Markets are down. Social media is loud. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice is asking if you should do something. That voice has cost investors more money than any bear market in history. Joe and OG dig into what actually separates disciplined investors from everyone panic-refreshing their brokerage account — and how to build the guardrails that keep you from making the one mistake that derails everything you’ve built.
What You’ll Walk Away With
- Why the average intra-year market decline is 14% — and what that means for how seriously you should be taking a 5% dip right now
- The real reason financial news channels make you feel like you need to act — and how understanding their business model changes everything
- How to build a simple investment policy statement that removes emotion from the equation before the next market drop hits
- Why setting arbitrary calendar dates to review your portfolio might be the single most underrated investing strategy available to anyone
- The case for checking your portfolio less often — including a real example of how last April’s market chaos looked completely different depending on how often you were watching
- How to set automatic triggers that tell you when it’s actually time to rebalance — so you’re never guessing in the middle of a storm
- A powerful perspective shift: look at your tax returns from 2003 or 2010 and then look at your balance today — what that exercise does to your decision-making in volatile markets
- Why your only real job as a long-term investor is to not interrupt the compounding — and how systems make that easier than willpower ever could
- A four-factor framework for calculating exactly how much emergency fund you actually need — built around your income, job stability, reemployment risk, and expense flexibility
- Why the standard three-to-six month emergency fund rule is the wrong starting point — and what a personalized risk-based approach looks like instead
Why This Matters Now
If you’re in your 40s and you’ve been building toward something — a retirement account that finally has real weight to it, a financial plan that took years to assemble — a volatile market feels personal. Because it is. The stakes are higher than they were in your 30s and the noise is louder than ever. The investors who come out ahead aren’t the ones who reacted fastest. They’re the ones who had a plan written down before things got uncomfortable.
From the Basement
Joe and OG work through what a real investment policy statement looks like in plain language — rules, triggers, and all. OG and Anna return with the second installment of the financial planning basics series, this time tackling exactly how much emergency fund you need using a four-factor framework that replaces the three-to-six month rule of thumb with something actually built around your life. Doug arrives with insurance trivia that is technically about premiums and practically about Joe’s unregistered vehicle situation in Texarkana. Whether the basement scoreboard survived the week is a separate matter entirely.
Resources Mentioned
โข Stacking Benjamins Meetups — find a group near you at stackingbenjamins.com/bad
โข JP Morgan Guide to the Markets — monthly research report tracking S&P 500 returns and intra-year declines (Google “JP Morgan Guide to the Markets” for the latest edition)
โข Stock Market Maestros by Claire Flynn Levy and Lee Freeman-Shor — referenced throughout; available wherever books are sold
โข SSA.gov — Social Security earnings history lookup, referenced as a tool for tracking long-term financial progress
โข Stacking Benjamins Scorecard — rate your overall financial strategy at stackingbenjamins.com/scorecard
โข Stacking Benjamins Vault — budgeting and net worth tracking tool at stackingbenjamins.com/vault
โข Stacking Benjamins Voicemail — share your investment policy statement questions at stackingbenjamins.com/voicemail
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!



Our Headline
- Smart Money, Dumb Money, Itโs All Just Money | The Intelligent Investor for March 10 (Wall Street Journal)
Doug’s Trivia
- If you receive a traffic ticket and your insurance finds out, what is the name of the money you pay toward your policy that will probably increase?
Have a question for the show?
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Other Mentions
- Join One of our BAD Meetup Groups! (Benjamins After Dark)
- Benjamins After Dark
- How Optimized Is Your Financial Life?
- Guide to the Markets | J.P. Morgan Asset Management
- Even the Pros Are Wrong Half the Time. Here’s What They Do Differently (SB1820)
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we welcome our Wednesday Mentor, who teaches clever girls (and guys) how to become millionaires, the founder of Clever Girl Finance, Bola Sokunbi.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Stop Relying on Willpower (Build This Instead) SB1821
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: Happy Monday Stackers. We begin this Monday, like we begin every Monday with our shout out to some people doing, uh, amazing work in the Middle East and around the world. Here’s to our troops. On behalf of the men and women, make a podcast to mom’s basement and the men and women who are hanging out with us. [00:00:18] Joe: Here’s to our troops, Selco Stacks Benjamins. Together now shall we? [00:00:23] Doug: Thanks everybody. [00:00:25] OG: At some point far in the future, historians will probably ask, what was daily life like in the early 21st century? Well, one thing we know for sure, nobody will ever point to these two clowns and say, this was how you should have been Stacking Benjamins. [00:00:50] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:05] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ve hoped that cooler heads would prevail, but nope. Time for us to address the elephant in the room. This stock market, how do you protect your money? When good times go bad? We’ve got ideas, strategies, and tactics. So grab some paper. We’ll also share the latest guidance on financial planning basics from OG and Anna. [00:01:27] Doug: And of course, I’d never leave you without first bestowing upon you a sliver. Of my delectable homemade money themed trivia. And now two guys who took the dress, like your parents’ theme a little too far. It’s Joe and o. [00:01:53] Joe: And happy Monday to you. And you know what? My dad was a snappy dresser. I’m sure og. Your dad was a snappy dresser as well. [00:01:59] OG: He had snaps on his dresses. That’s right. [00:02:02] Joe: Was perfect. Welcome to a Monday show of the Stacking Benjamin Show. And you know what? Today is a big day og, because last week we talked to a couple phenomenal researchers about the stock market and how great stock market investors. [00:02:17] Joe: Work. And today what I wanted to do is dive further into that because of the fact. It is a time when a lot of investors generally do dumb things. As of the time that we’re recording this, the s and p 500 is down about five and a half percent, and so this is not the time when we see people doing excellent things. [00:02:38] Joe: We start seeing bubbling up on social media. What do I do now? How do I not look at my statement every day? How do I stop hitting refresh on the news? All of these things. We’re gonna dive into how to do that on today’s show. And og, I know that, uh, this is something that you do daily in your financial planning practice. [00:02:57] Joe: It [00:02:58] OG: should be easy for me to rage against the machine, is what you’re saying. Got it. [00:03:01] Joe: It should be easy, but it took you a while to get to that point. And I know stackers. If you’re feeling all these emotions about the market and about your money, you know what? It takes you a while to think. The opposite, which is this is the time to lock into your systems, back the [00:03:17] OG: truck up. [00:03:18] OG: That’s your favorite phrase. [00:03:20] Joe: And maybe not even back the truck up back. The truck up either. [00:03:24] OG: She created a list. Doug, uh, earmuffs Joe. Earmuffs, Doug, you and I should create a list of things that Joe hates to say or hear and just have an entire episode of us just doing that. Okay. You can, you can listen again, Joe. [00:03:38] Joe: This, this is, uh, going downhill fast, so we’re gonna do that in just a moment with an introduction from maybe our favorite columnist. Doug, you mentioned this during our prep for this episode, Jason’s week. He should just get co-host credit, I think is what you said. [00:03:55] Doug: I mean, I guess when you’re good, you’re good. [00:03:57] Doug: The guy produces great stuff and we like to reference him because it’s quality. [00:04:02] Joe: We’re gonna dive into how to react, how to respond, how to make your moves when the markets are a shaken. But first we have a couple sponsors to help us keep on keeping on. We’re gonna hear from them. And then OG Doug and I gonna get into helping you maybe make some better investment decisions. [00:04:21] headlines: Hello Darlings, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:04:28] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from Jason Swig. A couple weeks ago, og, we were talking about private equity, and around that time was when I read this piece by Jason, smart Money, dumb Money. It’s all just money. [00:04:41] Joe: And he was diving into why we don’t want to invest like the 1%, why we don’t want to. Maybe get into investments that lock us up, but he mentioned this in that piece with markets and turmoil over the war in Iran, who’s gonna bail at the bottom? Conventional wisdom has the answer. Individual investors, of course, which is sadly OG the case because like we heard last week when we were talking about stock market maestros, the maestros don’t make these mistakes. [00:05:12] Joe: The pros don’t make these mistakes. The pros make a lot of mistakes as they mentioned. But they don’t make the mistake of bailing at the bottom. Why is it so easy for the individual investor to bail at the wrong time? [00:05:27] OG: I think some of this just has to go back to access and really, I think back to a lesson that I learned years and years and years ago. [00:05:36] OG: Joe, I think you might remember this guy’s name. Do you remember Don Connolly? From Putnam. I [00:05:40] Joe: do remember Don Connolly, [00:05:41] OG: he used to make the Don Connolly tapes. He was the sales manager for Putnam, and you’d get the cassette tapes. He had a great story one time about the history of pricing stocks and more specifically around the access of those prices. [00:05:56] OG: Because, ’cause what used to happen, right, is you’d say, I wanna buy, you know, a hundred shares of Ford. You’d go to the broker, you’d give ’em some money, some days later you’d get a thing in the mail that had your stock certificate. And you’d file that away at the bank or in your safety deposit box or in your safe. [00:06:12] OG: And then sometime in the future you’d say, I need to sell this. And you’d go back to the broker and give ’em the certificate. Some days later, somebody would send you a check. It wasn’t like instantaneous. What? The powers that be decided was that it? It was, it would be a benefit to redeeming shareholders to post. [00:06:30] OG: Stock prices in the newspaper. So the Wall Street Journal started posting the closing prices of stocks as a courtesy to redeeming shareholders. Right. Hey, if you sold today, you probably don’t even know what you sold it for because you literally dropped the paper off and waited and you know, but here, here’s a rough idea of what this was. [00:06:49] OG: And so you can see how that was, you know, and that’s in the forties and fifties, right? That’s a long time ago. But you can see how that’s changed too. Not only. Is it a courtesy to redeeming shareholders? It’s also a discourtesy to people who aren’t redeeming because the reality is, is that if you aren’t selling your stock today, who gives a crap what the stock price is worth? [00:07:09] OG: It’s complete noise in the whole picture of everything because you’re not doing anything with that information. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, when you get inundated with information. Your natural instinct is I want to do something with that information. And if you think about, put your tinfoil hat on for just a second and you go to CNBC or Fox Business or whatever your jam is, wall Street Journal even, and go, what’s their purpose? [00:07:36] OG: Is their purpose to be helpful, educate, provide information? Hell no. Their purpose is to sell advertising. That’s it. That’s all they’re trying to do is to get people to buy the stuff or stay long enough to watch the ads. That’s how they make money. They don’t make money from anything else. Not, not a lot anyway. [00:07:56] OG: So if I’m a newscast producer for one of these channels, or I’m a newspaper person, or I’m a blogger, or I’m some sort of person that’s tied into this, I want you to do something so that you’re staying with this information. I don’t remember who said this, it might have been Warren Buffett. Somebody said something along the lines of, if CNBC would tell you what you needed to do, the channel would run about seven minutes a day and just go, yep, still the same thing as yesterday. [00:08:27] OG: Um, buy really good stuff. Hold it forever. That’s all folks. We’ll see you. We’ll see you again tomorrow. So when you see the stock prices on a daily basis, or God forbid, something more frequently than on a daily basis, your brain’s instinct is, I gotta, [00:08:42] Joe: I [00:08:42] OG: gotta go. You’re supposed to do something with this information. [00:08:44] OG: I [00:08:44] Joe: gotta move. [00:08:45] OG: There’s something they’re, they wouldn’t be feeding me this if they didn’t want me to do something right. And it’s just that panic, fear, you know, whatever those activating emotions are around, like I need to do something. And it works both ways, right? We see it on the upside too. You think you have to do something, but today we’re talking about downside. [00:09:02] Joe: I think all that’s compounded as well, OG by our bias is humans toward action. Like if we don’t take action, right? People are lazy when they don’t take action. They are complacent when they don’t take action at. So we identify those traits with all kinds of behaviors, and yet the stock market is one of the few things where when we don’t take action. [00:09:25] Joe: We’re doing the right thing. I mean, there’s that old quote that’s been attributed to many different people. I may have even attributed to different people, just that I’ve failed more often than the average person has tried is the quote. And I’m sure we’ve all heard that. You think, okay, I just fail forward. [00:09:40] Joe: There’s another one. Fail forward right? Yet with stocks. We have a bias toward action. It is incredibly, incredibly difficult. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t take action, that we never take action. So I think maybe we need to pull back OG and to think about, well, when do we take action? When is the right time for us to take action? [00:10:02] Joe: If you and I are sitting here saying, now might not be the right time to take action. Maybe we’re saying that maybe we’re not. I’ll ask you that too. How do we determine when the right time is to take action, and what’s the foundation of that action that we take? [00:10:16] OG: I think first you wanna look at what are we talking about in terms of reality. [00:10:21] OG: JP Morgan does a great research report on a monthly basis. They update a lot of data and a lot of slides. It’s called JP Morgan’s, guide to the Markets. And you can go online and you can Google this and flip through all these slides, but, uh, usually somewhere in the first, uh, 10 or 12 slides, they have a slide called, uh, that, that’s about the average returns and enter a year declines. [00:10:43] OG: And this, this quarter, this month, it’s on slide 16. And what it does is it charts out for the last basically 40 years, here’s the returns of the s and p. And as you can imagine, it’s a bar chart and it’s got some good years and some crappy years, and lots of really good years and lots of middle years and so on and so forth. [00:11:00] OG: And it just goes across from 1980 till present. And then it also shows the inter year decline. And, and just to kind of define what that looks like, it’s basically where was the high water mark of the year? And then, you know, we know that the stock market goes up and down, but you know, sometimes it goes down, but it still can go down and finish up for the year. [00:11:19] OG: Right? You, you could be up 10 from January through December, but in June be down five, right? Like right now you said the s and p’s down five and a half for the year. We could finish the year up 10. It’s just right now we’re down five. Right? So that’s the entry year decline. So the average inner year decline of the s and p 500 is 14%. [00:11:41] OG: And so if you take that information and then say in 75% of the year, 75% of the time, each individual year is positive. Right. And the average intra, I did, I say in year, I meant intra year. Sorry. Doug was looking at me like, I think you’ve said the wrong intra, or, [00:11:58] Doug: I better not play poker because I, I cannot hide a thought. [00:12:02] Doug: Yeah. With my facial expressions. [00:12:04] OG: Yes. [00:12:04] Doug: That’s worrisome. [00:12:05] OG: Yes. You cannot, he’s gets all giggly. You’re like, eh, two ACEs. Right? Like, what? What? What do you mean two ACEs? Well, I just kind of went all in. Why [00:12:12] Doug: would you think that? [00:12:13] OG: Like, whatcha you talk about bro? So intra a year, so during the year it goes down 14%. [00:12:19] OG: And so if, if, if we know that on average an average year, you could look at your statement and be down 14%. Let’s say you invest all in the s and p, that’s average and you know that 75% of the years you finish positive and you know 99% of the 10 year times you’re positive and a hundred percent of the 20 year times you’re positive, 5% shouldn’t even register. [00:12:39] OG: It’s not even a part at which we’re to average yet. Does that make sense? [00:12:44] Joe: Yeah. We’re just over a third of the way down on an average year down. [00:12:50] OG: Yeah, because it goes up and down every day and sometimes it goes down for consecutive days in a row and okay, we’re not even to average yet, so should we be doing something with the minus five or minus tens or minus fifteens? [00:13:02] OG: The answer is yeah, maybe. Maybe it’s a good time to rebalance. Maybe it’s a good time to tax us harvest. Maybe it’s a good time to deploy more money. I said, back up the truck, and that’s your favorite phrase as it relates to investing. If you have a chance, if you’re like, I’m sitting on some cash and I was thinking about investing it either on April 1st or March 30th, and the market is down five, just put the money in. [00:13:24] OG: You know, it doesn’t mean that it’s gonna not go lower from here, but it’s already 5% cheaper than it was January 1st, and you thought it was a good idea on January 1st to put your money in. [00:13:33] Joe: I’m trying to listen as a beginner to all this og. I still think that a lot of this we just need to guard against, we need to guard against any back, the truck up, any, I put money in at random times. [00:13:46] Joe: I don’t think about it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, I, I kind of think I need to guard against all that, which is why I think maybe, and tell me if I’m wrong here, the first rule of an investment policy statement, which is what we call it in the industry, but if you’re brand new to this. What an investment policy statement is, is a series of rules that you’re creating for yourself. [00:14:08] Joe: Rule number one is, I’m only gonna look at this two days a year. I schedule those two days ahead of time. I schedule ’em in a time when I have no idea when the market’s gonna be up, no idea when the market’s gonna be down. They’re arbitrary days on purpose so that I don’t back the truck up, so to speak, which can be dangerous if I choose, you know, whatever data to make that move. [00:14:34] Joe: Or I’m gonna pull the money out on X days. I’m not gonna make those moves. I’m gonna look at it twice a year. I’m gonna look at on arbitrary days. That is, and that is it. Those are the days when I’m going to make my moves is only during those times. Other than those two days, maybe I’m completely automated, meaning I’m still investing, but my investing is automated besides those two days. [00:14:59] Joe: What do you think about that for a brand new person just starting out? Because I feel like then we avoid market timing. We’re beginning to get the idea of a rules-based approach versus an emotional approach. We can feel the emotion, but go, no, it’s not July 18th yet, and that’s the day. I don’t do anything till July 18th. [00:15:15] Joe: Like I feel like we start to put these guardrails on ourselves to begin getting outta this emotional game that a lot of us play. [00:15:24] OG: There’s no statistical evidence to suggest that rebalancing anything more frequently than once a year provides any additional benefit. I think you can make the case that if you were aware that the market was down 10% and you could do a tax loss swap between one, you know, fund in another, you know, to capitalize some of that loss, perhaps, I think you can make a case for why that would be beneficial to know or to do. [00:15:51] OG: But I, I like the idea of having pre-prescribed dates in mind of here’s when I look at it with the asterisk of, if anything, this is kind of like my philosophy around the news. Because if you ever watch the news, there’s never good stuff. The last thing is always about puppies, but everything between, you know, the, the, the opening headline and the last thing is all garbage. [00:16:15] OG: Like, even if the weather’s like 75 and sunny, you know, it’s a beautiful day. They’re like, we haven’t had rain in forever, you know, so we’re all gonna. You’re like, but it’s 75. It’s like, can we just have a nice day? You know, like, can we, [00:16:26] Joe: or there’s rain on the horizon. Yeah. Either we haven’t had rain in forever or get it while you can because we only got 36 hours of this. [00:16:32] OG: Yeah. Yeah. The pattern is changing and, uh, you know, the, the northwest low is gonna, uh, cripple the, uh, the south corner of the, you know, whatever. It’s stupid. [00:16:42] OG: But my philosophy on the news is, is that generally speaking, if anything major happens, you’re gonna find out about it in other contexts. You could be completely off everything and you would still know there’s stuff going down in the Middle East right now, right? [00:16:58] OG: Like it would just come up in conversation. You know, there was a airplane accident in, uh, at LaGuardia as we record this. It was yesterday. But you know, as you’re listening to this as a week ago, I don’t watch the news. I found out because somebody asked me about it and I went, Hmm, let me look. And I looked and I was like, Hmm, interesting. [00:17:16] OG: You don’t need to be plugged into this stuff all the time. So if the market’s down 20, if you’re like, well, I know, but what if I, what if I miss the fact that the market’s down 20% could tax? Trust me, you’ll hear about it. You’ll know. Somebody will mention it and then, you know, if you go, okay, I can look in the context of being productive. [00:17:36] OG: But if it’s set to auto refresh on your desktop or, you know what I mean? Like, ugh, gross. [00:17:42] Doug: Well, that’s a case where if somebody mentions it to you like, Hey, it was down 20% the other day, be glad that you’re, you have a big lag time between when it happened, because then you’re less likely to react to it. It might’ve re responded, recovered by then. [00:17:55] Joe: That’s a good point, Doug. You’re like, it’s already four days old, or three days old, or Yeah, even two days old. You’re like, oh, it’s too late. Even though it was too late out the gate, you know what I mean? Your brain actually goes, well, I don’t have, you know, there’s nothing to do here. [00:18:08] OG: Yeah. I mean, this is very real. [00:18:09] OG: This, this actually happened last year. If all you did was look at your statements on March 31st, 2025, April 30th, 2025, and May 31st, 2025, if that’s all you knew were just those three statements in the, in the dollar amounts of your portfolio, you’d go, huh, looks like April was kind of a meh month. That’s all you would’ve gotten out of that, [00:18:31] Joe: would’ve never seen the jackknife. [00:18:34] OG: If you, if you, if you paid attention to it every week, or God forbid, every day on April 7th, you were freaking out. You’re like, oh my God, the economy’s crashing and the tariffs are gonna take all our money. And, you know, but by the end of April was nothing. It was, it was pretty much a non-event. And by May everybody was back to even again, [00:18:52] Joe: you know, the thing that the maestros said. [00:18:54] Joe: Or the maestro researchers told us last week, uh, Claire and Lee, was that these maestros start out with an idea and then instead of making moves, they work on the machine and the machine makes better moves. So I really like what you did with what I said there, og, which was, let’s say that I only look at it twice a year. [00:19:14] Joe: Then the first thing you said was, well, there’s no evidence to show that looking at it twice a year is gonna give you any efficacy. Just looking at it once a year is, is good. So now that I’ve got. Twice a year in my brain, well do I make it once a year? We can tweak the machine and see if that’s a better approach. [00:19:30] Joe: And then the second thing that you said was, well also if we go outside of this is what I heard, not exactly what you said, but if the market goes outside a band, there’s no reason not to rebalance your portfolio. So now we put a new rule in that says, Hey, I, I set up these triggers online. That will alert me and it’s easy now to do this with ai. [00:19:54] Joe: It’s easy to do it in a lot of the, the brokerage account places. I set up this trigger that if it goes beyond, let’s say 14 percent’s, the number goes beyond 15%. I will rebalance my portfolio and we can talk about what that means for beginners here in a minute. Now I’ve got another rule. So instead of just rebalancing once. [00:20:14] Joe: I’m setting up these rules that go, Nope, I’m only looking at it once a year, unless it goes beyond 15% down, in which case I rebalance to my original strategy. And then the next question I ask is, what is my original strategy? And what’s that? What’s that based on? And I’ve once again, write all that down. I think this might be a great place to begin an investment policy statement to get away from this. [00:20:39] Joe: What’s the market gonna do tomorrow? Fed gonna change things og. What’s gonna go on? [00:20:44] OG: What is fed? I don’t [00:20:46] Joe: Who is fed [00:20:47] OG: Fred? You mean Fred? Is Fred gonna change things? I’m not sure. [00:20:49] Joe: Yeah. That damn Fred [00:20:51] OG: being a Fred. It’s like the Fed’s version of Doug. You just call him Fred. [00:20:57] Doug: The friendly face of a, of a tough organization just like us, the analogy’s. [00:21:02] Doug: Perfect. [00:21:03] OG: Pretty much, [00:21:03] Joe: but I think that would substantially change the game stackers if we started off with these set rules and then worked backwards from there to, what are my exceptions? Because I feel like OG we spend our days as individual investors making exceptions. Well, right. How many times have you heard this in online forums? [00:21:21] Joe: This time or in meetings? This time is different though. This isn’t like all those other times. This time is different when then a year later we find out, you know what, it was different, but it was exactly 100% the same thing. [00:21:37] OG: As I think about a lot of this stuff, I really kind of think about it from the concept of, you know, behavior and how to make, how to put yourself in a position to make really good decisions. [00:21:45] OG: You’ve talked about it before, Joe, around. Health and running. It’s like half the battle is like just putting your running shoes on, like you’re not committing to running. You’re just like, I’ll just put socks and shoes on and just see what happens after that. You know, and I’m, I’m there with the cycling right now, like I’m on week five or something. [00:22:02] OG: There’s 15 weeks to go and I’m like. I just have to like, literally put my clothes on and, and just go stand in the garage and maybe just maybe I will get on that damn thing and ride it for four hours or whatever supposed to do for the day. Go again. The interesting thing around behavior and your money, and I’ve, I love witnessing this in real time, and you can only do it if you keep track of stuff and you look backwards. [00:22:25] OG: But I would encourage, this is a great time to do this. Everybody’s looking at their taxes right now. People are, are filing or kind of elbow deep in that, go find your tax return. If you’re old enough to do this, go find your tax return from 2010. Go find your tax return from your first job, or go on the social security website. [00:22:42] OG: You know you’re supposed to do this anyway. ssa.gov, right? Check your earnings history, make sure it’s up to date and that sort of thing. Go take a look at that and see the money that you made over your career and just spend a few moments in that and like watching. How that number changed. And some of you, you may be like, oh, those are the glory days. [00:22:59] OG: But probably for most of you it’s, it’s like, oh yeah, I remember that year. I remember 20 2003 when I made 40 grand and like I felt like king of the world. Like I had so much money, it was insane. And now you make 140,000 right? Or 240,000 or whatever the number is. And the only way to measure that stuff is by looking backward when you do it in the context of your financial plan. [00:23:23] OG: It puts a real big perspective on progress, and that’s really the biggest thing that you’re trying to protect against when you’re making decisions around your money, is interrupting this magical process of compounding. I think Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger said, that’s your job is to like not get in the way of the compounding. [00:23:44] OG: And if you can set up the guardrails like you’re talking about, or, or the motivation, which is maybe what I’m leaning on right now. To say, I just have to like, stay outta the way and this will work. Just don’t do anything dumb. Avoid the dumb mistake of getting out or doing, you know, stopping my contributions or whatever the case may be. [00:24:02] OG: And the way that you prove yourself, prove it to yourself, rather, is to go look at your financial plan from before. Go look at your 401k balance in 20, you know, 2009 when you were putting in 3,200 bucks a year and the account balance was 11,000. And you went, there’s no way we’ll ever get to a million, and now you’ve got 1,000,002 and you’re putting in 25,000 and your spouse is putting in 25,000. [00:24:25] OG: You’re like, this is amazing progress. Don’t screw it up. Now. You’re doing great. You know? Trick yourself, [00:24:34] Joe: stackers. How do you avoid making the dumb mistakes? We’d love to, uh, hear from you about doing that. What struggles have you had on your investment policy statement? We’re about to do another full episode, answering your questions with Anna that’s coming up. [00:24:49] Joe: In about three weeks, so stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. A lot of [00:24:53] OG: Anna lately, [00:24:55] Joe: much better than us, man, much better than us. We have Anna coming up in just a moment. But give us your take, stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail and we’d love to feature you. And, uh, how do you have you set up your investment policy statement? [00:25:09] Joe: How do you avoid mistakes or what mistakes are you struggling with that may be. Our, uh, stackers can help, uh, the hive mine can help you think about. And then also just your questions in general. We need those for an upcoming episode, stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. Every episode at the halfway point, we have money themed trivia so you can show your friends just how smart you are around the water cooler. [00:25:33] Joe: And guess what? That’s up right now with, uh, mom’s neighbor, Doug. [00:25:41] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug, and a big happy birthday to singer songwriter Tracy Chapman, who famously penned a song called Fast Car. I don’t mean to brag. I also have a fast car. Tracy. My El Camino goes from zero to sexy in less than three seconds. Oh, what? Oh, the phrase is zero to 60. [00:26:04] Doug: Yeah, that takes a little bit longer, but let’s speed toward today’s trivia question. If you’ve got a fast car and you get pulled over by your local sheriff, Bufort T Justice, it’s probably going to eat into your stack of Benjamins. What do you call the fee you pay to an insurance policy? That probably is gonna go up now that you have some traffic points on your record. [00:26:26] Doug: I’ll be right back with your answer after I go text Sergeant Simpson down at Texarkana Police Headquarters and tell him how much his service is appreciated. [00:26:47] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m law abiding citizen and guy who probably is gonna get a ticket for trivia. That’s too good. Joe Sch mob’s neighbor, Doug. Well, I texted Sergeant Simpson and there’s good news and bad news. Turns out good news. First he thanked me for the kind text, the bad news. He’s not letting me outta my ticket that I got yesterday for driving 15 miles under the speed limit. [00:27:13] Doug: I mean, you can’t be too safe, Simpson. [00:27:16] Joe: Geez. [00:27:17] Doug: Let’s do better than try with today’s trivia. Let’s nail this one. You’ve got it. The question was, if you receive a traffic ticket and your insurance finds out what’s the name of the money you pay toward your policy, that will probably increase. The answer, while some of us refer to this money for insurance as complete bullshit, the technical term is the premium. [00:27:41] Doug: Make it sound so nice. Did you get it? Of course you did. Now you can brag to your friends around the water cooler about your trivia acumen. And now let’s hand it over to Anna and OG, who are gonna give you the scientific approach to figuring out how much to put into your emergency fund. [00:28:01] OG: You know, it seems that I only get sick on weekdays. [00:28:06] Anna: I’m so over this. [00:28:07] OG: I must have a weekend immune system. [00:28:10] Anna: You’re speaking my language right now. [00:28:12] OG: You got the sniffles. [00:28:13] Anna: I got the sniffles. [00:28:14] OG: You get the sniffles. What do you have like a little monster running around that? I [00:28:16] Anna: have a little germ monster coming into my house every day. Puts [00:28:19] OG: your monster every [00:28:20] Anna: day. [00:28:20] OG: That slobbers on everything and gives you lots of kisses and puts her hand in her mouth and then in yours. It’s so fun. [00:28:26] Anna: Yeah. Drinks my water bottle. [00:28:27] OG: Oh, that’s, [00:28:28] Anna: mm-hmm. [00:28:29] OG: So fun. [00:28:30] Anna: Yeah, [00:28:30] OG: it’s kind of like an emergency. [00:28:32] Anna: Feels like it. [00:28:32] OG: That’s like the vitamin C they call emergency. [00:28:35] Anna: Mm-hmm. [00:28:35] OG: We are talking today about emergency funds, not FUNS, but F-U-N-D-S Fund is our perspective on emergency funds is that the three to six month rule of thumb is stupid. [00:28:52] OG: Very ultra stupid and we don’t believe in that. [00:28:54] Anna: So stupid. I can’t even believe, [00:28:57] OG: yeah. [00:28:57] Anna: That people believe in it. [00:28:58] OG: We do something way different. [00:29:00] Anna: So different. It’s gonna blow your mind. [00:29:02] OG: Okay. So at the end of today, what we wanna figure out is exactly how you can think through exactly how much cash reserve you need, exactly how much emergency fund you need for you based on what’s going on in your life. [00:29:16] OG: So last week we talked about. Your expense number and we said, okay, this is the number that kind of everything else works from. And the first thing that it starts with is your emergency fund. Um, remind us again, just expenses. We’re using that plus plus debt, right? [00:29:32] Anna: Mm-hmm. Yep. You’re gonna look at that living expense number on a monthly basis, plus the debt payments you have. [00:29:38] OG: Okay? So let’s just use me as an example, because this will just be easy to like, kind of walk through the math. Okay. So $8,000 a month of living expenses. I got $3,000 a month of debt expenses. So step one is I got 11 K that I have to send out. So now we have a four step framework of how to go through exactly how much you need. [00:29:59] OG: Uh, let’s just work through it and we’ll use me as an example. So I’ve got 11 k. Let’s, the first thing that we’re doing. [00:30:04] Anna: So first thing is the baseline. [00:30:06] OG: Okay? [00:30:06] Anna: If you answer all the following questions and you’re in really great shape, you should never have less than three X expenses. Obviously, if you have to tap into it, then it’s gonna go down, but that’s where we’re gonna start. [00:30:20] OG: All right, so we’re starting with three X. So for me that’s 33 K, and now let’s work through the questions. First question is, as it relates to income concentration. So step one is. [00:30:31] Anna: How much income sources do you have? [00:30:34] OG: Yeah, and the big ones are two income household. [00:30:38] Anna: Yeah. So if you have or [00:30:38] OG: single income [00:30:39] Anna: house, two people working, or if one person has multiple jobs. [00:30:45] OG: So we have three different components here. Dual income bo, or you know, two jobs, basically. It’s okay if one person’s working two jobs, but basically dual income. And either one of those jobs covers the living expense. We’re gonna add zero to our three numbers. We’re we’re starting with three baseline, we’re gonna add zero if both people are working or we have two jobs and both incomes are required, we want to add one. [00:31:11] OG: And if one person is working, obviously then one person’s job is required. So we want to add two. The most points you can get in section one is two, one or zero, and you’re adding that to the three. So in my case, I’m single income. I have multiple, multiple jobs, but only one income. Uh, we could talk about the glorious pay that is podcasting later, Anna, but in my case, single income. [00:31:35] OG: I would add two. So I’m at five now. So three plus two is five, right? [00:31:39] Anna: Mm-hmm. [00:31:39] OG: Okay. What’s the second one? [00:31:41] Anna: Next step, how predictable is your income? How stable is it? Do you know that your next paycheck is definitely coming? [00:31:48] OG: Okay. What are the categories, or what are the three questions for income stability? [00:31:53] Anna: Number one, how stable is your income? Do you know you’re gonna get your next paycheck? You know that you’re gonna be employed? You are going to add zero, [00:32:03] OG: okay. [00:32:03] Anna: To that number you previously had. If you have a little bit of variability, so you have a bonus that’s kind of unknown, you may have a little bit of variable compensation that comes through, but for the most part, like you have a base that you can rely on and, and pay your expenses for the most part, then just add one. [00:32:23] OG: Okay? [00:32:24] Anna: Then. If you have very variable income, you are a business owner or you are very comp based. Performance based sales jobs, something like that. Or you rely on a lot of equity income to come in, then I would add two. [00:32:43] OG: Okay, so we’ve got income stability, income concentration, so zero, one or two. I was a two. [00:32:49] OG: Single income, an income stability. I’m a business owner, so I would add two again, so I got two and four, so now I’m at four. Third area is reemployment risk. You’re highly reemploy. You’re a nurse, you’re gonna find work that’s zero. You have specialized jobs, but it’s somewhat portable. That would be one. [00:33:08] OG: And if it’s highly specialized or you’re very niche based, or you’re an entrepreneur or something like that, that would be two. So zero, one or two in Reemployment risk. I’m an entrepreneur. I’m gonna give myself two for that. So I’m, I’ve maxed out, I’m winning, I maxed out everything. 2, 4, 6. And the last area is subject to interpretation, I think a little bit right around expense flexibility. [00:33:32] OG: What’s your, what’s your vibe on og uh, having expense flexibility? [00:33:37] Anna: Yeah. I think we all need to be really honest with ourselves when we answered this question. If you look at your expenses. And you can say, yes, I can peel back a lot of these expenses and I am just spending a lot of money on fun things that I don’t necessarily need. [00:33:58] Anna: Travel. Yeah, like expensive, fun little gifts or [00:34:01] OG: wine [00:34:02] Anna: watches, [00:34:04] OG: whatever. [00:34:04] Anna: You know, all the things that I spend money on. [00:34:06] OG: Exactly. [00:34:06] Anna: Then you can add zero to this [00:34:08] OG: if it’s super flexible, zero, somewhat flexible, one. Highly fixed income or highly fixed expense lifestyle. So debt, payments, tuition. Most of my expenses are food, you know, insurance, whatever the case may be. [00:34:25] OG: Then I’m gonna add two, so four categories. The most I can get is two in each category. So 2, 4, 6. I’d say that we’re a zero here. We have a lot of flexible spending. We have some, some fixed spending, but a lot of flexible spending. So I’m gonna give myself a zero there. So I got 2, 4, 6. The baseline is three. [00:34:44] OG: So three plus six is nine. So I need nine x my salary in emergency fund based on this risk-based, uh, emergency fund framework. So very easy for somebody to sit down and figure this out, right? [00:34:57] Anna: Yeah, just answer a couple of questions. It’ll take you five minutes. [00:35:00] OG: Alright, so let’s just wrap it up real quick, work through this. [00:35:03] OG: One more time. Income concentration. So this is basically dual income, single income, household income stability. Is your comp salary base, base income, or do you get a bunch of variable compensation and kind of that scale. So you gotta decide on that. Step three is how Reem employable are you. So if you lose your job. [00:35:23] OG: Are you gonna find one right away or is it really specialized? Gonna take you a little bit small, medium, large there if you want to think of it that way. And then the last one is on, uh, expense flexibility. How flexible are the expenses that you are counting in that, in my case, 11 K. So you add those up, start with the base level of three x, you’re gonna add 2, 4, 6, 8, or whatever the number is. [00:35:47] OG: The most you get to is 11 x, the least you’d get is three x. So somewhere between there and then that’s That’s unique to you. [00:35:54] Anna: Yep. There you have it. [00:35:57] Joe: And now you know how to set up your emergency fund. Nice job, og. Great work, Anna. Thank you so much, Doug. Let’s meander onto the back porch because we’ve got a bunch going on around the country with our meetup groups. [00:36:13] Joe: If you’re new here, man, we’ve got some cool stuff happening in different cities. What? What’s on tap? [00:36:19] Doug: Yeah, there is a lot going on. We’re gonna have to get through this quickly because we could spend a lot of time talking about each one of these. I think. First coming up on the calendar on April 7th. Isn’t Paula doing a live record, longtime contributor to Stacking Benjamin’s regular on her Friday shows? [00:36:36] Doug: She’s doing a live recording at Texas a and m, which will could potentially be like a little. Meetup for Texas folk. Is that right? [00:36:43] Joe: We we’re gonna do a live, uh, special episode of Stacking Benjamins and afford anything at Texas a and m Texarkana. So if you are anywhere between Little Rock, Dallas, Sharif Port. [00:36:57] Joe: Texarkana, if you’re in this part of the country, we are going to be doing this very special event. By the way, the night before at my house, if you email me, we’re doing a special event, like a meet and greet, write me though, email me Joe at stacky Benjamins dot com and I’ll tell you how to get here, tell you the details on that. [00:37:16] Joe: So if you happen to be in the area the evening before and then that day, we’re gonna be live. At the university with university students and the community answering student questions. [00:37:28] Doug: Here’s your chance to party at Joe’s house. I hear it’s okay to throw, um, your beer cans and peanut shells on the floor at Joe’s house, Texas thing. [00:37:37] Doug: Apparently, I mean, that’s worth traveling for. [00:37:41] Joe: Not sure that ever occurred. Imagine Cheryl, [00:37:43] Doug: that’s what I do, [00:37:43] Joe: uh, with that one. Who is generally the nicest person alive. [00:37:46] Doug: Maybe that’s why Cheryl gives me a little cold shoulder when I get to your house. I’ve always done that. [00:37:53] Joe: Might not, might not be that pleased With that, it’s gonna be a great time. [00:37:57] Joe: Stack your Benjamins dot com slash meetup to tell us, uh, that you’re coming to get details on the Texas a and m Texarkana Live recording. Hope you can make it. [00:38:08] Doug: That’s enough detail about that. We gotta move on, Joe. ’cause we got all this other stuff [00:38:11] Joe: happening. [00:38:12] Doug: We do in [00:38:12] Joe: Boston. We do. But how often have we had, we’ve had these things all around the nation. [00:38:17] Joe: How often have we had one in Texarkana? [00:38:19] Doug: Well, that’s your fault. [00:38:20] Joe: How often? Once. Once, which was just the beginning of the book tour. [00:38:25] Doug: The very next night, Wednesday, April 8th at six o’clock, the Boston Benjamin’s after dark group is meeting at Hannah’s Brewing. Then the night after that in Seattle. Man, I’m gonna be on a lot of airplanes in Seattle, Thursday, April 9th, five to seven at the Berliner Pub, and then, uh, at the end of the month, April 22nd, Southern Minnesota. [00:38:52] Doug: Mankato Minnesota is having their meetup six 30 to eight o’clock at their usual joint, which is the Maverick Innovation Gateway. So lots going on. Uh, we understand Twin Cities may also be having a meetup, but we are still awaiting their details. So just about every group is getting together in the month of April, Tucson. [00:39:15] Joe: Yeah, I was gonna say where we have, where we have another one, Tucson is also coming up in April, and we’ll have details on that, maybe on Wednesday show. Pretty exciting. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup or if you just want to join the group, stacky Benjamins dot com slash bad. Benjamin’s after dark it gets gets you there. [00:39:35] Joe: That’s gonna do it for today. Hey, thanks for hanging out today. If you know somebody who really gets emotional about their investing, maybe this is the episode that you send their way. It’s also a great follow up to our Maestros episode from last Wednesday. If you miss the Stock Market Maestros case study last Wednesday with Claire and Lee who studied this stuff professionally, you’re gonna want to go back and listen to that. [00:40:00] Joe: At the very least, get your investment policy statement, move in stackers. But before we ask Doug to bring this home, if you’re wondering how am I doing with my investment strategy overall? With my cash on hand with my investments, OG and his team have a scorecard where you can rate yourself on a scale of one to 10, how well you’re doing versus how well you probably should be doing. [00:40:25] Joe: It’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash scorecard. That’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash scorecard gets you to the link into figuring out, you know what, here’s where I’m at today and here’s, uh, what I can do better. Doug, you’ve got it from here, my friend. What should we have learned on today’s show? [00:40:45] Doug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from today’s headline, the Smart Money. [00:40:49] Doug: That Could be You. You are smart if you ignore the noise. Focus on your end game and work from a written strategy. Second, when you’re figuring out how much to put in your emergency fund, begin by thinking about the risks you’re taking in life. More risks, more cash, but the big lesson. Whenever you can celebrate Tracy Chapman’s birthday with Joe’s mom. [00:41:14] Doug: She sure can share interesting stories about people with fast cars. Listen to this. She knows this one woman who had a fast machine and she kept her motor clean. She says, this lady was the best damn woman she’d ever seen. Great story, ma. This show is the property of SP podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. [00:41:38] Doug: You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello and oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. [00:41:57] Doug: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:43:04] Joe: Og, I was telling Cheryl the inspiring story of you signing up for an event and what I love about anytime that people are trying to get in shape that well people, let’s be honest me, whatever. I’m trying to get in shape. I go sign up for the event first. Just sign up for the event. Because it gives me a direction. [00:43:24] Joe: Make sure that I’ve, I’m on the straight and narrow, but our stackers might not know that you have committed to an event, which, which we call suicide. You’re, you’re on the show, uh, you don’t know it yet. It’s performative torture, right? Uh, you’re gonna be bicycling in the mountains. [00:43:47] OG: Yeah, it’s a bike ride called the Triple Bypass, and it goes from, uh, just outside Denver to basically Beaver Creek, Avon area in the summertime. [00:43:56] OG: It’s super popular, so if anybody’s a cyclist, they probably already know it. In fact. I got the side eye. ’cause I, you know, they send you a free shirt. They’re like, you know, here wear this shirt. So I was, you know, I’m wearing my cool shirt, you know, and somebody came up to me, they’re like, wow man, how is Triple Web has? [00:44:11] OG: I’m like, well, I’ll let you know in a couple months. He’s like, oh, I haven’t done it yet. And he like, pedals away. I’m like, yeah, sorry. [00:44:16] Doug: Hold on. [00:44:16] OG: Apparently I’m not supposed to wear the shirt until actually I’ve done it. Maybe, I don’t know. [00:44:20] Doug: Oh, I mean, I can get a free t-shirt just by signing up and then I don’t have to do the ride. [00:44:25] OG: Well, it’s included and it’s, this is a great hack and it’s a cycling shirt, so it, it would look a little weird walking around your neighborhood. In that tidy, [00:44:34] Doug: that little bit of belly hanging out underneath. [00:44:37] OG: Although it does have little pockets in the back, so you could have like, like snacks and stuff. [00:44:40] OG: You’re like, put my Snickers [00:44:41] Doug: back there. [00:44:42] OG: Yeah. You’re like, like, you know, people wear these to ride ride bikes for 50 miles. Right. But water bottles, you’re like, oh no, I got like Doritos. And, uh, ERs, that’s [00:44:50] Doug: Snickers. I keep my sugar cookies. [00:44:51] Joe: Everybody else has their energy chew. He’s pulling out his, his Fritos. [00:44:57] OG: He’s got like a little flask, you know? This is great for hunting. What are you guys talking about? It’s fantastic. [00:45:04] Joe: One thing we were talking about, you know, in town we have this half marathon run the line, and one thing, our announcer and I, ’cause I play the music and, and take care of the agenda for the day and make sure that like the sponsors get mentions and blah, blah, blah. [00:45:18] Joe: So I find myself standing next to him a lot. The unforced arrow, gee, you wanna make sure you don’t make, okay. I don’t know, Doug, about wearing the shirt before you’ve done the event. I don’t know there, but the number one thing you do not do. Do not wear the shirt to the event. Yeah, that’s a rookie move. Oh, [00:45:36] OG: okay. [00:45:37] OG: You [00:45:37] Joe: see people show up and you’re like, oh, it’s your first time doing this type of thing. [00:45:40] OG: What if I, what if I got like shirts from a couple years ago? [00:45:44] Joe: That’s cool. That’s retro. [00:45:46] Doug: Yeah. I don’t know. That’s changing because even like, but [00:45:49] OG: also I didn’t do it a couple years ago, so is that like fraud? [00:45:52] Joe: Well, [00:45:54] Doug: I dunno, man. [00:45:55] Doug: That’s what eBay is for. [00:45:56] Joe: I don’t, I don’t know about that. I don’t know how people feel about that. I like just, they’re [00:45:59] OG: be like, you’ve got the shirt from 2020 and you’re, you can’t make it up the first hill. Like, what’s wrong with you bro? [00:46:05] Joe: If you wanna do like a retro thing, do a different ride, you know? [00:46:09] OG: Ah, [00:46:09] Joe: that you have like your kids, uh, walk around the block. [00:46:13] OG: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I’m gonna make my own companies that You can make your own shirts. It’s gonna be fun. I got a couple of friends that are doing it with me. I’ve talked to a couple of people who have done it and it’s not a race, so it’s not about like trying to finish. Yeah. Although obviously somebody’s gonna finish first, it ain’t gonna be me. [00:46:29] OG: Well, [00:46:29] Joe: it is about trying to finish, but not first. Yeah. [00:46:31] OG: But it’s finishing and so all the training got a great coach who is um. Putting me through the paces, as they say. And [00:46:39] Joe: uh, the reason we thought about this OG was I was in Northwest Arkansas this weekend. Uh, I just love that area so much. Back at Crystal Bridges some great, we went to a fantastic speakeasy, uh, by the way. [00:46:50] Joe: But, you know, you’re up there and there’s these, there’s the Ozarks. I’m thinking around, oh gee, he doesn’t even have the Ozarks and you’re about to do the Rockies. Like, how are you getting any hill work for what’s [00:47:01] OG: well [00:47:01] Joe: ultimately gonna be the biggest hill you’ve ever pedaled up? [00:47:05] OG: Really not. Um, there is some evidence to suggest that heat adaptation is similar to altitude, so that will have some help, maybe a little bit. [00:47:14] OG: Um, but no, I’ve got a couple trips planned out west to, to go get a few, uh, a few miles going to field a few reps to see what that’s like. Yeah. [00:47:21] Joe: Good. That’s cool. Go schedule the thing. Stackers, I think, uh, Doug, go schedule it. I see on your calendar here it just says, uh, another dozen donuts. [00:47:32] Doug: Well, that’s ’cause there’s room in the back of my new shirt for the dozen donuts. [00:47:36] Doug: I.

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