Are we overusing popular “helper” apps like DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber? One popular blogger thinks so, which made us ask some of the top podcasters in the money space: do you agree? This simple question helped create a fantastic discussion about the importance of community, real-life neighborhoods, avoiding “using” people while still appreciating them, and so much more. Dr. Bill Yount joins us from the Catching Up To FI podcast. Bill’s a natural community builder, so we were thrilled that he agreed to join Paula Pant (Afford Anything) and Doc G (Earn & Invest) in this wide-ranging discussion.
As always, we’ll also include another EPIC edition of Doug’s trivia in the middle of today’s chat!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch On YouTube:
Our Topic:
We Live in a Society (Millennial Money with Katie)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Costs of “convenience” apps.
- Value added by using the apps.
- DoorDash, RaskRabbit, InstaCart, Uber.
- Sharing economy.
- How to make money on the apps.
- The value of forming real connections with others.
- Why you should know who your neighbors are.
- Valuing your time and not overextending yourself.
- Respecting others’ time and contributions.
- The value of human connection.
- How to balance doing favors for others with respecting your time and energy.
- How to decline requests of your time.
- “Buy nothing” groups.
- The consequences of excessive consumerism.
- How to build the bonds of community.
- How to take initiative to meet others and offer to help.
- How to overcome your fear of meeting new people.
- Giving is a greater gift than receiving.
- The art of reciprocity.
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Bill Yount
Another thanks to Bill Yount for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Bill on his show, Catching up to FI at ‎Catching Up to FI on Apple Podcasts.
Doc G
Another thanks to Doc G for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Doc G on his show, Earn & Invest podcast at Earn & Invest on Apple Podcasts.
Check out his book Taking Stock: A Hospice Doctor’s Advice on Financial Independence, Building Wealth, and Living a Regret-Free Life.
Paula Pant
Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- What year was TaskRabbit created under its original name, RunMyErrand?
DepositAccounts
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Mentioned in today’s show
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Doug: Is this your place? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I live with my mom. Oh yeah. You hungry. Hey, [00:00:07] Joe: ma, can [00:00:08] Doug: we get some meatloaf [00:00:13] live from the basement of YouTube headquarters? It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:28] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s show have TaskRabbit, Instacart, DoorDash, and others taken over your wallet and your life. Has anything been enhanced as they promise today we dive into the favor economy and maybe save you some cash while making you a few more friends. Helping us with this discussion is a guy who’s not only interested in catching up to financial independence, he also likes making new friends. [00:00:54] He’s the host of Catching Up to Five podcast Bill y and the guy who’s always your friend on this show, OG plus the woman who’s helping Manhattanites warm up to the idea of better money skills from afford anything. Paula a pant. And if you know, you know. But for those of you who don’t, at the midway point, we’ll take a break and shine a light on my incredible trivia question. [00:01:20] And now a guy who’s here for the free coffee, like Sanka, it’s Joe Sa Chaw. [00:01:29] Joe: It’s so funny. We’re live here on YouTube and I put, I’m here for the free desserts now. I guess. I’m here for the coffee and desserts. Happy Friday everyone. We’re super happy you’re here with us. And man, I love LOVE, this discussion that we have today, because hopefully we’re gonna not only save you some money in your wallet, we’re also gonna really, hopefully in answer your life if we do this well. [00:01:50] No, the bar is high. Paula Pant is here. Paula, the bar is high. You ready? Are y’all stretched out? [00:01:56] Paula: Ooh, yes. Stretched. Reaching as far as I can. Yeah, this is gonna be [00:02:01] Joe: Olympic caliber. Oh my God. She just showed her guns for people that. For people not watching the video. Don’t mess with Paula. She’ll kick your butt. [00:02:10] The other guy next to her on my screen showing his guns, we’re super happy. He’s here with us from catching up to fights about time. We got him here. Bill y [00:02:18] Bill: Bill. [00:02:18] Joe: How are you? Man, [00:02:19] Bill: this has been a long time coming. I’m excited to be here and dive into this conversation about the little favor economy and how we can improve our lives in our monetary outlay. [00:02:28] Joe: Well, catching up to fi I know is a passion project for you because you are a guy that was trying to catch up. [00:02:36] Bill: Yeah, I, I got a late start. Uh, I was 50 when I woke up to most things financial heck. I didn’t know what a net worth statement was at that point. I mean, I was ignorant with a capital I, [00:02:47] Joe: well, the cool thing is. [00:02:48] You gotta know what assets and liabilities you have. So I guess you do need your net worth statement. I just rarely think of it. Think of it in those terms. So many people don’t think about it at all. Bill, was there like a Phoenix from the flame moment? Was there a wow, I gotta like you woke up one day, did, was there some hard reality that hit? [00:03:06] What was the turning point? [00:03:08] Bill: I turned 50 and I realized nobody else was gonna take care of me. And I was on my own. It was just fear. It was me and my wife against the world and somehow we thought it’ll just take care of itself. And 20 years went by from when we started our jobs and we were at the other end of the funnel of life, as we call it, and we were burgeoning empty nesters and we had to figure our finances out. [00:03:28] Joe: So you and Jackie have an awesome show around this idea you’re talking to and for a lot of other people catching up to Fi. Tell us a little bit about the podcast. [00:03:37] Bill: Oh, this was a little twinkle in my eye maybe two or three years ago, and I was looking for a partner to do this because I needed an accountability partner. [00:03:44] And I first found my first co-host, Becky Hetic. She’s so awesome. She’s [00:03:48] Joe: been on the show. [00:03:49] Bill: Yeah, she is awesome. She has a great story and is sort of the godmother of catching up to Phi uh, e Everybody misses her. Now. I have Jackie Cumminsky as co-hosted the show. She brings a whole new sort of energy to the show. [00:04:01] She was a late starter, grew up in poverty, retired at 49. Uh, I got, I would get to work with some incredible people and we talked to an incredible group of people who feel like they’re the lost generation. They’re the silent generation. Jordan just had a show, uh, with a guest talking about us, and it was nice to hear another show. [00:04:20] Talk about late starters and how do we catch up. [00:04:23] Joe: It’s funny, Jackie, your co-host wrote the book on financial independence, uh, fire for Dummies. Like that’s, that’s a [00:04:31] Bill: exactly right here. I’m the Big D, [00:04:34] Joe: but I love that we can all do it. You don’t have to, you don’t, it doesn’t have to be rocket scientist. I love if we just talked to blogger Darius Farru and he said, you know, I mean the big thing we have available to us is just stop doing dumb stuff. [00:04:45] It’s pretty amazing. Speaking of, you mentioned the name Jordan. We’ve got him here. Jordan Gruman, AKA Doc G is here from Earn and Invest. How are you my friend? [00:04:53] Doc G: I’m doing good and I, I’m, I’m contemplating what Bill just said. This whole idea of we’re just waiting for someone to save us. Right. Just waiting for something to change or someone to do it for us. [00:05:03] And, and not just money, but in life, right? How many of us are at that point where we’re like, things should be better or different, but we’re waiting for someone else to do it for us. So Bill, that really hit me as I was listening to you talk about it. [00:05:13] Joe: Well, and I’m wondering if that’s what’s going on right now. [00:05:15] ’cause for you, does financial independence mean like moving in with other people, being at somebody else’s house and not your own? [00:05:22] Bill: You’re asking me or Jordan because he is living with contractors. [00:05:25] Doc G: Well, [00:05:25] Joe: that’s what I’m saying with Doc [00:05:26] Doc G: G. Yes. Yes. Is that what it takes, doc? Uh, at this point I’m at my parents, so I’m trying to be anywhere but my own house where they’re pretty much on any given day tearing it apart or trying to put it back together. [00:05:38] ’cause we’re doing major construction. So yes, that financial independence to me is being homeless. I’m [00:05:43] Joe: happy. It’s not just me in mom’s basement. It’s not just me. Yeah. [00:05:45] Doc G: Now I’m in, I’m in mom’s extra bedrooms. How about that? [00:05:49] Joe: Perfect. Well, we got a great show today. We’re gonna talk about DoorDash and we’re going to talk about TaskRabbit and all of these other. [00:05:57] Little helper things that the internet has brought us. And we’re gonna question these more than just, are they hurting your wallet? A great friend of ours, Katie, from the Money with Katie podcast, she had a wonderful piece. Uh, and we’ll lead to it on our show notes page. You won’t need to read it to have some fun with us. [00:06:14] But if you’d like to just add to stack your Benjamins dot com and take a look at the show notes. You know what always makes this ex besides Bill y being here. Doc, do you know what also makes Fridays just super special here on the show? Everything. Yes, but there’s one very special thing. It’s the fact that Friday episodes are brought to you by State Farm. [00:06:35] That’s why if you own a small business, whatever your business, you need someone who understands. And that’s where State Farm Small Business Assurance comes in. State Farm agents are small business owners too, and know what it takes. They can help you choose personalized policies that fit your budget. [00:06:50] Small business insurance from State Farm, like a good neighbor State Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today. Not only does State Farm, uh, sponsor every Friday episode now of the Stacking Benjamin Show. We also have a few more sponsors that make this show free. Here is one more and we’ll be right back to kick things off. [00:07:09] We’ve got Paula Pant here. Bill Y is here. Doc G’s here. Let’s get this party started. [00:07:20] All right. As I mentioned in the open, our piece today comes to us from Money With Katie. It begins. Uh, well, before we get to Katie’s piece, let’s just talk about your usage of these apps. Bill, let’s start with you as our guest of honor. You use, uh, TaskRabbit, uh, DoorDash, Instacart, you using these options to make your life easier. [00:07:42] Bill: We use DoorDash. Uh, we’ve used that quite a bit and what’s interesting is we’ve done the delivery only. We don’t meet who’s delivering the food on the other side of the door. We get a text that is there. They disappear and magically the food appears. You don’t have to [00:07:55] Joe: see anybody. [00:07:56] Bill: Yeah, it is a very surreal experience. [00:07:59] It took somebody cooking the food, it took somebody bringing the food, and it’s just like. Instacart. Exactly. It shows up. [00:08:06] Joe: What’s the, because I haven’t, I don’t use DoorDash. What’s the premium you pay to DoorDash? A meal. [00:08:12] Bill: Oh, it’s easily a third of the cost of the meal. It’s not insignificant. [00:08:17] Joe: Paula, uh, you live a busy life there in Manhattan. [00:08:20] I always see every time I go to Manhattan, you got these delivery people and bicycles all over the place. Mm-Hmm. Do you, DoorDash, TaskRabbit, Instacart? [00:08:27] Paula: I use TaskRabbit all the time, constantly for everything. I like to make my own food. Like here, you know, I’ve, I’ve got salmon and couscous in a bowl, I’ve got some grapes. [00:08:38] So personally I prefer groceries in terms of just eating clean. So I’m not big when it comes to Uber Eats or DoorDash, but all my groceries get delivered. It’s all an Instacart kind of thing? Yeah, it’s, uh, technically I use this thing, it’s called Misfits Market, which is imperfect food. So they, it’s like quote unquote ugly produce. [00:08:58] Uh, misshapen produce the stuff that wasn’t beautiful enough to be placed in grocery stores. So the produce is a little bit cheaper. So I place an order there once a week and they deliver all of my groceries to me. But by virtue of having all my groceries delivered, I don’t have a car. I’m able to live car free. [00:09:14] Because otherwise, besides groceries, what else would, besides groceries, home Depot, Ikea, like those are the things you really need a car for. [00:09:22] Joe: Is there an upcharge on those or do you get them at a discount because they’re, they’re misfit. ’cause they’re not pretty. [00:09:28] Paula: I mean, so in my particular case, because I’m using uh, misfit Ugly Produce, there’s a discount on it. [00:09:35] In the case of somebody who is using something like Instacart, which I don’t use, but you know, for Instacart, there’s a premium on that. Oh, sure. I was asking specifically about the misfit stuff. Yeah. With Misfits there’s a discount. Mm-Hmm. [00:09:46] Joe: Yeah. True story. OG Doug and I are, uh, the misfit podcasters. So there’s a discount for each of these shows. [00:09:53] We just make ’em free because who would, who would buy this thing? Doc G, how about you? Do you use DoorDash? Instacart. TaskRabbit? [00:09:59] Doc G: I’m a Luddite. I don’t use almost any of that stuff, although my kids will order something on DoorDash or occasionally my wife will, but I have none of those apps. I think the only one I use regularly is probably Uber. [00:10:11] When I’m out of town, I’ll, you know, use Uber to get a ride. But otherwise, honestly, I don’t use any of that stuff. Is it your wallet? Is it you just, I mean, why? You know, I think, for instance, TaskRabbit, I’m just likely to do it myself. For food, I’m likely to walk over and pick it up myself or use, occasionally we’ll use like the delivery from the place, but I’d rather actually go to the place, sit down and eat. [00:10:35] And so I just don’t find myself using that stuff that much. I just, maybe it’s a generational thing. I just never grew up using those kind of services and so I, I don’t, [00:10:45] Bill: we don’t use them a lot either. I’ve learned to a little bit from my kids and I worry about their generation because they don’t go shopping. [00:10:52] They use these services and it’s a major drain on their finances. My wife and I we’re like two little old people on Sundays. We get in the car, we drive a quarter a mile away. We get in the grocery store, I push the cart, she gets the groceries. It’s a social event for us. [00:11:08] Joe: It’s, it’s nothing like a Saturday that is old people. [00:11:11] I, I hate to say it, bill, but that is an old person thing. I love that too. Hey, let’s, it’s date day. Let’s head to the grocery store. [00:11:18] Bill: Well, we have alternative lifestyles. We wear our similar sweatsuits and go to the movies at noon and have a nap at four. [00:11:24] Joe: Live in the dream. For some of us, our younger listeners, like, what are you talking about? [00:11:28] Wait till you get there, kids. Mm-Hmm. Wait till you will get there and it will be, it’ll be fantastic. I need to do a little bit of a windup after that beginning, ’cause I wanted everybody to hear to what degree you guys use these before we dive into this. But this windup is gonna be a little bit long. [00:11:45] ’cause Katie, I think in this piece goes somewhere where I personally didn’t expect when I started reading this, and I’m just gonna read her open. She says, when we first moved to California, our next door neighbors, a very kind Gen X couple knocked on our door and invited us over for dinner and the following weeks they’d pop over to check in, periodically lending a tool or an extra set of hands. [00:12:06] One day I was stuck in traffic coming back from San Francisco. I texted my neighbor, Hey, can you go over and let beans out in the backyard? It was no problem. I walked their dog the next time they were out of town. Every time we exchanged excess baked goods or text one another to check in about the state of our respective pg e bills. [00:12:21] I feel that sparkling a little reminder. Someone’s looking out for me and I them. I wanna ask about your neighbors because you also live in very different communities from each other. Bill again, we’ll go to you first. Do you know your neighbors? Do you have this type of Katy relationship with the neighbors where you take care of them and they take care of you? [00:12:39] Bill: So I get your intent. Put the new kid on the block. On the spot because he asked you too many trivia questions on an episode he had you on. I, oh, the trivia comes later, my friend. Your episode’s coming out soon. I’m gonna get you back for this one. But no. Um, we met our neighbors when we first moved in because they all invited us over for a get together. [00:12:57] They did? Yeah, they did actually old fashioned. A lot of ’em were actually Gen Xers. A little old fashioned too. We still write thank you notes, that kind of thing. But I have an interesting neighbor story. We got to know one of our neighbors really well. Recently we faced a health crisis. My wife was diagnosed with cancer. [00:13:13] We didn’t know what to do. We were at a loss because somebody told us to do one thing and we didn’t think that was right. We’re both medical professionals. Our across the street neighbor is a gyne, onk surgeon, and my wife had an an issue there. So I called him up on a Saturday and I said, Hey, Jonathan, uh, I don’t know what to do. [00:13:31] My wife just got this, uh, preliminary diagnosis and she needs surgery. What do you think we should do? And he goes, well, I do that. I can take care of that. Uh, have her come into my office Monday and we’ll get this on the road. And I’m like, awesome. And I knew he was good. It wasn’t just the neighbor. I knew he was good. [00:13:48] I specifically sought him out and I felt very fortunate that good ‘ [00:13:51] Joe: cause Bill, not to interrupt you too much, but I’m just thinking, yeah, I gotta shut out back. Like now I’m looking for their neighbor. [00:13:59] Bill: No, no, no. And, and you know, he took great care of her and he got us plugged into a system for other, uh, other health issues. [00:14:06] And without, you know, our neighbor there, we might not have accessed the system in a way that was most beneficial for us. So I am really grateful for good neighbors like State Farm. [00:14:19] Joe: Nice. Wait way, way to keep the sponsor happy. I will text them. Uh, thank you very much. B Bill, can you come back on every week, by the way. [00:14:27] Uh, [00:14:28] Bill: thank you. I I’ll work on that. [00:14:29] Joe: Paula, you live in a high rise building. Mm-Hmm. In a high rise building, do you get to know the neighbors or are the neighbors just, you know, other people you see and smile and wave too? [00:14:39] Paula: Oh yeah. I know a bunch of my neighbors. So my two neighbors in particular, Caitlin and Steve, some of my best friends here in the city, we have exactly what Katie was describing. [00:14:49] Steve has a dog. There are times he’ll text me and he’ll be like, Hey, I’m stuck at a work event. Can you take my dog out for a walk? And similarly, there are times when I, back in March, I was in China, I had a cat sitter who was watching my cats and I was not getting a good feeling about her reliability. [00:15:08] And so I was like, Hey Steve, can you go over and check on them? ’cause I, I have a cat sitter lined up, but I just kind of have a bad feeling about it. Like right now, I, I wanna move my daybed. It’s currently against the wall and I wanna move it to the center of the room, but that’s, it’s a heavy object and I need more hands. [00:15:24] Steve is this weekend, he’s coming over to like, help move the daybed. [00:15:28] Joe: How’d that relationship begin? Was it kinda like Katie said they invited you over for dinner when you were the new person? [00:15:33] Paula: Basically, I saw Caitlin in the lobby and I liked her shoes, so I said, Hey, I like your shoes. We started chatting and we exchanged numbers. [00:15:41] A couple of days later, she was in the elevator with Steve and they realized that they both lived on the same floor. So they started chatting and then a few days later, all of us went out to dinner together and we’ve been really good friends ever since. And then meanwhile there are two new girls. So there was this, there were these neighbors who lived right across the way from me. [00:15:59] They ended up moving to Europe. And so these two new girls have just moved in across the hallway. We’ve been like chatting in the hallway a little bit and we haven’t, I don’t even know their names, so we haven’t formed a friendship yet. But you, I can tell that one is brewing. So one of these days I’m just gonna put a post-it note on their door being like, Hey, come over for wine and then like, leave my name and phone number and apartment number. [00:16:21] So that’s cool. Yeah. Plus my building has all kinds of like community events. Like the other night they had a casino night where we all played blackjack together, you know, they have trivia nights. You can imagine how good I am at that. Um, [00:16:35] Joe: well you’re rocking at our trivia, Paula. [00:16:37] Paula: Exactly, exactly. So yeah, the building has a lot of building, building social events. [00:16:42] Joe: Doc you have on past episodes, talked about you’ve lived in Evanston. I I, I think all your life, I would imagine your neighbor’s situation’s gotta be pretty solid. [00:16:50] Doc G: We moved into our house 20 years ago and what’s been really interesting is, first and foremost, yes, when we first moved in, people brought bread and introduced themselves. [00:17:00] And we got to know on one side we had people who are older than us. So we’ve kind of seen them age and gotten the phone calls in the middle of the night that so and so fell and ran over to help them and those kind of things. And then we had younger neighbors who eventually moved away. But the kind of cool thing about being in the same neighborhood for 20 years is, you know, when we got there, we didn’t have any kids and we were the young ones and we had these older, more established parents who had teenagers. [00:17:20] And then we saw those teenagers go to college and then they left. And newer people came in with the young kids, but then our kids were teenagers. And you really see this lifecycle. I will tell you. The connection is definitely less than it was 20 years ago. We knew our neighbors a lot better than, uh, I think we were involved in their lives. [00:17:37] I mean, our, our next door neighbors still, like when they go outta town, we watch their house and collect packages. And when we go outta town, they do the same for us, but the connection to the neighborhood maybe is a little bit less. We used to have these really vibrant block parties and I feel maybe as an older person in the neighborhood now, we’re not as involved or as you see the younger people there who are kind of going every year, et cetera. [00:17:55] But, but there’s definitely connection there and we definitely, you know, you find that you help each other out. [00:18:00] Joe: Do you think it’s just people being busy? Is it, uh, you don’t have the leadership in the neighborhood? Like why is it not as tight as it used to be? Yeah, I, I [00:18:07] Doc G: wonder, I mean, for instance, in our neighborhood there used to be a group of people who were all very close and you’d see them on summer nights. [00:18:14] They’d all grab their chairs, sit outside and drink wine and eat cheese. And so a lot of that as the group that maybe they were my cohorts, gen X and a little bit older as they kind of moved away and did other things. I think some of that social. Peace has fallen out. Now, I’ll tell you though, there are some people in the neighborhood with much younger kids and you see them congregating. [00:18:34] So the parents with the young kids at the park, there’s a park at the end of our block, so you’ll see them at the park with the other parents, with the younger kids. So I don’t know if some of that is a function of aging, as in we are aging. And so those connections have fallen away because again, our kids are older, et cetera, versus the nature of people has changed. [00:18:52] I’m not sure which it is. [00:18:53] Bill: I used to live in Chicago, and I understand what, uh, Jordan was talking about. I lived in the neighborhood, and Chicago is very neighborhood based. We lived in the Halloween neighborhood. People would bust their kids in from miles around to trick or treat in our neighborhood because, and we would have to buy hundreds of dollars of candy for the amount of kids that came through. [00:19:13] And so we were in the hub of a, spoke of a really eclectic neighborhood, and people could walk to the business district, they could walk to the store. We had block parties. The fire department came around and sprayed us with their fire hose. I mean, it, it was classic Norman Rockwellian stuff. I think it still exists, but it doesn’t quite exist in the same way in our neighborhood here in Knoxville, Tennessee, we’re car-based and you’re, you’re not. [00:19:37] Foot soldiers on the pavement going everywhere you need to go. Running into everybody and then going through their houses for a progressive dinner anymore it sounds like. I wanna move into where Paula lives because they got a lot more going on. [00:19:50] Joe: There Is this serendipity, by the way that happens when you have to walk places. [00:19:54] I do this work on trails in our, my hometown here in Texarkana. And so I’ve read a lot about just the huge things that happen community-wise, when you have to walk and how amazing it is for building communities just to walk places and you know, you just happen to see the same person every day. On the Knicks Creek Trail, which I run three days a week, there is a guy who has a cat on a leash that he’s walking. [00:20:16] Every time I go, we go at the same time, and I don’t know the dude’s name, but he’s really cool. We smile and wave. I feel like he’s my buddy for, for three years now. We just, I know that guy. He’s just a part of our, part of our cool community. But what’s funny is when I was in Detroit, I had the opposite. [00:20:33] Nobody brought stuff over. We moved into our house, our neighbor was. I met him outside one time early on, and he was very shy. And the other neighbors I just never met until, and this is what’s sad, the people across the street, I always kind of felt like we would be good friends with them. They had kids that were a little bit younger than ours. [00:20:53] They looked like the kids were about ready to go to college. And as we were selling our house and selling all of our stuff that came over for our estate sale, and we sat and talked at our estate sale probably for two hours, and I realized these people I’d lived across the road from for two freaking years could have been some of my favorite people. [00:21:11] They were just amazing people. But the sad news was we kind of, we let that go. The title of this piece is We live in a Society and our stackers are wondering, you know, okay, what does that do with DoorDash and TaskRabbit? Or maybe they’re starting to see where we’re going, but I. Where Katie goes next is she says, I’ve seen an uptick in content, hard selling, the little favors economy. [00:21:34] The thesis goes something like this. We’ve been inundated with therapy speak that essentially provides a script to let herself off the hook when we’re not in the mood to show up for people in our lives. That line hit me hard. By the way, if I’m not in the mood to show up for other people, I just go, well, it’s better for me if I don’t help you. [00:21:52] In fact, she says, there’s a paragraph that recommends telling friends you didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to care about them, so could they take their personal crisis elsewhere or schedule a different time to need you? I definitely have felt this uptick just in the universe. I don’t wanna bother people. [00:22:11] Do you think Paula, is this just the marketing of all these companies starting to get to us? DoorDash going. You know, why have your friends while they’re at the restaurant bring you home something? Or why would you, why would you wanna, you know, they’re trying to have an intimate dinner themselves at the restaurant. [00:22:26] Why would you barge in on that? Or why would you ask them to move your bed? Is it marketing? Is it society like, or, or do you even agree with what Katie’s saying here? [00:22:35] Paula: I disagree with what Katie is saying. The issue that a lot of people have faced is that number one, there’s a certain cohort of people who are new, they’re, they’re mobile, right? [00:22:47] And so they have newly moved to a particular place. They don’t know a lot of people yet, and so they don’t yet have people to call on for favors. And so things like TaskRabbit or Uber or Lyft are great in those use cases. There are also people who, it isn’t that they’re not in the mood, they’re just busy. [00:23:07] I mean that like enormously busy. And if something is a genuine emergency, if it’s urgent, if it matters, then sure they’re, they’re willing to take a day off or to rearrange their schedule or something. But if you just need to go to the airport, I mean, I go to the airport one to two times a month, would I be calling on people 24 times, 12 to 24 times a year for airport rides? [00:23:31] That’s just an imposition at that point. And I think the other thing that happens is people, you know, there’s probably an 80 20 or maybe 70 30 split where there are some people who naturally have been fairly good at saying, Hey, I’m at work. I can’t do this. Or they’ll blame an externality, Hey, I, I’ve got a boss. [00:23:52] My boss won’t let me out of my job, so I can’t do this. But then you have another cohort of people, their nature is to be a people pleaser. Their nature is to be agreeable. So their nature is to say yes even when it is a massive imposition, and to not let on how much of an imposition it is. And that particularly gets exacerbated when you have people who have jobs where they’re self-employed, and others conflate flexibility with availability. [00:24:23] They’ll say, well, you’re self-employed, or You have a flexible schedule. That means you are available all the time for everything. And so those people, that particular cohort of people who have flexibility in their schedule get overly burdened and overly called upon. [00:24:39] Joe: I do have people that thought that when I first moved to texa. [00:24:41] People would ask Cheryl, they’re like, so your husband is at home? Like, what the hell does he do all day if he just sits at home? Like, is he just sleeping? Like, what, what, what’s going on? Mm-Hmm. It took a while for them to know about Stacking Benjamins and what I do to go, oh yeah. He’s definitely not, uh, napping during the day, but I don’t, I wish Paula, that it was that logical, like people were as logical as you’re talking about. [00:25:03] I, I just think about when our friend Grant Sier, he was in Detroit for his book tour, and he was talking about the number one thing people were door dashing in New York City was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Now that’s his research, not mine. I haven’t verified that. But if that’s right, the people that are using DoorDash are not people that they’re too busy to, I can’t, I can’t be putting all these spreads on bread myself. [00:25:30] Yeah. It just way too much time. There’s a laziness factor, doc. [00:25:34] Doc G: I mean, it’s the ease economy. And so the ease economy is outsourcing everything. And I’ll tell you, having kids who are of that age, right, a 16 and 19-year-old, they are so used to using that ease economy. And so yes, there’s this issue of you’re spending money on it, but it’s not just that. [00:25:53] It’s also the issue of when someone else comes and asks them for help, they’re much more likely to say, oh, just hire someone to do that. Oh, just use this app. And so what happens is it becomes an imposition because they’re not used to doing things themselves. They’re used to hiring it out. And so when it comes to this article and what we’re talking about, this interconnectedness between people. [00:26:18] What happens when people do come to you for help? And instead of going out and helping them, you say, oh, you know, use this app or hire this person. Um, that chance to connect and help and to be part of a society and to be a neighbor goes away. And I certainly see that in my kids. Like they don’t connect in that way. [00:26:38] And there’s a lot of, like, there’s a lot of conversations in our household going, this is being an adult, or this is being an older teenager. No, you actually have to go do these things. And yes, it’s an imposition and yes, you have two tests tomorrow and yes, it’s unfair that you didn’t sleep well last night, but this is what being a neighbor is or this is what being a human being is. [00:26:58] And you’ve actually, the things they tell me seem difficult to them. And of course I’m an adult and their kids, so it’s always gonna be a little bit skewed, but sometimes they tell me, these things seem so difficult to them. I’m like, no, no, this is just what people do. But I think we’ve lost some of that because people don’t do it anymore. [00:27:14] They hire it out. [00:27:16] Joe: Well, and Katie’s presenting that as really, you know, while we’re talking about being mindful of everybody else’s opinion, I think Paula, the person we’re afraid of, we’re afraid of that person where they’re already overburdened and I don’t wanna overburden them more, you know? Mm-Hmm. I’m, I’m afraid everybody’s that person. [00:27:30] But I think you presented that person as one in four different people. But in my mind, I get rid of the other three and I’m just constantly worried about that one. And I project upon them that, you know what? Everybody’s this person that’s overly, overly busy. [00:27:46] Paula: You know what I think is great about TaskRabbit? [00:27:48] So remember what I said earlier about how my neighbor, Steve, who lives in my building, is coming over this weekend to help me move this, uh, daybed. ’cause I want to basically rotate it 90 degrees from the wall to the middle of the room. I asked him, I said, Hey, do you want me to hire this out on TaskRabbit or I. [00:28:08] Would you be interested in coming over and doing this? And what I told him, I was like, if you come over and do this, whatever money I was going to spend on that TaskRabbit guy, I’ll use it to buy you beer. You know, we’ll go out for drinks afterwards. And so by virtue of phrasing it like that, a. He knew that I had a viable backup and a viable alternative. [00:28:31] Yeah. And so he wasn’t saying yes out of guilt if, if he thought that I had no other alternative, he might have said yes out of guilt because he would have felt as though my lack of alternative was his problem. But instead, because I was able to ask the question in the framework of. Here are two options. [00:28:51] They’re gonna cost me equally as much. Frankly, if I take you out for beers, it’s actually gonna cost me more. ’cause I’m gonna be matching you one for one. So it’s actually gonna cost me double, you know, like, so you know. But here are two options. Like TaskRabbit’s the cheaper way. Yeah, exactly. Actually, yes. [00:29:06] TaskRabbit would be cheaper. TaskRabbit would be cheaper. And [00:29:09] Joe: you don’t get a hangover with [00:29:10] Paula: TaskRabbit. [00:29:12] Joe: Should that be their new tagline? Paula TaskRabbit? No Hangover. [00:29:15] Paula: Yes. TaskRabbit would be both cheaper and healthier. DoorDash [00:29:20] Bill: is interesting because DoorDash is invisible, right? And, but I mentioned my wife got sick before and she needed healthcare. [00:29:26] It was a crisis for us. And if you, how you show up for the small things is how you show up for the big things. And we’ve gotta teach our kids to show up for the small things. ’cause they may not show up for the big things. We were overwhelmed. My wife was recovering. It was hard to go to the grocery store. [00:29:40] It was hard to cook a meal. We were exhausted. What our friends did was create a meal train. You know, we could have door dashed every night and somebody invisible could have shown up with food for us for weeks. But, you know, friends of ours created a two to three week meal train where they not only showed up with the food home homecooked with the love that they had for us, but they would stay for dinner if we were up for it. [00:30:02] So it was a much different experience. Are we gonna DoorDash life or are we going to open the door, greet the people in our lives, they’re showing up for us. We’ll show up for them. Is it going to be a reciprocation or a fragmentation? [00:30:16] Doc G: Yeah. Uh, duck. Hey, I a hundred percent agree with what Paul said, and I, I love that tactic. [00:30:20] I think that’s a wonderful tactic. The only thing that really interests me there though, is to point out like this concept of I have an issue and so I. I go to someone for help, but one of the ways they may interpret it is how does your issue become my problem? And what I guess the difference is unless someone’s doing that over and over again. [00:30:40] Right. So, so if someone’s doing that every day, it, it really becomes like, how is your issue, my problem? But otherwise, why isn’t the default in a sense, your issue is my opportunity. And this gets back a little bit to community and society and being there for other people and those, you know, the ties that bind. [00:30:58] I think if you go back generations, you find that it was much more your needs. Your asking for help is my opportunity to do my part, to be part of society, to be a good neighbor, to do all those things. And I think that’s morphed very much in today’s economy to. Why are you bothering me? I’ve got enough on my plate. [00:31:21] Joe: Yes, right. It is funny how, and I love the way Katie says this, that the therapy thing is the self-care thing is to not be around other people, Paula. [00:31:33] Paula: Well, I think also it skewed in terms of who receives those requests and who is expected to respond to those requests. So I think whether in today’s society or going back generations, it wasn’t equally distributed amongst a hundred percent of people. [00:31:50] It was predominantly the people whose schedules were viewed as more flexible and whose time was viewed as less valuable. Those were the people who had an undue proportion of those favors, requested of them. I’ll give an example from my own life. So a few years ago. I have two biological sisters. One of them lives in Australia, and she and her husband and their two kids came from Australia to the United States. [00:32:18] And this is, uh, back when I was living in Las Vegas. So they came to the United States and they were, they were doing like a month trip in the US which was great. And they were visiting lots of family everywhere. They came to visit me in Las Vegas. And they asked me, they said, could you drive us to Los Angeles? [00:32:36] You know, can you drive us? Wow. Yeah. Can you drive us from Las Vegas to Los Angeles because they wanted to visit some other family in la. I had a really hard time trying to defend. I said, no, but I could tell that they were really put off by that because they were like, but you make your own schedule. You know, it would be one thing if you had a boss who said, no, you, you can’t have the time off, but you make your own schedule. [00:33:06] There’s no boss who says that you don’t get those days off. So why is it that even though you have the ability to make your own schedule, even though you don’t have a boss, you’re not in school, you don’t have to go to class, you don’t have a boss forcing you to come into the office yet, you’re still saying no. [00:33:22] And that was actually one of those moments where I had to go, I was meeting with a therapist at the time and I talked to her about it and I was like, what do I do? And she was like, you need to tell them that you have deadlines. And I was like, oh, that’s a good idea. But I mean that’s, it’s just a perfect example of if your schedule is viewed as flexible. [00:33:42] Then it becomes reasonable to ask you for a ride from Las Vegas to Los Angeles versus if I was a school principal or something. Right, right, right. [00:33:50] Joe: Yes. Yeah. If you were Paula, the mayor, right? Yeah. Going to a set construction site or something. Or in a series of meetings all day. Right. I wanna pick this up after our very, very poor, we are, we are way late for the very important part of the show, but in the second half, I wanna, I wanna get to kind of the tactics. [00:34:09] ’cause I don’t think, Paula, that you’re disagreeing with the, the piece of there is community and we need this community and we need to figure out how to be a part of the community. And so I really like where you were starting to lead us there, which was. How do we, how do we phrase this? What are the nos and the yeses? [00:34:26] Like what’s the etiquette? You know what I mean? I, so I don’t go to that same person all the time. And how do I kind of look at this as a quid pro quo? Assuming that you do agree with the premise that we are part of the society and we should wanna contribute and maybe we’ll save some money in our wallet or pay more to Paul point, or [00:34:45] Paula: pay more and pay more and destroy your liver. [00:34:47] Joe: Yes, it sounds like a win-win win, win win, win for them. Win for me. Win for my liver. Well, lost for my liver, I suppose. Uh, we’re gonna do thou that in the second half of the show, it’s gonna be a little, uh, less than the second half, uh, uh, looking at the time. But at the midway point of our show, we have this year long trivia question, this trivia challenge where our three contributors are going head to head for this just awful dollar store trophy that makes its rounds every year. [00:35:16] Bill, we’ve got good news and bad news about you competing. In this shindig. Do you want the good news first or the bad news? [00:35:24] Bill: I’m an ER doc. I’ll take the bad news first. [00:35:27] Joe: Well, the bad news is you’re not winning. The good news is there’s two pieces of good news. Number one is that you’re in second place ’cause you’re gonna be playing for, uh, my mom, who, as you know, does not do the stairs, doesn’t wanna be bothered. [00:35:39] So you’re playing for mom and she’s got eight points. The other good news, pretty much good news. Besides that, the other good news is that you get to go before Paula. ’cause as Paula alluded to earlier. She really is great at a ton of stuff, bill, but not at this. She’s got six. Mom’s got eight, and OG pulled even a little further ahead last week by beating Lauren Williams, the Olympian, at, uh, at, at, I was sure Lauren was gonna win that one. [00:36:04] Paula, I was so sure she was gonna win that one, but OG takes the win last week. So OG is 11, mom’s got eight and Paula has six. And we always keep the G’s together. So Doc G, you’re playing for og. I think that’s, uh, that’s a good one. [00:36:18] Doc G: Don’t, don’t worry. I’ll pull ’em down. Don’t worry. I’ll give, I’ll, I’ll give more of a crazy answer than you, Paula, any day. [00:36:24] Don’t worry [00:36:26] Joe: the answer. For people that are new to this show, even if the answer is between one in 10, doc G will say a million. Like it’s, it’s pretty good. Doug. Uh, what’s our question today? We gotta have a question so we can figure out who’s gonna win this thing. [00:36:43] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug, and I’m taking the under on this discussion. What do I mean? Who needs friends? When I can hire a perfectly good stranger, eh, sure. My social connections might be worse to start off with, but if I hire enough people, sooner or later, one of them will be willing to come back and look at my record collection. [00:37:03] I never get why nobody ever says yes to that offer. I mean, I’ve got old cheat and Chong. I got, uh, Mariah Carey. It’s really good stuff to make sure I can make small talk with these new friends. I looked up TaskRabbit Online. Turns out they are now owned by a subsidiary of Ikea. Have been since 2017. Where have I been? [00:37:23] Does that mean that a guy who looks like, uh, like a squiggly line, he’s only got a profile like this triangle nose, he’s gonna come to my house and figure out what all these drawings really mean on my Ikea assembly guides. That’d be a nice start. Hey, here’s the start, middle and finish to today’s trivia question. [00:37:39] What year was TaskRabbit created under its original name? Run my errand of course, with no spaces ’cause it’s the internet and you gotta make brand names like that. I’ll be back right after I see if I can hire someone to come talk to me about the history of El Caminos. That’d be fun. [00:37:57] Joe: Alright, Doug is off to, uh, look up if TaskRabbit will help him with that. [00:38:02] Doc, you’re going first. TaskRabbit, when was it first created? What year? I’m [00:38:07] Doc G: gonna say 1998 as run my errand. [00:38:11] Joe: Is there a logic train behind that or is that just feeling [00:38:14] Doc G: good? Well, I, I don’t know. I know that TaskRabbit, yeah, I mean, I, I think I’m thinking that I never heard of it before the two thousands, and usually I’m hearing about it late, so I assume that it was around before then. [00:38:30] So 1998 just sounds good to me, but eh, who knows? [00:38:33] Joe: Bill, you think that’s early or late? [00:38:36] Bill: I think that’s around one. I was thinking I was, I’m gonna say 2000 because I’m going.com. I’m going back to that bubble. [00:38:43] Joe: So they were, they were part of that first iteration of, uh, what they call it then, uh, web 2.0 or [00:38:49] Bill: Yeah, that’s what I think. [00:38:50] So I’ll take 2000 for the win. [00:38:54] Joe: Well, well, Paula gets to go last, which should be a good thing someday, Paula, that’ll end up working in your favor. But you’ve got 1998 and 2000. What are you thinking? [00:39:03] Paula: That’s quite a narrow band. So if I have to capture one, either the under or the over, I’m gonna capture, here it comes. [00:39:10] Yeah, I’m, I’m gonna capture the over, so I’m gonna guess 2001, though. I’m capturing that is [00:39:16] Bill: just not fair. I feel so used. [00:39:20] Doc G: Welcome to the trivia segment. Bill. Welcome to the trivia segment. That’s the way this works, bill. That’s the, [00:39:26] Bill: you disadvantage your mom by making her go in the middle. You, [00:39:31] Joe: you know, bill, you gotta feel right at home and a member of the family when, when Paula can do that to you. [00:39:35] ’cause she only does that to friends. Alright, doc G is 1998. Bill’s got 2000. Paula’s got 2001. Who’s right? We’ll let you know in a minute. We’ll be right back. I. Doc, you kicked all this off by saying 1998. Both Bill and Paula thought it was later. How you feeling now after you heard everybody else’s answers? [00:39:54] Doc G: Oh, I’m feeling great because no matter what, I’m within three years right of everyone else. So it doesn’t matter how later I win or not, I couldn’t be that far away from everyone else. So I’m feeling good about that. [00:40:08] Joe: There are two things so far in this show that I think are cute. The first thing is, I think it’s, I think it’s cute that you don’t care if you win or not. [00:40:14] You’re within three years of everybody else, which gives you orb fuzzy, like you’re not a million away, so that’s good. The second thing, by the way, that I forgot to shine a light on earlier, I thought it was cute when Bill said that the fire department sprayed him off with a fire hose and he didn’t get what was really going on there. [00:40:28] Like he thought it was all just funny games. [00:40:32] Bill: Well, I feel really good because they, they both chose answers near mine, so I’m right there in the middle. [00:40:39] Joe: It is nice being in the middle of that sandwich bill, but if it’s you’re warm [00:40:42] Bill: and cozy, I, it feels good. [00:40:44] Joe: If it’s 2000, you got it. If it’s 99, you get to tie with Doc. [00:40:47] So that’s, that’s not bad. And Paula, you’ve got 2001 until now. How are you feeling? [00:40:53] Paula: I, you know, I, I mean, just, just watch it be 1999. That’s, that’s gonna be amazing. [00:40:59] Joe: I was gonna say, Paula, who cares how you feel? Because how many times have we played this record? [00:41:05] Paula: I know, right? No, when, uh, in all seriousness, when I heard the question, my first thought was that smartphones and apps became a thing right around what, 2010 to 2012? [00:41:17] Somewhere in there. That was when we moved from like the, the phones where you had to press the button, like, you know, five, five five to the actual smartphones that we know today. That’s right. [00:41:29] Joe: That was so fun just to spell the [00:41:31] Paula: Yeah, exactly. Nine presses. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, so I mean, I, my guess in all honesty is that TaskRabbit probably formed as an app, so therefore probably would’ve formed in the smartphone era, which would be like 2012 plus. [00:41:50] So I feel, but I mean, I’ve got the whole upside after 2001, so I feel great. [00:41:55] Joe: So your true guess is, is 2012. Yeah, 2012 ish. That, that’s like your flex guess. Yeah, I bet it’s 1999. [00:42:02] Paula: I know you’re right. Watch. Right, right in the center, like July 15th, 1999, like right in the center of the year. [00:42:10] Joe: Of course, uh, Doug. [00:42:11] We need a winner who’s, uh, got this thing. [00:42:18] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m your very own friend for hire. You know, if you got enough cash in your pocket, it’s Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Doug. I looked on TaskRabbit during the break and there are no El Camino experts. That’s a slot I can fill in their lineup. Hey, here’s a slot our contributors tried to fill. [00:42:36] What year was TaskRabbit originally called? Run my errand. Found it. Created by entrepreneur, Leah Busk, a former IBM engineer who came up with the idea when she needed dog food and didn’t have time to get it herself. TaskRabbit now is in over 61 cities and in 2022, closed all of its offices to become a 100% virtual company. [00:43:01] So in answer to the question, what year did Leah start TaskRabbit? The correct answer is 2008. Ah, Pollant [00:43:12] Doc G: for the win. [00:43:13] Paula: Wow. [00:43:14] Doc G: Huap pants. Yes. Yes. Taken home the win. See, I was only 10 years off. That’s not much. I mean in the realm of time, space, time continuum here. 10 years. It’s pretty close. [00:43:26] Joe: Bill, you ever seen the Northern Lights? [00:43:28] Bill: No. I look forward to it someday on the list. [00:43:31] Joe: Well, uh, seeing the Northern Lights is actually easier than seeing Paula win a trivia question. [00:43:39] Bill: Well, I mean, she’s nailed it. Scientific and so smart. I mean, she probably overthinks it is my thought, but we gave her a lot of room here today, so I’m glad we could come in for the wind for Paula bit. [00:43:49] Joe: Nice. Bill’s like. You’re welcome, Paula. Yeah. Time for the second half of this shindi. Let’s get back to our discussion about TaskRabbit, DoorDash and society, uh, neighborhoods and getting to know the people around us. Second half of this show is brought to you by deposit accounts.com. Bill, you know what happens when you go to deposit accounts.com? [00:44:07] Bill: You deposit something, [00:44:08] Joe: you, you, you get a deposit of some knowledge because what you find, it’s one of my favorite parts of the show every Friday. ’cause we get to see. How interest rates are with savings accounts, CDs, checking accounts, and money markets at the top banks versus the rest. We compare more than 275,000 deposit rates from over 11,000 banks of credit unions for free today. [00:44:32] The national average of savings account rates in the country is 0.51%. That’s of all the banks out there. If you’re in the top 1%, which is still hundreds of banks, 4.95, that’s down a little bit I think. I think last week, Paul, we were at like 5.01, so we slipped back below 5%. Deposit accounts.com where you can check out savings accounts, CDs, checking. [00:44:53] Find out by the way, what banks those are that have the top rates and it’s easy to compare, ditch, switch and save. The first thing I wanna ask you guys is this, Katie brings up how some groups try to make this better rather than having this be an expense. We could do something. My sister does this, she’s part of a buy nothing group and I know a lot of people in the financial independence community part of these buy nothing groups. [00:45:17] Katie goes, we are turning, you know, this thing into, in, into, uh, I truly don’t understand why, but it sounds like she’s really negative here. Doc G about, uh, these buy nothing groups as well. Are you negative on buy [00:45:31] Doc G: nothing groups? I’ve never participated in them. I just, yeah, in a sense, I guess that’s fine. [00:45:36] I believe in buying things. I like buying things. In fact, I love buying things, especially things that make my life better. So I guess I’m not about buying nothing. It, it’s a great mechanism, especially if you’re like at one of those places in your life where frugality really is important and you feel like you need to tighten up your budget or, I really love this idea if you’re into environmentalism. [00:45:58] So that’s one of those places which I really love. ’cause if you’re like, I wanna buy nothing ’cause I don’t wanna add to the clutter and the junk of the world and the plastic and all that. I think it’s wonderful. [00:46:06] Joe: Like Sean Malaney said, remember when we were, we heard him at at Camp Phi Southwest. Our good friend Sean Malaney said, it is wild when you walk into a Walmart or a Target and then you realize that one day, no matter how much attention people pay to all this stuff, it’s all gonna end up in a landfill. [00:46:23] And you go, oh my God. Now every time I walk into any. Any place that’s selling a bunch of stuff and I look around, I go, oh my, this is all gonna be in a landfill. He’s not wrong. Okay. [00:46:32] Doc G: And now compare that to the other way around, which is buying things you value from people you believe in and supporting the makers of those products or services which you think add to the world. [00:46:43] Like, I like that look better. Maybe it’s just a little more positive for me, but I think the same idea goes behind them. [00:46:50] Joe: But Bill, when it comes to these buy nothing groups, I mean there’s nothing that stops us and being friends with these people, this could widen your friend group. [00:46:56] Bill: Um, I’ve heard people talk very passionately about them for reasons that Jordan has, uh, elucidated. [00:47:01] I have not personally participated. I probably should get my hangers, as Katie talks about from these buy nothing groups. I probably should get a tour of a landfill. You know, we go on tours with Target and Walmart. Uh, when was the last time I ever saw landfill? Where are they? It would probably blow my mind to see one in real life. [00:47:18] Joe: Just the stuff I saw this morning online. I saw one designer did a fashion show. From a landfill where they famously drop all kinds of clothing and, and these models just took clothing from the landfill and put it on, and it was, it was all really nice clothing that had gone there to die. And it was, it was before its time. [00:47:38] And [00:47:38] Bill: you were there watching the models. You weren’t looking for the clothes at all. [00:47:42] Joe: All they had clothes. Oh, [00:47:44] Paula: Paula buy nothing. Groups. So here’s the, the issue is that oftentimes with a buy nothing group, with flea markets, with and anything of this nature, oftentimes people are not going there to look for something specific. [00:47:58] People are going there to browse and they come home with knickknacks and junk, and it becomes clutter that fills their basement and their garage. If there is something really specific that you want or need, like this microphone stand that I’m using right now. There is a very, very low probability that I would’ve gotten a microphone stand from a buy nothing group. [00:48:20] It’s an extremely specific requirement that’s that I needed during a very, uh, limited window of time. If your acquisition of material goods is limited to, I only get very specific things that I need that are pre-written on a list. I write out this list, and once or twice a month I go and get everything that’s on my list. [00:48:46] Then you know that you’re limiting your acquisition of new items to only the things that you actually need. But if you’re just randomly browsing, you just end up getting more stuff that you really don’t need. Now, in this particular case, if you’re not buying it, if it’s just sort of a trade, okay, fine. [00:49:04] That’s a, that’s a cool hobby, I guess, if that’s how you wanna spend your free time. But I don’t see that being a. Legitimate not, not legitimate, that’s not the right word. I don’t see that being like efficacious in eff efficacious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. [00:49:25] Joe: I think, let’s put it in a different way. You’re saying intention is everything. [00:49:27] Paula: Exactly. Exactly. You’re [00:49:29] Joe: welcome. [00:49:30] Paula: Right? It, it’s not eff I was gonna, my garbled way of saying it is, it’s not efficacious in the procurement of items that you genuinely need in order to function in your day-to-day life. Doc, what do you think about efficacious procurement? [00:49:49] Doc G: So many wrong things just went through my head there that I don’t even know where to, I don’t even, I don’t even know where to start. You’ve, you’ve made me speechless here. [00:49:57] Joe: That’s a first for everything here. Uh, let’s talk about that doc, what Paula brought up earlier. Let’s just go there now. I wanted to, I wanted to ask first about that question specifically of, you know, these buy nothing groups and can you actually clean this up online? [00:50:12] Maybe you can, maybe you can, I think is where we land there, but, but let’s go back to the neighborhood because your neighborhood is not as together as it used to be. Like, is there some etiquette around how you meet the neighbors and, and how you kind of play this game? Do you have some thoughts for our stackers on, okay, I wanna start becoming more of this, you know, uh, a part of my society, maybe then I’ll lower my cost to these apps that quote, make it easier for me. [00:50:41] Where do you kind of, where do you start there? [00:50:43] Doc G: Well, I, I love the welcome to the neighborhood if you wanna be a good neighbor and if you wanna start connecting with the people around you and eventually benefit from the fact that you’re now a society of people who help each other. I. I think when someone moves into your neighborhood, you should knock on their door and say hello or bring them, like someone brought us a loaf of bread from Panera back in the day when a loaf of bread from Panera meant something right Back 20 years ago. [00:51:03] Like I think that’s a really good way to start. So you never want to have one of your first main interactions with someone that you barely know being, Hey, can you help me with this thing? It’s much more how do we kind of build those bonds of community, right? So first thing you welcome them to your neighborhood. [00:51:18] I love community get togethers, right? If you have block parties or if you get community dinners or those kind of things. Something where people, especially in the beginning, can just show up and be a part of something. I also think that there is just, you know, being a good neighbor, so for instance. When we moved into our neighborhood, as I was saying, I’ve watched people age in and age out and the people next door to us, I’ve, you know, watched them get older and older and they’re in their eighties now. [00:51:43] And so, you know, it’s just normal. When we go to shovel our snow, we generally will just then shovel their path and shovel up their stairs. It’s just what we do it, I don’t even think of it as different. It’s just part of me shoveling my snow now. Um, and so I think give where you can and be generous where you can. [00:52:00] And then it makes the other side much easier when you are in a bind when you do need something, whether it’s it’s a lemon because you don’t have what you need for your recipe or something bigger. Like, Hey, you know, I’m really in a bind here. Can you drive me to the airport? When you get to that stuff that’s a little bigger, you actually have real connections there. [00:52:20] And so I think that’s how you do it. [00:52:21] Joe: Yeah. [00:52:22] Doc G: Well I [00:52:23] Joe: love that idea because I love the idea of don’t wait for them, you be the catalyst and make it a positive catalyst. ’cause I think about those neighbors across the street I mentioned earlier. I remember one time Cheryl said, uh, you know, I made extra cookies. [00:52:36] I’m just gonna take ’em across the street and I’m gonna reach out. And I remember telling her, I’m like, they never reached out to us. Like the whole, we, we’ve lived here for like a year. What the hell? Well, no, don’t take Ali. I got a great home for those cookies. And I think that was stupid on my part. Even though we’d lived there for a year, I should have taken the, taken the lead and it turned out I was the worst for it. [00:52:55] And you, you know, it’s a trick [00:52:56] Doc G: too. We each have unique gifts and those are the easiest things to volunteer. So I’m a doctor, I know about medical stuff. So when the people next door, when one, you know, the gentleman fell and needed help getting up, like it was really easy for me to run over there and help him. [00:53:11] And I know about how you hurt yourself when you fall, and I know about the safe ways to help someone get up. And so that’s, that’s my wheelhouse. Like that’s my natural gift. Something I’m good at. It doesn’t take me a lot of energy. To then offer those type of things to other people. Um, but then I do think that engenders returns in a more connected neighborhood. [00:53:32] Bill: I mean, what do we really own in life? We own our time, we own our skills, we own what we can control. And I’m a doctor too. And you know, I get calls later at night from friends saying, I got this problem. What do I do? And I welcome those calls because it’s taking advantage of a skill that I have that I can share with the village, share with the community that I’m in, share with my friends to maybe hopefully help them avoid going to the ER or to access the system in a different way so that their anxiety is alleviated. [00:53:59] I give of those things kind of generously because, you know, I train for my work where I go earn money, but I earn a life in helping others for no reason at all. Other than that they have a need [00:54:09] Joe: that is specifically Bill. Why? When I saw this piece, I thought of you and having you on here because as a guy who’s an introvert in real life and who, um, you know, I struggled to just go say hi to people. [00:54:21] I don’t know. I hang out with Bill YI don’t know Paula or Doc, if you guys have hung out with Bill Young at a conference. Mm-Hmm. But this guy goes up and talks to fricking everybody. Mm-Hmm. Like just everybody. And by the time the conference ends, I don’t think there’s anybody in a 2000 person conference that doesn’t know who Bill is. [00:54:37] And, and he’s on a first name basis with him. Like, like I I love that. So for our introverts out there, bill, how do you kind of force yourself out of this? Well, it’s therapeutic for me to be alone, to know I really need to be a part of this society and get my ass out there. [00:54:53] Bill: Well, I have a conference hack for you. [00:54:54] I mean, we go to conferences by ourselves often. Sometimes we go with our spouses, but often we’re going by ourselves. When I go to a conference, I’ll book a dinner, uh, a table for eight. And during the day in the conference, I’m going around to people saying, Hey, you wanna have dinner tonight? Do you have any plans? [00:55:08] I go to the speakers, everybody is going to eat. Why not eat together? Uh, so I mean, there’s a little hack for that. You don’t have to eat alone. You’re only eating alone if you choose to do so. [00:55:17] Joe: By the way, one of my longtime stackers know that’s one of my favorite books. Never eat alone. Uh, Keith Ferrazzi, have you read that book? [00:55:24] Bill: No, not yet, but I will know. [00:55:25] Joe: It’s a great book. My favorite meme of any book is a dude who’s sitting in his, uh, workplace break area by himself, reading, never Eat Alone. So just, just fantastic. Paula, you talked about this idea of, Hey, this isn’t mandatory and I’ve got this backup, so, so don’t feel bad about saying No. [00:55:44] I love that. Mm-Hmm. Is there also kind of a quid pro quo thing going on though, between you and Steve? Like, you know, if if I help Steve, Steve will help me, then I’m one up, or is it not that? I [00:55:57] Paula: mean, the phrase quid pro quo sounds a bit too transactional. I think Steve knows that if he ever needs help, he’ll call me, and on occasion that’s happened, like mostly it’s dog related stuff. [00:56:09] If he’s being held late at work and he knows that his dog needs to be taken out, he’ll text me and be like, Hey, can you take out Ollie? That actually doesn’t happen that often. Over the four years that I’ve known Steve, he has certainly helped me out significantly more than I’ve ever helped him. So you owe him? [00:56:27] Yeah, I do, I do. Big time for sure. [00:56:31] Joe: But you know what’s interesting about that is, you know, you talked earlier about the people that get picked on all the time. Mm-Hmm. I think to some degree Paula, then there is, you know, you’re right, it’s very transactional, but in your head there should be a little bit of quid pro quo. [00:56:43] Like, how many times have I asked this person for help versus them? Like, do I, do I go back to this? Well, for the 87th time. Yeah. Because there are some people I feel like pick on me all the time and I’m like, man, I’m, I’m not your buddy as much as you think that I am. [00:56:58] Paula: Yeah. That’s [00:56:58] Bill: probably what [00:56:58] Joe: Steve is thinking about me right now. [00:57:01] Bill: There’s an art to giving and there’s an art to receiving and, you know, we’re, we’re used more to receiving and giving is where everything starts. Just like Paula said, you know, I’m gonna go put a post-it note on somebody’s door and saying, Hey, we’re having wine here at seven. Be here. Uh, you’re giving them an opportunity and they’re gonna want to take it because of out of sheer curiosity. [00:57:24] And who wouldn’t wanna meet Paula anyway? [00:57:26] Joe: Well, you also find over time, like this is a big aha for me. Giving is where the fun is. Mm-Hmm. You would never think that. You always think when you grow up, you know that receiving is where it’s at. Like, wow, I got a gift. How cool is that? The biggest gift is giving a gift. [00:57:39] Like, that’s kick ass. But Paula, you, you were gonna say. [00:57:42] Paula: Oh, well, so, uh, going back to the reason that I keep calling on Steve for favors is he’s the friend in the building with a giant toolbox. He’s the guy who’s got like the drill and the Yeah, like, and so he’s the one who can do that handy person kind of stuff. [00:57:57] Whereas like, I can help you set up a podcast, you [00:58:01] Joe: know, I can edit your next memo at work. [00:58:04] Doc G: Here’s what I love about that. So what you were doing is, what we were talking about a little bit is basically that’s Steve’s gift, right? This is what he’s good at. Mm-Hmm. But you can clear the deck by taking him out to dinner. [00:58:13] Mm-Hmm. You can clear the deck by saying, Hey, I have this, you know, well, he’s, he’s married, but let’s say he was single. You could be like, Hey, I have this girlfriend. I think you guys would do really good together. Let me set you up. Like there’s so many different ways where you can show your appreciation for Steve, and he’ll probably wanna help you in the future. [00:58:31] Like, take him out to dinner, buy him a six pack. I saw this great bottle of wine, I thought you’d like it and you’ve been so great to me here. I wanted to just get you something and [00:58:38] Joe: that like, well, and how fun is that, Jordan? How fun is that? Spending your time and your energy, thinking about what would light somebody else up like. [00:58:46] Those are also some of my best moments of the day and people forget [00:58:49] Doc G: to professionally, like for instance, Joe, you and I and Paul, you and I, and Bill, you and I, all of us work very collaboratively together, and so it’s one of my favorite things is when I hear someone talking about like, no, no, no, you should have Joe on your show to talk about this. [00:59:01] Like Joe is the expert in this thing. You should really have him on your show or, or you should take Paula’s class because Paula, she has this course about real estate and it’s like, I’ve heard people rave about it. You should take Paula’s course. So like, there’s so many different ways, right. To integrate that and to just be giving and like, so, so that you don’t have to keep scoring. [00:59:21] Joe: Yeah. Or you say, Bill’s been been sprayed by a fire hose. He knows all about that half that guy [00:59:26] Bill: fire hose. I mean, it’s hard to feel in depth to someone else and it’s hard to give without expecting or letting the other person think that they’re should expect something in return. You know, these things are arts as opposed to, uh, you know, hard skills. [00:59:42] We have to learn them and, and not let people feel that they need to return the favor. [00:59:49] Joe: Hmm. Yeah. It is, I’m a hundred percent with you. And being mindful too, that the same people get picked on all the time and knowing who that is, spreading that around a little bit. It just amazed me how cultural this is. [01:00:00] I want to end on this note. Paula, I remember when I was in Kaman, do. I went to the airport and you know, Katie in this piece and you guys brought up earlier, like going Uber, right? I felt like we were the only people that Ubered to the airport. ’cause everybody else brought their whole damn family to the airport. [01:00:15] Paula: The airport trip is a big one there, but, but also people fly a lot less there. Yeah. People don’t [01:00:19] Joe: take business trips there, they’re not going two or three times a month like you were talking about. [01:00:23] Paula: Yeah, yeah. Over there it’s like you’ve spent years and year, you’ve, you, four years ago you applied for a tourist visa to the uk and four years later you finally got it. [01:00:34] So it’s this big, big, big life event. [01:00:37] Joe: People have no idea what I’m talking about. Uh, we got to the airport, I was sure security was gonna be six hours long ’cause there were so many people there. I got through security in about five minutes because I would say one outta 25 people were flying. Yeah. The rest of people were there to say goodbye. [01:00:53] Yeah. Which was really cool. I just thought it was really, you know, this idea that I’m burdening somebody, a family member or somebody to, to go to the airport. I actually remember og, you know, saying one time to me, he’s like, he’s like, why wouldn’t Cheryl Uber, just Uber home from the airport? Why are you going to pick her up? [01:01:08] I’m like. Because it’s my spouse and I wanna say hi. Plus, Paula’s been to our airport. Tell us how our Uber works. Paula. Oh, in exa. Oh my goodness. [01:01:18] Paula: That Uber. Oh, from the, I have attempted to Uber from the Texarkana airport. It did not go well. It’ll just put it that way. [01:01:26] Joe: I think it was an hour and a half after the plane landed. [01:01:28] Wow. You finally made it to our house. [01:01:30] Paula: Oh. I literally was like, I, I reached the point where I was like, okay, I can sleep on this table. I can, I can pull the sweater over myself and tie it around my eyes. There’s a vending machine right here, so I won’t be in a caloric deficit, you know, it’s one o’clock [01:01:46] Joe: in the morning. [01:01:47] Yeah. Just so people don’t think I’m a complete jerk. Why didn’t I come get her? I wasn’t in town. I wasn’t there. You were in [01:01:51] Paula: Nepal, ironically. In You were in Nepal. [01:01:55] Joe: Yeah. That’s funny. [01:01:57] Paula: But yeah. But in Nepal, yeah. The whole family goes to the airport. But that’s because you are 40 years old and boarding and airplane for the first time in your life, you know? [01:02:06] Mm-Hmm. So that’s why. It’s such a major life event, [01:02:10] Joe: but just as a guy that was a back to community, just as a guy that was a stranger there and seeing these people, it lit me up. It was that, yeah, community I think is that important to us. As you all can hear, I really love this piece. I think it’s worth, worth reading. [01:02:23] Great job, Katie. We’ve linked to it in the show notes. If you’d like to take a look. We’re gonna end here the way that we end every show, which is every Friday, which is finding out what these brilliant contributor ours are up to. Uh, we’ll have our guest of honor go last doc, what’s happening at the Amazing Earn and Invest podcast. [01:02:40] By the way, I had somebody pitch me. I. Just, uh, this week Who said, this guy’s going on a bunch of hit shows like Earn and Invest and then list a couple other big shows. It, it was, it was just cool. Seeing Earn and Invest was the first thing that the PR rep was telling me that I had to have this guy on. [01:02:58] Yeah, I I, I paid them. I’m like, right [01:03:00] Doc G: Joe. And tell Joe that’s what you gotta do. Tell Joe that he’s been on some really great shows, including First Earn Invest. Um, so you asked what’s happening on Earn and Invest. We are crossing the red line, that line you’re not supposed to cross. I have Physician Dish Path on from the frugal physician and we are talking of all things politics. [01:03:24] So we are talking about the presidential election and what that means to our finances. Uh, we don’t go deep into I like this candidate versus, I don’t like this candidate, but more about. Are there stark differences about what these candidates are offering? And specifically, what are some dos and dotes around what might be a stressful situation, which is a presidential campaign? [01:03:46] Very, very different conversation. Not in the interview, like I do tons of interviews. I love interviewing people. This is more of a conversation, uh, where we just kind of talk about how could this affect our finances and why it matters. Are we gonna leave this conversation angry? Like every other political discussion? [01:04:01] I, I don’t believe so. But again, we are not. N none of the conversation specifically says, you know, this politician is right versus this politician is right. But we do get into some specifics about kind of what’s your worldview, right? Like what do you think about student loan debt, right? What do you think about things like Medicare and social security, et cetera. [01:04:19] So we talk about some of that. So I don’t think people come out of it feeling revved up or hostile, but hopefully they’ll just be a little more thoughtful about what financial moves you might wanna make or not wanna make, uh, when the world seems to be rapidly changing in front of your eyes. [01:04:32] Joe: Well, and I was joking about the hostility actually, ’cause I can’t imagine you having that conversation in the first place. [01:04:38] It would be a very measured, in depth deep dive, which is why I love the Earn and Invest podcast. Paula, what’s going on on the Afford Anything podcast, [01:04:48] Paula: on the Afford Anything podcast. So of course, every other episode we’ve got you Joe, joining. Brilliant, joining us. Brilliant, brilliant. Um, we also, in terms of a, a deep dive, we did a nearly two hour long interview with Michael Kitsis. [01:05:02] Two hours. Yeah. Near nearly, it was an hour and 45 minutes, uh, was I think how, how it shook out. But, uh, with Michael Kitsis, we asked the core question, is the economy worse than we think? And so for the next hour and a half, we learn about the nuances of the economy and whether or not the economy is doing worse than we think. [01:05:25] Uh, which is a, a fear that a lot of people have, particularly given how much of our stock growth has been driven by mostly Nvidia and a small cohort of other tech companies. So we talk about Nvidia, we talk about ai, we talk about. Just the, the world economy and asset allocation and financial planning as it pertains to that. [01:05:47] Joe: Wow. Michael Kits is talking financial planning. [01:05:49] Paula: I know, right? [01:05:52] Joe: Does he know anything about that? For people who, dunno who Michael Kits is, he’s the go-to man on that topic. [01:05:58] Paula: Yes. He was the keynote at Morningstar, and I’m very sure you, I’m sure you’ve heard Joe talk about Morningstar a bunch of times. [01:06:03] Morningstar is like the preeminent investor brand. Morningstar is an investment brand that is followed by a lot of financial advisors. So it’s followed by the, you know, the industry insiders and Michael Kitsis was the keynote at the Morningstar conference. So he is the rockstar financial advisor at a conference of financial advisors. [01:06:25] And if he had opinions, [01:06:26] Joe: he’d be better. [01:06:31] So fantastic. But you know what you have. The Michael Kids is we have the Dr. Bill Ya with us. So there Paula right there. Huh? Oh my goodness. Yeah. What are you Jackie up to at Catching up Tophi. Thank you so much for joining us Bill. It is about damn time we got this done. [01:06:47] Bill: Oh, it’s a pleasure. I’ve always wanted to join the circus and it’s nice to be a part of the crew, but um, I listened to Paula’s episode and I have to recommend everybody go do it because it is one of those episodes that will stick with you and we’re trying to make those episodes too at catching up to Phi. [01:07:00] We have coming up, uh, Joe Sal Sea. Wow. Stacking Jeffersons. And uh, we have uh, Vicki Robin coming up talking about coming of aging. We have a two hour conversation with the godmother of Phi and her, she’s so awesome. Her latest projects is talking about how we age and the challenges there, which actually dovetail well with Katie’s post today. [01:07:21] It’s all about society, community engagement, um, real engagement, and not walling ourselves off in our castles, but opening ourselves up to our villages, and that’s what she’s all about. And then, uh, we’ve had all of you on the show. We’re very fortunate. We’re really meeting and greeting our late starter audience who found financial independence later in life where they need to be so they don’t feel alone, and they can join the journey with us. [01:07:44] And thank you, all three of you for joining us on the show. [01:07:47] Joe: Well, I just, I love that mission. And you know, bill, we say all the time what you guys say, we parrot your message, which is you can’t go back and take back the past. Right. You start with where, where you are and you just make it better every day. [01:07:59] And how exciting is that? It can be a really exciting journey [01:08:03] Bill: that works for money, that works for about everything really. [01:08:05] Joe: Yeah. Well that is, uh, the Catching Up to five podcast. If you missed it, also afford anything and earn and invest. You know what? We’ll link to all these phenomenal shows on our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. [01:08:16] So just go find the show notes and you’ll find all these brilliant people’s work. Alright, Doug, you’ve got it from here, man. What should we have learned today? [01:08:24] Doug: So, what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today. First, take some advice from our panel. Have you tapped into a real community of friends? It turns out that people want to be needed, and for most of you, so do you. [01:08:37] That’ll save you money and you’ll build social capital. Second, if you can’t find a friend to do the task, is it truly worth the monster upcharge to have it delivered? Sometimes, maybe, but often you can save a ton just by eliminating the task altogether or doing it yourself. But the big lesson, don’t tell TaskRabbit they need an El Camino expert. [01:09:01] Turns out they have air quotes, experts to air quotes, help them decide what categories are profitable. Well, air quotes, TaskRabbit, your air quotes are missing out on a great opportunity. There’s dozens. Okay? There’s like tens of us. There’s a couple of us out here who are big El Camino fans. [01:09:24] Thanks to Bill out for joining us today. You’ll find Bill’s podcast catching up to Fi wherever you are listening to us now. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, afford anything wherever you listen to finer podcasts. [01:09:44] Also, thanks to Doc G for joining us today. You’ll find the incredible earn and invest podcast wherever you go, to listen to podcasts, to invest in yourself, like Spotify, apple, overcast, and wherever that place is. You’re listening to me right now. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. [01:10:07] Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. 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. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. [01:10:29] 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, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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