Helping Mom With Money Before It's Too Late (SB1853)

One day you’re comparing Roth IRA options. The next you’re helping Mom navigate long-term care paperwork, fighting with a bank over a power of attorney document, and wondering how anyone manages all this without losing their sanity

Welcome to the world of financial caregiving.

Today, certified financial planner and financial journalist Beth Pinsker joins us to share the lessons she learned while helping manage her mother’s finances during a health crisis. From powers of attorney that don’t always work when you need them to the surprising warning signs that an aging parent may need help, Beth offers practical advice every family should hear before an emergency arrives.

Then in our headline segment, a blast from the financial past: unconventional mortgages are making a comeback. Are these products helping qualified borrowers who don’t fit the traditional mold—or are we seeing early warning signs of the next lending problem?

Plus, Doug celebrates the legacy of Ray Charles with today’s trivia challenge.

In Today’s Episode

Why financial caregiving is far more complicated than most families expect
The paperwork Beth wishes she’d completed before her mother’s medical emergency
How power of attorney works—and why it may not work as smoothly as you think
Warning signs that a parent may be struggling financially or cognitively
The surprising problems created by passwords, two-factor authentication, and modern banking systems
Why trusted contacts, healthcare proxies, and emergency document folders matter
Common family conflicts that emerge during caregiving and estate settlement
Whether today’s unconventional mortgages should worry homebuyers
The important differences between today’s lending environment and 2008
Ray Charles trivia from Doug

Our Guest

Beth Pinsker

Beth Pinsker is an award-winning financial journalist, Certified Financial Planner™, and author of My Mother’s Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving. Through both her professional expertise and personal experience, Beth helps families prepare for the financial realities of caring for aging loved ones.

Mentioned In Today’s Show

My Mother’s Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving by Beth Pinsker
Long-term care insurance
Financial power of attorney
Healthcare proxy documents
Trusted contacts
Estate planning basics
Non-conforming mortgages
Ray Charles

Doug’s Trivia

Which Ray Charles hit became an official state song?

Better Call Saul…Sehy & OG

What financial caregiving preparations have you already completed—and which ones are still sitting on your to-do list?

Our Mentor: Beth Pinsker

Big thanks to Beth Pinsker for joining us today. To learn more about Beth, visit Financial Caregiving | Beth Pinsker CFP®. Grab yourself a copy of the book My Mother’s Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving

Our Headline

A Risky, Unconventional Mortgage Is on the Rise Again (Wall Street Journal)

Doug’s Trivia

On today’s date in 2004, legendary musician Ray Charles passed away. Which of his hit songs became an official state song?

Have a question for the show?

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Other Mentions

Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when we answer the question: what are the signs that you’re actually winning with money?

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: 59% of Retirees Left the Workforce Earlier Than Planned — Are You Ready If It Happens to You? SB1852

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] opener: Is this your place? No. No, no, no, no, no. No, I live with my mom.

[00:00:04] Doug: Oh.

[00:00:05] opener: Yeah. You hungry? Hey, Ma, can we get some meatloaf?

[00:00:14] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement, it’s The Stacking Benjamins Show

[00:00:29] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today we’re shining a light on the sandwich generation. You know that moment’s coming, your family member can no longer handle their money, and now you are the one in charge. Where do you turn? How do you create good systems? Today, we’re joined by certified financial planner, Beth Pinsker, who not only has written about this topic, she’s lived it.

[00:00:52] Doug: She’ll share her very personal story on today’s show. In our headline segment, the ghost of mortgage problems past is rearing its ugly head. We’ll explain some frightening news out of the mortgage industry and how you can avoid losing your house. Yes, all that, and I’ll save some time for some of my incredible money-themed trivia.

[00:01:14] Doug: And now, two guys who are just like Mr. Incredible from that Pixar cartoon, barely fitting into their pants, it’s Joe and Oh, J- J- G-

[00:01:29] Joe: Well, it’s for two different reasons. OG because he spends so much time on the bike, so those glutes are getting big, man. Gluteus maximus. Just yoked. Yes. And me because the Twinkies are, are calling. Welcome back to Wednesday on the Stacking Benjamins show. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. Super happy that you’re here with us.

[00:01:45] Joe: Doug, as you so eloquently explained, not only are we gonna help people keep their house, we’ll also help you help Mom with her money. Like, that’s, this is a twofer, dude.

[00:01:55] Doug: Wow. Those are two heavy-hitting topics.

[00:01:57] Joe: All in the same episode, yes. And I know if you’re not going through that, you will be. I’m not going through that right now, but I’ve been through it.

[00:02:05] Joe: I know lots of members of our community have talked about this in our basement Facebook group and elsewhere, that they’ve dealt with it. It’s so frustrating dealing with the bank, and there’s so many horror stories. Beth Pinsker’s been through all of it with her mom. There are so many, so many lessons that Beth can teach us.

[00:02:23] Joe: I can’t wait for us all to learn together from her. We’ve got that. We’re talking about the mortgage industry. Super-duper great news coming up on the back porch. But before all that, we have a couple sponsors who make sure we can bring all this to you for free. We only have two sponsor spots during the show, just one now and one in the middle of Doug’s trivia, and that’s it for the episode.

[00:02:46] Joe: So we’re gonna hear from two of them, and then we’ll be back with Beth Pinsker, a certified financial planner who not only has written for Reuters for a long time, now has a great new column with MarketWatch that I read religiously. If there is an adult in the room when it comes to personal finance, it’s our friend Beth Pinsker, and I’m super happy we finally have her here on the show.

[00:03:09] Joe: So when we come back, Beth Pinsker on her way to the basement to help you handle loved ones and their money and their planning.

[00:03:26] Joe: Feel like Stacker’s adulthood is just this long series of moments where nobody hands you the instruction manual. One day you’re figuring out Roth IRAs, the next day somebody says, “Hey, can you help Mom with Medicare and somehow become a lawyer overnight?” Well, Beth Pinckard’s been there. She spent years covering money professionally, and then suddenly got thrown in the deep end personally, and guess what?

[00:03:46] Joe: She’s here in Mom’s basement. How are you, Beth? It’s about time I got to meet you.

[00:03:50] Beth: Well, I’m in my own basement. This is where I’ve been relegated now that my son is home from college.

[00:03:56] Joe: Gotcha. I see how the family dynamic already coming into play.

[00:04:00] Beth: Yeah. They like their own rooms back when they come home from school.

[00:04:03] Joe: I remember when I moved out, my mom literally within two weeks it became her sewing room, Beth. I was done.

[00:04:09] Beth: Yeah, so I took all his pictures off the wall while he was gone and built my own little backdrop for doing podcasts, and now he’s back and I’m in the basement.

[00:04:18] Joe: Make room. But like all parents, I’m sure you’re happy having it that way.

[00:04:21] Beth: Absolutely.

[00:04:22] Joe: Yeah. Well, Beth, everybody gets the call, right? What was the moment that you realized this wasn’t just helping your mom, now you were about to have a new job?

[00:04:33] Beth: Yeah, so I was about three days into it when I realized that we weren’t prepared the right way in all directions. We had done the best we could.

[00:04:42] Beth: So my mom had surgery on a Tuesday, and by Friday, the caregivers needed to be paid, and I was sitting there with my mom’s checkbook in one hand and the power of attorney documents in the other. But I hadn’t taken the power of attorney documents down to the bank and had them legally authorized. And so my mom was too sick at that point to sign a check.

[00:05:06] Beth: She couldn’t lift her arm. She was out of it. She just didn’t want to deal, and she had asked me to take care of things. And so my choices at that particular moment were to forge her signature, which I was very, very competent at doing ever since middle school.

[00:05:23] Joe: But for a whole different reason.

[00:05:25] Beth: But yeah, exactly.

[00:05:27] Beth: But I knew it wasn’t right at that point. As a financial professional, I didn’t want to be signing her name to checks. I could have picked up her arm and scribbled something on the pad, but then the bank probably would’ve flagged it as like, “Hey, this doesn’t look like your regular signature.” Or I could have written my own check.

[00:05:45] Beth: So those were my options at the moment. And then I was confused because I didn’t understand how the long-term care insurance reimbursement worked. If the money went out under my name, would my mom still get it back as having paid for it herself? You know, I was like, “Wow. I know a lot about a lot, but none of it makes any sense or is any good for us here in this circumstance.”

[00:06:09] Beth: Right. I have a CFP, I have years of training, and I’m sitting here and I don’t know what the right answer is.

[00:06:16] Joe: My favorite line that you wrote was you felt book-smart when you really needed to be street-smart.

[00:06:22] Beth: Yeah. That’s was… what this was all about. It was that moment sitting in the hospital, and the way this book started is I was sitting there, and while I was doing all that, I also had a column due.

[00:06:33] Beth: I looked around and my brain was mush and, you know, I’m trying to work and manage the care of my kids back at home, and I’m a thousand miles away, and I was like, “I don’t know what way is up. What am I gonna do?” So I’m like, “I’m just gonna write about this, because this is what I’m living right now,” and I’m a sandwich generation, you know, adult, oldest daughter in a family, and this is what we’re all going through.

[00:06:59] Beth: So I wrote that first column and it got a tremendous response, and so every time I hit, like, a major roadblock with my mom, I, I wrote about it.

[00:07:09] Joe: And taken us all on your journey, which it turns out is all of our journeys, which is what I think you’re learning now. What is it that people think, people, you know, we all have this idea, if we haven’t been through it, about what financial caregiving is versus what it actually becomes.

[00:07:25] Joe: What’s the difference between this idea in our head, fantasy land in our head, and what it really is?

[00:07:30] Beth: I think the fantasy land for most people starts with the fact that they think they can just step in and do stuff with their parents if they have their parent’s permission. Like, oh, you know, Mom gave me her password, I can just go into her bank account and move stuff around.

[00:07:46] Beth: You can’t anymore. Like, it– that’s the way it might have worked back in the day, like when your parents took care of their parents, you could kind of fake stuff the whole way through. But there’s signature recognition, voice recognition, two-factor authentication. Think about your parents far away, ’cause I had to do this with my mom several times.

[00:08:07] Beth: I was trying to do something for her, and it texted a code to her cellphone. So I have to call her on the phone and say, “Mom, a code just texted to your cellphone. Can you go and read me off the number?” Well, the first number they’re gonna read you is the text number, which is the number that they’re texting from, which is not the number you need.

[00:08:26] Joe: Right.

[00:08:26] Beth: You’re gonna put that in, and it’s going to fail, and then you’re gonna have to send another code and call back and try to get the right number. Like, you’re dealing with older people who aren’t the most cellphone savvy or the most tech savvy all the time. So think about that annoyance, first of all.

[00:08:43] Beth: And then the, the second thing that people don’t realize is they think– I term this as financial caregiving for a reason. I did not call it estate planning. I don’t get to the word estate planning until pretty far along in the concepts of it. This is not so much about your Newport mansion and who’s going to inherit, you know, your fortune.

[00:09:05] Beth: This is about who’s going to make sure your mortgage gets paid. Who’s going to divvy up– I have the family candlesticks behind me. Who’s going to get those family candlesticks? There’s only one of them, one set of them. You know, am I supposed to give one to me and one to my brother? Am I supposed to inherit them?

[00:09:23] Beth: Is my brother supposed to inherit them? This is what family fights are made out of. This is why people end up in court. They’re fighting over not family fortunes and estates. They’re fighting over little things that there are only one of

[00:09:35] Joe: I, I had a client, Beth, when I was a brand-new financial planner. I haven’t been a financial planner in a long time, but they had an estate planning issue, and they wanted to come in and talk about it.

[00:09:44] Joe: And I was very excited that for the first time I was gonna meet these super wealthy people ’cause they had an estate planning issue, and I was like, “Oh my goodness.” I had maybe been seeing clients, I’d been in training forever before that, but I’d only been seeing clients for a short time. And I sit down with this more experienced planner I bring in, and the problem is exactly what you’re talking about.

[00:10:05] Joe: They had four kids and three shares of GM stock- … and they had to figure out how to separate the three shares among four kids.

[00:10:15] Beth: Yeah. See, I think that money is the easiest thing to split ’cause you can get down to the pennies and split it all up. It’s the stuff that is more rare and more meaningful and emotional that people get hung up over.

[00:10:28] Beth: And in the same way, I think that the after-death stuff is a lot less important than the sickness stuff. The way that I deal with it in the book is, not to give any spoilers, but my mom passed away in 2023, and so for half the book I’m dealing with, you know, the sickness issues, and half the book I’m settling her estate.

[00:10:49] Beth: And there’s a lot of paperwork, but there’s no deadline. When somebody is sick, everything is urgent. Everything is an emergency, and you have to be mindful of that and prepare for that in a different sort of urgent way. And my message to people is that, you know, all of this is at the bottom of everybody’s to-do list because there’s no sense of urgency to it.

[00:11:12] Beth: You know, the day you’re going to die or get sick is not something that you think of as going to happen today or tomorrow, and so people don’t put it at the top. And if you think about it in the terms of, “This is what I need to do for the people I love”- It goes higher on the list, right? If being a responsible parent and showing your love for your kids by doing something hard for them makes that go to the top.

[00:11:43] Beth: Like, I do a lot of really hard, onerous, tedious things for my kids, right? So, you know, I’m gonna drive to a volleyball tournament tomorrow in the rain, and I don’t want to.

[00:11:55] Joe: I’m gonna work in the basement.

[00:11:56] Beth: Yeah. Actually, the basement’s kind of nice. So I don’t mind that. It’s quiet. You know, people understand the concept of a parent trying to make life easier for their kids than it was for them.

[00:12:08] Beth: Trying to fix the mistakes of the past is a concept that we understand and value. I’m constantly trying to make sure my kids don’t have to do the stuff that I had to do, and my mom was constantly trying to make sure that I didn’t have to do what she had to do for her parents. Now, her parents ran out of money, and she had to finance their care, you know, out of a teacher’s salary, out of my father’s teacher’s salary, and that was hard for her, and she didn’t want me to have to bear the burden of paying for her care.

[00:12:39] Joe: I like that flipping it, Beth, because often, as you know, it isn’t about what I should do, it’s about how do I get myself to actually start moving. But there’s another roadblock that you mentioned, too, that I think is really important to call out before we start talking about tactics and strategies, and that is that there’s a little intimidation here.

[00:12:57] Joe: I mean, your mom, it sounds like, was a real badass with managing her money, and when she’s able to evaluate how you’re doing, like, you feel stressed out about that, and I think that’s a lot of people that are hanging out with us, listening or watching.

[00:13:11] Beth: Yeah, that is true. I like to take that down a notch by telling people that when you are sick and you go to the doctor, you don’t have the burden of figuring out what’s wrong with you.

[00:13:23] Beth: You go to the doctor and you say, “My head hurts,” and the doctor looks at you and does tests and figures out what’s wrong with your head and gives you a solution to fix it. When you have an estate planning need or a financial planning need, there are people you can go to and you can say to a financial planner, “I’m feeling worried about my ability to pay for my long-term care needs in the future.”

[00:13:47] Beth: And your financial planner can say, “Oh, I can help you diagnose that and fix that.” You can go to estate planning attorney and you can say, “I want to leave money to my children, but I don’t wanna leave it to them until they’re, you know, at least old enough to handle it.” And the attorney says, “Oh, yeah, I know what trust works for that.”

[00:14:07] Beth: Or if you’re remarried and you wanna make sure that your kids get something even if your spouse marries somebody else, they’re like, “Yeah, we have something in the toolbox for that.” You don’t have to be an estate planning attorney and you don’t have to be a financial planner in order to get the help you need to do that.

[00:14:25] Beth: All you have to know is what you want and what you’re trying to accomplish.

[00:14:29] Joe: What are the red flags? I mean, a lot of people don’t have this moment that like you had where your mom went in for surgery and three days later you’re taking over a lot of stuff, but there are some early red flags. What are some of those ways you think cognitively Mom or Dad might not be able to handle it like they used to?

[00:14:46] Beth: For my mom, the biggest tell was that she couldn’t get her mail. She lived in a condo building, and getting the mail required leaving her apartment, going down the elevator, going through the lobby to the mail room, getting the mail, and then going back. She stopped being able to do that at some point, and whenever I would come to visit, the first thing she would do is hand me the keys and say, “Can you go down to my mailbox and get the mail?”

[00:15:09] Beth: We should have red flagged that a lot earlier as like, “You need help at home. You need somebody coming in here once a day, every other day, something like that, to get your mail, to help you…” She was getting clothes out of the washer and dryer with one of those grabber hooks ’cause she couldn’t reach into the barrel anymore.

[00:15:29] Beth: She was getting stuff off of high cabinets. She was very small, my mother. She would reach up with the grabber, knock it to the edge, and then it would land on her head, and she would balance it till she could get it, you know, onto the counter.

[00:15:43] Joe: Oh, no.

[00:15:44] Beth: You know, and she would roll around the kitchen on a rolling chair.

[00:15:48] Beth: These were all things where we should have said, “Hey, you need some help at home.” What finally got her to do it was that somebody older in her building died. That person’s caregiver became available, and she liked that person’s caregiver, and that person’s son said to her, “Hey, you know, if you don’t grab this woman now, somebody else is gonna lock her in.”

[00:16:10] Beth: And my mom’s like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And the only reason she was able to manifest that was because she had long-term care insurance, and that was gonna help her pay for it. Otherwise, she would never have, you know, sort of indulged in a home aid of any sort because she would have thought it would have bankrupted her.

[00:16:29] Joe: Wow. That’s so interesting how psychological… I mean, she’s been paying for this insurance, uh, so it’s not like it’s free, right?

[00:16:36] Beth: No, it’s… It was s- it was almost $7,000 a month, ’cause I had to pay the premium that first month that I was taking care of her because she had been behind on her paperwork. The paperwork for these care policies is sometimes very tedious.

[00:16:51] Beth: Oh, yeah. And hers was extremely tedious. And she stopped doing it, and so she went out of claim. And they wanted a premium again, and it was 6,800 and some dollars that they needed FedExed to them, and I had to send them a check. You know, I don’t have that much cash lying around. So I had to free up money in order to cover that check and FedEx it to them.

[00:17:14] Beth: And then eventually I got reimbursed, you know, like four or five months later via regular mail, of course.

[00:17:19] Joe: Of course. It’s funny, a friend of mine going through this, he, uh, stopped by his mom’s house and she had some weird new subscriptions to magazines he’d never seen before. He also noticed some, you know, charitable donations that they hadn’t seen.

[00:17:35] Joe: It’s like, Mom forgetting my birthday, that’s one thing, but Mom donating 700 bucks to a guy named Patriot Eagle Freedom Trust, like that’s a whole, whole different deal.

[00:17:44] Beth: My mom was giving to politicians left and right, like with no sense of it. Somebody I interviewed for the book who was a gerontologist, which is a person who studies, you know, the aging population, her father, when she went to visit him, had a stack of calendars from, you know, various charities.

[00:18:01] Beth: They gave you a calendar if you donated money. And she’s like, “Why do you have like two dozen calendars sitting here?” Oh,

[00:18:06] Joe: no.

[00:18:08] Beth: So none of these things have to be nefarious. They just have to be unusual. They have to be… Things add up for older folks who are not paying attention without them realizing it.

[00:18:18] Beth: They’re buying something or doing something in the moment, buying from QVC, giving money away, giving gifts like to the cleaning lady or their home health worker, you know, 100 bucks at a time, but they give you 100 bucks on Tuesday and don’t remember, and then on Thursday they’re like, “Oh, I wanna be generous and give you 100 bucks,” and they give another 100 bucks without realizing what it’s all adding up to.

[00:18:41] Beth: Sometimes it’s parking. Sometimes it’s, you know, they park one space off and they don’t remember. You know, the car is askew in the driveway or the neighbors notice that the grass isn’t mowed. You know, something’s not being taken care of in the same way that they cared about previously, and those are things that really you need eyeballs on a lot of the times.

[00:19:03] Beth: Uh, some people only call with their parents. They don’t visit very often. You need to have boots on the ground sometimes.

[00:19:11] Joe: We just got back from a weekend trip to visit an aging family member, and actually, we had the opposite. We were expecting some of that path, and the cool thing was, was especially after reading your book, I feel like I’ve got my radar up, right?

[00:19:24] Joe: But things looked really good. He’s 92 years old, and man, he, he was on top of it, which was also great. Like, I wanna know that, too. Boots on the ground I think is super important. I wanna go back to the paperwork that you talked about, and paperwork nightmare, because man, I remember those long-term care policies.

[00:19:39] Joe: I still- … have nightmares about my time helping people fill those out, and it’s been a long time. But I think everybody assumes that once you have the legal paperwork, like, you’re done, but the paperwork apparently is just the tutorial level of the, this entire quote game that we’re about to play.

[00:19:59] Beth: Yeah, the thing that irked me the most about the long-term care insurance was that you had to fill out the hours for the caregivers even if the care they were giving wasn’t reimbursable.

[00:20:10] Beth: Like, my mom’s policy only reimbursed for home healthcare aides when they were in your home, but my mom was in a facility for much of her illness, either a hospital or a rehab facility. We still kept the care workers with her there because she wasn’t… Like, she needed more care than they were able to provide, so we, we kept those women on to help her, but they weren’t covered when they weren’t home, but I still had to keep the paperwork filed in order to keep the claim going.

[00:20:37] Beth: I would fill out all this onerous paperwork, and then it would come back denied, and I knew it was gonna be denied.

[00:20:42] Joe: Ahead of time you knew it was gonna be denied.

[00:20:43] Beth: A- ahead of time. And so finally at the very, very end, I worked it out with one of the ladies on the phone, you know, the customer service lady who I got to know very, very well, and I’m just like, “Can you just, like, let it go for, like, those weeks?

[00:20:59] Beth: Like, w- I really just, I can’t.” And she’s like, “Yeah, yeah, we can let that go.”

[00:21:04] Joe: Let’s talk about power of attorney. First of all, some people might not know what that is, so we should probably explain that first. But you mentioned that it’s both essential and useless, right? Why, why, why is it both?

[00:21:16] Beth: It’s essential and it’s hard to use, I think is what I meant to say, and then after death it’s useless.

[00:21:22] Beth: So you have your before death documents and your after death documents, and there’s a brick wall in the middle where, you know, once the person dies, everything from before doesn’t work and you need all the stuff after. Like, 30% of people in this country have a will. That’s the most planning that most people do.

[00:21:40] Beth: A will does nothing for you while you’re alive. It only comes into play after you’ve died. Power of attorney is for when you’re alive and does nothing for you after you’re dead. A new stat came out recently that only 11% of people have a valid power of attorney right now. 11 is a very small number for what I consider the most essential planning document that you need from age of 18 onward.

[00:22:05] Beth: We’re not talking about just old people. We’re talking about anybody going off to college, any young adult. You get locked out of their lives. We are all legal adults. I’m a divorced woman. Nobody can act for me in my place unless I give them a permission slip, and that permission slip is this very simple legal document that says, “I, Beth Pinsker, give permission to,” whomever it is, “to do financial tasks for me if I am incapacitated.”

[00:22:36] Beth: If something were to happen to me right now, a 20-year-old would take care of all of my financial needs and do what I had to do for my mother, which scares the dickens out of me.

[00:22:48] Joe: And him too probably.

[00:22:49] Beth: At least he has a guidebook- … to know exactly what to do, you know, ’cause we live and breathe this in my household, but I am also his power of attorney.

[00:22:58] Beth: Because he went off to school and I needed the healthcare proxy documents for the healthcare side of things and the financial side if he needs help with the bill. We were on the phone the other day, I have a, an 18-year-old also, and we were trying to roll over her bank accounts to her own name as an adult And the lady on the phone, I called up and I’m like, “I wanna get these out of my name and into my daughter’s name,” and my daughter was sitting on speakerphone with me, and she said something, and the lady’s like, “I hear another voice in the room.

[00:23:31] Beth: You know, I’m gonna need legal permission from that person, you know, in order to speak in front of her.” I’m like, “Well, that’s my daughter,” you know? They’re trained on the bank end to be very suspicious of financial manipulation.

[00:23:45] Joe: Yeah, rightfully so, sure.

[00:23:46] Beth: So you need legal paperwork. You need a legal permission slip that they can process through their legal departments in order to do anything.

[00:23:55] Beth: You can’t just walk into your parent’s bank and say, “You know, my mom’s sick. I need to take $5,000 out of her account.” They’re gonna look at you like you’re crazy. You need to show up with this permission paper that’s legally notarized and stamped and signed, and then they still say no to you, which is the hard part.

[00:24:14] Beth: They are very, very suspicious of people in a financial capacity trying to be power of attorney for somebody else. They want all the I’s dotted and all the T’s crossed. So what you have to do is, you know, I showed up at the bank with this document and I pushed it through the little tray and they’re like, “Nah, sorry.

[00:24:34] Beth: You need a court order.” And I’m like, “No. No, I don’t. This is a completely valid document filled out by a lawyer within the last five years in this state. I know it’s perfectly fine. I know my rights here.” And they’re like, “No, sorry.”

[00:24:48] Joe: Uh, hold on a second. So you have bank employees telling you that your legal document isn’t legal enough?

[00:24:55] Beth: Yes. The bank employee, the bank manager, and their customer service representative all told me, ’cause of course I’m gonna ask to throw it up the chain, they all told me it was not possible. I needed my mom to come in in person, my mom who had just had major spinal surgery and couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t move her arms, anything.

[00:25:16] Beth: I’m like, “Do you wanna talk to her on the phone? Do you wanna send a notary to her bedside? We can do any of those things. What she can’t do is come here in person,” which is why we have power of attorney. It’s completely frustrating and catch-22, and none of it makes any sense. These documents are supposed to be made so that the families have an easier time of it, and so that you can prepare for emergencies, and when you get to use them in practical terms, they are really, really hard.

[00:25:44] Joe: How’d you get it done?

[00:25:45] Beth: They said, “You’re gonna have to come back for an appointment.” So I made a two-hour appointment for a day later, came back, sat with her while she went back and forth with the legal department and faxed and went over the documents and, you know, like back and forth and back and forth and back and forth, and then they’re like, “Okay.

[00:26:01] Beth: Well, we can’t finish this today.” So I had to come back for another two-hour appointment. And at that point I had, at the end of that second two-hour appointment, so six man-hours- In a hot, humid, you know, bank in Florida, six man-hours to get that document approved and get checking write abilities on her account.

[00:26:20] Joe: This is another downside of only 11% of people having them though, Beth. The bank never sees them. I mean, that’s gotta be half the problem is they just don’t see them

[00:26:29] Beth: They don’t see ’em. Every bank has different rules. You know, it’s not like my mom just had one bank. You know, my mom had three banks, a brokerage account, an annuity company, and, you know, at one point the cable company asked me for the power of attorney ’cause the cable was out and I wanted to reboot the box, and when I called in they’re like, “Oh, no, sorry.

[00:26:48] Beth: You’re not an authorized user on the cable account. You need to call in the morning and fax your power of attorney to the administrative office.” And I’m like, “Holy crap, this is complicated.” Well, I

[00:27:01] Joe: hear two tactics in there right now. Number one, set up power of attorney early, but also still be prepared for a bumpy road. But number two, on these trusted contacts, make sure that your child or whoever’s gonna be that person is your trusted contact on as many things as possible.

[00:27:17] Beth: There’s a couple different ways to do this.

[00:27:19] Beth: Trusted contact does not give you any ability to transact, so the term that the financial industry uses as a trusted contact is only somebody for the bank or the financial institution to call if they suspect something going awry. That is, or if the long-term care insurance, for instance, at the same time I figured out that my mom hadn’t paid the bill, they had a letter in the mail to both me and my brother saying, “Hey, your mom hasn’t paid her premium.

[00:27:47] Beth: It’s past due. We thought you should know about this.” So trusted contact is just for informational purposes only. Then you can be power of attorney, which is a fiduciary responsibility and therefore you have to act legally in the best interest of the person. And then there is joint ownership. So some people put their child or somebody else on the bank account of an older person to be a joint owner.

[00:28:14] Beth: That is a completely different thing than being power of attorney, and most financial advisors frown upon that, although most people out there, this is what their solution is. Yeah. “I’m just gonna go on my mom’s bank account and be a joint owner.”

[00:28:26] Joe: It’s a horrible solution.

[00:28:27] Beth: Yes. It works best in happy families.

[00:28:30] Beth: It works best in one-child families. Like, if you don’t have any siblings to worry about and their feelings and the succession of the account after the person dies, then joint ownership, you know, in a loving, you know, happy, no problems family can work. If the joint person also does not have any children going to college, any divorce, past or present or future, and any creditors, past, present, or future.

[00:28:59] Beth: So you go find me that person- Unicorn … and you all get to have a gold star. There are just too many complications to doing it. Being on the deed of your parents’ house is also a nightmare. You know, there are some assets that are better passed at death A house is definitely the big one of those. So the thing that I tell people to do with the power of attorney is get the power of attorney and go put it in the bank and get it processed when the person is well and walking around and great.

[00:29:28] Beth: It’s only for emergencies. You know, it doesn’t give that person permission to come and take money out of your bank account. That person is financially, is fiduciarily bound to act in your best interest. They could be in trouble if they steal from you.

[00:29:41] Joe: Which is not the case if they’re on your bank account.

[00:29:44] Beth: Exactly.

[00:29:44] Joe: If they’re on your bank account, it’s just their money.

[00:29:46] Beth: They are the co-owner. They can do as they please. So I had somebody call me or write me an email recently, and he was like, “I think you were the person who suggested this. I was visiting my dad and we were talking about power of attorney, and I said, ‘Let’s just go down to the bank and get this processed.’

[00:30:03] Beth: And his dad was like, ‘Why? Why should we do this?'” And, and he was like, “Well, Beth Pinsker didn’t do that, and she and her mom were in a big pickle because they didn’t get that done in time. While you’re still good, let’s just take 10 minutes to go down to the bank and take care of this.” And now it’s done.

[00:30:19] Joe: I want to do a little speed round here because there’s a few others that you mentioned that we should take care of, and let’s just do these very briefly.

[00:30:29] Joe: Healthcare proxy.

[00:30:30] Beth: Absolutely. Need it from 18 plus. My kid turned 18. Walked right down to the notary, get that done. You absolutely need it for a college student, and why not just keep it for the rest of your life?

[00:30:42] Joe: Emergency document folder.

[00:30:44] Beth: Uh, you need that death folder. You need something. Uh, most binders sit unused and unopened, uh, unfilled in.

[00:30:53] Beth: If you don’t fill that in, whoever takes over for you is gonna have to do, like, a scavenger hunt that’s gonna end, you know, very badly.

[00:31:01] Joe: Speaking of scavenger hunt, here’s one. Medication cheat sheet. I think that’s a big one.

[00:31:05] Beth: Yeah. You know, you know things about your kids that you don’t know about your parents or other family members.

[00:31:12] Beth: I know everything about my kids’ health history. I did not know when my mother’s appendectomy was. You know, they ask you in the hospital, like, “What surgeries did your mother have?” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” You know, anything before 1994 I’m not aware of. I was a baby. You need to know what they’re on. You need to know who their doctors are, and they’re the best person to tell you that if they just put it on a piece of paper.

[00:31:38] Joe: Boy, and a big one, too, just the code to the computer and the code to the phone.

[00:31:42] Beth: Yeah, the phone is a tricky one. You need more than the code. A lot of people tell me, “Oh, I have my mom’s phone code,” but really do you? You know, your mom might change the phone code without even knowing they’ve changed the phone code.

[00:31:55] Beth: Your kids might change it all the time. What you need on a phone is a beneficiary designation, just like you need on a bank account, because if you do not need that code, and somebody has a book coming out on that, they lost their daughter very tragically and unexpectedly, and they could not get into her phone And it has plagued them with guilt and grief ever since.

[00:32:18] Beth: And Mac and Android both have a feature where you name a legacy contact to your phone. It’s 60 seconds to go into your settings and name somebody as a beneficiary to your phone. It spits out a QR code. You keep that with your important documents, and if something should happen to you, they just scan that QR code, they identify themselves, and then they are given access by the company to your phone.

[00:32:44] Joe: Oh, that’s fantastic.

[00:32:45] Beth: Yeah. Without that, it’s a brick. Even the FBI can’t get into it.

[00:32:49] Joe: Let’s talk about maybe somewhat taking care of Mom or Dad or other family members, but also afterwards. You know, you mentioned in your book that you and your brother were co-executors. I always caution people against that.

[00:33:05] OG: Yeah.

[00:33:06] Joe: Because of the fact that we need somebody who’s just gonna be the person who’s gonna do exactly what it says in the will. ‘Cause too many times I saw that not happen. How do you avoid conflict during this time with family members? ‘Cause now that you’re taking care of Mom, y- you’re, like, revisiting all these family dynamics with siblings and cousins and everybody else who thinks that you’re doing it wrong, Beth.

[00:33:32] Beth: Yeah. I’m working on a big piece about siblings right now, and I asked some siblings to rate their level of involvement and care and their sibling’s level of involvement and care. And the number of people who gave themselves a 10 and their siblings a 2- … was the prevalent, uh, score that was going on.

[00:33:53] Beth: Being an executor or the trustee of a trust does not mean you’re getting all the money. Does not mean you’re getting more of the money. It is a thankless administrative task, and being co-executor or trustee with somebody is just an entanglement that most people would rather avoid. The key to all of this, just like everything, every part of the living part, it’s all about communication and all about doing things out of love, and you really have to keep that in mind after, because after, there is no prevailing authority.

[00:34:28] Beth: Mom and Dad cannot come back from the dead and slap you upside the head and tell you to go to your room. The only way you’re gonna resolve disputes in the after period is in court. And court for this sort of thing is just horrible. It is expensive, it is costly, and the judges, like, just have no patience for your mom loves me best arguments.

[00:34:57] Joe: They probably heard that a bajillion times.

[00:35:00] Beth: Yeah. They are gonna take it out of your hands. Whatever decision, nobody’s gonna be happy with it. So if there’s something that you’re fighting over, you better make sure it’s worth fighting over. Otherwise, you just need to come to some sort of agreement. And my biggest piece of advice to people is keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

[00:35:21] Beth: The biggest thing that causes family fights is somebody feeling like they’re not being included. Like, the prevailing feeling of the sibling that’s causing trouble is that there is a family chat going on that they are not included on, and a lot of times there is, right? There’s some troubled sibling that you are talking around, and that sibling knows it, and they’re pissed.

[00:35:46] Beth: And if you can just find a way to include that troubled sibling some way, somehow, with some time-consuming but innocuous task, you can keep things a lot calmer and a lot better. Like for instance, I make the joke, my brother has been involved for the last three years with digitizing the family photos.

[00:36:08] Beth: That’s his job, right? He will never, ever finish it. I take care of everything else. And any time he asks me about something, I say, “Oh yeah, let’s talk about that. How’s it going digitizing the family photos?”

[00:36:26] Joe: Discussion done.

[00:36:27] Beth: Discussion end. Yeah, we’re all set.

[00:36:31] Joe: In my family, my sister and I are the two siblings left, and, uh, when my dad died it was, it was very easy and amicable, and I feel very lucky that way.

[00:36:41] Joe: ‘Cause when I was a financial planner I didn’t see that a lot. I always saw what you said. In fact, it’s funny, in my spouse’s family, we have the exact discussion going on that you’re talking about, that there’s discussions going on behind other people’s back and it ju- all the triangling happening. It’s absolutely ugly.

[00:36:56] Joe: Is there a way besides that to avoid becoming the f- the family villain? Or at some point, do you just say, “You know what? I’m gonna be a little bit of a jerk about this, because I just have to do what it says in the document. My job is not to please you, my job is to follow the document.”

[00:37:14] Beth: Yeah, so if you are the trustee and then there are terms in the document, yeah, you have to follow them.

[00:37:21] Beth: The other people can get upset about them. The thing that forestalls bad feelings the most is if the person who’s sick, mom or dad or whomever, talks about it beforehand. I list one scenario in my book where mom and dad left an unequal amount of money to a pair of siblings, and without telling them that they were gonna do that.

[00:37:40] Beth: And the one getting less, who was a lawyer and well off and didn’t need the money, which is why they did it, said, “You know, Mom and Dad would never do that, you know, without talking to me about it first. That must not be what they wanted.” And so he caused a fuss. And in another family, the same situation happened, but they talked about it beforehand, and the one who was more well off who was getting less was like, “Oh yeah, that makes complete sense.

[00:38:03] Beth: I understand what you’re doing, and, uh, yeah, I’m okay with that.” Talking about it, like, the power of talking about it cannot be overstated.

[00:38:12] Joe: I just keep hearing, uh, what that old book, Sun Tzu, The Art of War, like, the best battle’s the one you never fight.

[00:38:18] Beth: Exactly.

[00:38:18] Joe: Yeah. I got a couple heady questions, I think, to round this out.

[00:38:23] Joe: What did this whole experience teach you about your own planning, Beth?

[00:38:29] Beth: Well, it made me realize that most of this stuff is in my head. And since I’m a, a divorced person and I’m raising two kids and doing it all by myself, it’s all up here and nobody else knows what’s going on, and I need to be a lot more explicit about my plans, where I keep things, you know, and making things easy enough that if my 20-year-old had to take over, all of my accounts are in one place, all of my documents are in a booklet.

[00:39:00] Joe: You had a line, by the way, that I identified with very much. You said something that you, Beth, you are a, I think you called it a pre-worrier. Like, you worry about the worry before the worry, and then you’re the worrier, and then you, like, a post-mortem worrier as well. Yeah. Like, all season worrier, Beth.

[00:39:18] Beth: Yes. I like to plot things out.

[00:39:21] Beth: I like to know, you know, that I’m prepared. I was talking to somebody and she said that people tell her all the time, like, “You can’t account for everything.” Like, you can’t account for all contingencies that might happen. And she was like, “Yes. Yes, you can.” Well, I’m in that school. You can prepare for almost any bad thing that’s going to happen.

[00:39:42] Beth: You just have to have the will to do it, and so that’s what I’m trying to do with my finances, is make sure that somebody else understands what’s going on in my own head.

[00:39:54] Joe: Let’s do one more quick hit round before we say goodbye. I think these are gonna be fun. W- let’s see. What financial document sounds fake but is real?

[00:40:03] Beth: The, uh, medallion stamp.

[00:40:05] Joe: It sounds like something that Frodo has to take to Mordor, Beth.

[00:40:08] Beth: Yeah. Well, it’s almost as hard to get in real life.

[00:40:11] Joe: Yeah. What is a medallion stamp, by the way?

[00:40:13] Beth: So it’s like a notary stamp on crack. It’s a bank verified identification procedure where they literally have, like, a stamp that’s a medallion symbol, and there has to be somebody at the bank authorized to do it, authorized to look at your documents, and the banks don’t have these people anymore.

[00:40:33] Beth: So I went looking for a medallion stamp all over Manhattan and could not get one.

[00:40:39] Joe: Wow. In a, a city like Manhattan. What’s a phrase that triggers you emotionally after this?

[00:40:45] Beth: I’ll get to it later.

[00:40:48] Joe: One thing every family should talk about over dinner this month.

[00:40:53] Beth: Who has power of attorney over who?

[00:40:55] Joe: Oh, yeah.

[00:40:57] Joe: You told us about one ridiculous bureaucratic moment at the bank. Is that the most ridiculous moment or is there another more ridiculous bureaucratic moment?

[00:41:05] Beth: Oh, no, no, no. I had to deal with the IRS. I had to find my mom’s lost tax refund, and it required a phone tree code that I got off the internet, like a cheat sheet code, like, you know, like for the video games, and it’s like press four, press three, press two, press one, press three, press two, then say representative.

[00:41:29] Beth: And it’s in my book. I don’t know if it works anymore, but- And I got a live agent and I needed to, uh, send a document and it had to be faxed. I didn’t have a fax machine so I had to call back and I had to do the whole thing again. I set up eFax. So the second time I get the fax to go through they say it’s not a wet signature.

[00:41:49] Joe: Oh my God.

[00:41:50] Beth: I’m like, “It’s a fax.” F-

[00:41:51] Joe: yeah.

[00:41:52] Beth: A wet signature is that you can see that it’s written in pen and that you have the original. I’m like, “It’s a fax, it can’t be an original. Like a fax can’t be a wet signature.” They’re like, “Well, it ha- this is clearly a photocopy so you have to send us a wet signature.”

[00:42:06] Beth: So I call back. I have to reprint the document, sign it, and then I get the next one and the fax won’t go through and the call times out ’cause it, the whole call has, can take no longer than four minutes with the IRS. They’re timed. So I have to call back. Fourth time I get it to go through. Then, uh, they verify the document which is just the permission to talk to me document, and they tell me that my mom’s dead.

[00:42:35] Beth: They’re like, “The reason nothing is going through is ’cause your mom is listed as deceased.” I’m like, “Yeah, I know that.” It’s like, “Thank you very, thank you very much.”

[00:42:48] Joe: All the stuff you learned. I would’ve been more, far more sarcastic, Beth. I would’ve been, “She is?”

[00:42:53] Beth: Oh my God.

[00:42:54] Joe: But that’s me, yeah. If only you had put all this wisdom in a book.

[00:43:00] Joe: I wish that you had done that. It is called My Mother’s Money: A Guide to Financial Caregiving. You wrote this book, it, it felt to me like for everyone, but what’s the biggest thing you hope people get out of it?

[00:43:13] Beth: I hope people put this task higher up on their to-do list because my book storytelling makes them see the whole point of it, makes them see the urgency of doing this sooner rather than later, and by sooner, I mean today.

[00:43:27] Joe: And it’s available everywhere.

[00:43:28] Beth: Available everywhere, and if you buy a copy or sign up for my newsletter, you can get a free download of the resource guide in the back, which is like a little workbook that works you through… Some people need more than one copy of that, so I offer that as a free download.

[00:43:44] Joe: That was my favorite part, by the way, all of the end of chapter resources, like at the end of each part. Like, it isn’t about reading about, it’s about going and doing it, and I really appreciated that. So thank you for mentoring our Stackers today. I super appreciate it, Beth.

[00:43:58] Beth: Thank you for having me.

[00:44:04] Doug: Hey there, Stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and cheers to Beth. Taking care of your mom’s financial life, even as a pro, that’s a challenge. While Beth’s mom was a rock star in her eyes, imagine if she’d been in charge of a real musical star’s assets. On today’s date back in 2004, we lost one of our greatest musical stars.

[00:44:24] Doug: Ray Charles passed away at the age of 74. Here’s a question. Of course, Charles had a ton of hits, all while playing the piano blind. Which hit of his was so respected it actually became not just a chart topper, but a state song? I’ll be back right after I see if I can compose a new theme song for this trivia segment.

[00:44:45] Doug: Hey, uh, O- OG, what rhymes with awesome?

[00:44:54] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m music lover, but guy who leaves musical creation to others, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. This idea of writing a hit song sounds easy, doesn’t it? They all sound so natural and, and, and relaxed and easy until you realize that’s exactly what makes it difficult. I hope today’s trivia question isn’t too difficult.

[00:45:13] Doug: Ray Charles died on today’s date back in 2004. What hit song of his not only brought him lots of Benjamins, it even became a state song? That would be the magnificent Georgia On My Mind, which the state of Georgia adopted as the state song in 1979. While it’s a magnificent tune, it also helped that Charles was a Georgia native as well, and a great tribute to the state.

[00:45:41] Doug: And now back to guys who are some kind of tribute to financial planning, Joe and OG. Some kind of tribute

[00:45:48] Joe: Some kind. Doug, uh, thanks for that. By the way, I know you enjoy karaoke as much as the next person.

[00:45:55] Doug: Georgia.

[00:45:55] Joe: I was gonna ask

[00:45:56] Doug: Georgia.

[00:45:58] Joe: There it is

[00:45:59] Doug: The whole day through.

[00:46:02] Joe: He’s got it. Sounds just like Ray Charles.

[00:46:05] Joe: Big thanks to Beth Pinsker for dropping by, and so many people she helps. Because it is frustrating, OG, that, uh, to Beth’s point, you can be really book smart about this, and yet the system is kind of designed to bite you in the ass no matter, no matter how, uh, how much you know, it’s gonna frustrate you to no end trying to, A, make sure that mom’s well taken care of, or dad, or, you know, uncle, aunt, whoever it might be.

[00:46:32] Joe: And by the same token, getting their estate plan in order in a timely basis, like all of this just, man, juggle it as soon as you can.

[00:46:40] OG: Yeah, I mean, the, the hardest thing is once you figure out the fact that, uh, you might have to intervene, now it’s harder to intervene because maybe you don’t have all the documentation that you need in order to be able to help.

[00:46:51] OG: So have that discussion sooner rather than later.

[00:46:54] Doug: Yeah. Financial power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney. It’s so hard, and I’ve gone through this, I’m going through this. It’s very hard to get that done if you’ve got an elderly parent or relative who cognitively is not there or not entirely there.

[00:47:12] Doug: They don’t wanna lose control. They don’t wanna give up that control because it’s a matter of pride to them to feel like they can still handle that stuff, and it just makes it much more difficult to say, “Hey, Mom, we should go to a lawyer, and we should have this stuff drafted.” “Oh, I’m not ready for that yet.

[00:47:27] Doug: That’s not

[00:47:27] Joe: necessary.” Well, no, and to, yeah, Doug, and to Beth’s point too, I mean, there’s a little intimidation factor on your end. I mean, for Beth, she always looked up to her mom, and now there’s a little, “Mom always handled all her own stuff,” and now I’m trying to handle it in a way that would- Yeah

[00:47:39] Joe: respect. So on both sides, Mom doesn’t wanna give up control, and, you know, you’re a little int- dah, uh, yuck. Yeah.

[00:47:47] Doug: It’s tough.

[00:47:48] Joe: Let’s do a headline.

[00:47:50] headlines: Hello, darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines.

[00:47:56] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal.

[00:47:59] Joe: This is written by Katherine Hamilton. A risky unconventional mortgage is on the rise again. I read this, OG. I started shaking. I’m like, “No, don’t bring 2008 back. Please, please, please.” Unconventional mortgages on the rise. Share of mortgages using alternative lending practices doubled in recent years with lenders trying to get more business in a stalled housing market.

[00:48:21] Joe: So here’s what’s happening, OG, is in, in the housing markets, you know, not much activity going on, so lenders trying to dangle some carrots in front of people to pick up some, some new biz. And, uh, w- what could possibly go wrong here?

[00:48:36] OG: I saw an ad the other day for a five-day HELOC with credit scores down to 600.

[00:48:42] Joe: Five day.

[00:48:44] OG: I mean,

[00:48:45] Joe: wow. Just imagine the, the, the penalty if you go to day six. No,

[00:48:48] OG: no, no. No, no, no. I’m

[00:48:49] Joe: saying- Approved in five days.

[00:48:51] OG: Yeah, like done and funded- Like you- … in five days … oh, I get it. I thought you had to pay it back in five days. I was like, “Dude.”

[00:48:52] Joe: Oh. Like, like

[00:48:57] OG: a- Like a payday loan but against your house?

[00:49:00] Joe: Exactly.

[00:49:01] Doug: That would definitely be unconventional. I mean, sometimes you just need the money for bet MGM purposes.

[00:49:07] OG: I need 386,000. We can lend it to you, but only for five days.

[00:49:12] Doug: I, I, but actually, can we just take a minute and, and just give some examples of what a non-conventional mortgage is for our listeners?

[00:49:20] Doug: I

[00:49:20] OG: mean, I ki- I kinda think that it could be a good idea. I don’t know that I, that, that- Well, let’s- … that it’s, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

[00:49:26] Joe: Yeah, let’s start off with what traditional mortgages are, the reverse of what you’re asking, Doug, because a traditional mortgage is generally built for a W-2 employee, right?

[00:49:35] Joe: Who has a predictable paycheck, clean tax returns, like somebody with a pretty straightforward situation- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm … is going to fit best into a traditional mortgage. But where we get our income now has changed in a lot of ways. A lot of people, entrepreneurs, they get income streams in bunches. It, it’s not a clean W-2 all the time.

[00:49:56] Joe: Realtors, as an example, somebody that, uh, that will get huge blocks of their income maybe three or four times a year. They get these big income checks, and then nothing the rest of the year. Freelancers, investors, business owners, a lot of people make great money, but they look pretty terrible on paper. I mean, this piece highlights a real estate agent whose taxable income looked way lower because of business deductions, which limited her ability to qualify traditionally.

[00:50:26] Joe: And you’ve seen this, OG, with clients, I’m sure, where the bank says, “Show us your income.” The self-em- the self-employed person is like, “Which, which version of my income do you wanna see?”

[00:50:36] OG: I would be interested to read through this article and find the data points in here. I would say that 95 times out of 100, when a business owner says, “Oh, well, I actually make a lot of money, it’s just business deductions,” either, A, they have really crappy accounting systems/process that goes with that, and they actually have no idea where anything goes, or, B, they’re, you know, writing off their country club membership as a marketing expense, which is a- Yes

[00:51:06] OG: you know, tax fraud, and then trying to have their cake and eat it, too. This is one of the major problems with TikTok financial advice or Instagram influencers who are like, “You know, you can go buy a G-Wagon and write it off for your business.” It’s like, no, you can’t. Stop saying that crap. It’s absolutely garbage to be able to, to, to be telling people that.

[00:51:27] OG: Or, you know, like, “It’s super easy. Go buy, like, 10 Airbnbs. If you’re a surgeon and you make a million dollars a year, go buy 10 Airbnbs. You can depreciate it all, and look, you just saved all this money.” No, you didn’t. You just deferred the taxes. Depreciation expense gets paid back on the back end, unless you consume it like a frigging oil well.

[00:51:46] OG: If you use all of the oil in the oil well, then you don’t pay it back, you know? But like, you know what I mean? Like, if you turn around and sell your property later, you pay taxes on it. You’re just kicking the can down the road, which may or may not be a good thing. In these circumstances, I think most of the time people are trying to take liberties with their personal situation.

[00:52:06] OG: Like, “Oh, I’m a, I’m a realtor. I don’t qualify for this because I have business expenses.” Hmm. That’s a little sus, honestly

[00:52:14] Joe: John Warrillow, who y- you know John. John Warrillow has built a whole business around building businesses to sell, and he said exactly what you’re describing, OG, when he was on the show.

[00:52:24] Joe: This is a number one problem he has when people are trying to sell their business, is that they’ve done all these things that are, quote, “lifestyle decisions,” wink, wink, country club. I’m taking clients there all the time, so I’m writing that off. Maybe you are, maybe you’re not. But changing your business around so it’s actually sellable, nobody wants to see that.

[00:52:43] Joe: If you’re selling your business, nobody wants to buy a dead end with zero income. Like they- Yeah … they want an income stream.

[00:52:50] OG: Yeah, it’s hard to do both sides of that transaction, to run the books correctly, legally, you know, above board all the time. And I mean, here’s… The reality of what you’re talking about here as it relates to being a small business owner, or hell, even somebody that gets i- irregular income like bonuses and that sort of stuff, yes, it takes an extra hoop to jump through to get a loan because if your salary is 150 and your bonus is 150, and you say, “I make 300,” that is true, that’s what happened, but the bankers are gonna look at it and go, “Well, we need some assurances that this, you know, this 150 bonus thing is somewhat predictable,” you know?

[00:53:28] OG: And so they’re gonna ask, “Let’s see the last three years.” And if it’s like, “Well, last year was 61, the year before that was zero, but we- we’re on track this year to be at, like, 225,” they’re gonna average that out, you know? And I get it, ’cause I also deal with this. This isn’t, like me, you know, yelling at cloud without having some experience living it.

[00:53:47] OG: The problem with the mortgage market or frankly any real lending of any kind, is that there is no human involvement in any of this anymore. I distinctly remember when I was a kid, my grandparents owned a business, and I remember I was at my grandpa’s shop, and he said, “Hey, let’s go get a sandwich, and then we gotta go to the bank.”

[00:54:05] OG: And where they had their office or where they had their, their business, like be- out- outside, behind the parking lot was the, was the sub shop. A great Italian sub place, by the way. And then kitty-corner through the parking lot across the street was the bank. So we, like, walked out the back, ate sandwiches, then walked across the thing.

[00:54:23] OG: And so we walk into the bank, and the banker immediately knows my grandpa and says, “Auggie, hey, great to see you.” And they shake hands, and my grandpa says, “You know, I need a couple hundred thousand dollars to buy a new press And he looked at him, he says, “I’m, yeah, we can make that happen. Why don’t you come by tomorrow and we’ll get it all squared away?”

[00:54:41] OG: And that was how they did business, right? Now, there’s good things and not so good things about that. Now, you have a bunch of computer jockeys who take your info, dump it into some algorithm with no involvement whatsoever in terms of hu- actual human decision-making. And so I understand the frustration because I live that too when I go to refinance a mortgage or get a car loan or whatever.

[00:55:04] OG: They’re like, “Well, car, you don’t make any money.” It’s like, “Yeah, I’m good, man. Like, look around.” Is unpredictable in their sense, like you said. So as it relates to this kind of up-and-coming financing, I don’t actually think this is a terrible idea if it’s going where I think it’s going, which is using some other assets as ability to purchase stuff, uh, through lending versus a traditional going to the bank route, which, you know, is becoming, is becoming worse and worse.

[00:55:31] OG: Now, I also think that there’s some other stuff coming on this. We haven’t really spent any time talking about this, but I honestly think this will be a good thing for people from a cash flow standpoint. I think there’s gonna be real-time credit monitoring/bank monitoring/social monitoring coming, where, like, literally the bank and your credit card people are gonna be able to see, like, “Wow, OG just posted he’s got a new job.

[00:55:58] OG: That must mean he lost his job. We noticed he skipped, uh, he had, he had two weeks in his bank account without a paycheck. We are gonna slow down his available credit on his Amex card.”

[00:56:08] Doug: And, and he downvoted 72 different Reddit posts, so he must be angry and bitter about something.

[00:56:14] OG: Yeah, yeah, exactly. He unliked Ford.

[00:56:17] OG: Guess he must be working at GM now, you know, or whatever. Right. That could be bad, right? That could be bad from a like, “Oh crap,” like I can’t float that anymore. Like the old days of like tighten checks. You know, I could write the mortgage check on Friday, mail it, and, and, and hopefully get paid on Monday and get the money in before they cash the check.

[00:56:33] OG: You know, that was a thing. And now I don’t think you’ll be able to even do it with your credit. But I think that might be a good thing because it’ll force people to stay ahead of the curve a little bit and maybe- Yeah, it’s- … prevent you from getting into trouble.

[00:56:45] Doug: But there’s a lot of other… I mean, historically, non-conventional mortgages have come with some downsides, a lot of downsides, like higher interest rates, fees, higher fees that go along with, you know, acquiring that loan, different down payment requirements.

[00:57:04] Doug: You know, they restrict what kind of properties they’ll oftentimes loan against. So You’re not telling our listeners to be worried about that kind of stuff? Or at least watch out for it?

[00:57:14] OG: I, I

[00:57:14] Doug: think

[00:57:14] OG: it’s a good thing. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I don’t think that every single person needs to live in the best neighborhood- Of course not

[00:57:20] OG: in their town.

[00:57:21] Doug: No, of course not, but we need to at least help them be aware of some of the things that come along with non-conventional, non-conforming mortgages. So what does

[00:57:27] OG: that tell you though, just from a, like a capitalistic standpoint? If

[00:57:31] Doug: you- There’s a greater risk.

[00:57:32] OG: No, exactly. For the lender. So if you g- if you go to the bank, and the bank goes, “Look, we can give you this deal, but it’s gonna cost you 15%,” what do they think?

[00:57:40] Doug: They think you’re gonna

[00:57:41] OG: default. They think there’s a really good chance you’re not paying us back.

[00:57:43] Doug: Right.

[00:57:43] OG: Right? What do they subconsciously shou- you should be, like, processing in your brain? You know, like, “Oh, do I really need the house that bad?” Or, “Do I really need- Yeah … this car? Do I really need this line of credit?”

[00:57:54] OG: Because someone somewhere, the Elgo of all of life, has just come up with this idea that there’s a really good chance I’m not gonna make good on this.

[00:58:01] Joe: Yeah, they’ve run this by the law of large numbers, and you’re on the wrong side of it. Right.

[00:58:04] Doug: Yes.

[00:58:05] OG: Yeah. And I get it, ’cause it can be frustrating, especially when you’re, you know, you got a growing family, or you’ve got a job change, or you want to have your kids in a better schools district, or, you know, all the reasons why we move.

[00:58:15] Doug: You didn’t hit that five-way parlay.

[00:58:17] OG: You d- you know, now you gotta move the other way, quick- … before they find you again.

[00:58:21] Joe: Damn horse in the number four race came up lame.

[00:58:23] OG: Damn it.

[00:58:24] Joe: Wrecked everything.

[00:58:24] OG: Again. Why is it always the number four race that get ya? You know? It’s, because one, two, and three weren’t good enough.

[00:58:31] OG: You just, you doubled and tripled down. So I just think that sometimes the universe is kinda giving you a clue, and if the only way for you to get the house is to borrow it from the bookie on the corner, you know, at 30 cents on the dollar, payable weekly, and also, you know, you gotta do some favors for the family when they ask, it, it’s probably not the t- it’s

[00:58:56] Doug: probably not- That is oddly

[00:58:58] OG: specific, OG.

[00:58:58] OG: Yeah, just saying, you know, it might happen, you know. Y- you probably don’t need to spend the money. Just do something different, or save more money, or be in a better spot. You know, the great thing about, if there is a good thing about the computers taking over everything, it’s that you can figure out what the mold looks like, right?

[00:59:15] OG: If you’re a business owner, and you’re like, “They screw me ’cause I don’t have a predictable income,” frigging pay yourself a W-2 paycheck every week for a year that’s exactly the same so you can feed that into the system that they go, “Oh, yeah. Hey, this company sure pays real predictable wages” that you work for, and you’re like, “Sure do.”

[00:59:31] OG: They set up the game, the rules, you can go play it. Or a better way to do this is just design a different game and then go win your own game.

[00:59:42] Joe: It is interesting because-

[00:59:43] OG: Sorry, I, I, I don’t know why I had so much energy around that. I just-

[00:59:46] Joe: No, it’s good …

[00:59:47] OG: I just blacked out. What happened?

[00:59:50] Joe: Well, you know what?

[00:59:51] Joe: The fact that in the headline it says the share of these loans has doubled in the last three years, that’s where people start getting flashbacks. And that’s where, Doug, I’m glad you told the cautionary tale of, hey, these loans may not be what you think they are. And OG, you’re impassioned, like, “Whoa, you need to pump the brakes if this is the only way that you can get money.”

[01:00:11] Joe: And yet what’s interesting is while before the 2008 crisis, we had lending standards that were loosening, we had these very creative, quote-creative mortgages, and everybody assumed then that housing prices would just keep going up and up and up, right? This is actually not what’s going on with, with this.

[01:00:29] Joe: So the headline, which is the case often, the headline reads one thing, that these have tripled, and yet how they’re tripling I thought was, was really interesting because as an example, two companies, Rocket Mortgage and LoanDepot, have had a lot more of these non-conventional mortgages go on the books lately.

[01:00:51] Joe: Rocket Mortgage declined to comment about its non-conforming loan portfolio, but LoanDepot said it at a 68% increase in the production of non-conforming loans between 2024 and 2025. But who they are loaning to is really interesting. Lenders say that they’re careful to look at metrics like credit score and assets, which, as you know, was not the case in 2008.

[01:01:18] Joe: Now they are looking specifically at high earners who have only been earning money for a shorter amount of time, OG, so they haven’t established the good credit yet. They’re on their way to good credit, they’re just not there yet. And small-time investors, especially people that are investing, small-time investors using this, uh, as real estate investments.

[01:01:43] Joe: So there’s a very specific… While the, the number has gone up, the underwriting is still, seems to be pretty solid.

[01:01:53] OG: Well, I mean, income and credit score are not related in any way, shape or form. You can have a, a billion-dollar income and a really crappy credit score, or a fantastic credit score and no income.

[01:02:03] OG: I think this is a scenario of you have to look out for yourself. First of all, as it relates to borrowing money, there are 7,000 ways to do it. Some are better than others. Doug and I were just talking before we started recording about a lending situation that he’s familiar with, that I’m familiar with, and I said, “Well, here’s another idea You can borrow money now from your investment portfolio.

[01:02:25] OG: You don’t have to borrow it from the bank. You know, Schwab will give you money, Fidelity will give you money. You can write option contracts on your positions and earning– Like, there’s a thousand ways to come up with cash. Some of them are good, some of them are not good, and some of them are applicable to you and, and, and some aren’t.

[01:02:41] OG: But I think this is a scenario when you go to borrow money, whether it’s for a house or car, a vacation, God forbid, whatever, an investment, new investment idea, you have to recognize that the only person looking out for you is you. You know, maybe you got a team of people, maybe you got a great advisor, maybe you’ve got a great lawyer, great accountant that, that you can kind of lean on, or a business partner that’s kind of part of your decision-making team.

[01:03:04] OG: The bank’s job is to look out for them. They’re looking out for their shareholders, which is why they want you to toe the line on exactly how much they can charge you of interest, just enough of debt that your lips are just above water, not enough to file bankruptcy when you just throw it all to caution to the wind.

[01:03:22] OG: And they also don’t want you to make enough money that you just go, “I don’t need any debt. I have a bajillion dollars, so I don’t need that.” Right? That this, the system, let’s rage against the machine together, is designed so that this happens. You know, “Oh, my warranty’s up on my car, I should get a new one.”

[01:03:38] OG: Or just maintain your car. The car people want you to buy a new car. The house people want you to buy new houses. That’s how the transactions are done. And that’s how the money is made. The bankers want you to borrow money. So as you’re evaluating these decisions, the only one who’s looking out for you is you.

[01:03:55] OG: And you can use some of these other clues along the way as to what everyone else thinks of you. You know? If you’re getting credit card offers in the mail and you wanna play the points game, and you’re getting lots of lines of credit and lots of low interest, people seem to think they like you, right? Th- that’s, that’s the vibe.

[01:04:12] OG: If the credit card offers you get in the mail are, “Send us a check for 1,000 bucks and we’ll give you a $1,000 line of credit to help you rebuild,” that’s what they think of you. You know? Just take the hint. If the bank says, “We’re not gonna give you any money,” part of it is maybe a reporting issue and they’re screwin- screwing you somehow.

[01:04:30] OG: Or maybe, you know, they’re just going, “Eh We have a strong s- sensation here that this is gonna go bad. Just be patient.

[01:04:41] Joe: Yeah, and I think this is the through line, OG, is that these financial crises don’t happen overnight.

[01:04:46] OG: Well, and it only happens to you if you allow it. Right. Like, we were part of this, you know, we lived this- But

[01:04:51] Joe: it’s not one thing.

[01:04:52] Joe: It’s, it’s generally a series of dominoes.

[01:04:55] OG: Sure, and I, you know, and, uh, uh, I know, like, during the recession, you know, that affected everybody. But it affected you more if you were also one of these people that had that mortgage that, you know, in 2007, like we did, that we didn’t qualify for. I’ve said publicly on the show before when we were…

[01:05:11] OG: We, we put the deposit down on the house, which was a, a whopping $10,000 to build it, and then nine months later they went, “Okay, cool. We’re gonna build this house for you.” And the mortgage guy called that was affiliated with the building company. Mortgage guy called and said, “Okay, so we’re just, uh, finalizing this for you real quick.

[01:05:26] OG: Uh, you guys make $12,000 a month, right?” And I was like, “No, 6,000 a month.” Right.

[01:05:32] Doug: Right.

[01:05:33] OG: And he goes, “Let me, let me try this again, sir. Uh, you guys make 12,000 a month, right?” And I went, “Yeah. Yeah, yeah, 12,000 a month.” He goes, “Okay. And…” You know, like old school, you can hear the computer. And, “Uh, okay. We’re approved. Uh, so when the house closes, you’ll just go to the…”

[01:05:52] OG: Th- that was the app- I know this sounds absolutely bat-ass crazy, right? That was our application process in 2004. “You guys are good for it, yeah?” You know? And when I refinanced my house here, where I was very well qualified to do it, they’re like, “Yeah, we, we see the last three years of returns.” We just don’t think we can get it done.

[01:06:16] OG: Like, wait a second, look at the equity position. Look at the, you know, what are you talking about we can’t get it done? This is a small mortgage pay- Like, all of the things lined up perfectly, but they were diving a little deeper. So this is a good thing. Look after yourself. Also, debt sucks, so you know, don’t frigging borrow money.

[01:06:33] OG: Also, debt sucks.

[01:06:35] Doug: For those of you playing the Stacking Benjamins drinking game at home, OG did use ellipse above water reference there, so that’s gonna cost you a shot, and the week is young. We still have time for Joe to use a Sun Tzu Art of War reference. Uh, tune in Friday, see if that happens.

[01:06:51] Joe: Well, I think that’s why you don’t use debt right there, Doug, is because the best debt battle’s the one you never fight.

[01:06:57] Joe: Oh, very good. Do that right now. Nice. Let’s wander out on the back porch really briefly because we’ve got some great news. Our new guides are out, Doug.

[01:07:04] Doug: Yeah, and you’re talking about AI now, right?

[01:07:06] Joe: Well, this is the big reveal is that we’ve been working on this for a long time. I’ve said there are some things that we can’t tell you about our guides.

[01:07:13] Joe: For those of you that are new to Stacking Benjamins, we have guides in three areas, on your taxes, tax prep, and tax strategies. We have a guide about college planning that we co-author with our friend, uh, Robert Farrington at The College Investor, big college planning website, and then we also have a guide to your HR benefits.

[01:07:35] Joe: All three of these guides are comprehensive. We update them every month. You pay one time for the guide. We update them every month. The guides are- big and they have lots of information, but when you just want the fact, you just want the fact. So we have been able to build an AI tool into the guides. This month it’s in beta.

[01:07:54] Joe: We’d love for everybody, if you own the guide, go try it out. Go ask your question about anything related to your benefits, related to your taxes, related to college planning that you’re worried about. Put the AI through its paces as we finish bringing it up to speed, but it’s, it’s pretty awesome. It not only will answer your question, it’ll also tell you specifically which piece of the guide you’re gonna wanna focus on if you wanna get more educated in that area.

[01:08:20] Joe: So Doug, I’m super, super pumped we finally got that done.

[01:08:24] Doug: Sounds amazing.

[01:08:25] Joe: Yeah, it is awesome. Stackingbenjamins.com/guides if you wanna check out any of those three guides. We have two more guides coming, but I’ll save that for another day. But the June, the June update may be the biggest update we’ve ever had.

[01:08:39] Joe: We’re using AI so that you can just search specifically, and we will answer specifically the question you have. Uh, and the chance, by the way, of hallucination, which we’ve reported on a lot here, where th- they’ll just make something up, we’ve eliminated it by having it only crawl the guide. It’ll just tell you, “Yeah, the guide doesn’t cover that yet, but we put it on the list and it’ll cover it next month.”

[01:09:00] Joe: So if we can’t answer your question, it’ll be on, uh, next month’s update list. So great stuff. Stackingbenjamins.com/guide. Uh, we also have meetup groups meeting throughout the country. And as an example, two weeks ago, uh, the Twin Cities had Dr. Erika Rasher from Beyond Finance talking about finance and psychology join them.

[01:09:20] Joe: The Boston group had a fantastic discussion around spring cleaning your finances. I know the Mankato group also had a similar conversation. And man, w- w- we do this quarterly meetup of all the groups together online, and guess who brought the most people, Doug? Guess which of our groups brought the most people?

[01:09:38] Doug: Tucson.

[01:09:39] Joe: Tucson.

[01:09:40] Doug: Yeah, baby.

[01:09:41] Joe: The smallest community by… Well, Mankato is pretty small, but they’re associated with, uh, Minnesota State University, so they’ve got a nice student population to draw from. But our Tucson group is just the group that could. So if you’re in any of those communities where we have groups, stackingbenjamins.com/bad, Benjamins After Dark.

[01:10:00] Joe: All right, that’s going to sunset Today’s show, huh? No. Huh? Oh. Huh? Almost. As the sun goes down, we gotta ask Doug. Doug, what are our big takeaways from today’s show?

[01:10:12] Doug: Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Beth Pinsker. Working on money for a relative? Remember, the right documents are only table stakes. Get those in place as soon as possible, and don’t be afraid to still ask for help.

[01:10:25] Doug: Even pros like Beth needed good people on her team. Second, thinking about a new mortgage? Don’t look twice at the shiny non-conforming mortgages unless you know all the downsides. There are many, and that’s why the 2008 downfall happened. But the big lesson, don’t ask Joe’s mom for her favorite Ray Charles song.

[01:10:47] Doug: She’ll launch into Hit the Road, Doug, and Don’t You Come Back. Mom, it’s Hit the Road, Jack. I don’t know why you’re always singing that at me. It’s kinda offensive. Thanks to Beth Pinsker for joining us today. You’ll find her new book, My Mother’s Money, wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins.com.

[01:11:10] Doug: This show is the property of SP Podcast, LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. You’ll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.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.

[01:11:36] 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 Benjamins show.

[01:12:42] Joe: Welcome to the after show. This is the part of the show that doesn’t exist. But usually we don’t talk about finance, but guys, I wanna talk about something about where finance meets travel. Have you seen that United yet again has changed the game? I think they were the first ones to add basic economy, weren’t they?

[01:12:59] Doug: I don’t know.

[01:12:59] OG: Wouldn’t know.

[01:13:01] Joe: I think they were. The ones-

[01:13:02] OG: Those, those words do not go together in any sentence I’ve ever used. Right. I can assure you of that.

[01:13:08] Joe: OG’s like, “If it’s, if it’s deeper than row six, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

[01:13:12] OG: That’s right. Do planes have anything beyond row five? I didn’t even know.

[01:13:16] OG: I always wonder where they put all those people that walk past me. Where are you guys going?

[01:13:20] Joe: There’s something behind that curtain, but I’ve never seen it. I have no idea.

[01:13:25] Doug: You know, the BE of basic economy means back end of plane. Of course. And OG has never once seen the back end of a plane.

[01:13:31] Joe: Back end of a plane.

[01:13:32] Joe: Well, because inflation has been so high, prices, you know. So, uh, actually, I saw this on TikTok, where you get all your news. This is, um, well, the first place I saw it was comedian Zach Woods talking about, uh, United’s latest move

[01:13:50] bit: I know there’s been a lot of controversy about United Airlines new economy slap fare class, uh, and I understand why, but I just wanted to briefly explain why I actually don’t think it’s such a bad idea.

[01:14:01] bit: For those of you who are unfamiliar, the economy slap fare is a ultra-reduced fare class, and the only condition is that at some point during the flight, uh, anyone from business or first class is allowed to come back and recreationally slap you one time. Um, it’s all open hand, it’s all from the neck down, and, uh, it can’t be on the bottom because that’s raunchy, but, uh, belly-

[01:14:23] bit: thigh, knee, calf slap, those are all on the table. And, uh, the one exception is on transcontinental flights, uh, if you’re elite premium, you are allowed to turn one coach passenger over your lap for a brisk, brief spanking. And I think what it’s doing is it’s democratizing travel. You know, if you’re poor, you can’t afford to fly at all, but i- if you’re middle class, you’ve been priced out of a lot of the fare options, and this allows nurses, public school teachers, active military to be able to fly again, and I think that’s a positive.

[01:14:50] bit: United’s also experimenting with coach bathroom. The way that works is you, uh, sit in the bathroom for the entirety of the flight. Uh, if someone needs to use the facilities, they knock and you have to leave, but then you have to go right back in when they’re finished. There’s also, I… And I think this one’s really interesting.

[01:15:06] bit: They have coach snack grab, where if you pay for one of the United snacks in coach, any business class passenger is allowed to come gank that snack, give it to a more suitable coach passenger, who then becomes their indentured servant for the remainder of the flight, uh, their sky serf. Whoa. I think this is ultimately gonna be a positive thing- Sky serf

[01:15:25] bit: for the kind of pleasure of hedge fund managers and people like that who wanna fly with a community and not fly private, and for the people who will be able to sort of leverage their class humiliation in order to get to visit their grandma or their meemaw, whatever you call them.

[01:15:39] Joe: Or their meemaw. Oh, gee, you gotta be excited about that.

[01:15:43] Joe: These new- Yeah … fares really, uh, make sitting in the front of the plane even more fun.

[01:15:48] OG: I wouldn’t slap a passenger.

[01:15:50] Joe: Not even if it was part of their fare? Like, they got to- They knew

[01:15:53] Doug: what they were getting into.

[01:15:54] OG: No, no, no. Not even me would do that. I did not find that funny in the least bit. I like

[01:16:00] Doug: how now he’s taking the pious high road- I know

[01:16:03] Doug: of I would never stoop to that.

[01:16:05] Joe: I know. All of a sudden, I thought… I saw this, I thought- Do you know

[01:16:08] OG: how many steps it is to back there? Like, I’m not getting up. You have to move your, like, lunch tray, and the booze, and everything. It’s like, once you’re there, you’re there. Do you know how

[01:16:16] Doug: disgusting their snacks are?

[01:16:18] Doug: I’m not going back there for snacks.

[01:16:20] OG: Like, do you have to have a mask? I’m not sure. I don’t even know. Do you have to glove up? What are, what are the rules?

[01:16:26] Doug: There’s, there’s chickens and goats back there.

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Helping Mom With Money Before It’s Too Late (SB1853)

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