Retirement might be the goal, but the journey? Full of curveballs. On today’s episode, Joe Saul-Sehy is joined by special guest co-host Len Penzo of LenPenzo.com, along with OG and Neighbor Doug, for a no-holds-barred look at what really derails retirement plans—and how to build a strategy that can handle the chaos.
From unexpected job loss to rising long-term care costs, adult kids moving back home, and even changing relationship dynamics, this episode dives into the often-overlooked risks that can chip away at your retirement dreams.
Inside the episode:
- What to consider when evaluating long-term care insurance
- How job instability late in your career can throw off your timeline
- The growing trend of adult children impacting their parents’ retirement
- Grandparents becoming full-time caregivers—and the financial toll that brings
- Relationship shifts and widowhood in retirement
- Downsizing, austerity planning, and staying financially flexible
Plus, our TikTok Minute features Gary V on why taking a step backward might be the smartest move forward. And as always, Doug brings the trivia heat—this time, with a nostalgic nod to a certain potato-headed toy.
With Len Penzo in the basement, the insights (and squirrel references) are extra sharp. Prepare to laugh, learn, and rethink what “retirement ready” really means.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/four-things-that-can-derail-your-retirement-plan-1676
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Mentor: Len Penzo
Big thanks to Len Penzo for joining us today. To learn more about Len, visit Len Penzo dot Com – The offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people.
Our Headline
- Four Things That Can Derail Your Retirement Plans (Eggstack)
- Grandparents Are Reaching Their Limit (The Atlantic)
Doug’s Trivia
- What was the first toy advertised on TV?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Nic called in with a question about what exactly is a “qualified medical expense” for tax purposes.
Have a question for the show?
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Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday when our roundtable tackles the eternal debate of whether to rent or buy.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Fitness Meets Finances: Your Questions for Angelo Poli from Metpro (SB1675)
Episode transcript
bit: [00:00:00] Hey, this is Joe’s sister, Nikki. I think I might be the only girl in the world who has a brother who spends his entire day in the basement pretending he has an internet radio show.
Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And what could possibly derail your retirement plans? Today we’ll present four culprits and how you can protect against them. But that’s not all. Are you thinking about that side hustle you’ve always wanted to do, but don’t have the courage to pull the trigger. We have a TikTok minute that’ll hopefully get you moving and of course I’ll be sure to give you a heaping helping of my delectable trivia.
And now [00:01:00] three guys who are taking a break from filming the next season of Squirrels Gone Wild. It’s Joe OG and Lenzo.
Joe: Hey there, stackers and happy Wednesday. You’re right, it was, we were just getting to the part where, I don’t know, what are we calling ’em? Lens squirrel A and squirrel B. Squirrel A is having a really A conniption, as mom calls it.
Len: Yeah. And squirrel B is. About doing the same thing. So you should see squirrel C.
Just wait till you see squirrel C.
Joe: When squirrel C, see squirrel A and B together. I can’t, well, that’s
Doug: gonna be, did you get ’em to sign the releases this time to get ’em into the back of the RV and get ’em to sign the releases before you’re filming them?
Len: You should see the contract language, Doug. They sign anything.
Joe: People are brand new to the show going, what the hell is this a money show? Welcome back to Stacky Benjamin. Sit back and relax because we’ve got an hour of fun. [00:02:00] And uh, man, some super helpful conversation today. If you’ve ever dreamt about retirement, what could make it go the wrong way? I. Well, one guy’s gonna make sure it goes the right way.
He’s also here today. Mr. OG is here. Tear yourself away from squirrel’s. Gone. Wild man. And, uh, let’s get this thing going. Oh, sorry. How did you know?
OG: It’s my flushed, my flushed appearance. Must see tv. Uh,
Joe: what’s your Nielsen
Len: rating on that, Len? You know, it’s actually pretty good. I’m getting more comments though, for the squirrel cam after dark.
I keep getting, uh, encore requests for the possum that keeps going into the, uh, gets getting into the video, which Doug thought was a dinosaur. I remember, uh, one time, Ethan,
Doug: tell me a possum’s, not a dinosaur.
Joe: That hood, that that weird, uh, I don’t know facial structure that they have. Oh,
Len: you know, the possum just, uh, I got another video of the possum the other night and, uh, what was cool is he turned around, I’m gonna, I’m gonna post it in a couple weeks here.
He, he turned around and he gave a, a nice little butt shake, a little shimmy for the, for the camera before he called, before he [00:03:00] sauntered off. I think he calls that the moneymaker, shake that ass. Talk about an animal getting too big for its britches now, so we may have to renegotiate his contract.
Joe: That’s a big old booty on that.
Isn’t that possum?
OG: Just let me know when you, uh, you guys wanna transition back to money stuff?
Joe: Why don’t we do that in just a second? Because we got a couple sponsors that make your, today’s show is free. You don’t have to pay for any of this. The squirrels after dark, I think you’re supposed to whisper it.
People
Doug: are like, you’re kidding, this isn’t paid content. Tell me it ain’t. So
Joe: it is. Well, by the way, if you wanna see any of that, that’s the exciting stuff happening [email protected]. And, uh, anyway, we got a couple sponsors to make sure this is free. We’re gonna hear from them and then we’re gonna dive into things that can derail your retirement, like spending all day watching squirrels after dark.
bit: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines.
Joe: Our headline today comes to [00:04:00] us. From a website that I had never heard before, egg stack.com. Doug, I think you just ate the entire egg stack in front of us before we started recording today.
Doug: Like, what’s going on there, man?
I’m into my egg sandwiches. Yeah. How did you make that, how did you make that sandwich? Oh, man.
Len: How did you make that? This is,
Joe: don’t,
Len: don’t, this is like, no, because Doug was bragging about it while he was
Joe: eating in front of us. I know. But Len, this is gonna turn into an episode of Chef’s Table before we’re done.
OG: Basically, it involves a microwave and Costco bread. So let’s, let’s not quite elevate the, well, I just wanted to
Len: brag.
OG: I wanted to
Len: brag to Doug about my Sanders ’cause I’ve, after the show, I’m, he made me hungry and I’ve, and I was working on a sandwich as well. It’s a pureed nut spread with a, uh, strawberry reduction.
And I’m pairing it with a brioche bun. So it sounds, it should be really good. Mm-hmm. That’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yeah. You could call it that. Yeah. That’s, that’s another thing you can, that’s another thing you could call
Joe: it Doug, that [00:05:00] took me a minute. That took, I was like, oh, wow. That’s, wait a minute.
Hold on. Uh, the author here, Mike Ballou writes, life is unpredictable and even the best lay plans can go astray. If you wanna prove the odds of a successful retirement, you need to consider the risks along the way. Here are four things that can derail your retirement plans. Number one here is pretty interesting, OG, because we saw this statistic just last fall.
This idea of a healthy retirement, not longevity, but healthy longevity. And in the United States, according to the Wealthy Accountant blog, that age is 66 in the United States, 66 years old, until your plans might get derailed because of the fact that you aren’t healthy enough to do the things that you.
Thought, do you consider OG in a financial plan, this idea of healthy retirement when somebody’s planning out their golden years?
OG: I mean, you have to, right? I mean, you [00:06:00] have to think about when, when you’re gonna be able to do the things that you wanna do. And it kinda goes back to what we were talking about last, uh, last episode too, about being healthy and, you know, that sort of stuff with Angelo, it’s like all of this stuff is interrelated.
If you’re going to, you know, have a ton of money, but be wildly unhealthy, none of that’s gonna matter. There’s not enough money in the world to make you healthy if you’re not gonna take care of yourself. And you can have all the money in the world, but if you get, you know, flattened by a heart attack at 66, you know, that’s, that ain’t gonna matter either.
So I think all of those things go together, but you also have to recognize that, and I think this is why some people kind of come to this conclusion in their fifties and maybe even why the whole fire thing exists, right? It’s like it’s one thing to have 10 million bucks in the bank when you’re 65. Then not be able to use it versus having 5 million in the bank when you’re 52 and you go, well now I can do the stuff that I wanna do.
I can travel, I can hike, I can bike, I can, you know, do whatever it is that excites me. I’m not just sitting [00:07:00] around. Um, but I think it also matters from a planning standpoint, as you think about your spend and how that’s gonna transition, I don’t think anybody’s spend is gonna go down. I think it’s gonna transition.
You’re gonna go from spending on travel and gifts to family and that sort of thing to healthcare and charitable donations. And Metamucil. Who doesn’t take fiber pills? Everybody does, right? No, just me. Mine gummies though.
Joe: Lended, lended health influence your retirement date, like when you decided that you were gonna retire?
Len: Well, in the fact that I was in good health, I, and I’ve seen people, I, I know people who retired. I. Then they got sick. They got something sick the year after they retired and then, you know, they passed away a year after that. So, wow. That might have influenced me to retire a little earlier in that regard, because right now, you know, knock on wood, my, my health is very good.
I put a lot of thought into long-term healthcare insurance. Yeah. You know, in case you get something catastrophic like Alzheimer’s or something like that and you can’t take care of yourself. [00:08:00] Boy, it was really, I struggled with that think, man, I thought about it for a long time and I ultimately decided not to get it myself.
I think I have enough, even if something that bad happens, I think I can get away without getting it. But let me tell you that, that was something I put a lot of thought into before I retired. One of the toughest decisions I ever made was to, when I finally made it, not to not get it.
Joe: Well, and you can tell just by the price tag on that, Len, I mean, these insurance companies, I.
They’re regulated by the various states and when people see the price tag, they’re like, oh my God, this is gouging us. It isn’t gouging you, it’s that so many people use it that you really gotta consider it.
Len: Yeah. My mo, my mother-in-law who was very ill and she had cancer and there was for a while there, at the very end, we were looking into getting her some long-term healthcare stuff and it was very expensive and she did not have the money really for it, you know, and it, it was four, $5,000 a month and that’s just not, that’s just, you know, her being in a bed and being [00:09:00] taken care of daily.
I mean, there’s no benefits to that other than, you know, you just need nurses there to care for it. That’s where end of life care stuff. That was very expensive. So we ultimately decided to just, we kept her here at our house and we took care of her until she passed. But you know, you might have to do that.
If you don’t plan properly, you might be in that kind of a position, so you really need to think about it.
Joe: We decided the same thing. We said there’s a shelter and we want, it’s horrible. We, we just sent them out on the street and, uh, it’s a refrigerator box because we couldn’t afford all that. No, that it, it is super expensive.
In fact, I saw a TikTok video just this morning about a couple. She, I believe was seven or eight years younger than him, and at age 57, I’m 57 right now. At age 57, he was having difficulty figuring out, like finding the right word. And I thought, well, I do that all the time. But he was having a lot of.
Difficulty and then it got worse and worse and they [00:10:00] ended up, uh, almost a year later going into the doctor, they found out he had early onset Alzheimer’s at 57 years old. Yeah. Diagnosed at 58. And then at 60 when they did this video, he was clearly struggling to come up with the word to say in the sentence.
And, uh, man, I mean, I think OG people think of some of these things are, I get quote, old and gray, but as you know, 50 becomes the new, 40 and 60 becomes the new 50 and people are living longer and longer. These medical issues appearing outta nowhere. Like I think that’s a big part of your, gotta be a part of your financial plan.
OG: Well, Len, just to pour more gasoline on your, on your thoughts around long-term care costs, it’s not even for whether or not you can afford it, it’s whether or not you can afford it. And your spouse can afford to also live their life the way they, because you basically end up with two living expenses then.
You have the person who needs the care burning four grands of bargain, probably closer to [00:11:00] eight to 10 in today’s pricing a month for the stuff. And then you’ve got the other spouse who’s not doing that still at home paying the water bill and the property taxes and food on the table and that sort of thing.
So it definitely is a tough decision.
Joe: Well, and we also have the wear and tear on the caregiver, which this has been well documented scientifically. The guy living across the street from us was taking care of his spouse at home. Len, like you were talking about, he predeceased her. Oh, wow. When we first moved in across the street from them, he was great, but taking care of her is often as they did.
And they had, a woman also came in, uh, for mm-hmm. At home care that I think on Bill it really took its toll. Oh gee.
OG: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot of unseen. Calculations that go beyond just the simple, like, I got a 50% chance of using this and here’s the premium and here’s the benefit, and you know, that sort of thing.
I would bet that there, in this example that you’re talking about with the person with Alzheimer’s, that was a little young, a lot [00:12:00] young, I would bet that there were some, I don’t wanna say negligent, that sounds bad, but basically there’s some healthcare things that happened in the 30 years prior to that that maybe were unaddressed leading into that.
Joe: Maybe some flags, some signals they might have missed.
OG: Uh, you know, I mean, how is this blood sugar in his forties? I don’t know. I’m just making stuff up. I don’t, I’m not, I’m not saying this correlated. I’m just saying like, could there have been other things that domino that into, or maybe it wasn’t.
There’s always gonna be the one-off thing, right? Sure. I didn’t mean to scare people that happens to the 37-year-old that you go, I don’t get it. The guy was in great health and ran marathons. What’s the deal? You know? So that’s gonna be where stuff, but I think when you’re thinking about retirement. And the requisite kind of planning that goes with that in terms of costs, we add, as we build plans, we add healthcare costs prior to 65 and a healthcare cost.
Post 65 65 is where Medicare kicks in, so everybody is eligible for that, and you pay for it based on your income.
Joe: You build that [00:13:00] into the financial plan. That’s, we build it in the
OG: plan. So if you wanna have, if you wanna retire when you’re 55, it’s not just like, well, my living expenses are 8,000 a month, so it’s 8,000.
It’s 8,000 a month, plus a healthcare cost because you’re buying your own health insurance now with this, you know, period of time. Or you’re more likely to spend higher numbers on healthcare because you’re a little bit older and stuff comes up. And I think, I don’t know that the number that we use is right or wrong.
I think it’s good to just think through that exercise. I know, Len, that’s something that you did too. You kind of thought about all the contingencies, not just, you didn’t just sit down and go, well, the spreadsheet says I spent eight grand a month, so pencil it out, 4% bango, let’s go. It’s like, well, what if.
I need this or what if you know how the whole idea about what if planning? The way that I think about it is you’re gonna make really terrible decisions in the moment when you combine high emotional stress and important money decisions. You know, you hear people say, Hey, if you inherit money, just sit on it for six months.
There’s a reason for that. ’cause how did you inherit [00:14:00] the money? You won the lottery, or grandpa died, or your folks passed away, or you got the lawsuit money. All this stuff has been going on in your life. And somebody goes, here’s the check for 4 million. You know, this high emotional state. And then you’re gonna go, I’m gonna make really good money decisions now.
Probably not. So the idea with kind of what if planning is, while you’re of relatively sound mind, you can do that, you can game that out and say, well, if I did need assisted care, what would I do? Like how would I, how much would that cost? And who would be in charge of making that decision? And you know what I mean?
Like you can kind of play with it a little bit. It’s still not fun to think about these things, right? Yeah. And it’s not exciting and
Len: OG and that’s something that, at least for me, that’s not something that I came to my decision, you know, should I get insurance or should I not? And that, that kind of thought process, I didn’t do that in a day or a week or even a month.
No, I mean, I spent a couple years wrestling with which path am I gonna take there. You have to really think long and hard and carefully before you, it’s a big decision. Decision. Well, the interesting thing too
OG: [00:15:00] is for you, Len in particular, and for any of us, you still have that choice until you get to a spot where you have, you know, some debilitating medical issues.
You didn’t say no forever, you just said No, not right now. Correct. You know what I mean? Like there may be some other thing that changes your opinion on this or some financial decision or you know, some, something that goes, oh, well now there’s a different fact pattern, different time to make a decision.
You, you try to give yourself the opportunity, and I believe in this a lot too. Make the decision that gives you the most decisions in the future. Yes.
Len: There’s a lot of things in the calculus. I mean, there’s things like your age too. It’s like, well, when are you gonna take the, if you want the insurance, are you gonna take it now?
It’s cheaper if you take it now. If you wait 10 years, you’re gonna be paying a lot more. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you have to figure, you have to put all that you paid for 10 years when you’re healthy. Oh, of course. That, that, that’s all in the calculus. There’s the all the things. But if you have the family history, say of early onset Alzheimer’s or something like that, then you might wanna do it.
Yeah. Right. So. Well, and the bad
Joe: part about all this is that’s what you’re hoping for, right? I mean, you’re hoping you waste a ton of [00:16:00] money. That is, that is your goal. If you go with the insurance, if you don’t. That could be much, much more catastrophic or you hit the lottery and it doesn’t happen to you one or the other, uh, kind of makes your outcomes more known.
But this is this, what if planning, by the way, is maybe, was maybe my favorite part of financial planning. In fact, I had to stop myself OG because I would, I would just keep what if planning my client’s scenario over and over. What if we did this? What if we did this? And I would model like 50 of those and I’d then I had to back off and go, we don’t have 10 hours for this meeting for, for me to show them all these different, plus people get analysis paralysis when you show them 85 different things.
But I do know Len, when you, when you’re an engineering, I mean, I gotta believe a ton of what you guys did was these. What if, I don’t know if you called ’em what if scenarios, but you must have had, what if this happens? What if that happens before you go build stuff?
Len: No, it’s risk analysis and you set up a grid and you have consequences versus the actual outcome or, or the risk of that consequence [00:17:00] happening.
You can look it up. You give a score for consequence. You give a score for the actual risk of it ha or the odds of it happening. Um, is it likely or is it moderately likely, or is it not likely at all? And you can, it kind of helps you. Figure out which path you wanna take. But that’s what engineers do all the time.
I mean, that’s how they decide how things are designed. Yeah. You know, it’s cost risk analysis basically.
Joe: Yeah. And when I hear people say things like, I’m gonna think about, you know, long-term care, and I think we even talked about that earlier. I’m gonna think about it. I’m like, what are you actually gonna do?
Like, let’s not think about it. ’cause I can walk down the street and go, yeah, that sounds expensive. No, no, I don’t. I don’t think so.
Len: Yeah, no, like I said, you take the consequence or the thing that you’re worried about and then you, you know, what’s the odds of that happening? If there’s something that’s really, could be really catastrophic, that might happen to you, but the risk of it happening to you is very low, it’s probably not worth spending the money on, you know, the insurance for that.
But if there’s something, for example, if you have a family history of early onset Alzheimer’s, you know, that’s a pretty bad outcome and the risk is probably pretty high. So the [00:18:00] odds are you probably do wanna. Commit some money to that. It’s in terms of insurance. Well, the thing
Joe: that I like that you did was you widened the discussion though.
It, it, it wasn’t just insurance, it was risk management, right? Correct. ’cause then you thought with your portfolio, you’re like, I think I can handle this without it. And then you’re putting your portfolio at risk, but you already know that ahead of time. I mean, this is risk management. Do I take the risk myself or do I hand it over to a third party?
Len: Yeah. The other variable in there then for something like that is Well, okay, I mean, if you’re worried about handing over money, you know, wanting to leave your kids with a chunk of change when you’re passed on, you know, that’s gonna come into effect too. It’s like, well, I want to make sure my kids have some money left over.
Then maybe you do more, you’re more likely to take the insurance as well, otherwise, or if not, and you say, well, I, you know, that’s, that’s on them and my retirement is my retirement and I have the money to spend that if we get ill.
Joe: People are wondering, by the way, og, how to know what Lamb was talking about.
The odds. I mean, a great place to start is with the premium. I think that the premium on this thing is gigantic. There’s a [00:19:00] reason it’s gigantic. There’s some actuary behind those numbers. This isn’t just an insurance company taking it to you.
OG: Well, there’s a number of, I, I know you’re, if you’re talking specifically about long-term care insurance, but I’m just
Joe: talking about any type of insurance, right?
Just look at the different types of insurance that the premium’s high. I need to maybe worry about that one. If the premium’s low,
OG: I mean yes and no, but you can get the idea of what is a higher probability of happening as you think through logically what you know, probability and the, and the cost of it happen, and the magnitude of if it does happen by looking at the comparison of different things, right?
So you look at your accidental death and dismemberment policy, that’s a hundred K and it’s 11 cents a paycheck versus your a hundred thousand dollars 20 year term and it’s $11 a month. And you go, why? Why would one be. 10 x or a hundred x the thing, or you look at your car insurance and you go, yeah, my car insurance is really high.
It’s like $2,000 every six months, 4,000 bucks a year. Why is my house insurance [00:20:00] 2,500 like, but my house costs way more. Well, there’s only two factors in here. The factors are probability of something happening and the magnitude of the event if it were to happen. If you go, well, my house costs a lot more, but the premium’s less, that must tell you that the likelihood of you wrecking your car is that much more higher.
You know? Or your 16-year-old wrecking your car, you know, is that much higher than something bad happened to your house? Same thing with long-term care coverage. It should tell you a little bit about, at least conceptually, how that’s priced out.
Joe: There’s another facet of this for people that are thinking about re retire.
Even if you’re in your twenties, thirties, whatever you might think, I’m gonna work during my retirement years. This piece also says, a recent study found that 30% of Americans say they’re gonna work beyond age 65. Whether because they have to, they want to. Well, building that into your financial plan is difficult ’cause you have to consider the possibility.
You might not be able to do that with that healthy age, that healthy lifespan being 66 years old, the chances might not be [00:21:00] as good as you think during your planning years. So I think it’s one thing to do it. I think it’s actually great to do it right. This idea of joining something. Being a part of a group, having a purpose, all these reasons to have a job.
Those are great, but the math of I’m gonna keep saving during those years is probably, uh, that could go wrong. Number two on this list is job loss. Another life event that could derail your retirement plans is a job loss. Besides the obvious loss of income, you could also stop contributing your 401k lose any employer match.
Of course, you see people do this during their career, right? If they have a baby, they might take time off, they might get fired, they might get downsized. We talked about this risk a couple of weeks ago, og, this is horizon risk, where all of a sudden the horizon changes on you for reasons beyond your control that can really affect your financial plan.
OG: I mean, if you’re 52 and you’re like, I got 10 years to go, and you get your walking papers at 59 and a half. You know, it’s, are you going back? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It’s tough, right? I [00:22:00] mean, it’s a thing. There is a thing about hiring people with gray hair. It’s, you know, you’re smart, Joe, you just went no hair. So that’s my goal.
Nobody knows what color it would be
Joe: when this big money podcasting thing doesn’t work out.
OG: When you finally have to go get a real job, you’re gonna be safe. But, um, you know, so that’s a real thing, right? In terms of the age discrimination and, you know, if you’re interviewing two candidates and they’re both really great and one’s on the doorstep of what you think would be a retirement, well, you know, I mean, people are gonna make biases decisions.
Joe: Well, Len, you worked at Corporate America. How often did you see people over 50 get hired into your company? Uh,
Len: probably a little more than I, probably than the rest of America. Just because, well, just because they’re skilled. It’s a really skilled profession. It’s like a work. So sometimes you, you need people who are older for certain jobs that, but, but still, you’re right.
I mean, if there’s a choice between the younger person and the older person, and they both can do the job, the younger person who’s making less money is gonna, who has, will have a lower s is gonna get the job. There’s just, there’s no reason [00:23:00] to hire the older person who’s wants a higher salary.
Doug: You know, Len, another place where that happened is in technology.
’cause what often happens is companies get themselves entrenched in specific tech platforms and. Then, you know, the rest of the tech world moves on to the next coding language to the next platform, and you’re still needing to support a legacy system. You gotta go find those older people who were highly trained in that 20 years ago because you’re, you haven’t migrated yet off of that old legacy platform.
You need a
Joe: 50-year-old who remembers Fortran, is that what you’re saying? Yeah.
Doug: That well, they’re now 90, but yes.
Len: Yeah, that’s right. And, and at least in the engineering where I work, there’s certain jobs that a younger person, you need an older person, you need somebody with experience to do the, a particular job.
The younger person out of school just doesn’t have that experience. So there’s a lot of times that have, but still, I, I get it. It’s true. There’s age discrimination out there and it, and it’s, there’s a reason behind it. Like I said, it’s, if you’ve got the younger person who’s gonna make a lower salary and an older person who wants more money, you’re going to, plus your, and the older person might retire in a [00:24:00] few years.
You want, you wanna hire the younger person. So, I mean, that’s just life.
Joe: How do you build that into a financial plan though? Oh gee, that I might, you know, I wanna retire at 60, at 57. I might be forced
OG: out. Well, again, that’s back to that what if thing. These are all the decisions that you can work on making early on, right?
Because you, you solve this problem by saying, I need the flexibility to account for this, that it might happen. And so how do I get the flexibility? You don’t wait till the last minute to go crap. I need flexibility. You say, well, I need to plan for being a year ahead, you know, so that I can soften that blow if possible.
Len: It’s that cost risk analysis again, Joe. So what I would do if I was in that position at, at, say I was 52 and I said, well, I’m planning to retire at, uh, 62, but I could get, you know, there’s, odds are very good. I may be laid off in the next five years. If I could afford it at 52, I would say, well, here’s what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna up my savings, my contribution level, my contributions, I’m gonna up that. So in case that happens, I’m good at 50, 58 or [00:25:00] 59 just because the risk is so high that I, I can’t afford. And hey, if I make it to 59, I’m still working. Hey, then it’s gravy. That extra money, it’s extra money. But that, that’s how I would handle it.
Joe: I like, they have a couple, the author has a couple in here as well. Having that emergency fund, which a lot of people avoid, they think, well, I got credit. Emergency fund comes in great here. Second is I. Remember that you’re still gonna need a social network. So making sure that your resume’s updated, that you have, uh, you know, people at other companies who might be, want you for a project or two afterwards, maybe in a consulting basis.
I know quite a few people when I was a planner, they would, I’m thinking of one person in particular where this happened to them. They actually got a consulting gig that tidied them over, and it was because they had a phenomenal social network, just amazing network of people who were like, yeah, hey, I need somebody for, I think it was just a little more than 18 months, which fit the bill.
Pretty perfectly. After our break, we’re gonna do number three and number [00:26:00] four. These are these, these are some good, I can’t wait to hear about, uh, what you guys think about the third one on this list. But before we do that, we’re gonna pause here because Doug, you’ve got, uh, today’s, uh, trivia question. Is something big going on in this day in history?
Doug: Sure is. Joe. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. It’s always so much fun having Len Pezo here. I especially love hearing stories about his childhood growing up with all that nature, sitting by the fire. Finger painting on the cave walls. I mean, did, did you guys have toys back then, or did you just like play with Mastodon tusks and pterodactyl feathers arranging ’em in the mud.
So they look like a face. That must’ve been a hoot. Ah, of course. We’re just kidding. Len, we, we know he’s older than that. Yeah, but maybe, wow. Maybe, I mean, we don’t know. Maybe Len knows the answer to this one. What was the first toy ever advertised on television? I’ll be right back [00:27:00] after I go see what vegetable Joe’s moms brought in from the garden.
Hey there, stackers. I’m food from the garden lover and guy who’s apparently four months early. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. She is not the first woman to tell me that I’m early. Weird. I don’t know why that keeps happening. Anyw who? Today’s question. We are hoping Len knows the answer to and he can arrange a big smiley face when he gets this right.
What was the first toy advertised on tv? That would be Mr. Potato Head. Oh yeah. All those clues we were arranging things like faces. Mom’s Garden, come on, Len, keep up. I had one. It was how. You know the original version of this, you had to use your own potato. I did. That’s what mine was. You used his
Len: own potato.
I remember opening on Christmas Day was a rusted potato [00:28:00] and there was a whole bunch of my, my mom’s false eyelashes and a bunch of stuffing.
Joe: It didn’t even have a package
Len: and what was great was it already had, the eyes were already on the potato, so I didn’t have to Oh
Doug: yeah, that’s you. You
Len: got
Doug: the
Len: deluxe model.
Doug: You know, Mr. Potato had was also the first TV advertisement targeted for children and Len, apparently the ad camp. Yeah, the ad campaign was successful with over 1 million sets sold in the first year. There’s an interesting corollary. If you look at the bar graph of the Idaho potato industry, it’s exactly parallel with Mr.
Potatohead. Uh, and because a guy can’t be left to have fun alone, ’cause mom says she’ll go blind and because a guy can’t be left to have fun on his own, ’cause mom says she’ll go blind. Mrs. Potatohead was added the following year. And now back to the three potato heads on this show, Joe OG and Len.[00:29:00]
Joe: Nice. Could you imagine those kids, like at the holidays they open up their gift of Mr. Potatohead and they didn’t get the deluxe edition like London and, and mom didn’t know you had to go down to the store and stores are closed that you can’t even play with the thing.
Doug: Gotta have your own potato. Mom. Mom.
It’s a raw potato. Figure it out.
Joe: So, so, so good. Speaking of good. Let’s go over, uh, the third and fourth reason. This, uh, wonderful piece says that you might have issues in retirement. And number three, failure to launch adult children might interfere with your retirement. The biggest reasons Americans fail to adequately save for retirement is failure to launch at all children.
Apparently, og we see this all the time. We’re so busy helping out the kids. We don’t have enough time for us or money for us.
OG: It was funny, we were, you know, we’ve got [00:30:00] Alex going to college here pretty quickly, and, and we’ve talked about different things around that and budgets around non-school essential things.
This is just Alyssa and I, we were talking about a friend whose kid came home after they graduated, and I just said, oh, and she goes, oh, no. Like, I would be okay with the kids coming home for a little bit. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. No, ma’am. Like our, our financial responsibility ends after, I mean, it ends technically according to Alex this weekend as he’s a man now, but we’re gonna help him out with college.
And I’m like, that is it man. There’s no coming home. We’re selling the house. We’re moving to a small condo on the golf course. Our financial support ends at college. Like, when you’re done, you are doing your thing. And I’m, I’m talking tough right now. We’ll see. We’ll call me back in four years, right? And, uh, and or six or 17 whenever Caroline’s done, and ask me how it’s going.
But yeah, right now I’m very much on team
Joe: you out. My dad was adamant about [00:31:00] that. I mean, it was just, yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That is not an option. Yeah, failure’s an option, but you’re gonna figure it out. I don’t know. Uh, what was it like in the Penso house growing up, Lynn,
Len: you know, growing up.
They took me back in after college. It was so I could save money to buy a house. So, um, they didn’t care. They, the whether, and I could’ve lived off, obviously when I graduated I could have had my own place, but they let me save, uh, money and I was out, I was out within, what, 18 months. And my mom was just thrilled to have me.
I, you know, I was, I was the good kid. I was mama’s favorite I guess. So she loved having me back. Anyways, you know what, though, life happens and today’s kids, they have it tougher. It’s a lot harder for Gen Z and, and the millennials than it was for Gen X and the Boomers. It’s just things are different,
Joe: especially where you live.
Len, I couldn’t imagine trying to buy your first quote starter home.
Len: Oh, it’s terrible. My daughter’s still living at home. She works as a, a registered vet tech. I mean, she makes, uh, pretty good money for, and [00:32:00] it’s, it’s ridiculous. It, it would her just rent around here in Southern California would eat up in a.
Decent place would eat up almost her whole paycheck, I feel for her. And like, like I said, I, I really am sympathetic to this, the younger generations. It’s just, um, something’s gotta give here.
Joe: But if you’ve been in a spotlight where you didn’t have enough money to retire when you wanted to, and you had a kid struggling after high school, where would you have drawn that line then?
Because clearly you’ve, you did the savings, so you have the means to be able to help them.
Len: Uh, you can’t kick ’em out, you have to take ’em in. But I would either have to get a second job or force them to get another job or something. I mean, something’s gotta give, but I think the bottom line is your retirement, you are number one, it’s kind of like in the airplane, you know, put your mask on first and then your child’s mask on second.
In the end, you’ve gotta ultimately look out for number one yourself. So I guess push comes to shove your retirement because once you’re 70 and [00:33:00] 80 you can’t work. Yeah. You can’t work and you’re running outta year. So it really, you have to put yourself first in that position. How do you see clients handle this og?
OG: Well, like Len said, it’s very difficult, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it’s family, you know? So how’s it any different than helping out mom or helping out grandma versus helping out your kids? I don’t know, except for a time standpoint, you know? I feel like my kids have, to your point Joe, like you guys are gonna probably make mistakes and off you go and Godspeed and I hope it works out.
You know, mom may not have that flexibility to start over at 75, so maybe I wanna help her and not, again, like I said, I’m talking tough right now, so call me in four years.
Joe: Yeah. Well, and I think that’s what my dad was doing when he’s like, that’s not an option. I think he was putting in my head that it wasn’t an option.
Mm-hmm. Had it been an option, I know my parents well enough, they would’ve totally let me podcast for 15 years from their basement. Hypothetically.
Len: Hypothetically speaking, I think back then though, job you could push him outta the [00:34:00] nest with a little more confidence. He easier because Yeah. Just because things were different then, you know?
Yeah. Much, much, much easier. Yeah.
Joe: Yeah. I could have two crappy jobs and still have an apartment that I could pay for. Yeah. You know, my, uh, some family members have done this. I think pretty well. They have a child that they’re helping out after college. They have him pay some rent, which covers his groceries.
So it’s less than a quarter of what his rent would normally be, but he’s still helping out with the cost of the house, a piece of the cost of the house. Mm-hmm.
Doug: I
Joe: don’t know if that’s a solution that resonates with with people, but I like that. There’s another piece of this, by the way, talking about struggling during your retirement years.
Oh gee, you forwarded this one to me and this is the perfect place to put this. This is not children with failure to launch. This is just children that are doing okay, but they’re on the edge. This is from The Atlantic, written by a writer named Faith Hill. I don’t think it’s that Faith Hill. I think this is a different Faith Hill.
Listen to this piece. I’m not [00:35:00] gonna tell you the title, but Elena and her husband had plans for their retirement. They wanted to move to Wyoming to meet new people, volunteer, hike, the snowy, perfect Tetons, and they did move there. For about eight months. Then they got a call from their daughter who was due to have a baby within weeks.
She and her husband were on five or so different wait lists for daycares, and now she could see that they would still be waiting by the time she had to go back to work six weeks after giving birth. She needed help. Her parents dropped everything, packed up a U-Haul, moved to the Pacific Northwest. They were going back to work too, as full-time grandparents.
And this piece, OG goes on to say grandparents because life is so, so, so difficult for a young parent. You look at how expensive kids are, a lot of grandparents OG going back to work, but this piece talks about just how tapped out grandma and grandpa are. That might not be the option that it has been in the past.
OG: Yeah, it’s really hard to to be that [00:36:00] third generation support system, you know, I mean, financially. I, I think also from an energy standpoint, it’s, I’ve known people, I’ve known clients who’ve done it. Uh, I’ve known family members who have done it. And I don’t know, it seems like just as much as Len you were saying, it’s rather difficult for young people to kind of get started and do the house thing and all that sort of stuff and rent’s expensive and whatever.
How much of it is also like, it’s not my job anymore. You know what I mean? Like you decided to have a kid and now grandma and grandpa gotta take care of it. ’cause you just found out daycare is expensive. You know? Like that should have been part of the whole discussion, planning into this and I’m, I don’t know that there’s a right answer for that.
I’m not saying that. Well then when nobody would have kids, I, I understand that there’s a lot of financial issues there and it’s not as simple as just black and white. But I wonder, wonder if that’s more of an afterthought in some cases, right? Where it’s like, oh, you know, it’ll be okay, my mom will help, or dad will help.
I
Joe: think being flippant with that is the [00:37:00] problem.
OG: Yeah, maybe. Or, or over if somebody is overestimate, maybe grandma and grandpa are overestimating their ability to help and their energy level raising kids is tough.
Joe: I think that’s the problem right there. Is grandma and grandpa saying, I’m gonna help and then they want
OG: grandkids.
Maybe that’s it. Like, when are you guys gonna pop out a grandkid for us? ’cause you know, we’re ready. And it’s like, well we can’t do it. It’s, well, we’ll help. And then they realize pretty quickly that being a full-time caregiver for an infant is.
Len: Pretty tough. I will say this with our kids, we’ve had that pre-discussion already and we’ve made, I’ve made it clear, it’s like we’re not gonna be a full-time daycare for our grandkids.
Mm-hmm. We’re not gonna do that. I mean, you’re gonna have to cover the, if you’re gonna both choose to work, which my daughter does, and my daughter wants to be a stay-at-home mom, but if she had to work, I, you know, I said, Hey, we’re happy to take ’em, you know, day here and a day there for whatever, obviously.
But don’t count on us being a full-time every day, Monday through Friday, daycare center, just because that’s just not how you do it.
Joe: Neighbors of mine lend, do, [00:38:00] uh, once a week with their grandson.
Len: Yeah, that’s reasonable. And, and as grandparents, I would think you would love that. Yeah. Once a week, but not where it turns into a job and now you’re tied down.
It’s like, and you can’t even make your own plans to go travel or do whatever. ’cause Oh, I’ve gotta, you know, that’s not fair to the parents. I don’t,
Joe: yeah, they get their day with Leo, which is fantastic, but I will tell you this, at the end of that day, to your point, OG, about overestimating, they take
OG: naps for three days.
Joe: Oh, oh, they’re both exhausted. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve gone over to their house at the end of the day and they are exhausted after one day with Leo. Yeah. Imagine five days a week helping out. And I know families want to, but, but this piece is all about, it’s called grandparents are reaching their limit. Older Americans are doing more childcare than ever before because Yeah.
And I’m not suggesting it’s not
OG: difficult, right. It’s, I I think people who are in the throes of it right now are going Yeah, yeah, yeah. Money bags. You think it’s all easy. You know, it’s different than it was when you had kids. And it is right. I mean, my oldest is 18, my youngest is eight, so I’ve got a couple of examples.
But I also, we were also fortunate [00:39:00] enough that for Caroline, Alyssa was able to stay at home, not without its own struggles of course, but you know, she was able to be a stay-at-home mom for Caroline. So that was a different scenario for us. But I think we’re also maybe overestimating or under appreciating, I.
The wear and tear that it, that it has on 65 year olds. Yeah, I think robbing them maybe a little bit too, right? I don’t know. I think everybody just has to be,
Joe: again, I love this idea of the, of the what if scenario. What if grandma and grandpa can’t do it five days? And that makes you also ask the question ahead of time, which Glenn, you’ve already addressed in your family.
Yeah. Uh, hard pass cannot not, it don’t have the energy to do that five days a week. The last one on this list, number four. This is a difficult one, and we all know people in, in this situation, and that is if, if we’re retiring with someone, which isn’t our whole audience, but if you are retiring with someone, loss of a spouse or a partner, if you’ve got that person you’ve been planning on retiring with and they’re not there anymore, sometimes they say that it is.
A death other time it’s, [00:40:00] and we’ve seen this before too, right? Kids leave. You’re all of a sudden together, just the two of you and you realize we’re not the same people we were before we became parents.
OG: I like you better when we were, when we were not around one another.
Joe: Yeah. Yeah. You see studies show there’s a ton of divorce after the last kid leaves the house.
But I think modeling a divorce with your spouse or your partner would be difficult for your planning. But it’s always gotta be og a, a specter that this is gonna land differently.
OG: I suggest having a separate financial plan in the corner, in a red binder that says if he leaves me, this is what I do. No, no, no, no.
Don’t do that. Don’t do that.
Joe: Only open if
Len: Nope. They have life insurance. Do they have divorce insurance? So you could insure, you know, somehow I think
OG: there probably is some sort of, uh, system for that. The permut world. Yeah.
Doug: It’s like key
OG: employee
Doug: insurance key. Yeah. What happens if you lose your CEO? So this, this is [00:41:00] easily solved.
Just incorporate your marriage and then get key employee insurance.
Joe: Key marriage insurance. That is a difficult one though, uh, thinking about that and, and we all know people, or you might be the person that this has happened to and it changes everything. Everything, everything. And I guess that’s the thing.
Og The only thing I think to wrap this up, the only thing that is the constant is we know it’s not gonna work the way we plan. It’s not gonna work. It’s not a static plan. And if you have a static plan, I think that’s a ridiculous way to get this planning done. I will link to this piece from Egg Stack News, really like this guys, uh, four things that can derail your retirement plan and the piece from the Atlantic about grandparents.
Uh, maybe being tapped out on our show notes page at stacky Benjamins dot com. Doug egg stack plan. That’s like my sandwich. It is. Uh, I thought Egg Stack News was created by you, but apparently there’s, I gotta check it out. Mike Ballou that actually wrote this great piece. Alright, one more segment here.
And we call this the TikTok minute. This is the part, I don’t know, Len, if you’ve been here, we’ve done a, have you been here where we’ve [00:42:00] done a TikTok minute? This is the part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either doing something brilliant or air quotes brilliant as we often see on TikTok.
So you think we’re about to listen to brilliance or air quotes? Brilliance? Do I have to guess? Yeah. That’s the way this game works. Oh, okay. Yeah. Is before we play the clip, we’re pull, we’re about to play a TikTok clip. Yeah. Audio clip. Is this brilliance or air quotes? Brilliance.
Len: Okay. And I have to answer before the clip or after the clip.
Joe: You gotta answer right? My head hurts Doug. Usually Doug makes my head hurt and I’m, I’m turning to Doug to tell him my head hurts. Welcome to Short Attention Span Theater everyone. Welcome to the guy with early onset. Uh, so Lynn, you think it’s brilliant or air quotes brilliant. I, I’m gonna say air quotes brilliant.
This is a spot guys that we see a lot of stackers end up [00:43:00] in and it’s, it’s, uh, it’s a difficult place to be where you really wanna make a change, but, uh, it takes a lot of courage. This is a guy that many of you have heard before. This is, uh, Gary Vanerchuk.
TikTok: Are scared to take a financial step backwards for their happiness.
It is almost unacceptable in almost all societies around the world to downsize your home, sell your home or apartment and get a smaller one that is like,
Doug: no,
TikTok: no. People are worried about what people perceive. You had Lexus, now you have a Toyota. That’s a problem. Whereas for me, if we can ever eliminate that stigma in society, we’ll have a much happier world.
’cause then people will do that. Save dollars to be able to go after their dreams. I can’t be a singer and do open mics and not make money. I’ve gotta keep being this corporate executive. Well, you don’t have to if you can downsize, but then imagine people with families. I have incredible empathy. If you’re a mother or father and you’re the bread we and then you come home and now that your kids have to share a room.
Yeah. Who wants to come home and see their seven and 4-year-old go from their own rooms at a nice backyard and we’re gonna move to a neighborhood that might be not as nice. No [00:44:00] backyard and you’re sharing a room. That is very challenging. The problem is, I think if someone is living unhappy, much bigger challenges are in front resentment, unhappiness, alcoholism, escapism in all sorts of different ways that tend to lead to problems.
Joe: It’s a very difficult place to be. And we all know people, Lynn, that have, that have been there. You wanna make a change or pretty unhappy. But if I’m gonna make a change, I gotta start in a new career, I gotta do something different. And to do that might to go from the Lexus to the Toyota. I like that from the kids might have to share rooms.
Like this idea of going backwards is, uh, huge hangup.
Len: Well, you gotta, if you have to, you have to. Right? I, I think that smart idea is to, you know, hopefully you thought about it before you, right? When your life got started and you moved out of the nest and you started your own thing and you thought about this ahead of time.
That’s where it’s important. If you don’t have to downsize and you start small to begin with. And that’s, that’s what I did. And, and I’ve always told my kids, it’s like we live [00:45:00] well below our means. We’ve, we’ve lived well below our means for a long time. Not to the detriment of the kids. We still went on our vacations and we did our things, but we lived in a house.
We still live in the house. It’s much smaller than what I could have afforded. We drove modest cars, my whole car, I, I didn’t have a new, a brand new car until I was 50. I drove, you know, old cars and that allowed me to save money and retire when I retired at 58. So, I mean, I think the key is just hopefully parents out there instill in your kids to try and live below your means and they’ll be much happier.
You won’t have to worry about downsizing. I think that’s the key. But if you have to downsize, you have to downsize. And for kids going from your own room to sharing a room. I, I think stuff like that when your kids, I don’t think kids really care. I think kids make their, you know, kids have fun being kids, rooming with their siblings.
Doug: Listening to that clip was like an episode of scared straight. I mean, you, you downsize, you then you go to resentment and exits, alcoholism, like, are those the steps? That’s true. No, man. No, no,
Joe: no, no. I [00:46:00] think you missed what he was talking about there at the end. He’s talking about when you don’t change, when you don’t make the change, it’s gonna light you up.
It comes out in other ways. If you stay in that dead end job that you hate, it comes out as resentment. It comes out as alcoholism. It comes out as, you know, a bunch of self-care stuff that’s really not great. So you, you. At some point you, you’ve gotta make the change is, I think what he’s,
Doug: I see,
Joe: okay. What he’s saying.
I don’t know.
Len: There’s one thing I didn’t agree with him on. He was saying, well, you leave the corporate job to become a, you know, you know, spend your time working. It’s an open mic or whatever, singer. As a singer being a singer, you know, un I think that’s ridiculous. That’s not downsizing. That’s, that’s reckless.
I did it in my opinion.
Doug: I did it successfully.
Len: Well, if you, it’s a risk. I mean, you can do it, but boy, you’re roll. That’s rolling the dice. To me, that’s not downsizing. That’s, you know, for your own happiness.
Joe: We heard from Jim comedian Jimmy Carr a couple weeks ago about that. Remember though, Jimmy Carr was like, I went through, I think he called it Yoho a Pirate’s Lifes for me.
Like, he’s like, I had a good job and I just [00:47:00] let it go because I needed to do the thing. I had to do the thing. And that’s when, you know, I think that it’s. How important it’s to you is when you’re willing to give it up. You know, I was, when I was way in debt, I lived in a rental house, uh, Doug, you came over to my house in, in my rental house, and uh, I lived in this beat up house.
I had this chance to rent a house that was much, much, much nicer. And I asked my career coach at the time, I said, Hey, I’m gonna do this. And I think it was gonna be $500 a month, which in today’s dollars would be closer to like another $1,200 a month. And I remember what she said. She said, would you rather come home every day to a place that you know you want to get out of?
Or go to a place that you can barely afford that looks right, but you know, is not at all where you, where you want to be. Like, do you wanna put window dressing on this, you know, for a while? Or do you wanna fix [00:48:00] this the right way and fixing it the right way was the answer. So we stayed in that house until they kicked us out and uh, immediately bulldozed it.
Like the Salt Sea High family’s disgusting. We got a bulldoze. Nobody could live here after them. Actually, that neighborhood was getting all these bigfoot houses and uh, my goodness, the house that’s there now on where my old little house used to be is, is pretty incredible. But that is difficult. Og But sometimes, you know, you get to the, I love hearing the success stories.
People going, you know what? I used to drive the thing. I realized I couldn’t afford it, and so I dropped down. I think in our community that’s kind of a flex
OG: for whatever reason, there’s a bunch of things in the budget or in your lifestyle that, that when you’re. Struggling or when you are trying to make this radical change, a lot of people go, well, I can’t touch that.
I can’t touch my kid’s private school like that. We have to do that. And that’s the phraseology that we use. Well, we have to, whatever. And [00:49:00] when you use the language, and this is why verbiage really matters. You are pigeonholing your psyche into not being able to solve that problem when you’re faced with any sort of problem that you’re trying to deal with.
The reality is, is that the more you give your brain the ability to solve it, the more likely you are to come up with a solution. And you do that by having everything beyond the table and to, you know, Gary v’s. Point here. It’s like everything has to count. There are no sacred cows in in money when it comes to, you know, and there was, that was a book Who wrote that book?
I can’t even remember who wrote it. Now everything counts. No. Something about there, there’s, there’s no sacred cows. That was the name of the book or something like that. And basically the whole point of this is when you’re dealing with these things, everything has to be on the table. It’s like, well, I’ve got a car payment.
I, I need a car. Do you, do you, do you need one for the next, I mean, is there a [00:50:00] solution that’s not a car for this problem for the next short period of time, you know, back then to your long-term care discussion. You’re not saying, I’m never buying long-term care insurance, you’re saying I’m not buying it right now.
I’ve done the evaluation. It’s, for me, that’s not a solution. That’s, that makes sense right now, in 10 years from now, you might go, you know what? I’ve done the planning on this, and now it’s something I wanna do. That’s the thing when it comes to all of these plans, whether it’s, you know, I, I just think about them like austerity plans, right?
You get to, you get fed sick and tired, right? I’m just, I’m fed up with where I am and I need to make this change. This is not a life sentence. You know, if you go on the, the one thing that I do appreciate from Dave Ramsey is the whole like rice and beans thing, you know? And he is, it’s a metaphor, right? A little bit.
But he’s basically saying like, you just have to be okay with being uncomfortable for it. You’re not gonna starve to death if you eat rice and beans. It’s not gonna be the greatest meal plan in the universe. You can do it. It’s not a life sentence either. Like [00:51:00] this is just like. You know, it just has to suck for a while.
And there’s two ways that you can go through it. You can be miserable in debt for the next 15 flipping years, or it can just suck for the next 24 months. Yeah, it’s really bad.
Doug: It’s weird that, that this is the area where we if, if you do these sorts of things, it’s considered failure, but in every other aspect of your life, it’s just getting smart and getting on the right path.
If you’re not healthy, maybe you’re overweight. You’ve gotta go on an austerity plan to get on the right path. Right. If Interesting
OG: observation. Yeah. If your
Doug: company, if your company isn’t doing well, the sales aren’t where they need to be. You go on on austerity plan, you change your budget. That’s just dere standard operating stuff.
So why is it any different with your own personal life? It’s not. Doug,
OG: I was thinking when you were talking about that it media popped in my head about working out. It’s like. That sucks. There’s people who say, oh, I love working out. They’re full of crap. Like working out sucks. Like it requires energy and commitment and discipline and amen and being uncomfortable and [00:52:00] being sore and all those things.
It’s not that they love it, it’s they love the process of it. I know what I’m getting by doing this over and over and over again. It’s not,
Doug: it’s allegedly, there are these endorphins that get released supposedly when you’re, I get that, but
OG: that’s on the back end. That’s crap. It takes discipline and accountability to like go to the gym at 5:00 AM or 6:00 AM or 7:00 PM or whatever.
You know what I mean? Like you have to love the process to want to do those things. Not, not like I’ve never met anybody that’s like, dude, my arms are so sore. I can’t lift him, and it’s awesome. Like, okay, cool. Mia might say that for, you know what I mean? But nobody really feels that way. Like that sucks. I think this is
Joe: where so much of this is mindset.
Like I know for me, when I decided to take control and I knew that I was the one driving that bus and we were cutting stuff and I was making sure that we were living an all cash lifestyle. Like, it was pretty fricking exciting. It was actually exciting, not because of the stuff that we were doing, the rice and beans.
To your point, og, that wasn’t exciting. What was exciting was I chose to do that. [00:53:00] That was really, really cool. Empowering. Yeah. Super, super fun going, you know what? I could go out to a restaurant tonight on a credit card. We are not doing that. And that was a whole new place to be. And once I realized that I was a hundred percent in charge of that, it was pretty kick ass.
Uh, that’s a great place to leave it. We will, uh, link to that as well. And thanks to, uh, stacker Leslie for sending that to us. That was a good one, Leslie. I, I saw that. I was like, go,
Doug: Gary V. Nice job, Doug. Yeah. No, by the way, uh, no Sacred cows. Garrett Gunderson. That’s the book you were thinking of. Okay.
There you go. OG
Joe: Garrett. Garrett Gunderson, by the way, is, um, I think we’re gonna have on the show this summer, so I.
Doug: Awesome.
Joe: Yeah, it could be super cool. Garrett’s a great guy. Alright, let’s uh, dive into one last thing, Doug. We talked about this on Monday. We actually had some fun reviews of, uh, this podcast, Len.
We actually from time to time, get a review of this podcast.
Len: Uh, how many [00:54:00] of ’em are five star?
Joe: Uh, well, uh, I think we’ve had a bazillion of them lately. Well, yeah, sounds good. And by bazillion I think we mean three. We’re three for three.
Len: Very good.
Doug: I don’t know, I mean, I’m looking at the graph here. Um, it’s a ton that, that purple line on the bar chart that, uh, just represents five stars.
People are
Joe: very nice. Yeah.
Doug: Vastly outnumbers anything below it. Um, but here’s my favorite recent review. Partly because it was written by beginning investor Mark with a CI always like Marks with a C. They’re just, they’re going their own way. They’re not, they’re not like K, anybody can do Mark with a K.
This is Mark with a c. He is, uh, for you. And they,
Joe: that, that’s how we get negative reviews from the marks with a K
Doug: immediately. If you’ve got a K at the end of your name, we don’t wanna hear from you. Alright, so Mark with a c said, great for DIY investors through a variety of headlines that they cover in addition to relevant [00:55:00] interviews, this show has struck the perfect balance of humor and investing advice.
There was no funnier episode than the Pie Day episode on March 14th. I still don’t understand why that was called The Pie Day. Uh, Joe is a master interviewer. OG can analogize any investing situation to make it easy to understand, and this is in all caps. And he, he like. He typed it like 17 times. So I’ll just say it once.
Doug is awesome.
Len: Oh my God. By the way, Doug, I still haven’t gotten my check for that review. When are you paying me? And Len thought it was clever to put the C
Doug: on the end of the name too. And he says he never mark with a c. Never misses an episode.
Joe: Thanks, mark. Thanks Mark. Thank you very much. Let’s do one more and then we’ll save the third one for later.
Doug: Okay. Uh, here we have, uh. JL Betten. I’m betting JL gave us a five star review ’cause he said Great [00:56:00] show. Very helpful. I got into financial advice shows during C and this along with the Ramsey show were my go-to shows. I feel the Teching Benjamins does a great job of talking about finances with lots of comedy mixed in.
Sometimes you forget it’s a finance show. Thank you to Joe OG and most of all, especially can’t emphasize this enough. Doug, you see where this is going on? We’re putting on a great show at the
Joe: end of every review we have to put up with this. Every single one doesn’t change. I’m
Doug: just, I’m just reading. It’s what I do.
I’m a professional reader and I mean, I just. They put it out there and I say it.
Joe: Thank you for the reviews and it’s great chatting with some of you. And by the way, if you wanna hang out, I will be in Boston. How do you pronounce that? Doug Boston? Yes. On uh, may 20. Let me get the date here. I should have had it ready and I don’t.
May 20th. It’s the 20th. Yeah, Tuesday, May 20th. As of right now. Not sure where we’re gonna be. Probably gonna be by the time this comes out though, you’ll see [00:57:00] it. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup to tell us that you’re coming and um, we will. We’re gonna have a lot of fun.
Len: I love Boston. That’s my favorite big city in America.
It is. It’ll be great. Is so awesome.
Joe: Going back to Fenway there again, Len. I’ll be my second time at Fenway. Yeah, it’s
Len: a great stadium. I love it.
Doug: You know what though? I don’t. I disagree. Oh boy. Yeah. I disagree with that. I’ve been to Boston, uh, excuse me, Fenway. I’ve been to Boston countless times. I’ve been to Fenway maybe three or four times I think.
And I am a. Crazy baseball fan. I love the game of baseball. I really do. And I think that the reason Fenway gets so much love is because of the history. But as a ballpark, if you take away the history, it’s kind of a dump. I mean, it, it really is not when you’re in the stands, when you’re underneath the stands, when you’re in the, in the, what do they call it?
Not the, um. Concourse. It’s dark, it’s damp. It’s, it’s kind of a dump. [00:58:00] Now, don’t get me wrong, I will go there as often as I can because it’s phenomenal because most of baseball, for me, a solid 50% is the history of the game. I love hanging out. Love that
Joe: about it. Street outside. That’s a fun area. The shop across that street, a big, big shop.
It’s a whole
Doug: vibe, but I think there’s other places like Camden Yards, like, um, uh, is it Petco in San Diego? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, those places are, you still get that sense of history, but they’re bright. They’re fresh. They’re just a, a really comfortable place to be and, and we
Joe: sat in the lower deck, back row, the very last row at the lower deck and had water drip on us the whole time, which was romantic.
Fenway,
Len: that’s part of the
Joe: charm, right? It was probably a spilled beer from the deck above us. Yeah. I mean, spilling on me.
Len: I don’t know. I remember sitting in an old, the old Cleveland municipal stadium, and I right behind a beam.
Doug: I went
Len: to municipal. Yeah. But my chair was blocked. My view was blocked by a beam.
You know, this was back when they had beams in there. I [00:59:00] thought you were gonna say
Joe: your, your view was blocked by the other fan who was there.
Doug: That too. They used to call, remember on the ticket, Len would say obs. V-O-B-S-V-U. Oh yeah. You’re like, what’s an, what’s an obs v? What’s, oh, I thought that was French.
I thought that was French. For, for Have a good time. They had those at Old Tiger Stadium. Doug. Oh, they had ’em too. Yeah. Obstructive view, obstruct. Youd sit there with a giant eye beam between your legs while you were trying to watch the game.
Joe: Doug loved every minute of that. Alright, time for us to go. Let, let’s say goodbye, Doug.
Uh, what are the three things that should be on our to do list today?
Doug: Ha. First take some advice from our headline. Lots of things can ruin your financial plans, so make them flexible and spend some time thinking through what if scenarios. That way, when disaster strikes, you’ll know your next move. Second grandparents, maybe they’re already overworked time to tweak your babysitter arrangements.
Mom and dad get creative, but the big lesson, [01:00:00] don’t refer to Len as Mr. Potatohead. He’s a super big fan of that nickname. How was I supposed to know? That’s what the honeybee calls him. No, Len God. We’re not snuggling right now. Get off me, Len. Thanks to the Len Penso for joining us today. You’ll find squirrels after dark lens sandwich survey and his Friday black coffee posts and [email protected].
We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the property of SB podcast LLC, copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets some help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.
Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, [01:01:00] 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.[01:02:00]
But maybe Len knows the answer to this one. What was the first toy ever advertised on television? I’ll be right back after I go see what vegetable Joe’s moms brought in from the garden.
Len: Anybody got a guess? I. I’m gonna say tinker toys.
Joe: That, that totally sounds like an engineer answer, doesn’t it? Yeah.
Really? An erect
Len: hector set.
Doug: Well, I had all those stuff. It’s probably a chemistry set. Was it? Was it an actuarial table? Maybe those are, those are hilarious.
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