Retirement planning isn’t about waiting until 65—it’s about setting yourself up for a life you love starting right now! Today, Certified Financial Planner Benjamin Brant joins us to challenge traditional retirement thinking.
What We Cover:
✅ Retirement planning starts now, not later – Why waiting to plan is the biggest mistake you can make.
✅ Dream big, but expect some ‘bad data’ – How testing financial plans (and life plans!) helps you refine your future.
✅ Why trust beats performance in financial planning – A new study shows that your advisor’s returns matter less than their integrity.
✅ The Monte Carlo simulation debate – What this financial tool actually tells you (and what it doesn’t).
✅ Childhood dreams, stand-up comedy, and time travel? – How revisiting past joys can shape a meaningful retirement.
✅ Choosing the right financial advisor – The #1 factor to look for before handing over your portfolio.
Key Takeaways:
💡 Retirement isn’t a number—it’s a mindset. The earlier you start thinking about what brings you joy, the better.
💡 Financial planning isn’t perfect science. Bad data, trial-and-error, and adjusting your plan over time? Totally normal.
💡 Trust is your biggest investment. A good financial advisor isn’t just about returns—they’re about guidance you can rely on.
Grab your favorite drink (coffee, bourbon—you choose!) and let’s stack some wisdom for your future self.
🎧 Hit play now and start building your best retirement today!
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/find-your-fulfillment-in-retirement-Benjamin-Brandt-1639
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Monday Mentor: Benjamin Brandt

Big thanks to Benjamin Brandt for joining us today. To learn more about Benjamin, visit Benjamin Brandt Certified Financial Planner About. Grab yourself a copy of the book Retirement Starts Today: A Non-Financial Guide to an Even Better Retirement
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: Oh my goodness. It’s Monday morning and you gentlemen know what we do on Monday morning. Sleep in. Well, besides that, have seven eggs complain. Besides that, we salute the troops. Well we do all that. Yes. And we salute the troops. So raise your mugs gents. ’cause it is Monday in America and across the world. [00:00:19] And you know what that means? On behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, who gave OG that damn big mug? Look at that big mug. Mm-hmm. He’s got a big coffee [00:00:28] Doug: cup too. Did your mug grow? No, it looks longer than it used to be. Nope. Same size on behalf of the men and [00:00:35] Joe: women. Make a podcast in Mama’s Spaceman and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union. [00:00:40] Here’s to our troops. Thank you for all you do. Let’s all go stack some Benjamins together. Shall we ade? [00:00:51] bit: Bring Ade one? I’m not, dang. What? Nothing. Here’s you inputs. I’m not dead. Yeah. He says he is not dead. Yes, he is. I’m not. He isn’t. Well, he will be stewing. He is very ill. I’m getting better. No, you’re not. [00:01:06] You’ll be stone dead in a moment. Oh, I can’t take him like that. It’s against regulations [00:01:16] Doug: live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:30] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And have You’ve been planning retirement all wrong this whole time. I mean, who knew? Well, this guy did. We’re adjusting our sights on a more fulfilling and exciting retirement vision. With today’s mentor, certified financial planner, Benjamin Brant Plus, in our headline, do You Trust Your Financial Pros? [00:01:50] We dive into a new study on the topic with some surprising findings, and don’t you worry, because even if a more successful retirement or better financial help doesn’t make you feel all tingly in your nether regions, you can always rely on my amazing trivia to pull you through what sometimes it happens. [00:02:13] And now two guys who are surprisingly surprised for their eight, I mean this early on a Monday. It’s Joe and oh G. [00:02:28] Joe: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Let’s Make It Awkward podcast. I’m Joe Salsey. Hi. I have Joe Money on, uh, on the Twitter the X, although I’m never there anymore. You can find me all over social media. It’s good stuff. How are you [00:02:40] Doug: gentlemen? This morning I’m feeling kind of tingly in another regions, frankly, that Geez. [00:02:45] So what? Oh gee. How are you doing today? I’m just saying my feet itch. [00:02:51] Joe: Yeah, I, I do, by the way, I get the winter, like just dry skin thing drives me crazy. It’s horrible. That’s what lotion’s for. Yes. Lotion. [00:03:00] OG: Maybe take a bath every so often. Oh no. [00:03:05] Joe: You know, it’s not Tuesday takes like hard pass on that my friend. [00:03:09] Hard pass on that. You know what’s great guys? We’ve a fantastic show today. I read about 50 books a year, getting ready for guests to come on the show. This gentleman Benjamin Brand, I thought I knew where he was going with this analogy he’s gonna talk about today, that retirement OG begins today. I thought he knew, I knew where he was going. [00:03:28] I had no idea. I had no idea. So this is gonna be a just a huge, huge, huge lesson for all of our stackers out [00:03:35] OG: there. And Brandt. Good dude. Yes. Good dude. Very good dude. People, dude. He’s a dude of the people. He is a dude of the people. The dude abides. He’s kind of like the dude he totally is. He’d be like the dude, right, with that long [00:03:45] Joe: beer to his, yeah. [00:03:47] And his just very laid back nature. Yeah. Is he always carrying a white Russian? [00:03:50] Doug: Well, [00:03:51] OG: maybe [00:03:51] Joe: not. [00:03:51] Doug: Careful, man. There’s a beverage here. I could [00:03:53] OG: see him walking around in like a bathrobe. I totally could. Like every day, all day. Yes. Benjamin Brand. It’s totally uncool, man. Your retirement plan is trash. [00:04:04] Joe: It’s awful. [00:04:05] It’s totally uncool, bro. You could do better. Yeah, but he’d just be more positive than that too, though. He’s like Mr. Positive all the time. Benjamin Brand is here. He’s A CFP from the great state of North Dakota. North Dakota. Yeah. Don’t you know? Don’t you know? He is the fantastic host of The Retirement Begins Today Podcast. [00:04:25] Frequent contributor here. We have him on about, uh, twice a year, but today he’s in the driver’s seat because he’s got some mentoring to do. OG Sweet about retirement starting today. What does that actually mean? I thought I knew. I didn’t know. Bet you guys don’t know. We’re gonna hear from Benjamin next, but before we get there, we’ve got some sponsors to make sure this show’s free so that you don’t have to pay for any of this. [00:04:47] Goodness. And man, goodness, it’s gonna be today. Let’s hear from them. And then Certified financial planner, Benjamin Brandt joining us at the card table. [00:05:05] And I am super happy. This guy’s coming down to the basement. Ben Brandt’s here. How are you man? [00:05:09] Benjamin: I couldn’t be better. Love your show. Love everything about you. [00:05:12] Joe: Well, that’s not, holy cow. I feel like I owe you 10 bucks already. [00:05:16] Benjamin: Awesome. [00:05:17] Joe: You know, we call our Monday segments Monday mentors. And your appearance here today is specifically because of a note that stacker Joel sent to us. [00:05:30] He actually shared this in our basement Facebook group, and I’d like to share it with you because I think this is, this is so important for what you and I are gonna talk about today. He actually shared this in our Adventure Podcast forum, the Stacking Ventures clubhouse. He said, I’ve been listening to Stacking Benjamins for 10 months now. [00:05:49] Pretty consistently. My wife and I recently retired, and we’re having challenges transitioning from a savings, frugal mindset to a spending mindset. Hoping this group and the New Adventures podcast gives us some ideas to help with this transition, and of course, adventure ideas. Thanks for your time and effort. [00:06:05] Joel. Thanks to you. This pen is a great intro to why you’re here today and what we’re gonna talk about. Let’s talk about cliches in personal finance, because I was a financial planner for quite a long time. Like let’s just talk about men in general. When you think about a cliche of men and retirement, what does the average prototypical male tell you they’re going to do in retirement? [00:06:29] Benjamin: Fish and golf. [00:06:30] Joe: Fish and golf. Yes. A hundred percent. I got golf a lot. Maybe it’s ’cause I don’t fish often. I didn’t get fish as much, but fish and golf and then, then women [00:06:39] Benjamin: spend time with grandkids. [00:06:40] Joe: Oh, for me it was travel. Okay. [00:06:44] Benjamin: Well, that could be both. I guess that could be the same thing, but yeah. [00:06:46] Joe: Travel to where the grandkids are. [00:06:48] Benjamin: Yeah. Right. [00:06:48] Joe: Absolutely. But a lot of time on the road, and by the way, stackers, this isn’t everybody, but this definitely is, is an issue. I don’t know, have you ever had somebody tell you that? Like, Hey, uh, uh, I’m in retirement and this golf retirement’s not doing it for me. [00:07:04] Benjamin: Yeah, all the time. So we work with Super Savers. [00:07:06] That’s kind of who listens to our podcasts and, and who are our clients. And it’s difficult, you know, the wires that we connected in our brain in our twenties and thirties and forties and fifties to save up all this money and the skills we develop to save up money is not the same skills we need to spend it. [00:07:20] So a lot of times we get to retirement and we’ve got a couple million bucks in the bank, and we’re like, I don’t, I’m, I don’t know what to do. I’m, I’m kind of sick of golf. I’ve watched the prices right as much as a human possibly could, and I’m, I’m really bored. I didn’t think this is what retirement was. [00:07:34] What do I do now? [00:07:35] Joe: It’s so sad because you think about all of this money that you save you, you’re like, oh, I’m gonna get, get to golf nonstop. And I had. I had that same thing back when I was a planner all the time. Have, have you ever seen the Ken Ald studies on this, the early years of retirement? [00:07:50] Benjamin: I’m sure I have. [00:07:50] I couldn’t quote ’em to you chapter in verse, but it sounds familiar. [00:07:53] Joe: Yeah, just, just the first 18 months, Ben is this, uh, overwhelming sense of joy, just this fantastic euphoria that I’m not going into the office. Everybody skips into retirement to the golf course with a fishing pole, whatever it is, for like 18 months. [00:08:08] Yep. 18 months in the average retiree. And it’s funny ’cause I’ve quoted this a ton when I’ve done public speaking the last several years, and I always have people afterwards come up and go, that was exactly me. 18 months in they have this deep, deep, deep depression and it’s this huge, is this it? Is this really what retirement’s about? [00:08:31] And this is kind of what you’re fighting against every day. I. [00:08:35] Benjamin: And I think you’ve covered this on your show before, but there’s a great TED talk, I don’t remember who did it, but the four phases of retirement and, and he calls that phase the honeymoon phase. And so you retire and it’s nine months or 18 months of this honeymoon phase, and you’re like, this is never gonna end like this joy of no more zoom calls, no more voicemails, no more commute, you know, no more whatever. [00:08:55] I can wear sweatpants and a hoodie every day. This is never gonna end. And then at some point it does end and you say, okay, now what? You know, I’ve got 29 and a half more years of retirement. Well, what am I gonna do? Now? [00:09:07] Joe: You make a kind of a bold claim early on in your new book on this topic, which is, managing money correctly is not a fulfilling retirement. [00:09:18] And now it’s like you just swore at a bunch of finance nerds that listen to this type of stuff. Ben, what do you mean when you say managing money correctly is not a fulfilling retirement? [00:09:29] Benjamin: What I mean is that sometimes in the book I’ll talk about what got you here, we’ll get you there. So our hyper focus on money oftentimes, especially for we’re retiring early, is what makes the thing possible, but we can’t change our focus, so we’re still focused on the ones and zeros. [00:09:43] So sometimes I’ll meet with somebody and I’ll meet with them two or three times a year, over a decade, and I can tell before the meeting starts what mood they’ll be in. Because of the state of the stock market, they’re letting their investments dictate their entire energy and their outlook on life, right? [00:09:59] They’re letting the ones and zeros dictate their behavior, right? Sometimes it’s even political, you know, sometimes it’s financial and I think there’s just so much more to life than that. So the money is what we need to go live life, right? We need, we need to have a kind of a set it and forget it style of a plan so that we’re not focused on those specific account balances all the time, and then letting that dictate our mood. [00:10:20] So focusing way too much on the financial aspect is going to almost ensure that we die with some form of regret. We gotta get past the numbers. Uh, we have to build our retirement confidence even when the market’s bad. And we gotta go do the thing that we saved up the money for. Sometimes we save up this money ’cause I’m gonna go do X and then we never figure what X is. [00:10:39] We just focus on saving up the money. And so I, I start the book out by saying, there’s two ways you can mess up retirement. Our industry only focuses on one running outta money. The second one is dying with regret. And if we don’t sort of get past number one, we’ll almost guarantee number two, we’ll almost guarantee the die with regret part. [00:10:55] Joe: Well, the frustration that you have is that the financial industry in general only focuses on number one. Right. And I think we kind of feed that fear because then you hire professionals. You’re like, oh, if you don’t hire me, you’re gonna run outta money. Right? You don’t wanna run outta money. We emphasize that a ton, but the regret piece to me is way bigger. [00:11:12] Benjamin: Well, I think the, the whole financial industry, I, myself included, is built on assets under management and or selling insurance policies. And both of those are, are focused on don’t ever spend your money, leave it invested with me so I can charge you 1% forever. Or buy this expensive insurance product that’s gonna guarantee that you never run outta money, but inflation’s gonna eat you alive and you’re not actually gonna be able to go do the fun stuff that you wanna do ’cause you’re on an allowance. [00:11:34] And this insurance policy is carved into stone tablets. Right. So the whole industry is on number one, and we tell you that’s the most important thing, but I don’t believe it. I’m not buying it. Did you read Christine Ben’s new book? I read pieces of it. That’s the Morningstar lady, right? Yeah, yeah, [00:11:47] Joe: yeah. You must have been applauding. [00:11:49] I was just thinking of you. You must have been applauding when in chapter one, she’s talking to an annuity expert. They’re not talking about annuities at all, Ben. They’re talking about a successful retirement’s treating it like a job. Like I got that feeling from you as well. And we’ll define what type of job this is, but it’s not the job that you’re going to for anything other than It’s what I love to do, like treating retirement. [00:12:12] Like it’s not this end. Well, you call it much more of a graduation. Not this, uh, in fact, I laughed out loud when you said something about how, you know, a lot of people get this explosion at retirement, but it’s not the good kind. It’s not like a firework show. It’s this, it’s this horrible, horrible bomb that goes off that we didn’t want. [00:12:32] Benjamin: Right. Yeah. If you ever wanna get really depressed, uh, if you ever find yourself too happy, you know, you can go online and you can search like high school graduation or college graduation, and it’s just an endless, like on Amazon, endless stream of like these inspirational gifts and like the world is your oyster. [00:12:47] You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. And, and it’s super inspiring because you do have the whole world ahead of you when you graduate high school and college. If you do the same thing for retirement, it’s like a coffee mug that says, I hate my boss or not my problem anymore. Right? It, it’s the opposite. [00:13:00] I wanna challenge that and say, not only is the whole world ahead of you now, you have money, right? You have all the options you had in high school and you don’t have, you can reinvent yourself. You don’t even have to pierce your ear or buy a leather jacket, right? You’ve got money and you’ve got time. [00:13:14] Let’s dedicate some money and some time to figure out what the heck we wanna do for the next 30 years. So I want retirement to be as exciting as high school graduation, but I don’t think the world is reflecting that right now. [00:13:25] Joe: But you can still get the leather jacket and pierce your ear if you want to. [00:13:28] Benjamin: I might. I might. I might pierce ’em both. Yeah. [00:13:31] Joe: Just pierce the bottom of your beard there. Do that little thing where you put the, put the thing in the bottom of the beard, you know? [00:13:36] Benjamin: Oh, I like it. Yeah. And then maybe a chain that goes to my ear. [00:13:39] Joe: Yeah. Perfect. Fantastic. [00:13:40] Benjamin: Yeah, I like it. [00:13:41] Joe: I thought I knew where this was going. [00:13:43] I’m like, okay. What you’re talking about when you talk about retirement starts today is now I’m gonna live this vision in the future. Like Christine Bens talked about, right? Live this vision. We’re waking up every day during retirement, and retirement is much more structured. I now have a focus and a plan that’s different than me just going to the nine to five every day. [00:14:03] And then you flip that on me. I realized I had no idea where the hell you were going. And this is something different and something more. And really this is what made me so excited for us to talk today. Let’s frame this through your story of Corey and Becky, because Corey and Becky kind of define what we’re talking about here, because so far everybody listening thinks, okay, this is for once I get past retirement. [00:14:30] I will listen to this episode later. Corey and Becky are not retired guys. [00:14:34] Benjamin: No, they’re about my age. A little older. Yeah. Tell us about Corey and Becky. Yeah, so Corey and Becky are real people. Shout out if they listen to this show. They’re among my favorite clients. But Corey was, you say that’s [00:14:42] Joe: everybody. [00:14:43] Benjamin: Yeah, of course. So Corey worked in it for a long time and he decided, uh, that he didn’t wanna work in it anymore. His real calling was to be a pastor. So he quit, uh, great job with great benefits, and he went to become a pastor. But beyond that, he said, I want to live a life of adventure. And he said, the biggest adventure that I can think of is to hike Mount Kilimanjaro. [00:15:04] And he lives where I live in North Dakota, Mount Kilimanjaro is pretty far away from here in a number of different aspects, distance-wise and otherwise. And he said, okay, I’m gonna go online. I’m gonna research how to hike Mount Kilimanjaro. And then like 18 months or two years in advance, he’s gonna train and and go do this thing. [00:15:20] And so the retirement lessons there are, while you’re working and while you have a salary, we should be making small investments and taking small risks of like time, energy, and money to figure out what really gets us fired up. And then intentionally create that on the other side of our career. A lot of times we wait until we’re retired and we say, okay, I have all this money and all this free time. [00:15:44] Now I need to figure out what to do. And the energy exchange is so different because if I wait until I’m retired and then I go buy a bass boat, I better be damn sure that I love fishing because now I’m all in on this bass boat or golf. I think that’s why so many people golf, ’cause they just, I. I have free time, I guess I’m gonna golf. [00:15:59] But if we rewind that five years or 10 years or 15 years and we take risks and gather data of, I’m gonna try hiking, I’m gonna try mentoring, I’m gonna try this or that, and then good data and bad data are both good data. I tried volunteering at the Humane Society. I don’t like it. I don’t even like dogs. [00:16:17] That’s good data. Check that off. That’s not something we’re gonna do in retirement. So I want you to take small risks of time, money, and energy. Figure out what you like and what you don’t like, and then we need to artificially create that in retirement. That could also go for your career as well. You know, write down what specifically you like about your job and you might like, I like being an engineer. [00:16:34] There’s probably more pieces of that. Like I love working on projects with people. I love bringing something across the table, under budget and on time. Or I like collaborating with other people. Or I like just hanging out in the break room and, and you know, chewing the cud with friends. Take specific notes of that and then recreate that in retirement. [00:16:52] Again, bad data is also good data. Write down what you hate about your life and make sure you don’t do that in retirement. So yeah, Corey and Becky are, you know, they were, they’re just living that out loud, so I had to include it in the book. Did he [00:17:02] Joe: like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro? [00:17:04] Benjamin: He loved it. Yeah. It was very cool. [00:17:06] Yeah. I got the whole breakdown of like, Sherpa and like how many days you do certain things and where you camp out on the thing. And probably not something I would do, but, uh, but see, but [00:17:14] Joe: that’s cool because for you, me, I wouldn’t do it either. In fact, a group of our friends went and climb Mount Kilimanjaro. [00:17:19] I have, I have no interest. I would spend that same time going on a safari if I was going to Africa. Just the top of the mountain doesn’t do it for me. But the safari certainly does. But what’s cool is, I think it is, but I’ve never been on a safari. Mm-hmm. And so if I save that for retirement, that’s one thing. [00:17:35] If I do it now, then I’m like, oh, I, I, it turns out I don’t, don’t like safaris the way that I thought you said. Also, I think that, um, during retirement, they’re considering like different. Places they’re going to live. So now pre-retirement, these vacations are like explorations of these different locales to see if they actually would like living there. [00:18:02] Benjamin: Yeah. They’re just gathering data and, and so the great thing about data is both good data and bad data are good data because I’m getting information and I’m analyzing it, and I’m doing it all while I’ve got my health insurance figured out, I’m getting paid every two weeks. Like the, the risk factor is so much less than my health insurance is gone, my paycheck is gone. [00:18:22] I’m living off my savings now I gotta figure out what I’m gonna do. I hope I like it. Uh, I don’t want that for anybody. [00:18:28] Joe: We have this huge disconnect between what we’re doing today while we’re working. Right. I’m planning a week’s vacation and I’m thinking about unplugging, I’m thinking about just getting away from the office. [00:18:40] It’s amazing how connected Ben, this could all be if we think about who I wanna be in the future and just connect it to who I am today. [00:18:49] Benjamin: Yeah. [00:18:50] Joe: As an example of this, this idea that the past doesn’t have to equal being a teacher. You talk about somebody who, let’s say, is a teacher, right? Somebody who’s, who’s been a teacher for 30 years doesn’t mean you have to be a teacher tomorrow. [00:19:05] Do you remember the story? [00:19:06] Benjamin: Yeah. So our, I mean, you meet somebody, the first thing they ask you is what do you do for a living? Right? It’s such an integral part of your identity. And then at some point in the future, it’s gone. Gone as far as you’re retired, it may or may not still be a part of your identity. [00:19:20] That’s a decision that you have to make, right? So I, I want you to create something beyond that. Just because you were a teacher for 30 years doesn’t mean that needs to be your identity for the next 30 of retirement. There might be pieces and components of that that you choose to keep or reject. Uh, but you get to decide. [00:19:38] The sooner we start crafting that shopping list, so to speak, of retirement, the more actual control we have over it. Again, if we wait until retirement to decide, some of those things might be decided for us just based on our circumstances, whether that’s like emotionally, spiritually, financially, whatever it is. [00:19:53] But if we start really soon to say, here’s what I do want and don’t want, and discover that with an intentionality, then we have so much more control over actually making that a reality. So that might mean being a teacher, it might mean something completely different. Professional poker player, I, I don’t. [00:20:06] I dunno. It’s the opposite of being a teacher. [00:20:07] Joe: Well, you decided to do this yourself, right? I mean, you decided, hey, if I’m gonna explore being a quote poker player, then Brant, I’m gonna go give myself some of my, my own medicine and go try out maybe not being a financial planner. [00:20:20] Benjamin: Yeah. I did it in the pandemic. [00:20:22] I did it over Zoom, uh, which didn’t really count, but I was still terrified. But then at FinCon, I believe it was, I did in New Orleans, I did standup comedy for the first time. So [00:20:32] Joe: wait a minute. So during the pandemic over Zoom, you did what? [00:20:35] Benjamin: Standup. [00:20:36] Joe: Oh. Oh, you took like a standup class? [00:20:38] Benjamin: I took a standup class and did, yeah, in form of about Okay. [00:20:41] A few hundred people. I did standup and the hard part about Zoom is you can’t hear anybody laughing. Um, unless you’re quiet for long enough. Either nobody was laughing or, or there was enough of a delay. How long was the class? It was like nine weeks or 12 weeks. It was, and it was several hours a week. It was a pretty good commitment [00:20:58] Joe: Yeah. [00:20:59] Benjamin: To develop like four minutes of material. [00:21:01] Joe: Which by the way, if people think, oh, four minutes, you can do it. Four minutes is a long time, dude. [00:21:05] Benjamin: It’s an eternity. [00:21:06] Joe: Yeah. Especially when you can’t hear anybody laughing. You’re like, oh God. Yeah. [00:21:10] Benjamin: Oh God. That’s what I heard after every joke I heard. Oh God. That’s all I ever heard. [00:21:14] No laugh. [00:21:14] Joe: So you’re, you’re, so you’re in New Orleans after the pandemic. Mm-hmm. And, and you go to a, uh, you go to standup like, what was it, like an open mic night? [00:21:24] Benjamin: Open mic. Yeah. So I wasn’t planning on it. Uh, and my buddy Steven Jarvis, who, who he and I, uh, we put it on pause right now, but we co-host a podcast, but I think you’ve met Steven in the past. [00:21:33] He’s a CPA kind of tax guru. And he called me the day before he texted me, and he is like, there’s an open mic on Wednesday night and we’re doing it. And I was terrified and I was going over my joke. I got like 24 hours notice. If he gave me three months notice, I would’ve said no. But 24 hours notice I’m in a different city. [00:21:48] If it goes well, if it goes poorly, I’ll just fake my own death or something. No one will ever know I was there. Right. So he gives me 24 hours notice. I I do it. Uh, and he’s like, I’m gonna record you doing this. And I said, no, no. This is gonna go poorly. I don’t want any evidence that this ever happened. Uh, and I didn’t let him record it. [00:22:03] And it’s, I have so much regret that it didn’t have him recorded. ’cause it went really well. It did not so well that I did it. I’ve done it since. But it went well enough that I wish I had that video. I let my fear of it going poorly impact and it still impacting me because I didn’t take the risk of having him record it if it did go poor that he, he could have maybe obviously blackmailed me or just deleted it. [00:22:25] Um, so I have regret because I didn’t take the risk. I, that’s why I put it in the book. But yeah, I love standup comedy. Uh, I was an unsupervised latchkey kid and all I did was watch standup comedy all throughout the nineties, which was like the last heyday of standup comedy. We’re in one now. Yeah, my standup comedy teacher said, write down all the things that annoy you throughout your life and turn those into jokes. [00:22:44] So all my jokes are about having six kids. [00:22:47] Joe: Well, you said, uh, I think in the book you said that was your first joke. [00:22:50] Benjamin: Yeah, my first joke was, uh, when you tell people you have six kids, they assume you’re Catholic. I’m not Catholic, I’m just impulsive. [00:22:58] Joe: So I’ve never done standup, but I have, uh, been, you’d be really good at [00:23:02] Benjamin: it, I think. [00:23:02] Joe: Well, thank you. What I do though, Ben, is I write down stuff that would be in my three to four minute set, right? Mm-hmm. And I have these topics now that I would love to at some point get on a stage and, and try it out. But I’m always, we should [00:23:15] Benjamin: see next time we’re at FinCon together. If there’s an open mic, we should do it. [00:23:18] Oh, look at the time I look at the time, at time, we can find four or five people that do it. [00:23:23] Joe: My, I was with a group of parents one time. ’cause your joke reminds me of a joke that I told that went absolutely horribly. My kids were running at the a a U National meet in Orlando. They were running cross country and they were maybe 12 years old. [00:23:39] And we were doing it, by the way, for fun. I’m not a hyper competitive parent, but they were really good runners and my daughter ended up running for, uh, the University of Arkansas later on. But they just enjoyed it. And if they enjoyed it and I had the money to take the trip, why wouldn’t we do it? And there was no pressure on them to perform. [00:23:55] They just loved running. So we would go to the local meet, then the district meet, then the regional meet, and then we qualified for national. So there were maybe five other parents from the town that we lived in at the time. And, uh, we all decided to go to dinner together the night before the meet. And we’re all, we’re all sitting around. [00:24:14] And uh, Cheryl tells the other parents who we don’t know that well, you know, you’re just getting to know each other, says Joe’s dad has 16 brothers and sisters, which is true. And uh, somebody said, wow, big Catholic family. And I went back to Jim Gaffigan. The comedian now is known for not being controversial at all and doesn’t tell off-color jokes, but he used to, [00:24:38] Benjamin: I know the joke. [00:24:39] Joe: And there’s this old Jim Gaffigan joke where he said, yeah, we’re either Catholic or My grandma was a whore. And so I said that and I cracked myself up telling this joke ’cause it’s just horrible. And dude, nobody laughed. Nobody laughed. And they thought I was the worst human being. You could see it in their eyes like, you are. [00:24:59] How could you talk about your grandmother that way? I’m like, of course I’m kidding. [00:25:04] Benjamin: But in hindsight, that makes it funnier when you tell a joke that you love and everyone else cringes. In hindsight, it’s gonna be a better story later that you said, I told this to 15 people and nobody laughed. That makes it so if you said, I told this joke and everyone laughed and it was amazing, that’s a less funny story. [00:25:19] Right? [00:25:20] Joe: Well, and here’s what I like about this whole discussion is this. Now that I’m taking my vacations from my job and I’m tying it to future me, right? I’m, I’m enjoying myself, I’m doing things that light me up today, but I know also are an experiment toward things tomorrow. For me, that really excites me. [00:25:38] Like the idea of tying present me to future me is, is this great idea. But also because I know it’s an experiment, if it goes poorly, it becomes a story that I get to tell my friends later. Oh, guess what? I thought this was gonna be fantastic. It sucked. It was so horrible. Cheryl and I, and a lot of our stackers don’t know this story, Cheryl. [00:26:02] And I thought that we were gonna be nomads, that we would not have a house and we would just live in different places. And during the pandemic, through a series of kind of now in hindsight, hilarious things that happened, we ended up homeless. And the cool thing about being financially independent, then you can live anywhere. [00:26:19] And guess what? We tried it for several months and you know what happened, Ben? You loved it. I hated being homeless. [00:26:25] Benjamin: That’s good data. That’s a bad situation, but good data. How many people that are financially successful go drop six figures on an RV before they even have rented an rv? Right, and know that they like it. [00:26:35] It happened so often. [00:26:36] Joe: I had clients when I was a financial planner who bought the rv the second they retired from General Motors bought this RV at the time, this would’ve been like 1996, they bought an RV that was like $120,000. So we’re talking about a quarter million dollar RV today, just this badass thing. [00:26:52] The 18 months of euphoria, they lived in it and by the end of 18 months they said, is this it? They sold it. They bought a house. They were like, we couldn’t stand living in the rv. It was horrible. And think about $125,000 today. Quarter of a million dollar mistake. Yeah, because you didn’t know ahead of time [00:27:11] Benjamin: and you pulled that money outta your ira. [00:27:13] So you lost 50 grand in taxes too. Yeah, I, I think 90, no. If, if anybody, you know is a follower of my podcast and they sell RVs, I apologize in advance. Please don’t unsubscribe. But I think 99% of people that have the RV fantasy could scratch that itch by renting it. And then worst case you do go buy one and you’re, you’re a few thousand dollars worse off. [00:27:32] But again, that’s data. I want you to make small money, time, emotional and financial commitments like renting an RV or like, I have kind of the idea that I wanna live half the year in either Phoenix or Las Vegas. I want to rent a house for six months there before I buy, because buying a house is a massive commitment, especially at like 7% interest rates. [00:27:51] So get good data. Figure out which side of the tracks is the wrong side of the tracks, all that kind of stuff. Rent your rv, learn how to take those big turns on someone else’s quarter panels, right? When you rent it and then you get data, good data or bad data, but it’s gonna help you make a, a more informed decision, I think. [00:28:06] Joe: Okay, so here’s a financial planner on the show then talking about living retirement today. Let’s talk about the thing though that our money nerds wanna talk about then. Ben, where does the math fit in? [00:28:16] Benjamin: So you want to do minimum viable product math. We wanna say, okay, the amount that I’m gonna take from my portfolio is, you know, roughly four to 5% per year napkin math plus social security that we’re gonna get at some point in the future. [00:28:29] If that covers kind of your, your basic needs plus a little bit more, then we can kind of check off minimum viable product, right? And then we can go explore. Uh, that’s one way of looking at it. If you are totally obsessed with numbers, which most people are, if you are a normal person and you’re not hyper obsessed with numbers, I want you just to dream like there are no numbers, and then go backwards and do the math because. [00:28:50] Where we make the mistake is that we do the math first and we listen to financial podcasts. And the gurus say you can spend 5% a year. No wait, it’s actually 4%. No wait. It’s actually 1.5% is the new safe withdrawal rate. And then you look at your savings and you say, geez, I guess I gotta smash everything I wanna do until like a one and a half percent safe withdrawal rate, which is no fun. [00:29:09] You didn’t save. That’s not why you saved it. The money, right? So what you I want to do is dream like you’re Jeff Bezos and you have unlimited money and figure out what you really wanna do and then go back and do the math. So don’t smash your dreams into like this bookend of like one or two or 3% safe withdrawal rate. [00:29:24] ’cause that’s gonna suck. Dream big. And then we could always pull back a little bit. Like, let’s say you said, uh, I’m Jeff Bezos, I have Bezos money. I’m gonna fly in a private jet around the world for six months and be a nomad. Well, maybe you don’t have Jeff Bezos money. Maybe you do. But I can say, okay, I could fly Southwest to Houston for like 40 bucks and then I could fly, you know, air Lingus, you know, to the, you know, you could make a cheaper version of that that fits into your numbers. [00:29:49] But again, if you start backwards on the 2%, 3% safe control or whatever it is, you’re never gonna get there. So I want you to start plan big and then we could find a Southwest Airlines version of that, a Kia version of that, right. A Costco brand version of that. But we’re never gonna get there. If we start with, I have to do the math first. [00:30:06] Joe: I love this idea of, of starting out like we’re 13 years old. Yes. And you went back to 13 years old and said, Hey, if I was 13 years old and I had 500 bucks, what would I buy? And you had something very specific you would’ve bought when you were 13. [00:30:19] Benjamin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So financial independence stinks in that we get all of the money when we’re our least creative in life, right? [00:30:27] If I think about my average client as an engineer, and they’ve just been beaten to death creatively wise by the corporate world for 30 years. So they’re at their least creative point in their life and they have the most amount of money that they’ve ever had. It’s sort of like the movie BIG, or like Trading Places or something like that. [00:30:42] So I said, what if we could flip that? What if we could go to our most creative time and give that kid financial independence? So I thought 13 is when you are old enough to maybe think about the future, but young enough that you still still have all of your creativity and you’re the least financially independent. [00:30:58] Or at least I was, you’re making like 20 bucks a week cutting grass or something. Uh, hardly enough to do all the stuff I wanted to do. So I said, what if we give you Joe or Benjamin $500 in a time machine? You go back to when you’re 13 years old, you’ve gotta spend it on yourself, but at the end of the day, what would you buy? [00:31:13] And then that would give us some data to then extrapolate to financial independence. So I would buy a set of drums and I did buy a set of drums. ’cause what’s more fun than a, you know, when I was 13 right? I was listening to Dookie on a Green Day’s Dookie and, uh, Trey Cool, who I just saw in concert about six months ago, just, you know, made magic with drums. [00:31:32] And I thought, oh gosh, if I had money, that’s what I would do is I would buy drums. So that’s what I did. Did drums still let you up? Uh, less so because, uh, an unnamed member of my family that’s higher ranking than I am, bought a treadmill that it sits right where the drums are supposed to go. Uh, so this unnamed member of my family made me move my drums into the corner. [00:31:49] This a very sad corner, not even an exciting corner. So, uh, I banged on ’em for like a year. [00:31:54] Joe: I met this member of your family and, and, and she’s way more deserving of the space than you are, [00:31:59] Benjamin: right? She, well, she outranks me, so yes, he or she, I don’t wanna, you know, [00:32:02] Joe: right. I’m sorry. Yes. I may or may not have met that member of your family. [00:32:09] For me, it was funny when I read that 13, I don’t remember, but 16, I was obsessed with getting an ultralight. I wanted to have an ultralight [00:32:18] Benjamin: That’s a bike. [00:32:19] Joe: No, it’s one of those, it’s one of those things where you take like a, an engine off, like a lawnmower and you put it on a, the structure of like a plane with wings. [00:32:28] Oh. And you’re up flying at like 5,000 feet with uh, just you and this little. Almost next to nothing. Um, I thought having an ultralight would’ve been the coolest thing. I remember I started a separate savings account specifically for my ultralight. I think I got like 600 bucks in it, and I bought a really nice bike instead. [00:32:49] Benjamin: I like it. So that’s really good data. So you could take that and say, okay, now that I’m approaching financial independence, what version of that could I do? Could I take flying lessons? Could I volunteer my time at a local, you know, whatever? Could I help maintain planes? Is there something there that I could create a version of that, that I would get excited about? [00:33:07] So I’m pulled forward by my exciting future, rather than being focused on, I did this last thing for 20 years. It’s all I know how to do. I guess I gotta do that in retirement or nothing at all. Uh, neither of which I, I don’t think either of those would be fulfilling for a lot of people. [00:33:19] Joe: I just think going back and feeling the excitement again. [00:33:22] You know, to your point, we have the money. We’ve lost the creativity. And now when we start tying ourselves not to the past anymore, but to the future, it is such a great way to start the math, which leads to stackers by the way, things like that. We haven’t gotten into, like people use the, you believe we used the Monte Carlo simulation completely backwards. [00:33:41] Benjamin: Yeah. I almost come to the point where I hate the Monte Carlo analysis, [00:33:44] Joe: which is a great tool if I think if we used it the opposite way that we use it. Yeah. We want it to be a hundred percent correct, which your point is then that’s there’s a hundred percent chance. If it says a hundred percent, you’re probably gonna regret [00:33:56] Benjamin: a hundred percent chance of regret. [00:33:57] That’s exactly right. [00:33:58] Joe: Everything that you, you did today, uh, believe it or not, you wrote a book on this topic called Retirement Starts Today, and the original title was Someday and it is crossed out with today because we’re taking pre-retirement, combining it with retirement. By the way, if you’re already like Joel and you’re in retirement. [00:34:17] Still this idea applies, I think, Ben of, of, hey, everything you do in those early euphoria years, don’t get down if the RV didn’t work out. This is data for later. [00:34:29] bit: Yeah. [00:34:30] Benjamin: Yeah. They say the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is now, although somebody corrected me online and said, well, wouldn’t the second best time to be 19 years ago? [00:34:38] And that’s probably true, but we’re gonna ignore that for now. And saying, yeah, you, you’re through the honeymoon phase, things aren’t going as well. That’s just good data. You know, the last 18 months are data. Now we can extrapolate good stuff and bad stuff and then we just try to repeat the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff. [00:34:52] So you’re not done, you still have 28 and a half years, or 27, whatever the math is, and you’ve got financial. If you’ve been listening to the Stacking Benjamins show for any amount of time, you’ve got significant financial independence. So let’s use that in a way that’s, uh, positive. [00:35:04] Joe: And what I love about financial independence is that’s different than. [00:35:07] Having money as well. You know what I mean? You have the independence, I think, to think freely to create your future. I think that’s the way I look at financial independence. [00:35:16] Benjamin: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I like to say that’s why they call it personal finance and not everybody finance. There’s so few broad brushes we can paint with like what you want. [00:35:24] If, if you and I had the exact same amount of money, we’re the exact same age, we could want wildly different things. And that doesn’t mean one is right or wrong. Uh, it just means that it’s personal. [00:35:33] Joe: So how do we get this book that fired me up so much? Retirement starts today. [00:35:38] Benjamin: You could call my friend Jeff and you can buy it on Amazon. [00:35:40] Joe: Awesome. Call my friend Jeff. [00:35:42] Benjamin: Yeah, we talked about Jeff Bezos earlier. Yeah, he’s a buddy of mine. [00:35:45] Joe: Hey Jeff. I wanna buy the book. Uh, you know the book? Yeah, the book. The one. And, and, and don’t be offended if Jeff says w how’d you get this number? Right. [00:35:53] Benjamin: Uh, j. When I text Jeff, he texts me back. New phone. Who does? [00:35:58] Joe: Ben, thanks for hanging out and mentoring our stackers today. I super appreciate it. [00:36:02] Benjamin: I love it. One of my favorite podcasts ever. [00:36:08] Doug: Hey there, stacker. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and happy February everyone. I love February so much. The cold weather, the depressingly short days. I can’t figure out why I’m so cranky. Well, maybe it’s that we’re also one month closer to tax day, which gets me down every stinking year. I contribute so much to this nation, and yet still they want my money too. [00:36:31] Well, here’s another bummer. Speaking of horrible Washington rules, it was on this date in history back in 1913 that the 16th Amendment was ratified. Let’s make that today’s trivia question. What did the 16th Amendment give the government the power to do that affects me personally. Maybe you too. I’ll be back with the answer right after I take a self-help positivity class. [00:36:58] Things are gonna get better, things are gonna get better, things are gonna get better. [00:37:13] Hey there, stackers. I’m music lover and guy who’s now a constitutional authority. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. So what was the 16th amendment? This amendment gave the federal government the right and ability to create that very income tax I was complaining about at the top of this segment. You get this according to the amendment. [00:37:33] And the fine lady who does my taxes, I’m on the hook for these quote unquote income taxes that every third year or every other year, but every single year isn’t that simple. And now here to hopefully help you get your mojo back so you can be a proud tax paying stacker. Here’s Joe and OG again. [00:38:04] Joe: Big thanks to Ben and wow, what a, what a mentorship session that was. I think we’ve got, uh oh gee. This idea that Future Me is different than present me. We truly, I love the way that, uh, Ben blends those together. Doesn’t have to be, and by the way, it doesn’t have to be who you were yesterday. Let’s tie yourself to the future and make it really exciting. [00:38:23] Instead of, you know, 10 years from now, I’m gonna do all this cool stuff. No, let’s do it now. Yeah. [00:38:29] OG: I mean, 10 years she might not be around. Yeah, you right. You know, or you might have a busted hip or something. You get an opportunity to ski with the Dug. You’re gonna go skiing with the Dug. You have to go break your leg with the Doug. [00:38:42] Oh, don’t put that on the universe, bro. That ain’t cool. No, [00:38:45] Joe: that’s not gonna happen. [00:38:46] OG: What do you harshing [00:38:46] Joe: on our vibe for what? You say that to actors? Go break a leg. Why wouldn’t I say it? When you’re skiing, like, Hey guys, go break a leg. [00:38:54] OG: It’s a whole different thing. [00:38:55] Joe: Does that mean ski great? I thought that meant ski. [00:38:57] Great. [00:38:58] OG: I’m going on on all the green ones. Doug’s like, so are you more of a double black or triple black diamond guy? Mike, I’m more of a up and down re ski cocktail guy. [00:39:07] Joe: That’s me. I’m more of the bunny hill and the spa A [00:39:10] Doug: rope. Yeah. I think this ski trip is gonna be, Hey, we’ll meet you at that lift. Yes. In 30 minutes. [00:39:18] Joe: That’s fabulous. Uh, boy, that sounds exciting. Let’s talk about Benjamin Brandt while we’re at it. You know, OG we talked just a little bit about a Monte Carlo simulation. Right? We didn’t explain at all what this Monte Carlo thing is that, uh, Benjamin’s not that excited about what is a Monte Carlo simulation for people that dunno. [00:39:37] OG: It’s a card game in, uh oh, Eastern. Uh, you could travel for it. Yeah, it’s a good idea to go to Monte Carlo and, uh, basically you play James Bond. I do think about it like a card game because I think it’s an easier way to think about how it works, right? So as you’re working through your financial plan, there’s things that you know, or that you can assume are gonna happen, right? [00:39:57] I am, I’m putting in 23,000 into my 401k, and I expect to do that for the foreseeable future, right? You can have that down as part of your plan. You can say, I know I spend this amount of money today. I anticipate with inflation that I’ll need to spend this amount of money down the line. And I think those are fair estimations. [00:40:14] I have a million dollars today in my account. How much am I gonna have in the future? Well, one of the variables that you don’t know is what sort of rate of return are you gonna get? But the cool thing with Monte Carlo, or the way that I think about Monte Carlo is we have a hundred years worth of data for your portfolio. [00:40:30] And I don’t necessarily mean for your specific stock fund or your ETF or your mutual fund or your stocks, but generally speaking, your asset allocation, right? So we know a 70 30 allocation has produced this, an 80 20, a hundred zero, a 50 50 whatever over the last a hundred years. And we know what they, it’s done each year. [00:40:48] And so what Monte Carlo does is if you think about a deck of cards and on the front of the card you have, you know, 19 61, 19 84, 2013, whatever, you have the year and on the back of the card have the return for your portfolio, for your asset allocation. So you’ve got those known knowns, how much I’m saving, and I know how much my portfolio is today, and I know how much I’m gonna start taking out in the future. [00:41:10] You know, I can, I do some fair estimations. The thing I don’t know is what’s the sequence of returns gonna be, you know, what’s my return profile gonna look like? So Monte Carlo shuffles the deck and plays those return cards in a different order. So it’s the same returns that have happened, but just in a different order. [00:41:26] Then you play that game, you run that math problem out, and you ask the question at age a hundred, did I have enough money, as in, did I die with at least a dollar? And if the answer is yes, you put a tick mark in the yes column, and then you shuffle the cards and you play the game again, do that a thousand times and you’ve got a pretty fair estimation of how successful your plan’s gonna be. [00:41:44] And I don’t even think about it in terms of the success rate. I’m with Benjamin on this. I hate the term success rate, and I hate the percentage numbers, uh, different reason than he does, although I like his reason too. There’s always gonna be changes in your plan. You can never get to a hundred percent. [00:41:59] Mm-hmm. You can never get to 99 because you just don’t know what the future is gonna be in a realistic person with smart choices. If the market goes down 25% two years in a row, like Paul Merriman says, he doesn’t go on the European vacation, then it’s a little tighter. Warren Buffett’s famously said, I get to figure out how the market’s doing by how much my wife leaves me in the change jar for breakfast. [00:42:19] If the market’s doing really well, I get to have a hash brown for breakfast. If I look in my cup holder in my car and there’s not enough for a hash brown, then the market must be doing bad. You know, I kinda only have an egg muffin and a coffee. [00:42:29] Joe: Yeah. It’s funny. Paul Erman either travels the world or explores staycations. [00:42:33] Yeah. The Pacific Northwest, depending on his portfolio and [00:42:35] OG: how much money does he have. Right? Right. So he a bajillion Yeah. Rounded. So a normal person is gonna take into context what’s really happening in the world and say, Hey, you know, the market’s down a whole bunch the last couple years. I’m gonna, I’m gonna tighten a little bit. [00:42:49] So saying that you’re never gonna have a change. So the way that I look at Monte Carlo a little different than Benjamin is when I see those percentage numbers, I say, what’s the percent chance that I have to make a change to my plan along the way? And if it’s like 80%, I’m like, there’s an 80% chance I’m, I’m not making any changes to my plan. [00:43:10] Like I’m good that, that, I’m fine with that. And I think a hundred’s bs Anyway, I like his take on the matter, which is. The higher you get, the more, the more you’re leaving on the table. The regret. Yeah. You know, because the other solution on this, by the way, is what the solution is. Age a hundred or age 90 or whatever y year you’re solving for most of us use a hundred or 110 these days, pull out the social security tables and find the life expectancy of a, of a couple age 90. [00:43:34] Right now it’s two years. I think you got a plan for it, but it’s okay to have some flexibility in that plan and live a little, and that’s kind of his take too. Great take. Thanks again to Benjamin. [00:43:46] Joe: Let’s do a headline. [00:43:48] headlines: Hello Doling. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:43:54] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from Investment News. This is written by Leo. DiCaprio. This is written by Leo Al Mazura, uncle Leo from Seinfeld. We’re doing this again. I’ve, it is the same. Leo, Leo. I keep stumbling and they keep filling in. Da Vinci, uh, Leo Al Mazura at Investment News. A new survey suggests that when it comes to selecting and staying with an advisor, investors aren’t likely, are not likely to decide based on their portfolio performance. [00:44:29] How about that? [00:44:30] OG: Took a survey to figure that out. [00:44:32] Joe: Well, but it’s interesting because everybody’s like, well, I fired my advisor because, you know, I, I only got whatever per, I remember when I got fired because that, that client got like mid forties. In their portfolio and all their friends had doubled their money back in 1990. [00:44:47] Back in 1999, all their friends had doubled. Yeah, you only got like 45%. Uh uh. You’re, you’re gone. Like, ’cause we stayed well-rounded. That’s why. Uh, so frustrating. I’m gonna call that dude, by the way, in, in 2002 and go. You [00:45:01] OG: wanna call ’em now? Like, Hey, what’s up? Remember me? Yeah. [00:45:04] Joe: How’d that work out for you? [00:45:06] But now he’s all in Nvidia. 100%, I’m sure. So he’s probably doing okay today. Back in 2002. Not sure the findings by a cap Intel FinTech company providing investment comparison tools revealed that trust matters more than portfolio performance. In the survey of a thousand investors that conducted late last year, 72% identified trust as the most critical factor when choosing an advisor, beating out their investment experience 50%. [00:45:33] And the ability to provide holistic financial perspective. 46%. It’s funny because og, the reason that I find this. This amazing is that I was on this online forum this last week and this dude goes, yeah, I picked this blue chip stock. And it didn’t go up the way that I thought, does anybody got a better stock? [00:45:55] Like, like, tell me what your favorite stock is. And the guy goes, because seriously, like I am behind. I’m behind and I need to go faster and I’m not where I need to be. And then I think about good advisors and while certainly I think to some degree it is about performance, but truly I think when you’re hiring a good advisor, I. [00:46:14] You’re looking at systems and process, how do I bring a system and a process to the table? Because obviously person after person in the comments was like, um, hope is not a strategy. Like, like how I could give you, I, you know, and, and there were of course a bunch of jokers just naming a stock, just going, oh yeah, pick this one. [00:46:33] This one’s gonna go off tomorrow. Yeah, you’re good man. And, uh, the guy just got angrier. But I think what you’re truly after is, is system and process. But even that OG doesn’t matter if you don’t trust the person. If you’re getting advice from somebody that you don’t trust, regardless of how much skill they have or whatever it is, you gotta let ’em go. [00:46:54] Like they gotta go. There’s gotta be this trusted relationship for the win. [00:46:59] OG: It’s really hard to kind of predict that in advance, you know, when you’re evaluating people and that sort of thing. But you got a sense for it. I talk a lot about, uh, right fit and right time in conversations with people, because I think that’s a beginning stage of that trust, like you said, of do we think that we can provide value and is now the right time to provide that? [00:47:23] I think all of those things are important. You know, financial planning, the CFP board says there’s, well, they say seven now because they include behavioral finance, but I like the number six better than seven, but six different tactical areas of financial planning. And, and all of those are important. You know, the, the decisions you make, you just really go hell’s bells into like optimizing your investment portfolio. [00:47:43] That’s, that’s great, but you need to know how that’s gonna affect your taxes and your cash flow. If you really wanna focus on your retirement plan, that’s fantastic, but you need to pay attention to how that affects your estate plan and your distribution and your taxes and your, and your cash flow now. [00:47:58] So. Having a trusted guide who’s been up and down the path that you’re about to go on for the first time is really the key differentiator in a lot of that stuff. Because while investments are important, and yeah, your portfolio may be a little different than how I would do it, or something like that, that’s at the margin. [00:48:20] That’s like the difference between 12% small cap value and 10% small cap value. You know, it’s like, okay, maybe there’s a reason for it, but it’s like a 0.000 whatever percent outcome, the 90% solution is save money into stocks. You know, it’s like, do that and you’ve got 90, should I be VOO or VTI or IWV or IESP? [00:48:44] Like, no, no, none of that matters. The 90% solution is put money into stocks, [00:48:49] Joe: but, and I think the key of hiring people, oh gee, just to stop you on that analogy right there. The key to hiring people is I want somebody who’s gonna tell me that it’s gonna go, yeah, that’s irrelevant. And I believe them. I believe them, that they’re irrelevant. [00:49:02] I want them to get in my face and tell me where I’m wrong, number one. And I want them to be strong enough that I go, yeah, okay, yeah, you’re right. Yep. And if somebody’s not gonna do that, I don’t know that that’s the right person for me personally. It’s gonna be different, I think, for different people. But that’s who I want. [00:49:18] OG: Well, there’s likely to be a few times in your lifetime where the correct answer is, don’t do that, or The correct answer is stay where you are. And that is really the hardest thing to do. Especially now, I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago, and short of a little blip in COVID 2022 wasn’t great. [00:49:40] You know, it was down 20%, but it was hardly, it hardly felt down 20%. It wasn’t like recessionary as kicking like. The recession in 2007 or Y 2K, like it just didn’t feel as much of a beat down. You know, during 2022, it wasn’t great. I look back over history right now and I see a ton of investors who have been investing since 2010. [00:50:08] I see a ton of advisors who’ve 15 years of experience since 2010 and have never had to counsel anyone or themselves live through a severe recession over any real length of time. You know, covid sucked, but from a market standpoint, it was a non-event. The inflationary time sucked, but from a recessionary market time period, it was pretty much a non-event. [00:50:33] Doug: I’m questioning your math on 15 years since 2010. That’s impossible. It just doesn’t seem like it. [00:50:40] OG: Come on you. You know what? I watched yesterday, complete sidebar. I flipped on Apollo 13. Oh, so good. Great movie. How many years ago? Don’t think of the year. How many years ago was Apollo 13 Made? Like 11? [00:50:54] Doug: Yeah. [00:50:55] More than four. I mean more than four. Yeah. [00:50:57] OG: Yeah. 30. Good. God, shut up. I think I can’t prove this ’cause I didn’t look it up, but when is Apollo 13 base? Isn’t it the seventies? [00:51:06] Joe: It is. It’s a 1970s. Yes. Yeah. [00:51:09] OG: So I think the distance between today and when Apollo 13 was made is longer than the distance between when Apollo 13 was made and the actual event happened. [00:51:18] Doug: Is it 1980s, Doug? It’s 1970. It [00:51:21] OG: was the seventies for sure. 1970. [00:51:23] Doug: Yes. April 11th, 1970. [00:51:25] Joe: Yeah. I was like, there’s no way. It’s not the seventies. [00:51:28] Doug: If we landed on the moon in 68, 69, July 21st, 1969. Like I said, 1969, OG continued. [00:51:36] OG: Yeah. So Apollo 13 was made 25 years after the event, and it’s been 30 years since the Apollo thirteen’s been made. [00:51:43] So the difference between those two is greater anyways. That’ll just knock your socks off. How the hell did you get so old duck? That’s what I wanna know. [00:51:51] Joe: What happened, [00:51:52] OG: what happened? Anyways, I like this as an idea. You can’t sleep on the other things. You can’t sleep on performance. You can’t sleep on great financial planning. [00:51:59] You, you can’t absolutely make mistakes and, and say, oh, I’m sorry I forgot to do your RMD last year. Like, there’s threshold competencies that you gotta get right all the time. And look, people are human. People make mistakes. We do that on occasion. We had a mistake last year that, you know, I’m pretty sad that happened, but we made it right and, and everybody was made whole in the event. [00:52:17] But, you know, you gotta to, to your point, Joe, it’s really about process. And do you trust that person’s, that person’s guidance because, well, [00:52:26] Joe: I think because everything else after that does not matter if you don’t trust them. Yeah. [00:52:30] OG: I mean, it’s like going to your doctor, right? If your doctor’s like, Hey, I need you to take this medicine. [00:52:34] You’re like, I don’t know, Google said, what do you do after that? As the physician, what do you say? Like, I don’t, okay, go with Google then. I don’t know. Do your thing, bro. That doesn’t make Google right and wrong and me, right? No. It’s just, you know, but [00:52:47] Joe: part of trust is not blind trust. I mean, it’s okay to have a discussion with your doctor to go, Hey, I looked this thing up, what about this? [00:52:55] But then when they tell me why that doesn’t fit me, I still have to trust them [00:53:00] Doug: that they are, uh, you know, they’re telling me the truth. That’s and the lines of, I’m, I’m glad you said blind trust Joe, because that it’s what I’ve been dying to cut in with here is what do we tell our listeners to do or ask or learn about to build that trust? [00:53:15] Because you can’t just show up on day one and trust this person if you’re interviewing potential advisors because you don’t really know them. Like, what should our listeners be doing to start to feel confident and build that trust? [00:53:30] Joe: I don’t know that I have that methodology, because for me personally, I know just the personality that I’m looking for. [00:53:38] And I will trust that person more if they’re the personality that just fits with me. Like I think it’s much more about know you than know them. Like who am I going? Who are the people in my life that I trust the most? And why do I trust the most? I trust those people the most when I feel like they have my back. [00:53:54] And the way they prove they have my back is they go, no, Joe, you’re wrong. [00:53:56] Doug: No. Right. But that takes time. Now you think of those people as your trust with their life, you, because there’s time in life. But even when I [00:54:02] Joe: first meet them, they come across as that type of person who’s going to argue with me. You know, who’s gonna be the person who is going to, uh, we’re gonna have a fun conversation. [00:54:13] It’s gonna be a good conversation. They have some intelligence, and I could kinda get that right away. But you’re right, there isn’t any depth to it. So to OGs point, it’s hard when you’re interviewing people, it’s freaking hard, which means OG also, you gotta be willing to let ’em go when they don’t end up being the person that you think they are. [00:54:31] Let give you an example, because I don’t think that this is, this is just financial planners. I think this is also other advisors in your life. My property casualty people. This is, this is, remember, my house got robbed. My house got robbed. I found out that my property casualty company that I have here locally in Texarkana. [00:54:48] It was just an order taker. Literally, when I asked her for help, I need to file this claim. Oh, I can’t help you with that. You just gotta call away a hundred written number. It’s amazing how quickly you could take my money and you could do everything except help me when I need it and when I need it. [00:55:04] Complete failure, like horrible failure. So then I go with a one 800 number because I decide that I don’t trust people when it comes to my property casualty, right? And I could just have a one 800 number. One 800 number doesn’t work at all either, by the way, that did not work for me. Works for a lot of people, didn’t work for me. [00:55:22] I had nobody at all telling me how do I pick the right stuff? How do I make sure I’m not getting ripped off? What are all these different things on my policy? Nobody knew. The 100 number of people didn’t know. I couldn’t find that person who could interpret property casual to me the way I want it interpreted. [00:55:39] So then I found, now, now I have somebody, this woman has like the heart of a teacher man. Uh, she is, and what’s funny, she’s not even with a, with a company that I love. She’s a badass with a company that I tolerate. But she’s great. She completely explained how we’re gonna pick my homeowner’s insurance. [00:55:58] What I’m really looking for besides low premium, right? What do I want on it? How does this stuff work? Absolutely love that. But Doug, to your point, man, I had to search a little bit. And, uh, yeah, I don’t think, do, do you have a rubric on that, og? [00:56:11] OG: Well, I think absent time and experience, you have to look for the clues to suggest that they know how to guide and counsel people like you. [00:56:23] And the clues are that it’s not their first rodeo, right? The clues are that, and you said this earlier, that there’s, that there’s a system, there’s a method to the madness. There’s a process, there’s support around that. There’s people that support the different angles, so to speak. There’s something to be said for a little bit of social proof too. [00:56:44] I don’t think a lot of us are getting phone calls at supper time anymore. Like we used to, to, to get sold stuff, you know, I mean, we, we can all look on our phones and when it says spam, you know, you just hit decline and block and, and so how do we find these other professionals in our lives? Well, you ask people who are like you, what they do. [00:57:03] If you are selling a business and you’re like, man, this is a complicated transaction, you’re probably not gonna do it on your own. You’re gonna ask your friend who also sold a business and he’ll say, oh, well I use this m and a company, or I had this attorney who looked it over, or I had this tax guy who helped with the tax calculations. [00:57:20] You can do it yourself, but most of the time that’s not a great idea. So there’s that kind of social proof. There’s the group of people that are like you. Honestly, I think we all just want to hang out with people or that we like and that we, that are like us. Is it a great fit to be a 30-year-old looking for a financial planner and you hire a 70-year-old? [00:57:40] I mean, they might be really smart and super trustworthy, but probably not your people. You know what I mean? Not going through the same thing in life. And so I think there’s something to be said about that. I, I, I mean, early on to your point, Joe, I think it’s really hard to, to pin that down, but you got a sense of it. [00:57:57] You got a sense of it early and you know, you know, I mean, when I, I use this doctor example all the time because I just absolutely love that relationship that I have. I walked in and I was like, okay, this is the place for me. Like, I knew the guy sat down and, you know, we talked for 45 minutes in his office, not at an exam table. [00:58:16] Like, Hey, tell me about you, like, what’s going on? You know what I mean? Like, he spent all this time, and then he is like, all right, well if you wanna hire us, talk to my pa and we’ll schedule an actual physical. Like there was no, he didn’t jump me on the table. Let check your heart rate and da, da, da, da, da. [00:58:32] It’s like, all right, well, let’s see what’s going on in your world. He was evaluating whether or not he wanted to work with our family. No different than I was trying to evaluate if I wanna work with him. It was a very mutual conversation. I felt very comfortable with that. I didn’t have any reason to trust him. [00:58:46] Joe: Yeah. Best doctor I had was totally like that. It was so weird. ’cause every doctor I’d had before this, I’m sitting there half naked on the exam table and the Dukes tell me stuff. Why? Well, he is and, and, and you, Joe. Hold on. That’s the guy you trust. No. Yes. And man was that, most people don’t make you do that, Joe. [00:59:05] No. You know, you’re sitting there and they’re like, here’s the deal. This guy literally goes, okay, go ahead and put everything back on and we’re gonna meet my office. I’m like, what? Really? And then the nurse comes, walks me down to his office. We sit like adults at his desk then, and then he gives me the diagnosis and he shows me stuff on the screen. [00:59:25] I mean, so instead of the awkward crap, Doug, to your point, yeah. Instead of these awkward meetings with the doctor, this guy was. Completely different. Best doctor I had. Fantastic. I just [00:59:36] Doug: want Steve to know there were three jokes that I abstained from Steve so that you wouldn’t have to edit them out. That was for you. [00:59:42] Joe: Well, and it made the point, ’cause you’re right, it was super awkward. Every doctor I’d had before that was super awkward. I’m like, I. Can I just put my clothes on? I, I really, I I don’t wanna, please God, just before you tell me what’s wrong, just lemme, I forgot [00:59:55] Doug: to shave today. Just lemme, [01:00:01] you called that a bush? God no. See, it was funnier when you didn’t go there. God. All right. We [01:00:09] Joe: gotta go. We gotta go. That was [01:00:10] Doug: just disgusting. [01:00:11] Joe: Just a couple quick things. Tomorrow we are having a meetup in Seattle. It’s gonna be in Bellevue, Washington. Details are at Stacking Benjamins dot com slash meetup. [01:00:21] Come join us tomorrow. Uh, click the link there so that we know that you’re coming to join us, albeit retirement on Saturday. I am 99% sure as we record this at that deal sold out. But if you wanna join us online, no matter where you are, go to retire meet.com and you can join us, uh, online, anywhere where you are, around the country. [01:00:37] Uh, not only, uh, Tom and Don, the host of Talking Real Money Podcast, who are host, but, uh, Apollo Esky will be one of the speakers. Paul Merman’s, a speaker and yours truly. So you can join us at Retire Meet in a couple weeks. OG and Doug are going to be at Heavenly, so come join them. Also, stacky Benjamins dot com [01:00:58] Doug: slash yeah, meetup, did we just go out to the back porch and I didn’t even realize it. [01:01:03] I think we did. We’re taking you to the back porch. It’s so porch material. [01:01:06] Joe: After all these jokes you’re trying to pull, [01:01:08] Doug: just to complete the thought, we’re gonna be in south. Lake Tahoe, uh, at Mcpe tap room Wednesday night the 19th from six to 8:00 PM OG the fin turn and me will be holding court there. So come do the Mcpe takeover [01:01:26] Joe: with, uh, Doug and og stack Benjamins dot com slash meetup gets you to both of those events and, uh, we’ll have more. [01:01:34] I’ll be at economy in March. We’ll start talking about that. So, but you know what? Economy sold out, so we probably won’t talk much about that. All right, that’s gonna do it for today. Thank you everybody for hanging out. Please, uh, share this with somebody who really needs Benjamin Brands mentorship from this episode. [01:01:48] What a great idea. Let’s, let’s not think about retirement in the future. Let’s think about it right now. Speaking of right now, we’re retiring this podcast episode, huh? Huh, huh? No, no. Doug, what should we have learned today? [01:02:01] Doug: Well, Joe first takes some advice from Benjamin Brandt. Retirement isn’t about tomorrow, designed today so that it makes life easier for future you. [01:02:11] Dream first, test now, and then focus on the math. Second, take some advice from our headline. Good advice is advice that you trust. Don’t trust your advisors. Maybe it’s time to figure out why and focus on better relationships around you. If you can make better decisions, better returns on those decisions are sure to follow. [01:02:33] But the big lesson, don’t tell Joe’s mom that you’re down. You know why? I’ll tell you why. She said, while you’re down, why don’t you clean that floor? And she handed me a mop. Lady takes advantage of every opening. Thanks to Benjamin Brand for joining us today for his book Call Jeff if he doesn’t answer your call. [01:02:56] We’ll share a link to Retirement Starts today on our show notes page. This show is the property of SB podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [01:03:22] 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, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:04:38] headlines: Should [01:04:39] Doug: we really be toasting them with coffee? Isn’t that like bad luck? Shouldn’t we be doing it with bourbon or something? [01:04:44] Joe: I, I think we need a new, yeah, we need a new deal There. It, it’ll spice things up. Make the podcast, podcast. Wow. That that episode went quick. Yeah. You guys recorded for six minutes before you fell asleep. [01:04:59] bit: I think we’re done. [01:05:03] Doug: Nothing more to say. Uh, be good money. Good. Sh. Good show everybody. Good night.
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