over all of the computers in the world and then decide that the best way for humanity is for all the human- humans to die?
[00:31:59] Paula: I mean, likely that will probably happen sometime between 2027 to 2029. See,
[00:32:05] Joe: there-
[00:32:06] Paula: Yeah …
[00:32:06] Joe: and that was the prediction from James Cameron way back in the day.
[00:32:08] Paula: Wow.
[00:32:09] Joe: Yeah. How about that?
[00:32:10] Doug: Sam, Sam Altman is probably gonna be the target when they go back in time- … to get rid of whoever started this whole thing. They’re going after Sam Altman. We just gotta kill Sam
[00:32:18] Joe: Altman.
[00:32:19] Doug: Yep.
[00:32:20] Joe: All right. What do we got, Paula? Actually, it’s the humans- Okay … coming back to k-
[00:32:24] Paula: So the first thought that came into my head was top 100 quotes were likely to bias towards the beginning because nobody likes to think of their quote as, like, number 74 in the top 100.
[00:32:36] Paula: The other thought, though, that came into my head is that is such a classic quote. To OG’s point, I can’t really think of many quotes… Well, I can’t really think of many quotes, but also I can’t really think of many quotes- … that top it.
[00:32:49] Joe: But you know that quote. You’ve never seen the movie.
[00:32:52] Paula: Exactly. E.T. phone home.
[00:32:55] Paula: Um, what else do I know?
[00:32:59] Joe: Do you know the two that OG talked about?
[00:33:01] Paula: Uh, oh, I’ve, I’ve never watched either of those movies, but I, uh, have heard both of those quotes. Okay. One is Casablanca, I think, maybe.
[00:33:09] Joe: Yep.
[00:33:09] Paula: And the other is something else.
[00:33:11] Joe: That’s good. Wow, that’s brilliant. Ninja.
[00:33:15] Paula: Well, I mean, as a person who doesn’t watch movies, what other quotes do I know?
[00:33:18] Paula: I know E.T., E.T. phone home. I know, um- I made my parents disappear. Uh, okay, I’m gonna say it was probably number 16, 17, I’m gonna guess. I’m g- so I’m, uh, I’m just gonna guess 18.
[00:33:37] Joe: Number 18. Goes with the under from OG. Mm-hmm. So OG’s got 19. Yeah. Jesse’s got 59. Paula’s got 18. Who’s gonna win? We’re gonna find out in just a minute.
[00:33:47] Joe: We’ll be right back. All right, OG, you opened this up by saying 19. I know part of that’s gamification. What was really going on in your head? Did you really think it was 19?
[00:33:59] OG: I think it’s in the top third, mostly because, like Paula said, in terms of recency bias maybe a little bit, and the panache of Arnold.
[00:34:09] OG: I do think it’s maybe inside the top 20, so I was trying to figure out a, a little gamey place to put it to make Paula have to decide.
[00:34:18] Joe: Well-
[00:34:19] OG: And she decided …
[00:34:20] Joe: Paula, you thought it’s probably inside the top 20. Feeling good?
[00:34:24] Paula: I, I, I think so. Okay, so it’s like, uh, who you gonna call? Uh, what e- I mean, what other quotes are there?
[00:34:31] Paula: What movies have existed?
[00:34:35] Joe: Paula can count the movies that have existed in one
[00:34:37] Doug: hand. I think you’ve already named them all, Paula. I think you said all the movies.
[00:34:42] Paula: But, and before that, there were silent pictures.
[00:34:45] Joe: That’s right. But- Not many quotes from those.
[00:34:47] Paula: Yeah, uh, I mean, did Wizard of Oz have any particular quotes?
[00:34:52] Doug: No place like home. No place like home. There’s no place like
[00:34:54] Paula: home.
[00:34:54] Joe: Sure, yeah. All right, uh, uh, Jesse, you’ve got all the top half, so if it’s in the 50s, 60s, 70s, y- you got it. Feeling good?
[00:35:04] Jesse: I’m feeling good. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got this little system that is pretty good. It’s, it’s a little like, uh, Anchorman.
[00:35:10] Jesse: 60% of the time, it works every time. That one might be in the top 100 quotes. And, and the system is basically where I watch Doug as the third guest comes in, and once in a while, I detect, I detect something, and based on Doug’s reaction, I’m worried that the right answer is in the 20s or 30s.
[00:35:31] Joe: Uh- Oh, no, so you’re worried that OG’s got it.
[00:35:34] Jesse: Correct. That’s, if, if I had to guess, I bet you the right answer is, uh, maybe it’s 31 in honor of Halloween. Well- That’s my guess. That’s my current updated guess, is 31.
[00:35:44] Joe: Let’s find out how good Doug’s poker face is. Doug, who’s taking the win home?
[00:35:54] Doug: Hey there, Stackers. I’m internationally acclaimed action movie star and guy who was once asked to leave a Planet Fitness for yelling, “Get to the choppa,” while using the elliptical, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Apparently, shouting motivational movie quotes is considered a lunk alarm violation, which is ridiculous.
[00:36:12] Doug: It was motivating everybody, not just the lunks. Before the break, we were talking about The Terminator, the 1984 classic starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a murderous cyborg from the future. I gotta tell ya, the more I think about this movie, the less believable it gets. Um, I mean, it, I, I thought it was like a documentary first time I saw it, but now I’m not so sure.
[00:36:30] Doug: A machine from the future that looks exactly like a human being? Eh, fine. Time travel? Of course. But you’re telling me that in the year 2029, artificial intelligence is so advanced the machines can take over the entire planet, and they still can’t figure out how to kill one person without sending a bodybuilder back 45 years?
[00:36:51] Doug: Yeah, I’m not buying it. That’s like OG trying to eliminate credit card debt by going back to ’84 and punching the guy who invented the Discover card. Anyway, Schwarzenegger delivered one of the most recognizable lines in movie history, “I’ll be back,” and it earned a spot in the American Film Institute’s list of top 100 greatest movie quotes.
[00:37:09] Doug: So where did it rank? Well- The correct answer was 22 places higher than Jesse’s guess, 19 places lower than Paula’s guess, and just 18 places lower than- Mm … OG’s guess, which means the Prince of Darkness is today’s winner.
[00:37:25] Joe: You mean higher than OG’s guess?
[00:37:27] Doug: Yeah. Well, it depends on how you’re saying it, but it, they, the correct answer is 37.
[00:37:31] Joe: Yeah, 30. It was number
[00:37:31] Doug: 37- Mm … in the, in the top
[00:37:33] Joe: 100. Oh, I see what you mean. So OG was closest. Yes. Yeah. I get, I get you.
[00:37:36] OG: I’ve got some other ones on here that I think, uh, Paula, you might recognize, ’cause I looked them up, uh, while we were talking. So I’m gonna go, “Go ahead and make my day.” No?
[00:37:46] Joe: You, you
[00:37:47] OG: know that one, Paula?
[00:37:47] OG: “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
[00:37:49] Paula: Oh, that’s Wizard of Oz.
[00:37:51] OG: Yep. “May the force be with you.”
[00:37:53] Paula: Oh, that’s Star Wars.
[00:37:54] OG: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:55] Paula: Never seen it, but I’ve heard.
[00:37:56] OG: But you know it exists. “Bond, James Bond.”
[00:37:59] Paula: Oh, that’s from James Bond. That’s Harry
[00:38:01] Joe: Potter. “
[00:38:01] OG: There’s no place like home.” We already got that one. How…
[00:38:03] OG: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver- No way … with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.” Oh,
[00:38:10] Paula: that’s, uh- Nice … Anthony Hopkins in, uh- Mm-hmm … Silence of the Lambs.
[00:38:14] OG: Yep. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” “
[00:38:16] Joe: Gonna need a bigger boat,” there’s a good
[00:38:17] Paula: one. “We’re gonna need a bigger boat. Need a bigger boat.” I don’t know that one.
[00:38:20] Paula: Titanic.
[00:38:21] OG: Oh.
[00:38:21] Paula: Jaws. Titanic.
Titanic.
[00:38:25] OG: Also Titanic.
[00:38:27] Joe: All right, time for our second half game. Uh, we could just play, the second half of this, play the game of Quiz Paula about her, uh, acumen when it comes to these. I think she knows more movies than she thinks she knows. But-
[00:38:40] Paula: Well, I haven’t seen any of them. I’ve only heard the quotes
[00:38:42] Paula: we
[00:38:43] Joe: do have, though, Paula, a movie studio. I don’t know if you know this. In Mom’s Basement we have a movie, movie studio, and, uh, SP Pictures just green lit a new movie. We’re calling it I Know What You Financed Last Summer. Very, very scary. Our movie begins with a loving parent. Their 24-year-old needs a car.
[00:39:04] Joe: Kid can’t qualify. Mom co-signs. Mom said, “He’s a good kid. He’ll make the payments.” Freeze frame. You’re the director. Write the horror ending
[00:39:17] Paula: Kid takes car, drives off to Mexico, ghosts mom. Uh, initially I was going to put him in a car accident, but then insurance would cover it, so kid takes car, drives off to Mexico, ghosts mom, doesn’t make any of the payments.
[00:39:32] Paula: Mom now no longer knows where the kid is, and is on the hook for payments
[00:39:37] Joe: And there’s no collateral at all. Mm-hmm. The collateral is missing. Yes. Uh, Jesse, you’re one of the producers that can make a note on that. You know, in, in Hollywood they call it making a note when you wanna revise it a little.
[00:39:51] Joe: Would you revise that, add some notes?
[00:39:54] Jesse: Well, I, I liked how Paula, i- in the spirit of Halloween, how the kid ghosts his mom. That was a good- That was a good touch. If we wanted to make it scarier, uh, rather than he doesn’t make it to Mexico, he breaks down outside of Dallas in OG’s hometown, and, uh, Jafar/OG comes at him with a chainsaw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre style.
[00:40:20] Jesse: And so not only does he not, uh, make his payments- … uh, but it actually is a gruesome R-rated horror film. It’s both. That’s my note.
[00:40:28] Joe: Crazed financial planner on the loose- Yeah … trying to make sure that mom, his client, gets her money.
[00:40:34] Jesse: Bloody CFP.
[00:40:36] Joe: OG, some notes from you. Uh, how would you change up that ending a little bit?
[00:40:41] OG: I actually like wh- where Paula was going in terms of the accident. Um, because the car’s in mom’s name, kid, uh, causes an accident, school bus full of children, and since he has no assets but the asset is owned by mom, she gets sued for a trillion dollars- Oh. And is now destitute, living under a bridge-
[00:41:02] Joe: Oh.
[00:41:03] Joe: Ooh.
[00:41:03] OG: In an old refrigerator box.
[00:41:05] Joe: Oh.
[00:41:06] OG: With nothing but a picture of her s- long lost son, who doesn’t call her anymore because he, she doesn’t have a phone because she doesn’t have any money.
[00:41:16] Joe: OG, your clients come to you and they say, “I wanna cosign for the 24-year-old.” What do you tell them? How do you handle it instead?
[00:41:22] OG: I mean, I have this. My s- I bought my son a car, and it’s in my name, and I have the insurance and the liability and all that sort of stuff where it needs to be for our family. And, um, I would love for him to make the payment, but if he doesn’t, I know that I’m responsible for it. So I don’t have a-
[00:41:39] Joe: So you just know, you know what the Achilles heel is ahead of time going in.
[00:41:42] OG: Yeah, I don’t… I, I mean, I go into it eyes wide open of, “I’m paying for this if he doesn’t.” And in fact, I pay it so that it gets paid, and then if he pays me on time, then that’s great.
[00:41:53] Joe: Jesse, how do you handle this?
[00:41:55] Jesse: Well, I like OG’s solution, which is like, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with, with cosigning a loan or giving money to your kids or supporting your kids in some way.
[00:42:04] Jesse: It’s just about, a- as with anything in, in financial planning, it’s like know where your risks are and, and what can you do to mitigate those risks? Yeah, that’s what I would do. Now, if your son kind of betrays your trust in some way, that, that really sucks. But y- you can try to mitigate some of the actual financial risks.
[00:42:23] OG: Well, the good news then is if they do, it’s your car, so you have no, you know, you have all the legal recourse you need to just go get it. You know? It’s yours. There’s not like this cosigning nonsense of, “Well, it’s kind of ours and, but I’m financially responsible for it.” S- just leave it yours.
[00:42:40] Jesse: The car’s in Mexico now, and there’s this big wall.
[00:42:44] OG: I love going to Mexico. Everybody loves a little Mexico time.
[00:42:47] Joe: chasing his car down in Mexico. That’s the sequel, Paula. OG chasing the car down in Mexico. Try- trying to stay sober while he’s in Cabo to get long enough to get his car. Paula, do you consider this car then, do you consider it a gift, like when you’re loaning money to a family member?
[00:43:06] Paula: Yeah. I generally do not believe in loans when it comes to friends and family. If it exists, it is a gift.
[00:43:14] Joe: Yes, yes.
[00:43:15] Paula: You know, I think- That’s
[00:43:16] Doug: exactly what I wanted to hear.
[00:43:17] Paula: Yeah. Loaning, in the context of family and friends, is not a thing
[00:43:23] Joe: Let’s move on to our final game of the day. And there always is in, in all these horror movies, of course, there’s the, uh, woman commonly known as final girl, right?
[00:43:35] Joe: Uh, who does not die, who figures out what the game’s all about and manages to escape. So I’m gonna give each of you a financial conundrum between two things final girl can use in her financial acumen to get where she wants to go. You tell me which one’s a better weapon, all right? Jesse, we’re gonna have you go first.
[00:43:57] Joe: She can have as her weapon the emergency fund or great credit. Which one’s better?
[00:44:05] Jesse: Ooh, it’s a hard one. That’s a really good one, Joe. I’m gonna say great credit. I think over the long run, having great credit will provide a bigger monetary benefit than having the emergency fund.
[00:44:19] Joe: All right, let’s see if these guys agree with you.
[00:44:21] Joe: Paula, emergency fund or great credit?
[00:44:23] Paula: Totally disagree. I say emergency fund. Credit only matters if you are applying for an apartment, like applying for a place to live, or taking out debt.
[00:44:34] Joe: But you could use the… I think Jesse, what Jesse’s thinking is you can use the credit as a poor man’s emergency fund, right?
[00:44:40] Jesse: I was under the assumption she had a well-funded taxable brokerage account.
[00:44:50] Joe: Zing. You never pull that out in the third act, Jesse. If you’ve ever made one of these movies, you introduce the brokerage account in act one so it can be used in act three.
[00:45:00] Jesse: Well, it’s, it’s, it’s a hard one. It, it really is a hard one, ’cause right, uh, Pa- I understand where Paula is coming from. Like, if you don’t even have an emergency fund, then you, are you in any position to be using credit anyway?
[00:45:11] Jesse: I just think to myself, if someone out there is 22 years old and they just got out of college, and they have no emergency fund to speak of, and they have really excellent credit, well, it’s like, well, I guess I don’t even know if they’d have excellent credit in that way, but I’m thinking to myself, this is a person who might be renting their apartment.
[00:45:26] Jesse: They might be buying their first car. They might be saving up for a down payment on a home, and having really good credit is going to pay off for them in the long run. But yeah, not having an emergency fund is not a great position to be in either, so. That’s,
[00:45:39] Joe: that’s kind of ageism. Uh, how come you think that everybody in Hollywood, final girl, is, like, 20 years old?
[00:45:44] Joe: Final girl could be, like, 70 in this case.
[00:45:48] Jesse: Right. Well, I don’t know. So,
[00:45:51] Joe: you know, I- I don’t know, I’m just messing with you. I don’t- Just, I don’t know. Jafari, you’ve got the final, the final, the tiebreaker here. Does final girl need an emergency fund or great credit?
[00:46:06] OG: I think that you will get further in life with great credit than you will with a great emergency fund. I just think there’s so many things that it’s tied into today, unfairly so. I don’t, I don’t agree with why it’s tied into it. I’m sure there’s some actuary somewhere that created some algorithm that says that these things are all correlated and therefore whatever.
[00:46:31] OG: But, you know, if you don’t have great credit, you can’t go on a work trip ’cause you can’t rent a car, and you have to have a bunch of money in cash to be able to rent. You know, it’s like you can’t do it. It’s just not a thing. And I get the Dave Ramsey folks out there who are like, “No, that’s bull crap. You could just do it with a debit card.”
[00:46:48] OG: Well, yeah, if you’re 40 and you’ve saved a bunch of money in cash for the last 20 years and you’ve done all that for… You know, I agree, you can But if you’re that 22-year-old that you said is out of college, like, they just haven’t had the opportunity to do that. I know, like, I remember when we were first married, Lissa went on a work trip kind of early in her career.
[00:47:08] OG: She had to call her dad because our credit card didn’t have enough limit for the week stay at the hotel for work, and they didn’t have, like, corporate cards. It was just like you just charged and got reimbursed. And she’s like, “What do I do?” Like, she’s like… Or she’s, like, trying to check in and, like, didn’t have a credit card with, like, a $5,000 limit because that’s just not what we had.
[00:47:27] OG: We had, like, a $1,000 limit, and she was gonna be in Chicago for a week.
[00:47:30] Joe: Oh, gee, I was trying to rent a car to take my very young family, sh- trying to take them to, uh, Disney, and we were gonna road trip it to save money. I couldn’t rent a car ’cause I couldn’t get enough credit. Same thing. Yeah. I didn’t have enough credit to rent a car.
[00:47:43] Joe: The way it’s tied
[00:47:43] OG: into, like, uh, they look at your credit if you’re gonna get a job. If you have any sort of job that has any level of security in it, whether it’s national security type security or just a job security thing, they’re gonna look at your credit and, uh, what’s going on there. There’s just so many things that are tied into it now that if you had a superpower of, like, “I got an 800 credit score for the rest of my life,” you know, you still have to be responsible for it.
[00:48:07] OG: It doesn’t, doesn’t magically make you responsible ’cause you have a great credit score. But it will, it certainly will make your life a lot easier on those day-to-day things.
[00:48:14] Joe: Well, I like these though, both great weapons for Final Girl to use. Let’s go to the second one. Paula, we’ll have you start. Final Girl can choose between two weapons: low fixed expenses or great insurances.
[00:48:29] Paula: Low fixed expenses. With low fixed expenses, that, that delta between what you spend and what you earn, that can go pretty wide pretty fast because, uh, there’s no ceiling to what you can earn, especially if you are healthy and have a hu- like a hustle, work hard mentality. And if you’ve got low fixed expenses, I mean, that gap between income and expense gets big.
[00:48:52] Paula: You take that gap, you invest it. That investment grows, and over time, boom, it, it grows big enough that you don’t even need insurance on many things. Like, of course you need it on, like, very low probability, high magnitude events. But you no longer need insurance on, uh, a lot of things and, and you can get the highest possible deductible on a lot of other things.
[00:49:16] Joe: Less risk because you spend less money. Do you agree with that, Jafar?
[00:49:20] OG: 100%, yep.
[00:49:21] Joe: Yeah.
[00:49:22] OG: If you can keep your fixed expenses low, the world is wide open to you. When you start having fixed expenses that are high, you, uh, run into a lot of, a lot of, uh, snugness around your, um, around your budget in a hurry if things don’t go exactly according to plan.
[00:49:38] Joe: Jesse, uh, you gonna pile on a third there?
[00:49:41] Jesse: It, it’s hard for me to not pile on. After all, I’m wearing leaves, and, and what do you do with leaves? You, you pile. I was trying to think, you know… I’m trying to think of a, a, a way in which having great insurance is better than having low fixed expenses. But I really liked, I…
[00:49:56] Jesse: One of the places my mind went to, I think, is what something I heard Paula just say, which is, well, if you have low fixed expenses, you’re probably in a position to then go out and afford some great insurance. Mm. Or, or maybe you just don’t end up needing the insurance in the first place, so- Yeah … I’ll go with that one.
[00:50:11] Joe: Let’s do this one, Jesse. Let’s keep you on the hot seat. Diversified investments. She’s got two tools here: diversified investments or a high savings rate.
[00:50:19] Jesse: Ooh, I like this one.
[00:50:21] Joe: And so then that would, that would mean the high savings rate goes into a not as well diversified, right?
[00:50:27] Jesse: It does. It does. There are shades of gray as far as how not diversified you are, but I, I think I’m gonna go with a high savings rate here.
[00:50:38] Jesse: I truly think the more time I, I spend learning about all the cool corners of financial planning, I think that cash flow is king and foundational, and everything else that matters is a function of your cash flow, and having a really high savings rate is another way of saying you’re in a really, really good cash flow position.
[00:50:57] Jesse: And so again, i- if someone were to tell me, you know, 100% of their money’s in one stock, eh, that, that’s stock, that, that’s not great, but I, I think you can get away with a pretty big lack of diversification if you’re saving a ton of money.
[00:51:11] Joe: Let’s change that up just a little bit, OG. Let’s say that you have a high income, which makes it easier for you to have a si- savings rate.
[00:51:20] Joe: So final girl can have high income versus having better financial knowledge.
[00:51:28] OG: Boy. I think high income will get you out of a lot of s- trouble. I think maybe I’d pick high income over knowledge.
[00:51:37] Joe: Yeah, Paula, where do you come down on that one?
[00:51:39] Paula: Okay. Initially it was diversified investments, but now it’s financial knowledge.
[00:51:44] Joe: Yeah, I just twisted it there to change it up after Jesse’s answer.
[00:51:49] Paula: Define the extent of s- of lack of knowledge that we’re talking about. Do we just mean, like, you’re over concentrated in, in your company’s stock that’s at 38% of your portfolio?
[00:52:01] Joe: Generally just doesn’t know what they’re doing. But they can save a ton of money.
[00:52:07] Joe: OG goes down with high income gets you out of a lot of pickles.
[00:52:10] Paula: Eh, I mean, it depends on how lack of knowledge we’re talking about, but I have seen some people with a real lack of knowledge that went really off the rails for like, whew.
[00:52:25] Joe: Did they have high income?
[00:52:26] Paula: Middle income.
[00:52:28] Joe: But if they would’ve had super high income, would that have helped the situation?
[00:52:31] Paula: No, they would’ve just been stupider faster. Yeah. Stupider with more. Yeah.
[00:52:38] Joe: Yeah, I don’t know. High income solved a lot of problems, though. Yeah. When, when I was a financial planner. It solved a lot of problems. I saw people get themselves into horrible areas, but because they had huge cashflow, didn’t really care.
[00:52:49] Joe: You know? Yeah. They’re like, “Oh, okay, I’ll get out of it.” Why? ‘Cause I got a monster amount of money that I can screw up next month.
[00:52:54] Paula: Yeah. It depends on how little knowledge we’re talking about.
[00:52:58] Joe: Well, that is gonna do it for the Halloween party. Thanks to everybody for playing our financial games. Let’s find out what’s going on this Halloween weekend, OG.
[00:53:07] Joe: Tomorrow’s Halloween. You’ve been saying this all week. You’re gonna serve 2% yogurt, Greek yogurt, at your house. Is that really happening for people that wanna come to the OG residence?
[00:53:17] OG: Yeah. I mean, like I said, once a year we’ll, we, we allow a little granola. So, uh, we’ve got little, little, little cups. Uh, there’s d- it’s kind of dealer’s choice.
[00:53:24] OG: You could take the little cups with the spoons in them, uh, that, that we can put in your bag for you, or we can just spoon it into your mouth, uh, when you come by.
[00:53:33] Joe: Happy Halloween, Mr. OG.
[00:53:36] OG: Come on over, everybody.
[00:53:38] Joe: Greek yogurt for the win. What spooky stuff is Don’t Afford Anything this Halloween week?
[00:53:42] Paula: I gotta say, I’m pretty sure you should never, like, take spoon-fed yogurt from strangers.
[00:53:48] OG: No, it’s, it’s healthy.
[00:53:53] Doug: It’s healthy living.
[00:53:54] OG: I don’t do it out of a van, Paula. It’s on my front porch. I just sit there and I just sit there in my normal outfit. And I go, “Who wants some yogurt?”
[00:54:04] Paula: And
[00:54:04] Joe: the kids come running. Here, kitties.
[00:54:06] Paula: The kids
[00:54:07] Joe: come running.
[00:54:09] Paula: All right, well, on the Afford Anything podcast, uh, you will… I don’t know what the heck you’re gonna find.
[00:54:14] Paula: Well, you’re gonna find you and me, Joe.
[00:54:16] Joe: Us.
[00:54:17] Paula: Yes, you, us.
[00:54:18] Joe: Very scary.
[00:54:19] Paula: Oh, so, so scary. Actually, we answer a question from somebody who asks, “Am I unemployable?”
[00:54:25] Joe: And we just answer no and hang up on them.
[00:54:27] Paula: Yeah. No. Exactly. Exactly. But yeah, we answered a question from a woman who, uh, was totally unmotivated by money.
[00:54:34] Paula: Uh, she’d made enough that she was no longer money motivated, and she was like, “What does that mean for me? Am I unemployable?” And so we, uh, we answered that question plus a whole lot more. So to hear Joe give his take on financial questions, tune into the Afford Anything podcast.
[00:54:50] Joe: That is very, very, very scary Mr.
[00:54:53] Joe: Jesse Cramer, dressed like fall personified. What scary stuff is coming up on the Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors show?
[00:55:03] Jesse: Well, last week we, uh, published an episode chock-full of the best quotes from Charlie Munger. Uh, not, not too many of them are scary, but yeah- Those were scary … may- maybe one or two.
[00:55:15] Jesse: One or two. Those were scary. There’s certainly a little sh- uh, you know. He had a way with words. And, uh, next week we are releasing an episode all about the history of retirement itself, which was kind of a fun, uh, deep dive to go down and learn more about.
[00:55:29] Joe: We have a big reveal before we say goodbye to everybody.
[00:55:33] Joe: This is a huge, huge thing that we should’ve done weeks ago and did not. OG has the current trophy, the traveling trophy that’s going around the nation. Well, supposedly was going around the nation, but Jesse, did you ever get the traveling trophy?
[00:55:48] OG: I, I don’t think so.
[00:55:50] Joe: Yeah. It has
[00:55:50] OG: your name on it.
[00:55:51] Joe: It does. It says
[00:55:52] Joe: It s- it says Jesse- Oh,
[00:55:53] OG: cool …
[00:55:54] Joe: in Sharpie. But the good- Sure
[00:55:56] OG: does …
[00:55:57] Joe: the good news is, is one of our contributors was nice enough to submit to the jury, uh, Doug and I, a new trophy. There is a new trophy, and Paula Pant, who if history repeats itself, Paula, you will never see this trophy .
[00:56:12] Paula: I will, I will never see it again.
[00:56:14] Paula: That’s, that was why I had to donate the trophy, so that I could- … for one glorious moment hold the trophy prior to donating it to the Stacking Benjamins, uh, institution.
[00:56:25] Joe: The brand-new Stacking Benjamins traveling trophy, here it comes. It’s like, uh, uh, uh, denotes reading, as if any of our contributors, Paula, have ever picked up a book.
[00:56:35] Joe: Have the three of you picked up books before? It is very studious on the top. That’s good.
[00:56:40] Paula: See, it’s a bookworm. See? It’s a bookworm.
[00:56:42] Joe: Yeah, it is. It’s a bookworm, so, uh, who’s the most studious, right? And then check this out. Like, the world of financial trivia, all of the… You’ve got math, you’ve got geography, you’ve got, uh, man, you’ve got all kinds of stuff here.
[00:56:57] Joe: And then look at this. It, it almost looks like real wood, but it is, uh, genuine plastic, everybody. And then at the bottom it says You suck the least. That is, that is the new Stacking Benjamins trophy. So congratulations, OG, you get to keep that one. We’ll send this, uh, to Jesse Cramer. If you want it, Jesse, on your, on your mantle for about a month.
[00:57:25] Joe: But now that Mr. Jafar’s gotten three weeks ahead, you might be sending it out very soon if you don’t get on the, the stick fairly soon.
[00:57:32] Jesse: Yeah, we, we, we can leave it where it’s at and, uh, wait and see how this year ends. That’s fine with me.
[00:57:38] Joe: All right. That doesn’t sound as confident as we wanted you, Jesse, but that’s gonna have to do.
[00:57:42] Joe: All right. Big thanks to everybody who hung out with us today for the making of the special Halloween episode. Thank you to all of our contributors for dressing up, taking it seriously, even though Doug has a conspiracy that, uh, maybe we didn’t take it seriously. I don’t know. Big thanks to everybody for giving us your time, and if you know somebody who says they’re not really into money, this might be a fun episode to share with them.
[00:58:02] Joe: So pass it along, and remember also for yourself, you can get more financial knowledge after this is done by signing up for our Veterans Day giveaway. We’re giving away a Solo Stove, stackingbenjamins.com/veterans, and you’ll get the 201. Uh, so get more knowledge after the shows, and get our newsletter, and maybe win a Solo Stove.
[00:58:23] Joe: But right now, you know what you’re gonna win? You’re gonna win Doug telling us what should we have learned on today’s show.
[00:58:28] Doug: Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Jesse Cramer. He said some sm- smart stuff. I mean, I dozed off there for a bit when he was talking, so that means it probably was really intelligent.
[00:58:39] Doug: Also, if you have a kid who’s gonna bounce to Mexico, mitigate your risks ahead of time. Second, don’t forget what OG said about how much to spend on your home. While the banks may tell you you can spend up to 36% of your income, you may be better off targeting more like 25, 30-ish to give yourself some breathing room.
[00:58:56] Doug: But the big lesson, when Joe’s mom gives you a chore to complete, you should never say, “I’ll be back.” It’s always, “I’ll do it right now, madam. Yeah, right away. Right away.” Otherwise, she’s described, uh, there will be no future Yeah, Ma. All right. Threat accomplished. Thanks to the very scary Jesse Cramer for joining us today.
[00:59:19] Doug: You’ll find Jesse’s personal finance for long-term investors show wherever you’re listening to us now. We’ll also add links in the dead of night to our show notes at stackingbenjamins.com. Thanks to the wicked Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her spooky podcast, Afford Anything, wherever you listen to the spookiest podcasts.
[00:59:41] Doug: And finally, thanks to OG for j- I mean Jafar for hanging out with us today. Your money giving you blood-curdling scream vibes? Head to stackingbenjamins.com/og to get on his calendar. This show is the property of SP Podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. You’ll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.
[01:00:11] Doug: Come say hello. And oh yeah, 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 Benjamins show.
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