A Wall Street Journal story about a 17-year-old helping his family with financial decisions kicks off a much bigger Stacking Benjamins question: who should you actually trust with your money? Joe, Doug, Paula Pant, Jesse Cramer, and special guest Roger Whitney dig into where great advice comes from, why bad advice often comes from people who love you, and how to build a better filter before you act. Along the way, they talk books, podcasts, family advice, AI, confirmation bias, homebuying myths, index funds, retirement plans, and why “smart” isn’t enough.
What You’ll Walk Away With
Why Roger says “advice” has a high bar: real advice should apply to your specific life, not just sound smart in public
The difference between information and advice — and why confusing the two can lead you into trouble
Why books often beat random internet advice: they usually have more vetting, structure, and accountability
How well-meaning friends and family can still give terrible money advice when they speak confidently about things they don’t really understand
Paula’s advice pyramid: avoid people who profit from outrage, be skeptical of people with no accountability, and seek sources with both expertise and vetting
Why AI can be useful as a sparring partner, but not as a substitute for your own thinking or fact-checking
The danger of “always” and “never” advice: always buy a house, always max your 401(k), never finance a car, always buy index funds
Why renting isn’t automatically throwing money away — and how the price-to-rent ratio can help you think more clearly
Why maxing out your workplace retirement plan may not always be the right move, especially when tax flexibility, business investment, or other goals matter more
How confirmation bias, present bias, and absolute certainty can fool you into believing your plan is stronger than it is
What to look for in your personal board of directors: people you respect, people with a high signal-to-noise ratio, and people who are kind enough to tell you the truth
Why Roger says a kind person is better than a merely nice one when you need real feedback
Why This Matters Now
Financial advice is everywhere: podcasts, books, TikTok, AI, coworkers, relatives, advisors, and confident strangers with strong opinions. The hard part isn’t finding advice. It’s knowing which advice deserves your attention. This episode gives Stackers a filter for separating useful guidance from noise before the wrong voice gets too close to their money.
From the Basement
Joe uses a Wall Street Journal piece about a teenage family financial advisor to launch a bigger card-table debate with Paula Pant, Jesse Cramer, and Roger Whitney. The crew builds a money-advice pyramid, debates which financial rules should be ignored, and explores when to trust yourself versus when to bring in your board of directors. Doug celebrates Art Linkletter with Game of Life trivia, Paula admits she’s never played it, and OG’s trivia lead might get a little more uncomfortable.
Resources Mentioned
The Wall Street Journal piece by Oyin Adedoyin about a 17-year-old helping his family with financial decisions
Roger Whitney — The Retirement Answer Man podcast
Paula Pant — Afford Anything podcast
Jesse Cramer — Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors podcast
Seth Godin — Linchpin
Thomas Stanley and William Danko — The Millionaire Next Door
Robert Kiyosaki — Rich Dad Poor Dad
Robert Cialdini — Influence
Richard Feynman — Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Beth Kobliner — referenced as an upcoming Afford Anything guest
Stacking Benjamins Newsletter, The 201 — stackingbenjamins.com/201
Stacking Benjamins YouTube channel — youtube.com/stackingbenjamins
Our Topic: Finding trustworthy financial advice.
He’s 17 Years Old and His Family’s Financial Adviser (Wall Street Journal)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Trusted financial advice
- Advice versus information
- Life-changing advice
- Personal life scripts
- Being an artist
- Retirement purpose
- Vetted financial books
- Unvetted online content
- Family financial advice
- Confident misinformation
- Budgeting fundamentals
- Worst financial advice
- Sales influence tactics
- Market prediction myths
- Financial media incentives
- Advice accountability
- Money advice pyramid
- Internet versus friends
- Trusting your gut
- Books versus podcasts
- Self-published books
- Renting versus buying
- Price-to-rent ratio
- Retirement plan limits
- High-interest debt
- Low-rate mortgages
- Car financing
- Index fund absolutism
- Roth conversion certainty
- Personal advisory boards
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Roger Whitney
Another thanks to Roger Whitney for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Roger on his show, Retirement Answer Man at Retirement Answer Man – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.
Check out his book Rock Retirement: A Simple Guide to Help You Take Control and be More Optimistic About the Future.
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
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- Which denomination of money in The Game of Life featured Art Linkletter’s face?
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’ll share tactics to make the most out of a tool an alarming number of people take for granted…the 401(k).
Miss our last show? Check it out here: What History Tells Us About Crypto, Real Estate, and Every Other Financial “Truth” (with Dr. Joseph Moore) SB1868 | Stacking Benjamins.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] opener: So you’ll pick me up tonight at 7:45?
[00:00:03] opener: Oh, well, no, I got a few things to, to take care of first, but why, why don’t we make it quarter to
[00:00:07] opener: 8:00?
[00:00:09] Doug: Stop
[00:00:12] opener: Okay, seven forty-five
[00:00:18] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it’s The Stacking Benjamins Show
[00:00:34] Doug: Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and the Wall Street Journal
[00:00:44] Doug: recently reported that one family uses their 17-year-old as their financial advisor. Man, when I was 17, I could have given you great advice on baseball and hairstyles and music and fake IDs, but money? It begs the question, who should you trust when it comes to your money? You know, I mean, other than me, ’cause I’m totally good for it, right?
[00:00:59] Doug: But that’s not all. There’s a big birthday today on the calendar, and we’ll celebrate with another helping of my money-themed trivia. Paula Pant is mounting a comeback. Can it continue? Stick around to find out. And now, a guy who’s the first person you can trust when asking about increasing your ice cream intake, it’s Joe Saul-Sehy.
[00:01:26] JOe: Sadly, Doug, that is far too, far too correct. Hey, everybody. Happy Friday. Let me be the first to welcome you to the weekend. I am Joe Saul-Sehy, and I’m super happy that you’re here with us because we’re gonna talk about advice. Where do you get advice from? Is it reliable where you get advice from? This is gonna be, I think, a really interesting conversation, mostly because we got a bunch of interesting people with us, starting with the gentleman behind the mic, the golden voice of Neighbor Doug.
[00:01:56] JOe: Oh,
[00:01:56] Doug: it’s golden. You know, I’m, I’m doing great, Joe. I recently discovered a secret. If you just lower your standards, your days get way better.
[00:02:05] JOe: Is- isn’t that amazing?
[00:02:07] Doug: If you just lower your expectations, everything’s good.
[00:02:09] JOe: It actually is funny, because, uh, you know, I’ve been doing all this research on retirement and the place of gratitude, which really, in some ways, Doug, y- you could put a little stank on gratitude, just say it’s lowering your standard.
[00:02:21] JOe: Just, oh, thank God- Exactly … it’s only raining slightly hard today.
[00:02:26] Doug: I’m happy it’s hailing.
[00:02:27] JOe: My shoes are only a little bit wet. Like, it’s great, but the more gratitude you have, the happier that you are. And you know what? I have a lot of gratitude, because we don’t have to lower our standards today, Doug, because we’ve got the woman from Manhattan with us.
[00:02:41] JOe: Paula Pant is here. How are you?
[00:02:43] Paula: I’m amazing. How are you?
[00:02:46] JOe: I’m amazing, ’cause you’re here and you’re amazing. Oh.
[00:02:49] Paula: Why, thank you.
[00:02:50] JOe: It was so great getting to see you last week. We were in Manhattan, Cheryl and I, and before I went to my first Broadway play, we got to hang out with the Paula Pant.
[00:03:00] Paula: That was your first Broadway play- That’s wh-
[00:03:02] Paula: Operation Mincemeat?
[00:03:03] JOe: That was my first one. I s- Wow … I saved the best for first. Yes.
[00:03:09] Paula: Wow. What did you think? Are you gonna quit your, your role as a podcaster and become a Broadway star
[00:03:13] JOe: now? I think so. Doug, we gotta practice the kicks so we can join- … the Rock- Rockettes, and we’ll be, we’ll be fantastic. But you know who we can kick almost as hard as?
[00:03:23] JOe: Jesse Kramer, who’s also here. Jesse’s what, 6’1″, 6’2″? You’d have a pretty high leg kick. 6’2″.
[00:03:30] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah, I can get, I can get my legs up there. I’ve got long legs, too. I mean, I’m not quite Rockette material, but somewhere on the spectrum.
[00:03:38] JOe: Almost. Almost there. Oh, you’re
[00:03:39] Doug: on the spectrum, all right.
[00:03:41] Jesse: I set you up. I set you up for that.
[00:03:43] Jesse: Wow.
[00:03:44] JOe: Jesse’s getting saucy already. Jesse, how are you today, man?
[00:03:47] Jesse: I am doing great. I am happy to be here. I’m excited for a fun conversation. I, I heard about, uh, I heard about this Wall Street Journal article, but I haven’t read it yet.
[00:03:56] JOe: I can’t wait to dive just a little bit into it. We’re not gonna talk too much about it, but it blew my mind enough where I went, “Do I wanna get my advice from a 17-year-old?”
[00:04:05] JOe: Like, do I, do I want to? Y- you know who I’d rather get advice from, Jesse?
[00:04:09] Jesse: I’m, I’m excited. Who’s it gonna be?
[00:04:11] JOe: From the long- one, one of the longest-running podcasters out there, Mr. Roger Whitney is here. The retirement answer man. How are you, dude?
[00:04:21] Roger: I saw this article and said, “I’m not gonna read that,” and moved on when it was published.
[00:04:27] Roger: But I did read it, because you sent it to me, so I’m excited to chat about it.
[00:04:30] JOe: He said, “I’m not gonna read it,” and then Joe puts it back in his face- Like good friends do, yes
[00:04:37] Roger: It was actually better than I expected after reading it Of what kind of advice? So I don’t know how, if we’re gonna talk about that or not, but, uh- It
[00:04:43] JOe: is super interesting to me.
[00:04:45] JOe: N- r- really not about, you know, getting advice from a 17-year-old, but mostly, like, who do you respect, and who do you, where do you get good advice? Where can you more reliably get good advice? Like, Paul is always talking about the thinking behind your thinking, right? How do we make it more likely that we would get good advice?
[00:05:05] JOe: I just, I find that bigger topic to be pretty fascinating. Um, and this kinda led the way. So all right, everybody, we got Roger here. Well, Roger, before we go, ’cause a couple people have not heard of the Retirement Answer Man. I don’t know who those people are, but they haven’t heard of the Retirement Answer Man, so what do you do over at the Retirement Answer Man show?
[00:05:24] Roger: I’m like the older version of Jesse, who is, uh- … has a great podcast. Uh, we hang out- … and noodle on how to rock retirement, which means- Not become an expert in retirement planning, but how do we do it well so we can actually go create a great life, which is the whole point of the exercise, which is often missed when talking about retirement planning.
[00:05:49] JOe: That it’s not about more money, it’s actually about more living. Is that what you’re saying?
[00:05:53] Roger: Yeah. I mean, that it’s a means to an end, and a lot of times people that listen to the, you know, podcast, they, right- like rightly so, they like to geek out on it, which is great, but then it also can be like a little safety blanky that we use rather than actually go create a great life, which is the whole point.
[00:06:09] Roger: So how do we get out of our own way is a, a huge obstacle, especially for those that like shows like ours.
[00:06:16] JOe: Well, and that’s interesting, too. I mean, we’ll get into this more, but is the best advice that you can get, is it because it’s deeper or is it because it helps you just get on with it? You know what I mean?
[00:06:26] JOe: Get beyond it. Like, if it’s 85% right, but it gets you there, let’s say, 50% faster, right? Is that better advice? I don’t know. Paula, I can see you pondering this as we talk about it. What do you think?
[00:06:39] Paula: Well, so I think you need to be informed of the trade-offs. There are some people who will argue that you should patronize others by virtue of giving them the simplest possible advice- Versus patronizing them
[00:06:51] JOe: because… Yeah, pa- patronize. We
[00:06:51] Paula: shouldn’t patronize them, we should patronize them. Yes, patronize.
[00:07:00] Paula: Tomato, tomato. So there are those who argue that others cannot take a more complicated answer, and so you must give them a reductive or simplistic one because that’s all they can handle, and I find that to be patronizing.
[00:07:18] JOe: It is interesting. I can’t wait to get even more into it. As you guys can see, our whole panel’s excited about this topic, so Roger’s here, Paula’s here, Jesse’s here, Doug and I are here.
[00:07:26] JOe: We’re gonna talk about how to more reliably get good advice. Who do you trust with your money? We’re gonna discuss that in just a second. But we got a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them, and then we’re diving in Let’s start with this one, Stackers. If you need something done and you need it done right, you don’t go to random internet.
[00:07:46] JOe: You go to people you know who do that all the time. You know what I do all the time? I am in tons and tons of meetings, and as my mentor said, “Ask who, not how.” You know what? I am your who on this, and Granola is what I use. What’s Granola? It’s an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet.
[00:08:04] JOe: What I love is that I send out these notes that are better than anybody else’s notes to the point that I even brag about the notes. “Check out how cool these notes are.” And everybody’s like, “Where do I get that?” The best part, Granola works through your device’s audio, so it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use.
[00:08:21] JOe: There’s no setup, no awkward bots. It’s just your normal meeting with superpowers. And now you can actually listen instead of frantically typing every word, and still walking away with a kinda hazy look at what happened. So if meetings are eating up your day and they’re not as effective as they can be, and you really want to impress the people around you with your ability to take notes, be focused, and listen, you can try Granola totally free by heading to granola.ai/sb.
[00:08:52] JOe: That’s granola.ai. Don’t forget the /sb to tell them that we sent you. As Mom says, “Get your time back.” Once again, try for free at granola.ai/sb.
[00:09:10] JOe: All right, so today we’re gonna give you the confidence to think better. You know, everybody has financial advice, right? Your parents, your favorite podcast. We certainly have advice, Doug. Your buddy from work has advice, your barber, some random person with three million followers on TikTok. The question isn’t whether you’re gonna get advice, ’cause you’re definitely gonna get it, it’s whether you’ll know whether that advice deserves your attention or not.
[00:09:36] JOe: And so as we mentioned before the break, I started this journey of thinking about this with this article from a person with the best name ever, uh, Oyen Adedoyin in The Wall Street Journal, uh, also carried by MSN. We’ll link to it in our show notes. And, uh, Oyen tells this story of a 17-year-old who’s become his immigrant parents’ financial advisors.
[00:10:00] JOe: When they first came to the country, he helped them navigate English language financial documents, and he was teaching himself about investing, which is all fascinating. I’ll let you go read the piece, ’cause we’re really not gonna focus on whether you should get advice from a 17-year-old or not. We’re gonna focus on the bigger thing, which is our own money.
[00:10:19] JOe: Like, where do we more reliably find advice? And I wanna start this really by asking you guys this question. Not who, but where did you find great advice from? Where did you find advice that changed your life? Roger, you’re a guest today. Let’s start with you. Was it a podcast? Was it a book? Was it a person that gave you- Well, can
[00:10:41] Roger: I ask a question first, Joe?
[00:10:43] JOe: Sure.
[00:10:43] Roger: Can we define what we mean by getting advice? What are we talking about here?
[00:10:47] JOe: Somebody that told you something that was motivational enough and specific enough that it changed the d- trajectory of Roger Whitney’s future.
[00:11:00] Roger: Okay. Okay. Uh, best advice I ever received was from a book by Seth Godin, Linchpin, which was essentially be an artist.
[00:11:11] Roger: Whatever you’re going to do, whether it’s sweeping the streets or being a receptionist or being a, you know, being a retirement planner, whatever the heck it is, be an artist. Bring your unique perspective and service to it, rather than play the game of becoming commoditized and essentially trying to out-Walmart Walmart.
[00:11:33] Roger: That is a loser’s game. And that, uh, in so many ways, professionally and personally, has been the best advice I ever got.
[00:11:42] JOe: I could see how that would change things professionally, Roger, but why did it change it personally?
[00:11:47] Roger: Well, what ends up happening, and you see this in retirement planning when we’re coming up with vision, what do I want my life to look like?
[00:11:54] Roger: Which is usually, you know, that discussion is happening before you’ve actually had that time freedom. What we end up doing is, and it’s helpful to a point, is, well, what do other people do? And that’s where we see all the articles on, you know, retirees like to travel, retirees like their grandchildren. We see all these scripts that are promoted from, you know, the, you know, the internet.
[00:12:16] Roger: And because we lack our own inward imagination, or it’s a lot more difficult to go in deeply of what we want, we end up grabbing other people’s life scripts-
[00:12:26] JOe: Mm …
[00:12:27] Roger: and patching them together rather than determining what you want your life to look like. So a practical example of that, Joe, is for years, it’s a bane in my family, I never have my phone, and when I do have it, it never rings and I never answer it.
[00:12:39] JOe: I was so surprised, by the way, this morning when I called you and you called me back three seconds later, ’cause that is not Roger Whitney.
[00:12:45] Roger: I never answer my phone, and I usually call back. Same thing with emails. I just made those choices. I don’t have any social media other than LinkedIn, but I’m never really on there.
[00:12:55] Roger: And I made these choices years ago, and it went against, especially when you have a podcast, you’re supposed to be sending out messages to the world constantly. I just adopted that own script. I’m sure I pulled it from someone else. But I think we gotta be careful of adopting other people’s scripts, which means you need to know who you are and what you want, which is really what the real work is when it comes to advice.
[00:13:15] JOe: This is so interesting. I remember back in my American Express days, Roger, there was a receptionist who was easily the worst receptionist in the Detroit area. She was horrible. Her name was Linda. Linda, by the way, I’m gonna call her out. Mm. Linda James. Linda James was a- Wow. … was a horrible receptionist.
[00:13:35] Doug: Completely doxing her. What’s her address, Joe?
[00:13:37] Paula: Wow. I
[00:13:38] JOe: know. Because- Can you give
[00:13:39] Paula: us her social security number and her mother’s maiden name?
[00:13:42] JOe: You’re gonna love where this story goes, because to Roger’s point, my friend Tony, who was her manager, rather than fire Linda, he sent her to Nordstrom training, and when she came back from training, over the next five years of my career, she went from the worst by far to the best by far.
[00:14:02] JOe: She was easily the best receptionist in any office in the D- well, maybe any office I’ve ever been in. She was just incredible. She knew everything. Do you think I would’ve called her out without-
[00:14:13] Roger: I’m glad you cleaned that up, Joe
[00:14:16] JOe: She was amazing. But I asked her, Roger, to your point, “Why? How did you turn this around?”
[00:14:21] JOe: And, and she said, Roger, exactly what you pointed to. Instead of having the receptionist script, which could be a boring job, people come in, get them coffee, go get the advisor, blah, blah, blah, same crap different day. She said, “I got interested in the individual people. I got interested in just having fun myself with all of these wonderful people that came in.”
[00:14:43] JOe: So whether it was the UPS driver dropping off whatever, the, the mail person, somebody’s client, my clients loved Linda ’cause she cared about them, and she took something that could be ro- boring and just was an artist. But it was pretty amazing and pretty fun. Paula, where did you find the best advice? So Roger got his from a book.
[00:15:03] JOe: Mm-hmm. Was yours from a book?
[00:15:05] Paula: Yeah. My, the best financial advice that I got were from books, plural. Some of the earliest books I read were, uh, The Millionaire Next Door, Rich Dad Poor Dad. Those were some of the early books that, that gave me a framework for how to think about money at the 30,000-foot-view level.
[00:15:21] Paula: But over time, just the accumulation of many, many, many books, um, the aggregation of many books, the benefit to books in particular is that it’s vetted. So if you’re reading blog… W- blogs were popular back, you know, when I was getting started. Um What’s a blog? Like a history lesson. Yeah. Like a, a history lesson for anyone who’s under 25.
[00:15:42] Paula: Uh, back in the day.
[00:15:44] Roger: Jesse’s paying attention to this.
[00:15:48] Paula: Uh, as opposed to, like, blogs or podcasts or social media which are unvetted, so you’ve got the noise with the signal, and when you, when you don’t know anything you don’t know how to separate noise from signal. You don’t know how to distinguish good advice from bad.
[00:16:04] Paula: And that was actually one of the things I was thinking when I was reading the Wall Street Journal piece about the advice from a 17-year-old. I’m like, “Well, it’s great that this particular 17-year-old happens to be giving good advice to his parents, but his parents do not have the skill set to be able to evaluate good advice from bad.”
[00:16:19] Paula: And oftentimes if you’re taking advice from a family member, who knows if it’s gonna be any good or not, you know? In this one case study it happens to be, but, like, plenty of family members give lots of bad advice. So anyway, that’s why I like books, because they’re vetted.
[00:16:34] JOe: That’s interesting, but you don’t have a very specific one.
[00:16:37] JOe: Like Roger had a specific book, specific thing. No top, uh, pointy end on th- on that statement?
[00:16:44] Paula: No. Again, um, in terms of, like, basic mindset, you know, I… The, The Millionaire Next Door dispelled me of the popular myth that, like, most millionaires just were born into it. That’s the pervasive myth that, like, the data just doesn’t support.
[00:17:00] Paula: So The Millionaire Next Door kind of broke me of that, and so it made me re- question, all right, well, if the majority of US millionaires were not born with it and did not receive any inheritance, what did they do? And so it kind of laid that groundwork. Same with Rich Dad Poor Dad. It l- in terms of thinking it laid that groundwork, but those are both 30,000-foot books.
[00:17:22] Paula: None of them are… They’re neither strategic nor tactical, and so those had to come from much more granular books.
[00:17:28] JOe: Jesse, we’ve got books for Paula, a book for Roger. Tell me it’s not a book.
[00:17:34] Jesse: Um, my most influential advice probably came from Nordstrom training actually, when you and Doug sent me there a couple months ago.
[00:17:42] Jesse: I mean, learning how to become a podcaster-
[00:17:44] JOe: And podcasting went from rote to really fun. You got along with all the other podcasters.
[00:17:48] Roger: Is this
[00:17:48] JOe: your receptionist’s son, Joe?
[00:17:50] Jesse: Yeah. Linda’s my mom, you
[00:17:56] Jesse: Sorry, Mom. I know you taught me better than that, to swear on microphone.
[00:17:59] JOe: Yeah, Linda’s amazing. She wouldn’t have brought you up that way.
[00:18:01] Jesse: I go back and, and just think of almost some meta advice over time that I probably picked up, I don’t know, picked up as a little kid intrinsically, and I just think about enjoying learning.
[00:18:10] Jesse: It’s like something that everybody in the space who wants to learn more about their finances, like, first you kinda have to just enjoy the process of learning. Or just, I don’t know, enjoying interacting with people, enjoying the act of helping people. Like, some of those lessons were, were really powerful, but I guess maybe they’re not always the easiest to teach.
[00:18:26] Jesse: So when it comes to, like, tactical stuff that we talk about here, I do think about my mom and dad and, and just some of the most fundamental, foundational financial advice that I can picture from my childhood was, “Well, we earn X, and that’s why we only spend 80% of X.” It’s something that’s so important, and my, my parents were both public school teachers.
[00:18:45] Jesse: It’s not like they were bringing in the big bucks. But they kept a budget, and we paid attention to what we spent, and, you know, that set me off down this, down this path of, yeah, you know, mild, mild success by mid-career. You know, that’s what we all aspire to, right? Just a mild success.
[00:18:59] JOe: Some mild If you can get a little mild success, that’s good.
[00:19:02] JOe: Thanks, Linda. Yeah. Doug, what’s yours?
[00:19:06] Doug: I was worried you were gonna ask me this, uh, because I think my … also probably from a book, and this is gonna sound unintentionally humorous, but I remember at a pretty young age reading a book about the Donner Party. Wow. Geez.
[00:19:22] JOe: Wow. Can you tell people that don’t know why we’re laughing, like, what happened to the Donner Party, Doug?
[00:19:27] Doug: Well, I mean, the best advice that I got from that book was barbecue sauce makes everything better. No. Oh. Was… No, that’s- that’s not it at all, but I just had to, I had to give the obvious joke. But I think, A, the reason a lot of us are saying books is because when you’re reading, you really have time to marinate and really let your mind wander and think about how that amazing thing you just read fits into your world.
[00:19:53] Doug: So I think probably better than other forms of media, I think that’s probably why things we’ve read or why a number of us on the show are, are giving that answer. But at a young age, I think I realized some conservatism about when to push and, and, and when should you try to make it over the pass, as the Donner Party tried to do in some of the worst weather in recorded history, at least in the Sierra Nevadas, uh, and it didn’t work out so well for them.
[00:20:18] Doug: So, uh, that, that taught me that there’s a time, uh, to be aggressive and a time to be conservative, and, uh, the reason that- I
[00:20:25] Roger: thought this was a Jeffrey Dahmer reference. I wasn’t in on the joke. It’s- Now I’m getting it. It’s-
[00:20:29] Jesse: Oh, it’s close enough …
[00:20:30] Paula: it’s close. It’s close. Yeah.
[00:20:31] Jesse: It’s- Donner versus Dahmer … it’s an Alfred Packer reference.
[00:20:33] Jesse: Yeah.
[00:20:34] Paula: Yeah. Okay. Uh, yeah.
[00:20:35] Jesse: And, and Doug, of all the verbs in the world, of all the verbs, you had to pick marinate.
[00:20:39] Paula: Marinate. I was like, “Ix-nay on the arinate-may.”
[00:20:44] JOe: Just when people thought it couldn’t get worse, another episode we, we make sure it gets worse.
[00:20:48] Paula: If anyone out there is wondering what the Donner Party is, I urge you not to look it up.
[00:20:53] Doug: Well, they’re gonna now.
[00:20:56] JOe: I think my best advice actually came from my dad, which was, uh, serving other people is more fun than serving your own self-interest. You’ll always have fun because they’re having fun, and if you try to make sure other people are having fun, it really lights you up, too, and that has served me very well.
[00:21:11] JOe: Let’s go the other way very, very briefly. Where did the worst advice that you got … Le- let’s stick to financially with this one, and I will go first because we’ll just take this maybe in reverse order. I don’t know if we’ll go back to Doug if the Donner Party’s
[00:21:27] Doug: the best one. The next one’s better. This one
[00:21:29] JOe: is better.
[00:21:29] JOe: I should have got this. Mine actually came from my father-in-law, who was amazing and one of my best friends, and I miss him very much, so… He passed away a few years ago, and it was the most well-meaning advice, but he told me that I should start putting money in an annuity when I was 27 years old. Uh, he said that an annuity had worked really well for him, and I should put money in annuity too.
[00:21:52] JOe: He actually had me call a broker at Merrill Lynch, and I called the broker and the broker at Merrill Lynch said, “Why don’t you build an emergency fund first and pay off your student loans?” So it’s wild that the commission broker that everybody complains about actually gave me much better advice than this man that cared about me a ton.
[00:22:13] JOe: Doug, worst advice?
[00:22:14] Doug: Yeah, I mean, I’m sorry to
[00:22:15] JOe: say it, because- Besides talking about the Donner Party on a podcast. Yeah,
[00:22:17] Doug: no, this will be a little bit more straightforward. I hate to say it, but some of the worst, at least financial advice in the context of the show, was from my dad. And, you know, it- I couldn’t love anybody more than I loved him, and I think about him every day, but he was not a, a financial genius, that’s for sure.
[00:22:33] Doug: And he used to say to me, “When you have it, spend it, and when you don’t, don’t.” And I think he really thought that was simple and profound, not realizing that’s basically zero-based budgeting, Dad. You’re not going anywhere with that. Mm. At the time he said it to me, I didn’t really… I just thought, “Well, that’s simple and straightforward,” and, you know, you should be able to enjoy life a little bit.
[00:22:52] Doug: If you’ve got the money, spend it. But he literally would spend most of it. There wasn’t a lot of savings going on. There was no midpoint in that. It was either when you have it, spend it, and when you don’t, you gotta l- know when to shut it down.
[00:23:05] JOe: That’s interesting. Uh, there’s
[00:23:05] Doug: some merit to that, but-
[00:23:06] JOe: It goes back to Joseph Moore on Wednesday, who talked about historically how that was, that was what everybody thought in the 1800s, right?
[00:23:14] JOe: Money’s unreliable. So, uh, why put it in- I’m not that
[00:23:16] Doug: old, man.
[00:23:17] JOe: Yeah. Why put, why, why put it in a bank? Let’s see. We’re going backwards, so I think Jesse, that means you’re next.
[00:23:23] Jesse: Um, the story that came to mind was, uh, just a, a, you know, I let a, a salesperson convince me to make a purchase, like a $10,000 purchase that, I don’t know, within a year, I, I fundamentally regretted.
[00:23:35] Jesse: The big takeaway, it led me down this path of reading the book Influence by Robert Cialdini and, and kind of learning the ways that in that particular exchange I was influenced probably, you know, outside of my rational brain into the irrational part of my brain. And, uh, and yeah, I, I think one of my takeaways was just kind of being aware of- The way that we can manipulate ourselves, we can be manipulated by others at times into maybe doing things that aren’t in our, our best interest financially
[00:24:02] Doug: W- was the $10,000 the hot tub, Jesse?
[00:24:04] Doug: It was
[00:24:04] Jesse: the hot tub. Ah. Yeah. It was the hot tub story. I knew it. I’ve, I’ve told it a lot, so I didn’t wanna, like, go into detail and tell the hot tub story again, but it’s the hot tub story. Yep.
[00:24:13] JOe: I do find it interesting that for you and for me, the bad advice led to good stuff. Like, led me to the broker who’s like, “No, I think, I think your pyramid is build emergency fund, pay off some debt.”
[00:24:26] JOe: Paula?
[00:24:27] Paula: I would say, and I’m, I won’t name particular names, but I’m thinking of a handful of friends, people I have known throughout my life, who have given me uninformed advice about the market, particularly at a time when I didn’t know that much about the market. So it’s striking to me that pretty much every person is naming, like, friends or family.
[00:24:49] Paula: Um- It’s, it’s well-meaning
[00:24:50] JOe: people.
[00:24:51] Paula: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so same thing. I, I’m, n- without naming names, the category is friends and family, and the mechanism is when someone speaks with a huge degree of confidence about a subject that they know very little about, but you yourself don’t know enough to recognize how little they know.
[00:25:12] JOe: I guess Jesse’s was not friends and family, but yours, Doug’s, and mine- Yeah … certainly were. But I like the huge amount of confidence with things that they don’t know a ton about. All right, Roger. Bring it home, man.
[00:25:24] Roger: And this goes to books, which really saved me. I liked how Paula did that, ’cause you bring them into your life, and what really…
[00:25:30] Roger: The worst advice I ever got was the cohort of people around me, because I had no money education. I started off as a, a, a stock trader in 1990, right at the beginning of the launch, and I was around a bunch of egotistical, you know, jerks. And they all saw you’re always gonna make more money and this is really easy, and those are the scripts that I learned, and I leaned into that because I was young and immature, and it took me 10 years to get out of that.
[00:25:57] Roger: Of all these lies about you can predict the market, you can trade your way to prosperity, live a, you know, live, live into future income. Those are the things I learned from just really idiots, because I didn’t know they were idiots. I thought they were smart. Uh- That’s the worst advice I ever got.
[00:26:11] JOe: No, it is interesting.
[00:26:12] JOe: I really think having good advice and good advisors, and we’ll get to your board of directors i- in the second half of today’s show, is super important. But some of the moronic, quote, “financial advisors,” Roger, that I was around were, were absolutely horrible. I remember our Christmas parties back in the, uh, American Express days.
[00:26:32] JOe: Cheryl, my spouse, didn’t wanna go to the Christmas parties because there were so many people there that had the kinda way of thinking that you’re talking about. Just, it was… They were living the rat race. They were spending every dime they made. They were giving questionable advice. What’s funny is I still think at that company were some of the smartest and best people I work with, which is why hiring,
[00:26:51] Roger: quote- Smart is a totally separate issue.
[00:26:53] Roger: Well- Smart is overrated. And I originally wrote down all of Wall Street and media, which we could basically group that into one big group. Worst advice you could ever get is listening to media, and that includes blogs and podcasts, as advice, or to Wall Street in general Anybody that doesn’t know you, bad advice.
[00:27:11] JOe: It’s interesting though because when, you know, when you say anybody that doesn’t know you, Seth Godin doesn’t know you.
[00:27:17] Roger: He didn’t provide advi- he gave me information that I integrated and used for myself. ‘Cause when you’re interviewing books- And that’s
[00:27:22] JOe: why you asked what I meant by advice. Yes. That’s why you were defining early on what I meant by advice.
[00:27:27] Roger: Yeah, because advice is I am telling you what to do in your situation. That’s a high bar that has, that I think the purveyors of content, like we all are, have to really appreciate, and also the consumers of content have to realize everybody giving you the content doesn’t know crap about you and your situation and circumstance, and that’s where advice comes in.
[00:27:51] Roger: That bar is high, and I think both sides underappreciate that.
[00:27:55] JOe: Very briefly before we go to this intense competition to see if Paula Pant can continue to catch up in our yearly trivia race, and it’s getting exciting here in trivia land. But before we do that, I’d like to build just very quickly like a pyramid, a money advice pyramid.
[00:28:11] JOe: Like in your brain, if you’ve got kind of the bottom of the pyramid, let’s say, is the worst, and then the tippy top the golden top. So maybe, maybe the bottom is, as an example, random internet, and then you go up from there. Paula, can you build us like a very quick pyramid of levels of this will generally be better than that, will be generally be better than that, generally better than that?
[00:28:35] Paula: I, I’m just laughing that you’re, you’re literally launching a pyramid scheme.
[00:28:40] JOe: I am. Let’s have a pyramid scheme here on the show. Back to Roger. Don’t use this as advice. Don’t get involved in a pyramid scheme. Okay.
[00:28:47] Paula: Yeah. I would say bottom… Instead of categories, I’m gonna explain the, the why mechanism. So the bottom of the pyramid would be anyone who makes money by making you angry or making you tribal.
[00:29:00] Paula: Regardless of the medium through which that is conveyed, anyone who profits from outrage is necessarily going to give you slanted or biased advice. That’s what I would put at the absolute bottom. A step above that might be those who are not accountable if what they say turns out to not actually unfold, and that could be online, it could be in the real world.
[00:29:30] Paula: An example of this is if you’re talking to a real estate agent, and they’re like, “Oh,” and they’re trying to sell you a house, and they’re like, “Oh, this, this neighborhood’s totally gonna go up in value.” You’re not accountable if that doesn’t happen.
[00:29:41] JOe: Well, what’s funny is y- you know, you went to a person, Paula, but I go right to AI.
[00:29:46] Paula: Mm. ‘
[00:29:46] JOe: Cause AI’s not accountable. I was trying to build out some numbers for a podcast last week, and all the numbers AI gave me w- were wrong. And when I fact-checked them and I went back to AI, of course, I talk to AI like it’s human, right? I’m like, “All these were wrong.” You know, AI just goes, “Yeah. Oh, my bad.
[00:30:01] JOe: Yep, you’re right. They were all wrong.”
[00:30:03] Paula: Right, right, right. Yeah. AI is useful. You think of it like Excel, you know? Uh, it’s useful in terms of, um, processing and analyzing large s- form… like, large amounts of data, but you yourself have to be the, the reader. You yourself have to be the analyst. AI can be a sparring partner, but it can’t do your thinking for you.
[00:30:24] Paula: I
[00:30:24] JOe: like the sparring partner much better. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we’ve got anybody who’s not accountable. Who’s above that?
[00:30:30] Paula: So above that would be people with both accountability and some degree of knowledge or training or vetting. Books fall into this category because, again, books are vetted, and at least to a limited extent, the authors are accountable for what they say.
[00:30:44] Paula: At a minimum, they’re accountable for fact-checking. So there is at least some degree of accountability in vetting there. And then I’d say at the very, very top of the pyramid, highest degree of accountability and highest degree of vetting. That might be something like a financial planner, like a, a licensed or certified financial planner.
[00:31:03] JOe: Let’s build this a different way, Roger. I’m gonna give you two of two different groups. You tell me which one you think is above the other in terms of, uh, predictability of getting good advice. Random internet- By the way,
[00:31:14] Roger: I love Paula’s framework, by the way. Love that framework. Mm.
[00:31:17] JOe: I do, too, which is why I don’t wanna have a bunch of me-tos afterwards.
[00:31:20] JOe: We end up changing the game. Uh, random internet versus friends, who’s more reliable? In a bigger percentage of time, larger percentage of the time, do you think you get better advice random internet or friends?
[00:31:34] Roger: Again, I’m going back to advice. Better information and perspective, internet. Advice that I’m teeing up the issue, friends.
[00:31:42] Roger: I’m gonna go closer to intimacy when I’m at getting to a decision, and that would be part of my hierarchy. But they wouldn’t be the one I would go for for how this works. Okay.
[00:31:52] JOe: Jesse, let’s add another one. Random internet, friends, and your own experience, just your own gut feeling.
[00:32:01] Jesse: Not your own gut feeling, not for the average person.
[00:32:05] Jesse: It’s hard, man. The random internet is so random. I mean, that’s the problem, right? I mean, there, there are forums and there are subreddits where you can go there and actually get very accurate advice, certainly much more accurate than your friend at the barbecue. But I’m gonna go with m- my… Well, I’m going with my gut here.
[00:32:22] Jesse: How ironic. My gut was what, was what Roger said, which is that if people know you and at least understand something in your circumstances, they’re familiar with who you are and what’s important to you, they can give you better, better advice than a stranger on the internet.
[00:32:36] JOe: L- let’s go with Paula. How about, uh, books versus podcasts?
[00:32:41] Paula: Ooh. I think there’s a distinction between podcasts that are kind of sloppily made versus podcasts with a extremely high level of research and production. It, podcasts, in fairness, like if we’re going for broad category, books have more v- p- traditionally published books have greater vetting because it has to get through an editorial team.
[00:33:09] Paula: A podcast, if it is sufficiently large, also has at least some degree of vetting because you have a team, you have a production team behind it. So if you look at some of the, some of the biggest podcasts that are out there, you know, they’re supporting a, a staff of 20. It passes through a lot of people. It passes through a lot of filters and a lot of layers before it gets published.
[00:33:33] Paula: Between the two broad categories, books. The short answer is books. But I don’t wanna treat all podcasts as though they are a monolith.
[00:33:40] JOe: Well, and almost, you know, it’s funny, ’cause you went right to traditionally published, which if you look at, at books, you know, how often do we all get pitched authors for our shows, and some of them are just garbage books.
[00:33:52] Paula: Oh, yeah, yeah. And so honestly, and people get very upset with me when I, um, poo-poo on like, uh, self-published books, but frankly, in a busy world with limited cognitive bandwidth, if something is self-published and it has not been vetted, I do not have the bandwidth to, to vet it myself. Like, we’re all busy people, we don’t have the time.
[00:34:13] Paula: To
[00:34:13] JOe: put it in financial terms, the standard deviation is too large.
[00:34:16] Paula: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I would not bother with self-published books because of that standard deviation.
[00:34:23] JOe: In the second half of this fascinating discussion, we’re gonna talk about what financial advice should you ignore. I’m gonna ask our contributors a series of different financial conundrums, and we’re gonna see which ones they think you should ignore and which ones you think they should follow.
[00:34:37] JOe: And then, um, you know, I, I asked Jesse a question on purpose about your own gut feeling. Like, when should you trust yourself, you know, with, with money decisions? We’re gonna do that in just a moment because at the halfway point of every Stacking Benjamins show, but especially fun on the Friday shows, we have a year-long competition between our three frequent contributors, Jesse, Paula, and OG.
[00:35:02] JOe: And Roger, today you’re on Team OG, and that means we’ve got some good news and some bad news for you, my friend. Which one would you prefer?
[00:35:10] Roger: Oh, gotta go bad.
[00:35:11] JOe: Yeah, the bad news is I, I ca- I, I really get frustrated when we have to have the guest go first. But you’ve been here so many times, Roger, you’re, you’re practically not a guest.
[00:35:20] JOe: You’re like a houseguest who’s here quite often. But you have to guess first because you’re winning. You and Team OG are winning, and the score has been tightening though, Roger, so there is a little bit of pressure. Doug, what’s our score, man?
[00:35:32] Doug: I can tell you recently, Joe, I’ve been very uncomfortable just in general on a day-to-day basis, and I couldn’t- quite put my finger on it, but I’ve realized now we have a very tight race.
[00:35:44] Doug: The order of the universe is on the precipice of being upset. Because OG’s not running away with this anymore, as has been the case in, uh, many seasons in the past. OG/Roger, uh, have nine points. Jesse, right there, right behind at seven points, and Paula at five. So it’s anybody’s game. It’s anybody’s game this year.
[00:36:11] JOe: It is so interesting as this thing tightens up at the… Uh, a few weeks ago, Roger, we were talking about how OG was trying to go for the record of 18, and he still could be, but also Paula could be going for the record of not finishing last, which could be interesting. And Jesse’s got a title to defend, so man, it’s all on the line today.
[00:36:30] JOe: Doug, you’ve got the question. What are we talking… It’s a birthday today.
[00:36:34] Doug: Sure is, Joe. Hey there, Stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we’re celebrating the birthday of legendary television host Art Linkletter, born July 17th, 1912. Now, look, before you go look up, “Who the hell is Art Linkletter?” let me fill you in.
[00:36:49] Doug: He spent decades on television before most of you were even born, but he was also a pretty savvy businessman. In fact, he got involved with one of the most iconic board games ever made, Milton Bradley’s The Game of Life. Ah, Life, the game that brought my childhood to a screeching halt at seven years old by teaching me I needed a job, homeowner’s insurance, and a diversified investment portfolio.
[00:37:15] Doug: Meanwhile, I’m still making bouncy balls out of rubber cement and thought other kids would give you cooties. Who am I kidding? Both of those things are still true. And wow, what about those little plastic cars? One minute you’re cruising around with your spouse, windows rolled down, singing Don’t Stop Believin’ at the top of your lungs.
[00:37:32] Doug: Next thing you know, you land on a couple of spaces and you got eight kids stacked in the back like you’re running an unlicensed daycare. And don’t even get me started on that spinner thing in the middle. Clickety, clickety, clickety, clickety. Nothing says relaxing family game night like a piece of plastic that sounds like my El Camino trying to start in February.
[00:37:50] Doug: But Art Linkletter wasn’t just a major investor in the game. His face actually appeared on one denomination of money used in The Game of Life. So here’s today’s trivia question: Which denomination of Life money featured Art Linkletter’s face? I’ll be back right after I check whether my health insurance covers getting one of those little blue pegs stuck in your nose.
[00:38:16] JOe: Roger, I would bet that you played The Game of Life
[00:38:20] Roger: Oh, totally, totally. Yeah
[00:38:21] JOe: An Art Linkletter shows up on one of the bills. Maybe going first is an advantage here, Roger
[00:38:29] Roger: I don’t even know what denominations they had. I’m gonna have to go with the hundy
[00:38:34] JOe: The $100 bill?
[00:38:36] Roger: $100 bill
[00:38:37] JOe: The Benjamin. Yes, in this case, the Linkletter
[00:38:41] Jesse: Have they changed the denominations over time with inflation?
[00:38:44] JOe: Can’t tell you
[00:38:46] Jesse: See, yeah, that’s tough. That’s tough. ‘Cause I, I feel like I remember playing in the ’90s, 2000s, and you know, you would buy a house for 100,000 bucks or multiple hundreds of thousands. So I gotta think there’s some bigger denominations in there, but I don’t know about when Art was around, Mr.
[00:39:04] Jesse: Linkletter, that is. I’ll go with, uh, the $1,000 bill, assuming that was a, that was one of… that was an option
[00:39:11] JOe: The $1,000 bill. Did you like the Game of Life, Jesse?
[00:39:17] Jesse: I enjoyed it, yeah. I, I remember playing it. I remember, I think, like, this… there was a split level house that literally got split by an earthquake.
[00:39:25] Jesse: That was an option that you could buy, and I think that was, like, the worst of the 10 housing choices And then I think the Tudor was one of the very nice houses. I, I still have memories of, of playing
[00:39:34] JOe: This is how old I am. I don’t even remember, I don’t even remember playing a version where you could buy, uh, a house.
[00:39:40] JOe: Do you-
[00:39:41] Jesse: I think, I think I remember I think it was Life. It might’ve been a different game
[00:39:45] JOe: I just remember, uh, having the car, deciding if I wanted to go to college or not, and buying insurance
[00:39:50] Jesse: Mm-hmm,
[00:39:50] JOe: mm-hmm Paula, I know you have this long-standing tradition of not knowing any, any pop culture, but tell me you played The Game of Life
[00:39:58] Paula: Never have I ever played The Game of Life You’re kidding.
[00:40:00] JOe: Oh my God.
[00:40:01] Paula: Never Mm-mm
[00:40:03] Doug: Do you even have a mental image of what it might look like, what the game board looks like?
[00:40:07] Paula: Not the game board, no. I c- the outside of the box, so L-I-F-E, it’s… and it, they’ve got, like, a different color panel be- Yeah … behind each- That’s right … letter
[00:40:16] Doug: Yep
[00:40:17] Paula: So I can picture the logo in my head
[00:40:19] JOe: Were there any, any games you played Clue
[00:40:23] Paula: Chutes and Ladders
[00:40:23] JOe: Chutes and Ladders. Yeah.
[00:40:25] Paula: There’s a Nepalese version of that actually called
[00:40:27] JOe: Snakes and Ladders. Snakes and Ladders. Mm-hmm. I think it’s- Mm-hmm … called Snakes and Ladders more reliably around the world, I think- Yeah … many of our- The UK as well … international fans will. But Paula, you got 100 bucks and you got 1,000 bucks, so what do you think?
[00:40:39] Jesse: I feel like the Nepalese, I feel like the Nepalese might have missed an opportunity there to, like, weave Sherpas in. Like, we will take you up. Sherp- Snakes and Sherpas.
[00:40:48] JOe: That’s right, and then we’ll slide you down Annapurna. If
[00:40:51] Jesse: that was insensitive, I apologize, but I think it’s, I think it’s good.
[00:40:55] Paula: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you could make some variations on the sh- Oh, you could have the ladder, like, across a crevice- Across
[00:41:01] Paula: across a mountain crevice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:04] Jesse: See? Come on, Milton Bradley.
[00:41:05] JOe: There is nobody, by the way, you’d rather have take you up the mountain than the Sherpas.
[00:41:09] Doug: We need a, a denomination of a bill from you.
[00:41:13] Paula: How about how- I’ll go with the 20.
[00:41:15] JOe: Goes with the 20. 20. All right. We got 100 from Roger, 1,000 from Jesse, 20 from Paula.
[00:41:22] JOe: Can Paula continue to get closer? Can Roger get Team OG one step closer to winning the championship and maybe beating 18 points, which is the record? Can Jesse defend his title? Getting one step closer. We’ll be right back. We’re gonna find out. All right, Roger, you opened this up with 100 bucks. Now you’ve flanked, uh, well, no.
[00:41:45] JOe: Uh, yeah, flanked on both sides, 1,000 above you and 20 below. How you feeling?
[00:41:50] Roger: I sure hope I get it right because Josh OG will be texting me lots of sarcasm if I don’t. So that’s really why I want to be right. Your
[00:42:01] Doug: motivation is fear.
[00:42:02] Roger: Yeah. There you go, Doug. Exactly.
[00:42:05] JOe: Ro- Roger, Roger, you and I have known OG for a long time, and there’s nothing to fear ’cause he’s gonna text you sarcasm either way.
[00:42:11] Roger: Yeah, good point, good point. Yeah. And if I got past giving him a hug, which literally freaked him out once, uh, I think I can survive this.
[00:42:19] JOe: Wow, you went in for the hug. Nice job. Big time. Yeah. Jesse, 1,000 bucks. You feeling good?
[00:42:26] Jesse: I have no idea. Uh, you know, I… These are the best questions though. It’s the best questions when you kind of feel like all three of us have no idea.
[00:42:32] Jesse: So it’s a good question.
[00:42:34] JOe: Well, let’s go to the person who clearly has no idea ’cause she’s never played the game. Paula, how you feeling?
[00:42:39] Paula: Uh, assuming that there are ones and fives and 50s, I would be the closest, so I feel like I’ve got… I’m well-positioned. She’s
[00:42:47] JOe: got all the small denominations. Ah, good
[00:42:49] Roger: tactic.
[00:42:49] Roger: Good tactic.
[00:42:50] Paula: Thank you.
[00:42:50] JOe: Well, is, is Paula gonna keep her winning streak alive? Doug, who’s taking this home?
[00:42:59] Doug: Hey there, Stackers. I’m certified life coach and guy whose insurance agent claims a blue plastic peg up your nose is considered a pre-existing condition, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Before the break, I asked you what denomination of money in the Game of Life featured birthday boy Art Linkletter’s smiling face.
[00:43:17] Doug: Was he on the $1 bill, the 20, maybe a crisp old 50? Oh, hell no, Art wouldn’t get out of bed for that kind of money. The correct answer, well, it was $99,900 higher than what Roger guessed. Oh. 99,980 higher than what Paula guessed, and 99,000 higher than what Jesse picked. So Jesse is our winner. Yay. That’s right, $100,000.
[00:43:48] Doug: Which, when I was seven years old, seemed like enough money to buy a mansion, an orange Corvette, and a controlling interest in the Sizzler. Of course, the Game of Life wasn’t always that generous. One minute you’re collecting a giant paycheck, the next you got six kids, a mortgage, and the spinner’s telling you you need a new roof.
[00:44:03] Doug: Wait a minute, life wasn’t a game, they were grooming us.
[00:44:07] JOe: They were grooming us the whole time. Nice job, Doug. Congratulations, Jesse.
[00:44:11] Jesse: Thank you. So w- was it a $100,000 bill?
[00:44:14] Doug: It was the $100,000 bill. $100,000.
[00:44:16] Jesse: Wow. Wow. And, and, and that was in, like, the original game, too? I mean, I’m full of questions. Yeah,
[00:44:21] JOe: that was in the original game, 100,000 bucks.
[00:44:23] Jesse: Cool.
[00:44:24] Doug: Fun fact, not exactly the original. This game originally came out in the 1860s, and it was called the Checker Game of Life. Milton Bradley rebirthed itself, they were a lithograph company, and they were going nowhere until they made this game, and then they reissued it in the 1960s, and that’s when the $100,000 bill showed up.
[00:44:47] Roger: Doug, I did not have this information.
[00:44:53] Doug: Well, that’s- … that’s the
[00:44:53] JOe: goal, Roger. You better start texting OG right now. I didn’t have all the info. I did not have it. My bad. Wow. But it gets a little tighter. Jesse now one point behind OG. I
[00:45:03] Jesse: think OG’s been on nine points since, like, April. I mean,
[00:45:06] Doug: we’re coming for him. He has been. I can tell you exactly when it, uh, June 12th was when he got to nine points.
[00:45:12] JOe: So over, over a month ago. Interesting to see, as it all tightens up. Speaking of that, let’s tighten up this ship and let’s get on to the second half of our discussion about who we trust with our money. I wanna explore a little more this idea of financial advice that you should ignore. So I’m gonna give you some advice.
[00:45:34] JOe: Paula, you tell me if you should ignore it or follow it. You ready?
[00:45:39] Paula: Okay.
[00:45:40] JOe: You should always buy a house because renting is throwing money away.
[00:45:45] Paula: Ignore. Ignore
[00:45:48] JOe: Jesse. Well, you know what? Maybe we should say why. Just very briefly, Paula, how come you’re gonna ignore that?
[00:45:54] Paula: You use the price to rent ratio to determine if you live in a place where it’s better to own or better to rent, and if by looking at the price to rent ratio you’re in a place that’s in the gray zone that’s marginal, then you take into account other factors such as how long you’re gonna live there, et cetera.
[00:46:10] JOe: And everybody’s wondering how the price to rent ratio works. What does that mean?
[00:46:15] Paula: So it is the price of a home divided by the annual rent. So for example, if a place rents for, uh, 2,000 a month, then that’s 24,000 a year, right? So is 24,000 a year in rent, are you paying a lot or a little? Well, it depends. If you could buy that same place for $200,000, that’s a very different equation than if you would buy that same place for $2 million.
[00:46:39] Paula: That ratio of how much you would pay in rent relative to how much you would pay to purchase it, that is the price to rent ratio. And basically, if that ratio is 15 or under, it is slam dunk you should own it. If that ratio is 25 or higher, it is slam dunk you should rent it, and if it’s between 15 to 25, you’re in the gray zone.
[00:47:02] JOe: And when I think about that gray zone, I think about, you know, how long do I expect my job to last. Mm-hmm. You know, what’s the chance of staying in the community, yada, yada, yada.
[00:47:12] Paula: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:47:12] JOe: Right.
[00:47:13] Paula: Yeah.
[00:47:13] JOe: Right.
[00:47:13] Paula: Yeah. Gray zone is where all the personal factors come into play, and it gets much more detailed and much more nuanced, but less than 15 is a slam dunk.
[00:47:21] Paula: More than 25 is a slam dunk.
[00:47:23] JOe: All right, Mr. Whitney. Always max out your workplace retirement plan. Follow or ignore. Ignore it. Ignore it. How, ignore it. How come?
[00:47:34] Roger: Well, there are gonna be a lot of instances where you have higher priorities. I mean, a classic example in my journey is if you have someone within, say, five years of retirement, and they’re already significantly over-weighted in tax-deferred accounts, or sometimes even Roth accounts, that you need to repurpose that assets to have after-tax assets so you can manage your tax brackets a little bit better.
[00:47:54] Roger: That might be one reason. If you’re younger, there could be other reasons. You know, investing in a business. If you’re gonna invest in yourself, there are a lot of things that go into it.
[00:48:03] JOe: Is there ever a time when you should put no money in your workplace retirement plan?
[00:48:09] Roger: Of course there is. There has to be.
[00:48:11] Roger: I would- we always move towards doing at least enough to get the free match if there is one.
[00:48:16] JOe: Yeah.
[00:48:16] Roger: And then redirecting other assets.
[00:48:19] JOe: Jesse, follow or ignore, pay off all your debt.
[00:48:23] Jesse: All your debt. Uh, ignore that one. That is way too broad a statement, uh, to just say it’s 100% true. Now, if you had said, for example, “Joe, pay off all your debt that’s got an interest rate of more than 10% on it,” I, I could get behind that.
[00:48:37] Jesse: I could get behind th- making that a rule of thumb. But actually think- I was thinking about when we had the worst advice. I think one topic, was it the worst advice, advice that we’ve ever received? Yes, right. I thought about sometimes the worst advice that I’d ever given. And when I was like really, really early in my journey, I mean, this is the quintessential family member giving you bad advice.
[00:48:55] Jesse: I knew enough to be dangerous. I was probably somewhere up on that initial peak of the Dunning-Kruger curve, where you don’t know anything but you think you know a lot. And, uh, I told a family member who like- Those are
[00:49:03] JOe: the most danger- That, that by the way- So dangerous … is what I worry about with the 17-year-old in this-
[00:49:07] Jesse: Yeah
[00:49:08] JOe: in this Wall Street Journal piece.
[00:49:09] Jesse: Yes, exactly. But to make a long story short, a family member didn’t like their 3% mortgage and really wanted to get out from under it. And I was like, uh, r- rather than what I should have done is try to gently understand more and talk them off the hill, and be like, “Listen, a mortgage at 3% is kind of a nice thing to have.”
[00:49:27] Jesse: But instead I gave them advice on how to, you know, the benefit of paying it off even faster. So I, I had to think about w- how I got down this story. So yes, so like that would be an example where if I could go back in time, that’s not debt that I would recommend paying off any faster than you, than you had to make monthly payments.
[00:49:43] JOe: I love it. What’s, what’s the worst advice you’ve ever given? Yeah. That was … Wow. That-
[00:49:49] Paula: I-
[00:49:49] JOe: Paula?
[00:49:50] Paula: I, I, I will say jumping in there, as, as somebody who has paid off a, a 3% mortgage, there are sometimes, even if it’s not the most mathematically sound- Mm-hmm … in a perfect set of circumstances, particularly if someone is like an entrepreneur, if their income is really volatile, if they wanna preserve liquidity f- to reinvest in their business, hy- hypothetically um, there are sometimes those reasons where that would be a good idea.
[00:50:18] JOe: Paula, stick with you. Never finance a car.
[00:50:23] Paula: Ignore. Um, again, the always versus never is so absolute. Mm-hmm. And we’ll go back to if you can borrow money at a 2% or 3% interest rate to finance a car, that frees up $20,000. If that’s the differential between you being able to pay off your credit card this month or not, then why would you run up a credit card bill but have no car loan?
[00:50:47] JOe: Roger, always buy index funds.
[00:50:50] Roger: Ignore.
[00:50:52] JOe: And?
[00:50:55] Roger: I- ignore. I mean, it goes back to that never say never, right? There are always use cases for specific things. A immediate… An annuity has a place in certain situations depending on what, how you define the problem you’re trying to solve, just as an example. Some of this goes to Joe, and I like that Dunning-Kruger was brought up, is when you’re getting advice from people Those that are really more, are farther along on the mastery curve, ’cause you start with, you just have unknown unknowns, and then you think you know everything.
[00:51:29] Roger: But the farther you get along on your mastery curve, you have more known unknowns, which means that everything is contextual to what the person is trying to solve. And I’ll go to a great example here of someone who is an expert in taxes and retirement, Ed Slott. He will never tell you not to do a Roth conversion in a tax presentation, and that’s just BS.
[00:51:53] Roger: That certainty shows that he either knows that it’s not, it’s contextual, but that doesn’t sell well, so it’s clickbait, or he doesn’t know, which is even scarier. So I think it’s always contextual to the person’s situation.
[00:52:06] JOe: I think it’s actually, you know, you could say the same for Dave Ramsey, for Suze Orman, and I think it’s- 100%
[00:52:11] JOe: I think it’s much more talking to large audiences. I’ve gotten this feeling that because they know they have a huge audience, that to be directionally accurate with most of the audience and to have this firm spot is a, um, is a better tack to take because you’re working with so many people that are on, not even on first base yet.
[00:52:32] Roger: Well, follow… I think a lot of it, it wasn’t it, uh, Munger that said, “Just follow the incentives.”
[00:52:37] JOe: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:37] Roger: And if you look at podcasts, books, I, I agree with books ’cause they’re more vetted, especially because it, it, it’s somebody’s thought, at least in an organized way. But you take a podcast, especially in the finance world, almost every single podcast has incentives that isn’t necessar- it, there are, everybody’s trying to sell something in some way, and unless you understand the incentives, you’re really not gonna understand the titles that they, they say or the, you know, the way they present the information, et cetera.
[00:53:06] Roger: And that is really important because the entire internet is simply a sales funnel, and most people don’t realize that, and that includes us here, by the way.
[00:53:14] JOe: Well, one of my favorite things that you’ve said on this show, Roger, and I’ve quoted you a bajillion times, if you ask somebody a financial question and they lead with a product, run away.
[00:53:24] JOe: If they lead with more questions about your scenario and your situation, then keep listening. Doesn’t mean they’re great, but that’s kinda like your first barrier.
[00:53:34] Roger: Yeah, Jesse had a great comment related to the mortgage is like, lead with curiosity always, because that will help you understand more of what you’re trying to solve for.
[00:53:44] JOe: Let’s go down this path, uh, about this idea of trusting yourself. Roger, do you think, sticking with you, your first opinion should always be your own, and then you’re vetting that against other people? Or should you look for input first and then form your opinion?
[00:53:57] Roger: Uh, one of the most curious people that I have ever encountered in writing was Richard Feynman A quote that he had that I often go back to- The physicist?
[00:54:06] Roger: is the, the physicist. Wonderful book. Uh- Wow … Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, is a wonderful- Yeah … book. And the first principle is to never fool yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool. And so what ends up happening is, yes, you gotta trust yourself in determining what you want, but we’re all in the mosh pit of our life and our emotions and our history and our biases.
[00:54:29] Roger: We have to have somebody in the balcony to help us see reality because we can’t see it for ourselves. I mean, that’s primarily what I do outside of the financial, you know, structure and processes, help people go to the balcony. And I think, no, you can’t trust yourself. You gotta get those people around you to help give you perspective ’cause you’ll never see it otherwise.
[00:54:50] JOe: Paula, what’s a good sign that you’re fooling yourself? Roger’s talked about fooling yourself
[00:54:55] Paula: If you have absolute certainty about something, then you’re probably not considering alternate options
[00:55:02] JOe: I love that because one thing I’ve said for a long time, Paula, is that if you think your plan is foolproof, you have not looked through your plan.
[00:55:09] JOe: Every plan has an Achilles heel, so finding the Achilles heel is the super important part. I love that. You know, we talked also about biases. Roger talked about biases. Jesse, what’s a bias that you’re personally fighting?
[00:55:22] Jesse: There, I’m sure there’s a, there’s a bunch of them. Um, this, this question just caught me off guard, that’s all.
[00:55:27] JOe: Well, why don’t I give you one? I’ll give you a second- Sure … to think about it, ’cause I could tell you one for me that I’ve fought forever. I took a personal finance class in high school where they even taught us this bias, and I find myself still, at my age, still fighting the same bias, which is the thing that’s presented to me right now is better than a future that I haven’t yet imagined.
[00:55:51] JOe: So in other words, because I’m a spender, spending money on this thing today, the board game, whatever it might be, the sweater at the store, you know, whatever it is, is a better option. That’s my bias, is that that’s a good option. And I have to continually remind myself that that’s my bias, and because of that, I have to go, “It isn’t this sweater versus not the sweater.
[00:56:12] JOe: It this sweater against future uses of this money that could be way better.”
[00:56:18] Jesse: That’s a good one. They’re really cool. I just, you know, went back and candidly I just Googled what are the big ones, and, uh-
[00:56:27] JOe: Is that a big one?
[00:56:28] Jesse: Probably. Uh, the, the, the Googling bias where you can’t remember anything yourself, so you just Google it.
[00:56:33] Jesse: Yeah. No, um, I mean, ki- I feel
[00:56:35] JOe: like- Did it say at the top of your Google search Joe’s was- Yes. … was the good one? That was…
[00:56:40] Jesse: Uh, I’ll go with confirmation bias. I think it, it probably is the one that, like, the most people suffer from the most. It’s, like, the most common ubiquitous one. But, um, I am certainly guilty of subconsciously cherry-picking data to confirm my preexisting beliefs, so that way I can feel like a smarty instead of having to realize that I’m actually, uh, much dumber than I previously thought.
[00:57:05] Jesse: And it is. It’s super dangerous because, you know, you end up in some sort of echo chamber, or you end up being this person who’s more or less convinced that you’re always right. A- and the reason why is because- You are just, again, most likely subconsciously choosing to ignore the contradictory information, even if the- Mm
[00:57:21] Jesse: contradictory information is correct. So that’s one that I think you kind of have to constantly fight confirmation bias to make sure that you are… I mean, it, it’s what Roger said. You are fooling yourself when you have confirmation bias.
[00:57:34] Doug: Yeah. I mean, we’re, we’re wired as animals to be egocentric, right? So there’s a reason why AI bots are wired to essentially create confirmation bias, or the- they’re always reinforcing and sort of helping and…
[00:57:45] Doug: Great question, Doug.
[00:57:47] JOe: That’s the best
[00:57:48] Doug: statement ever, Doug. Well,
[00:57:50] JOe: it probably wasn’t. You are so incredible. So
[00:57:52] Roger: true. So true.
[00:57:53] Doug: We’re so shallow.
[00:57:55] JOe: I still think, though, if we, in our jobs, with our bosses, realized how much our bosses love that confirmation bias. Like, if it was back in the day and I had AI, this, that, that would’ve been my first lesson.
[00:58:06] JOe: Go in to my boss every day and go, “Oh my God, that’s so smart.”
[00:58:10] Roger: Joe, that is so insightful. That’s really insightful that you said that, Joe. ‘
[00:58:14] JOe: Cause it makes me wanna use AI all the time. I’m like, “God, I’m brilliant. Let’s see what else, what other, which other ways I’m brilliant.” All right. We have talked a lot on this show about the idea, then, of building this board of directors, right?
[00:58:26] JOe: And we’ve talked about how vetted directors are better than unvetted. That’s why we talk about books. Paula, you talked about the, you know, some vetting involved in podcasts that you choose, following the incentives, Roger. Like, you guys have given some great advice. But l- let’s give everybody… Because I get this question a lot when I’m out with our Stackers in our Benjamins After Dark meetings or answering questions online.
[00:58:51] JOe: When you’re building your board of directors, what is a prerequisite for you, w- some trait that somebody should have before you consider them to be a person whose advice you’re going to trust? Where it meets this, “I know you personally, but I also have the expertise to be a valuable, uh, uh, source of information for you.”
[00:59:15] JOe: Jesse, let’s start with you. What is one requirement for somebody before they’re on your board of directors?
[00:59:23] Jesse: You know, I’m not always the, the biggest fan of like pop science, um, like kind of these like pop psychology phrases that enter the lexicon or just, you know, motivation this and talking about sleep and wh- whatever all those kind of pop science things are.
[00:59:38] Jesse: But this will be an exception where… What’s that, that phrase about like you’re the average of the five people usually- Five people around
[00:59:45] JOe: you, yeah …
[00:59:46] Jesse: that you spend the most time with? I don’t know if the number’s five, and I don’t know if it’s like a perfect average, but there’s no doubt about it that the people who you surround yourself with, like you, you will rise or fall to the level of people around you.
[01:00:00] Jesse: And so I’ve, I’ve just seen too many examples of that in my own life. Speaking of bias, there’s gotta be some s- like anecdotal bias going on there. I’ve seen it in my life, it must be true. But I have seen it in my life, and so I think it’s true. And, uh, it makes me think that if you’re the filter to get on the board of directors has to be like, “I have to really look up to you and realize that like I want to rise to your level.”
[01:00:20] Jesse: ‘Cause I think that’s part of the reason why you want someone on your board of directors in the, in the first place.
[01:00:24] JOe: Paula?
[01:00:25] Paula: That was an excellent answer.
[01:00:27] Jesse: Oh.
[01:00:27] Paula: Yeah. So
[01:00:28] Jesse: there’s- Thank you, Paula.ai.
[01:00:37] Paula: Um, so ditto to that. I would also say I look for somebody with a high signal-to-noise ratio, m- meaning that when they communicate, particularly about the subject matter that they are on your board of directors about, ’cause not everyone’s gonna be an expert in every topic. They might be excellent at business and money and strategic thinking, but maybe they’re not that great at, I don’t know, fitness or whatever.
[01:00:59] Paula: So I do think that you need to have an advisory board that is subject specific, but when they are talking about their subject expertise, their density of ideas per minute should be quite high, which is a, you know, another way of saying they don’t vomit, word vomit horizontally. Like, they go deep vertically.
[01:01:19] JOe: Roger, you’ve got the last criteria.
[01:01:22] Roger: I love all of those, and I think we could add… This is gonna be additive to that depth that Paula talked about and that aspirational live up to, is that dense vertical. Another thing we need to add, I’ll go back to curiosity because somebody that’s dense vertically will many times have a funnel that goes straight down, and I would look for creative decision-making, somebody that’s creative and trying to poke at things from lots of different ways to find a solution.
[01:01:50] Roger: And I think, uh, another prerequisite, since I’m just gonna throw another one, is I would want people that are kind, not nice. And the distinction that I learned long ago is a nice person, if your zipper’s down, they’re not gonna tell you. A kind person is gonna go there and tell you because they care enough to be awkward.
[01:02:08] Jesse: When you were doing this with your finger, Roger, I thought you were gonna say they’ll zip it up for you. It’s like, is that really what a kind person does? I am not that kind.
[01:02:15] Roger: That’s a whole different relationship there, Jesse.
[01:02:17] JOe: I might be a nice person, but not… I don’t
[01:02:19] Jesse: know. Maybe that’s what OG thought you were doing.
[01:02:21] Jesse: He thought you were going for the zipper. You were just going for a hug. His eyes did light up. That explains it.
[01:02:25] Roger: His eyes did light up.
[01:02:27] JOe: I love all those, but Roger shining a light on yours. I’ve always thought, I like the distinction between kind and nice because for me it’s always someone with a little bit of a, of a Gordon Ramsay.
[01:02:39] JOe: I know Gordon Ramsay on those restaurant shows wants a restaurant to succeed, but he’s gonna fight with the owner about how to make it succeed, and he’s not afraid to fight with them about how it succeeds. And if I’ve got somebody who’s doing the AI thing, you know, “Joe, you’re great” all the time, it’s not that.
[01:02:54] JOe: And if
[01:02:55] Roger: you’re successful, it’s even harder to get that because- It’s so
[01:02:59] JOe: hard to get that …
[01:02:59] Roger: everybody is, you know, the, “Wow, you’ve done so well.” And internally you never think you’ve done well, and it… Affirmation is definitely valuable, uh, for our psyche, but not very helpful if you’re continuing to try to improve.
[01:03:13] JOe: But I like how the kind fits in there because I think it’s important that they’re on your team, not just somebody who’s fighting with you. Yes. But somebody who clearly wants to make sure you win.
[01:03:21] Roger: Yes.
[01:03:22] JOe: Yeah. Great stuff. Well, I’ve got so much more if we could talk about on that topic, but thanks for bringing it today and I hope we helped a lot of people think through, like- Do, do you trust your 17-year-old?
[01:03:34] JOe: I think this 17-year-old could be super-duper smart, and I still would not have them as my financial advisor. I just don’t think there’s enough life experience there For all the reasons that you guys talked about. Could be the smartest 17-year-old in the world, and no offense to our 17-year-old stackers, but, uh, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of life ahead of you that you still need to dive into.
[01:03:56] JOe: Speaking of diving in, I’ve got some curated podcasts you can dive into. Remember how we talked about you wanna make sure they’re curated by some smart people? Well, we only have smart people on this show. So Roger, what’s coming up at The Retirement Answer Man?
[01:04:10] Roger: In September, we’re doing a month-long… It’s a five-week month.
[01:04:13] Roger: We’re doing a month-long Social Security playbook.
[01:04:17] JOe: Wow.
[01:04:17] Roger: How do you think through it if you’re a single filer or if you’re a joint filer? And it’s much less about understanding Social Security. You have to have some basics down, but it’s how do you think through it in an organized fashion so you can get to your own judgment.
[01:04:32] JOe: You know, you, you like to use the word noodling. It’s one of my favorite Roger Whitney words is noodling. But there’s a lot to noodle on there, Roger.
[01:04:40] Roger: There’s a lot to noodle on. And sometimes we mistake learning about things for understanding how to make decisions. And so you… And we actually don’t need to know near as much technical stuff if we’re organized in how we make decisions about things, and so we’re gonna lean into that part of it.
[01:04:56] JOe: Wow, going through it in an organized manner, that’s crazy talk. Understanding how you should think about it, what are you talking about? Very
[01:05:03] Roger: clickbaity, very clickbaity.
[01:05:05] JOe: That sounds almost like something an engineer would do, like, uh, former engineer Jesse Cramer, who has his own podcast called Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors.
[01:05:14] JOe: What’s going on there, Mr. Cramer?
[01:05:16] Jesse: What’s it called, Doug? The P Fly?
[01:05:19] Doug: Flitty. Flitty.
[01:05:20] Jesse: Flitty.
[01:05:21] Doug: Or P Fly, either way, but-
[01:05:24] Jesse: Well … Filthy … Filthy We’ve done Filthy before Maybe that’s why it was… That’s right. It’s Filthy, yo. If we’re getting, we’re getting filthy together. Uh, last Wednesday, published an episode, an Ask Me Anything episode, all listener questions about Roth conversions.
[01:05:35] Jesse: Ed Slott would’ve loved it. Uh, and then, uh, next, next Wednesday, the title is What Your Brokerage Statement Doesn’t Tell You. Oh. ‘Cause, uh, you know, you get that quarterly statement, that monthly statement, it has plenty of good information on it, but there’s also obviously a lot of important information that’s not on it, and that’s what we talk about next week.
[01:05:56] JOe: I have a, uh, family friend who I was, uh, having a nice conversation with last week who used to work for one of the major investment firms, and he was… Oh, you guys will love this. He was talking about how he was one of the guys that would talk about how they would put the information about their funds out, and if they had had a particularly bad period, they would find ways to just give you all the data that was correct while making sure that they just did not include-
[01:06:25] JOe: the timeframes that, uh, that were not as, uh, generous. So yeah. A- and as humans, right, when information’s put in front of us, we’re great at analyzing it, but often it’s what’s not put in front of us that we don’t, we don’t find, as I think one of you guys said. At least one of you said earlier today. And speaking of thinking about your thinking, that also sounds like an Afford Anything podcast, Paula.
[01:06:46] JOe: So what are we thinking about our thinking coming up on Afford Anything?
[01:06:50] Paula: On the Afford Anything podcast, I can actually tell you all of our guests for the month of July.
[01:06:55] JOe: Holy.
[01:06:55] Paula: Yeah, I got that in my brain.
[01:06:57] JOe: I don’t wanna brag, but…
[01:06:58] Paula: Uh yeah, I, I know the guests that appear on my own show.
[01:07:02] JOe: That’s crazy talk.
[01:07:05] Paula: Uh, early July we had Lorraine Marshand on the show.
[01:07:09] Paula: She talks about AI and jobs, and will AI take your job? So if you want that conversation, listen to that interview. Mid-July we have venture capitalist and former Wharton professor, David Bell, on the show. That’s a two-part episode. The first part he talks about many of the consumer brands that he’s worked with, like everyday household names that you have heard of before, and he gives the behind-the-scenes story.
[01:07:33] Paula: So that’s an interesting, like business episode. So you
[01:07:35] JOe: ring that bell twice?
[01:07:37] Paula: Oh, ’cause it’s a two-part.
[01:07:39] JOe: Yes. Sorry.
[01:07:40] Paula: The second episode he talks about what is a VC. You know, what’s a venture capitalist? Then we’ve got Cody Berman on the subject of how he hit financial independence by the age of 25. He, like, really went for it in his early 20s, so he has a book called Retire by 30, aggressively early retirement.
[01:07:59] Paula: And, uh, then we end the month with Beth Kobliner, personal finance in your 20s and
[01:08:03] JOe: 30s. Just fantastic people that I absolutely love. And the fact that you could remember all that, just- I know … that’s how amazing Paula Pant
[01:08:11] Paula: is. Right? I am leveling up as a podcaster.
[01:08:16] Roger: I love these young people that can remember who they talk to.
[01:08:23] JOe: Settle down, Ronald. All right, that’s gonna do it for today. By the way, speaking of thank you, big thanks to all of you who hung out with us today while we made the episode. We do this on Mondays on YouTube, so come join us every Monday, ev- nearly every Monday, on YouTube in the mid-afternoon. So, uh, come join us.
[01:08:46] JOe: If you get the 201, often, uh, Tina from our team will send out a newsletter telling you that exactly what the time is. But if you’ve just got YouTube open and you’ve got the alerts turned on, you’ll find us there. You’ll also find on our YouTube channel lots of other videos, including our conversation with Morgan Housel just went live.
[01:09:04] JOe: So make sure you catch that if you missed his, uh, recent appearance on the podcast. And we include a cheat sheet so you can walk through all the important stuff that we talk about on that video. All right. I’ve got… We got lots more to… people to thank and stuff to get to, but I hope all you Stackers have a great weekend.
[01:09:23] JOe: And Doug, what are our three biggest takeaways today, man?
[01:09:27] Doug: Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Roger Whitney. Smart is overrated. Oftentimes, smart people that don’t know you will give you advice that isn’t applicable for your situation. Just because you think they’re smart doesn’t mean what they know applies to you.
[01:09:42] Doug: Second, heed a warning from Paula. Your well-meaning friends and family could be giving you uninformed advice. Be careful to separate the message from the messenger. But the big lesson Don’t let Joe’s mom know that you’re thinking about playing the Game of Life again. She’ll spin the wheel for you and tell you it landed on weed pulling.
[01:10:03] Doug: I don’t know what special edition she bought, but it sucks. Thanks to the Retirement Answer Man, Roger Whitney, for joining us today. You’ll hear his podcast. Wait for the name, because it’s really cool. It’s called The Retirement Answer Man, wherever you’re listening to us right now. We’ll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins.com.
[01:10:25] Doug: Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, Afford Anything, wherever you listen to the finest podcasts. And finally, thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining us today. Ever wonder what Jesse’s middle name is? It’s Podcast. In fact, I’ll prove it. He has his own show, and it’s called Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors.
[01:10:46] Doug: Rolls right off the tongue, right? You’ll find Jesse Podcast Cramer’s podcast wherever you imbibe podcasts. Promise. 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.
[01:11:11] 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.
[01:11:37] closer: Oh. Oh.
[01:11:38] Paula: What’s wrong with you?
[01:11:40] closer: Uh, it’s either this show or indigestion, but I hope it’s indigestion.
[01:11:44] Paula: Why?
[01:11:45] closer: It’ll get better in a little while.
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