What’s the best safe withdrawal rate for your retirement plan? What the heck is a safe withdrawal rate? On today’s special roundtable discussion, we dive into the deep end of this important topic: understanding what you’re investing in, what different financial terms mean, and if they’re important for you. We’re thrilled to welcome our special guest, Bernadette Joy, to our roundtable panel. She’s the force behind Crush Your Money Goals, a money media company to serve up fun and practical educational content. Our own OG joins her at the card table, along with Len Penzo, creator of the award-winning blog LenPenzo.com.
In the second part of our discussion, sponsored by DepositAccounts.com, we dive into each of our roundtable contributor’s favorite pieces of basic and advanced get-out-of-debt advice.
Stay tuned for the next chapter in our year-long trivia contest. Doug brings the trivia suspense with an ‘Ol Blue Eyes-infused trivia question. Will Bernadette keep Paula in the running for the year-end trophy, or will OG or Len put it out of reach? Listen and find out!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch on Our YouTube Channel:
Our Topic: A Few Word Description
The Crucial Difference Between Beginner and Advanced Advice (Forte Labs)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- The importance of mastering the basics of financial planning
- Should you search for more information or just start?
- When are more advanced financial strategies appropriate?
- Start small, make mistakes, learn, and adapt
- The value of financial rules-of-thumb
- Financial order of operations
- Advanced vs. basic financial advice
- Best get-out-of-debt advice
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Bernadette Joy
Another thanks to Bernadette Joy for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Bernadette on her show, Crush Your Money Goals, at Crush Your Money Goals on Apple Podcasts.
Learn more about Bernadette and explore her work by visiting Crush Your Money Goals.
Len Penzo
Visit Len Penzo dot Com for the off-beat personal finance blog for responsible people.
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- Frank Sinatra’s son was kidnapped on this day in 1963. How much was the ransom?
DepositAccounts
Thanks to DepositAccounts.com for sponsoring Stacking Benjamins. DepositsAccounts.com is the #1 place to go when you’re looking to see if your rate is the BEST rate on savings, CDs, money markets, and even checking accounts! Check out ALL of the rates ranked from best to worst (and see the national averages) at DepositAccounts.com.
Mentioned in today’s show
- 10 Old Wives’ Tales Masquerading As Financial Rules of Thumb (LenPenzo.com)
- Army-Navy Game, 2023
- Joe’s November 10 Facebook post addressing Dave Ramsey’s safe withdrawal rant.
Join Us Monday!
Tune in on Monday when you’ll learn how to launch your financial independence rocket with financial educator, Jamila Souffrant.
Missed our last show? Check it out here: How to Achieve Challenging and Unlikely Goals with Astronaut Mike Massimino (SB1445).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
Hanukah, so drink your Jager and smoke your.
Live from Joe’s mom’s
basement. It’s
the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan. Today, when you’re giving people advice, what’s the difference between what you tell beginners versus what you share? With more advanced financial savers today, we’ll ask our round table team featuring financial independence, coach Bernadette Joy, Andrew Microphone, and joining her from this podcast, it’s The Man with a Financial Plan.
OG and finally fresh off her amazing Thanksgiving halftime show appearance. It’s Dolly Parton. That’s just Len Penso, but don’t worry, he’s still wearing the cheerleader outfit. And that’s not all. Halfway through the show, I’ll share my extorting trivia question. Extortion. Extortion. We’re going with that.
And now a guy who couldn’t be bribed to stop bringing you the best personal finance advice, it’s Joe Saul Sea. Hi.
Who would wanna do that? Who would wanna suboptimal advice? Hey everybody, I am Joe Sulci, high average Joe Money on Twitter, on x, on threads, on whatever name the social channel threads. But we are there. And man, we have a great round table today because. We have the woman who’s your favorite Rich auntie.
Okay. It’s about time we had her here. Bernadette. Joy, it’s about time you’re here, Bernadette, to save this show. Thank
you so much. And thank you for letting me use this giant microphone for a reason.
For people not, uh, watching on YouTube. They might not know that we’ve got a beautiful pink microphone in front of Bernadette.
It’s bigger than my snowman. Totally. Is
that your microphone or are you just happy to be here? I, that’s what
I was thinking too, for the three people, Bernadette, that don’t know your story. Let’s get this straight. Did you really pay off over $300,000 of debt in three years?
Yes, I did in three years.
Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. My husband and I decided a couple years ago that, uh, we didn’t wanna be on that rollercoaster that is called, uh, education student loans. And so, uh, we decided that we were just gonna do something different and we started off with paying off $72,000 of student loans in a year. Wow. Wow. And then we’re like, well, what do we do next?
What would happen if we paid off everything, including our house? And lo and behold, three years later, we were completely debt free in our thirties. And that’s what started us on the financial independence journey. And then
very quickly after that, not that long after that you, but you said this publicly, you became a millionaire.
I
became a millionaire, yes. And it’s a little weird to say that publicly, but I decided that, you know, for my, myself, growing up in a kind of immigrant family and money being kind of a very scarce topic, I decided, you know what? I think more people should. Be celebrant of what they’ve accomplished. So I say it loud and proud and I hope that it encourages other women to, you know, not shy away from the, what they’ve accomplished.
We gotta have you back another time to dive into like the debt payoff strategy because as you know, this comes out in December. A lot of people getting into debt right now. Oh yeah. If there’s, if there’s one, one thing that was like the biggest thing to paying off all that debt quickly, what would you say?
The number one thing for people our stackers to take away would be? I
would say that the number one thing that helped me personally get out of debt was to bite the bullet and pay off that first lowest balance immediately, like as soon as I decided it. And that really just triggered the momentum fast forward.
So in my case, I had like, uh, $72,000 of student loans, but it was broken up over like six or seven different loans. Yeah. And I had cash in the bank that was sitting there not really doing anything for me. And so I bit the bullet and just like paid off that first loan and I was like, wait, I didn’t die.
Let’s, let’s see what else happens.
And you know, it’s funny, I mean, you’re joking, but you’re not joking. People have that feeling. They’re like, wait a minute. I, I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think I can do it. Mm-Hmm. Especially
for people who are used to having X amount of contingency fund or emergency fund and kind of follow that traditional advice of like, you have to have three to six months of emergency funds.
But nowadays, like you said, a lot of people are going to debt right now. A lot of people don’t even have enough savings for, you know, a $400 emergency. Yeah. And what I realized was there, there’s a lot of people that I’ve met who are holding onto cash and they don’t really know why. Mm-Hmm. While at the same time holding onto significant debt.
And so for me, I was one of those people who thought, you know, I was gonna be doing well if I had money saved up in the bank, even though I had this debt all the way on the other side. And so I started shifting things over and it really changed the trajectory of my finances. It’s a
fabulous story. And by the way, if you wanna hear Bernadette, uh, talk to lots of people with inspirational stories, just pause right now and subscribe to her podcast, the Crush Your Money Goals podcast.
I know you guys just finished a new season. We another season of the show and, uh,
well, I took a note from you guys. I decided to bring on a co-host, and she’s awesome. And she is based out of Portugal, Steph Gonzalez. And she’s smarter than I am. So I learned from, I know what that’s like. I learned, I learned to bring people smarter than me.
It’s gonna help Bernadette a little bit, but until you get an announcer, it’s just not really gonna take off until you get the
announcer. That’s, that is the key. We met Steph at FinCon, had a, had a nice chat with Steph and just a fantastic co-host. Let’s, let’s talk about who else is here on this round table with you.
First of all, my co-host, Mr. OG joining us. You got the, uh, not OG look going right now, it looks like, uh, maybe, uh, a, um. Wannabe look, maybe, I don’t know, just trying out new things. See how
it lands. Model our idols. Yeah. Yes. Imitation is the highest form of flattery from what I understand.
For our audio listeners, majority people og just put on a cap, which might look a little bit like the gentleman in his bunker under Los Angeles.
Mr. Len Penso is here. How are you man? I am
great and, and, uh, I, I guess we’re talking about advice today, right? So I, I gotta tell you, I, I did get some advice once from a, a financial advisor. I, I considered going to one and I thought I’d stop into his office. So I asked him, I said, where should I put my money?
And he told me to put it on booze. And I was thinking, I was like, booze, why should I put it on booze? You know what he told
me? I have no idea.
He said, where else can you get 40%? 80 proof is 40%. Folks, that’s,
I got it.
We got it buddy. I’m sorry. I had to explain that to, we got it. You didn’t need to explain it.
It was, it was good. We just weren’t laughing. This
was nothing there, Len. It was just zero for that. At least
put a sound effect in there would you?
He here all week. It doesn’t get better, Bernadette. Sorry. It does not get better. Good to know. Good to know. Thank you. We got Bernadette Joy here. We got og, we got Le Penso, we got Neighbor Doug.
We are talking about advanced discussions on money versus beginner discussions on money. So let’s go. Oh, wait a minute before we go. We can’t go yet. Bernadette, we haven’t read you the rules yet. We gotta give you the rules. Do you know the rules?
It didn’t feel like a show that had rules, but, okay. We’ll we’ll tell
that.
Yeah. After Lens’s joke, who has rule? I’m sorry. Which by the way, brings up rule
number one. Uh, laugh at lens joke even if it’s not that funny. Got it. That’s rule number one.
Yes. Wait for rule number two. It’s
even better. Okay, so rule number two is, I gotta laugh at anyone’s jokes here, even if they’re not funny, but if they’re wearing a hat that makes it okay.
Yes. Which we Wait a minute. Well wait a minute. I see what we did there. One of us not wearing hat,
but that means you all violated the first rule then, because
nobody laughed. There’s, there was shoulda laughed. Oh boy. We’ve got Bernadette here, we’ve got Len, we got og, we got jokes, we got Doug. Let’s
go. Len was the one violating something with that joke,
your sense of humor.
But yes. Uh, our piece today comes to us from a Forte Labs. This was half of the inspiration for today’s discussion written by, uh, Tiago Forte, the crucial difference between beginner and advanced advice. And I thought about this partly because there was a big time discussion on the internet a couple weeks ago where Mr.
Dave Ramsey. Came out with a statement saying that a safe withdrawal rate for a retirement portfolio is is 8%, and the way he got there was math. He said, Hey, if your mutual funds do 12%, I. And you have a 4% conservatively inflation rate, that means there’s 8% between those two and you could just take the rest out and the internet world exploded saying this is horrible advice, including us.
What’s funny is, I know there’s a bunch of people out there though, Bernadette, who were saying, what’s a withdrawal rate? Like, what the hell are you nerds talking about? That’s right. Like that was really in the big scheme of thing, birded debt. That was a very advanced kind of argument beyond, I bet there’s a ton of people, I have no idea what people are arguing about.
Yeah.
I’ve encountered that myself and what I, I, I know I kind of followed this discussion also, and what I think is really interesting is that there was a lot of people who, I’ll say this, there’s a lot of people who have opinions about it. Who haven’t even really considered what withdrawal actually might look like or have not gotten to the point where they have to start even thinking or experience that.
And so I, when I say that is that I’ve often seen a lot of folks who are not even close to retirement or thinking about retirement in the near future or don’t have enough money to retire and then have opinions about that. Whereas for myself as a financial coach, I’ve been working a lot of with people who are maybe five to 10 years out closer to retirement and they don’t understand what a withdrawal rate is, and they are the ones that need to know what a withdrawal rate is.
I love that we’re talking about this topic of beginner versus advanced advice because there’s a lot of conversations that are happening both ways, like people who are taking beginners, who are taking advanced advice that they shouldn’t be, and people who are advanced, who are perpetuating beginner advice just regardless of where people are at in their journey.
Yeah. And this piece, uh, from Forte Labs, and we’ll link to it in the show notes at Stacky Benjamins, you truly don’t need to read it to follow along in this discussion, but. This piece, Len, begins with, you know, a lot of people wanna skip the beginner stuff, right? And especially when they hear half the internet blow up around Dave Ramsey’s rant a couple weeks ago, and they just wanna go to the advanced stuff.
What’s the downside of skipping the basics and, uh, and just going right to the advanced planning options? Well,
you know, if you go to the advanced planning options, that kind of intimates that you understand, you have a, a good grasp of what you’re trying to get the advice for in the first place. So if you don’t really understand the subject matter, the advanced advice will actually, I mean, you can actually do more harm than good because you, it requires you to understand yourself so, and understand what you need and what you want, and you have to know how to act on it.
And so, and. Really advanced advice. I mean, it requires you first. I mean, it’s just like anything else. You need to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. And there’s certain things that are in the financial world that people will ask, tell you to do things like, for example, investing. Why don’t you invest in options?
You can make more money quicker. There’s one, uh, by investing in options instead of putting something into stocks. But options. And I still, after all these years, I still do not understand how options work at all. But one thing I do know is you can lose a lot of money extremely quickly if you don’t know what you’re doing.
And you just, you know, you go and put some money down on some option and before you know it, I mean, you can lose a lot of money very fast. I don’t understand it, so I stay away from it. But, you know, if you really know your stuff, then maybe options will work. But it requires a lot of internal knowledge on yourself before you can advance on any advanced advice.
Yeah. And OG in your financial planning practice, I mean, how often have you seen people making investment? Choices where they really need to be more advanced. And I’ll give you an example from when I was an advisor. I remember meeting with a client and she had all these bonds that she had just bought from a broker and she said, well, look at this.
Bond’s paying 7%, but she paid, and this is where we’re gonna get advanced guys. She paid above par value, which completely made the 7% coupon rate that it said on paper again, we’re going to advance Land zero. Like, like these bonds weren’t gonna really make her any money at all. And she didn’t understand that.
She just looked at, oh, it says 7% on this bond. So this sounds like a good deal. I think
this is a very interesting, because I feel like for the vast majority of people, the simplest stuff is probably the right answer, and very rarely do you run into the scenario where the most. Advanced or the most complicated scenario, or the most complicated advice, turns into, you know, something to spend a lot of time and energy on.
I was thinking about pension calculations on Monday. We were talking about lump sum pension calculations or stream of income versus a lump sum. And you get in some very complicated decision-making around beneficiaries and life expectancy and, and all the different things. But a lot of that boils down to deciding between revocable choices and irrevocable choices.
Like, can you, can you undo this if you don’t like it in the future? And, and when it comes to financial decisions or thinking about financial choices, I think it really needs to be kinda looked at through that lens. If this is something that I can change, then totally make the simple choice, you know, invest simply, or like Len was talking about, or pay your debt off, or, you know, just those simple things.
You don’t have to get overly complicated with it. But when it gets to something that’s an irrevocable choice. Once you make this choice, you can never make another choice again. I think then it makes sense to make sure that you spend a lot of time and energy going through all of the different combinations and permutations of that decision because you truly get one choice or one time to make that decision.
But a lot of times we get wrapped up in, I wanna make the complicated decision. Yeah, I wanna do the fun. You know, the fun stuff I see on Instagram, or the fun stuff I see on TikTok or God awful Reddit or something like that. And it’s like, no. The simplest thing is just invest money. Like don’t touch it for 30 years, you’ll be rich.
You don’t have to get creative just. Do
the easy stuff. Well, in OG Bernadette brings up a great point, which is, you know, the advanced stuff leads people to think, I just need more information before I move. Mm-Hmm. When you were paying off your 300,000 and you actually pulled the trigger on doing that and quote, it didn’t kill you, right?
Mm-Hmm. How much of that was having the right information and how much of that was just getting started?
Oh, I love that you pose it that way. I had no information. So, wow. It was 0% information and a hundred percent I just need to do something to feel like I am making a move here. And I think one of the real challenges of taking on advanced strategies and money in particular, uh, before you really did the beginner steps is it puts a lot of people into analysis paralysis where they’re like, let me go learn more.
Let me go learn more. Let me go listen to a hundred different gurus about what they have to say about this before I even start doing something. And one of the things that I often tell people is just like, you have to start like today. Just do something. And that beginner, like, uh, OG said like the beginner step is probably gonna, not gonna steer you in the wrong direction unless you’re doing something super crazy.
Which in that case it’s not really beginner, is
it? Well, and the cool thing for you too was every move you made truly was revocable. Like when he was talking about there was, even if you’d made a mistake, Bernadette, it wasn’t gonna kill you.
Well, here’s what I think is interesting, and I thought about this a lot, is I get a lot of, uh, students in my programs who.
Make it feel like it’s life or death, like on fire kind of decisions for this type of stuff. And I had to peel back, well, why are they acting that way? Why are they acting that way? And you know, really a lot of it came to what Len said of like knowing yourself, but also knowing where your beliefs around money came from.
Where that your thinking to the point of like, wow, if I put a thousand dollars into my Roth ira, like that’s gonna be a huge mistake. That’s a pretty big overreaction, I think. And if we know about Roth IRAs, like you can actually just pull it out again if you really wanted to. Yeah. And you know there’s not gonna be a penalty on it.
So what I realized was that a lot of where people’s, especially beginners are getting stalled from moving forward in their financial journeys is because they are attaching this life or death kind of mentality to these decisions. And it likely came from. Them, you know, somewhere along the line someone told them like, if you lose the money, it’s never
coming back.
Well, and I think that’s a great point that Bernadette makes. Len, I feel like if we start at that advance level, we’re much more likely to get confused and in the weeds, which means we’re more likely than to make a mistake. And then I think a big part of this game is confidence. Don’t you? Confidence in
knowing what you want to do.
In other words,
as as well, A, what you wanna do, and B, that hey, I made a move and it didn’t kill me. Like, let’s take your example of options. I go into the option market, I start there, I’m very, it’s so easy to mess up the options market. Oh yeah. Like it’s, that’s a place where it’s very easy to screw yourself.
And so you do that and instead of, of feeling more confident making the next move, you were retreat, going to your shell because hey, you messed it up and you lost 500, a thousand, or you know, maybe even more money. And you
might never go back to it again. Even when you get smarter and you actually do have the chops to actually go ahead and do that.
So that is true. Now there’s another opposite side to that too, is let’s say you take some advanced advice, but you really don’t understand all the nuances still. But you get lucky. You get lucky and it works out. Mm-hmm. But it worked out for the wrong reasons. Now you’ve got false security there, and you might go work further down the road and make another move based on that advanced advice that you really, and it really bites you in the butt.
So, you know, again, walk before you run, uh, it just, you gotta be careful. You gotta be careful. You, and uh, I mean there’s also the downside to the beginner’s advice too. And I don’t know if you want, we’re not talking about the beginner’s advice, let’s go there, but there are pitfalls to beginner’s advice too.
Okay? So, for example, the beginner’s advice can be so simplistic. That, that doesn’t help either. Now, I guess everybody’s gotta start somewhere, but for example, one of the classics I think is, uh, well, how much stocks should you have in your portfolio? And, and what’s the old rule of thumb? It’s, uh, subtract your age from a hundred, right?
Something like that. Uh, so if you’re in your twenties, you put 80% in. Well, I, I mean, that’s a good start, but perhaps that’s even too conservative. Who’s to say that when you’re in your early twenties, when you have plenty of time in front of you, why not put even more than 80%? I, I see no issue potentially going with 90 or a hundred percent, especially if you’re, you’re, you understand the risks involved.
So. It’s a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. You gotta be careful in both, both
respects. Well, and, and, and I think you bring up a great point because, you know, one thing I’ve always thought is using those rules of thumb in the first place. We call that beginner advice. And I’ve always pushed back and said, I think that’s a stupid place to start.
The fact that so many people push that Len is beginner advice, where the, I think the perfect place to start is actually, and it sounds difficult, which I guess that’s a good question. Does it make this beginner advanced advice? I think, I think if you’re a beginner, starting with the end of mind is the perfect place to start.
Yes. Begin with what do I want? And then instead of some stupid rule of thumb. Yet I’ve gotten pushback from people who have said, no, no, no, no, no. Without the rules of thumb, people won’t even start. Like, I need a rule of thumb to get started. I, I think, I think rules of thumb too often could lead you astray.
I, no, I don’t
like that, but that’s the key. Okay? So use that as a baseline, as a benchmark. But you’ve got, again, we go back to know yourself. Okay? There’s your benchmark. How does that apply to you? Does it make sense for you? Uh, here’s another one. Like make sure your house, your mortgage is no more than what, three times your, uh, take home pay or something like that.
It’s like a third. You know, it shouldn’t be more than that, but it’s so broad and it doesn’t take into account certain things. I mean, if you’re making a lot of money young in age, and let’s say you’re making well into six figures, maybe a hundred, 120, $130,000, and let’s say you get a nice interest rate to start or whatever.
I mean, that might not apply at all. Maybe you can afford. 40% of your income right away, or 45 just to start. I mean, because you, you have so much excess income, you know, you don’t necessarily have to hold yourself to that rule of thumb. You, you have to just use that as a benchmark and then kind of know yourself and apply how that
applies to you.
Oh, gee, rules of thumb versus beginner advice is, or do you think rules of thumb or truly beginner advice? I guess I would say
that they probably are a starting point. I don’t think that all of them are bad, and I don’t, I honestly think that the way that I look at kind of the generic idea of a rule of thumb type of financial decision is you’re just trying to like point the boat in the right direction.
Are we, are we going west or north? Like we’re, we’re not trying to get exactly the degrees right, we’re just trying to like, like literally row in the right direction for now and then we’ll fine tune it later. Here’s one, you should contribute. The first amount of money from savings or for your savings should be to your employer match contribution.
Otherwise you’re quote, giving away free money. I think that’s perfectly fine. And for somebody who’s starting out and going, I don’t even, yeah, I don’t, should I save 5%, 10%, 30%? I don’t know. What’s the number? Should I pick? I think that’s a great place to start and say, well, at least I’m gonna do that because we know that if you did that for the next 40 years, you’d be fine.
You know? And so we’ve got like a hierarchy of where to save and, and, and, you know, and that sort of stuff, I think is, is a totally fine way to do it. But very quickly you have to transition from that to your point, Joe, and go, all right, now, now we’ve got at least people rowing in the right direction, or my money going in the right direction.
I need to spend some time here and decide what’s best for me. The reality is, is that when you’re 20 or 30 or 40, a lot of times you don’t have any idea what you wanna do in the future. I mean. 20 years is a long freaking time. I
think you’re talking about two different things. Oji. I think there’s uh, I think on one hand you’re talking about order of operations, which I like.
Yeah. You know, do this generally first. This generally second rule thumb. Sure. This generally third versus no, versus just a rule of thumb, which is some of the stuff len’s talking about like a 30 year money toward your house or only so much toward, you know, whatever that might be. Yeah. 50, 30, 20 spending plan.
Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Those things. Bert A, that order of operations versus rules of thumb, what do you think?
You know, I do believe that there should be an order of operations when it comes to certain things. Like I, on my platform, I’m pretty stringent about telling people, I don’t think you should be investing if you have 27% interest credit card debt.
Like, I think there’s an order of operations on that. Yeah. But I’ll say that I myself have been. Susceptible to rules of thumb that were not good for me. And so like a prime example is there’s a lot of rules of thumb of like what you should be doing at every age. So there’s like all these articles that are like, at twenties you should be doing this, and in your thirties you should be doing this, and in forties you should be doing this.
And where I got caught up on it was that I. My retirement plan, even though I’m 38, really looks more like a 55 year olds right now because I’ve been able to accumulate enough investments to retire early. And so when I was looking at what I should be doing at 30 something, I ended up being, uh, making some decisions that really didn’t make sense for my situation.
And I also think that what the rules of thumb, I loved, you know, what we’re talking about here is that, you know, you have to be able to understand, and I love the analogy of the boat of like a rules of thumb is like your basic guide map, right? Like, here’s where you’re going, we’re going in the right direction.
Yeah. But if a storm comes, if pirates like try to take over your ship, you gotta be able to like ditch the map and figure out what you’re doing next. And I think that’s where we talk about advanced advice.
That’s fabulous. Amazing coincidence, Bernadette, because. I’m 38 too, but my body looks 55, so it’s, it’s really, that’s weird.
Wow. Something’s starting to stink down here in the, I dunno what it is. I think that’s a great place to leave it. What I’d love to do in the second half after, uh, we take a little break for our trivia competition is, uh, let’s talk about basic tips in different areas of your financial plan, whether it’s getting outta debt, saving for retirement risk management, like what’s a great basic tip that you guys like, and then what is a grade advanced tip?
What’s kind of the 2 0 1 for all this? But before we get to that, as I alluded to, we are in the last three weeks of our year long trivia competition. And by the way, remember how last year, Len, uh, uh, we had a cake that OG made us watch him eat from a milk bar. Remember that? I remember that cake stacker filled.
After we had a guy at the beginning of the year say, I’d love to have a, have a cake. I’d love if there were a cake. And then that dude disappeared. We wrote him over and over and over about, Hey man, it’s cake time. And he just, no thank you. I don’t know. Sniffed us on the cake. But then stacker Eric in Detroit stepped up, who’s a wonderful man, and, uh, last year said, well, guess what?
He wrote me again yesterday and said, Joe, I would love to donate a cake again for the winner. So, and Bernadette’s like, wait a minute. There’s cake.
There’s cake.
I could see the lookout her face, if Paula wins Bernadette, you gotta go to her and say, Hey, I, I’ll claim this cake. I get part of the, yeah, I get part of your cake pant.
Come on. Uh, Bernadette, speaking of that, you’re playing on team, uh, Paula pant. Okay? Which means I’ve got good news and bad news for you here with three weeks to go. Do you want the good news first or the bad news? Bad news. Well, the bad news is, is that Paula’s gotta run the table to force a tie because she’s got 13 points and Len is in first place with 16.
So she’s gotta win this week, next week, and the week after for her to actually have any. Chance at the cake. Oh, okay.
Done. The I
I’m gonna win. I already know. Of course. The good news though, Bernadette, is that you are gonna be in the driver’s seat today. ’cause you get to guess last, you get to hear what everybody else is guessing.
Got. Len will guess first because he’s got 16 OG last week with our special two pointer. Pulled it within one 15. Points. So, man, 16 Delen. I was tied, I thought, I thought I tied it up last week. Nope, you’re well, you had 13 and you scored two points. So you are at 15. Where’s
the official record of this? Is this a Google doc
of some kind?
I feel like. Talk to producer Karen. Talk to producer. Karen Saw the Slack channel.
Karen didn’t know what was happening either. 16,
15, 13. I know this place
had rules. What is happening
exactly? Oh yeah.
We’ll, we’ll verify that. But one thing we do know is this is one of the more exciting years we’ve ever had.
’cause it is, we’re in the fourth quarter. There’s just a couple of minutes left. And, uh, OGs hoping for that ready to hit home run interception by the Michigan defensive
back. Whoever has the ball
last is gonna win this. I, I, that’s how it’s gonna work.
Well, you know what, to have a winner, we need a question.
Doug, what is today’s trivia question? Here we go. Hey
there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Speaking of advice, one piece of advice I got early in life was don’t join the mob. But that’s always been tough advice to follow because you know, I’ve always been a big fan of mafia movies, especially The Godfather.
Not to brag, but I read the book before I saw the movie. Rumor has it that the character Johnny Fontaine was based on Frank Sinatra, who many people believed had his career resurgence because of his alleged ties to the Mafiaa. Sinatra was furious about the rumor and threatened the author of the novel, Mario Puzo, even though Puzo insisted that he hadn’t intended for the character to be based on Frank.
After the confrontation, the character of Johnny Fontaine was reduced to a much smaller part, but the legend remains today. Frank likely wanted to protect his clean image as his kids were all adults by the time the movie came out and it could have soured their opinion of their father. Frank Sinatra Jr.
Had already been through enough by then having been kidnapped when he was a teenager. Which brings us to today’s trivia question. Frank Sinatra’s son was kidnapped on this day in 1963. How much was the ransom? Ooh, I’ll be back right after I pick up some cannoli
there. There is a, there is a great, and I don’t, I’m not even gonna say good.
There is a great TV series. I highly recommend. The bad news is. It is. Um, where do we figure out? It’s on Paramount Plus. It’s a Paramount Plus. Wow. I, I know which I think like three people subscribe to that thing, but it stars Miles Teller and, uh, it is the true story. It’s called the Offer. It’s the true story of how the Godfather Movies got made and it is surreal some of the stuff that happened.
It’s a phenomenal, so if you, uh, if you cancel some of your other subscriptions for a little bit, grab uh, paramount Plus and watch the offer. Highly recommend it. Alright, Len, you are up. First man, Frank Sinatra Jr. On today’s date in history was kidnapped. How much was the ransom, uh, did you say on this date?
In history?
Yes. On this date
in 1963, Frank Sinat Jr. Was
kidnapped.
Oh, that’s a good one. Well, inflation. What would a ransom
be? Then? You gotta make him an offer they can’t refuse. See, that was funny.
That was funny.
I liked that one. Every once in a while, Bernadette, every once in
a while you never come to me as a friend.
That was good. I’m
impressed.
Oh, Lordy. You just take your time, Len. I mean, whenever it’s good for you. I know
it’s a lot of editing Steve’s gonna
have to do. Yeah, sorry.
Um, I don’t know.
Uh, clearly that part we get
well, you
know,
I don’t, he really
thinks he’s gonna get this right. This is, I think that right.
Well, is this, is this what
normally happens? This is serious Birdette. Okay. This is serious. He
isn’t the lead. Right. So he’s this a
two-time winning trophy that he’s trying to steal.
I wanna say
something like $10 million. But the inflation, I mean, $10 million back then was like, just ridiculous. I mean that so.
I think it’s significantly less. Matter of fact, I’m gonna say it’s less than a million just because of inflation. Uh, I’m gonna say a quarter
million dollars, a quarter million from 10 million to two 50 a
quarter million
250,000. A quarter million. I think that’s from 1963. I think that’s a lot of, a lot of dough.
Okay.
Final answer. He’s not allowed to change,
right? He is not allowed to change. He’s locked in. og what do you think of, uh, $250,000?
Uh, so my question, I, I have a question, and maybe this is allowed or not. Uh, may, I know, always has a question. May may I know the age of Frank Sinatra Jr. Upon the kidnapping.
Oh, that is a good question because I, I can’t really frame out like where, how old Frank Sinatra was during that time.
No. If we let you know, then we have to have, we had to let Len, if he wants to amend his guess.
I deny that request. We’re not telling you these. Request denied.
Okay. Oh, that’s, oh, all right.
So Frank Sinatra in 1963,
it’s pretty hard. Corporate debt. I did not notice.
Yeah. When was he? He, he sounds, seems like somebody that might’ve been born in the teens, maybe twenties. I.
Wait a minute. Did you say Frank Sinatra? Frank Sinatra didn’t get kidnapped, did you? You said Frank Sinatra
Jr. No, I’m, I’m trying to figure out how old his kid would be.
Right. Junior. Settle down. We said Junior.
Okay, nevermind. He’s reverse
engineering His age is what he’s trying to get. Oh, okay. I, yeah. I
don’t understand. How old was Joe in 1963? Easy. Stop it.
No. Okay, stop it. I’m standing right here, so he’s maybe like age, Joe.
Was it sunny or cloudy that day? When,
I’m gonna say this was a botched, the whole, this, this whole thing was like just a botched thing.
It wasn’t, they didn’t know who they were getting, they just, they just randomly grabbed some Dude. I have the, the mafiaa, the
mob. They’re pretty precise of on that kind of stuff. I know,
but you know, Len Len’s thinking that this is actually, people know what’s up. I, I, this is a child’s play. $50,000. This is, this is hardly anything.
50,000. All right, Bernadette, on one hand you got two 50, you’ve got 50. Where are you putting the guests?
- Okay, I, I’m gonna tell you why I think this. I thought that was your
answer. 1,900
okay’s. Amazing. That was quick before all of the thinking here. I already had an answer in mind. So I’m gonna go high on this and I’m gonna say 300,000.
I was really gonna say half a million, but I’m gonna 300,000. And I say this because one, it’s the mob. Like why would they do anything for less than that amount of money? Two, it was Frank Sinatra’s son. So this is not like a ambassador or like a government official or whatever. It’s like someone legit famous back then, like that’s like our Justin Timberlake or Justin Bieber back in the day, right?
And if it was good enough to make the news or like that people knew about it, then it had to be a good amount of money. So I’m gonna go with 300 K,
300 k. So we’ve got 300,000 from Bernadette, we’ve got 50,000 from the og. And we got two 50 from Len. Guess what? We’re gonna let you know who the winner is right after this.
All right, Len, you kicked it off with 250,000 and uh, Bernadette gave you a little room on the top and OG gave you a heck of a lot of room on the bottom. You feeling good? Um,
no. I, I don’t know. It’s, I think it’s less than a million, but I don’t know. I have no idea where it’s at. Somewhere. What they’re gonna ask for Frank Sinatra Junior’s kid, so
I don’t know.
No. Frank Sinatra’s kid. It’s Frank Sinatra’s kid. Who is Frank Sinatra
Junior. Yeah. Frank Sinatra. Junior’s kid would get nothing. I mean, yeah, that’s, they wouldn’t pay any money.
It’s not Frank Sinatra’s grandkid, it’s Frank Sinatra’s kid.
Oh, well then I really don’t feel good at all
then. Bernadette’s got it.
Than Bernadette’s Got it. You think should have been higher then? Yeah. Well, yeah. Had you understood the question, but OG you were much lower at 50,000? How you feeling? Again, I think this is
just some sort of. Random crime of opportunity. Oh, they, I, I don’t know who the, you know, I don’t know how old he was.
Doug, Doug, some 8-year-old on the side of the street. They snap him up and they’re going, Hey, I’m gonna ransom this kid off. They, they, you know, just some low level criminal and not being able to tie all those things together. So Doug, is
he implying that some of this competition might have some randomness attached to it?
Is that what he’s trying to imply? I, I think he
is hinting around the edges of that. I think. I think maybe
there just might be a touch of randomness, but Bernadette, Len thinks you might have it. Honestly,
I think I have it too, but I’m just overly confident in anything
related to
trivia. I’d rather you have it than og.
’cause if OG gets it, than we’re tied.
Alright. Is Team Bernadette slash Paula still in the competition? If Bernadette’s right, they are. If, uh, Lenges that he pulls ahead, OG can force a tie. He’s Dormy Doug. Well, who’s got it?
Hey
there, stackers. I’m Italian food lover and cement boot maker. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, his rumored connections to the mob. Not withstanding, Frank Sinatra was known for his legendary temper, which made it all the more surprising that one of his kids could be the target of a kidnapping. Surely the singer and actor would’ve more than harsh words in store for anyone who attempted to hurt his family and extort him.
Today’s trivia question is Frank Sinatra’s son, Frank Junior, was kidnapped on this day in 1963. How much was the ransom? The answer. Frank Sinatra Jr. Was snatched out of his dressing room by three of his former classmates while he was on tour at the age of 19. There’s your answer, OG the perpetrators contacted the Elder Sinatra the following evening to demand a ransom that in today’s dollars was equal to 2.3 million, or in 1963, $190,000 more than what?
OG guest. $60,000 less than what? Bernadette guess, and $10,000 less than what Lend guest. It was $240,000 edging. Lend just a little bit closer to that coveted crappy trophy.
He’s gotta dormy. I should have done, I should’ve
done that. I’m devastated. I’m devastated.
Bernadette, we screwed this up. We needed to just sandwich him and just go, somebody at 2 49 and somebody at 2 51,
you’ve colluded
regrets.
That’s not the proper way to play this game. You can’t, the
proper way is to do it the old school way where if you’re over, you’re out. So I would’ve
won, I’ll say og, your formal request for an audit on the scores over the year has been submitted appropriately. We’ve, we’ve deemed, and so we will take a look at what the accurate and actual score was going into today’s competition because it’s close enough.
We wanna get, go to video, replay and get this right. Yeah. Just
like we would because it could matter. It could be over right now. I hope that
recount gives me an extra one. And then
we’re no longer dorm. That’s I win.
Like it could be over, we could have the last three weeks or two weeks. But lend your dormy now.
The best I can hope for is tying you. Which tie goes to the current champion? I
believe. No.
Nonetheless, you were already tied.
We already have today. We actually have a tie breaker in mind that we’ll share. Do if that happens. If that happens, we do have a tiebreaker. It involves nudity. It does.
I win
Bernie. That’s
like so happy. I’m not gonna. Next is Joe.
I’m so mad that I lost that question. To be honest, I haven’t been, I’ve been listening to what you guys been saying for the last five minutes.
You were
so close. You were so close. Nice job. Hey, uh, let’s move back to the serious stuff, the second half of our discussion about beginner advice versus advanced devices, brought to you by deposit accounts.com.
Bernadette, you know what happens when you go to deposit accounts.com. You deposit stuff in your accounts. Oh it’s, that’s so close. You find out that that brick and mortar bank you’ve been banking at might not have the best interest rates. In fact, I just pulled it up. Deposit accounts.com and today you’ll wanna go there yourself to see what rates are when this actually airs.
’cause we’re a few days before. But listen to this, the national average on a savings account, 0.49%, but when deposit accounts.com looked at over 275,000 different deposit rates from over 11,000 banks of credit unions, top 1% of those is 4.9%. So instead of 0.49, if you get up there to the top 1%, 4.9% CDs, a one year cd, national average.
4%, top 1% is 5.71. That number’s gone up significantly over the last few weeks. Anyway, uh, head to deposit accounts.com and you can compare what you are getting to what the top places in the nation are paying. Alright, let’s dive into the second half of this. And what I’d love to do is let’s get tactical now, guys, a basic piece of advice for getting outta debt.
Bernadette, you’ve taught a ton of people how to get outta debt. So let’s start with you. Basic tip for somebody who’s listening right now to begin that road to getting outta debt.
So the first step that I would tell anyone is before you even pay off debt, is to just have one month’s emergency fund. And so I tell people to figure out what your housing, your transportation, your utilities, your food, and your health costs would be for one month.
Because inevitably, while you’re trying to pay on debt, something will happen. That will derail you or will, or, or will demotivate you. And so having that contingency fund first before you start paying off any debt would be really
good. And I love Bernadette that you built that out because what a lot of people hear when they hear one month is money coming in.
Remember, there’s taxes, there’s, it’s what you need to live on, not what’s coming in. And those can be often, but much different numbers. Len, let’s build on that. What’s another piece of basic advice for somebody trying to get outta debt?
Gosh, this one might come off as, I dunno, cavalier almost, but I would say if you can get a second job or a side hustle and increase your income.
Yeah. And I wanna ask you about that burden of debt because you were able to pay that off in such a short time. I know our friends Ty and tell at McNeely, they started selling stuff around their house and it became a game adding to the income stream like Len talked about. How much was increasing your income a part of your strategy?
Uh, it was a huge part of it in the, in the first part of it, because I didn’t know how I could make more money. At the time I was working a full-time day job and I didn’t have a lot of other skill sets that I thought I could monetize. And so I did the same thing. I went and started selling stuff, um, from my house.
And I also, my husband, here’s a fun fact, he started doing extra work on tv. And so like if you watch like old seasons of like Homeland or some of these HBO shows, you’ll see this guy in the background that’s him and. He would get paid like 15 bucks an hour, but he would’ve probably done it for free, but we put it towards our debt instead.
Oh,
that’s cool. He’s having fun. Andy’s making money at the same time. Mm-Hmm.
And I think, you know, when people talk about side hustling, I love that Len said that, because that advice has kind of fallen out of favor lately. A lot of people have talked about like the anti hussle culture. Yeah. But at the end of the day, if you don’t have enough income to cover, you know, what you wanna do in, in terms of like aggressively paying down debt.
Like there’s no, there’s no shame in going and getting a retail job, like something that’s easy to
do. No. Once you’ve locked down your expenses, sometimes it just is an income problem, you know? And I love the phrase, you can’t shrink your way to greatness. Correct. Yeah. I just love, love that quote. Uh, og, let’s build on Bernadette’s advice and lens.
Simple advice, basic piece of advice, starter advice to get outta debt.
I think the biggest thing is you have to recognize that everything’s on the table. Once you make the decision that you don’t want debt in your life anymore, and now you’re committed to making it work, I think you have to recognize that every single solitary piece of money has to be counted, everything has to be on the table.
It doesn’t mean that you, you know, doesn’t mean like Dave Ramsey’s like, oh, you gotta go sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, you know, all that sort of stuff, like he says. But you have to be open to the fact that there’s gonna have to be some changes in your life. And if you start from the thought process of everything counts and I’m gonna build it up from scratch the way that I want it, you’ve got a much better likelihood of being successful.
Let’s go to more advanced advice then, Bernadette. So, uh, a more advanced piece of advice to maybe speed up the train.
So, uh, the beginner advice that people often hear in paying off debt is the debt snowball, right? So paying from lowest to highest balance regardless of interest. And generally, I’m a fan of it because it just helps you build momentum.
But the advanced version that I teach people is what I call the, the peaceful debt snowball, which is taking that list first, and I’m, I’m piggybacking off of what lent it earlier. Knowing yourself, right? And saying, okay, well here’s the initial list. This is the list from lowest to highest in terms of balances.
But then do I need to make trades on this list to push things up higher on the list that would help me sleep better at night? So a prime example I had recently was I had a client you had. Several hundred thousand dollars of debt. Everything from student loans to credit cards, car payments, and, and then debts that, uh, personal loans from family members.
And it was around this time during the holidays that we did the list from lowest to highest, uh, balance. But then I asked her, well, what do we need to put on top of the list that’s gonna help you sleep better at night? She’s like, I would really love to go to Thanksgiving and Christmas and not have to look at my cousin in the eye and know that I still owe them money.
So we moved that up even though it was zero interest and it wasn’t the lowest balance and it didn’t make sense in either of those, the rules of thumb. But for her, she felt so much better going into the holidays knowing that she could eat her mashed potatoes in peace.
Well, and what’s interesting about that is that the whole debt snowball thing is about building confidence.
And that gave her the confidence. Absolutely. Like it was doing, doing the same thing. The snowball does. Exactly, and,
and, and for her, she was able to stick to it longer because we got that thing that was out of the way. That was really like keeping her up at night. And I think for everyone, that’s where the advanced advice comes in, where it’s like you have to know what actually really matters to you, and you’re likely to stick to it longer if you’re actually doing it according to like what is going to motivate you.
That’s fabulous, Len. A more advanced piece of advice for people trying to get outta debt. Well, if
you
have a lot of credit card debt and you have multiple credit cards, if you can do balance transfers and transfer your higher interest debt into cards that have lower interest, so at least that way you will cut back on the interest expense that you are paying.
I think that’s kind of advanced.
No, I think it is too. And you’ll see a lot of people don’t give beginners that strategy specifically because people, people that are beginners think that solves your problem. That’s right. And I think it’s advanced because you just know that it speeds it up. So you gotta have that, still have that pit in your stomach before you do that, that says, I still need to be focused on this.
Yeah. You have to be committed. Exactly. You have to be committed to getting rid of your debt. Otherwise, yeah, all, all you’ve done is you’ve, uh, just said, oh look, I’m, you know, I’ve got more. I can spend more now. So,
yes, correct. Yeah. I love, I love that specifically as an example, because that’s very dangerous for beginners and it’s fantastic.
If you’re advanced, like you look at any CFO in the country, that’s what they spend their day doing is rearranging the debt for the company. Oh gee, how about you? Another one?
Yeah. I mean, both of these are really good. The only thing that I can add to that is using your other resources. As leverage to help pay off the debt.
It doesn’t work as great nowadays ’cause of the way interest rates are, but still, your interest rates on a home equity loan or the interest rates on a investment loan against your investment account, for example, is gonna be a lot more favorable than, you know, a credit card loan. The downside, of course, is that you start leveraging other things.
If you don’t have the discipline built in there and you say, okay, I’m gonna take all my credit cards and roll ’em into my house, you just took a, an, an asset that was protected and now you just gave it risk. You had your house, you know, paid off for example, or you had, you know, one loan on your house and maybe a hundred thousand dollars of of credit cards.
Yeah. Which are unsecured. You can make those go away just by not paying them and you know, like they’re not gonna come get your house, but now you roll it into your house or you’re tied to your investment account and do you know, an asset loan or you know, a business loan or some sort of other asset that you have that you’re gonna use to, to borrow against.
And you add another huge layer of risk associated with that. So if you’re not. Confident in your abilities to pay that stuff off or you don’t have a good system, then, then I would
say not to do that. You know, Joe, it occurs to me when I listen to Len and Bernadette and OG talk about mental approaches to this, it makes me think of the chicken.
Who asked the pig or suggested to the pig, Hey, let’s start a breakfast restaurant, and the pig said, what? Easy for you to say? And the chicken’s like, what are you talking about? It’s like, well, yeah, you’re motivated. I’m committed. Right. That’s true. Right? Like how committed are you to these ideas? ’cause the pig gets one shot at it.
Yeah. The chicken just keeps up pumping out eggs. Yes. The pig is committed. And how committed are you to really reducing your death?
Well, and I think, guys, this is a great example because. A lot of that advanced advice will get you there quicker, but it will also way slow you down. And, and I’ve seen so many people tripped up because they started with these advanced strategies.
Uh, I’m gonna throw one more on the table, which is a lot of people, I’ve talked a lot about how important communication is in your budget, whether communication with yourself, meaning that you’re using, you know, apps or resource or some type of a tool, and then you set aside time to look at this and to focus on it and to watch that work.
But what I often find is that people overdo the tool and they will, you know, we’re gonna meet every day for 45 minutes and it’s gonna be whatever, like this Camp David Summit for the whole family. And then pretty soon you’re not talking about your money at all because you’re so sick of it. But I do think that experimenting with apps and using communication and setting up a good pace is really a good advanced, uh, advanced piece of this as well.
Let’s move over to retirement. Bernadette, we’ll start with you again. Good basic tip. Saving for retirement.
Uh, good basic tip I tell people is to do $28 a day and so $28 a day. Yeah. $28 a day. It’s actually $28 and 40 cents. If you did that every day for a year, you’d have $10,000.
Ah, isn’t that funny how you take a number, like 10 grand, that sounds so huge, and you break it up to 30 bucks and you go, oh, I think I could do that.
Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm.
And so I tell people just, you know, like if you can find $28, whether it’s not getting paramount Plus or I don’t know, or uh, you know, selling something for $28, most people feel a lot more motivated thinking like, okay, that’s doable. Versus like, exactly what you said, $10,000 feels like
it’s a mountain.
Yeah. That’s fabulous, Len of a great basic piece of advice. Well,
you know, I think a few have already, we’ve already discussed, uh, earlier on, I mean like the 3% match or 5% or whatever your company match, do that. But since we’ve already done that, if you just want a fun little trick for saving and one of, one of my, uh, readers brought this up and I, and she’s not the only one, but which she took, ’cause every time she got a $5 bill, the rule was a $5 bill that came into her possession, went into savings immediately.
So then that was just a fun way to save money. Uh, a little extra on the side, you know, real basic. But hey, it guaranteed that every time you came into some of that, you know, $5 bill, you were gonna save some money. So, I know that’s very basic, but, um, hey, that’s what you get for
basic stack
of fives. That’s a good idea.
A big thing on TikTok right now is the hundred envelope challenge. That you see, you, you get these hundred little spots and you try to, you put money in each of them and you put different numbers on each of them. And then to your point, you just try to fill all these different things over whatever the course of time is.
For a lot of people, it’s a year and you save a bunch of additional money doing that.
Yeah. And it’s thousands, I can’t remember how much this lady saved, but it was thousands of dollars in, in a few years just by saving $5 bills. So, uh, it does work. Can I give
the millennial upgrade of lens? Yes. I was just thinking about it because I was just like, I never, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a $5 bill ever, like, recently or ever.
’cause I, I never carry cash. So how would I do this? And so my, my millennial, uh, take on it would be whenever people transfer you money on Venmo, instead of transferring it back to your cash or whatever, just transfer it into your IRA.
There you go. Letting us no idea what Venmo is.
I do. Yes. That’s a good
one.
Bernadette, auntie Bernadette. Meet Uncle Len. Exactly. og. Good basic, uh, tip for saving for retirement. Yeah. I mean, I
can’t get past the, just put money in your retirement plan at work to the match and, uh, don’t touch it for 45 years. Like, that’s really the simplest thing that you
can do. You know, I’m gonna add mine, which is, I think especially when you start out, you overthink, what do I invest in?
Find a good wide index. Put the money in that wide index, specifically like a total market index. When you begin and you’re gonna be completely diversified, you’re in stocks which are gonna go up or down, but you know what? With a long, long timeframe, that’s where you wanna be. And so don’t overthink it when you start.
Don’t overthink the asset allocation. Just get started. Get started. Uh, let’s go more advanced then Bernadette. More advanced a 2 0 1 strategy for Retirement Savers. So my 2 0
1 strategy, uh, building on what OG said here, is to go up to the maximum you can contribute in a year in your 401k and let that be your goal instead of opening up other accounts.
Because I see a lot of people who are opening up Acorns or Robinhood or all this other stuff and they think that they’ve maxed out because they, they said, oh, I put up to the match so I maxed out. And they don’t understand. That actually can put more than. Just the match, and you’re just simplifying how many accounts you have to track over time.
And so putting upwards of $20,000 is not an easy feat for most people. And so that would be an advanced way of still keeping things relatively simple, but just making the goal be the actual IRS contribution limit. And not just the match.
Well the, well, the thing that I love about that too is there’s another implied thing, which is so many people, as you know, I wanna have an account here, account here, account here, account here, so that I get all these buckets.
But to your point, Bernadette, I think the more advanced thing is you gotta have a dashboard. You gotta be able to see what the hell you got. Like if you’ve got money in 50 different pockets, it’s difficult to know where the hell you’re going.
That’s absolutely right. And I would say too, a lot of people, you know, in 20 20, 20 21, everyone is talking about dollar cost averaging.
Like, oh, it’s just like amazing strategy, right? And I’ve had to tell my clients, I’m like, do you know that just by putting your money in your 401k and your paycheck, you’re automatically doing dollar cost averaging? Like you don’t even have to think about it. So just do that instead of trying to dollar cost average some other
account.
It’s automatic, it’s fantastic. Len 2 0 1, instead of focusing,
I, I know a lot of people, they’ll focus on just indices. They’ll focus on the Dao or the Russell or, or uh, the NASDAQ and things like that. And that’s good, and you diversify that way. But start thinking about ways to diversify even further than that.
Break into things like sectors, energy sectors or food sectors, utilities, different types of commodities. Do your research and decide for yourself which ones are under invested in and which ones where investments will be needed in the future. Start looking deeper into ways to really, really get into diversification and break things down rather than just into the higher level indices.
My,
actually, I’m gonna piggyback off that, Len, because my advanced one was going to be the kind of the 2 0 1 of what I said in the first round, which is begin to worry about your asset allocations much more specifically when the amount of. The technical word I think is jiggle. The amount of jiggle in your portfolio on a daily basis matters more than what you put in.
That’s when it makes sense to actually then get away from just putting money in a broad index and starting to think about what really fits my goal better like that. Did you save that for later? I think all the people on Wall Street use the term jiggle. Jiggle. I like it. Did you go to the
bar down by the airport again, Joe?
To see some jiggle in the
broad.
I, oh man. og, how about you? Uh, bring us back. I’ll reel us
back in here. So I, mine’s kinda like a two part one. Uh, just sticking on retirement planning and retirement savings if you don’t have the opportunity to contribute to the maximum that 22 and half thousand, or soon to be 23, I think next year, right?
Mm-Hmm. Set up the automatic escalation every single six months of, you know, 1%, 2%, whatever. And you will never miss it. You will eventually max it out and you’ll be fine. And, and so that’s kind of phase one of that. And then phase two is just ’cause you got to 22,000 or 23 doesn’t mean you’re done. You can start doing excess contributions if your plan allows it beyond the maximum to really start kind of putting your foot on the gas pedal from a, from a tax-free accumulation.
This is the ubiquitous mega. Backdoor Backdoor Roth. The Mega Doug, the mega Doug’s mom. They’re
still
allowing the Backdoor Roth. I thought they were trying to get
rid of that backdoor Roth. There was a movement for a minute. Uh, no. It’s maybe a year and a half ago, but it’s still there. It’s still there,
man.
Okay. Yeah. Hammer down if you can. Do Doug’s mom. Get after?
No. Okay. No.
What? Well, isn’t that what we decided
to, that is what we decided, Bernadette is, it’s an old joke, but we, we, yeah. You don’t know what we, but the Mega Backdoor Roth, we just hate that name. Yeah. So we came up with a new name and whenever we say Mega Backdoor Roth, instead we decided, we’d say Duck’s mom.
I like, I mean. Okay.
Yes.
Yes. And, and it isn’t any better. It should have been something better, but we couldn’t come up with any better. So,
but anyway, that’s my major one. If you get a chance to do Doug’s mom, have at it. No. No. You
know. No, no,
no. Hi, Doug’s mom, by the way, I’ve never met you before. Yes, but,
oh, Jesus sweet lady.
She’s a very nice lady and doesn’t
deserve any of this. She listens to every episode and hates og Doug.
Doug deserves every second of this. His mom deserves none. Uh, I think that’s a horrible place to leave it, but you know what? I think we are gonna leave it right there. Let’s find out what’s happening.
Where each of you are, man. December holidays, og. What are you guys doing this weekend?
Uh, absolutely. Uh, nothing. Watch an army Navy game. Go Navy beat Army.
Right? We’re gonna have our guest of honor go last, Mr. Penso, what’s coming up@lendpenso.com? Hey, you know what I’m
gonna bring up? Uh, it’s uh, one that’s a few years old now, but, uh, uh, I did a article is a well received, uh, got a lot of comments on financial rules of thumb.
I think it’s apropos considering what we were talking about today. So, uh, yeah, come on by len penso.com and you can see, uh, I think I’ve got about 15 rules of thumb. And for the most part, why, uh, reasons why they’re not necessarily good to take as gospel.
Love it as a guy that I will always fight for. The fact that you don’t need rules of thumb.
It’s not that much harder to begin with your own goal, and it’s so much better and it’s so much stickier. It’s so much. More fun, and frankly, you’re smart enough to, to take that approach. Bernadette, thanks so much. I apologize for these yahoos, but thank you so much for, uh, joining us
today. Well, thank you so much for having me.
And this weekend I’m actually writing, uh, my first chapter of my book is due this weekend, so I’ll do nothing but oh writing. Um, but funny enough, I’m writing about 25 money habits that I think people can use to get started. So not the advanced stuff, beginner stuff. And so hopefully that’ll be helpful for people in the future.
Sweet. Well, you definitely have to come back and you definitely have to come back when the book’s released ’cause we need to dive into some of that with our stackers ’cause. Okay. It’s great stuff for now though. Let’s, let’s talk about the podcast. What’s coming up?
So we actually just finished the, uh, this season, season six with my co-host, Stef Gonzalez.
And, uh, we are looking forward to getting more people in the new year who’s gonna talk more about advanced strategies, uh, particularly around investing. So in 2024, look out for, uh, more advanced talk around investing for people who are wanting to retire
early. Well, you know what this does too. This gives everybody a chance to catch up all our stackers that don’t know the show yet.
Can, uh, can catch up and you’re on every platform, right? Wherever they’re listening to us. Now,
wherever you’re listening to this podcast, you can listen to the Crush Your Money Goals podcast and we go by season. So we like to have binge worthy type of stuff so you can binge us all in like a couple days maybe for the holidays.
That’s fabulous. Uh, and we’ll link to it in the show now. It says We will lens a post and, uh, won’t be linking to the Army Navy game, but we’ll all be. Why not? Yes, we will. Well, Kevin, make sure you link to the Army navy game. All right. That’s
that. That’s gonna do it today. I think he felt a little Moy there.
He’s like, why won’t you? I just, oh, you’re doing it. You shoulda have done
the mob, mob
voice again.
Doug. Bring us home, man. Uh, what’s our to-dos from today’s episode?
You know what? Well, first we had a, to-do mid episode, Joe, because I reached out to our audit firm that we use Dewey Cheatham and how, and, uh, they looked into our trivia scores just to confirm.
And, uh, we have confirmed that going into last week’s Friday Roundtable episode, Len was three points ahead of og. Then in that episode it was a game show episode, so there were two points available and og, yes, you captured both points, but that brought you one point behind Len as we correctly reported at the beginning of our trivia segment.
So yeah, you’re screwed.
Got two weeks left.
All we needed was the end of that sentence, og, you’re screwed.
Okay, so let’s get back to our, to-do list. Well, Joe first take some advice from Bernadette Joy and consider maxing out your 401k contributions up to the IRS limit so you can your mashed potatoes with peace of mind.
Second, take some advice from OG and realize that when you’re trying to right your ship, absolutely everything is on the table. That means yes, you’re gonna have to sell your bitch and Camaro and possibly your cat. Hey, look, Cooper, don’t look at me like that. I don’t make the rules, but what’s on my to-Do list.
I gotta take out an insurance policy on myself in case I’m ever kidnapped by three people I know. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Joe Lynn, and og. Thanks to Bernadette Joy for joining us today. You can find all things Bernadette on her podcast Crush Your Money Goals wherever you are listening to us right now.
We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com because OG yelled at us to do so. Thanks also to Len Penso. Thanks also to Len Penso for joining us today. You can find len@lenpenso.com slash what’s Venmo? Thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning.
Help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. This show is the Property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earnin and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of this show Engineered by Tina Eichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Youngen are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
Say hello when you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.
I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. No, no, I want,
I should get my rifle.
You’ll shoot
your eye out kid. Merry Christmas.
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