Here’s a rewritten version of your “Gold Prices Hit All-Time Highs (What’s That Mean To Us?)” show notes — polished for clarity, SB voice, and listener engagement, with your established tone and avatar in mind:
When gold shines, so do the hot takes—and today, the Stacking Benjamins crew dives into what this record-breaking surge really means for your money. Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug kick off the week with their signature Monday salute to our troops before digging into the glittering headlines: gold prices are hitting new highs… but does that make it a smart investment or just financial fool’s gold?
From breaking down why gold spikes when markets wobble to questioning whether it’s truly the “safe haven” it’s cracked up to be, the guys unpack the myths, mindset, and math behind precious metals. You’ll also hear fresh strategies for weathering volatile markets, balancing your asset allocation, and staying cool when everyone else is panicking. And of course, Doug drops in with a TikTok Minute, a trivia challenge, and one listener’s wild math-powered success story that somehow involves an Olive Garden. (Breadsticks optional.)
So grab your coffee, your calculator, and maybe your lucky coin—because this episode proves that in the unpredictable world of investing, sometimes the smartest move is knowing why you’re holding what you’re holding.
What You’ll Learn
- Why gold prices are climbing and what that might signal about the global economy.
- The myth of “safe haven” assets: When gold works, when it doesn’t, and why diversification still wins.
- Smart portfolio moves for volatile times—without letting emotions tank your returns.Real-life stories and lessons from Stackers proving that good math (and a little luck) can go a long way.The lighter side of finance: Breadsticks, TikTok, and trivia—because learning about money doesn’t have to feel like homework.
Questions You’ll Want to Answer:
Have you ever made a “safe” financial move that didn’t turn out as safe as you thought?
Do you view gold as an investment, insurance policy, or just a shiny distraction?
What’s your go-to strategy when markets start getting rocky?
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our TikTok Minute
Our Headline
- Gold Price Hits $4,000 an Ounce as Record-Breaking Climb Continues (Wall Street Journal)
- Gold Is No Safe Investment (Commodities Futures Trading Commission)
Doug’s Trivia
- What was the name of the hit film about the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- “Rich Dad Poor Dad” Author Robert Kiyosaki Predicts a Stock Market Crash in February: What Should Investors Do If He’s Right?
- Shielding Your Portfolio: Smart Strategies for Market Volatility
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we welcome a guy who knows how to deliver the WOW and will teach you the same…he’s the longtime Chairman and former CEO of Royal Caribbean Group—Richard Fain.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: How to Build a Confident Early Retirement Plan (Without Overthinking It) SB1746
Episode transcript
[00:01:04] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:19] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. There’s gold in them. Our hills. Gold hit a new high last week. So what does that mean? Should you invest in gold? Nothing. [00:01:29] OG: Oh, sorry to interrupt. [00:01:32] Doug: I’m working here, man. That’s [00:01:33] OG: my outside voice when I meant to have my inside voice. Apologies. [00:01:36] Doug: Yeah, should you invest in gold? [00:01:38] Doug: What other investments are best for a potential down market? We’ll cover all of that and more on today’s show. Plus, what if you won the lottery? We’ll share a TikTok minute with some advice you won’t wanna miss, and we’ll also share a math story. Oh, I didn’t, I was told there would be no math. Anyway, we’re gonna share a math story from a stacker who’s flexing her skills at the Olive Garden, and even after all that, you’d better believe I’m bringing you some fresh money trivia right out of the oven. [00:02:12] Doug: Oh, that’s bad. Foreshadowing right there, Joe. And now two guys who spend their days wondering how to help you earn more, save better, and spend more wisely. It’s Joe and oh Ju Ju Jean. [00:02:30] Joe: Yes. Dougie Wright. We have an action backed agenda today. I don’t like it. I don’t like where that’s going. It’s gonna be a wild ride on the Stacky Benjamin Show today. Hey everybody. Happy Monday. Buckle up Buttercup, because we’re bringing it. We’re talking about gold. And the gold on this podcast. We called him Goldie. [00:02:50] Joe: Mr. OG is here. How are you man? [00:02:52] OG: I did not approve this. Um. Uh, subject matter today, just for the record. [00:02:58] Joe: Well, we got some big news, uh, on gold. We got some huge news. No, we didn’t. You think we did? It is amazing news. Stop. And I’m glad Doug got OG right in the right mood for [00:03:09] Doug: this particular topic. How, how do you know it’s a slow news day when your headlines are about gold? [00:03:16] Doug: I don’t, it, it, it was front [00:03:18] Joe: page, top of the front page of the Wall Street Journal last week. So whatever you guys can poo poo, [00:03:26] OG: like do the announcements, you know, at a football game and they’re like. And now the visitors starting lineup, you know, playing left tackle Bob Smith and the whole stadium goes, who cares? [00:03:38] OG: And then, and then they’re like starting right, tackle Jim Johnson, who [00:03:42] Joe: cares? The Wall Street Journal does their headline. Who cares? Who cares? This is [00:03:45] OG: my entire an, this is gonna be my answer to all of this. I’m just, you said something about foreshadowing Doug. I am fores. I’m just not even there. There’s no shadows. [00:03:54] OG: This is just the sunlight. Who cares? [00:03:57] Joe: This is gonna be such a great episode. Right? So you say you do not wanna miss this and you know, og, there are people who are seeing. Well, the headline I’m gonna mention and they Oh, care. [00:04:09] OG: Oh, sorry. [00:04:10] Joe: And they are wondering, Hmm, should I get into this? Hmm. And there’s a bunch of other questions that are gonna flow from this [00:04:19] OG: actually. [00:04:20] OG: Yes, everyone should, to leave more stock for me, [00:04:23] Doug: we’re gonna get like 15 minutes into this and OGs gonna start saying, warm up the bus. Warm up the bus, [00:04:31] OG: take this ass beaten like a man, and get up on the bus. And get on outta here. [00:04:36] Joe: We’re gonna warm up the podcast heaters. It sounds like we’re already heated up and ready to go, but we got a couple sponsors and make sure we can keep bringing it to you like we’re going to today. [00:04:47] Joe: So we’re gonna hear from them and then OG Doug and I getting into it, talking about gold. [00:04:56] headlines: Hello, doling, and now it’s time for your favor, part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines [00:05:03] Joe: headline of The Wall Street Journal last week, last Tuesday in fact. Gold prices top $4,000 for the first time. This is written by David Oody and Ryan. [00:05:16] Joe: December. Record Run for Futures comes Amid concerns about the economy’s outlook. They write. Gold surpassed $4,000 of Troy Ounce for the first time in history signaling an investor rush into alternative assets at a time of concern about the outlook for the US economy and its place in the world. The price of the precious metal has surged this year more than it did during some of America’s biggest crises. [00:05:43] Joe: Rising more than 50% futures run up in 2025, has outpaced rallies during the pandemic and the 2007 2009 recession. Not since the inflationary shock at 1979. Has gold catapulted, I love that word, catapulted so much higher in a year. Big news for gold. Well, as long as they weren’t bombastic about it, it didn’t, didn’t get all excited. [00:06:14] Joe: Well, 1979, I mean, oh gee, that’s been a long time since we’ve seen this type of a rush on gold. I mean, if you take a look at, uh, what, fourth quarter of last year, we were sitting at $2,000 an ounce, and now we’re over 4,000. Price of gold in less than a year has doubled. [00:06:36] OG: Uh, hold on, let me get my, uh, my note out. [00:06:38] OG: What did I write here? Oh, yeah, who cares? Sorry. Do I need, do I need to, can we just end like to move on? This is. Please. Please don’t make me do it. [00:06:52] Doug: Og, tell us why some other people care about this, not you. You said this would be a fun [00:06:56] Joe: show. I know the piece of this that I really wanna focus on and the piece that I know is that investors are gonna read and go, oh, should I do something? [00:07:08] Joe: Might not be about gold, and we’ll get back to gold here in a moment. But before we do that, halfway through this first sentence, signaling an investor rush into alternative assets at a time of concern about the outlook for the US economy and its place in the world. So what the Wall Street Journal’s saying here is because of worry, people are looking for a safe haven. [00:07:37] Joe: That’s why gold up. Huge in the past year. So let’s not focus on the gold. Let’s focus on this idea of searching for a safe haven og. Because you can’t read a first sentence in a Wall Street Journal piece and not think to yourself, oh, should I be doing something? I mean, you know, there’s a ton of stackers out there just going, oh, all these people buying these quote safe assets. [00:08:05] Joe: Should I be doing something? We’ll go back to gold. But this flight to safety, [00:08:09] OG: I, I don’t even see that the stock market’s at darn near an all time high. The government hasn’t been working for like three weeks. Everybody’s like, well that sucks, except it doesn’t. ’cause they don’t really do anything anyway, and the market’s just chucking along. [00:08:24] OG: Oh, he’s bringing it today. You know, there’s people in the government that work really hard, generally, not our elected officials, but the servicemen and women that we just talked about. Air traffic controllers need to make sure our planes get to where they need to go. Law enforcement people and so on and so forth. [00:08:40] OG: But, um, it doesn’t hurt my feelings that the elected guys are taking a little mid-semester break. You know, they can’t screw anything up while they’re all sitting at home. But what are we worried about? What do you think is gonna be better than, you know, the greatest, most well capitalized companies in the entire history of mankind, a lot of which do a lot of business here in America, or a blump of, of metal that doesn’t do anything ever, ever. [00:09:09] OG: It doesn’t produce anything, ever. It never does a thing. I was looking for this article ’cause uh, as soon as you se started talking about gold, I remember this piece that I read about, uh, Warren Buffett and Gold. And, um, Warren Buffett very famously bought his first stock sometime just after World War ii, and I don’t know the exact date, but you know, there’s the story of him having a hundred dollars and he bought his first stock and you know, that kind of. [00:09:38] OG: Sparked his curiosity into, uh, investing and of course buying the buying, uh, Berkshire Hathaway. If Warren Buffett would’ve invested, and he told this story, if he would’ve invested $10,000 in gold when he bought his stock, his first stock, he would’ve purchased 300 ounces of gold. Right? And so Warren Buffett takes us 300 ounces of gold and puts it in a nice, safe deposit box that no one can ever touch and lets it sit until today. [00:10:10] OG: How much money does Warren Buffett have? Well, you just told me that it’s $4,000 an ounce right now. So Warren Buffett bought 300 ounces back in 1942 right after Pearl Harbor. And that gold has grown from whatever the hell he bought at $10,000, 300 ounces. Today it’s worth $4,000 an ounce. Today he has 4,000 times 300 is 1.2 million, right? [00:10:32] OG: I was gonna say that. Pretty good return. What has the s and p returned over that same period of time? Just give me a ballpark guess. You just, okay. We all know that the number’s more, but what do you think? Let’s go 10 x, so 12 million instead, Dougie. [00:10:51] Doug: I was gonna say, I think it’s gone up, I don’t know. [00:10:54] Doug: 10,000? [00:10:55] OG: Yes. A thousand X. So that’d be 10000% I guess, right? Yeah. Right. So a thousand X. So your $10,000 invested in the greatest, most well capitalized companies in the entire history of the universe at all times, by the way, because its self cleaning has grown to be worth a hundred million dollars, or it’s grown to be worth a million dollars. [00:11:23] Doug: I’m interested in the self-cleaning part. How do I get in on that? ’cause showering takes up way too much time. [00:11:28] Joe: Well, it’s actually really cool. I mean, when you invest in an index. You are only buying the 500 companies that represent that economy, let’s say the SB 500, you’re, you’re buying those 500 companies. [00:11:42] Joe: And when a company does poorly enough that it no longer represents that index anymore, they take it out. You don’t have to do anything. It’s sent down to the miners. [00:11:52] OG: Yes. Relegated. Yes. It gets relegated. It gets relegated, right? Yes. And then a new team comes into the Premier League. I’ve got another piece that I found that I actually have at the ready. [00:12:03] OG: I like literally have this on my desk at all times. ’cause it’s the most updated one that has some other interesting inflationary data from, uh, 1980 till present. Again, thinking about gold inflation hedge, you know, and, and maybe that kind of dovetails a little bit, Joe, into your topic around worries about the economy or whatever. [00:12:23] OG: Um, in 1980, gold was $800 an ounce. And in today you said 4,000, so you know roughly a four and a half X return over that, uh, 45 year period, right? Four and a half x. The CPI was 78, and today is three 50, roughly 4.5 x. So you’d say, well, see, I told you gold is a perfect hedge of inflation. If of course you could actually use gold for anything in your day-to-day use. [00:12:59] OG: What was the s and p in 1980? Oh, man, I’ll tell you today, we can say it’s maybe 6,000. I, I, you know, plus or minus, depending on the day, whatever. Okay. 6,000, what was it in 1980, so gold, 800 to 4,000. That was a four and a half X return, CPI 78 to 3 54 and a half x return s and p today, 6,000. What was it before then? [00:13:27] OG: 19 80, 62. Not a terrible guess, 115. So one 15 to 6,000. So, uh, by my, uh, back of the envelope calculation, let’s go 50 x return. So you got four and a half X or 50 x, which one of these two is gonna be a better return of inflation. In fact, the dividends have grown at a rate faster than inflation of your, of your s and p holdings. [00:13:55] OG: Under no circumstances should you look at gold as an investment, um, marginally a store of value, where you might say, well, it’s gonna keep up with inflation. Okay, I could agree with that, but I would ask you from an investment standpoint, why in God’s name would you want to just keep up with inflation? [00:14:15] OG: Like to what end? You need to outpace inflation so that you can account for ups and downs in investing and all that other sort of stuff that happens in life. And if you’re at the point in your life. Where you are at a point of success, whatever that looks like, you’ve saved a million dollars, you’ve saved $5 million, you have some amount of money. [00:14:35] OG: Why in the world would you now say, okay, all that hard stuff, the 30 years that it took me to get to this point, now I’m gonna finally start being able to compound this at some good rates. Hold on a second. I don’t want to do that anymore. I had this huge success over my entire life, compounding, using the markets, investing, and watching it grow. [00:14:54] OG: And now I’ve got a, a sum of money that I’m gonna say now, I never want this to grow ever again. I never want this to compound beyond, you know, so whether it’s gold or cash or fixed income or annuities or whatever the heck you wanna look at for safety, why would you wanna do that? Nothing in your life up to this point has proven to you that that’s the way to do it. [00:15:16] OG: Go pull up your net worth statement from 10 years ago and look at it today, and it’s probably grown. 2, 3, 4 x if you’ve been saving and investing money. You’ve already demonstrated the ability to have 300, 400 x or three or 400% returns on your own net worth by saving and investing in the market and so and so forth. [00:15:37] OG: Why would you wanna now just go, well, thank God I’ve got $5 million. I don’t wanna do that ever again. Like keep doing it. Do the thing that worked. You already have the recipe card and all of this other sort of stuff. Your whole life, you’ve disregarded, oh my gosh, the economy and the market might go down tomorrow, but now all of a sudden you should do that. [00:15:57] OG: So dumb. So shame on the Wall Street Journal for this nonsense. I get that. It’s 4,000 a ounce. [00:16:03] Joe: All they’re doing. OG is looking at just a point int it is a point in history. Gold prices are higher than they’ve ever been before. [00:16:12] OG: Yeah. But all the other sort of stuff around like, because people are concerned about the falling economy and the, the lowering of the US and the world. [00:16:21] OG: Whatever the hell they said, it’s like what? [00:16:25] Joe: And heard that at all anywhere. I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it from Jamie Diamond. I’ve heard it from people on CNBC nearly every day. Oh, [00:16:33] OG: well I guess maybe I don’t listen to that ever. So yeah, [00:16:36] Joe: people saying that the economy might be coming down over the, over the short run, but let’s get into that. [00:16:41] OG: Oh, so, so let’s predict that the markets might go down sometime in the future. [00:16:45] Joe: Well, I can predict that right now. The answer is yes. Wow. The answer is it’s going to happen. When they were talking about the price of gold, what we’re talking about here, stackers are gold futures, right? These, these futures get traded. [00:16:58] Joe: And the price of gold. The price of gold, and looking at where gold’s going to be in the future. So taking delivery on gold, I blame Costco. [00:17:09] OG: They’re selling of their little gold nuggets lately that they’ve been doing [00:17:12] Joe: that, that, that Costco’s to blame for all this. Yes, I would love that as the Wall Street Journal first line, the Costco run up on gold, [00:17:19] OG: the Costco effect. [00:17:21] OG: They can’t, they can’t charge more than a dollar 50 for a hot dog and a Coke, but, but they make it up on gold. They make it up on gold, gold futures. [00:17:27] Joe: That’s where they get you, they get you with a little gold coin. When we take a look at just this idea of, first of all, we’ll get to safe haven, but let’s talk about gold in particular, OG as a safe haven. [00:17:40] Joe: I have a piece right here that we’ll link to in our show notes from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. This is a US government agency. Uh, it’s, it’s cftc.gov is the website. Headline. Headline. Why every time that we talk about safe havens over the last 15 years, do people always run to gold? Every single time they run to gold? [00:18:03] Joe: The CFTC, the government agency looking out for people says Gold is no safe investment. That’s the headline, OG from the Government Agency. Gold is no safe investment, and this is what the government writes on this piece. Maybe you’ve seen the commercials on tv, videos on the internet receive something in the mail. [00:18:25] Joe: They predict economic instability and use graphs of past performance to quote, prove gold, silver, or some other precious metals. Not only your safest bet but is destined to double or triple in value. The truth is gold and other precious metals are highly volatile, and past performance is not a good predictor of future returns. [00:18:45] Joe: If sales pitches also include a lot of doom and gloom or high pressure sales tactics, they could be setting you up for fraud. Then it goes into who does buy gold and why people buy gold. But I remember a great journalist named Walter Updegrave several years ago talking about gold being eight times more volatile on a daily basis, just on a daily basis than the stock market eight times. [00:19:08] OG: Yeah. [00:19:09] Joe: So if I’m worried about the stock market, why am I jumping into something on a daily basis that’s eight times more volatile? And back to your original point, also something that doesn’t grow where the stock market has one eighth of the volatility on a daily basis and grows over time because you’re buying the biggest companies in the world. [00:19:32] Joe: Don’t get it. I don’t understand. And yet. People profit off this stuff og. I mean, there’s so many people that profit off the doom and gloom, just profit off it. I got a piece here from the Motley Fool. Let’s go back to February 4th of this year. Here’s the Motley Fool headline. Rich Dad, poor Dad, author Robert Kiyosaki, predicts a stock market crash in February. [00:19:57] Joe: What should investors do if he’s right? Robert Kiyosaki, by the way, not only wrote Rich Dad, poor Dad, he’s also called 28 of the last two downturns that we’ve had. [00:20:09] OG: Yeah, [00:20:11] Joe: since February 4th. Since you’ve been qui, you’ve been quizzing us on the s and p 500 long term. Just this year, what’s the stock market done? [00:20:18] Joe: If you reinvested dividends, if you, if you bought the SP 513% and you reinvest, sorry, 13. Since February 4th, only eight. Ah, only eight. Yes, it’s gone up 8%. There has been no monster, monster downturn that Robert Kiyosaki predicted. [00:20:36] OG: Weird [00:20:37] Joe: if you’d taken his advice. [00:20:39] OG: So just something else to chew on here for just a quick second. [00:20:43] OG: Is it that gold is going up or is the dollar value going down? [00:20:48] Doug: Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point, an excellent question. The first time somebody said that to me, it kind of blew my mind. [00:20:55] OG: What about the second time? ’cause it never occurred to me young. What about the second time? That was [00:20:58] Doug: a long time ago. [00:20:59] OG: Did I give you a little something? I was trying to hang on to that little nugget, get it to the very end, and then just, just set that off to the side and just see if that was a story early [00:21:10] Doug: on in my adult life. I remember an older guy saying that. The value of gold has never changed. It’s the value of whatever currency is sort of based on it. [00:21:21] Doug: I, I was like, whoa. Never thought of that. Hmm. [00:21:25] Joe: One of the nation’s biggest advisors, Peter Malu, when he was on the show, talked about whether it was 500 bc 17 hundreds, or today, the same amount of gold bought a suit. So if you wanted to dress up nice in 500 BC or you wanted to dress up nice in 1700, you wanna dress up nice today, you’d use about the same amount of gold. [00:21:51] Joe: Great store of value. In fact, I think his quote was to OG that if I was getting into a time machine, then I wouldn’t take dollars stocks. ’cause over 5,000 years, I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I don’t know which currency is gonna be there. So I don’t know whether I’d take dollars or, or euros, or what the heck. [00:22:06] Joe: I’d say yen, I don’t know what I’d take. But I would take gold ’cause I know that what I’m buying today is gonna, I’m gonna have exactly the same amount. It’s so [00:22:15] OG: funny that you said that because I just put something in Chachi bt just to see what it would say. And it literally says, over centuries, gold’s purchasing power is fairly stable. [00:22:23] OG: One ounce of gold. Bought a fine men’s suit in ancient Rome, a fine men’s suit in 1942, and a fine men’s suit today. Even Chad, GPT listening to Peter Maeu on our [00:22:33] Joe: show. [00:22:33] OG: Yeah. Or is it the other way around me? No, no, it’s [00:22:35] Joe: Chad, GPT spying. Honestly, you know. We all know that. [00:22:38] OG: Always listening, Sam Altman always listening. [00:22:41] OG: So frustrating. [00:22:42] Joe: After the break, we’re gonna talk about what do you do if you’re worried it, it’s understandable At any point that you’re worried about market volatility, uh, sane people worry about volatility. What do you do? We told you what not to do. Don’t buy gold. Don’t fall for the sales pitches. [00:22:59] Joe: Don’t look into these guarantees. We may get back into that again, but uh, we’ve got some direction for you after the halfway point, which we’re gonna call that right now. Doug, you’ve got today’s amazing, I’m sure. Trivia question. Sure [00:23:16] Doug: do Joe. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and hey Joe. [00:23:22] Doug: You know, it’s October. I feel like we should be cranking up the scariness in the trivia, don’t you think? Well, if a scary of money, I mean, let’s do it. What do you got? Mine? Oh. I got one. I was wondering what the insurance claims would’ve been for these people. Check this out. Today is the anniversary of the crash of the plane filled with Ian. [00:23:44] Doug: Is that even a thing? Is that what we call those folks? The rugby team from Uruguay that crashed in the Andes? Yep. Let’s not do that one. Wait a minute. Hold on. Just hear me out. They made a major movie about it. You, you remember the story? The crash survivors would have to resort to cannibalism to survive the 72 days until their rescue only 16 of the 45 people on board made it through 12 died in the crash or shortly thereafter, another five died by the next morning. [00:24:13] Doug: And one more succumbed to injuries on the eighth day. Oh God, I remember this. Isn’t this where they Yep, that’s exactly, and I think this is a good time probably to remind everybody that today’s episode is sponsored by Sweet Baby Rays. Great. On the other white meat? Nope. We’re not doing it. Nope. Okay. Nope. [00:24:33] Doug: All right. Fine. Look, I’m, I’ll clean it up a little bit. Okay. Here’s the question. What was the name of the Benjamin Stacking movie about this catastrophe? [00:24:51] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m trivia lover and guy who’s starting October by risking my employment with this one. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Ah, Hollywood. They can take any catastrophe and turn it into millions, can’t they? This is how bad the Ian, again, not sure that’s the term we’re looking for. It, it, it could be rites. [00:25:14] Doug: Anyway, the rugby team from Uruguay had it. Here’s how bad they had it. After managing to survive 16 days, the few survivors left were hit by an avalanche killing eight more survivors. Oh my God. But. But for one man who lived there was a strangely happy ending. Shortly after the movie about the Calamity came out, survivor Jose Luis Inciarte won a $2.5 million lottery jackpot, sharing it with his family. [00:25:45] Doug: Man, how lucky was that guy? I bet the other survivors would’ve given an arm and a leg to win that lottery. Nope, nope, [00:25:51] Joe: nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, [00:25:53] Doug: nope. But what was the name of the hit film about the horrible incident? It was called Alive, ironically. And now two guys who like to say it’s alive whenever the market goes up. [00:26:10] Doug: Back to Joe and og. [00:26:13] bumper: Hi, I’m Jamila Sufran, and when I’m not helping people launch the financial freedom, I’m Stacking Benjamin’s. [00:26:20] Joe: I have to say, I’d never wanted to see that movie. I heard what a hit it was. I heard how disturbing it was. I [00:26:26] Doug: didn’t see the original Alive, but I saw the foreign language film that, well, it just won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film two years ago. [00:26:34] Doug: Society of the Snow, same thing. Quite good. Yeah. About the same [00:26:40] Joe: incident. [00:26:40] Doug: Oh yeah, sorry. It’s the exact incident. Yeah, it’s just an updated version of it and I, I would say it’s definitely worth watching. Oh, I didn’t see the other candidates that were up for that particular Oscar. Not sure it was like best, but I would watch it. [00:26:56] Doug: I would, I would recommend it. Society of the Snow. [00:26:59] Joe: Another horrifying disaster. Wasn’t it called Alive, the John Kra hour book? No, that’s into thin air, isn’t it? Into thin air. Into thin air. In Into thin Air. Yes, I read that. Oh my. Just [00:27:08] Doug: so, oh, and then they also made the Christopher McCandless story, uh, out of a John Kra hour book called Into the Wild. [00:27:16] Doug: Similar, but that was just one guy. But, um, both excellent books. I actually preferred into the Wild more than into thin air, but neither of those re uh, you know, had to resort to cannibalism. [00:27:29] Joe: No, no. Thank you for bringing that up again. That puts it [00:27:31] Doug: over the top. [00:27:32] Joe: Thank you for bringing that up again. I appreciate that. [00:27:35] Joe: Let’s move on to what maybe different people are saying you should do with your money. If you’re worried about the economy, if you’re worried about volatility, this comes to us from advisor pia.com. Let’s see how this one fits og. We’re gonna look at this like we’re looking at new suits. You know, we talked about the price of gold being worth the fine suit, shielding your portfolio, start smart strategies for market volatility. [00:28:02] Joe: Are these smart? I’m just gonna skip to what they say. Number one thing advisor pedia says in this piece, OG, is be diversified. Diversification is your biggest, biggest key to stability. [00:28:17] OG: I don’t know if stability is what you’re looking for. The trade off of equity investing, the reason that you get your 10% return in the s and p is because of the volatility. [00:28:30] OG: If you only got stability, you would not get 10%. That’s the trade. The trade is, some days you’re gonna look and it’s gonna go up, and some days you’re gonna look and it’s gonna go down. What diversification does is it allows you to smooth out that ride a little bit because not all economies or all sectors of the economy are likely to do the same thing at the same time. [00:28:54] OG: So for example, the US might be doing great, but Europe might not be. And now Europe might be doing great, but the US might not be. And uh, by owning both sides of that. You get the upswing, the ups happen and the downs and the downs happen, but you get the total return of the entire world over periods of time. [00:29:13] OG: The other added benefit is if you’re rebalancing once a year, you have an opportunity to say, oh, the US went up and Europe didn’t. Well, I can take some of my winners. I can sell some of the US at a profit and reinvest into Europe at, you know, that didn’t do as well. And I buy more shares of that for the potential, you know, recovery, if you wanna call it that, or when, when that area of the economy, you know, does well. [00:29:38] OG: So diversification allows you like a built-in rebalancing structure, and it also allows you to get the entire return of the entire world just in a random order. [00:29:48] Joe: And I think random’s the key word. Like we mentioned earlier, that the answer is yes, the market’s gonna go down. Kiyosaki’s was right if you would’ve stayed with the markets going down, calling that it was gonna go down in February of last year ended up being slightly ridiculous. [00:30:04] Joe: Uh, this piece goes on to define diversification. Says a diversified portfolio may include stocks, growth oriented assets with long-term appreciation, potential bonds, fixed income investments that provide stability and regular income, alternative investments, assets such as real estate, commodities and REITs that help hedge against inflation. [00:30:23] Joe: I look at this, stocks, bonds and alternative investments and I think, what are we, what are we doing? Why am I so overly diversified? What are your thoughts when you hear stocks, bonds, alternative investments, all enough quote, well, diversified portfolio. [00:30:40] OG: I don’t see any reason to ever have fixed income other than for short term funding goals. [00:30:46] OG: I think cash. Something that looks a lot like cash will accomplish the same thing and allow you to stay fully invested in the areas of the economy that are going to actually grow. You know, lending money to somebody is a guaranteed outcome, but then you don’t get any real return. You know, we’ve talked about that. [00:31:05] OG: Alternative investments, while they sound exceptionally enticing, because you know, the articles that you read about this are always, this is how wealthy people invest. This is how the 1% do it. You know? And it’s like, well, the 1% do it with their, the two things millionaire million don’t [00:31:22] Doug: want you to know. [00:31:23] Doug: Yeah, [00:31:24] OG: yeah. The one percenters do it with 1%, you know, so they’re not doing it with 20. But the problem with alternative investments for the vast majority of people, whether you’re talking about real estate or real estate investments or God forbid, commodities like we’re talking about here, it’s, it’s more the liquidity. [00:31:44] OG: You know, I don’t have a problem with real estate investing. There’s plenty of people who have been wildly successful making tons of money and being financially independent by owning lots of real estate properties. But it’s illiquid, you know, it takes a while to sell that. And as you’re growing that side of your portfolio, if you all of a sudden need a little something, it’s, it can be a little challenging to get that cash out. [00:32:07] OG: And if it’s a real estate investment where it’s a, there’s a third party between you and the property ownership, it’s actually even harder to get your money out because now there’s another layer of people in the way that say, well, we can’t just give you money. We own 37 apartment buildings. Uh, we, we don’t have your a hundred thousand dollars lying around. [00:32:25] OG: It’s, you know, we’re using it right now. So come back later. [00:32:28] Joe: Christine Bens at, uh, Morningstar OG about a week and a half ago, kind of brought the heat against real estate investing, she said, and you and I both know, and she knows a lot of people have done really well with real estate. She just looked at the camera on this video I was watching and said, you don’t need real estate in your portfolio. [00:32:50] Joe: Like if you want it, that’s fine, but you do not need to have real estate in your portfolio. Partly because the correlation between that, that investment class and stocks, while they react differently, they still react similar to similar market conditions. So if you keep hearing about how great real estate is and you don’t want it, she said, don’t worry, you don’t need it. [00:33:16] OG: Well, the reason, yeah, you know, I mean we can, I don’t wanna turn this into a real estate show, but the primary reason why individually owned real estate properties works mathematically is because of leverage. And what’s mind boggling to me is that if I said to you, Joe, or if I said to you, Doug, hey, I have a great idea. [00:33:36] OG: Instead of investing your million dollars in stocks, why don’t we instead. Invest a million dollars in stocks, but because you’re investing a million in stock, we can go ahead and buy 5 million of stock. So let’s go borrow $4 million from Schwab and we can buy 5 million worth of stock. I mean, this is a great idea, right? [00:33:57] OG: You know, it’s leverage. This is gonna be fantastic, and everybody in the universe will go, what are you crazy? I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna have to pay interest on borrowing money. And, and, and what if the market goes down, then, then Schwab can come and take my stuff, and that’s a really terrible idea. I go, but what do you think is a better lever? [00:34:15] OG: You leveraging your million dollar s and p fund against another 5 million or 4 million of the world’s greatest companies? Most well capitalized, most well professionally run companies in the universe, or the one beach condo in Destin. That you wanna buy, right? You do the same thing, or the, the apartment complex in Columbus, you’re like, oh no, it’s great. [00:34:39] OG: I put $200,000 down and go buy a million dollar property. That’s not risky, but apparently it’s risky to take 200,000 and buy a million dollars worth of stock of the biggest, best companies in the entire universe. I don’t get it. I mean, I understand I would never do that, but I’m saying when you say it in those terms, it’s kind of really opens up how, huh? [00:34:59] OG: How the leverage works. Your return of stocks would be the same as your return on real estate. If you, if you levered it the same ’cause they’re, to your point before Joe, they return approximately the same and have a relatively similar correlation. The difference is the bank won’t come and take your house as long as you make your payments, no matter the price volatility. [00:35:19] OG: And number two, you don’t see the price volatility every day. So you can’t freak out. [00:35:24] Joe: Next on their list. Asset allocation. Finding the right balance. I love the idea, OG, of protecting yourself by beginning with yet, and buying. Start off with, hey, my goal is way out here. What type of thing has gotten me there? [00:35:36] Joe: What mix of assets historically has gotten me there? And then use those and rebalance. So initially I like where this piece is going. Asset allocation I think we can agree is, is great. Choose investments. Don’t, don’t get into gold. If you’ve got a long-term goal, you’re just going to neuter your chance for growth versus, as you mentioned earlier, buying equities. [00:36:00] Joe: This is the part that I don’t like though, after talking about what a well-balanced portfolio might include, they say, this says in big letters how to adjust asset allocation based on market conditions. And I went, what? Why would you, why would you change your allocation based on market conditions? You would change it based on a change in your goal. [00:36:21] Joe: If my goal moved up or my goal moved back, well then I’m gonna change it. Mm-hmm. But why would I change it during market conditions? We’re just asking for it. But listen to this. In bull markets, this piece says Increase your exposure to equities for growth opportunities. Let’s talk about how that plays out. [00:36:35] Joe: OG the market’s humming along your cab. Drivers telling you about Nvidia stock. Everybody is super hot on equities. All you’re reading about every day is how well it’s doing. So you go buy, generally you buy when the market is heated up is is hot. And then the time you sell is in a panic. When it goes down, you’re like, oh, I thought this was a hot market. [00:37:05] Joe: It turns out that my time, that I thought that things were going great, turned out to be my time of maybe the bigger risk of investing versus a time when everybody’s bailing out and at that point investing. Well, that’s not what this says in quote bear markets. You should shift toward bonds and defensive sectors to preserve capital. [00:37:26] Joe: What the hell are you talking? Just wanted to scream. And then third, during economic uncertainty. [00:37:31] OG: Oh, well that’s, that never happens. [00:37:33] Joe: We just heard about it in the Wall Street Journal. Og. We’re there now, right? Oh goodness. Everybody’s worried about economic uncertainty. I dunno if you know. Well that’s, [00:37:38] OG: it’s certainly a lot better than the economic certainty we had two months ago, that’s for sure. [00:37:43] Joe: During economic uncertainty, consider alternative assets like gold or real estate. So now I should be shifting. Let me guess not The gold is it? Is [00:37:50] OG: this sponsored by the gold people? Is this article, is there a bunch of ads of gold in this article that you’re, there are [00:37:56] Joe: no ads. It’s just a horrible piece. [00:37:59] Joe: Okay. Iss just horrible. [00:38:00] OG: Uh, we’ll see. I I think you’re gonna get to the bottom and go. Click here for William de VA’s, uh, gold Report. [00:38:08] Joe: Mark FABERs Doom and gloom. Uh, defensive investments for market stability. This is what you should invest in. Invest in defensive stocks, add bonds to your portfolio just to make sure your portfolio never grows again. [00:38:23] Joe: Explore alternative investments. [00:38:25] OG: I mean, the thing here is on paper, all of this sounds really good, right? A hundred percent it does. I wanna do all this market stuff. When it’s going good, I want to take it out. But the reality is, is that you don’t know. You just have to think through this logically. You don’t know that you’re in a bear market, let’s say, until you’re in the bear market, right? [00:38:45] OG: Like, what is the trigger for you to say this is the case? Because you can’t prove to me that today is the high watermark for the next year any more than I can prove to you that it’s the low, right? We won’t know until we get a year down the road and go, holy crap, remember October 15th? That was a good day man. [00:39:05] OG: We should have got out that day. We should have doubled. Doubled down that day. That was an awesome day to, to get out or to get back in, right? Like we don’t know that until it’s already happened. And so if you use the standard definitions of like bear market, which is a minus 20%, you’re gonna go from a million dollars down to 800,000 and then what? [00:39:25] OG: Get out and then how do you know you’re back in a bull market? That’s the problem when you go back to the even money. So you took the minus 20, you took that on the chin, and then you just sit around and wait until it goes back to where it was. By the time you get the minus 20, you have to understand you’re that much closer to the end. [00:39:44] OG: Like it seems darkest right then, but it’s like you’re the hard part’s over. I mean, yeah, it might go down another 10 or 12, but. We’re really close to the end part of this now. And how many times in the last 25 years has the stock market gone down 19.9 and gone back up from there? And quickly. And quickly? [00:40:07] OG: Oh, it’s a, well, I mean, it’s a rubber band, you know, the faster that it goes back, the faster that thing’s gonna snap forward. [00:40:13] Joe: I like the fact that they start this OG with rebalancing. I don’t like the fact that all of a sudden they turn rebalancing into what you’re talking about, which is this gambling game. [00:40:24] Joe: Yeah. Try to market time. It’s not gonna work. It’s crazy for people who dunno what rebalancing is, or if you’re new to the stacker universe, rebalancing is where, let’s say. You start off and you’ve got, you know, and I’m gonna use a ridiculous allocation, 50% large company stocks, 25% international stocks, 25% small company stocks. [00:40:45] Joe: Again, not advice and not what I do, but I’d start with what I need for my goal and work from there. But let’s say I have those, and let’s say large company stocks do really well, and instead of being 50%, now a year later, it’s 60% of your money. Well now to reach your goal, you sell off the 10% that’s above your allocation, your 50, you get back to 50, and that means then you’re buying back to the 20 fives. [00:41:11] Joe: Which now are lower percentages of your portfolio in the two that you missed. Uh, and that’s what rebalancing is. But that’s based on your goal. That’s not, that doesn’t mean shifting. Oh, rebalancing means go to gold. No, it doesn’t. Rebalancing doesn’t mean going to gold. Rebalancing doesn’t mean going to bonds. [00:41:28] Joe: It just means keeping your same stuff you were using but changing the allocations and that OG can smooth out the bumps in the road a little bit. Yeah, they do have some practical strategies here for managing market fluctuations. Remember, number $1 cost averaging. This is what people are doing. Their 401k og. [00:41:45] Joe: This really helps. ’cause whether it goes up or goes down, you’re putting the same amount of money in every month. [00:41:51] OG: I mean, why would you try to guess which days to put money in and which days not to says take it outta your paycheck. The same. Two times a month like you do everything else. Yeah. Works out. [00:42:01] OG: Number [00:42:01] Joe: two, portfolio rebalancing. Again, based on your goals, not based on where the market is. Number three on this list is avoid emotional investing. If you feel emotional, put the keyboard down. Go for a walk. Just, just please stay away from your Schwab account. And that means staying the course during volatility. [00:42:20] Joe: It’s amazing they end this piece OG with by saying, stay the course during volatility. And yet halfway up the piece, they tell you in the middle you to change the course. [00:42:27] OG: I mean, the most recent example of this, and I mean I saw this workout in real time because it really, it really was kind of an interesting time for us because it’s right during our review season when the tariff stuff kind of came up in April for some people. [00:42:43] OG: We talked to them in March and reviewed their financial plans and everything was great and then, you know, and then we’re doing financial planning reviews, let’s say the middle of April. And the tariff news had come through and the stock market had gone down 20% in seven days. You know, that doesn’t feel very good, but reviewing financial plans and they’re still fine. [00:43:03] OG: And then we talked to people in May and reviewing financial plans and they’re still fine, but the people who got stuck in the middle, right? The person who we chatted with on April 15th had occasion to look at their stuff. That’s when they noticed the person who reviewed their plan in March. And then we talked to them again in September. [00:43:21] OG: ’cause we kind of visit every six months, give or take. It was like a blissful ignorance. It was like, yeah, you know, I’m up 12% for the year. It’s pretty good. Like, yeah. Did you see the minus 20 that happened three days after we chatted? Wait, what long is this huge rollercoaster ride? No, I didn’t because I just stick to the plan, you know? [00:43:40] OG: And the person in May who we talked to in November will have the same, the same reaction. [00:43:44] Joe: I think it’s like with your real estate OG that you’re talking about earlier. The difference is you don’t see your house fluctuate every day. Yeah, you, you probably do what I do. You go to Zillow a couple times a year and what do you do normally? [00:43:54] Joe: You go, oh wow. Oh, cool. And that, that’s it. Oh, [00:43:59] OG: neat. Yeah. [00:44:00] Joe: Yeah. [00:44:01] OG: Interesting. I mean, the sync to Monarch. So a little, I see little ticks along the way. Little bumps, but, um, yeah, [00:44:08] Joe: not tracking on a daily basis. [00:44:10] OG: So basically the, uh, whole, uh, summation of all of today then is, um, about gold is who cares. [00:44:21] Joe: I’m glad we walked through it. [00:44:23] Joe: Okay. I’m very glad we walked through it. And the whole idea of changing your portfolio around, if there is volatility, there will be volatility, stackers, at some point there will [00:44:31] OG: be [00:44:32] Joe: stock market’s up. Great. Every day is volatile. [00:44:34] OG: It’s not, no. Every day is volatile. Okay. There will be a downturn, like we think volatility is only a downside. [00:44:39] OG: Volatility is both ways. [00:44:40] Joe: There will be a downturn. How about that? We’ll get the semantics right. On this note, let’s go to the TikTok minute because we talked about avoiding emotional investing, and what’s a time when you get emotional? Well, you just won the lottery back in mid-September. Uh, FRA nine sent me this TikTok saying, uh, you know, you gotta play this because, uh, well, this has a lot to do with people that have a lot of money. [00:45:07] Joe: They worry a little bit about, they worry, not even a little bit. They worry a lot about what might happen to it. Are we about to see some TikTok brilliance from FRA two nine og, or are we gonna see, well, maybe not so brilliant. [00:45:21] OG: No, but I have a great, [00:45:22] Joe: uh, lottery winning story too. Well, let’s see if this one’s great. [00:45:26] Joe: This is from lottery attorney, CPA on TikTok. [00:45:32] TikTok: Hi, I’m Kurt DUIs. I’m a lottery lawyer and CPA. Today is August 18th, 2025, and the Powerball jackpot is set at $605 million. The cash lump sum amount, the reporting is $273 million. That’s less than 45%. Why is it less than 45%? It’s because of interest rates and inflation. [00:45:52] TikTok: The government, the lottery commission in this case can only invest in certain types of investments that are secure. They basically use the five year treasury rate. The five year treasury rate today is a little over 3.8%. In 2021, the start of 2021, that interest rate was one half less than one half of 1%. [00:46:12] TikTok: The general rule has always been take the lump sum amount because your advisor should be able to outperform the treasury rates. Stay away from advisors that wanna put you in annuities and or mutual funds because they’re very tax inefficient and not the best way to invest your funds. So if you win tonight, 605 million, the government will take out 24% or withhold it from the initial payout, which will be about $65 million. [00:46:36] TikTok: Let’s say you happen to live in a state where there’s a state income tax and, and that tax is 5%. That’ll be another $13 million that’ll be withheld. And of course, next April 15th, when you file your 2025 income tax return, you’ll pay the balance, which will be another 13%, 37% in total, or $35 million. But your net after all taxes will be about $160 million. [00:46:59] TikTok: A good advisor should be able to get you about three and half percent, most of which will be tax free without taking really any investment risk. And you’ll still have the $160 million growing for you. So of course, that three and a half percent will be worth more each and every year, but it’ll basically be a little over $5 million that you’ll have tax free that you can use and live off of and spend without ever touching your principle. [00:47:22] TikTok: Again, my name is [00:47:23] Joe: Kurt. All right. It goes into his name again. But what do you think about that og? For somebody who’s maybe gonna win a ton of money, you could live off $5 million a year, n absolutely [00:47:35] OG: you can. I mean, I would good start. I would think so. I mean, probably not you two guys. You guys burned through that like crazy. [00:47:42] Doug: This seems like we should play that clip from succession again about how 5 million is, yeah, 5 [00:47:47] OG: million. Poco Loco, my friend. The problem with the thesis here is you did all the hard work, and this case you got lucky, but you did all the hard work of. Getting $160 million in your investment account and you’re gonna just dump it into Munis so that it’s tax free. [00:48:05] OG: I mean, that’s nice for you, but it ain’t gonna do anything in, in two generations. It’s still gonna be kicking off 5 million bucks. And guess what? That won’t be as much money in a generation or two from now. I, I agree that being tax smart is important, but I do like, um, I don’t like quoting Warren Buffett twice in an episode, but we’re gonna have to, I do like how he said he wanted to be the most taxed person in America. [00:48:33] OG: Like, you know, like that means I made the most money. Like, I’m good with that. There’s an idea of being tax efficient and, and then there’s, you know, tripping over. What do, what do you, what do you do? Trip over dollars to pick up pennies? Is that, is that the phrase? I mean, wouldn’t you rather make, you know, $16 million on your 160 million of. [00:48:58] OG: Growth, have a little bit of dividends on that. Oh my God, I gotta pay a little taxes. It’s like, yeah, but I, but I made 16 million, so of course I’m gonna pay some taxes on that. You know? Well, no, 5 million is better. It’s tax free. Well, 5 million is not more than 16 million, minus a little bit of tax. It’s like when I went to the car dealership and the guy was like, you qualified for the 1.9% financing for 72 months? [00:49:24] OG: And I said, well, based on your chart, I also qualified for the 0% financing for 60 months. And he said, yeah, but that costs more. I go, no, it doesn’t. 0% for 60 months is less than 1.9% for 72. He’s like, no, it’s not. It’s more [00:49:42] Doug: what? What? He was probably gonna say that your monthly payment was more, ’cause you’re paying it over 60 months instead of 72. [00:49:50] Doug: That’s what he, which is what he said [00:49:52] OG: and he said, but he’s like, but you just pay more. I’m like, but no I don’t. It’s an absolute dollar amount. I pay less. So I would rather have $16 million of income and pay a little tax on it than $5 million of tax free income and never have it grow. What he meant was, I get [00:50:08] Joe: more, he gets more. [00:50:10] Joe: That’s what he, if take, that’s what he meant. You know, I think there’s a couple different ways to play this og. I think number one is if you win that type of money, number one, you’re playing a different game. And this is the problem when you hear phrases like you mentioned earlier, invest like the 1%. The 1% like this CPA said you might not care about legacy planning or intergen, you know, multi-generational wealth. [00:50:33] Joe: And that’s, and that’s okay if you decide not to do that. But that’s not our average stacker. Our average stacker needs their stack to grow. You have to have your stack grow. Otherwise, you’re never gonna get where you wanna go. And so you can’t do the same thing that a lottery winner does. But thinking like the lottery winner, who does want intergenerational growth? [00:50:57] Joe: To your point, why not grow it? I was with them in annuities. Don’t put them in annuities. They’re inefficient. They’re, it’s, it’s gonna make the advisor a crap ton of money and it doesn’t do much for you. [00:51:10] OG: What if you’re an advisor? Would you sell yourself an annuity? You get a big commission, [00:51:15] Joe: make money on both sides? [00:51:18] OG: That’s a great idea. [00:51:20] Joe: Making money on my money. Yeah. By, by selling myself a bunch of crap I’m gonna take to pays me take, I’m gonna, I’m [00:51:25] OG: gonna, let’s see, with 160 million, I’m gonna do a $50 million whole life policy and then $110 million in annuity. I’m gonna make, um, you know, $30 million of commissions on that. [00:51:38] Joe: I wonder if, seriously, I wonder if the inefficient and the horrible returns you get will be offset by the monster commission you get. So your ROI ends up being huge [00:51:47] OG: because, because you’re getting both sides of the deal. You get slapped around because you’re the owner of the policy, but you’re the, but you’re the broker, so you get the huge commission. [00:51:55] Joe: So this is what you do when you, when you win the lottery, become an advisor, [00:51:58] OG: become [00:51:58] Joe: an [00:51:59] OG: annuity broker, and learn how to sell. You get, get licensed to sell annuities and go get yourself a 12% annuity commission. You on 10 year annuity, [00:52:09] Joe: you truly want risk free returns. Become an annuity salesperson and sell it to yourself. [00:52:15] Joe: Sell it to yourself. [00:52:17] OG: You can ladder ’em like do 16 million a year for 10 years and then the hell you doing, Steve. Well, you know, and our number one producer, again, leading the company, working one minute a day a year, [00:52:31] Joe: Mr. A billion dollar lottery winner. Yeah. And everybody else is jealous because of what you did and you’re, you’re always winning the free trip to Cancun too. [00:52:39] Joe: You had [00:52:39] OG: a free trip to [00:52:40] Joe: Cancun [00:52:41] OG: with the cool little diamond ring because your diamond status, [00:52:44] Doug: if you could pull that off, you’d solve the ultimate question of being a grower and a shower. [00:52:53] Doug: You’ve got it. Nice. [00:52:55] Joe: It’s the circle [00:52:56] OG: of life comm mobious loop. [00:52:58] Joe: But I think there are a couple things there. He, he’d lost me at mutual funds. I mean, not a ton. Mutual funds could be inefficient. I think exchange traded funds might be a better way to solve that, that problem if you’re not in a, in an account. [00:53:10] Joe: But again, I’m not solving for taxes. I’m solving for more money. That’s a goal. Thank you for Unit United for sending that to us. And, uh, yeah, perfect time for us to play. That was gonna be today. I was waiting for a time when we were talking about emotions and money and th there’s a big one. Alright, before we say goodbye today, let’s wander out onto the back porch because we got a, a gr You’ve been showing me this letter over and over and over and I’m excited you’ve been Doug about this note that we received from stacker Jean. [00:53:41] Joe: Yeah, this was a [00:53:41] Doug: fantastic note to receive from a stacker. Here she goes. Hey Joe, I just listened to episode. I don’t know why I assume she had a southern accent. Hey Joe, I just listened to. Because people in the Carolinas love math. Is that Yeah, I just listened to episode 1715, uh, from July 29th about using math. [00:54:05] Doug: I’m a retired higher ed math teacher. Some of the fun things I did in my classes were often related to financial planning, like compound interest, asking students to crank through that exponential formula to really understand how compound interest can make you rich. [00:54:22] Joe: And before you keep going, Doug, uh, what she’s referring to stackers was that back earlier this summer, episode 1715 was Ted Denter Smith who talked about how to make better decisions using math and was talking about our high school curriculum. [00:54:37] Joe: And we challenged our math teachers to step up and tell us what they do. So Gene Gene’s bringing it man. With the financial planning questions around compounding interest for her class. [00:54:49] Doug: Yeah. I used to love it when my math teachers, you know, first day of class they’d be like, but I’m here to make math fun. [00:54:55] Doug: And everybody’s sitting there with their arms crossed against their chest and they’re like, alright, teach. We’ll be the judge of that. Well, Jean actually involved food, so I was in on this one. She says, my most fun example involved the Olive Garden restaurant. They had a contest where they were giving away one of those unlimited pasta passes where you could go in and order as much pasta as you want, or you can get two orders to go if you didn’t want to eat in the restaurant. [00:55:22] Doug: I decided to try to win the contest by explaining how to use combination slash permutations for how they serve their pasta with the pasta on the bottom, then the sauce, and then the toppings as the third layer on top. I showed the math. I showed the math on how many combinations of pasta meals you can get at the Olive Garden. [00:55:42] Doug: And I won the contest. Wow. I used, I know, I used that as an example to my students of how you never know when you can use math to get something. Cool. Anyway, thanks so much for your podcast. I enjoy listening to it. And you know, then she signed off with something stupid and ridiculous. Just proving Go green. [00:56:04] Doug: No, go green. I won’t read it. I won’t say that. Go green. Uh, that’s beautiful Jean. That’s not what she [00:56:08] Joe: said. That is absolutely beautiful. Jean, thanks so much for the note and, uh, congratulations on winning. And I got, how about being able to brag about that with your class? [00:56:19] Doug: I got one more thing. Here’s how you know that Jean is an ultra, ultra math nerd. [00:56:27] Doug: Her email address includes the phrase math rocks. Like you are committed. You are totally committed. If that’s your email address, [00:56:39] Joe: that’s somebody who is truly teaching, is a passion like teaching what they’re super passionate about. And for that gene we say no. Fantastic. Love it. Thank you so much, Jean, for the note. [00:56:54] Joe: And, uh, thanks to all of you for hanging out with us today and talking about volatility and getting OGs hackles up. It’s always fun to hear OG start shaking. [00:57:04] Doug: You mentioned gold. It’s [00:57:05] Joe: always easy to get OGs hackles up. Thanks for today’s example. Yeah, but today was the ultimate poke. When I saw that last week in the Wall Street Journal, I’m like, oh, it’s, it’s like manna from heaven. [00:57:19] Joe: The gift that keeps giving gold is a headline. You’re just setting it on a tee for me. Thank you Wall Street Journal writers. I love you too. Uh, coming up on Wednesday, we are getting our crews on. You know, one of my favorite things to do is not to drop out of the workforce, but to enjoy what I do and make it enjoyable for other people. [00:57:43] Joe: And Richard Fein, who is the longtime CEO and chairman of Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, joins us to talk about bringing the wow to everything that you do. And nothing more fun than, uh, than watch people’s eyes light up because you made their day with something you did. So that’s coming up on Wednesday, but today we end every show by talking about what are the three things that should be on your to-do list. [00:58:10] Joe: And for some reason, we delegate that duty to Doug. No idea why. Why [00:58:18] Doug: was that necessary? We were all getting along so well, and then you just come out of the corner swinging. All right, Joe, I don’t know. Let’s see if I can just fall on my face on this one first. Take some advice from today’s headline. Gold. [00:58:32] Doug: No thanks. Diversification. Yes, please. Second, winning the Lottery or trying to control volatility. Annuities can be an answer, but watch out for who’s paddling them. But the big lesson, maybe run your can’t lose trivia ideas by your boss before going live with them on air. Now I gotta go down the hall and see Gertrude and HR again. [00:59:01] Doug: This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:59:21] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:00:34] Joe: I recently went to Galveston for Cheryl’s birthday. We went and saw the Savannah Bananas, by the way, guys, Galveston gal, which was, uh, super, super fun. Highly recommend. We could talk about the bananas another time, but I wanna talk about this, which is we went to Kroger. Because we were staying in this nice Airbnb condominium. [01:00:56] Joe: We just got a few things for the beautiful weekend down by the beach and we go to the self checkout. It’s late at night and there’s only one main checkout open and there’s people with all the carts and the self checkout had an open one. So we go there, we get to 20 items and it stops us. And we had 23 items and the person came over and they had to put a code in because we had violated the 20 item rule for the self checkout cheater. [01:01:28] Joe: Well, which brings up a question that that, that I’m wondering if, you know, you’ve got, we didn’t know we had 23 items at a time, but I will tell you this, if I’d known I had 23 items, I, I was just thinking about this, I don’t think I would’ve gone through the self-check. I think I would’ve stood in the dumb line just ’cause I’m like, well, I, I don’t know ’cause I’m a rule follower. [01:01:48] Joe: But if you had 23 items, Doug, and you knew you had 23. The sign said 20. Would you go through the quick line? [01:01:57] Doug: Well, first of all, I had no idea that those self-service lines had limits. I thought they wanted to push everybody there as much as possible. I feel like [01:02:05] Joe: most places are. Yeah, I was surprised too. I had no clue. [01:02:08] Doug: I mean, in the old days when there was like a line with a person manning that line, there was always a little sign hanging over the entrance. And I always, yeah, I’m a rule. I mean, look, I was a boy scout. I was an eagle scout and that like it’s a law. We don’t have a choice. We have to follow the rules. And I, I remember standing there like hovering outside the entrance of that line. [01:02:27] Doug: Two, three, oh, I got 21. Do you count, do you count the three bags of Cheetos as one item or do you count it as three? Like I remember doing all of that [01:02:38] Joe: calling three bags of Cheetos. One. Is that cheating? Cheating Cheetos. Oh, I see what you did there. Cheating og. What do you do? [01:02:47] OG: Well, this is kind of a silly question because the real answer is. [01:02:51] OG: Buy that on Instacart and having them deliver it. I was [01:02:54] Doug: just gonna say OG hasn’t, hasn’t checked out himself in decades. Okay. I [01:02:59] Joe: question the premise. [01:03:02] OG: This is foolish on so many levels. Wait a minute. When someone would’ve like literally brought you all the stuff you wanted to your doorstep, but there is a place you can go and shop [01:03:10] Joe: for your own groceries. [01:03:11] OG: I’ll play, what is [01:03:12] Joe: this mysterious place? [01:03:14] OG: Yeah, no, I’ll play. I would 100% go in the other line and then on top of it I would make a giant scene about the fact that I was at 20. And then I would be like, well guess I gotta start another order. ’cause I won’t let me do 22 items or 23 items. And I would take that away and then I would like stand there with my three and I’d restart and I’d put my code in and then I’d scan my three and do it again. [01:03:37] OG: Yeah. ’cause that is a ridiculous thing. The limit. Okay. I don’t know why. Wait a minute. The limit exists. The checkout is for me to go fast, not for you to limit how fast I can go. That’s my philosophy on this. Um, if you wanna, I think like Doug, you were saying they’re trying to shovel everybody to these like, like I was at Costco the other day and there was like two normal lines and like 700 DIY lines. [01:04:04] OG: Yeah, yeah. You know, this is crazy. I waited in a line for that one. ’cause the people were moving the, the Costco people will move faster than the people people do. Okay. [01:04:11] Joe: But you and I have had this before. Let’s put the shoe on the other foot though, og. ’cause you’ve had this before. Somebody’s got like 26, 27 items. [01:04:19] Joe: You’re in the 20 item in the last line specifically because I can’t trust that you’re gonna go fast. Don’t get me wrong. Now that I know you, I know you want nothing more than to get the hell out there. Like you are going, you’re the first guy. Get line behind because there’s no grass growing under OGs feet while he stayed in line. [01:04:36] Joe: He’s body checking people out of the way. But you don’t know, right? You don’t know which line to get in. So I get behind you, you’ve got 27, 28 items. And then I gotta sit there and watch you, Mr. Rule Breaker, make a big ass scene. Well, I dunno, they limited me at 20 and now I gotta do another one. You know how pissed I’d be if I was in line behind you? [01:04:57] OG: I guess you guessed wrong, buddy. You would be the same if [01:05:00] Joe: I did that to you. If you were behind me and I was doing that, how would you feel? [01:05:05] OG: I would put my headphones in and just open a pack of gum and start eating it. [01:05:10] Joe: That is Doug. You know that’s a lie. Yeah. There’s too many [01:05:14] OG: crazies. There’s too many crazies in the universe, man. [01:05:16] OG: I’m not going crazy in a, in a grocery store about somebody else’s behavior. I’ll go crazy and make a scene on my own, but I’m not gonna go crazy about somebody else’s scene. [01:05:26] Joe: I feel like Maury Povich, I just looked at your blood pressure and that is a lie. Yeah, [01:05:32] OG: no, I, this is why, I mean, it’s such like you can’t put me in that scenario. [01:05:36] OG: ’cause I’d never be in that scenario. I’ve, I’ve walked into grocery stores and seen the lines and just walked out. Like, I don’t need it that badly. [01:05:45] Doug: What kind of crazy would OG go, uh, sovereign Citizens review his videos to find out how they can go over the top? [01:05:54] OG: I’ve done an entire grocery shop and then found the lines to be too long and just like literally left the cart where it was and walked away. [01:06:01] OG: Like, this is ridiculous. [01:06:04] Doug: Well, as long as you’re rational about it, [01:06:06] OG: right? I can put this all back in my Instacart. Unreal. Between here and the car, [01:06:11] Joe: he takes that financial planning concept seriously. The one about sunk cost, don’t evaluate sunk cost. Yeah, like it’s just [01:06:18] OG: the fact, the fact that I spent an hour putting all this in the cart, it does not matter. [01:06:20] OG: There’s no bearing on anything from here on out. [01:06:23] Doug: It does not matter. It’s funny how protective you get over your cart, like, I’ve just hunted and gathered this food for my family. Don’t, don’t you take anything outta my cart. Whoa, whoa, whoa. To protect your cart. [01:06:35] OG: Have you done that? Have you ever taken anything outta people’s carts before? [01:06:38] OG: Like, oh, where did you guys get the popsicles? [01:06:41] Joe: No, but I do like the videos that I’ve seen recently. Yeah, [01:06:44] OG: me neither. I mean, [01:06:48] Joe: I do like the videos I’ve seen recently though about how, you know, in my family I’m always wrong. Like I’m always wrong. It doesn’t matter if somebody else brings something up, it’s fine, but if I bring it up, Cheryl’s like, no. Why would we do that? Have you seen the one where the guy’s shopping with his spouse and he takes stuff out of the cart that she found and then he presents it to her and she looks at him and is like, no, we’re not buying that. [01:07:11] Doug: Yeah, [01:07:11] Joe: they’re like in the produce section [01:07:13] Doug: and he hands her an apple and she’s like, no, he’s going through everything that she already bought and she’s [01:07:20] Joe: vetoing [01:07:20] OG: all of it. Fake. Oh, I don’t know. Fake. [01:07:23] Doug: It’s fake, but we’re laughing about it because we know there’s an element of truth in that buried in there. [01:07:28] Doug: A hundred [01:07:28] Joe: percent element of truth. I don’t laugh at fake stuff. Fake.
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