Think building seven figure wealth requires exotic investments or perfect timing? This President’s Day episode from Joe’s mom’s basement tells a very different story.
Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug dig into a Kiplinger My First Million case study featuring a Wisconsin couple who started saving at age 32 with exactly zero invested and quietly built $2 million over the next 22 years using mostly retirement accounts and steady habits. Their success sparks a bigger conversation about why simple strategies often outperform complicated ones, and how surviving the boring middle is where wealth is created.
Along the way, the gang tackles advisor fees, the psychology of enough, long term care decisions, and the real value financial professionals can bring. Of course, it wouldn’t be a basement episode without trivia, community wins, and a few unexpected detours (including a conversation about giant toilet paper rolls that somehow reinforces the episode’s central theme).
What You’ll Take Away:
• Why ordinary retirement accounts (401(k)s, SEP IRAs, and Roth IRAs) can be enough to build significant wealth without chasing complex investments
• How starting with just enough to earn the employer match creates momentum without overwhelming new savers
• A simple escalation strategy: increasing contributions by 1% each year to grow savings almost painlessly
• The often missed detail of contributing through the final paycheck to capture the full employer match
• A creative gamification approach to Roth contributions tied to the Social Security wage base
• How reframing long goals into months instead of years helps investors stay motivated during the long, quiet middle stretch
• Why imperfect plans with higher fees can still beat waiting for the perfect investing setup
• The real concerns people have about trusting workplace retirement plans and how those plans actually function
• Lessons the featured couple learned, including the value of post tax flexibility later in life
• Long term care planning as risk management, including balancing insurance coverage with self funding strategies
Big Behavioral Conversations:
• A TikTok minute featuring Dr. John Delony sparks a discussion about defining enough and whether chasing more success is driven by purpose or ego
• How redefining success can shift financial decisions more than any spreadsheet ever will
• The danger of constantly moving financial goalposts once progress begins
Listener Mailbag: When Is a 1% Advisor Fee Worth It?
OG walks through how to evaluate an advisor relationship beyond performance numbers, including whether your advisor helps you make money or avoid costly mistakes, the value of saved time and reduced stress, planning continuity for spouses or heirs, typical fee structures, and how to have an honest fee conversation without damaging a long standing relationship.
This Episode Is For You If:
• You’re behind on saving and worried you’ve missed your window
• You feel like wealth building requires strategies you don’t understand
• You want proof that simple plans work if you stick with them
• You’re wondering if your advisor’s fee is worth it or if you should manage it yourself
• You need reassurance that boring and consistent beats exciting and complicated
This episode is a reminder that wealth rarely comes from brilliance or shortcuts. More often, it comes from steady decisions repeated consistently while everyone else searches for something more exciting.
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
Doug’s Trivia
- In tennis, winning the Grand Slam means you win each of the four major tournaments. What are the names of those tournaments?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker MJ calls in with a question about whether or not they should fire their advisor.
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- Stacking Benjamins After Dark (BAD) Boston Meetup (March 11 @ 6:00pm)
- Stacking Benjamins Omaha Meetup: 1% Better, Together (February 20 @ 6:30pm)
- Stacking Benjamins After Dark (BAD) Seattle Meetup (March 5 @ 6:30pm)
- Join One of our BAD Meetup Groups! (Benjamins After Dark)
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday for our yearly check in with Robert Farrington from The College Investor. He shares their take on the best tax preparation software before filing your 2025 taxes.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Love it or Leave it: Financial Edition (SB1803)
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: You know, it’s a big day in the basement today. [00:00:02] Doug: Yeah, I do. [00:00:03] Joe: Huge day. [00:00:04] Doug: Why? Why is it a big day? [00:00:06] Joe: Because we’re saluting our armed forces like we do every Monday, Doug. So raise your mug, gentlemen. And uh, ladies, stackers. Get those mugs up because if you’re new here, we pay tribute to the people that kept us safe all weekend while we were playing around [00:00:22] OG: ended weekend. [00:00:23] OG: I don’t even know why we’re working today. I need to have a word with hr. Like in military parlance, this should have been a 70 tourer, right? Like we have 72 hours off, or 96 er, where we have four days off. Like, what are we doing? [00:00:39] Joe: Well, and Doug’s got important work today. He’s gotta go buy a mattress. ’cause isn’t that what you do on President’s Day? [00:00:44] Joe: Because I [00:00:45] Doug: wore it out over the weekend. [00:00:48] Joe: Oh, oh. I just threw up in my mouth. All right. On behalf of the men and women making podcast in mom’s basement and the stackers out there trying to do their best here is. The salute to our troops. Thank you for keeping us safe all weekend and on this extended 70 tour. [00:01:05] Joe: Here’s to you. Let’s go stack some Benjamins together now, shall we? [00:01:08] Doug: Thanks everybody. [00:01:10] opener: We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for $1 million. [00:01:21] opener: Well, don’t you think we should maybe ask for more than a million dollars? A million dollars isn’t exactly a lot of money. These days [00:01:35] Doug: live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:47] Doug: I am Joe Spas neighbor, Doug, and tell me a story. How’d you make your first million? Today, we’ll dive into the tale of a couple who saved more than a million dollars, and we’ll show you how to do it too. Plus, we’ll answer a letter from one stacker who thought, you know, I’d better call sa, see hi and og. [00:02:07] Doug: Should they fire their long-term advisor? We’ll weigh in and you already know. That’s not all. Of course, if you’re worried about not saving enough, I’ll also share a TikTok minute about the definition of enough, and then I’ll share some heartwarming trivia, not because it’s warm and fuzzy trivia. Or like it’s, uh, it’s trivia in the middle of February. [00:02:27] Doug: So it’s a great distraction from this crappy weather. And now two guys who show up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, whether or not mom locked the door. How do they do that? It’s Joe and o Ju. [00:02:46] Joe: That’s right. Stackers. We’re busy working on the extended weekend, so you don’t have to put your feet up. Relax. Welcome to the Greatest Money Show on Earth. The show that’s won four Plutus awards, Kiplinger and Bankrate called the Best Personal Finance Show on Earth. Earth. And uh, you’re here and we’re here. [00:03:04] Doug: Didn’t we get an award from like the UN or something too? I’m pretty sure we did [00:03:07] Joe: not. I’m sure it’s on the way. It’s gotta gotta be on the way he’s [00:03:11] Doug: keeping some kind. Yeah, [00:03:13] Joe: especially Doug, after today’s show. We’re going to be chatting about, as you so eloquently said, a couple who made a million dollars. [00:03:20] Joe: So be prepared to be motivated. Time to get your motivation on the guy who was motivated enough to wear pants to this particular episode. Mr. OGs here. How are you? Man [00:03:30] OG: is 84 degrees. We are wearing shorts. Wow. [00:03:33] Joe: It is incredible. You talk about the crappy weather, Doug, and we’re like, what are you talking about? [00:03:37] Doug: I’m looking at, it’s at least two feet of snow on the ground, out my window. [00:03:40] Joe: It’s weird how his side of the basement is. I like How [00:03:42] OG: much different? Like much. He always exaggerates. [00:03:44] Joe: I know. [00:03:44] OG: It’s like, trust me, it’s two feet. It’s like, okay, [00:03:47] Doug: dude, we’ve had 135 inches of snow. [00:03:50] OG: Okay. [00:03:50] Doug: At my house. [00:03:51] OG: How many times have you heard that? [00:03:52] OG: Am I right Joe? [00:03:53] Joe: Yes. [00:03:54] OG: Trust me, this is like 135 inches, [00:03:56] Joe: I swear to God. Yes. I got the manly man. Uh uh, ruler out. Oh man. So [00:04:02] OG: the fish was this big. [00:04:04] Joe: Which only works in audio podcast. [00:04:07] OG: Did you not get a ticket for having too small a fish, sir? No. I held it out in front of me in the picture. It made it look bigger. [00:04:13] Joe: Don’t you love motivational stories by the way, og, when people tell you about, uh, all the exotic ways they did something and then you realize they truly were special because they were just like you and me and they went and did something A lot of people think of as extraordinary, they saved a million dollars. [00:04:29] OG: I mean, that’s pretty, pretty awesome. I have a funny story about a, uh, fitness YouTube event that I saw that kind of dovetails on this. Maybe we’ll talk about it later. I [00:04:39] Joe: can’t wait to hear about that. I’ve got a similar story about, uh, something unbelievable I saw that I may share later too. Right now, I wanna share with you guys though about our guides, which come out every month. [00:04:51] Joe: They are updated every month to say currently what’s going on. You know, if you have middle school age students, I don’t know if you know, but those next few years come fast, Doug. You know, gee, you’ve been through this. Remember when your kids were in middle school like it was yesterday, [00:05:05] OG: like it was gonna be in three days? [00:05:07] OG: Three years. [00:05:10] Joe: Like it’s about to happen, [00:05:11] OG: just like it was about to happen in two years from now. [00:05:14] Joe: All of a sudden they’re graduating these next few years ago, quickly, time to begin planning. [00:05:18] Doug: That’s when stuff really accelerates. I felt like grade school to middle school, that took about 28 years, I feel like. [00:05:26] Doug: But once they got to middle school to to graduating, that was, yeah, a few weeks. That was wild how fast it got. [00:05:32] Joe: We built our college planning guide with the help of the team at the college investor. So we begin with a simple checklist. All you need to do. Is take 10 minutes, fill out the checklist, know exactly what part of the guide applies to you, and then we update it every month to make sure it always stays current. [00:05:46] Joe: Stacking Benjamins dot com slash guides to get to that, our HR guide and our tax guide and more tax season now too. We’re gonna talk about that on Wednesday, but today we’re talking about making you millionaires. So get the paper ready or whatever you used to take notes because we’re gonna dive in. [00:06:02] Joe: Before that, we got a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them. And then OG Doug and I are gonna dive into helping you save millions. [00:06:13] headlines: Hello Darlings, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:06:20] Joe: Inspiration for today came from a Kiplinger piece, which is my first million. [00:06:25] Joe: They, uh, have this cool case study that will link to in our show notes where they dive into how a person saved, and it really is a good look into people that are much like you and I. Let’s talk about this couple. The gentleman is a 60-year-old married retiree in Wisconsin, retired as a senior reactor operator, control room supervisor to nuclear power plant. [00:06:49] Doug: Ooh, wow. [00:06:50] Joe: Talk about some responsibility there. That’s [00:06:52] Doug: a business card. Don’t tick him off. [00:06:55] Joe: He and his wife, both born and raised suburban Chicago, have been married for 48 years. The first question Kiplinger asked the best one, how did you do it? What did you use? And the gentleman says, we used a 401k. SEP IRAs and Roth IRAs to accumulate our first million dollars and most of our net worth we save mostly using the 401k at my place of employment and a sep IRA at my wife’s place of employment. [00:07:21] Joe: I wanna dive into that first og because how often do we hear from people trying to stack Benjamins who look at all these cool Wall Street tools, these, uh, nifty looking ways to save money and they think, oh, you know what, here’s a new esoteric thing I gotta have, and yet this couple makes it using largely they’re 401k and SEP IRAs. [00:07:45] Joe: Like nothing, nothing extraordinary when it came to building their net worth. [00:07:50] OG: What about angel funds and private equity? [00:07:52] Joe: I know, right? [00:07:52] OG: Private credit and real estate and gold. What about all that? [00:07:57] Joe: It’s so crazy that people think we need all of these ridiculous ways to save money, and yet we need none of it. [00:08:04] Joe: In fact, if you remember a few years ago, we talked to the people at Ramsey Solutions. We did an interview. They had just done a survey, eight outta 10 millionaires invested in their company’s 401k as their primary way to get wealthy. It was their company’s 401k. That simple step was very much the key to success, and yet, og you and I meet people every year who go, uh, I don’t know that I wanna save in my company. [00:08:28] Joe: 401k. I don’t really trust those people. I don’t, I don’t trust the, the, my, my employee. I don’t like my boss. [00:08:35] OG: Well, and obviously those things are completely not related to one another. Your benefits package 401k is completely separate from your company. It’s not their money. It’s not, uh, I mean, it can be invested in the company. [00:08:46] OG: You have the choice to do that in some cases, but you also have the option to not do that. But the money’s not controlled by the company. It’s controlled by a third party. There’s a third party administrator who makes sure that your payroll stuff all is all synced up and what you take outta your paycheck goes into this account. [00:09:01] OG: Your boss doesn’t get to know how much is in the account. In some circumstances, some higher ups of HR will have get a report of like who’s contributing and, and that sort of thing. But generally speaking, you know, your mainline, you know, unless you’re, unless your boss is the boss, your mainline boss probably doesn’t have visibility into that and, and you have full control over it. [00:09:21] OG: Here’s, here’s an interesting question for you guys. So I said, can, you know, just contribute to the 401k and I’m gonna take some big leaps here. And I understand this isn’t true for the, not everybody can do this, but I just wanna give you guys an opportunity. The answer is going to be in numbers of months, okay? [00:09:36] OG: Okay. So that’s the answer. You have to come up with the answer. I’m giving it to you. I’m telling you what the criteria is. So if you made 150 KA year and you got a 3% match in your 401k. You contributed the maximum that you can, which is 24,500 this year, [00:09:53] Joe: $150,000 a year I made. [00:09:55] OG: Yep. You make one 50 and you got a 3% match. [00:09:57] Joe: 3% match, [00:09:59] OG: and you get 8% in your investment account. How many months does it take for you to hit a million [00:10:05] Joe: in months? So, uh, hold on. [00:10:09] Doug: Seven. [00:10:11] OG: Okay. Doug’s answer is seven. He’s like the doc g of guessing trivia questions. [00:10:19] Joe: Wait a minute. One year is gonna take you to almost, uh, 30,000. So, okay. Uh, gonna take you close to 30. [00:10:25] Joe: So let’s, so that means 10 years would be 300. Now we gotta think about compounding, right? Are you putting compounding in here, og? [00:10:33] OG: Yeah. I’m saying like, Hey, you know, if you just, you, you’re making 150 grand, you’re starting at zero, you get a 3% match, you are able to not get, people are gonna say, well, I can’t put a max in. [00:10:41] OG: Like, I only make, I understand. So you can, [00:10:43] Joe: I’m gonna say, uh, if 10 years of just straight contributions is around 300,000 bucks, then I’m gonna say, so that would be, uh, 120 months. So I’m gonna say 150 months. [00:10:56] OG: That’s a really great guess. The answer is 199 months, [00:10:59] Joe: right? Yeah. [00:10:59] OG: So 199 months. Build yourself a little thing to check off. [00:11:03] OG: You know, you get to have a little candy every month or something like that. You know, it’s under 200 months now what happens if you have two people? You got a dual income household. You’re fortunate enough to be in that situation. You worked really hard and both people make 150 K. Wow. Yeah. Both people get a 3% mash and both people can do it. [00:11:19] OG: How long does it take to get two a million As a family? [00:11:21] Joe: Well be half that right? Be be, well, not [00:11:24] OG: quite, because a compounding is not gonna work as As as long. [00:11:26] Joe: Yeah. Oh, it’s oh quicker. So instead of a hundred months, then let’s go to 70. [00:11:31] OG: No, it’s not double or it’s not half of, because you don’t have the compounding as long, so. [00:11:36] Joe: Oh, gotcha. [00:11:37] OG: It’s actually 130 months, so just over, just over 10 years. [00:11:40] Joe: That’s funny. I sent it the wrong way. I sent it 31 way. [00:11:42] OG: Yeah, you were thinking it and you said it the exact opposite. But what’s interesting about this, and I think it’s really powerful to do things in different terms than you’re used to, because it reframes the way we think about stuff. [00:11:53] OG: If I told you it was gonna take you 10 years to finish a project, you know like, Hey Doug, you’re remodeling a house. We should have it done somewhere in the next 10 years. You’d be like, oh my God, I don’t even wanna do this. Right? Like, that’s not even a, you know, hey, you’re training for a marathon, Joe, we think your training should be done in about 10 years. [00:12:13] OG: Like, that’s an insane amount of time. But if you change that to months, for whatever reason, it changes the optics. It’s still 10 years, 120 months is still 10 years. Right. But when you think about it in terms of opportunity, like I, we live our lives in 30 day increments. You know, our budget’s based on 30 days, you know, the lunar cycle is 28. [00:12:34] OG: Some change days. Like, you know, this is how we think about our lives. Right. [00:12:39] Doug: 28 lunar cycle [00:12:41] OG: and some change. [00:12:42] Doug: Okay. [00:12:42] OG: But my point is, is that when you put it in those contexts, you go, oh, 130 of those doesn’t seem like as, as much as saying it’s gonna take you 10 years. [00:12:52] Joe: I still think though. If you go in with the expectation, it’s gonna take you 10 years. [00:12:57] Joe: How many times do we see people use these exotic investments? Og. Because they just get tired of the boring middle. You know? They’re like, oh, this is never gonna happen. I gotta go faster. I gotta, I gotta go faster, I gotta go faster. You know how long it took this couple, by this couple, how long it took them to get $2 million? [00:13:13] OG: What do they say [00:13:14] Joe: it? It took them 22 years. [00:13:16] OG: That sounds very close to 20 months,right?
[00:13:19] OG: Or 200 months? [00:13:20] Joe: 200 months. A [00:13:21] OG: little more than, but they had different contribution limits. [00:13:23] Joe: But if you started off knowing that it’s gonna take me 22 years, then I think you get more comfortable with the boring middle. [00:13:29] Joe: You’re like, oh yeah, I’m on pace. This is why I like the milestones along the way. I really like celebrating those milestones and kind of look back and go look at how far have we come versus, oh my God, I got so far to go. Yeah. Like once you know those milestones along the way and you’re celebrating those and you know it’s gonna take you 22 years to get to a million, I think that becomes a powerful thing. [00:13:48] Joe: This gets even more powerful though at age 32. Guess how much money they had saved for retirement? [00:13:56] OG: Zero. [00:13:57] Joe: Zero. Nothing. They had done nothing by the time they were 32. And how often do we think, you know, uh, I, I gotta speed up. I gotta, I gotta hurry up. Yeah. They just trusted that from 32 on, they’d be able to, and by the way, when he began working for a public utility at age 32, he had to wait a year to start investing in a 401k. [00:14:15] Joe: So we just started putting some money away on the side. Right. He might’ve started at 33. Right. Had he not been a little bit more proactive [00:14:22] Doug: and good on them for even starting, because how many people do you guys know? I know, I can think of three or four right now who get about to that point in their lives. [00:14:30] Doug: Maybe it’s 40, 35, 40 and haven’t saved anything and think, well, it’s too late now. Like, there’s no point in even starting. ’cause I’m never gonna make it, so I’m just gonna, I guess I’ll just work until, you know, the day of my funeral. I know a lot of people have just given up because they feel like they missed the beginning. [00:14:47] Joe: Yeah. I’ll save a minimal amount instead. Party today. Just live my life, spend every dollar and realize I’m just gonna work until I die. Uh, one other thing I wanna point out here too, because this is for people that aren’t savers and think that they’re behind. I think that’s powerful stuff. But there’s something in here too, OG for the Uber nerd. [00:15:06] OG: Uber nerd. I think you have to say it like that. [00:15:09] Doug: And now is the time for We Dance. [00:15:10] Joe: And it is that. Fees, fees, fees, fee. Fee fees. Fees. Right? We talk about fees. When we look at what he used, he used 401k Roth, IRA, step IRA, the 401k. If he’s with a big company and he certainly is running a nuclear power plant, that’s gonna be a big company. [00:15:25] Joe: Probably the company takes on a lot of the fees. And a Roth IRA, you’ve control over the fees. And this term sep IRA, a lot of people don’t know what that means, but that means that his wife works for a small employer. And you and I have seen some small employer 4 0 1 Ks og, right? And if somebody is in. [00:15:45] Joe: Uber nerd and they know what to look for. They’re going to go in and they’re gonna look at the fees on some of these small business plans and they’re gonna go, oh, wait a minute. They paired up with an insurance company, right? Where it’s an annuity based plan, meaning, and I know that might lose some people, so let me just cut to the chase. [00:16:02] Joe: That means that the employer to save money passed on some of these fees to the employee. So I could have seen Mr. Nuclear engineer going, oh me, you know what? [00:16:15] OG: Yeah, that’s a little pricey. [00:16:17] Joe: So we’re just not gonna save, we’re just not gonna save there. Yeah. And doing nothing instead of saving and, and certainly you wanna control your fees, but I think the bigger thing is, is getting the money saved. [00:16:29] Joe: And I still think getting it saved at work, even into some of these high fee plans, better than the alternative. [00:16:37] OG: Yeah. I mean, I would say higher fees, not even high fees. It doesn’t even, it’s all relative. There’s a cost to have a plan, there’s a cost to have the record keeping and all that sort of stuff. [00:16:48] OG: And in a small company, we’re a small company, Joe, you and I have a small company. It’s like we wanna absorb some of those costs for our employees. We can’t take ’em all on. Some of that’s just gonna get passed on to the employee, not because we’re vicious or you know, money grubbing, you know, capitalists. [00:17:06] OG: It’s just like, well then we don’t have money to run the business. You know? And then we don’t have a business. If you look at it from the perspective of, you know, what are we getting out of this? I mean, just purely the tax deferral is worth a bunch of money in the near term. And if you’re getting a match, I think, I think a lot of people miss the mark on this. [00:17:25] OG: If you’re getting a 3% match on your 3% contribution, you’re getting a hundred percent return of your money. And if I told you your fee was negative, a hundred percent, that’s a pretty good number, right? Like you’re getting, you’re getting all of your money. Then some money. You know what I mean? And so the net effect of that is, well, I only get 75 cents on the dollar because there’s some kind of cost that I’m incurring. [00:17:49] OG: I’m still ahead in this game. To your point, don’t arbitrarily just go pay high cost just ’cause it’s fun to pay high cost, but if that’s a limiting belief that you have. I’d reexamine that a little bit. [00:18:01] Joe: It’s funny that you bring up the match because that’s the next place that this piece goes. When he started investing in his 401k, he made sure OG to just get the match right. [00:18:12] Joe: He didn’t think he could do it. He’s 32 years old, probably has a young family and he is juggling a lot of expenses. Didn’t think he could do much, so he just saved 4% of his income to get the match. That’s all he started at, and he still got to a million dollars. But here’s here’s the deal. He then increased his contribution 1% per year so that he could slowly not really feel the effects with his family on saving more and more and more money and Sure. [00:18:40] Joe: Had he saved more early on, he would’ve gotten there quicker. [00:18:45] OG: Yeah, [00:18:45] Joe: but he still made it in 22 years. Just doing what he could. I think we, well, what’s that phrase mom always uses? Don’t let he hands outta [00:18:52] OG: the cookie jar. [00:18:53] Joe: That too. [00:18:54] Doug: Stop farting in the kitchen. [00:18:56] Joe: That too. [00:18:58] OG: Where are my meds? Those are grandma’s happy pills. [00:19:04] Joe: I can’t deal with you people today. None, any of those. Thank God [00:19:07] Doug: they made it legal. [00:19:10] OG: Just bury me in the backyard. [00:19:12] Joe: She says all those, every single one of those. But the one that I wanted to point to was don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. And here’s a guy that could barely save. So he saves 4% and then he notches it up every year. [00:19:27] Joe: I thought that was really cool. He said he made sure that he monitored and adjusted his contributions carefully so he didn’t hit the maximum limit until the last pay period of the year to make sure he got the match whenever he could. Right? And then starting in 2000, he started putting money into Roth IRAs as well. [00:19:42] Joe: So in 22 years they made it. But there’s, there’s a little bit OG of gamification there, you know, going, okay, I’m gonna save 4% and I’m gonna challenge myself to save 1% more. He actually took the gamification a little bit further than that though. He said initially he invested whenever his earnings reached the Social security maximum into his Roth. [00:20:03] Joe: This is how he did the Roth. Once his social security hit the top line, and for those of you that make enough, you could play this game as well. He calculated what he would’ve paid in Social security taxes, and he split that amount between the Ross depositing it every pay period, so that he felt the same amount of money og uh, coming out, but he was putting more money away, so he never felt a change. [00:20:28] Joe: That’s kind of nerdy gamification, but this idea of turning it into something that is a little bit more fun and a little bit more strategic, I thought was a really cool part of their plan as well. [00:20:40] OG: Yeah, I mean, anything that you can do to trick yourself into doing more is, is a great idea. If you know that you’re gonna get a pay raise in a couple of pay cycles sitting down and calculating what that’s gonna be, recognizing that, hey, some of that needs to go for. [00:20:56] OG: The rising costs of everything that’s going on. And maybe a lot of it goes to that. But if you can just take a piece of whatever your extra income is gonna be and allocate that to the future, it doesn’t take a lot. It takes a little bit over a long period of time. And when you’re 20, 30, 40 years old, you have 40, 30, 20 years to go at least to have this work. [00:21:18] OG: And I think the other piece to recognize is you guys both brought up what happens, you know, if you say, well, you know, I didn’t get it done. I’m 30 years old, I’m four years old, whatever. And you guys know this ’cause of your significant age gap difference between you and me. [00:21:33] Doug: And there it is. [00:21:34] OG: There’s a period of time where you’re like in that high like peak spending years of your life.Mm.
[00:21:39] OG: Right. It just is how it is. Where it’s like, okay, things are a little tighter right now. And recognize that just ’cause it’s how it is today isn’t how it’s gonna necessarily always be in the future. And you just make a plan for this year, just worry about this year. You don’t have to worry about like, well, what happens, da, da, da. [00:21:57] OG: No. Well, tomorrow we’ll worry enough about itself. Let’s just do today. But be true to it and recognize that, hey, there are, there’s, there’s likely to be some time, and I think you guys would agree with this, where it’s like, oh, I know Joe, you’ve talked about this immensely. When, when Nick left for school, college, or when he was done full time from the house. [00:22:15] OG: It’s like you go grocery shopping once every two weeks and that food’s still in the fridge. You’re like, what is like ing? We noticed that with when Alex is gone, you know? And then when he comes home, we’re like, how do we go through six gallons of milk this week? Like, who’s drinking milk all of a sudden? [00:22:29] OG: What is happening? [00:22:31] Doug: Yeah. [00:22:31] OG: Dead rot of waffles. We just bought ’em yesterday. What do you mean we’re out? It’s like, well, I had eight of ’em and William had eight of ’em. There’s only 16 in a pack. It’s like you had eight Lego waffles for breakfast, four hours. Like, well, I mean I had eight and then like four eggs. [00:22:44] OG: But yeah, you know. That stuff’s gonna happen and your life is gonna go through different cycles. So wherever you are right now, it is what it is. Right. You know, make do with where you are and recognize that there’s different, different seasons coming. [00:22:58] Joe: I get excited about this next part, which is what would he have done differently? [00:23:03] Joe: I always love this question when you talk to people in retirement, because this is where I feel like OG, you find some of the real answers and we have said countless times on the show that we often over optimize. This gentleman says, I would’ve invested more diligently and deliberately in our post tax investments because of the fact that too much of it was in tech shelters and he didn’t feel like he could be as flexible as he wanted to be. [00:23:28] TikTok: Hmm. [00:23:29] Joe: We think a lot about the tax ramifications. We don’t think about getting at our money. That is a huge, huge, huge point. And finally, he’s really thinking about long-term care. He said he’s intentionally not withdrawn from the Roth IRA accounts since they retired. Those are designed for future long-term care expenses for my wife if needed. [00:23:52] Joe: I’m covered by a long-term care policy we bought when I retired, so I like this. Mm-hmm. You know, there’s this big issue in financial planning about affordability of long-term care and you can’t just have no plan because you look at the statistics around long-term care, there’s gonna be a plan. No. But even if you don’t have a plan, the statistics don’t change that. [00:24:12] Joe: There’s a high probability that this is going to hit your family, but how you solve it, I think has to be different for everybody. So you and IOG, we know how expensive these policies can be. So listen to what he did. I’m covered by a long-term care policy we bought when I retired, purchasing a similar one for my wife, proof to be cost prohibitive. [00:24:33] Joe: What I like about this plan is that he recognizes this is not the perfect plan. You can hear between the lines that he knows what his Achilles heel is, that there may not be enough money there, and yet he’s covered a lot of the probability that, hey, if it’s me first, we got that covered. [00:24:51] Doug: Mm-hmm. [00:24:51] Joe: If it’s more likely to be me, then we have that covered. [00:24:54] Joe: We then are gonna protect ourselves. We’re gonna do some self-insurance by leaving the Roth IRA money and we’re not gonna think about it in terms of our future outside of long-term care. Maybe not og, maybe not the perfect plan. ’cause I think the Roth IRA can be used to minimize tax brackets along the way. [00:25:11] Joe: But I love the fact that he’s thought about this and he’s thought about what’s coming down the road for them. When you’re meeting with people OG and they’re in retirement, how much thought have they given to something as big as long-term care before you bring it up? Have, have many people thought about it already? [00:25:27] Joe: Or are you the guy who’s the grim reaper going, Hey, there’s this achilles heel coming [00:25:33] OG: long-term care. No, that’s a pretty uncommon, you know, self-thought, if that’s how you’d say that. [00:25:40] Joe: Yeah. [00:25:41] OG: Just like any risk management, it just boils down to probability of it happening, which is pretty high. And when you say long-term care, people think like, well, I’m not gonna go in a nursing home. [00:25:50] OG: But it’s really just any sort of assisted care in the spectrum of somebody comes to the house and makes sure I, you know, I’m okay every so often to full on 24 7, 365 memory care. There’s a wide range of service that happens between those two, those two extremes. [00:26:09] Joe: I like, by the way, how you widen that issue. [00:26:11] Joe: ’cause it truly isn’t. ’cause I remember when I was an advisor, nobody wanted to talk about facility. But when I said, okay, let’s not talk facility, let’s talk about the probability that there will be a catastrophic event, that you’re gonna need some help in the future. Because that’s what we’re really protecting against. [00:26:26] OG: Yeah. What’s the likelihood of needing some help? And then what’s the financial impact if we do need it? Like, how does that work? And you just lay it out and, and if there’s a gap, and frankly, even if there’s not a gap, you can sit there and say, all right, well how much of this risk do I want to have on my own? [00:26:43] OG: I mean, the, you do the same thing every single day with car insurance and homeowner’s insurance and your property and casualty stuff is you say, okay, I’ve got a car. I don’t think I’m gonna get in a car accident. I’m pretty sure I’m a pretty safe driver, but there’s a chance that somebody rear ends me. [00:26:56] OG: There’s a chance I get distracted and you know, squirrel runs out or whatever. And if I’m in a wreck, I’m willing to pay the first 2,500 bucks of whatever the expense is. If it’s just a little fender bender, cool, I’ll just write the check for it. Or I’ll let it be like, I’m okay with a small ding in the bumper, like that’s fine with me, but if I destroy this thing, I want to. [00:27:19] OG: Be made whole and I’m gonna need a car, so I’m gonna pass the risk of that risk onto, you know, onto Geico. And you can kind of do the same thing when it comes to long-term care insurance. You can say, I pretty safe, I’m healthy, I exercise. I don’t think any of this stuff is gonna happen to me or my spouse. [00:27:33] OG: And you know, but if it does, I want to, you know, I’m gonna cover the first little bit, you know, if it’s like that kind of end of life care and it’s just like literally three months, okay, cool, that’s what I’m gonna cover. But if I’m unlucky and I get in this major wreck, so to speak, with my health, I wanna kind of transfer that risk to a third party, or at least a large amount of that, that backside risk, tail risk, I guess is what maybe they call it. [00:27:57] OG: And then, and some people have enough resources to not have to worry about that. And then it’s just boiling down to what’s a better use of your resources? You’re marking it for this or having somebody else pay for it so you’ve got your own, you know, kind of prepaying it. Basically. [00:28:10] Joe: That’s what surprised me was when I started meeting people for the first time. [00:28:15] Joe: Who were truly wealthy. And during my advisory journey was when I started running up against these people that thought about life differently than I did, and the majority of my clients did. But when I started running up against people that had generational wealth, the number of those people that bought insurance, when I advised them not to blew me away, they were just worried, OG about freedom from worry. [00:28:40] Joe: They’re like, no, I want to cut that check. Why? Why would you cut that check? Because I don’t wanna ever, ever, one guy even looked at me and goes, ’cause I never wanna talk about this again. That’s why [00:28:50] OG: it’s worth, I’d rather pay Geico than listen to Joe talk. That’s, um, the telling, telling sentiment. I think you’ve kinda summed up a lot of the podcast episodes, honestly. [00:29:01] Doug: Wow. Things just became really clear [00:29:02] OG: to me. I know. I was like, wow, geez, this took 17 years for me to, to hear that in a way that really cut to my soul and. And really expressed in words how I felt on today of all [00:29:15] Joe: days, [00:29:15] OG: two decades. Thank you. What’s today? I appreciate it. President’s Day. What’s [00:29:18] Joe: today? It’s President’s Day. [00:29:19] OG: Exactly. [00:29:20] Joe: It’s President’s [00:29:21] Doug: Day. Oh. And he’s acting like he’s our president and so we should be more respectful. [00:29:25] OG: That what he’s [00:29:25] Doug: getting at. [00:29:26] OG: I got you. Sorry. It’s a big day. [00:29:28] Doug: Delusion is deep. [00:29:29] OG: President Saul Sea High. Your Majesty. Why do you prefer your Majesty, your your Highness? [00:29:35] Joe: I think it’s time to wrap up. [00:29:36] Joe: The second your high. I’ll link to this on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com. What do I feel like? I just gotta shut up all of a sudden. Alexa, let’s pivot. Pivot, let, Doug, you’ve got, uh, today’s, it is a great day and uh, Doug, you’ve got some trivia today, I think. [00:29:57] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and here on February 16th, there’s a huge birthday down in the basement. [00:30:04] Joe: Yes. [00:30:04] Doug: Can’t believe this guy’s, this old, so old and we’re all big fans. Of course, I’m talking about the John McEnroe. John has not only earned tons of Benjamins, he and Joe have a lot in common because the two of them, they have four US Open titles, three Wimbledon titles, and 10 grand Slam doubles titles. [00:30:27] Doug: And a really short fuse. They both have all that in common. Wow. The Grand Slam is a little different in tennis than it is in baseball though. Here’s today’s question. In tennis, winning the Grand Slam means you win each of the four major tournaments on the tennis schedule. So what are the names of those tournaments? [00:30:46] Doug: I’ll be back right after I go put another shrimp on the Bobby. [00:31:03] Doug: Hey there stackers. I’m kangaroo lover. That sounds weird. And Guy who’s been a champ eating a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast. I mean, look, four in one sitting’s. Not that hard. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. There’s a huge birthday in the basement today and Joe’s mom couldn’t be prouder. That’s right. It’s her favorite tennis star, John McEnroe’s birthday. [00:31:24] Doug: Nowadays, John’s not only a star tennis commentator, but he’s also voiced a hit Netflix series. That guy’s done a ton, but today’s question is about his tennis history. He won 10 grand slam doubles titles. So what four tournaments in tennis make up the Grand Slam? It would be the aforementioned Wimbledon in England. [00:31:45] Doug: The US open, the French open. And look, I tried to give you some hints. The Australian Open in Melbourne get it right, NARI. You are part, you are part way towards winning the Stacking Benjamin’s Grand slam of trivia. Nice answer. This one, the one on Wednesday. The one on Friday. And you’ll win a firm handshake from me right after you buy my plane ticket to your hometown. [00:32:14] Doug: I know it’s incredible, right? And now here come two grand guys who slam the microphone whenever they say something witty, Joe and og, [00:32:24] Joe: which might be why you rarely hear the microphones. [00:32:28] Doug: Usually if there’s, you’re slamming it like this. Hello? There’s this thing on. Hello? [00:32:32] Joe: Is it going? Wait a minute. That was, uh uh, John McEnroe had a fan that would not give up at the Australian Open. [00:32:38] Joe: I don’t know if you guys saw that video. Some dude just following him all the way through the airport. And finally, McEnroe is just like, please just, just leave. Please, please leave me alone. Like how many times do you gotta tell somebody to leave you alone? I actually, generally, I think [00:32:51] OG: 1800. [00:32:53] Joe: I think. I’m like, no, we got a podcast again. [00:32:56] Joe: Oh, G’S like, leave me alone. I told you last week time for our TikTok minute, this is the part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who’s either giving us something brilliant or air quotes brilliance. Uh, Doug, what do we got this week? You think? Brilliance. This was sent in by stacker Wanda. [00:33:14] Joe: She said that we often talk about how this isn’t a show about more money, even though it’s called Stacking Benjamins. It clearly is Stacking life much more like Benjamin Franklin had. And, uh, this is Dr. John Maloney, who some of you may know on another podcast talking about just having enough. [00:33:35] TikTok: It’s the first time I’ve talked about this publicly. [00:33:36] TikTok: My, my wife, one day I was down in the gym, this is over Christmas and we have a little gym in our, our basement and I’m exercising down there and she heard me cheering and I’d gotten a text message. This was over a holiday break that I’d landed a speaking gig that I really wanted. The guy who runs all that for me, he had texted in and said, Hey, and I think we got you another one. [00:33:54] TikTok: And I was cheering. So she comes down and says, whatcha so excited about? And I was like, I got this. And then I got this. And as she retells this, she said, I literally was watching my husband die in front of me. And then I hear him cheering that he got more work. [00:34:09] Letters: Hmm. [00:34:09] TikTok: And her, her normal, she withdraws, right? [00:34:13] TikTok: So when she gets upset or gets anxious or her normal move is to just pull back and then we reconvene. And this time she didn’t and she stepped forward in a way that kind of caught me off guard. And I’ll never forget this as long as I live. ’cause it was unmooring, she said, the pie chart. That is how much I love you. [00:34:30] TikTok: The pie piece that is how much money you make is full. Anything that you go get beyond this is not for me and it’s not for the kids, it’s for your ego. And she said, so from this point forward, go do whatever you wanna do, but do not make the mistake of thinking it’s for us. And then she said, this, John, we have enough. [00:34:49] TikTok: And then she walked out. [00:34:51] Doug: Whoa, [00:34:51] Joe: how about that? We have enough, the piece that’s, I love you, and the piece that’s for the family, that that is full. [00:34:57] Doug: So he basically just won Trivial Pursuit. That’s what I heard. [00:35:01] Joe: He got all the pie pieces, got [00:35:02] Doug: all the little pie pieces. [00:35:04] Joe: But how many people have the pie pieces? [00:35:07] Joe: And they don’t, they don’t recognize it. I mean, the one year syndrome people, I just need a little more, just need to keep working. [00:35:13] Doug: That’s an incredible partner for him to have, to have somebody who helps him realize we’re where we wanna be. We’ve got all the love, and we’ve got all the stuff that we, we need to have. [00:35:24] Doug: That’s, uh, that’s rare because so many. People and couples and families just can’t get off the, we need more. [00:35:32] Joe: It’s like this rat race to wear. [00:35:34] Doug: Mm-hmm. Yep. [00:35:36] Joe: And you look at the end of some of these races. I I, I feel like sometimes Doug, I’m glad you brought that up. ’cause I feel like sometimes people don’t even look at where does this lead? [00:35:43] Doug: Yeah. It’s like those people who run those marathons just to get the medals that have goofy on ’em or Dumbo or whatever. [00:35:51] Joe: Where does this slide, I’ll tell you where it leads. It leads to being in a boot, getting an MRI. That’s where it leads [00:35:59] Doug: nearly getting arrested and accused of cheating. [00:36:02] Joe: Yeah. Who cheats at the Disney marathon? [00:36:05] Joe: OG and I talking about that again earlier today. Like why do you cheat at Amer? I don’t know. But this idea of enough, it’s a great question. I think some of our overt stackers need to ask themselves. Got some more good news guys. We just got a letter. [00:36:21] Letters: We just got a letter. We just got a letter. We just got a letter. [00:36:27] Letters: Wonder who it’s from. [00:36:28] Joe: I got this note from MJ and MJ asking me, hold on. [00:36:32] OG: The mj, [00:36:33] Joe: I don’t know, it was just mj. [00:36:35] OG: Was there a 23 in the address? XXII. I just check in [00:36:41] Joe: MJ asking me if they should fire their advisor. And OGs like, I know a good advisor, mj. [00:36:46] OG: Yeah, [00:36:46] Joe: I know, I know a good one. And he’s been paying his advisor a 1% management fee and asked me, is that too much? [00:36:54] Joe: Should I keep them, should I get rid of them? And I wrote a long answer that said, this question is much more nuanced because the first question to ask isn’t what I pay. It’s what am I getting? Because 1% when you get a ton could be a huge, huge discount. And 1% could be highway robbery. So the the, my first answer to MJ was. [00:37:17] Joe: I don’t know. I need much more context and so do you. So then he wrote me his context and og, I wanna run this by you because there may be people thinking, do I fire my advisor? He says, thanks, Joe. Sorry. I guess I really knew it’d be more nuanced. I should have provided more info. We use a local branch of a national firm. [00:37:39] Joe: We’ve been with ’em for 15 years and we’ve only had two lead advisors during that span. So we like the stability and consistency we’ve gotten. They meet with us twice a year for in-depth meetings with an agenda. They openly share all their software spreadsheets with us. Of course, they also answer questions when needed. [00:37:57] Joe: They don’t push, and I always made it clear that I’m not gonna be buying any insurance or annuity products that they would get a commission on. They do make trades for us. They rebalance, they run Monte Carlo models with my various ever-changing variables, et cetera. They offer me general 401k advice also, even though they don’t manage that money. [00:38:15] Joe: We used to pay them 1.5%, but I negotiated down to 1% after we passed a million dollars and now they manage 3 million for us. I’m very happy with them, but I sometimes think, quote, I’m paying them more each passing year, but I’m receiving basically the same services, and I don’t think they’re increasing the number of hours spent on our file every year. [00:38:34] Joe: They’re ready to help us start planning for retirement in the next year or two once retired. I know I’m gonna want some more level of help, but other t typical services in retirement when we’re just withdrawing worth the same amount we pay now as investors in pre and post tax investment accounts, private equity investments, tax filing advice, debating the use of annuities in retirement, et cetera. [00:38:55] Joe: He said, all that said, what’s the best way to approach the topic with them and should I make a proposal that’s not offensive yet? Instead, respectful yet assertive industry, Stanford, yet favorable produce. In other words, do we negotiate with them to change the fee? Do we have the same fee? You know what, og I thought this is a good question because one thing that people get from this show that they don’t get from other shows is you’re the guy on the other side of the table of this. [00:39:21] Joe: When a client brings you, Hey, I want to talk about the fee, what are the things going on in your head when you hear a question like this that we see debated on social media 24 7? It feels like, [00:39:34] OG: well, I think that ultimately it boils down to value, you know, received. And there’s only one person that gets to make that decision, right? [00:39:42] OG: And that person is the consumer, or in this case, you know, the writer of this question, and only they can decide whether or not it’s valuable because it’s a, it’s not a product, right? It’s a ever ongoing amount of service. And I think, I think the thing that’s really difficult to continually reconcile is that there are seasons of time where there’s not a lot of stuff going on. [00:40:06] OG: Then there’s like one particular thing that has a profound impact on the next period of time. Whether it’s something as simple as like, which retirement package do I take? I shouldn’t say that’s simple, but which retirement package do I take? Which pension option do I choose? Which social security timeline is best for us? [00:40:23] OG: Yeah, there’s a [00:40:23] Joe: lot coming up right now for them. [00:40:25] OG: Well, sure. I’m saying like, like there’s that, there’s the, you know, there over your lifetime there can be RSU vesting or tax law changes and these things happen at very random times. And so, you know, you get in this rhythm of, you know, hey, I see my advisor every six months and he or she is, every year we’re going through planning and rebalancing and all that’s great, but I’m not, I’m not blown away by some wildly cool piece of advice that showed up in my life in the last two years. [00:40:56] OG: So why the heck should I keep on doing this? And it’s like, because we don’t know when the one thing is gonna be, and it’s very difficult. I think there’s three different categories here. One category is, is your team of people, do they have the opportunity to make you money that you wouldn’t have made on your own? [00:41:14] OG: That can be through a lot of ways, right? Asset allocation or tax loss, harvesting or rebalancing at appropriate times, or investing in asset classes that you don’t currently have. It could be that. It could be choosing a social security option. I mean, there’s countless ways that you can make money. That’s a factor. [00:41:32] OG: I think one of the factors is, can they prevent me from making a mistake or did they prevent me from making a mistake that I would’ve made without any counsel? This one is particularly challenging to reconcile because it’s trying to prove a negative. Unless you literally are about to buy the vacation house and the adv and the advisor goes, this will blow up your financial plan. [00:41:56] OG: Stop signing. You go, oh, okay. Like, literally, it’s hard to kind of tie, you know, decisions that you were gonna make because you’re just kind of bouncing like, Hey, I was thinking about this, or I was, you know, what about this? Or what about that? Or I, you know, my friend’s investing in this company. Or, you know, there’s these little things that pop up. [00:42:12] OG: So how do we know which one of those was this catastrophic error? Sometimes you can point to one, Hey, I want, you know, the market’s down 30%, I think we should sell. No, don’t do that. And you just like hit pause for a day and then that happens to be the bottom of COVID on Monday, whatever it was, March of 2020. [00:42:33] OG: And that happened to be just, all you needed was that one day to like get the recovery. And now you see the recovery and you’re like, okay, it was down 11 yesterday. It’s up 10 today, maybe. You know, like, was that good enough? I don’t know. Like, it’s, it’s very hard to to track that. And then I think the third area is, are you saving time and energy that you can allocate to other things that either produce more. [00:42:55] OG: You know, upside for you, revenue, whatever you wanna call it, or more joy, that you don’t have to think about this stuff. I think we could arguably say that a lot of us can do our taxes on TurboTax. It walks you through most of the questions, and a lot of people do TurboTax. A lot of people still use CPAs to the point where they’re overworked, by the way. [00:43:13] OG: Like there’s not enough CPAs in the universe to account for all the people that need to do taxes and that want help. But why don’t we just use TurboTax? Well, because I kinda wanna make sure I get it right and it’s okay that I’m paying a little bit of money to account for the fact that it saves me some time from doing something and they’re gonna prevent a mistake potentially, and maybe they’re gonna make me some money with some ideas or strategy. [00:43:37] OG: The other thing that I would add, and I think those are three really broad ones, there’s a fourth one that I think is increasingly more important as we look at generational planning. That is that almost universally in my experience. There is a lead person who’s in charge of the money in a relationship for good or for bad. [00:43:57] OG: There’s always both people on calls, you know, and they’ve got, the husband has some input, but the wife is the one making all the decisions. Right? Like that’s just the dynamic of relationship. You, you know, you have a thing that you do [00:44:09] Joe: divide and conquer. [00:44:10] OG: Yeah. It just, you know, it is what it is. This is coming up more and more in conversations as we think about the impact of wealth beyond our needs. [00:44:20] OG: So it’s like, Hey, my plan is good. You know, you do the thing. So in this guy’s case, right, he is like, I, I looked at all the money carlow things. I’m, I’m good. I can’t screw this up. If I tried, I can leave it all in cash for the next 30 years and I’d still have money when I died. Right? Like, that’s a really good spot to be. [00:44:36] OG: But as you think about the generational impact of that, and what if the person who is in charge of the money is no longer around? Now you have no relationship with no person who knows anything about your family and you just hand it over the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, to somebody who’s never been involved in this and has no guidance or direction. [00:44:56] OG: And where we see issues and these are the things we report on on the show. You read about in the Wall Street Journal, where do we see fraud and abuse and people being taken advantage of? It’s people that are like, I haven’t done this before. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to call or who to talk to. [00:45:16] OG: This person seems super nice. So you know, I wanna talk. I mean, what do I know? Maybe an annuity is the right thing for me. Safety and security. I mean, that sounds really great. And that’s how you end up with the 20 year annuity with the 80-year-old widow who didn’t know anything about anything. Because there was no continuity there. [00:45:35] OG: Sometimes I’m not saying in all the cases, but, but sometimes, and then when you extend that to like children and grandchildren and planning and stuff like that, most of the time people who are successful just want their people around them to be successful. And I know you say this a lot times too, Joe, it’s like people who are really successful with money don’t wanna spend time in their money. [00:45:54] OG: Like they wanna be successful in the things that they’re successful in. I’m a really good software developer. I don’t need to also be a really good tax strategy or estate planning specialist. You know, I’m willing to pay to delegate that so that I can spend my time in these areas that I care about. So I think it’s a lot of those things altogether. [00:46:13] OG: And in this, uh, I’ll just say Guy, I don’t know if it’s a guy or a gal, but uh, in this guy’s particular case. He rattled off like 40 things, right? Like, well, you do this and this, and this and this. Like, that’s a lot of stuff. [00:46:24] Joe: Sure. [00:46:25] OG: You know, [00:46:25] Joe: I think he’s more worried about the fact that he’s, uh, paying more and more and more money. [00:46:29] Joe: But the service is good. It just is the same service, and the fee is, [00:46:36] OG: I mean, this is the entirety of, of everyone’s life. My electric bill costs three times as much today as it did five years ago. I still get the same, uh, my, my, the AC in my house is, it’s the same, right? Like some of it is inflation. Some of it is opportunity. [00:46:51] OG: Some of it is, hey, I wanna make sure that I can still provide additional things that you don’t even know exists yet, that we’re building out on the backstage of how do we integrate these services and we have to continually invest and grow. An organization. Cars cost three times as much as they did 15 years ago too. [00:47:09] OG: It’s the same thing, right? It’s Incredibles in an engine. [00:47:11] Joe: I just bought one. I’m like, really? [00:47:14] OG: Yeah. Well mind blowing, huh? Gripes are the same. That costs way more. I do think that there is some reason to assume the marginal dollar of cost should go down. If you look at the averages across the industry for good or for bad, and it’s all priced this way by the way. [00:47:33] OG: Like everybody says, well, I don’t, you know, I don’t wanna pay you fees. I’ll pay a flat fee. Well, guess how the flat fee people figure out their prices. By the way, [00:47:39] Joe: it is so funny how when you look at the average pricing across the spectrum, it all ends up being about the same. [00:47:45] OG: It’s literally all the same. [00:47:47] OG: The first million’s always a a percent. A lot of times it’s the second million too. Maybe 90, I think average would tell you 95, like 0.95% on the second million. But just roughly say the first 2 million is roughly a percent. [00:48:02] Joe: Yeah, [00:48:02] OG: roughly dollars from two to five are roughly 75 or three quarters of a percent roughly industry wide. [00:48:11] OG: Once you get north of five, I think you have a little bit of negotiating power. I think above five is probably half is a fair, fairly reasonable, you know, half to three quarters, somewhere in there above 10 or 15 or 20. That’s where you start seeing some really low percentage numbers like 0.3. Because to his point, you know, as the dollars go up, does it cost more? [00:48:34] Joe: What can [00:48:35] OG: they do? No, not necessarily. There are some benchmarks of service that you know would go up. There’s certainly more responsibility. Sure. There’s certainly more liability. [00:48:43] Joe: Yeah. And you start moving into family office territory where the team of people that are looking at you to save you money in different areas begins to Yeah. [00:48:51] Joe: Expand. [00:48:52] OG: And what’s really interesting, I was talking to a family office provider, they were about 2 billion. For one family. Okay. The cost to run that family office. So this, so a family office is basically, we’ve got your CPA and your accounting and doing everything tax and your investments, like literally it’s an office of people who are just in charge of your money. [00:49:19] OG: Do you know what the cost was for that family? At 2 billion, 1%. It cost him 20 million to run it. [00:49:25] Joe: Yeah. $20 million. [00:49:26] OG: Cost him 20 million to run it. You go, that’s ridiculous. $20 million. They had a lot of people. Do you want the fresh accountant outta college making 55 grand? You can have that. Or do you want the person who’s special? [00:49:37] OG: You know what I mean? So there’s a little bit of a balance there. I think he’s got some negotiating power if he’s trying to get a little bit less of a cost structure. But I think if you look into the future, he’s already kind of pointed out a bunch of stuff that’s coming up on the, on the horizon. Mm-hmm. [00:49:53] OG: Um, sounds pretty big decision making. Right? We wanna get that right. Then, like I said before, only the customer, only the client gets to decide on value. I can say, Hey Joe, this is super valuable, right? It’s no different than the podcast. We put out content, we’re like, Hey, we think this is a really good show. [00:50:09] OG: You know, who gets to decide if it was a really good show? [00:50:11] Joe: Not us. [00:50:12] OG: That’s it. It’s like whoever listens if they go, yeah, that was dog. You go, no, man, it was really awesome. I go, no, it’s not. It sucked. You guys suck. Okay. [00:50:22] Joe: This is such a hard question to answer because even when I took the question from mj, I started thinking about, you know, my whole point of view here is that you have this board of advisors, right? [00:50:33] Joe: And so my first question to MJ would be how important it is, is it that you have these particular people? It clearly looks to me the fact that you’ve had the same advisor for a long period has been really helpful in your corner, and you value that. That’s my first question because if it’s interchangeable parts Oji, then it’s a whole different discussion. [00:50:55] Joe: But then I also think as a great relationship with advisors, if I’m the leader of my board, if I truly am a leader, is a great leader, born or made, and are these relationships born or made? And I think to a large degree, they’re made. So I think that if he wants to talk about pricing, I think the number one people to bring it up with are these advisors. [00:51:17] TikTok: Yeah. [00:51:18] Joe: I would go into this nuance that he wrote in this beautiful note to me and go, you know, here’s all of my thoughts. What do you think about this? Where? Where do we stand? Because just laying this out for the advisory team, you’re gonna learn a lot by the way they respond to this, even if they respond. [00:51:35] Joe: No, I’m in the middle of a negotiation right now with somebody. I brought up something thinking that, hey, they would respond to this in a positive way and maybe throw this on the table. And, you know, it was wild. Og the guy actually made a ton of sense. He goes, he goes, you know what? I can see why you want that. [00:51:52] Joe: Let me tell you why you don’t, because I was sitting where you were in the past, and here’s the ugly underbelly of what you’re asking for. The piece that people don’t see that I’ve seen, because I’ve sat where you are and I’ve seen the other side of this. And he brought new information to the table that I had no idea even existed. [00:52:11] OG: Yeah. [00:52:11] Joe: And didn’t make me back away from the table by the way that, that he said, no, you don’t really want this. Now, could he have been yanking my chain? And, uh, just going, yeah. Uh, let me come up with a clever way to say no. Yes. But the fact that well [00:52:24] OG: knows, knows an answer too, honestly. [00:52:26] Joe: Yeah, a hundred percent. [00:52:27] Joe: The [00:52:27] OG: great thing about all of this is that you’re in control as the client and the advisory team is in control as the advisory team. What you’re trying to decide is, can we come up to an agreement where you’re gonna deliver value that I think is valuable at an investment level that I think is reasonable, and am I gonna be able to deliver the value that you want at an investment level that you wanna pay? [00:52:53] OG: It’s all it is. [00:52:54] Joe: A [00:52:54] OG: hundred percent. And if they go, no, look, this is how our structure is. This is how our team is built. This is the resources that we bring to the table, and to do that, we charge this price. And you go, well, I don’t want all that. I want this instead. Well, then you have your answer. I mean, [00:53:10] Joe: it’s not the fit you want, then you don’t. [00:53:12] Joe: Yeah. Then you know. Great question, mj, thank you so much for the question. By the way, stackers, we have another full episode of your questions coming up. The amazing Anna Al’s gonna join us again for your questions. So [00:53:24] OG: amazing. [00:53:25] Joe: Bring those on, stack your Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. Bring us your questions as we prep for that incredible episode. [00:53:34] Joe: Alright, time for a quick trip out to the back porch. Doug, we have had some stackers doing some amazing things lately that we should probably shine a light on. [00:53:42] Doug: Yeah, Joe, one of the things I wanna highlight actually are a whole bunch of responses we got, uh, about a week ago when Gertrude asked, just put the standard question out there, show and tell time in the basement, right? [00:53:54] Doug: We do this nearly every week. For whatever reason, it blew. Last week. I mean, just some crazy like 28 comments the last time I looked at it. Yeah, just tons of comments. Everybody’s doing some incredible stuff. I wanna point out a couple that caught my eye. Stacker Shane. He’s pretty happy about his new minivan. [00:54:09] Doug: I mean, look, I would be teaching Shane, how are you not [00:54:10] Joe: happy with a minivan? [00:54:11] Doug: Yeah, those things just make you look cool when you’re driving him, right? Like nothing says, if the van is a rocking, please come knocking. Like a blacked out Honda Odyssey. Like you are just the man. [00:54:22] Joe: I used to do this when I had a minivan and my kids were young and it would crack up my kids. [00:54:27] Joe: It didn’t crack them up as much. You know, there’s some of things that are funny. To five year olds and funny to adults. And that is, I would pull up on Woodward Avenue in Detroit alongside another car that’s all souped up, you know, at the light. And I would put it in neutral and my foot on the brake and I would rev the engine. [00:54:44] Joe: And [00:54:44] Doug: you’re waving your pink slip [00:54:46] Joe: while, while I’m next to this like, uh, Ferrari and I’m, I’m, I’m revving the engine on my minivan. My kids thought it was hilarious. And generally the person in the Ferrari thought it was pretty funny too. [00:54:58] Doug: Yeah. Raising your eyebrows a little bit, like pointing your finger. [00:55:01] Doug: Like you wanna, you wanna, you wanna do this man piece, you want piece [00:55:03] Joe: of [00:55:03] Doug: us? You wanna go [00:55:04] Joe: me with the twin, uh, baby seats in the back we got, [00:55:06] Doug: yeah. I also wanna point out Kim, who is flipping a house. Awesome. And she’s building her own. Yeah. That’s pretty impressive. More impressive. She’s building her own cabinet to save some money. [00:55:17] Doug: I’m just waiting for my call, Kim. To which cabinet chair you’re gonna appoint me to. [00:55:21] Joe: Oh, I see what you do with that. Yeah. Nice job Kim. Kim bringing home some extra income. That’s always fantastic. [00:55:29] Doug: Saving in the process, building her own ca. I mean, that is ambitious, [00:55:32] Joe: right? [00:55:33] Doug: It’s impressive. I also, uh, lastly, wanna point out stacker Robb, who wrote to say that he was very excited about the successful launch of the Benjamin’s after dark group in southern Minnesota. [00:55:44] Doug: He said, successful launch of Benjamin’s after dark in southern Minnesota with some. Wonderful people, which caught my eye when he said some wonderful people when Rob’s like, look, yeah, some of them sucked, but some of them we were wonderful. I hear you Rob. I hear you. [00:56:02] Joe: I’m so proud of that group and of all of our bad groups, our Benjamin after dark groups, uh, speaking of our group in Boston, getting ready to go live, that’s gonna be next month. [00:56:12] Joe: So if you’re a New England area stacker, you want to be on the lookout because on March 11th, we have our first bad meeting happening and uh, to get more on that, or any of our groups, whether it’s Southern Minnesota, the Twin Cities, Seattle, heck, there’s a group launching in Tucson. Doug, you asked for it and they are delivering in Tucson. [00:56:33] Joe: I’ll be [00:56:33] Doug: there soon, guys. Just hang on. [00:56:35] Joe: Stack. Hang on. Stacky Benjamins dot com. Slash bad or stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup. Uh, give you all of the stuff that you wanna know about our meetups around the country. We have another one happening this week on Friday. I will be in Omaha, Nebraska. Well have all the details, stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup. [00:56:55] Joe: And I know there’s still a few tickets left for, uh, the 1% better conference that I’ll be helping headline in Omaha. So come visit David and the amazing, he’s got nine amazing speakers. Find amazing speakers and one bad one like you. How I got on that list and to, to keynote. It is beyond me, but it’s gonna be great in Omaha. [00:57:17] Joe: That’s on, uh, this Saturday and Sunday, the 21st and 22nd, if you’re anywhere near that. And our meetup’s on the 20th, so. Omaha coming to see you two weeks later. I’ll be in Seattle Thursday night, March 5th, I will be at Elysian Brewing in Capitol Hill. That’s the, the first time I went to Seattle. We had a meetup there. [00:57:35] Joe: My spouse Cheryl came, my son Nick came, and we had two tables of stackers and that was the first of many great meetup groups. Of course, now we’ve got the bad meetup, uh, group that meets every month there, but I’ll be joining them on March 5th. Again, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash bad to join the meetup group, which you totally should do. [00:57:54] Joe: And Stacking Benjamins dot com slash meetup if you wanna sign up for that particular one. But I would join the group and get the link through there so that you find your peeps in Seattle. What’s coming up next to end? This very special President’s Day episode is this, uh, Doug. What should be on our to-do list after listening to today’s show? [00:58:15] Doug: So what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from the couple who retired with more than a million dollars. There’s no need to get fancy. Start with your workplace retirement plan and challenge yourself to do a little more second. Why are you focused on getting more? Is that what you need more or is that your ego talking? [00:58:35] Doug: There’s a big difference between the two, and sometimes it’s about saving more and later it’s about actually living. But the big lesson, you gotta have a strategy before you sit down for a Denny’s Grand Slam competition, my latest. Use the pancakes like slices of bread. You just make a giant like breakfast sandwich outta everything. [00:58:55] Doug: That way you just stuff the whole thing in your mouth. It’s like a single bite. Move on to the next plate. 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. [00:59:20] Doug: 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. 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. [01:00:33] Joe: I wanted to ask a general question about society, which I know opens open. I know opens this up a lot, but I gotta tell you, you guys. And by the way, welcome to the after show. This is the part of the show that doesn’t exist. We don’t generally talk money anymore, although this is a money decision, but also I think a time management decision. [01:00:52] Joe: I saw new product development at the store in Albertsons yesterday while I was there, and this was incredible. You no longer need to change your toilet paper roll as often because Charmin has now released what they call the forever roll. Have you seen this? It can go for up to one month and it comes with its own little stainless steel holder. [01:01:21] Doug: Oh, you bought it? [01:01:23] Joe: I did not buy it. No. I took a, [01:01:25] Doug: oh, I thought you, that was your phone. I thought you were actually holding up the [01:01:28] OG: No, that’s a lot of, lot of visits to the numeral dose. [01:01:32] Joe: This thing is so huge. [01:01:34] OG: Oh, huge. Is it? [01:01:36] Joe: It won’t even go on its own role. It comes with its own role because it’s it its own dispenser Here, here’s my question and Cheryl’s like, why are you taking a picture of that? [01:01:44] Joe: I’m like, because I just have a basic question, which is how lazy am I? [01:01:48] Doug: Yeah. [01:01:49] Joe: Like in the big scheme of things that I’m now sitting there and product development is Charmin, I’m like, oh, you know how we save somebody some time? You know, all that time changing the toilet paper roll or doing the awkward bunny hop over to, to make it. [01:02:05] Joe: That’s [01:02:05] Doug: disgusting. Joe, why do you have to [01:02:06] Joe: be that way? Oh, tell me, you’ve never done the bunny hop before. [01:02:09] Doug: It’s been a long time. [01:02:11] Joe: But seriously, how, how lazy are we when I need a forever roll of toilet paper [01:02:16] Doug: and do you mount this thing to the wall like you’re a truck stop in Nebraska? Like, how does this thing, you [01:02:21] Joe: should see how big this is. [01:02:23] Joe: It’s so, I dunno. I found that awkward. Just really, I’m like, what the thing, I never, thanks for bringing [01:02:29] OG: it up here. [01:02:30] Joe: You’re, because we never bring up anything awkward here. You had a story Oji. [01:02:36] OG: We were talking about like doing simple things, you know, with the Millionaire guy, there’s a YouTube series, uh, YouTube channel, whatever, where this guy had like a 90 day fitness challenge, right? [01:02:49] OG: It was a personal trainer and, you know, created fitness plans for these, for people that entered. And if you won the contest, which was measured as, you know, whatever weight loss or fat loss or something, um, then you got a, um, gift certificate for two first class airline tickets anywhere in the United States, including why or Alaska. [01:03:08] OG: So the winner of course, does this big interview at the end, right, for the channel, like, what did you do? And, you know, how much weight did you lose? And da da da da da. And so they start out with the, the guy and they’re like, it was a guy that won. And he says, uh, okay, so let’s just start out. Let’s talk about. [01:03:25] OG: Three components. Let’s talk about walking. Did you focus on steps? Did you jog, do what kind of cardio? Like lay it out for us. And he says, well, I, it was a 90 day challenge and I thought if I walked 11,111 steps a day on average, I would walk 1 million steps. So I decided to do 22,000 as an average to walk 2 million. [01:03:47] OG: And so every day I walked an average of 22,000 steps. 22,000 [01:03:50] Joe: steps. [01:03:51] OG: And the, you know, they talked a little bit about that and you know, the timing and whatever. And he says, I think I finished maybe closer to about 25,000 on average, but my goal was always 22,000. Okay. Wow. Okay, cool. Um, so you walked. [01:04:04] OG: Basically two and a half x what the standard advice was. And, and, okay. Well let’s talk about weightlifting now. Did you do any weightlifting? Did you go to the gym? Did you have a home gym? Did you He says, yeah. Yeah. No, I went to the gym, um, every day. I took Sundays off except Sunday. I didn’t take Sundays off from walking, but I took Sundays off from the gym. [01:04:23] OG: I worked out six times a week, alternated upper, lower, whatever hits, you know, just very nonchalantly. Okay. So how, and how often did you go to the gym? Well, I went every day. Uh, how long were you there for? Oh, probably about two, two and a half hours every day. Oh, okay. So you walked 22,000 steps and you lifted weights for two and a half hours every day. [01:04:41] OG: Okay. Tell us about your, your, your meal plan. Like, how did you eat? How did you, like, what did you do? And he said, well, you know, I sat down, I figured out how many calories I needed to consume based on my weightlifting and my exercise, but also like being a calorie reduction. And I figured out how much that was for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. [01:04:58] OG: And then I ate the same thing every day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 90 days. So basically they go through this whole thing and the big aha moment is so basically just do all the things that everybody’s told you to do. Never miss a day ever, and just do it consistently for 90. I mean, this dude lost like 60 pounds. [01:05:17] OG: I mean, he went from, I would [01:05:18] Joe: think, [01:05:18] OG: being very [01:05:19] Joe: overweight and he spending like five hours a day, right? Right [01:05:22] OG: now, a hundred percent. He is, but it’s like, the thing that I thought that was really funny about this was like, it’s like they like really like, oh, so you must have had a really amazing weight. You know, like exercise played like, but he’s like, well, I picked up heavy things. [01:05:35] OG: This guy was like interviewing like a box of soap, you know? Or you’re like, massive roll of toilet paper. It was just, you know, he was just so matter of fact, like, yeah, I mean, I said to go to the gym, so I went to the gym every day. Like that’s what he told meto
[01:05:45] Joe: do. It’s like these people earlier, well, I used my 401k. [01:05:47] OG: Yeah, I used my 401k, like, what else is there to do? I [01:05:49] Joe: got the match. [01:05:51] OG: What I thought was very interesting about that was we all know if you’re working on whatever project, right? You’re like, I need to, you know, I need to get in better shape. I need to, it’s like we all know what the math is. Here are the calories to eat. [01:06:03] OG: Here’s what not to eat. Mm-hmm. Here’s the exercise you’re supposed to do. Here’s, it’s pretty well laid out at this point. And then you read the internet and it’s like, well I did 11,000 steps and I got, it’s like, okay, cool. But you know, basically I gotta do some amount of cardio check. I need to lift a lot of heavy things for a period of time, check. [01:06:19] OG: And I have to be really somewhat conscious of what I put into my body every single day. You know, like, could you lose weight if you ate Twinkies? Probably there’s some debate about how that works with insulin resistance. But generally speaking of calorie, you know, whatever. But nobody loses weight. Eating Twinkies, you lose weight. [01:06:35] OG: Eating frigging apples and bananas and salad and chicken breast and rice. Like that’s, you know. But this guy, what I thought was really interesting was in 90 days, which in the future seems like a lifetime away. Right. We’re recording this on, uh, did we ever say what today is, [01:06:53] Joe: it’s President’s Day, [01:06:54] OG: right? As in, oh, president day’s day. [01:06:57] OG: Hey president. Yeah. He’s like the Godfather. It’s kinda like his big day. Um,it’s
[01:07:04] Joe: John McEnroe’s big day. [01:07:05] OG: Yes indeed. It’s somebody’s big day [01:07:07] Joe: gonna go have some birthday cake to celebrate after you are after your great story about the next three months and doing everything right, [01:07:13] OG: you’re going to, uh, you know that blowtorch thing. [01:07:15] OG: You got me? Is that what, is that what you’re using to light McEnroe cake with? Because my god, the amount of candles that have to be on your guys’ cakes when you get there, it’s just profound. Do you have to get like a burn permit? What do you call like the city of Texarkana? You’re like, Hey, uh, I’m having a birthday. [01:07:31] OG: Like, oh hell. Oh yeah, this is Joe. Like, uh, okay, so you gotta file the 68 47 in triplicate. [01:07:38] Doug: Make sure that you’re out in your concrete driveway. Yeah, we haven’t had rain in a month. I’m sorry. You can’t celebrate [01:07:44] OG: No celebration for you, sir. [01:07:45] Doug: You know what I think is interesting is he, he keeps on with this whole, you guys are old shtick, and yet he’s at the age now where we were when he first started giving us crap about this. [01:07:56] Joe: That’s right. [01:07:57] Doug: And, and we were old then, but he’s not old now. [01:08:00] OG: I mean, it’s relatively speaking and you guys are relatively speaking a heck of a lot older than me, like 25% older than me, or 12 some, somewhere between 12 and 20. A number. My point with all of this was looking into the future, 90 days, looking into the future, 10 years is forever, right? [01:08:19] OG: Like today is the middle of February, March, April, may. Like if I was like, Hey, what do you do in May 15th? You’d be like, hell, if I know that’s May, right? But if I asked you, uh, how long ago was Thanksgiving? What would you think? [01:08:34] Joe: Right? Three years. [01:08:35] OG: It was kind of just right around the corner. You guys were talking about it with middle schoolers and high schoolers, right? [01:08:39] Joe: Just happened. [01:08:40] OG: I have a fourth grader and the time between her being in fourth grade and her graduating high school is an eternity. When I look at Alex, who was a already done, basically with his freshman year of college, and I look back to some of the things that I remember doing with him when he was 10. [01:08:55] OG: I’m like, oh my God. That was kinda like y. When you think into the future, you think you don’t have all this time when it comes to money or when it comes to health, but it’s gonna be here before you know it. All it takes is 90 days to get your together and just walk to only 2000 steps. Eat chicken and rice every day, three meals a day, and lift weights for three hours and you’ll be jacked, bruh.
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