How She Eliminated a $43,000 Hospital Bill (SB1808)

Live from Joe’s mom’s basement (where the jokes are free but hospital care apparently isn’t), the Stacking Benjamins crew tackles two very real financial stressors: surprise medical debt and a shifting housing market.

First up is Imani Vance, who joined the Coast Guard at 19 and soon faced a nightmare scenario. What started as appendicitis escalated to severe sepsis after limited on-base resources and long waits for off-base care. After hospitalization, including treatment for an abscess and eventual appendix removal, Imani received a bill totaling roughly $43,000 to $45,000.

And here’s where it gets worse. She didn’t qualify for VA help because she hadn’t yet served 180 days. Accessing Coast Guard records proved difficult. The bill arrived after the care, opaque, overwhelming, and completely disconnected from what she had agreed to or expected.

If you’re a Stacker, you know this feeling. The stress isn’t just the number. It’s the lack of clarity.

Imani shares how she started researching options, discovered the nonprofit Dollar For through Reddit, and used them to apply for hospital financial assistance. Dollar For helped her complete and submit the required forms, and within weeks, she was approved for 100% financial assistance, wiping out the bill entirely.

Joe Saul-Sehy highlights an important takeaway. Nonprofit hospitals are legally required to offer financial assistance. Many for-profit hospitals offer programs, too. Income thresholds are often higher than people assume. The applications can be confusing, which is where advocates like Dollar For can make a huge difference.

Instead of locking into $300 to $500 monthly payments for years, Imani walked away debt-free and with a completely different outlook.

After Doug drops trivia about the youngest bank robber (yes, really), the crew pivots to housing. A recent Wall Street Journal/Redfin headline suggests the housing market may be tilting toward buyers, with more homes selling below list price and average sales around 8% under asking.

Joe and OG break down what that means for Stackers, not in headline hype terms but practical life terms.

What You’ll Learn:

Medical Bills and Financial Assistance:

• Why medical debt feels different from other debt
• How hospital financial assistance programs work
• Why many people qualify but never apply
• How nonprofits like Dollar For can help navigate the paperwork
• Why you should always ask for itemized bills and assistance options

Housing Market: Think Forward, Not Backward:

• Why you shouldn’t get stuck in your mortgage just because you locked in a low rate
• How anchoring to past rates can cloud present decisions
• Why negotiating power is shifting and how to use it
• The importance of building a financial margin when income rises
• Smart, low-cost staging tactics, including hiring a pro for just an hour of advice
• How AI tools can help with pricing and presentation ideas

The Big Takeaways:

Before paying a massive medical bill, check whether you qualify for assistance. Financial stress often comes from confusion. Clarity is power. Housing decisions should be forward-looking, not emotionally anchored to the past. Margin and flexibility beat perfect timing.

This Episode Is For You If:

• You’re facing medical debt and thought you had no options
• You’ve been putting off dealing with a hospital bill because it feels hopeless
• You’re stuck in a low rate mortgage and wondering if you should move
• You want to understand what’s really happening in the housing market
• You believe there’s always more to the story than the bill or the headline

Question for You:

Have you ever negotiated or reduced a bill you initially thought was non-negotiable? Share your story in the Spotify comments or The Basement Facebook group. Your experience might help another Stacker avoid paying more than they should.

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

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Our Headline

• The Housing Market Is Swinging Toward Buyers (Wall Street Journal)

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Doug’s Trivia

• On this date in 1981, the youngest bank robber of all time stole $118 at gunpoint from a New York bank. How old was he?

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• 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).

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Other Mentions

• Get Relief from Hospital Bills – Dollar For
• Financial assistance policy and emergency medical care policy – Section 501(r)(4) | Internal Revenue Service
• Stacking Benjamins Vault

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Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when we’ll explore what YOU need to know so you’re not just relying on a last minute, hail-Mary miracle event to be the savior of your financial plan.

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Suze Orman Changes Her Mind on Working to 70 (SB1807)

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] opener: He’s the type of guy you get halfway home from the theme park before you’re like, oh, where’s Doug? Oh no, we have to go back. My wallet’s in his fanny pack. So, oh, do not feel bad for Doug. He’s terrible. Every time he tells a story somewhere, a child loses a balloon.

[00:00:22] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s my Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:37] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan, do you know someone struggling with debt? Because today we find some solutions you may not have known existed in our headline segment. Let’s talk real estate. It’s been a tough market, but is there hope on the horizon? We’ll share some new data from the Wall Street Journal and don’t you worry, there’s nothing I’d rather do than share some amazing trivia.

[00:01:00] Doug: With someone as cool as you and now two guys who can switch from cool to cold to hot in seconds. It’s Joe, why am I saying it like this?

[00:01:15] Doug: I always say it the same. Every time. And if I get off on the wrong note, it’s Yeah.

[00:01:25] Joe: Oh, hey everybody. Welcome to the Stacky Benjamin Show. And, uh, we’re just 

[00:01:29] Doug: running with this. We’re just gonna let this go. 

[00:01:31] Joe: Just, just fold the parachute up. Save it for another day, man. Okay. We’ll try again on Friday. 

[00:01:37] Doug: Wow. Crashed and burned on this 

[00:01:38] Joe: one. We go three days a week, so Doug can, you know, find the mojo.

[00:01:42] Joe: And, uh, get it back. But hey, you were on a roll there for a while. I was sure it was coming in strong. It was good. And then, 

[00:01:49] Doug: yeah, 

[00:01:50] Joe: it wasn’t, now there’s tears, 

[00:01:52] Doug: like, like a skier who crashes at the finish line. 

[00:01:55] Joe: Tears, apologies Doug going, this never happens to me. I, I don’t dunno what’s going on. Did you see og that John Oliver paying off all that debt?

[00:02:06] Joe: How many years ago was that, Doug? Is it two or three years ago? 

[00:02:09] Doug: I was gonna say, yeah, two to four years ago. 10 to 

[00:02:12] OG: 15, but sure. 

[00:02:13] Joe: Was it 10 to 15 years ago? 

[00:02:15] Doug: No way. 

[00:02:16] Joe: No, no. Come on. Well, John Oliver dug in 

[00:02:22] Doug: 2016. 

[00:02:23] Joe: Oh man. 

[00:02:25] Doug: That’s like five years ago. Like 

[00:02:26] Joe: we 

said, 

[00:02:27] Joe: again, 

[00:02:28] Doug: just happened 

[00:02:28] Joe: tears. This never happens to me. I can’t believe I made that mistake.

[00:02:33] Joe: It’ll never happen again. I swear. 2016, John Oliver paid off a bunch of debt and it was medical debt and a lot of this debt, and John kind of dove into this back in 2016. Sadly, a lot of hospitals still make it very difficult for you to navigate the system. Well, if you know somebody that has that issue, we’ve got a, a wonderful young woman, Imani Vance, joining us today.

[00:02:55] Joe: Who, uh, well, I’ll let her tell her story. It’s gonna be quite a story of all of a sudden realizing you owe $45,000 to a hospital and you’re 19 years old. 

[00:03:05] OG: Congratulations. 

[00:03:06] Joe: Hey, guess what? 

[00:03:07] Doug: You win. Welcome to adulthood. 

[00:03:08] Joe: Yeah. And of course, different OG than buying a car where you know ahead of time the sticker price is 45,000.

[00:03:16] Joe: She finds out after the fact, right? Mm-hmm. That, that’s, that’s what you owe. So it’s a tough system and uh, if you know somebody who’s navigating that well, there’s lots of stories of resilience no matter what you’re facing. We got Imani Vance coming up next, telling her story about how she was able to get out of this medical debt situation with some help from some really cool people.

[00:03:37] Joe: But before that, we got a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them and then. Imani Vance joins me to tell us her story about a surprisingly large bill.

[00:03:58] Joe: And I am super happy she’s coming down the stairs to mom’s basement. Imani Vance is here. How are you? 

[00:04:03] Imani: I’m doing good, Joe. And yourself? I’m happy to be here. 

[00:04:06] Joe: Well, I am super happy that you are going to share your story because you’re gonna help so many people. And you know what’s funny is so many people get embarrassed by things like medical debt when it’s just life happens.

[00:04:22] Joe: And to have you tell your story about what happened to you, I think is gonna help a bunch of people. And sometimes this stuff comes out of the blue. So let’s just get into it. If you don’t mind. You decided to join the Coast Guard. Tell me why you decided to join the Coast Guard. 

[00:04:37] Imani: Joe, I’ll be honest, I was 19 when I joined.

[00:04:39] Imani: I’m 20 now, but literally last year I joined the Coast Guard because I wanted to be able to find community. I was ready to serve. I was ready to learn, ready to be a hero. Then my appendix said, actually no thank you. So it tapped out before I did. I didn’t get a uniform. I didn’t get a boat. Instead I got a $43,000 medical bill.

[00:05:00] Imani: Not exactly the souvenir I had in mind. 

[00:05:02] Joe: No, not the Coast Guard experience you were hoping for. How long had you been in the Coast Guard when this happened? 

[00:05:08] Imani: It was really only two, three months ago. Oh my God. So even when it happened, it was in the fall and I left like right before Thanksgiving. So holidays were happening.

[00:05:17] Imani: People would probably wonder, I’m surprised being a recruit in training, it should have been able to be a thing where they would be able to perform the surgery and everything. But I’ll be honest, due to the Coast Guard’s resources and the timing of when it all happened, I would’ve had to go off base and get a medical appointment for that to even happen.

[00:05:37] Imani: And with their limited resources they had on the base, they only had like an x-ray to be able to examine me. And tried to give me some sort of diagnosis. It was pretty vague, and the only thing they had was my symptoms of obviously I couldn’t march, I couldn’t do what I needed to do that. It made it a lot harder for me to perform my duties and my tasks.

[00:06:01] Imani: So given everything that was up against me and really I had sepsis at the time. As soon as I, even at the time they gave me an ultimatum, they told me either I could. Wait on an off base medical appointment, which was gonna take about two weeks, given the holidays, and basically the backlog of other people that needed to have their medical surgeries and other diagnosis as well.

[00:06:25] Imani: ’cause people also had knee fractures. Even just other injuries beyond what I knew. But given all of those things, all I had to think about was the fact that I’m not feeling good. I was sitting in medical hold and for being in that amount of time. I’ve met other recruits that have been in there for about six months, that they’ve had to be there a lot longer.

[00:06:46] Imani: Typically, it’s a. A month that you would have to take off. But given the resources and even just the intensity of training, because the Coast Guard’s basic training is about second to the Marines, so it’s a lot more intense that I would have to be able to cultivate. I’d have to be able to rehabilitate and.

[00:07:04] Imani: Just heal. And with that and just given the holidays and missing my family, for me personally, it just was not worth it at the time. With that happening, I came home, I went to the hospital. They told me that it was great that I came in just in time because I was in severe sepsis. Mind you, I didn’t even really notice it being that big of a deal.

[00:07:25] Imani: All I noticed was just the stomach pain. But when they told me that I had an abscess around my appendix, they basically said, you know, we need to first get the infection down. So that’s really what happened. The first thing that had to happen when I was hospitalized in WellStar, they first had to get the infection down because the abscess was around my appendix.

[00:07:46] Imani: You know, even then it was a week in the hospital. It was during Thanksgiving. I was sitting there, wicked came out at the time and I was devastated. ’cause I wanted to first graduate and then immediately go see it. But that didn’t go the way that I planned. So basically I got into the hospital. I sat there for a week, and then I was discharged from the hospital.

[00:08:05] Imani: Typically, a regular appendix is usually 10 millimeters diameter. Mine was 20. So at that time, immediately my appendix, it got a lot bigger and it was about to burst. The doctor and medical officials gave me another ultimatum as well. They said, you don’t have to take it out now, but there is a possibility that there could be some leaks, some other things, or another abscess could form.

[00:08:30] Imani: So immediately I knew, you know, with all of that, I’m glad that I did leave. I did the best thing that was for me, 

[00:08:37] Joe: a hundred percent. 

[00:08:38] Imani: They didn’t even know that I had an abscess for them to even have to treat that first. So it would’ve been a lot more difficult and a lot more invasive than what I was gonna be wanting to take on.

[00:08:49] Imani: Even that, I was just a recruit. I was an echo one. I was basically a semen recruit. I’m just starting out and it’s like I was a veteran. That was my Vietnam, you know? Right, 

[00:08:58] Joe: right, right. 

[00:08:59] Imani: Like that they worded like that. That was my Vietnam, and I didn’t even do anything 

[00:09:03] Joe: back when I was a financial planner. I actually worked with a bunch of people in the Coast Guard at Ridge Air Force Base outside of Detroit.

[00:09:10] Joe: Hello, coast Guard people in Ridge, some fine women and men, and just a bunch of bad asses. But talk about being a badass, walking around with sepsis and really not knowing it. Just knowing that you have the hurt and then getting that cleared up and then finding out that you have to get rid of your appendix.

[00:09:27] Joe: Like just all this stuff, like one after another. 

[00:09:31] Imani: All these things. Appendix is so simple. You have the appendicitis, you get the surgery. Even then, Joe, I’ll give you a little bit more background to that. The reason I even got appendicitis in the first place was. I unfortunately got influenza as all military people will talk about, you always get some sort of crud.

[00:09:50] Imani: So they usually call it a crud. That’s usually just a all known sickness because everybody that comes in from different parts of the world, different parts of the country, usually everyone carries different sicknesses, they carry different immunity factors, just different things. And 

[00:10:04] Joe: every time I go to a convention, it happens.

[00:10:07] Imani: Absolutely. So when everyone’s all packed together, especially with that kind of intense environment, stress, that also wears on the body as well. Unfortunately, I caught the flu and I was hospitalized in basic training during that time, and. What I didn’t know and what the doctors gave me out here as a civilian, they told me that when the flu passed through my body, typically when appendicitis does happen, usually it’s due to the basics of waste or even fecal matter that’s left over and it travels to your appendix.

[00:10:38] Imani: In my case, it was a virus that got left over, and it may have seemed like it was gone, but no, it still said no, I’m here, and it went right to my appendix instead. 

[00:10:47] Joe: Do you know what’s wild is you talk about this like you are a doctor, which I know ahead of time you didn’t know any of this stuff, and now it’s like you have your PhD in appendixes.

[00:10:57] Joe: Take me to the point of your story though. I just wanna know where you are when you open this bill and get maybe, I would think the surprise of your life. Like what went through your mind, where were you? 

[00:11:12] Imani: Let’s think about it. I’m 19 years old. The most debt I ever had was credit cards, obviously. Sure.

[00:11:17] Imani: Running on my parents’, credit cards, things like that. I never really had to deal with that kind of thing when it came to debt. And when I heard of those hidden fees that happened, it was like just a wave of shock. A wave of fear came over me. And typically when it comes to debt, it may not seem like a big deal, but $43,000.

[00:11:40] Imani: I know. 

[00:11:41] Joe: I’m 19 years old and I’ve got $43,000. And just to be clear, this is not some of the stuff Imani that we talk about in Stacking Benjamins a fair amount. This is not lifestyle creep. This is not overspending or going to the mall ’cause it’s almost the holiday. So not buying too many gifts for people.

[00:11:59] Joe: This is life just happening. And bam, here it is. 

[00:12:03] Imani: I never expected this, and this goes nothing against the military in any way, shape, or form. Even now, post me, Joe, I am looking to go into the United States Navy. Oh, cool. With everything. I have nothing against the military, but I will admit that, you know, given my short time of service, I did not serve 180 days.

[00:12:24] Imani: The VA unfortunately, could not give me the medical assistance that I needed. So it wasn’t as easy for me to be able to get discharged, go immediately to a VA hospital and be able to auto no. And even with Coast Guard, a lot of their records is in paper and it’s not even digitized, so I couldn’t even get any of my medical records.

[00:12:43] Imani: It’s basically like it didn’t even exist besides the fact that I have my DD two 14 to indicate that I did serve in the United States military and two days afterwards. I was put into the hospital. So with that, it was a lot harder. It wasn’t as easy. So with me being in the hospital, I had a preconceived notion that I thought, well, you know, I served a little bit, maybe I’ll get some sort of support.

[00:13:06] Imani: And they told me if I wanted to even get that support, I would’ve had to wait a couple months, you know, paperwork backlogs. There was a presidential election going on. So even with the change of command, a lot of different things were happening. So it was a lot harder than I just wanted to take. And my parents, they supported me as much as they could.

[00:13:25] Imani: They were honest with me. They said, Imani, medical debt’s not a big deal. A lot of people in America have it, and even if they did, a lot of people wouldn’t function. They wouldn’t be able to have a job or anything. But the kind of responsible person that I am. Being as young as I am accumulating that kind of debt, all I automatically thought was, imagine people that have cancer and it’s a lot harder to be able to just be able to look at it and be like, oh, well that’s money.

[00:13:48] Imani: And I feel like just the common working person shouldn’t have to deal with that. 

[00:13:52] Joe: I think it’s great that your parents tried to reassure you, Hey, a lot of people have medical debt. You’re not the only person. You’re not alone. This is not Amma being a unicorn. Other people have gotten over this hill.

[00:14:02] Joe: You’ll get over this hill too. But you must have also at the same time, felt like there’s a bunch of medical billing stuff now that surprised you. Surprise number one was my time in the military didn’t matter ’cause I wasn’t there long enough. It’s almost like somebody starting any new job. What else surprised you about medical billing and what’s different about medical billing?

[00:14:23] Joe: Now that you’re probably become a PhD in this as well, like you have about your appendix, what’s different about medical billing than credit cards, student loans or car loans? How’s this debt different? 

[00:14:36] Imani: I feel like the debt is just different, Joe, because let’s be honest, when you’re in a hospital and you’re trying to get better, you’re not thinking about those kind of things.

[00:14:44] Imani: You’re not thinking about the hidden fees. I feel like maybe it’s some sort of the adrenaline, it’s like when you are buying a new car, when you’re getting something from your credit cards, you don’t think about those contracts. You don’t think about. The hidden fees. You don’t think about those little things, those little minute details that come up, especially when you’re in a hospital and all you’re doing is signing your name.

[00:15:06] Imani: You’re constantly being asked, what’s your name, your full name, what’s your social, et cetera, et cetera. 

[00:15:11] Joe: Well, and that’s job number one. That’s different. Mm-hmm. Than a credit card bill. Not only is it opaque like you’re talking about, you got all these little fees, you don’t get a bill until after the fact.

[00:15:22] Imani: That’s right. 

[00:15:22] Joe: It isn’t like, Hey, here’s a new sweater and pay for it and you can take it home. It’s here is the medical treatment and then the 43,000 bill shows up later on. 

[00:15:35] Imani: And it’s like when you are in a hospital bed trying to get better, it’s only just gonna bring on more stress to have to think about the financial burdens of that.

[00:15:43] Imani: But it’s especially harder when thousands and thousands of Americans, especially right now with what’s going on, a lot of people don’t have insurance. It’s just what it is. Well, a lot of Americans right now do not have insurance, and the ones that do and or they did the Medicaid subsidies, all these different things, it’s a lot harder to be able to just obtain insurance at a very reasonable cost compared to other countries.

[00:16:06] Imani: So when you’re just sitting and then after that you get the bill and automatically they tell you, Hey, you owe this amount of money. It was great taking care of you and all, but this is what you owe. It’s automatically like, where’s the ambulance? ’cause now I’m gonna have to go right back in because you just gave me a heart attack.

[00:16:22] Joe: We’re gonna talk about where you got help from here in a little bit, but initially you’re on your own. You got this bill. Negotiating isn’t intuitive to 90% of people. Did you think to like call ’em and say, Hey, can we get a lower number? Is there any negotiation you tried? 

[00:16:40] Imani: Absolutely Joe. I mean, even for me, it felt like, I’ll be honest, I like to dig deep.

[00:16:46] Imani: So whenever I have a challenge that comes over me, I don’t immediately just say, oh, well, and just give up. I immediately start to research. So for me, what I did was I went online, I go onto Reddit and social media platforms. I saw on Reddit of a post that talked about their medical death and given their story, they said, try dollar four.

[00:17:07] Imani: Basically they would be the ones to be able to like help you out. Like no matter what’s your story. I didn’t even know financial assistant existed. Nobody mentioned it. It was like a secret menu of finance, of like medical billing. But when I found out about dollar four, they helped me get the entire bill forgiven.

[00:17:24] Imani: Like I went online, I filled out a form, I gave them a situation of my income. You know what I just got out of? And when I told them that it basically, it’s like they wiped out everything. They wiped out all of my debt. 

[00:17:38] Joe: Let me ask you about this then. This is hospital financial assistance? Yes. So that’s what dollar four is.

[00:17:45] Joe: And in plain English, what is Hospital Financial assistance? What does that mean? 

[00:17:50] Imani: Hospital financial assistance is like a small program. They’re able to help you out when you cannot pay off. Your medical bills. Some hospitals understand, you know, I’m not entirely sure of others, but WellStar, they had a financial assistance program that told me, Hey, if you need help, we got you.

[00:18:09] Imani: We need you to fill out a bunch of these forms. And let’s be honest, at my age, I don’t really care about forms. I kind of just say, well, this is what happened to me. Can’t you guys just believe me? And they’re like, well, no, we gotta get all this other thing. So for me, I feel like dollar four was definitely a tool.

[00:18:25] Imani: They were like a friend, like a, just an angel on my shoulder to be able to tap me and be my advocate. They were like my lawyer. 

[00:18:33] Joe: They were like, we got the forms. Exactly. So what you’re saying is the hospital has forms, they have assistance programs, and this is most hospitals around the country. They have a hospital assistance program, but they really give you the stack of stuff to fill out.

[00:18:47] Joe: You freak out. I love the, at my age, forget Forbes. Uh, I think that’s any age. By the way, I’m 57 years old. Whenever I get a form, I’m like, forget the form. I, I don’t wanna 

[00:18:58] Imani: tax nine. You gotta be right for that. 

[00:19:02] Joe: But dollar four in groups like this have seen the forms before. Hospitals of course, don’t advertise that they even have help because they want.

[00:19:11] Joe: Of course you to pay if you can. At what point did you find dollar for, had the hospital sent your bill to collections or was it before collections? 

[00:19:24] Imani: It was slightly before collections. I was really, really close ’cause really what was happening given my circumstance, I was really trying to look for help from the va.

[00:19:34] Imani: I was really trying to look from help from my employment only because this did happen under their care. So I did wanna be able to go directly to the source and be able to find some help as much as I could. But when they finally explained to me after just a while after searching and searching and waiting.

[00:19:51] Imani: They told me that because of the lack of time that I served the minimum, it made it a lot harder for me to be able to get the assistance that I deserved. So with that, all I did was, again, late night scrolling. I literally just looked up and saw that there was something called dollar 400. First I thought, scam.

[00:20:09] Imani: These kind of things happen. Usually it’s like these ghosts advertisements that says, Hey, we’re gonna help you, but then they really are trying to steal your money. But dollar four, when I saw these other testimonials. When I really heard how they can be basically that form filler for you, kind of like how TurboTax does it for you and they help you fill out your forms and help you with your taxes.

[00:20:29] Imani: That’s basically what Dollar four was doing for me. They took all of my information, they took all of my hospital, they saw everything. They saw my income, they saw everything, and they just talked to the hospital for him. 

[00:20:41] Joe: It is, uh, such a great point you made that there are so many, when people get in trouble, there are so many credit relief programs that are scams.

[00:20:50] Joe: We’ve had people on talking about that before. There are so many people get into hospital that you get led astray by people that are going to try to make money off of you. Can we talk about how the process went when you started working with Dollar Four? ’cause whether somebody chooses Dollar Four or a similar.

[00:21:08] Joe: Company. Company, a similar institution. There are some institutions out there that can help you. So contact dollar for what happens then. Do you meet with somebody? Do you get on like a Zoom type call with them or do you have a chat online? Like how does this whole thing start? 

[00:21:24] Imani: All I did was go on their website.

[00:21:27] Imani: I believe there was an area where it said you could submit a form and when I started to fill out that form. Again, it is some forms that you still have to deal with, but it’s a whole lot sign significantly shorter than what you’d have to deal with with the regular hospital because the hospitals are here like, well, we need your W twos, we need your income.

[00:21:45] Imani: We need all these different verifications. A check of a check of a check. I didn’t wanna do all that, but what dollar four did was the, here’s just a simple form of how much do you make an estimate Then just a, a slight verification of that. It could be a check stub or anything like that. Then the next thing they did was put your story.

[00:22:04] Imani: So basically I told them what happened to me. I gave them my DD two 14. I gave them my medical notes and everything that happened and I gave them my medical bills. And basically they said, well, clearly they said we’ll take care of it. ’cause after maybe two to three weeks I got a notification from WellStar that said you were eligible for 100% of financial assistance.

[00:22:24] Imani: Not 20, not 30, not 50, not 70, a hundred. 

[00:22:28] Joe: And this is, I think, an important lesson, stackers. And obviously for many of you, this might not apply, but if you’ve got somebody in your family. Who is dealing with medical debt? I think some takeaways here, Imani are number one, nonprofit hospitals are legally required to offer assistance.

[00:22:45] Joe: Many for-profit hospitals also offer assistance. These income thresholds they have way higher than most people think way, way higher. More of you are eligible for medical assistance than you think, but the hospital makes the application confusing on purpose. Because they want you to pay 

[00:23:07] Imani: and they wanna make it where you are manipulated.

[00:23:10] Imani: You know, you’re basically gonna say, I don’t wanna do this. Or you put in the wrong thing. You say the wrong thing, just the wrong input. And automatically they’ll pass it by and say you’re rejected. 

[00:23:20] Joe: Yeah, a hundred percent. So what Dollar Four does is a group that exists. A hundred percent just to help you navigate and like you, Imani, when I first heard about dollar four, which has been a little while now, I was like, oh, just another scam company.

[00:23:37] Joe: And man, just all of the people that have gotten great help from them 

[00:23:43] Imani: and it’s real and they were real stories. It’s not ai, it’s not these fake testimonials. They are real people. Some people that have gone through even worse situations than mine. Even ongoing medical problems and medical traumas, and they still were able to get coverage.

[00:24:00] Imani: That was amazing to me. 

[00:24:02] Joe: They exist 100% to help people get through medical debt. They will see if you qualify. And then, uh, Imani, like for you, they help you fill out the patient form, they prepare the application, and they send it to the hospital exactly what they did for you. And then they work with you and the hospital to get you medical relief.

[00:24:20] Joe: So after you found out that you were eligible, did you have more help from them after that? 

[00:24:25] Imani: Oh, absolutely. I mean, when I immediately got the financial assistance, the first thing I did was get a, I had to get a post-op just to make sure that I was recovering and rehabilitating well, and of course I did fine.

[00:24:37] Imani: Thankfully, the appendicitis, there’s two types, so I could have done the. Open surgery basically, where they completely cut me open and they would’ve had to remove my appendix that way. But then there’s been new treatments called the Laproscopic, tiny little incisions they make in my body. And what they did was just tiny little incisions, little holes with about three weeks, nothing.

[00:25:00] Joe: So powerful. This is the kicker Stackers. What did you pay for all this help from Dollar four? 

[00:25:07] Imani: Nothing. 

[00:25:07] Joe: She paid nothing. Dollar four is sponsored by generous donors. For people that really need help, they get it, which is amazing. And I know this is ending, upsetting, like a, uh, advertisement for dollar four, but truly what it’s an advertisement for is there’s help out there if you need it.

[00:25:25] Joe: There’s good help, man. If we can shine a light and stackers, if you can help us shine a light on organizations like this, then we can start wiping out medical debt. ’cause Imani, now the medical debt now is gone. How does that change your world? What are you thinking about what’s happening now that changed the second that you had this $43,000 ogre off your back?

[00:25:46] Imani: For me, it was amazing. I mean, the first thing that happened. Automatically, like my stomach dropped. I was in denial. I was like, there’s no way. There’s no way that they actually cleared it. ’cause a lot of times I get different stories. I had to do research and look to see, and people usually say, well, maybe, you know, just set up a payment plan and everything.

[00:26:04] Imani: But the minimum payment plans that they had set up for me was about three to $500 a month. For me to be able to pay that kind of thing off, I was like, it’s like I’m, I’m paying my car note already that it feels like that’s just another bill that I don’t need. I would rather pay that on a house or an apartment somewhere.

[00:26:21] Imani: I’m living not over something that was out of my control. 

[00:26:25] Joe: You’re gonna be paying for it forever. 

[00:26:26] Imani: Exactly, and it wasn’t even like it’s outta my control that these kind of things happen, especially just medical debt and just medical situations. A lot of times it really is out of your control and when you have to pay, you’re basically paying for your punishment, something that wasn’t even your fault.

[00:26:41] Imani: It’s sad. 

[00:26:42] Joe: Well, come on. It was your fault, your damn appendix if you would’ve had a talk with your appendix ahead of time. 

[00:26:47] Imani: It’s true if anybody’s listening to this, if you’ve got medical bills haunting you like a bad ex. Please check with your hospital’s financial assistance policy. 

[00:26:56] Joe: Amen. And if it’s a stack, then look at a group like Dollar four and we’ll link to, by the way, dollar four on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins.

[00:27:05] Joe: Hey Imani, good luck with the Navy. My dad served in the Navy. I’ve got two nephews serving in the Navy. Navy Federal has been a long time sponsor of Stacking Benjamins. So thank you for your future service and for trying the first time around. So glad that you’re gonna go help keep our country safe, and thank you for telling your story.

[00:27:25] Joe: I really appreciate it. 

[00:27:26] Imani: Welcome, Joe. I’d like to help in any way I can. 

[00:27:30] trivia opener: We’re looking for the answer and correct spelling. Old McDonald had a what? Farm. E-I-E-I-O.

[00:27:42] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, duck. And wow, these medical bills sound like highway robbery, don’t they? $45,000 of work and you don’t find out till it’s over. That doesn’t sit right with me. Something else that doesn’t sit right with me is when I see these neighborhood kids getting into trouble.

[00:28:00] Doug: We need to be better mentors. Stackers. Check out today’s trivia question. It was on today’s date back in 1981 that the youngest bank robber of all time stole $118 at gunpoint from a New York bank. How old was he? I’ll be back right after I ask Joe’s mom for a photo ID before I get her another gin and tonic.

[00:28:21] Doug: This reminds me, you can never be too safe.

[00:28:31] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m basement bartender and guy who just learned what happens when you ask a lady of a certain age how old she is. Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Doug, to be clear, I think Joe’s mom is wiser and smarter. Much, much more than she. Older. Okay. Can I throw away this paper with that note on it now, ma?

[00:28:52] Doug: Can I just get it? Oh, I wasn’t supposed to say that she wrote it. Bam. This is very complicated. Well, hopefully I don’t mess up the trivia answer too. Here was the question which I picked because of Ammani’s Hospital bill on today’s date in history, the youngest bank robber ever took off with $118, but later surrendered to the FBI.

[00:29:14] Doug: How old was he? The youngest bank robber ever was a whopping nine years old. Not a great way to start your life, kid. And now two guys who helped shine a light on those companies stealing from you. Back to Joe and og,

[00:29:36] Joe: OG og, how old were you when you robbed your first bank? 

[00:29:38] OG: Uh, bank of Mom, bank of I was like 13 probably. 

[00:29:43] Doug: Did you ever do that? 

[00:29:44] OG: Yeah, I did 

[00:29:46] Doug: you, did you just reach right into the purse and grab a 20? 

[00:29:48] OG: No. Way worse. Actually. I knew my mom’s pin number. Oh. Oh no. 

[00:29:53] Doug: Oh, no. Uh, does, does mom listen to the show? 

[00:29:57] OG: Yeah. She knows about this and she, she got me.

[00:30:01] OG: She was like, Hey, so something happened with our bank. The good news is like she just brought it up at dinner. She’s like, the good news is the bank has all these security cameras and it’s not gonna take them long at all to figure out who it was. And then they can go arrest the person who stole the money out of our account and was like, oh, 

[00:30:18] Joe: she’s just staring at you.

[00:30:20] Joe: Oh, 

[00:30:21] OG: yeah. And then you’re sitting there eating dinner going, oh boy, how do I, how do I get outta this one? Uh, she was very gracious. I learned my lesson. Don’t take money outta mom’s purse or bank account for that matter. 

[00:30:35] Joe: No, that’s a good lesson 

[00:30:37] OG: about fair play though, because she has an Amex card that’s tied to my account and, um, she, uh, she, she has no problem reminding me when she charges on it.

[00:30:45] Joe: That’s an answer for parents right there. Doug. Guilt runs strong. Just go ahead. Oh, let your kids steal a couple hundred bucks maybe. Or maybe a hundred bucks early on. And then 

[00:30:53] OG: in her mind it was like an investment. 

[00:30:55] Joe: Exactly. She’s 

[00:30:56] OG: like, I could put a hundred in the S and PIVV, I could V-T-S-A-X and Chill.

[00:31:01] OG: Or I could throw my kids steal a hundred dollars. Hopefully he’s successful. I’ll put it in 

[00:31:06] Joe: the og. SAX 

[00:31:07] OG: and then I’m going to, uh, get a copy of his Amex card. Don’t take money from your folks kids. 

[00:31:13] Joe: It’s such an important story that imani told, and I think it was very brave of her to just admit I didn’t know anything about how the system worked.

[00:31:21] Joe: I’m so happy that, uh, a young woman like that’s, uh, serving our country. So I wish her well on her adventure into the Navy, which is I think gonna be, gonna be great. And I’m so happy that we found this organization. Dollar four. And by the way, if, uh, you need that link, it’ll be in our show notes. It’s Stacking Benjamins dot com.

[00:31:40] Joe: If you’ve got. A relative or a friend who really, really needs help navigating, uh, man, what a cool nonprofit. Let’s take a look at a headline. Guys. 

[00:31:49] headlines: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. I was Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. 

[00:31:56] Joe: Doug, you saw this recently in the Wall Street Journal, and I wanted to run this by all of our stackers because I found this to be really interesting.

[00:32:04] Doug: I did too, actually. When I saw the headline, what grabbed me was the word swinging. And it was in the headline in the Wall Street Journal. I’m like, wow. What’s the Wall Street Journal gonna cover about this? And then I was disappointed. But you were excited about it when you saw the headline. I was, I was crest falling 

[00:32:23] Joe: Clickbait hits people different ways.

[00:32:25] Doug: Exactly. 

[00:32:26] Joe: I might, I might have seen the rest of the headline. Which is, which was the fact that the housing market is swinging toward buyers. This could be good news for people that have been trying to accumulate cash, oh, gee, and maybe buy their first home. This piece was written by Nicole Friedman. Nicole writes, many home shoppers have given up.

[00:32:46] Joe: On the depressed housing market where sales are stuck at a 30 year low, but those buying are enjoying discounts at the highest rate. In years, about 62% of buyers last year purchased a home below the original listing price. That was the highest proportion since 2019. According to a new analysis by real estate brokerage.

[00:33:07] Joe: Redfin, it strikes me, OG that interest rates go up, right and people get a locked into their house and the low interest rate and new buyers. With these higher interest rates, you know, if they had done back of the envelope calculations, those monthly payments now may have changed. The amount of money that they needed may have changed for the down payment.

[00:33:30] Joe: Everything starts moving. I mean, the real estate market’s cyclical. Is this. You think this good news is gonna last? Can people finally start, uh, planning their next move? 

[00:33:40] OG: I think it’s interesting when people say things like, and, and you said it twice, two different ways, like stuck in their house or stuck in their mortgage.

[00:33:49] OG: You have to remove that from your vernacular. Just ’cause that’s how it has been, doesn’t mean that that’s what you’re gonna have to make your decision on moving forward. It’s like the idea of sunk costs in economics, right? It just is what it is. And now you just have to have to make the next decision based on the evaluation of the data that that, that you have now, I mean.

[00:34:10] OG: Everybody thinks like two and a half percent mortgages was the new normal. It wasn’t. It was a short period of time where if you were lucky enough to get in there, great, but now, like you said, people feel like the luck is actually a bad thing to have because they’re comparing the future mortgage payment or the future interest rate to their current one going, well, I can’t quote unquote, afford to do this thing.

[00:34:33] OG: Things are gonna change, whether it’s pricing or whether it’s the borrowing costs, whether it’s the. Other tax situation that goes on with houses. There’s a lot of stuff going on right now and you know, I can speak to Texas and, and I know about Florida, and I’m sure it’s happening in other areas too, where legislators are trying to adjust the property tax rules, right?

[00:34:53] OG: Like, what can you tax? What can’t you tax? How much tax can there be? How long can you collect the tax for? Which, if you think about it, let’s say that you bought your house for whatever, 30 years ago. Your taxes and your house insurance, especially if you live in a high insurance cost area like a Florida or like a Texas or something like that, your taxes and insurance payment.

[00:35:12] OG: It’s probably more than your original mortgage principal. Interest taxes and insurance payment was when you first bought the thing 30 

[00:35:18] Joe: years, like 25 years ago. Like if you’re on the back end of that thing. 

[00:35:21] OG: And so there is some argument to say like, well, I, I paid for this, but now I gotta lease the land from the, from the government for the rest of my life.

[00:35:27] OG: You know, like at, at a rate that’s greater than all of these payments were when I first bought this thing. So that’s gonna change. I mean, imagine if all of a sudden they said, Hey, there’s no more property taxes. In this community or this county or whatever, like what would that do to housing prices? All this to say, there’s always gonna be changes that are happening, and as you’re evaluating, Hey, do I take the job and move?

[00:35:47] OG: Do I buy this house or don’t I, you can’t look backwards and say, if I would’ve only done this, well, yeah, if I’d have only taken all of my money and dumped it in Bitcoin at 10 cents. Right, 

[00:35:58] Doug: right. 

[00:35:58] OG: You know, a thing, I’d be a gazillionaire. Like, I wish I would’ve done that. I wish I would’ve taken all of my money on leverage and, and margined the hell outta my life and bought a bunch of Nvidia stock, but I didn’t, you know, and it’s like you can’t do, you can’t live your life looking backwards, trying to decide.

[00:36:14] OG: What I wanna do in the future based on things that happened in the past. 

[00:36:17] Joe: What about this idea of people getting bigger discounts on houses paying less than sticker price? Now looking at this, uh, there’s a chart, and I’ll link to it in the show notes for people have a Wall Street Journal subscription, but the average person now is paying 8% less than what the price looks like on the house.

[00:36:36] Joe: I mean, should we bone up on our negotiating skills? 

[00:36:40] OG: Well, I mean, you should have probably a realtor to do this, but. But I find this interesting too, that the commentary on we got a discount. It’s like, just ’cause you price something incorrectly and you get it for a correct price, doesn’t make you get got a discount on it.

[00:36:54] OG: If the house trades at $499,900, that’s the price. Just ’cause old man winners thinks that was worth 5 25 doesn’t mean you got a discount. It means that. The price is fairly priced. F 4 99. Like, I don’t know, like I don’t understand these, these articles or these, like these, this, this perception of like, it’s a discount, but I 

[00:37:14] Joe: think this is hard for somebody who’s just starting out because they see the price of a house.

[00:37:19] Joe: If I’m just starting out, I see the, you know, I go into Target and I see the price of bread. I’m like, okay, that’s the price. The house, that ain’t the case. 

[00:37:26] OG: Right? 

[00:37:27] Joe: That’s our starting negotiating spot, and the fact is people are now able to negotiate that down further than they were as soon as two years ago.

[00:37:37] OG: Is that a discount or is it like the sellers are, you know, are they living in fantasy land just like buyers were as it relates to rates? Right. At one point in time, Zillow said, my house is worth a million. I think it’s worth a million. It’s like, well, no, no one wants to buy it at a million People will buy it at 8 75.

[00:37:53] OG: Therefore, your house is worth 8 75. 

[00:37:56] Joe: That’s another headline by the way, when you talk about, you know, sellers and maybe there’s something going on with sellers og. Another headline recently was that we’re seeing people that make good money. People with good income streams are starting to default on their debt and really get into credit card debt, like the numbers are starting to stack up there too.

[00:38:17] Joe: Do you think that these two kind of tie together that you might have somebody who’s a little more distressed because of the fact that they need the cash today? 

[00:38:25] OG: I haven’t seen the credit card or, you know, auto defaults or you know, mortgage default numbers. I think there’s always gonna be this ebb and flow of people that get a little overextended.

[00:38:36] OG: And then have to tighten their belts a little bit and then get a little overextended and tighten their belts. And the key for all of this is to not play in this game. Like if, if you can avoid this rollercoaster ride of, whether it’s debt management or cash flow or whatever, always building in enough margin of safety.

[00:38:56] OG: To allow for the ebbs and flows. Look, if, if you have a job and you’re saying, oh, my job’s super secure, and I get a 25% bonus every year, and it’s always happened, it’s never not happened. Life is good and you’re living your life right to the, you know, your lips are above, just above water. That’s a huge risk.

[00:39:14] OG: That’s way riskier than taking a 6% mortgage when your other mortgage was four. Because any sort of thing, I was just having this discussion with my kid the other day. One of the classes that he’s taking is a, um. It’s like a seminar class and it’s about like different jobs and different careers and people come in and they talk about what their job is.

[00:39:32] OG: You know, he had a guy that came in and was a real estate developer. You know where this is headed. This is a very rich dad, poor dad. Like, if you owe the bank a million dollars, you’re in trouble. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, they’re in trouble. That, like, that kind of mentality and, and you know, I’m trying to explain this to my son.

[00:39:46] OG: I’m like, leverage is very, very, very successful and sexy. It looks so cool when everything is exactly lined up perfectly. When we walk through an idea of buying a rental property and you know, you’re clearing 2000 a month of cash flow and everything’s great. I’m like, well, how does this blow up? Like, what can go wrong here?

[00:40:03] OG: And he’s like, what if the tenant doesn’t pay? I’m like, bingo. Like if you’re, if you’re paying, you know, if you’re like, oh, I’ve had this extra 2000 a month of cash flow and I’m living on 1,990 of it, and now all of a sudden this tenant stops paying because they go through an issue, well, guess what? Their issue becomes your issue.

[00:40:21] OG: And now it’s like, well, what if you lose the tenant? You can’t redo the property. Or there’s a, some damage that happens and it takes a while to get repaired or you know, whatever. If you don’t have enough margin there, and this happens in our own personal lives as well. This doesn’t have to be like a rental type business.

[00:40:35] OG: If you’re making a hundred grand and you’re spending 99,900 of it, boy, everything has to go exactly according to plan. Every single solitary day. So this is a bigger issue, I think, than just like, you know, going, well, I’m getting hosed because the, the interest rates are not doing what I thought they should.

[00:40:53] OG: Or, you know, it was five and now it’s six. And that kind of hoses me. It’s like. Whether it’s five or six, you know, you still have to have some access in your budget, and if you don’t, you have to work on that component of it too. 

[00:41:04] Joe: Build that margin into your plan. Well, look at Ammani. We just heard OG Ammani’s story, and now there’s no way a 19 year old’s gonna get $45,000 saved.

[00:41:12] Joe: Right. But I’m sure for the rest of her life. She’s gonna have that emergency fund like she’s going, might not be 45 grand, but I do know, ’cause I learned very, very quickly that man stuff can go the wrong way in a hurry. 

[00:41:29] OG: Right? I mean, that’s an example of unfortunate luck, right? That’s not even like. That’s like one of those ones where you’re going like, God, God, why me?

[00:41:38] OG: Right. Right. It’s like, you know, so I’m, I’m talking about the self-inflicted things. 

[00:41:42] Joe: Sure. 

[00:41:43] OG: Bad things happen. It’s just, you know, a hundred percent you unfortunately, but if you can avoid some of that, whether it’s like having, you know, a little bit of an extra emergency fund or cashflow wise, paying attention to it.

[00:41:53] OG: And the interesting thing and what I think we wanna. Remind people of is, and I know where people I, I know the kind of feedback that we might hear, which is, yeah, it’s all easy to say when you make X dollars, but if you’re like me and you’re making 70 grand and I’m trying to put food on the table, like there isn’t any margin, and I get that, I a hundred percent understand that because I know, Joe, you were there, Doug, you were there.

[00:42:14] OG: I’ve been there like we’ve all lived through that. The important thing is, is like when the next good news happens, when you get the $5,000 bonus, when you get the, the 3% pay raise, you know, whatever, and that you’re starting to build in a little bit of extra, every single time those good news things happen.

[00:42:32] OG: You can’t, you just have to, for a short period of time, go, I can’t take that. I’m not owed this money. Like again, we hear that, right? It’s like I, I need a vacation. I’m gonna go, I just got a $5,000 bonus. I’m gonna go spend $6,000 on a vacation because I’m due, right? I’m owed it. You don’t understand how hard I’ve been working.

[00:42:53] OG: I need the time off. It’s like I do, I do understand how hard you’ve been working. I know what it’s like. We’ve all been there. If you can build that margin early, then from that point forward, you’re good. Then you can spend all the extra. Like if you say I’m making 70, but until I make, you know, from 70 to 80, that $10,000 gap I’m saving.

[00:43:11] OG: And then from 80 to 90, 90 to a hundred just spend all that. That’s fine. You still have that 10,000 gap, if that makes sense. Give yourself the benefit of being more conservative and it, it specifically relates to houses know it’s okay to not buy the million dollar house, and I know, well, you don’t know what it’s like to live in Chicago.

[00:43:29] OG: You have to. I know. I got it. But maybe you just can’t do that one. You have to have a little bit smaller one. Or I read an article the other day, you just rent, like there’s an article about somebody in New York that’s renting and they figured out the math that it’s. They’re gonna have more money in 20 years.

[00:43:43] OG: By renting versus by renting. 

[00:43:44] Joe: Yeah. 

[00:43:44] OG: The down payment and having that money taken out of the, their brokerage account and the taxes and the maintenance fees and all the stuff that goes into owning a place. 

[00:43:51] Joe: Well, and I think a lesson here too is don’t forget to negotiate. I mean, they can say no big deal.

[00:43:56] OG: Well, as it relates to buying stuff. Absolutely. You know, you should negotiate almost everything. 

[00:44:01] Joe: Always, always put your negotiation hat on. And if you don’t think you’re good at that, I mean that’s your next curriculum, right? Build yourself a curriculum. Find people are great at negotiation and dive into that.

[00:44:12] Joe: If I’m selling my house right now, should this data worry me that, uh, prices seem to be coming down? 

[00:44:19] OG: I mean, it would worry me if I bought the house a year ago. Again, this goes back to this mythical number of I remember when, right? 

[00:44:28] Joe: Yeah. 

[00:44:29] OG: I remember when this thing was worth this. How come it’s not worth that anymore?

[00:44:32] Joe: Well, this is why og, we don’t buy houses and sell them the next year. ’cause if you bought it a year ago and you’re thinking about selling already, I mean just the cost, the transaction costs, they’re gonna kill even without all this data that we’re looking at. 

[00:44:46] OG: Yeah. 

[00:44:47] Joe: But I also think when it’s more competitive, man, when we were looking at houses a few years ago, just the.

[00:44:52] Joe: Staging your house. Every statistic you see shows that, that spending just a little time. And if you can’t afford a stager early on I was, uh, moving from one place to another and I hired a stager not to do it og ’cause I couldn’t afford the stager, but I could afford one to pay them for one hour of their time to walk around my house and show me.

[00:45:15] Joe: What to do. And that was amazing. That was money. So well spent having them just take me around and, uh, ’cause again, thinking about negotiation, I’m like, I don’t have any cash. How do I get this done? But I know I need my house staged. Well, instead of paying all that cash to have somebody else do it, you know, for me at the time, um.

[00:45:33] Joe: Paying them for an hour. It was good stuff. 

[00:45:35] OG: Use ai. Take a picture of your living room and say, what should I do in here to make this ready to sell it? 

[00:45:43] Joe: And you know, the first thing ask, your house already looks great, but let’s make it look even better. 

[00:45:48] Doug: Yeah. 

[00:45:48] Joe: It’s gonna be like our best red. Wow, you live in an amazing place.

[00:45:54] Doug: Mine told me to hang pictures to hide the water stains on the walls. 

[00:45:58] Joe: There it is, 

[00:45:59] Doug: which I never would’ve thought of. 

[00:46:01] Joe: From all the crying Doug does when the open doesn’t go the way that he wants, creates water stains all over the walls. We’ll link to this on our show notes page at stacky Benjamins dot com.

[00:46:11] Joe: Before we say goodbye, Doug, uh, we have to go out on the back porch for a second because we’ve gotta meetup in Southern Minnesota if you’re in the Mankato area. Why, what else are you doing? It’s so cold there. Wow. Yeah. Move away and come back when it’s warm or, uh, I think you need to huddle with some other stackers because we’re having a cool meetup tonight.

[00:46:38] Joe: Tonight at six 30 at Maverick Innovation Gateway. That’s of course on the the other MSU campus, Minnesota State University campus. 

[00:46:48] OG: Minnesota State or Mankato State. 

[00:46:50] Joe: Uh, Minnesota State. Minnesota State University, the Mavericks og. Mavericks. So Maverick Innovation Center. Come join, uh, Tim and Rob in the gang.

[00:47:01] Joe: And um, we had a great, great first meetup a month ago, so hope to continue that tonight. I know they’ve got a fantastic agenda for the meeting 

[00:47:08] Doug: also in the back porch. I wanna make sure we talk about a great note we received from Marsha who lives. At the end of the earth. Like if, if, if you’re a flat earth like me, uh, you wonder where’s the edge?

[00:47:21] Doug: It’s where Marshall lives in New Brunswick, Canada. Like that’s a real place. 

[00:47:26] OG: Yeah. 

[00:47:26] Doug: Who knew? 

[00:47:27] OG: Isn’t Brunswick the name of the like the, the, the bowling company? 

[00:47:31] Doug: Yeah. That’s where all the bowling equipment must come from. I just thought it was a fictitious place, but it’s where they make all the best of 

[00:47:37] OG: bowling capital 

[00:47:38] Doug: of 

[00:47:38] OG: the North America.

[00:47:39] OG: Right. 

[00:47:41] Doug: Marsha is a 61-year-old Canadian woman who loves the podcast, although I feel old with each poke at Joe about his age. Love the dynamic between Joe Og and Doug. Been listening for a few years now. This isn’t even a review. This is just, she put this out there for the world to see on Facebook. She wears noise canceling headphones with AirPods inside so I can listen while riding the mower and have snow blown that way as well.

[00:48:07] Doug: That sentence structure. Marsha, makes me think you’re snow blowing and riding the mower inside. Uh, I don’t know what happens in New Brunswick. It’s a magical place. 

[00:48:16] OG: Bowling, we’ve 

already 

[00:48:17] Doug: talked about it. She lives in New Brunswick and Americans always say, where is that? You’re right, we do. They share a border with Maine.

[00:48:25] Doug: We’re not even sure. Maine is real. Marsha, so Awesome. Thanks for writing in Marsha. Appreciate that. 

[00:48:33] OG: All right, Doug. What should we’ve learned today? 

[00:48:37] Doug: Wow. Just not even letting Joe talk. I like it. I like this new format we’ve got. So what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today? Take some advice from Imani Vance, having work done.

[00:48:50] Doug: Get the bill asap and hopefully before you get the procedure completed, second that emergency fund. It comes in handy when bad things happen. Huh? But you might ask, what’s the big lesson?

[00:49:05] Doug: If you’re gonna card Joe’s mom, you might as well just begin washing windows ahead of time because that’s what you’ll end up doing anyways. You’ve been warned.

[00:49:16] Doug: Thanks to Imani Vance for joining us today and sharing her story. And good luck in the Navy. Imani, you’re gonna serve our country well, I’m sure. Also, if you or someone you know needs help navigating the hospital relief system, introduce them to dollar four.org. That’s dollar FO r.org. We’ll include a link to them in our show notes so you can get busy wiping out that debt.

[00:49:42] Doug: This show is the property of SP podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul Sea High. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube. And all the usual social media spots. Come say hello and oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.

[00:50:08] Doug: 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.

[00:51:15] Doug: This is the after show, uh, the part of the show that nobody’s allowed to talk about under a penalty of social embarrassment. I think 

[00:51:23] OG: public flogging. 

[00:51:24] Doug: Public flogging, which we gotta bring that back, right? 

[00:51:27] OG: So there’s a few people I got in mind. That would be 

[00:51:31] Doug: so many of our social ills would just disappear if, if that came back, uh, like the stockade in the town square anyway, you had a skiing adventure that may have topped our skiing adventure.

[00:51:46] Doug: Yeah, you teased me with this. I want to know the rest of the story. 

[00:51:49] OG: Well, I had scheduled this, uh, ski trip with my son. But then kinda last minute school kind of got in the way of a stupid thing called college. No, he, uh, life and rightfully so. He was like, dad, it’s Christmas break. I don’t know that I want to travel.

[00:52:06] OG: And uh, it was a good thing because the ski season out west is absolute garbage as it relates to the amount of snow 

[00:52:12] Doug: dog poo. 

[00:52:14] OG: It is wild how little snow there was when we were there. Not just like, oh, it hasn’t snowed much more. Like that’s grass. 

[00:52:23] Doug: Right. 

[00:52:23] OG: You know how like when you’re on a chairlift and you go, wow, that looks like a pretty intense run, but if you see it with the what is just grass and field, you’re like, oh, I should be able to do that.

[00:52:31] OG: That’s just 

[00:52:31] Doug: right. 

[00:52:32] OG: You know, I could damn near walk down that thing in any event. So I went with my brother, he was able to take some time off and, um, it was his first time skiing in a long time, so he, he was having a rough go of it. He was not very trusting of his abilities. It compounded with the fact that the snow wasn’t particularly fantastic, a little warm.

[00:52:51] OG: So you get that kind of slushy, you know, 

[00:52:53] Doug: the snow wasn’t particularly there. 

[00:52:56] OG: It wasn’t, it was hard to ski over the mud, you know, the rocks were kind of in the way, but we had a good time and it was good. Brother, brother time. So I was talking to my mom this weekend and she’s like, Hey, I haven’t talked to your brother yet.

[00:53:10] OG: I hope he got home safely. You know, just how moms would say. And I said, because this is a perfect opportunity to say this. I said, well, I’ve been sworn to secrecy about what happened, and if you know my mom, which I think you do a little bit, her mind immediately goes to, you know, like the most obscure, insane outcome that possibly could have happened.

[00:53:34] OG: Like, he’s not dead, but he’s close to it. And so she’s like, oh my god, does he break his collarbone again? Because he did that in seventh grade when he went ski. And I was like, whew, well 

[00:53:45] Doug: just, you 

[00:53:45] OG: know, your brother 

[00:53:46] Doug: has weak collarbones. 

[00:53:48] OG: I’m like, uh, I’ve been told not to say anything. And she’s like, God dang it.

[00:53:51] OG: You gotta tell me what’s going on. He just doesn’t have a friend. Find me on there. And I’m like, well, Sarah’s involved. That’s his wife’s name. I’m like, it’s okay. Like, I think she’s with him. She’s like, she’s with him like, like what did they do with the kids? And I’m like, I don’t know. They wanted to be together for Valentine’s Day.

[00:54:06] OG: Like all of that is true. They wanted to be together on Valentine’s Day. Oh boy. Boy. She’s with him. Boy, they with him at home. He’s such 

[00:54:11] Doug: a jerk. You’re 

[00:54:13] OG: such a jerk. Such a jerk. She says, well, I gotta go. I’m gonna call your brother. So she calls My brother leaves a voicemail, my brother, me the voicemail transcription, Hey, Josh said you might’ve got hurt.

[00:54:24] OG: Hope you’re okay. Let me know what’s going on. He text this back to me. Giggle, giggle, giggle. And takes a picture of himself, like sitting in a chair with his arm kind of like this, and then screenshots back to me loading that picture into chat GPT that says, put me in a cast in a hospital room in the mountains.

[00:54:44] Doug: Oh boy. 

[00:54:44] OG: And ums. So it’s, uh, this ongoing thread of me and my brother changing all these pictures. You know, like, okay, that’s good, but try this picture instead. You know? So he ends up with this picture. Here you go. 

[00:54:59] Doug: He’s got a head wrapped as well. Nice. 

[00:55:01] OG: He’s got his head wrapped, nice, good touch with a cast on his arm.

[00:55:05] OG: And then he’s had this picture of himself in a boot. All of his kids’ toys are in the background. I’m like, well, that looks stupid. Put yourself in a, in a hospital room. So Jet GPT puts him on the hospital floor 

[00:55:20] Doug: as far as I can make it. Ma, I crawled into the hospital, 

[00:55:23] OG: so he sends those pictures to my mom and says.

[00:55:27] OG: Here you go. And she loses her mind. And so then I text her back list, 

[00:55:31] Doug: you guys are the worst sons of all time. 

[00:55:34] OG: I know 

[00:55:35] Doug: you just terrorize your mother. 

[00:55:38] OG: So then I, so then I text her last night and I said, how’s Jordan doing? And she, and I said, I hope he is recovering. And she’s like, not a nice thing to do to an old lady.

[00:55:50] OG: And so then I text a picture of myself with an eye patch. And I broke around when I said, and I said I was also injured also with the head wrap in the, in the hospital room. And she just basically, it 

looked 

[00:56:04] Doug: like civil war veterans. 

[00:56:05] OG: Right? That’s what I’m like. And so, uh, anyways, this will be way better of a visual podcast than an audio to kinda see the whole transcription of it.

[00:56:15] OG: But if you know anything about me, I’d like, I’d love to pull all these little, uh, these little funny, funny pranks. 

[00:56:22] Doug: Ha, 

[00:56:23] OG: ha ha. My brother’s injured and my mom doesn’t know. Ha ha ha ha. 

[00:56:27] Doug: Catchy pt. Put my brother in a tree 

[00:56:32] OG: like skiing. Oh, that would be a good one. I’ve got one of him falling. I bet I can take the video, like take it to Sora and just be like, make this video.

[00:56:40] OG: Like instead of him just sliding and falling on his butt, like make him tumble down the mountain. I might do that one. That one would be funny too. 

[00:56:47] Doug: Yeah. I think she’ll enjoy that.