The ultra-wealthy get access to private equity, private credit, and pre-IPO deals the rest of us don’t. Now, suddenly, those same deals are being marketed to you. Coincidence? Maybe. Cause for suspicion? Absolutely.
Joe, OG, and Doug settle in at the basement desk (yes, Joe’s mom’s basement — the most prestigious financial address in podcasting) to dig into a Wall Street Journal headline asking whether everyday investors should be chasing the same private deals as the 1%. OG breaks down why “exclusive access” and “higher returns” can also mean binary outcomes, illiquidity traps, and a failure rate that the ultra-wealthy can absorb — and you probably can’t.
Oh, and there’s a Ty Lopez–led retail investment that allegedly became a Ponzi scheme. So that’s fun.
What’s in today’s episode:
- Why private equity and private credit are suddenly being pitched to regular investors — and what that timing might tell you
- The real difference between risk-free returns, stock market investing, and private bets (they are not the same thing, no matter what the brochure says)
- How “exclusive opportunity” can be a polite way of saying “binary outcome with limited exits”
- A real-world look at regulation risk using Airbnb as the example
- What liquidity actually means — and what happens when you need your money back and the market says “no”
- The Ty Lopez distressed retail saga and how it allegedly went full Ponzi
- Why private credit often means lending to borrowers who couldn’t get money elsewhere
- The uncomfortable truth about who gets targeted by aggressive investment marketing (hint: it’s people who feel behind)
OG also walks through an SEC-inspired framework for evaluating any investment before you hand over a dollar:
- Build a financial roadmap before chasing complex deals
- Know your actual risk tolerance (not the aspirational version)
- Diversify — for real, not just in theory
- Handle your emergency fund and high-interest debt first
- Grab every employer match on the table
- Rebalance regularly
- How to spot the early signs of fraud before it costs you
Also in the basement:
Doug drops Mustang trivia (the 1964 Ford kind, not the horse kind). The TikTok Minute rides off into the sunset, replaced by a shiny new back-to-basics segment. There are community meetup updates — including Benjamins After Dark in Boston. And somehow, against all odds, Kool-Aid nostalgia becomes a conversation.
Because sometimes the most dangerous investment isn’t the one that looks risky. It’s the one that sounds like something only smart, wealthy, connected people get access to.
Pull up a chair. The basement is open.
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
- Private Equity Was Headed for a Correction, Even Without AI Gloom (Wall Street Journal)
- He Vowed to Revive RadioShack and Pier 1. Investors Say They Were Swindled. (Wall Street Journal)
- Ten Things to Consider Before You Make Investing Decisions (SEC.gov)
Doug’s Trivia
- What iconic Ford car began production in 1964, originally cost $2,368, and sold 417,000 units in its first year?
Have a question for the show?
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Other Mentions
- Stacking Benjamins Vault
- Stacking Benjamins After Dark (BAD) Boston Meetup Tickets, Wednesday, Mar 11 from 6 pm to 7 pm | Eventbrite
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’re handing the reigns over to YOU, our Stacker community!
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: GREATEST HITS WEEK Investing Rules for a Sky-High Stock Market SB1812
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: It is Monday in the basement. You know what that means? The coffee’s hot and uh, the mics are hot. My [00:00:06] OG: coffee’s cold now. [00:00:07] Joe: Your coffee’s cold. Reheat it. How’s your coffee cold. [00:00:10] OG: Because I made it 30 minutes ago. [00:00:13] Joe: But we hear about Doug chasing his truck. And by the way, I don’t know if you know this, Doug, when trucks are in park, they’re stationary. [00:00:20] Joe: So you chasing your truck is a hilarious [00:00:22] DOug: one Would think story one would think the laws of physics would dictate when the cars in park, you got these big, wide truck tires planted to the ground, wouldn’t move. [00:00:33] OG: This happens to old guys sometimes they put it in neutral and it’s [00:00:36] Joe: can’t get it. [00:00:40] Joe: It’s welcome to Michigan, right? Yeah. Winter of Michigan. [00:00:44] DOug: Do you want me to tell this story or we just wanna, wanna do that another time? [00:00:48] OG: No, I don’t wanna hear it again. It wasn’t that great the first time. It won’t get better with age. [00:00:54] Joe: Oh geez. Like, uh, email me the rest of the story. We got stuff to do. Uh, let’s raise our mugs gents, on behalf of the men and women who are making podcast I mom’s basement, and all those stackers out there who had a fantastic weekend and a great week away from Stacking Benjamins, listening to greatest hitch shows and watching the news, you’re all working overtime. [00:01:15] Joe: So thanks to you. Thanks [00:01:17] DOug: everybody. [00:01:18] opener: Here’s the song that we’d like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers and what have you. This one’s called Vacation Over [00:01:29] opener: Vacation [00:01:33] opener: Over. [00:01:39] DOug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:54] DOug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. On today’s episode, problems with some of the investments wealthy people use. Who’s in trouble? How do you vet great investments so you don’t run your own financial independence ship aground? We’ll bring all of that, and of course, I’ll share some trivia that’ll make you excited. [00:02:12] DOug: You got up this morning and now two guys who both woke up on the, let’s make more money side of the bed. It’s Joe. Oh and oh. [00:02:27] Joe: That’s right Doug. Not only did we wake up on the Let’s make more money side of the bed, we woke up on the Let’s not lose money to Stupid Schemes side of the bed. ’cause that’s what we’re talking about today. Welcome back to Stacky Benjamins. I’m so glad you found us. We are kicking off another eight weeks of live show is, and if you miss the greatest Hits week last week. [00:02:48] Joe: Amanda, we have some good stuff from Jen Drummond. From George Gean, and, uh, we got your Greg McFarland again. That was fun. But the guy we’re hearing right now, across the mic from me is the og. How are you man? [00:03:01] OG: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me back. [00:03:04] Joe: We, we just, Doug and I took a vote. We decided he could stay around a couple more episodes. [00:03:09] Joe: Doug, love [00:03:09] DOug: when I’m a guest on your show. [00:03:11] OG: I’m still on the island. Just so I get off this thing. How do I get voted off for God’s sake? [00:03:16] Joe: Speaking of that, I I, I just saw a commercial for Survivor fifties. Does that mean for. Survivor is 50 seasons old. [00:03:24] DOug: Yeah. [00:03:24] OG: Yeah. [00:03:24] Joe: They’ve had 50 seasons of Survivor, but [00:03:26] DOug: do they run like three a year or something? [00:03:28] Joe: They must, [00:03:28] OG: yeah. [00:03:28] DOug: Yeah. [00:03:29] OG: Yeah. They didn’t start Survivor when you guys were toddlers. I [00:03:31] Joe: was. I was just thinking, man, how, or [00:03:35] OG: Mark what’s name never ages. [00:03:37] DOug: That’s what it was like growing up in the seventies. Our parents had no idea what we were doing. We were on our own island. Surviving [00:03:43] Joe: that was don’t come in until dark. [00:03:45] DOug: Yeah, [00:03:46] Joe: those days. We got a great show. We’re gonna help people shine a light, as it were on your investment philosophy. If you’re not sure how to evaluate investments, today’s all for you because the first half of the show, we’re gonna talk about how the 1% Invest, og, you know, all those commercials for those, those, those people that always go, you wanna invest like the one, this is not the 1% invest. [00:04:09] Joe: Well, what could go wrong if you invest like the 1% invest? Maybe something percent we’re gonna find out. The [00:04:15] DOug: percent don’t want you to know. [00:04:18] Joe: Shh. Be quiet. [00:04:19] DOug: We all talk about it at our meetings. Don’t tell ’em this. [00:04:23] Joe: If you know how much the 1% did not care what, you know, what you dunno, it’s great. And also, speaking of great, finally, the ferrets that spin the wheel here in Mom’s basement, they’ve made their master product. [00:04:36] Joe: We call it the Stacking Benjamins vault. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash vault. Take care of those subscriptions. Get your identity off the internet. Watch for stuff that appears on the dark web and take action immediately. Stacking Benjamins dot com you have. The vault already probably in seven different tools that you’re never gonna open. [00:04:57] Joe: ’cause there’s seven of them. Why not put it all in one place and just get it done? So Stacking Benjamins dot com slash vault. Alright, we’re gonna get into it here in just a minute, but we got a couple sponsors to help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them. And then OG Doug and I, we’re gonna go down the private equity rabbit hole on what can go wrong when you invest like the 1%. [00:05:18] headlines: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. [00:05:25] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. Uh, just about a week and a half ago, TEIS demos wrote this. Telo starts off by saying the market might eventually talk itself down from some of the worst fears about artificial intelligence disruption to software companies, but investors shouldn’t expect private asset managers to bounce right back to where they were as owners of, and lenders too, software companies through their funds, the largest private asset managers who’ve seen their shares shrink alongside swaths of the rest of the market. [00:05:56] Joe: In recent sessions, perhaps surprisingly though. The correction in many of these manager shares has actually been sharper, especially when viewed across a longer time horizon. Let’s back into what these people are talking about, og, because I was gonna say I blacked, bunch of gobbled black. You have to start over. [00:06:11] Joe: Deckers. Wait, what? So here’s the deal. Let’s start off with private equity because these people og, part of the promise of private equity is you don’t wanna invest like the masses. You wanna invest like the 1%. And the cool thing is we can make you more money, number one. And number two, OG is, you know, the term hedge fund. [00:06:33] Joe: Initially was around you. You can also hedge the downside risk by not investing like the heathens in these index funds. Can you talk for a second about the lure of private asset managers and what they’re selling? [00:06:49] OG: Well, if you think about it from the psyche of an investor, especially one who feels like he or she is a little behind the eight ball, right? [00:06:58] OG: Because people who have been investing since they were in their twenties. And or thirties and have, you know, money built up, you know, and, and you’ve seen the progress and you’ve seen the compounding have a different feeling about this necessarily than people who are just getting started maybe, and what the allure of private equity investing is, or just private investments. [00:07:21] OG: And this could be something as simple as. Ownership of a company that, you know, your buddy says, Hey, this is a great idea. You should own this company with me. Or a more public, like big name private equity type of deal, or something like that. It could be buying stock in companies that are pre IPO. So there’s organizations out there that say, Hey, do you want to get in on SpaceX? [00:07:42] OG: Like, here’s how you can do it, you know? But I think it all stems from some of the similar things, which is this fear that we’re a little bit behind. The only way to catch up is to be ultra aggressive in our investing. But the reality is if you just strip away all that stuff and just look at it from the fact standpoint, we know that US treasuries, so if you lend money to the US government, that’s what we call our risk free rate because we are very confident, very, very, very, very 99.9 9 9 9 9 9, repeating. [00:08:13] OG: Of course, uh, some people will get that joke very confident that the US is gonna pay their bills. We call that the risk-free rate, and that hovers right now about, let’s say 4%. So you can get a guaranteed 4% by giving your money to the government, they’re gonna pay you back. We know that over long periods of time, the biggest companies in the United States average about 10. [00:08:34] OG: The proxy we use is the s and p 500. The way that I kind of think about this, so the way that I coach people to think about this is what’s the likelihood over the next 10 years that your investment in US treasuries goes to zero? Say it’s, I mean, it is really, really small, right? Not gonna [00:08:53] Joe: happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:08:54] OG: You think about all the dominoes of other things that would go wrong if you gave $10,000 to the, to the government as a loan, as a bond, and they 10 years from now go, yeah, we just don’t have it. Sorry. You know, like there’s other chaos going. Okay. What’s the likelihood over 10 years of your stock portfolio, the s and p returning zero. [00:09:16] OG: I mean, pretty low also, right? Like it’s, I’m not saying it can’t because there’s crazy, crazy, crazy things we can’t even project. But in reality, over the last a hundred, 200 years worth of recorded history, the worst that it’s happened is broken even over 10 years. [00:09:29] Joe: We, we covered this a few weeks ago and I could link to it in the show notes. [00:09:32] Joe: We went through these numbers. The longer you leave it alone, the better your chance of breaking even at the very least is right. And over 20 years, historically, you’ve, you’ve never had a loss. [00:09:43] OG: Yeah, so let’s just say that 10 years you put in a hundred thousand dollars, you’re pretty sure you’re getting at least a hundred thousand back in 10 years probably you’re getting 200,000 back. [00:09:52] OG: If history is a guide, what is the chance that your brother-in-law’s ice cream shop using that as a proxy for private equity investing in 10 years from now returns zero. Well, it’s higher than the biggest companies in the universe, right? Like it’s some metric higher. So what kind of return do you need to get to offset the fact that you’ve got one bucket here that pretty much is, well, you have three buckets, right? [00:10:17] OG: You’ve got one bucket that guarantees you’re gonna get your money back from the US government. And with interest, you got another bucket that’s, you’re pretty sure you’re getting all your money back and pretty confident. Not only you’re gonna get it back, but it’s probably gonna double. That’s the s and p. [00:10:29] OG: And then you got this other bucket, which has two outcomes. Zero ice cream shop fails, or it’s successful. What does successful have to be to offset the risk of zero? And I would submit to you that it’s not 10% because you get 10 in the s and p, it’s not 12. It’s like it better double it, better triple it, better quadruple in a short period of time. [00:10:53] OG: Otherwise, like, what the heck are we doing? Because I’m gonna double in the s and p In 10 years, I’ll probably double in seven. Why would I go, Hey, hey, if you gimme a hundred thousand dollars, we can start this business. We’re gonna double in 10 years. Be like, bro, I can do that and and use the smartest people in the universe to do it. [00:11:07] Joe: I wanna talk about two things that you brought up, og, because I think they’re important points. I was recently in another forum, and while you were speaking, I brought it back up because I wanna read who the target market is for this type of investment. ’cause you talk about, okay, [00:11:21] OG: let’s see if I was right. [00:11:22] Joe: Well, no, you’re a hundred percent right, but let’s just put a real face in on this. Because this is somebody about to make a mistake, maybe not with private equity, but they’re about to make a mistake. This is what the piece says. I recently read in a college parent planning group, the people who invested in their 5 29 plans based on target age ended up with 4% growth over 18 years. [00:11:43] Joe: That is crazy to me. And by the way, we can talk about why that is and what people do wrong there, but this person then writes, we don’t have a lot in there for our kids. Oh, right. You can see this coming because we couldn’t contribute and they were babies. We got married, had a baby, bought a house all in one year when we were in their twenties and paid for childcare as years. [00:12:02] Joe: For years, we ended up having three kids. All the reasons. [00:12:05] OG: Mm-hmm. [00:12:05] Joe: That everybody had All the reasons why we’re behind. [00:12:08] OG: Yes. Right [00:12:08] Joe: now you just [00:12:08] OG: stamped it as a common American family. [00:12:12] Joe: You can hear the panic setting in. [00:12:15] OG: Yeah. [00:12:15] Joe: Right now our 14-year-old is $35,000. Our 11-year-old has 11. This is, this is the sentence. [00:12:22] Joe: I know. Our oldest is close to college, so while we’re contributing $10,000 a year in his account, now I wanna maximize the return. Oh God. This is the target. [00:12:35] OG: Yeah. [00:12:35] Joe: For these investment schemes going, you’re behind. Look at what happens to the average guy. Look at what that, you don’t wanna invest like that. [00:12:43] Joe: Why would you invest like that? That’s crazy. So here’s what you should do instead, hand it over to Doug who has this phenomenal approach to making up time. And th this person is about to make a mistake. And by the way, they made a second mistake, which is, I’m asking the internet a bunch of people, I don’t know, to quote, help me. [00:13:06] Joe: People that have no idea what their situation is, what their risk tolerance is, anything about them. Yeah. I’m gonna jump on an online form and ask them and the opinions that [00:13:13] OG: follow. Yeah. So you were, yeah, you were reading a, an online form. I thought this was part of the article at first, and now I know what you’re saying. [00:13:18] OG: No, yes. Yeah. You were kind of piecing this all together. And to be clear. I’m not suggesting for a second that brand new companies private equity. Private credit, although, we’ll, see. I’m not saying that that can’t be successful because I think all of us here know people who have done that and been successful. [00:13:40] OG: I think a lot of our listeners would be able to say, well, no, I, this person I know got in on such and such a thing early and made a killing. And it’s like all, all of that’s true. The hard part is, is that because they’re binary outcomes, you have to make a lot of bets to find the one that’s the winner. [00:13:58] OG: And most people don’t have the capital to do lots of bets to wait for one to pay off. [00:14:05] Joe: But that’s why these investments can work for the 1% because they do have the capital. And this is what people miss when they’re like, invest like the one, the 1% does this. Well, yeah, but the 1%, it’s a micro fraction of their net worth. [00:14:19] OG: Yeah, it could be. Yeah. [00:14:20] Joe: They can afford to take these risks, but you can’t put 80% of your retirement or your kids’ college in this super aggressive thing with a binary outcome and expect a win. [00:14:31] OG: Yeah. I mean, it’s like a lottery ticket. I was thinking about this the other day because I was talking to somebody about a private company investment and you know, it was all the reasons why it was gonna work. [00:14:42] OG: And I said, well, all of that may be true and there might be the one reason you can’t even predict as to why it won’t. Like you’re one legislation away from making your company go bankrupt, right? Or whatever, right? You don’t have no idea what that, you know, you say the Black Swan event, you can’t even, sometimes you can’t even predict what that looks like. [00:15:01] OG: It’s. Take Airbnbs, right? Here’s a great example. Everybody said go buy Airbnbs, depreciate them, do the cost segment analysis because you know, it costs $5,000 to do, but you’re gonna save a hundred thousand dollars on your taxes. Your W2 person, you know, build up all these Airbnbs. It’s super awesome, super easy to do. [00:15:19] OG: You know, banks like to lend on it ’cause you got positive cash flow, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the city of Plano goes, yeah, we don’t allow that anymore. And you go, well, no, no, no. You don’t understand. This is my business. Like, we don’t care. Our community has decided that we don’t do this. Now what? [00:15:35] OG: Now? You have a load of rental properties without tenants in ’em, and now you’re a landlord, not an Airbnb host. You know? Now you’re trying to offload it. You know what I mean? Like that wasn’t, everything was working great until it stopped. So it’s hard to predict what those things are gonna be. And to your point, Joe, when you do it with 50 K and your net worth is 5 million. [00:15:56] OG: I’m not saying losing 50 grand is not a big deal. ’cause it is, but it doesn’t change the needle. I would also submit to you, by the way, that that person who puts 50 K in with a $5 million net worth also probably isn’t gonna get but a 10 x return. Like that’s a, that’s a good number, right? So what’s 10 x on that? [00:16:15] OG: 500 K. What’s an average return of a stock portfolio that has 5 million bucks in it? 500 K. Like what are we doing? It’s 10 x return. I get, I know. Okay, cool. [00:16:26] Joe: Well, and that’s what this piece points out is now you have that downside that naturally comes with it. [00:16:33] OG: Yeah. I And so what do you really have to do? [00:16:34] OG: You have to do nine investments of 50 K to get one to turn to 500. Well, what did you do? You put 450 grand in to make 50 grand. Am I crazy? [00:16:44] Joe: Math. Math, not math. And [00:16:46] OG: you just look at the historic numbers of, of venture capital firms, they’re 99 to 1 98. One one out of a hundred, two out of a hundred. You’re gonna do it with a one home run. [00:16:57] OG: But then the other piece about this that I think, um, let’s set aside the expected return piece for a bit. The other thing that I think is really important for most investors to recognize is the liquidity issue. The problem with most private investments, whether it’s real estate, ’cause we talked about these before, you know, the real estate aggregation investment companies, some of which have blown up spectacularly. [00:17:22] OG: Called it, um, and, and late what, what, Doug, sorry. You guys don’t want to pat me on the back. I’m gonna do it myself, man. You know, the latest thing to have quite literally blown up in people’s laps is private credit. Which, you know, this just sounds so funny when I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I just like look at it incongruencies, like I just see ’em in my life. [00:17:45] OG: I like, I just happened. My brain is trained for it. So when I hear private credit, it’s almost like there was a movie and I can’t remember what movie this was. I feel like it was like Wedding Singer, an Adam Sandler movie or something, if you guys remember this from a long time ago. [00:17:57] Joe: Yeah. [00:17:58] OG: There was a scene in that movie, I think it was this movie where he’s, he’s talking to this guy, and I think maybe it was girlfriend’s, old ex-girlfriend’s, boyfriend, fiance, or something weird. [00:18:06] OG: Anyways, he goes, well, what kind of work are you in? And the woman in the movie goes, oh, he’s in junk bonds. And then the boyfriend, husband, or whatever says, I, I don’t say that you’re in junk real estate. Uh, I prefer high yield. We’re in high yield bonds. And that has really always stuck with me because it’s the same thing, right? [00:18:27] OG: It’s like, it’s the same side of the, it’s just like the same coin, but it’s a different way to spin it. So when I hear private credit, people go, Ooh, private credit, I would like to invest in private credit. Well, you know, who needs private credit? People who aren’t credit worthy. Because if you didn’t need private credit, you would go to the bank and just be like, Hey man, I need 2 million bucks if, and they’d be like, all right, you’re a super good qualified person. [00:18:50] OG: Here’s 2 million at 5%. Go buy your machinery. The people who need private credit are the people are like, listen. Bruh. So it’s like, look, you get 14% yield. You know why? Because there’s a really good chance that idiots not paying back the loan and you’re gonna own a tractor somewhere. [00:19:08] DOug: I like how he started all that by saying, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but, [00:19:12] Joe: but [00:19:13] DOug: that’s, [00:19:13] Joe: it’s always my favorite line. [00:19:15] DOug: Every conspiracy theorist starts their opening statement like that, but. If you look at the shadows on the lunar lander, they don’t line up with the shadows from the flag. [00:19:25] Joe: I don’t think Bigfoot exists, but they always [00:19:28] DOug: start that way. [00:19:29] Joe: Yes, I don’t believe in ghosts, but is this a line [00:19:32] bit: you should look into? [00:19:33] bit: The bond market. That’s where the money is.Ben
[00:19:35] bit: and [00:19:36] Joe: junk [00:19:36] bit: bonds, Jules? It’s high yield bonds. Do I tell people you’re in junk waitressing. [00:19:42] OG: Junk waitressing, that’s right. [00:19:44] Joe: Yeah. Yeah, that’s Drew Berry bar. [00:19:46] OG: If you just kind of peel away the layers of the onion, it’s like. If you start with the premise of that, the government gives me 4% for doing absolutely nothing and the biggest, most well-capitalized, most well-run companies in the universe. [00:19:58] OG: Give me 10 on average, why would you guys offer 14? What’s the catch? And the catch is quality or liquidity, and sometimes both, honestly. And so even if you get into an investment that is good, and actually like on paper, you’re like, damn, I killing it. You can’t get your money out anyway because they go, well, we need it because we own all these apartment buildings in wherever, or we own these, you know, this, this farmland in wherever. [00:20:27] OG: It’s like you can’t, you can’t use it until the liquidity event happens where they take all of it and then they sell it to another investor or something down the line. So I think there’s two sides to this. One is the return expectation, which we beat to death. And then I think the other piece of it is. [00:20:41] OG: It is just, even if you’re right, you’re still gonna be wrong. ’cause that person that you talked about in terms of like their college fund. You gotta be able to use the money in four years and there’s a real chance that you, they just go, yeah, sorry. We can’t, can’t do that. [00:20:54] Joe: That’s a question that doesn’t get asked enough is how do I get out of these investments? [00:21:00] Joe: And I remember early in my career, I didn’t know about UOG, but early in my career when I was meeting with new potential clients. I saw this a lot where they came to see me because they were in an investment they did not know how to get out of, and that was the key to beginning our relationship, was just unraveling this mess. [00:21:18] OG: Can you fix this mess? [00:21:19] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. [00:21:20] OG: It happens a lot less now, but it also happens I think, in waves during periods of chaos. I mean the biggest product that has the ebbs and flows of market movement, chaos investing if you will, is annuities, like where things go, a little squirrelly, you see all the ads for like, are you tired of seeing the stock market go down 10%? [00:21:42] OG: You’re retirement, it’s evaporating. You know, it’s like, did you lose $2 million in the market last year? And so it sounds really good to like lock that up and it’s like, okay, it’s locked up. It’s locked up for like 15 frigging years, bro. Like you can’t touch it or you can, but under, under huge penalty. [00:22:00] Joe: And it’s funny, the person I, I read to you earlier in that online forum who I think is the type of person that these firms market to where they feel they’re behind, there’s a whole different subgroup of people OG, that are worried about, what if I lose. [00:22:14] Joe: What if I, what if I lose money? And that every time the market starts to shake, we see a low volatility. People worry more. Man. Those annuity companies, they’re quick on the trigger. You know one that got me, and you and I have been doing this for a long time, and this didn’t get me to the point that I put money in it, but I thought this dude had turned the corner. [00:22:36] Joe: I thought that he was a guy that actually had what I thought myself. OG was a pretty damn good idea. I didn’t know if it was gonna work or not. I just thought it was finally a good idea outta this, this, this dude, because over the years, a long time ago when we started going after people that we thought were swindlers and were taking your money, og you and I went after this guy in the earlier years of the podcast named Ty Lopez and Ty Lopez very famously. [00:23:03] Joe: Made a ton of money telling people they could do stuff while he was standing in front of a Lamborghini and this beautiful mansion. And what, I don’t know who [00:23:11] tiktok: this is [00:23:12] Joe: and what, well, what we found out later, remember this is the guy we found out later, he had rented the mansion and the Lamborghini for literally like half an hour. [00:23:21] Joe: So that he could stand in front of it and imply that he had all this stuff that he didn’t have. He ended up on the Tim Ferris show. He ended up with a, it’slike
[00:23:31] OG: the photo shoot that’s like the inside of a, a cockpit of an airplane that’s really just like in some industrial park. Yeah. You know, [00:23:38] Joe: and they’re leasing, leasing it out to influencers every 20 minutes. [00:23:42] Joe: Yeah. And they’re buying it so they look like a baller when they’re really not. Well this guy Ty Lopez, it’s funny that you don’t remember this guy. ’cause you and I spent a lot of time. Warning people about these types of schemes where they’re making themselves look good. But this is a Wall Street Journal article from a few weeks ago. [00:23:57] Joe: He vowed to revive Radio Shack and Pier One, so I thought this was cool. Tano quote, Ty Lopez was living proof. The American dream was still attainable for young men, willing to bet on themselves. By the way, he was totally marketing to young dudes, to the bro culture. The entrepreneur hosted parties at a mansion in Beverly Hills. [00:24:18] Joe: And boasted about the black Lamborghini in his garage. Oh, by the way, he didn’t own any of this stuff. The College Dropout had made a name for himself on social media shots [00:24:26] OG: fired [00:24:28] Joe: by offering Get Rich quick schemes in self-help courses. He urged his followers to invest in a new company. He’d started, and this is when I was like, oh, maybe Ty’s actually onto something here. [00:24:40] Joe: This new company scooped up distressed retailers on the cheap. They bought Radio Shack out of bankruptcy. They bought pier one out of bankruptcy, dress barn mods, sporting goods and linens and things. These are all brands you’ve heard of that have been around forever. So he puts together this company and he goes and he gets investors going, you know what? [00:25:01] Joe: Radio shack’s no longer gonna be stores. We’re gonna take them online. It’s just gonna be online, radio Shack. And how many people Google Radio Shack still in a given day? There’s gotta be a fair number of people. [00:25:13] DOug: I’ve got a Radio Shack in my town. They’re still thriving. [00:25:16] Joe: You do have one? [00:25:17] DOug: Absolutely. [00:25:18] Joe: Yeah, [00:25:18] DOug: there’s a few left and I’ve got one. [00:25:21] Joe: I wonder how that works now that Ty owns the company. I’ve, I have no idea, but this is the person we’re talking about, OG Sean Murphy. Some dude saw Lopez’s post on his Facebook and Instagram feeds and was drawn in by the brand names like I was. But this is the key and a promise of 20% returns. He invested $175,000 in the company called Retail E-Commerce Ventures and related Lopez Ventures. [00:25:48] Joe: All told Lopez raised more than $230 million. [00:25:53] DOug: Nice. [00:25:53] Joe: From hundreds of mostly small investors. Murphy’s and Illinois grandfather. He got a $10,000 P one gift card, monthly checks of about a thousand dollars a month for two years, which by the way, we find out later, guess what? That thousand bucks came from og. [00:26:05] OG: Who? That dude that put in the 1 75. [00:26:09] Joe: The next dude in line. The payments abruptly stopped in late 2022, and the struggling retailers were taken over by some of the company’s creditors last September. Shock to nobody. In hindsight, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil lawsuit against Lopez and his partners accusing them of running a Ponzi scheme, misleading investors and misappropriating $16.1 million [00:26:33] bit: investors Possibly. [00:26:36] bit: You. Possibly you. [00:26:40] Joe: The FBI has also been contacting investors, though no charges have been filed yet. This is what happens when you think you wanna invest like the 1%. And man, what a good story. Og. Who doesn’t love Radio Shack? [00:26:52] OG: Okay. So, and I was gonna say, and so back to the storyline here of, of this particular investment even you said, Hey, you know this, this has some legs. [00:27:02] OG: Right now, notwithstanding the Ponzi scheme part of it, and what, I guess they’ll probably figure out with some fraud, the storyline of like, Hey, we can buy these. I mean, that’s what Warren Buffett does. He buys all the value companies. You know, it’s like you, maybe that is a good payoff, but you have to understand. [00:27:19] OG: Like I said before, it’s, it’s a binary outcome. You are going to get money or it’s gonna be zero. There is no yawn, and then I average 10% for the next 20 years and I retired like normal. You know what I mean? Like that’s not an option. When you are investing in small, this is no different than if you start your own laundromat or you start your own business, you’ll be successful or you won’t. [00:27:41] OG: Like, there’s just, it’s a huge risk. And the payoffs are really good if you’re successful. [00:27:47] Joe: A lot of our stackers, maybe even though you haven’t run a business, you may have backed something on Kickstarter. This is no different than a Kickstarter campaign. Right. And people get a private, [00:27:56] OG: private lending thing. [00:27:57] OG: What was the, what was that? Pierce Street or something like that where you could like lend, do micro loans. What did you have to do? You had to like go, well, I want those 14 percenters. ’cause those are fun, but I gotta, I gotta balance that out with a bunch of four percenters because I know that three out of the 10, 14 percenters ain’t gonna pay me anything back. [00:28:14] Joe: And then all of a sudden you realize how a, how a bond manager makes their money. Yeah, [00:28:17] OG: exactly. All of a sudden, all of a sudden I’m a bank credit officer, but without the salary [00:28:25] Joe: and handing out money to people that don’t repay and learning a valuable lesson, uh, how do you. Evaluate these investments. [00:28:33] Joe: We’re gonna talk about that in the second half of today’s show. Uh, we’ve got some great guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission. We’re gonna walk through that with you and give you the primer on investigating these opportunities, what’s good and what’s not. But before we get there, Doug, it’s a new eight weeks, which means. [00:28:52] Joe: Brand new eight weeks of trivia. [00:28:54] DOug: I’m back baby. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and Wow, it’s a huge day in history because back in 1964, Ford began production of its newest car, one that cost $2,368 when it first went on the market. And one that sold an industry record, 417,000 units in its first year alone. [00:29:18] DOug: What makes this whole thing ironic is the name of the car was also my nickname. In high school, [00:29:24] OG: Ford had a car named Small, [00:29:26] DOug: what’s the name of this iconic Ford automobile. I’ll be back right after I go figure out which stock is a stallion this quarter. Is it chicken stock? [00:29:43] DOug: Hey, there’s DERs. I’m car lover and guy who’s living his glory years. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Oh, those high school days. I was a big fan of that orange drink Tang, back in the day. So my Crazy Friends had this great nickname for me, which shares the same name as an iconic Ford car, which began production on today’s date in 1964 and set all kinds of sales records. [00:30:08] DOug: The answer yes, because I must have Ang those crazy friends of mine called me Mustang, which also happens to be the name of that amazing vehicle. And now back to two guys who are driving you toward financial independence, Joe and og. [00:30:25] Joe: How much tank did you drink as a kid, Doug? [00:30:28] DOug: Almost none. [00:30:29] Joe: Same. [00:30:30] DOug: That was too expensive for us. [00:30:32] Joe: I always thought it was gonna be this really cool drink and I would calm my mom into buying it and, uh, she would buy it and it wasn’t that good. It just, [00:30:40] OG: you know what, always over delivered though. Sunny D [00:30:45] DOug: See, that’s the generational difference right there. [00:30:48] OG: No, [00:30:48] DOug: because I don’t think, I mean, so D wasn’t a thing when we were, wasn’t Joe generational [00:30:51] OG: difference by like four years? [00:30:52] Joe: No, but what was the thing was Kool-Aid with those little packets and then you take the entire bag of sugar and pour. [00:31:00] DOug: Oh yeah. And just slice the bottom of the paper bag of sugar and just let that dump right into the [00:31:04] OG: picture. They had the wood spoon. [00:31:06] DOug: Yeah. [00:31:06] OG: You like. Kool-Aid Spoon. [00:31:08] Joe: No wonder the Kool-Aid man was busting through walls. [00:31:11] Joe: That dude was so sugared up. [00:31:13] OG: Yep. [00:31:13] Joe: You could bust through anything and then you’re taking a nap 15 minutes later [00:31:16] OG: make like ice cubes out of it. Little popsicles of Kool-Aid. [00:31:20] Joe: Well guys, this is the Swan song. It is the Steve, can we get, uh, some taps? [00:31:32] Joe: Yes, it’s the swan song. People of our TikTok Minute. We’re retiring this segment because next week we’re debuting. Well, I thought he was gonna be playing taps under me saying it [00:31:43] OG: actually, when you said you were retiring it. I was trying to hit this one. [00:31:51] Joe: Uh, you’re so happy. We have a brand new segment coming up that should we tell people or should we just let them find out next Monday? [00:31:58] OG: No, it’s, I’m really excited about it and we got this kind of a half idea. Should we give Doug even like a little credit? [00:32:04] Joe: Oh, I hate this part. This part’s so painful. [00:32:07] OG: Okay. I like chew through some love for Doug, but you know, Doug’s kind of the voice of reason and said, you know, maybe we ought have a little. [00:32:17] OG: Back to the basics and how we think about things and just kind of work through some planning things systematically. Uh, we kinda kicked that around. And so we’re gonna have a new segment instead of this like really awesome TikTok thing, uh, where Anna and I work together for eh, five or six minutes every, every Monday to work through some financial planning topics. [00:32:38] OG: We don’t have it named yet. We don’t have anything Cool. Uh, uh, background music or. Dug intro yet, but we’ll think of something. Maybe somebody else can name it for us. But, um, we’re kinda excited. [00:32:49] DOug: I thought we were doing this new thing just ’cause we finally ran out of internet. Did we use all of TikTok, [00:32:54] Joe: the internet machine with, uh, all kinds of new stuff. [00:32:56] Joe: Finally, we reached the end, like the pandemic when somebody said, I watched all Netflix. [00:33:01] OG: Yes, I’m at the end. [00:33:02] Joe: Can you actually reach that? Uh, I, I, I’m super excited. It’s a great idea and that new basics. SB Basics, maybe we call it that. I don’t know, like Amazon Basics, SB Basics debuts next Monday with OG and Anna. [00:33:16] Joe: But for our last one, you know, last week we had a great video on our YouTube channel from the amazing Bonnie Hammer, talking about what makes a good employee. What makes a great career part of Stacking Benjamins, obviously, is being great at your job. I saw this from, uh, the CNBC TikTok channel, the amazing restaurateur Danny Meyer, talking about what he thinks you should do to maybe be better at your career. [00:33:44] tiktok: We’re looking for a 100% employee, just like anyone applying to work for us should be holding us accountable for being a 100% employer. How do you get to that 100%? 51% of it are your emotional hospitality skills and those emotional skills. We’ve identified six that are always present in someone who’s got what we call a high hq, high hospitality quotient. [00:34:08] tiktok: Someone with a high HQ is someone who is happier themselves when they make someone else feel better. Imagine if you had a car where the more you drove it, the more it filled itself up with gas. That’s like someone with a high hq. The 49% that gets us to 100 are somebody’s technical skills. Are they a really good cook? [00:34:26] tiktok: Do they make the world’s best pasta? Whatever it is, we need both. You gotta have the whole package. [00:34:32] tiktok: So can you teach a hospitality quotient or is it just inherent? [00:34:35] tiktok: It’s hard to teach emotional skills. Are you kind and optimistic? Are you a curious learner? Do you have an excellent work ethic? Do you have empathy? [00:34:43] tiktok: Do you care how someone else feels? Do you have self-awareness? Do you know what your own personal weather report is on any given day? And finally, do you have integrity? Do you have the judgment to do the right thing even when it may not be in your own self-interest? I don’t know how to teach someone to be those things. [00:34:57] tiktok: I do know how to teach someone how to hire for those emotional skills, and I also know how to celebrate those skills when you see them. [00:35:04] Joe: So then he talks about promoting people and making sure they stay with the organization. But I think this is important, OG, for one reason, I wanted to end our TikTok minutes on this one because I feel like when we go into a career, we lean about 75 to 80% on having those technical skills and in being great technically. [00:35:23] Joe: But Danny Meyer saying 51% of it is the emotional side. Your ability to work in a team and be a great member of the team. You’ve been an employer for a long time. You’ve seen people come and go, oh gee, what do you think about what Danny said? [00:35:40] OG: It’s interesting that this came up today because I was just talking to my daughter about, she’s nine, and so she had like a little error in judgment as a 9-year-old. [00:35:52] OG: It was all about learning and trying to grow from it and all that sort of stuff. But the piece of it was around the fact that it’s okay to have these errors. It’s okay to make mistakes. It’s just like, how do you react to them? And when you think about, um, service or the service industry, which I mean, even if you’re, I can’t think of a job that wouldn’t be service based at some level, you know, whether it’s serving, you know, your employer or serving your teammates or serving customers or whatever. [00:36:23] OG: We think serving as like a job, like I’m a server, but in really just about any profession, you’re, you’re having some interaction with other people. But it seems to me that the people who respond best to things that come up, whether it’s positive things, which are far more infrequent in work than negative things, you know, like it’s always a good thing when you get an attaboy from a boss, but a lot of times you get like, eh, you did that wrong. [00:36:50] OG: Or a customer says you did this incorrectly. Or worse, right? You cost your company money or you get fired because you made such a big mistake. Like how you react to that is. So much a better indicator I think, of how you are as a person versus just pure technical. Capabilities and whatever field you’re in. [00:37:10] OG: Doug’s got way more experience in this than, [00:37:12] Joe: well it’s funny ’cause that’s actually than I do that, that’s a hundred percent where I was going next was to Doug ’cause this is kind of his field is helping teams work together. But what struck me, Doug, is I really like the part to jump on really og what, what you said. [00:37:27] Joe: I love that Danny Meyer said that, you know, people that get that helping other people is really fun and being helpful is really fun. I mean, he’s in the service industry, right? So of course he’s looking for that. But I think that translates to any, any industry, Doug. [00:37:40] DOug: It does. It’s just so hard when you are in a larger corporate structure to. [00:37:46] DOug: Try to devote any mental cycles or just physical labor cycles to helping other people because you feel like you’re handling all you can handle with the workload you’ve been given and with the critique and criticism you’re frequently getting from your leadership. You’re like, man, I don’t have time to try to be the he beneath the wind. [00:38:04] DOug: Between [00:38:06] Joe: the wind, what’s happening, the wind beneath your [00:38:07] DOug: wings, the air between wings or something like that. He’s [00:38:10] Joe: a big bet Midler fan. [00:38:12] DOug: You, you can’t even think straight when you’re that buried in, in large corporate America. But it doesn’t take much, I think is where I’m trying to to go is it really doesn’t take a lot of time. [00:38:22] DOug: It can be almost some quick offhanded comments you make as you’re at lunch with somebody. I. Over time, you’ll get that reputation of somebody who is building other people up and it’ll start to pay dividends. It’s just really hard to see that. You don’t have to like volunteer for every project and say, I’ll help out even though I’m fully billable on all the rest of my time. [00:38:44] DOug: Like you don’t. You don’t have to go that far. Just be somebody who is having other people’s best interests on your mind. And, uh. Over the course of a year, you’re gonna get to be a go-to person. [00:38:56] Joe: It is funny ’cause Bonnie Hammer in the video that I referenced from last week, which really was why I wanted to play this and I will link to this ’cause everybody should watch it. [00:39:05] Joe: You know, she complains as the former, uh, vice chairperson for NBC Universal and the head of the sci-fi channel and all the things that Bonnie did. Complaining about Gen Z and work ethic and what she’s not complaining about, by the way, as a generation, she’s complaining about young employees and what they don’t get, which by the way, people complain about millennials. [00:39:26] Joe: People complain about Gen X. People complain. Like every generation gets there. Oh, these kids coming up, right? But the thing that struck me from both of these conversations, guys, was just how much I really enjoy working with ai. Even though AI is wrong a ton of the time, and I kind of think it might be a good idea to think of yourself a little bit the way AI. [00:39:50] Joe: Works because you know, these people creating AI are making it addictive. They’re making it so you wanna use it more. And if I’m a great employee, I want people around me to be excited about working with me. And what does AI do? Oh my goodness, Doug, that’s a fantastic idea. Let me tell you how we do that. [00:40:06] Joe: Great. [00:40:07] OG: You know what happened to me the other day? [00:40:08] Joe: And then it gives me, well, hold on, just let me finish the thought because I don’t wanna lose this thread, which is that. If somebody came to me and if an employee came to me and goes, oh my goodness, Joe, I’m on board with this plan. Let’s do this and let me help it any way I can. [00:40:22] Joe: Even if it’s garbage. At least I know your head’s in the right place, but, oh gee, I’m sorry. [00:40:28] OG: Well, I, no, no. I was just gonna say in terms of like, sometimes you wonder like how this all works and you just go, is there just, maybe there’s just like somebody on the other end of the keyboard that’s just really smart and they’re just like, okay. [00:40:39] OG: Yeah. Like, oh, it’s a great thing that you’re talking about this, whatever, you know? And they’re like looking it up while they’re typing, right? They’re just really fast typing. [00:40:47] Joe: Right? [00:40:47] OG: Because I was in this thread with chat about something, and I can’t remember what it was, but I was just like, I go, I literally was like swearing at it like, F it, you’re fired. [00:40:55] OG: You’re like the s you know, crappiest coach out there. I never wanna talk to you again. Send like, shut my computer. And like when I came back to chat, like, you know, whatever, the next day it popped up and it’s like. We would like to ask you about your recent experiences with chat. It’s almost like, it’s almost like I did the survey at the end of the call and they’re like, and then they called you. [00:41:15] OG: They’re like, really? You gave us a one? Like why So? So somewhere in there they’ve got like if OG cusses you out, like something went wrong and it was like, what specifically went wrong with your chat? You know, it’s like I just wrote, you suck. Next topic. [00:41:32] Joe: Even when it sucks. I found myself coming back to it though. [00:41:35] Joe: I think if as an employee we, [00:41:37] OG: I did mention I was firing it and moving to a competitor maybe that had something to, I’m going to Claude talk. That was something to do with it too. [00:41:43] bit: Crock never gives me this kind of attitude. [00:41:45] Joe: We’ll link to this of course, in our show notes and goodbye TikTok minute. I thought that was a good one to end on before our brand new segment of, uh, swinging to the basics. [00:41:57] Joe: Maybe we call it swinging to the basics next week. No, no. Don’t like [00:42:00] OG: it. [00:42:00] Joe: Not doing that. Doug, I was thinking about different type of sweating. Sweating [00:42:03] DOug: to the basics. [00:42:04] Joe: Sweating to the basics. No, but we don’t wanna sweat. We want it to be cool and calm and collected. Can’t be sweating either. It doesn’t work either. [00:42:10] Joe: Yeah. Not going well. Let’s dive into the second half of today’s headline. You know, earlier in the show we discussed all of the problems of investing, like the 1%. Let’s spend a few minutes here teaching you how to look at investments. The Securities Exchange Commission has a piece. OG, I’d like to get your thoughts on these points. [00:42:29] Joe: Financial, navigating in the current economy. 10 things to consider before you make investing decisions. Number one, they start with not the investment at all. OG number one is draw a personal financial roadmap. Why is it important that you start there versus with what’s this opportunity? [00:42:49] OG: Because it’s a beginning with the end of mind, right? [00:42:52] OG: It’s like, what are we trying to do? If you’ve got a clear understanding of where you want to go, then it’s a lot easier to figure out what tools you need to get there versus just blindly going, I’m going in this direction. So Alison Wonderland, quote. [00:43:07] Joe: Yeah, a hundred percent. You know exactly what tools are gonna reach, which ones aren’t, and then it can, it can still be a good investment. [00:43:14] Joe: Og. You can go, you know what? This sounds like a great opportunity. It just doesn’t meet my goal. [00:43:19] OG: It doesn’t fit right now. [00:43:19] Joe: And once we know whether it meets it or not, let’s say it does. Then number two is evaluate your comfort zone on taking the risk. So I like this as second because now that we know what the risk is that we need to take, then we do the gut check. [00:43:32] Joe: Then we go, okay, can I really stomach this? And I think that when you start to do that, and you think about what you said earlier, OG, about binary returns, can I stomach the fact that this money will all be gone? Potentially, you know, I want to think about it tripling, but if it’s gonna triple, there’s a chance it could be gone. [00:43:51] Joe: Number three, consider an appropriate mix of investments, and I think this is where we get away from the 1%. Can I put $50,000 into Doug’s ice cream stand? Doug’s Tang factory and, and still be diversified. [00:44:09] OG: Is it? Is it Doug’s ice cream stand and tank Factory? Because then I’m definitely in, [00:44:14] Joe: it’s both. It’s like Disney with the doll whip, right? [00:44:17] Joe: The best thing ever. Ice cream and the doll pineapple. So yeah, [00:44:22] OG: pretty much the same thing. [00:44:23] Joe: Number four, be careful of investing heavily in shares of employee stock or any individual stock. What’s important about that? [00:44:32] OG: It’s important to be careful. [00:44:36] Joe: Thank you. [00:44:36] OG: Mine. That’s the important part. [00:44:38] Joe: That’s [00:44:38] OG: the, they literally said it in the headline. [00:44:40] OG: It was great. It was, they did a good job. It was edited [00:44:42] Joe: very well. That that’s why he, we give him the color commentary spot on this damn well, you know, if he picks up a first down, [00:44:48] DOug: you’re, yeah, [00:44:49] OG: you, if he runs at 10 yards, that’ll be a first down [00:44:51] DOug: Everybody. Four more tries to do it again. That’s why we have OG [00:44:55] Joe: number five. [00:44:56] Joe: Create and maintain an emergency fund. [00:44:59] DOug: Oh, [00:45:00] OG: say it [00:45:00] DOug: ain’t so, Joe, [00:45:01] Joe: why would you do that first? Why not? Just go for it. Buy the lottery ticket. Invest in Doug’s. [00:45:07] OG: Mm-hmm. [00:45:07] Joe: Wutang T [00:45:09] DOug: Wutang Wu-Tang Cream. [00:45:11] Joe: Wu-Tang. That’s a good name. [00:45:14] DOug: I like that. [00:45:15] Joe: Number six. Pay off high interest credit card debt. Well, that’s an easy one. [00:45:19] Joe: Oh G. ’cause it’s a guaranteed return. [00:45:21] OG: I mean, it really is like, you know, people don’t think of it that way. It’s amazing how much cash flow freed up you have when you don’t owe anybody any money. I’ve told this story before, maybe we’ll do it again sometime when we moved and we had, we didn’t owe anybody anything for a period of time. [00:45:38] OG: It was really quite wild, like how just not having to, you know, you’re just on living expenses. The reality is, is that most credit cards these days are 20, 22, 25, 30% interest. You’re not gonna get a better return in the market than 30% a year. That’s pretty awesome. So take that win [00:45:57] Joe: number eight. Speaking of free money, take advantage of free money from your employer. [00:46:01] Joe: Before you do anything else, number nine, consider rebalancing your portfolio. Occasionally, [00:46:06] OG: because on the employer side, again, some people will say like, oh, my company only matches 3%. Is it really worth it? It’s a hundred percent return on your money. You put in a hundred dollars. They give you a hundred dollars. [00:46:21] OG: That’s a hundred percent. ROI like. You don’t have to invest it like you just made a hundred percent return, even if it’s only 3%. It’s still a hundred percent [00:46:31] Joe: and I’ll buy three things a tide at target at one time to get the $25 gift card. [00:46:36] OG: Exactly. [00:46:36] Joe: You know, [00:46:37] OG: you know if you spend $78, we’ll give you a 25 back. [00:46:40] OG: You’re well, I’m only gonna spend 25. This is way better. Yeah. [00:46:45] Joe: Number nine, consider rebalancing portfolio occasionally, and it’s once a year. Well, and this is the other thing, og, in these private equity investments, you can’t rebalance away from it. You might be able to put more money in, but you can’t take money away. [00:46:59] Joe: Generally speaking, in little chunks, it’s, it’s very difficult to do the rebalancing. So if rebalancing matters to your portfolio, watch out for those. And then number 10, and here’s the Ty Lopez warning. Avoid circumstances that can lead to fraud. Is there a chance this could be fraud? And with Ty Lopez, I bought it. [00:47:19] Joe: Turns out might have been a fraud. We’ll link to these in our show notes at stack your Benjamins dot com. Just a great way to funnel down your investments. Maybe get rid of a little bit it. It’s okay OG to be excited to hear about this stuff, but to act on it without doing your due diligence. Let’s walk through these, these 10 things first. [00:47:40] Joe: That brings us almost to the end of our first show of the eight weeks back. But before we go there, we’d like to talk about some of the cool stuff going on in our community, Doug. Uh, what’s going on out there in stacker land? My friend? [00:47:52] DOug: One thing I just noticed, uh, just, I dunno, maybe 10 days ago or so, was a great post. [00:47:58] DOug: I liked Jamie made a great post. It was fairly lengthy. Uh, she’s trying to help out a friend. At work, if I remember correctly. And Jamie said, what’s the best avenue for a young work friend who doesn’t have a financially savvy parent or friend and can’t afford the cost of a financial advisor? All kinds of people chimed in. [00:48:17] DOug: We had, uh, uh, Larry and Frank chimed in, but I, I really liked the comment from Jimmy who just summed it all up, uh, and said, listen to OG. That’s all you need to do. Just listen to OG Boom. [00:48:31] Joe: What else do you [00:48:31] DOug: need? Chaka? Uh, and then there was some, some guy named Joe, uh, who chimed in with the simple Path to Wealth as a recommendation. [00:48:41] DOug: And then this other book that has a, the brightest yellow cover ever in print, in history, uh, we’re two great, uh, basic ways [00:48:49] Joe: if, [00:48:49] DOug: uh, to, uh, [00:48:50] Joe: if only there was a way to look at the six steps of financial planning in one book that was made to be, [00:48:54] DOug: that had [00:48:55] Joe: entertaining it. [00:48:56] DOug: It needs to have pictures. Doesn’t have pictures. [00:48:58] DOug: I like pictures. [00:48:59] Joe: It does. It has fun pictures. Some good graphs. Yeah. You can see my stick people. It’s, it’s amazing. But the simple path to wealth is a great place for somebody starting out. ’cause what that does is generally calms you down and goes, you know what? You could be okay investing in one thing. [00:49:13] Joe: Don’t get so freaked out. [00:49:14] DOug: The other thing that this Joe Guy talked about was maybe getting involved with a financial community, like maybe. Hey, Benjamin’s after Dark group, [00:49:23] Joe: which we’ve got a group in Boston that’s starting up on Wednesday, so come join everybody on Wednesday at Hannah’s Brewing at 6:00 PM that’s in Melrose. [00:49:36] Joe: I’m so excited to see what, uh, Carolann James and Susan have brewing for all of our stackers be part of the, be part of the new, the new crew, and, uh. Help create this new group in Boston, Benjamin’s After Dark. [00:49:50] DOug: Get on the ground floor [00:49:51] Joe: Stacking Benjamins dot com slash meetup to tell them that you’re coming and, uh, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash bad to join groups there in the Twin Cities in southern Minnesota in. [00:50:04] Joe: Seattle and, uh, we’re working with Tucson right now and talking to people in the Bay Area in Dallas and in, uh, Colorado about, uh, potential groups among others. So, uh, more to come. [00:50:18] DOug: These are all places I would love to travel on the corporate dime. These are all places I would love to go. [00:50:24] Joe: They’re great places and you see these stackers getting together. [00:50:28] Joe: They just, it’s, it’s so heartwarming to see people finding their, finding their community. [00:50:32] DOug: Yeah. [00:50:33] Joe: That’s gonna do it for today. Thank you for lending us your ear stackers. If you know somebody that needs to hear this, maybe they’ve fallen for something or they’re considering an investment that’s more of a private placement investment, be sure to share the episode with them ’cause man helping others, like Danny Meyer said today, it’s a great thing. [00:50:53] Joe: You can help save somebody’s financial independence by maybe making sure they don’t make a misstep. Alright, Doug, take it from here, man. What are the three things we should have learned on today’s show? [00:51:04] DOug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from our headline, vetting Individual Investments. Everything matters. [00:51:10] DOug: The manager, the fund approach, the history and the fees. So don’t be wowed by a great sales pitch telling you to invest, quote, like the 1%. Second, that investment policy statement we’ve always been talking about. Maybe time to get one yourself so you stay out of investment traps like we discussed today. [00:51:30] DOug: But the big lesson. I am so excited. Today’s show reminded me of those old Mustang days, but this Tang drink, it just doesn’t mix as well with rum as I expected. [00:51:46] 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. [00:52:12] 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. [00:53:16] Joe: Have you guys ever been to Nantucket [00:53:19] DOug: Uhhuh? Long time ago. [00:53:21] OG: I just know that there once was a man from Nantucket. [00:53:24] Joe: I’ve been to Martha’s Vineyard next door, but never to Nantucket. But, uh, one of [00:53:28] DOug: the greatest sitcoms of all time was, was about Nantucket. [00:53:32] Joe: Oh is that Wings? [00:53:33] DOug: Wings. [00:53:34] Joe: Wings was, uh, was Nantucket, which, which I’m sure made you excited about. [00:53:39] Joe: One. Stacker was talking about watching Leanne, and you were probably excited about Leanne ’cause you knew that he was gonna be on the show and then you were disappointed ’cause it was just like a six on a scale of one to 10. [00:53:48] DOug: Yeah. [00:53:49] Joe: Yeah. Tim, what’s his name? Tim, somebody. I [00:53:54] DOug: don’t remember. [00:53:55] Joe: Main guy from wings and you’ve got no idea. [00:53:57] DOug: Um, [00:53:58] Joe: I’m so disappointed. We thought you were [00:53:59] DOug: a [00:53:59] Joe: real [00:53:59] DOug: fan. Oh, Tim Daley. Sorry. I thought you were Yeah, I thought you were talking about the stacker. No, uh, yeah. Tim Daley was one of the leads on the show [00:54:06] Joe: and on was the love interest on Wings, uh, or I excuse on wings on Leanne. This I found interesting. What’s the heck going on in Nantucket? [00:54:14] Joe: This is NBC 10. Boston [00:54:18] bit: New testing shows Nantucket’s sewer water is filled with cocaine according to the enquire and mirror. The island’s. Cocaine markers have routinely exceeded national and regional averages. Two spikes in October and December reached nearly three times. The national average Nantucket’s health director says the data will help provide their behavioral health partners with actionable information. [00:54:42] Joe: So, uh, spikes in October, taking the Cris kids out trick or treat and need a little sugar buzz of your own. Like, what the heck? And then we’re getting the family together for the holidays. Just gotta try to tolerate those people. [00:54:57] DOug: That’s wild. [00:54:58] Joe: By the way, testing the water for cocaine levels. I never thought you’d test the sewer for cocaine. [00:55:05] DOug: And why are they flushing it down? The toilets? [00:55:09] OG: Yeah. How much that stuff costs. [00:55:11] DOug: You’re doing it wrong, Nantucket.
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