Learning to Think Like a Millionaire (with Sam Dogen) SB1681

What do most millionaires have in common? No, it’s not a yacht named “Compound Interest.” It’s mindset. In this episode, Joe Saul-Sehy and OG kick off Mindset Week by welcoming Sam Dogen, the Financial Samurai himself, to help you start your journey toward a million-dollar net worth—one intentional step at a time.

Sam shares why building wealth is less about luck and more about grit, clear goals, and a killer savings rate. He explains why $250,000 is the magic milestone where compounding takes over, why your “why” is more important than your budget, and how a simple house-to-car ratio can reveal whether you’re cruising toward financial freedom or stuck in the valet lane.

You’ll learn:

• Why your first $250,000 is the hardest (and most critical)
• How to find your “why” and let it drive your money decisions
• Why some people crush millionaire goals while others stall out
• The pros and cons of prioritizing student loan payoff
• How real estate, entrepreneurship, and mindset play a role in long-term success

Plus, Doug delivers trivia about the world’s most millionaire-dense country (hint: it’s not the U.S.), and Joe announces a live event with Bolden’s Steve Chen to help you master retirement planning tools. All that and a wink toward OG’s dream car obsession (which definitely didn’t come from the after-show… wink wink).

💥 Want to level up your financial thinking? This episode is your launching pad.

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FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/how-to-start-on-your-financial-journey-with-financial-samauri-sam-dogen-1681

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

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Our Headline

• Schwab Partners with Candidly to Expand Student Loan Matching Program (NAPA)

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Doug’s Trivia

• What’s the country with the most millionaires per capita?

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Better call Saul…Sehy & OG

• Stacker Mike from New York has a detailed question about asset allocation in his portfolio, with a goal of long-term growth.

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Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?

• Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).

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Other Mentions

• Chasing Money: A Marty and Bo Thriller (Marty Schott and Bo Bishop)

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Join Us Wednesday

Tune in on Wednesday when we tackle the question, “Are you fighting a scarcity mindset where it’s tough to imagine yourself having it all?” With special guest Leisa Peterson.

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Greatest Hits Week: Grocery Tips and Budget Bites (SB1680)

Episode transcript

STACK 05-12 Sam Dogen -steve

[00:00:00] Joe: It’s Monday. You know what that means? Coffee’s hot and we’re ready to salute the troops. You gentlemen? Ready? Sure. That’s an enthusiastic Monday. Greeting og. 

[00:00:11] OG: Sure. 

[00:00:11] Joe: There you go. Bring it man. Come on, you can bring it. 

[00:00:15] OG: I’m on an airplane right now. I’m super tired. It was an early flight for OG 

[00:00:19] Joe: person next to you get annoyed that you have this whole microphone set up on the airplane.

[00:00:23] OG: No, no. They asked if they could be on the show 

[00:00:26] Joe: and our special guest coming to us from seat four BI was gonna say 16 B Doug. But that’s you and me. That’s not, 

[00:00:36] OG: that’s where you guys sit. That’s not, it’s not over. That’s why we have to record on microphones because you won’t, you won’t sit next to me. 

[00:00:42] Doug: I’m happy anytime I get above row 28.

We, we won’t sit next to og. I think that, 

[00:00:49] Joe: I think that’s a little backwards. We’d be happy to sit next to you. You won’t sit next to us. 

[00:00:54] Doug: I 

[00:00:54] OG: mean, there’s no seats available. 

[00:00:56] Doug: The unwashed, the unwashed masses 

[00:01:00] Joe: On behalf of the Men and Women Making Podcast in mama’s basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, a big slew to the people who kept us safe all weekend, who, and also who I’m sure are gonna do it all week this week, our troops.

Thanks for all you do. Let’s go stack some S together now, shall we? Cheers. 

[00:01:20] opener: Here’s the song that we like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers and what have you. This one’s called Vacation over.

Vacation, over It Over.

[00:01:41] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. You know, a million dollars ain’t what it used to be, but it sure is a nice start here to help you start on your journey. We welcome the Financial Samurai himself. Sam Duggan, in our headline segment, student loans are in the news. Another big employer is helping employees pay off their loans earlier.

How should you prioritize your student loan payments? We’ll share our order of operations. You know, what should be first on your order of operations? My trivia, and now two guys. We all just wanna be right since they’re the geniuses dishing out money ideas, it’s Joe, oh and oh. Ju ju g

[00:02:44] Joe: Geniuses. I feel like I owe Doug 10 bucks this morning, bright and early. Hey everybody, happy Monday. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Saul-Sehy High. Sit back and relax because we are bringing it this week with a bunch of money, mindset stuff, and the guy who always has his mind on making sure that your money is safe and doing what it should be.

Mr. OGs here, how are you brother? 

[00:03:09] OG: How did you miss the intro of he always has his mind on his money and his money on his mind? I dropped the ball. Like what? Tm, you know? Totally. 

[00:03:21] Joe: Dude. Do you think somebody might have TM that before us? 

[00:03:23] OG: Geez, Luis. Maybe. Yeah. I don’t know. 

[00:03:26] Joe: How are you This Monday, my friend.

Great. 

[00:03:28] OG: It was Mother’s Day yesterday. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms that are, you know, wondering How come they didn’t get anything? It’s,

[00:03:39] Doug: we just, oh, another book of certificates I can cash in. 

[00:03:43] OG: Wow. 10 free car washes in the driveway and five dishes doing dishes without complaining. What? 

[00:03:52] Joe: Again? Again. And she adds them cash in the ones 

[00:03:56] OG: last 

[00:03:56] Joe: year, right? From the, from the stack of, of, uh, last year, the year before that. Year before that. We had a Wild Mother’s Day last year.

My kids were both very busy, but I had to call them at nine 30 and go, you haven’t said Happy Mother’s Day to your mom yet. 

[00:04:09] OG: Yeah, I feel like I would let them die on that one. 

[00:04:11] Joe: It’s 

[00:04:11] OG: a 

[00:04:11] Joe: day that the hatred doesn’t come to him. 

[00:04:14] OG: Well, that’s the point. Like That’s what I was gonna say. You like the next week, you’re eating it the whole time.

You’re like, God, I should have just called my kids and warned them in advance, but 

[00:04:24] Doug: Nope. Uh. Don’t worry you. You did get your mom a gift. It’s called disappointment. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s wrap it up in a nice bow. It’s the gift that’s just kept giving for the past. Yeah. The same one you’ve been given for the last eight years.

Yes. 

[00:04:39] Joe: X number of years. Yeah. And I think the belated thing, you know, a lot of times you can say, belated birthday of happy belated birthday, and people will go, oh, that’s nice. At least you remember a daylight. That’s fine. At least you know, whatever. But I think belated, that’s fine. I 

[00:04:51] OG: saw it on Facebook.

That’s late. 

[00:04:54] Joe: But belated Mother’s Day, I think is, it’s an every 

[00:04:57] OG: day’s Mother’s Day today. 

[00:04:57] Joe: It’s a bridge. It, it truly, truly is. It should be it, it’s not. It should be well today, whether you’re a mother or a father or you’re staying alive, staying alive. I don’t, is that the way that No, uh, we’ve got Sam Dogan here, Mr.

Financial Samurai. OG as we are talking about money mindset all week. Sam today, Lisa Peterson, on Monday, we’re breaking through all those metal barriers between you and your money. It’s funny, I heard Morgan Hausel the other day talking about making fewer $3 decisions and instead making $3,000 decisions.

Like we need to think on our thinking, like why are we spending so much time clipping coupons when we could be asking for the raise, or we could be starting the new business, or we could be investing our money more appropriately, the much bigger decisions. We’re talking about that this week, and Sam Dogen’s gonna kick it off.

For those of you that don’t know Sam, he is an award-winning blogger. This guy’s been blogging for a long time. Initially when we burst on the scene, is that what, if that’s what we did. Sam took us under his wing and we were in a group of bloggers that he, that he organized. 

[00:06:06] OG: I don’t even remember that.

That was so long ago. I. But thanks, Sam, 

[00:06:09] Joe: the Esei 

[00:06:09] Doug: Network. Ah, yes. Isn’t 

[00:06:11] Joe: that the Japanese mafia? Well, and and if you look at the name Sam Dogan, by the way, and Financial Samurai, you start to get the, yeah, you start to get the theme here, Doug. You totally get the theme. Damn. Sam has been doing so much to help people make more money and help people keep more money.

He always loves to stir the pot. The number of times we’ve talked about controversial pieces that Sam has written, uh, have been many, many, many, many, many. But Sam not always controversial. One thing he’s always appreciative of is helping you make more money. And he’s a guy who’s done it from his time on Wall Street to his time building financial Sam RI, he’s done that more.

He is been on boards of companies that you’ve heard of that have gone public, and now Sam is coming back to the basement to talk about your millionaire milestones. But before we get to all that, you know what, we’ve got a couple sponsors to make sure this is free so you don’t have to. Pay a dime for Sam Dogan and all the great guests that we have here.

We’re gonna hear from a couple of them and then Sam joining us in the basement. Hay Stackers. Great news that we received after we recorded these shows. You may have heard this last week, but if you missed our greatest hits week, we are coming to Boston. Boston area stackers. I will be there on Tuesday, May 20th at Idle Hands Brewing in Malden.

That’s Idle Hands Brewing in Malden. The place to sign up is stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup. Go make sure we know that you’re coming. We’re gonna have, uh, some appetizers, we’re gonna have some drinks. It’s gonna be a good time with either a foamy beverage or just the beverage of your choice. Non foamy is perfectly acceptable as well, but you know what, hanging out with you is something that is so fun.

We had a a great time. Last time I was in the Boston area, idle hands craft ails in Malden Tuesday, May 20th, Boston area, stacker stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup to tell us you’re coming

and super happy he’s coming down the stairs to mom’s basement. Sam do. It’s back. How are you man? Hey Joe. Good seeing you again. Great to see you, my friend. And I gotta ask about this, uh, latest project of yours. You make this statement maybe two thirds of the way through the new book about we need to be where the money is.

If I’m listening to this and I’m in my twenties and I’m designing my career, is this something for later, Sam? Or is this something early? Like if I’m 24 years old, I’m listening to this, do I pack up and I move to one of these top 10 cities that you have on your list? 

[00:09:00] Sam: Well, the idea of being where the money is, is that it doesn’t matter how smart you are, how good looking you are, how connected you are.

If the largest company in the city or town you’re living in is like a greasy spoon restaurant, you’re never gonna get rich. So you have to go where the big companies are, where the big jobs are, where the people are, where the people are that can help you along the way. So one of the things I talk about in Millionaire Milestones, simple Steps to Seven Figures, is to go where those job centers are.

Yes, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, la, all very expensive places to live. But there’s a reason for that. And the reason is because the income and the wealth opportunities are far greater than most other places. 

[00:09:47] Joe: We’re seeing all these CEOs call people back into work. Sam and I even said this when people were, you know, thinking they were gonna work forever, remotely.

I was like, I don’t think this is gonna last. But I don’t necessarily think it should last because I don’t know about you, but being around smart people, like in proximity to smart people just always has raised my game and it’s gotta be, I think it’s what you’re saying here too, just being around people and comparing yourself to these people.

It’s a little like wolf’s pack hunting. 

[00:10:16] Sam: Oh, absolutely. If you’re under the age of 40 and you still insist on working from home four or five days a week, I think that’s a career limiting move because at the end of the day, people who get ahead are those who build those relationships in person When it comes to downturns and firing people.

You’re gonna get rid of the person who’s outta sight, who you don’t know their in-laws name or their kids’ names, nothing like that. And the people you’re gonna keep and promote and give great opportunities to are the ones you’re in the trenches together, and you go out and get that $20 rubber chicken sandwich down the street and you’re talking about whatever.

And so those relationships are so important that if you’re under 40, or if you have less than 10, 15 years experience under your belt. You gotta get into that office, you gotta be in front of other people. 

[00:11:03] Joe: I never considered blogging or podcasting really a career. I do it because I love it. But even in this quote career, Sam, the fact that I was a part of your network early on when you were this established blogger and I was this new kid.

The fact that then we went to dinner together and I knew you like it just being in proximity of this group of bloggers. It’s how I met Len Penso. It’s how I met so many people was through this network of people that you created proximity and there’s just something different about being there physically versus on a Zoom call.

Let’s look at your top 10 cities, San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara. Obviously we’re looking at Silicon Valley there, Sam, that’s not a stretch. Second Bridgeport, Stanford and Norwalk, Connecticut is interesting. Is number two. Obviously a lot of money there. San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. Okay. That’s where the Great Sam lives now.

So gotta be there. Boston, Cambridge Newton, my daughter’s there. She’s lighting it up. She’s working for Harvard and there’s so many opportunities, so many exciting things. I just saw MIT is now the new Dream School over Harvard as well. Seattle, Tacoma. Bellevue, uh, Washington, Arlington, Alexandria is number six.

I wanna skip down here to number 10. Well, we’re very quickly just the New York area, the Denver area. The Austin area. I get all those. Number 10 on your list as if this was pretty badass being seen where I live. Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, Arkansas. You even have this, this cutout in your book where you’re like, did you just like do a double take when you saw Arkansas?

This is a up and coming community, Sam. 

[00:12:34] Sam: Well, that’s the thing. You know, we all know where the big city centers are the most expensive places to live in America, in the world. But if you wanna be a long-term investor, maybe a value investor, you wanna look at those. Up and coming places, or those cheap places now that will be potentially more expensive in 5, 10, 20 years from now.

So yeah, I did do a double take when I was doing that research and saying, wow, that’s not only is it low cost, there are huge companies there. And What companies are those? 

[00:13:02] Joe: Yeah, a little company called Walmart. Yeah. Another little company called Tyson Foods. You know, is there, I mean, you’ve got these great companies there in a major university.

[00:13:12] Sam: Right. So don’t just think about, oh, big tech and finance and consulting and all that fancy stuff. There are plenty of big companies out there with plenty of money to go on that provide great lifestyles. And if you can do it for a lower cost of living and do well income wise, uh, that’s a double win. So I would see if those companies continue to do well over the next 10 years.

Employees can do very well as well. 

[00:13:35] Joe: It’s funny, there’s a guy with a FinTech company, acre Trader, who I’m friends with. He’s based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and he said when he’s talking to people, he’s often getting people from Silicon Valley. And at first when he tells them Arkansas, they’re like, no thank you.

He told me, Sam, he’s like, if I can just get him to come with a plus one for the weekend, bring anybody you want, just come and spend a weekend with me. It’s all you gotta do. He goes, then it is. And I think his quote was, fish in a barrel. It’s ’cause they come out, they’re like, wait a minute, it’s beautiful.

I can buy a gorgeous 3000 square foot house for like the $350,000. Like, are you kidding me? What the hell am I doing? It’s gorgeous. I got a college sports, I’ve got all this fun stuff. What I like about this project is these are steps toward becoming a millionaire. And you’re a person who’s walked this talk already.

How old were you when you became a millionaire? 

[00:14:23] Sam: You know, I didn’t really know until I was doing the math at age 30 because I thought 30 was, you either made it in your career or you know you’re gonna make it or not. So I did the math at 30. I was like, oh, I got a million dollars. That’s a little pressure, by the way, if I don’t make it by 30.

Well it’s weird ’cause uh, when I was growing up I had some childhood traumas. You know, one of my friends died at 15 and I was thinking to myself, wow, you died at 15 and you have no more opportunity. And I was thinking to myself, well, I gotta get on the ball, study hard, make my money so I can escape sooner.

So I can live my life. And so I had that image of 30 because you know, we go to college for four years, grade school for 13 years, that’s eight years after college to try to grind and make something on myself, right? Because it was like, make your money. You gotta find your love life, your partner for life, because biology doesn’t wait for nobody.

You know, you try to have kids before 35 and it’s crazy expensive. In New York City and San Francisco where I’ve been living for the past 20 plus years, you gotta get on the ball and focus. So to answer your question, at 30, I was like, how am I doing in my life? Alright. I made VP at Credit Suisse at the time.

Okay, check, did I make a million dollar? Okay, great check. And then I look back and it was about age 28 when my assets started inflating to the point where I had a million dollar net worth. 

[00:15:42] Joe: At 28, and you talk later about this idea of compounding interest. You know the idea that if we can get to some of these milestone numbers early in our life, like that’s gonna help.

And you actually set a number of 250,000 is one of these early miles. Why is 250,000 such a big number for you, Sam? For 

[00:16:02] Sam: some people, when they’re first starting out, they might feel that $1 million is very daunting and it is very daunting. I had a goal of trying to get a million dollars before I had started trying to have kids.

’cause it was so expensive in New York City and San Francisco. And in retrospect, that was a crazy, crazy number. And you don’t need to do that. But in order to get to something great, you’ve gotta go in smaller steps. So even before 250,000, look for. Saving a thousand, 5,000, 10,000, 50,000. But the $250,000 mark is I think that break point where you start to feel the momentum of your money going for you.

And why is this? Well, in 2025, the maximum 401k employee contribution limit is 23,500. We know that 75% of the time, or thereabouts, you’ll make money in the stock market. We also know the historical rate of return for stocks is about 10% a year. So in other words, if you can amass $250,000 in stocks, you have greater than a 70% chance to earn a greater return than the maximum amount of money you can contribute to your 401k, which is currently 23,500.

So when you start having these constant returns. Are greater than what you can contribute, then that’s really when the momentum starts building and that’s when you can think, oh, I can see million dollars in my future. 

[00:17:28] Joe: Toward that end, you pose the, I don’t know if it’s a challenge if, but you say if you’re contemplating raising your contribution by 10%, by putting 10% more into your 401k plan, like do it right now.

But you and I both know what people are thinking, Sam. They’re like, oh, if I do that and I end up needing that money, you’ve told people this in the past. I even like for people listening to the audio here, I see the look on save slice stock. No, no, no, no, no. Do you get pushback from people when they actually raise it by 10%?

[00:17:59] Sam: I always get pushback, and the idea is if you want to outperform the masses or the median or the average, you’ve gotta do more than the median or the average person. We. Easily end up taking the amount of time. It’s, if you wanna give yourself what, five hours to clean your house, it’s gonna take you five hours.

But if you give yourself 30 minutes, you’re gonna get it done in 30 minutes. It’s the same thing with money. When you raise your saving rate, you keep on raising it until it hurts, and then it’ll hurt for a little bit and then you’re gonna get used to it. Then you can keep on raising it further. So I don’t think people have been pushed enough to save more.

You know, people say, oh, save 10%, 20%. The national personal saving rate is like 5%, which is pathetic. But then when you look at March, 2020, during the height of the pandemic, the national personal saving rate shot up to about 32%. So what does that tell us? Goes from 4% to 32%. That tells us we can save and invest more if we want to.

How much do we want to and how badly do we want to outperform? That is the question. 

[00:19:05] Joe: It is so funny how I remember that time, even though there was so much bad happening in humanity, when I saw those savings rates, numbers, Sam, I actually had some faith in humanity. I was like, we can do the right thing.

And then what happens in the pandemic goes away, and immediately I see the new numbers out from TransUnion, Experian that, Hey, guess what we’re doing with our credit cards? We’re jacking up all these OPM strategies or non strategies of getting ourself back into debt. It’s super sad. Which actually brings up where you start in this project, which is this, because I think you know what you’re talking about.

Is it’s gonna hurt. We don’t push ourselves enough. What is it that gets us away from this complacency that we have to be the same? We recently spoke to one of the top female sports agents, uh, Molly Fletcher, about complacency and about drive, and she talks about the importance of knocking complacency out of the picture.

But for most of us, we’re like, yeah, you know, I think I’m gonna be okay. How do I get away from complacency and start chasing number $1 million net worth? And then number $2 million a year. And the steps that you pretty eloquently walk us through? 

[00:20:14] Sam: Well, I think one of the hardest things about living in America is that life is pretty darn good.

We’ve got a relatively stable government. We don’t have wars. We’ve got a rule of law, and there’s tons of food and free water. Ooh, free wifi. So the idea is we can’t too much fault ourselves for living such a comfortable lifestyle. So when you’re comfortable, you don’t push yourself. That’s the bottom line.

So you have to find within to understand what is your why? What is it that you are saving and investing so hard for? What are you willing to sacrifice? And I think for some people, maybe many people, once they have children, that is the trigger point where suddenly they have dad power or mom power, and they work harder and save more than ever before, or they try to get into the best shape of their life.

You need to find your why, because at the end of the day, life is probably gonna be okay. Here in America we’ve got savings, rule of law, all that stuff. But without identifying your why. Without doing the calculations on how expensive life could be in the future for the life that you want, you’re not gonna push yourself.

You have to have clear whys and clear targets. For me right now, the clear why is taking care of my wife so she doesn’t have to go grind back in the office so she can be a mom. And for my kids to give them the opportunities that I didn’t have and to help them in the future, when they’re gonna get knocked down, they’re gonna get rejected.

Those are my clear why’s, and so you have to find your why and you have to figure out what the cost is of all those why’s. 

[00:21:46] Joe: I love how, uh, Stephen Covey that is, begin with the end of mind. If we begin with the end of mind, then saving becomes much easier. It also, I think, is a reason why so many of us don’t have a budget.

’cause a budget sounds horrible until there’s a why behind it. And you’re like, no, no, no. I’m not fencing out all the goodness in my life. I’m trying to fence that in and fence out all the crap. You list a bunch of whys. And some of them I wanna highlight because I find, uh, some of them funny and some of them.

Interesting and some of them really inspirational. One of your whys is to tell your micromanager to jump in a lake. 

[00:22:21] Sam: Oh man. Who hasn’t had a micromanager? Who said my way or the highway? Hey, how come you’re five minutes late? Why are you leaving at 7:00 PM Uh, don’t you see? I’m still here and, and neglecting my family.

Oh my gosh, micromanager. It’s funny ’cause I’ve been out of the workforce since 2012 and when I look back as an adult now I’m 47 years old. I think it’s kind of crazy that we are grown adults, mature adults, spending 40 hours a week listening to other adults tell us what to do. I mean, to me, I step back, I’m like, wow, that, I mean, I can see it in your teens, twenties, maybe thirties, but your whole life.

Give me a break. Grant 

[00:22:59] Joe: Sier told us that recently too, Sam. He was like, the longer I’ve been an entrepreneur, the more I’m like, why did I endure some of that crap? Like it just drives me crazy. You actually write about entrepreneurship and how important that could be in your journey to becoming a millionaire.

[00:23:14] Sam: Yeah. I mean, so entrepreneurship is easy. Well, it’s not easy. It’s interesting to understand. So as employees, we earn our salaries and we might get lucky with some stock options and RSUs, right? But as an entrepreneur, you get your salary plus the equity in your company. So when you sell a company, a companies are usually trading on a multiple of earnings, operating profits or revenue.

So every dollar you make from your company, your company brings in, let’s say, could increase the value of your company by 10 x. If the company trades at 10 times earnings, right? So if you bring in a hundred thousand dollars in earnings and companies in your space sell for 10 times earnings, suddenly you’ve created a $1 million company.

And so this type of entrepreneurial mindset in terms of making income, having these business expenses, but also creating equity. At a multiple is very powerful for having a million dollars in the future. 

[00:24:11] Joe: Way back in, uh, 2007 when I sold my financial planning company, I sold it for a multiple of five x. It was this launchpad to just go do whatever I wanted, which was incredible.

Five years before that, I hadn’t even thought about it. Sam’s an asset, like I hadn’t thought about it that way when I got in. And I love the intentionality of, hey, getting in. Making it a sellable asset, I think means you’re gonna focus on systems, you’re gonna focus on process, you’re gonna focus on building that multiple, some of the other things to start a family.

You talked about that. Or to make your family function the way that you want to, to start your own entrepreneurial endeavors. I like this one. To give more to the most important charities, to get the best medical treatment possible for a disability or illness. To not be afraid of the cost of going to a doctor, an emergency room, like the why’s that people have to fly in comfort, travel the world, and experience new cultures.

I like flying comfort to go to the front of the plane. Sam could be a nice why. 

[00:25:09] Sam: Yeah. Not not the bathroom seat. And you know, I was thinking about one of the best reasons to be financially independent is really to be true to yourself. Everybody has an opinion. If you’re a podcaster, you’re a writer, you’re a creator, you put out an opinion, suddenly you get a thousand opinions.

Some are very angry, some not so nice. But 

[00:25:30] Joe: you’ve never had that reaction to any of your pieces though. 

[00:25:34] Sam: No, not at all. Everybody agrees or disagrees, it’s just black and white. No, but what’s amazing is, so I’ve been around since 2009 with Financial Samurai, and I’ll say something, the most innocuous statement, you know, save 20% or something, right?

I’ll get maybe one to 5% raging commenters who will just accuse me of being judgmental out of, you know, in a bubble, whatever. And, and I understand, that’s fine. But it’s really to have the confidence to continue to be yourself, to share your opinions, to be respectful of others, right? And then just to learn.

And I truly believe the wealthier you get and the more secure you are with yourself. The happier you are because these little things don’t trigger you and and rage you as much as they would if you weren’t financially secure. 

[00:26:22] Joe: Yeah. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got your North Star, if you’ve got your why, who cares?

What’s I. And the great thing about that too is you can go, yeah, okay, that works for you. It just doesn’t work for me. I love that about once I have my why, what that does to your investing portfolio too. There’s 5 million different investment choices out there, but if I know my why, that could be a great investment.

It’s just not for me. It just doesn’t work. Speaking of investments, you talk a lot about real estate in investing and how important real estate has been for you. You really like real estate when it comes to building that millionaire muscle. How come? 

[00:26:53] Sam: Well, real estate is something that’s tangible. It’s easy to understand.

It provides utility shelter, it can generate income and their tax benefits. And so real estate, I think is one of the best hedges against inflation and a beneficiary of inflation. Everybody needs a place to stay, and I think one of the easiest ways to build a million dollar net worth is to do your best to save up a down payment, buy your primary residence, so your neutral inflation and neutral, the real estate market, right?

So you’re going up and down with the real estate market and you’re not a price taker. You’re not at the mercy of inflation. When inflation goes up, rents go up, you gotta pay more. That’s not good. And then after 2, 3, 10 years, you rent out your primary residence, your other primary residence, and you buy another primary residence.

And so you do that over a course of 30 to 40 years. You can suddenly build a rental property portfolio that you know and love and you can enhance it, remodel it, improve upon it, and to generate more income. And so if you can fix your living costs as much as possible. Life gets much easier, right? Food, transportation, healthcare generally manageable, but housing expenses, wow.

If you don’t fix that over time, it’s really gonna hurt you and drag down your net worth, potential 

[00:28:12] Joe: toward dead end. You always have a way of looking at things in quirky ways. You’ve got a metric in your book called the the House to Car Ratio, which can be a key to success that I think you originally wrote about on financial Sam RI.

But tell everybody a little bit about the, what’s the house to car ratio and why is that important? 

[00:28:29] Sam: Okay, so I think everybody needs a place to live and 90 plus percent of Americans. Own a car. This ratio could be the most important and pertinent personal finance ratio in the history of personal finance ratios.

Okay. So the idea is a house is generally neutral to appreciating asset. It’s okay to borrow money from that ’cause it depreciates over time. A car is a 99.9% guaranteed depreciating asset, right? So the idea is you want a little bit more house and less car. But the problem is the number one personal finance killer I think in America is people spending way too much money on a car that depreciates in value and they can’t use that to save an investor for the future.

So the idea is, okay, the median home price in America is 400,000. The median new car price in America is about 50,000, which is crazy because the median household income in America is about 80,000 pre-tax. So in other words, the nationwide house to car ratio is about 400,000 divided by 50,000, which is like I.

What is that? Nine? Yeah. 8, 0 8, 9, whatever. So your goal is to try to get a ratio above 30. The higher, the better. So the idea is you have more house than car. You can do that by saying you can buy a fancier house, which is, you know, kind of suspect. Or you can own a car, a cheap car, or you can own a car for longer.

That depreciates over time. So instead of letting depreciation hurt you as a car owner, you’re allowing depreciation to help you because the car is the denominator in that ratio and it declines in value over time. So as the value of the car declines, your ratio of house to car ratio increases. Right. And so I go a little bit more in depth in Financial Samurai and in millionaire milestones, but that is the concept.

You happen to have a higher ratio than the typical American. Which is eight or nine, definitely under 10. You wanna get as high as possible over 30. If you can get over 30, I think you’re on the right direction. You’re in the right. 

[00:30:25] Joe: And what does this encourage you to do? This encourages you to hold onto your car, make a better car, purchase, number one.

Number two, hold onto the car for a longer period of time, which I think is important. And number three, think about do I really need that second automobile? If I do need a second automobile, do I need a second automobile with a payment? That’s a big, big fat number. Like I’m rethinking the value of this car and the utility and what it does for me.

[00:30:50] Sam: And it’s also to help people who are spending too much on a car. Think about that house. If you’re not neutral real estate yet by owning your primary residence, what business are you doing spending so much money on a car? Maybe it’s ’cause it’s easier to buy a car than a house, obviously, but before you get neutral real estate.

Really keep your car expenses low. And this is important to note, I say neutral real estate because you’re riding up and down the real estate wave. You’re only really long real estate if you own more than one property because you have to live somewhere. So you’re only really gaining from real estate appreciation if you have two or more properties.

[00:31:26] Joe: Speaking of, uh, real estate, I know back on the Financial Samura I podcast a few years ago, you interviewed Mike CatchMark about the NAR ruling. He was the attorney that took the National Association of Realtors to task. We’ve been talking a lot about this and really what the fallout is, and we’re just, you know, now Sam, uh, starting to see how this is changing the game.

How do you think this long term’s gonna change the game when it comes to buying a property or selling a property? 

[00:31:53] Sam: It’s a huge game changer because it helps increase transparency and it gives consumers more power to negotiate. So the real estate industry will say, well, consumers can always negotiate their commission.

But the reality is, how many times do consumers sell a house or buy a house one every 13 years? That’s a median, wholly price. So whereas if you’re a real estate broker, if you’re a top 10% or 20% broker, you’re selling multiple houses a year. So you’re, you’re the expert, the consumer’s not the expert. So this settlement, this lawsuit against price fixing is about empowering the consumer to believe in their ability to negotiate lower rates.

If you think about stock trading, those commissions have gone to zero. But the real estate industry, the commissions are still sticky at about 5% total cost. I understand real estate brokers and agents need to make their money both sides, but let’s say you’re selling your property and you’re agree to a 5% commission.

2.5% or half of the commission traditionally goes to the buyer’s agent. Meanwhile, the buyer’s agent is trying to get the lowest price possible for their client. So there’s a complete misalignment in terms of the seller paying the buyer’s agent who is hammering you down on price. So this misalignment needs to be fixed, and I think we can all agree it’s misaligned.

What I know and realize is that sometimes, maybe oftentimes it takes that buyer’ss agent, you gotta pay them to bring their client to see your listing in the first place. But this should be disintermediated already because we all know how to go online to go to Zillow, Redfin, whatever, and see these properties ourselves.

So the bottom line is, I believe real estate commissions will go down steadily from 5%, four and three quarters, four and a half, 4% maybe it might settle down to 3% or three point half percent in. Five, 10 years, which would be good. ’cause then there would be less money going to the process and more money going to the buyers and sellers.

[00:33:48] Joe: I think the big thing, and you and I talked about this even before we hit record a little bit, is that you’re gonna find is who the true real estate pros are. Sam. You know, because the pros are gonna last. The people that are just out showing you the same stuff you can see on Redfin, those people aren’t gonna last.

[00:34:02] Sam: Oh yeah. So there’s this thing called the top Agent network and it’s the top 10% agents in terms of sales volume, and they do 80 to 90% of all sales volume. And so at the end of the day, it’s a relationship business. I think the winners are gonna to win more and the losers are probably gonna fade away. 

[00:34:20] Joe: I wanna end talking about how, especially for our younger stackers, how this march to a million or even heck to 250,000 can feel like this long grind.

Have you ever read, uh, bill Perkins’ book, die With Zero? I have, yeah. You worked very hard on Wall Street early in your career. Do you regret those years of grinding and out at the beginning of your career? Because, you know, uh, bill talks and what people talk about around that book is this idea balance, embracing the day going off and backpacking in Europe.

Do you ever wish you had backpacked in Europe versus grinding it out on Wall 

[00:34:55] Sam: Street? I wish I’d grind it harder. You know, I work 60 hours a week, but I had at least 20 more hours a week of energy in me. The reason why I know that is because I went to business school part-time while working 60 hours a week.

And so just one point on Bill’s book, and I understand the concept and I think it’s a good concept, but it is a luxury belief, bill is worth probably over a hundred million dollars. So if you are worth over a hundred million dollars, you can say die with zero, spend all your money, live life, and go backpacking, whatever.

But for most of us who don’t have a hundred million dollars, that’s not possible. And we have to be a little bit more proactive and judicious and planning. So in your twenties, I think you’ll realize you’ll have more energy, more motivation, more time than you realize once you hit your forties, I’m 47 now, and you’ll realize that that time goes quickly.

While you’re learning, you might as well be working as hard as you can because you have the double benefit of earning and learning. And it’s after about 10 to 15 years of compounding and saving and investing, where the compounding really starts to take off. Again, 250,000, 70% chance you might make 10% return.

That’s $25,000 and the most you can contribute right now is 23,500. That’s amazing. And the compounding aspect is something I really didn’t know. I remember one of my classic posts was the first million is the easiest. My thesis was, ’cause you have energy time, you don’t have kids, and you got all this motivation.

But now that I’m way older, it’s actually not the easiest. When you have money, making another million is way easier. Right. 2024 s and p 500 up 23%. So if you had a $10 million portfolio, you’re up to 2.3 million. If you have a five bam, if you have a four and a half million portfolio, you’re up 1 million doing nothing.

And so it’s very important if you’re in your twenties, thirties, or you’re starting off, please put in that sacrifice and that time it’ll pay off in huge dividends. When you’re older, you’ll be so happy. You worked so hard in your twenties and thirties, I promise you this. 

[00:36:56] Joe: Do you know what I love about that answer too, Sam?

As I’m thinking through it, I’m thinking two things. Number one, you learn frugality so that when you have money, you’re not blowing it. Like you’ll see some people that didn’t come up with money and they have sudden wealth. They always seem to blow it. You’ve built this muscle around how to spend money, but then the second thing is you also have this appreciation for how you got there and you built the luxury.

And I think that’s a pretty powerful thing to know when you’re in your forties or in your fifties, is really how hard this was to get to get to this place. It’s a powerful thing. Oh man, I could talk about this stuff all day and we just began talking about Sam’s new work on this topic called Millionaire Milestones, simple Steps to Seven Figures.

It’s available everywhere, guys, tomorrow, and Sam, we can find it everywhere, right? 

[00:37:46] Sam: Yes, you can. Joe, thanks so much for having me. It’s always been a blast. I can talk about this all day as well. We gotta get some steak dinners. Maybe. Maybe not in Denver, San Francisco. Come to San Francisco. Good steaks in San Francisco.

[00:37:58] Joe: I’ll come to San Francisco. That sounds tough. Sounds really tough. Thanks a lot man, for being our mentor today. 

[00:38:03] Sam: Alright Joe, take care.

[00:38:09] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s. Bob’s neighbor, Doug, and since Sam is helping us all become millionaires, I thought it’s a great time to share some millionaire trivia. Of course, the best way to become a millionaire is by having someone else earn the money. Duh. It’s called delegation. All the great leaders do it, look it up, but it’s easier if the people already have like close to a million, so you’re not waiting forever.

That’s annoying. The question today is, what country has more millionaires than any other per capita? Full disclosure. Originally I thought that was per capita when I first saw it, but Joe’s mom said, I can’t say per cap. I can only say per capita ta. So apparently millionaires don’t like LS or something.

I’ll be back right after. I make sure I don’t offend anyone by saying per capita my bad.

Hey there stackers. I’m Capal lover and guy who just learned that wasn’t dirty talk. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, per, I don’t even know what that means. Per capita, for those of you uninformed people. Means percentage based on the total number of people. So when we asked which country has the most millionaires per capita, we’re talking about having the biggest percentage.

Of course I was, you know, just kidding. Earlier. I knew it all along. And now because me So do you, I’m just here to teach, but what’s the country with the most millionaires per capita? Well, some country called Usaw was third. That That’d be, that’d be USA dude. USA. Oh, it’s, or, yeah. I mean, thanks for that help.

’cause I would’ve said you Saul before four Got it. While USA was third at over 9% in Australia. Was over 11%. It’s the place with more switzer’s than any other Switzerland. Switzerland is the winner with 16.45% millionaires per capita, uh, capita. And now back to two guys who are all about increasing the number of millionaires per capita.

Who listened to this podcast, Joe and og? 

[00:40:31] Joe: Yes, we are man. Switzerland. Isn’t it the number one spot, og surprising to you? No, I mean, that’s where I would hide my money. That’s a yes. What was that? That was a documentary, Doug, that you and I watched about all the artwork, which is, uh, shored in quotes in Switzerland sitting in these vaults.

Just uh, 

[00:40:52] Doug: well, it’s not just Switzerland, uh, if I remember that right. There are these, oh man, I wish we could remember what they were called, but there are these ports of entry that are technically not. Landed in France or landed in Belgium. They’re sitting on that soil, but they don’t count until they leave.

They don’t count for tariffs until they leave the warehouse. It’s like a multi bajillionaire duty free store. That’s exactly what it is. That’s a great analogy. And, uh, yeah, remember they’ve got ’em, they’ve got these huge concrete rooms that are decorated to the hilt just so they can sit there and smoke cigars and look at their artwork.

That’s like a, you know, probably a, a. Decimal point on their net worth, but they get to sit there and look at their gogans and Picassos 

[00:41:36] Joe: and put it back away so nobody else can see it. 

[00:41:38] Doug: And, and as long as it doesn’t leave that warehouse, it doesn’t get tariffed. You know what I learned because my good friend Michael Balter just released his oh sequel to his book, the First book, chasing Money.

Just a fun, fun read, much of which is based on stuff that actually happened to him or close business associates of him as they were trying to do startups. His second book, which the publisher begged for because of all the awards the first book made is called The Vatican Deal. And also based on a true, you know, loosely based on true stuff that really happened.

But what I learned by talking to him and reading this book is. A Vatican Bank account is far more coveted than even a Swiss bank account. You really hide your money? Yes. And yeah, you gotta read this book. It’s an amazing read. Super fun. They had the rights to reproduce Vatican artwork, which came with this thing called a Vatican Seal.

And they were trying to close the deal and the Italian mafia got involved and they couldn’t figure out why they wanted it so badly. And it’s because the right to recreate the artwork like nobody cared about it was the fact that it came with a Vatican bank account. And when you get in, when you get in there, man, that is, it’s like it never happened.

[00:42:56] Joe: That’s wild. We have to, I forgot, ’cause you told me before he’s coming out with another book. We will link to his first book in our show notes. ’cause to your point, it is good and it it’s a money mystery. The new book though, I think we have to have him on Stacking adventures if it’s uh, you know, going around the world.

Oh, that’s a good idea. 

[00:43:10] Doug: Yeah, that’s a good idea. Have him on the travel show. Yeah, it does. I mean, it’s Russia, it’s Italy, it’s the us I can’t remember. There might be some other, it’s fast paced and uh, well, it’s first book is fast paced too. I mean, oh my God. Yeah. Duke can write, you get zero to a hundred miles an hour, like in the first two pages on the first book.

And, uh, the second one’s a lot like it, but the, the fact that it’s all loosely based on real stuff is just mind blowing. 

[00:43:37] Joe: Well, and now, uh, Switzerland. Switzerland. Most millionaires, yeah. Most, most, most millionaires. 

[00:43:43] Doug: And interesting that the football coach, I didn’t realize, like I didn’t put two and two together.

Barry, Barry Switzer, like, he’s probably Switzerland. 

[00:43:51] opener: Yeah. 

[00:43:51] Joe: Yeah. Who knew? The more, you know, it’s like that NBC logo across the sky. Sky ding, ding, ding, og. You know, Sam spent a lot of time talking about mindset and uh, Lisa’s gonna do so on Wednesday as well. I. This is Mindset Week on the show. All of this kinda reminds me of the first mindset book that I read about Money, which was Napoleon Hills Think and Grow Rich, have you, did you read, think and Grow Rich 

[00:44:19] OG: 27 years ago?

Yeah. And it was a hundred years old at that time. 

[00:44:24] Joe: Sure. Right. But did it hold up? I mean, did you, did you like it? 

[00:44:28] OG: I mean, I don’t really remember too much about it. I mean, a lot of this stuff when it comes to mindset can seem a little, I don’t know. Woo woo. Yeah, I was gonna say foo. Yeah. We have a different consonant in front of the, Ooh, you know, but a little, A little made up.

Yeah. Right. Like it’s not, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that things like writing down stuff and gratefulness and gratitude and, you know, the sticky note that’s on the mirror. Every morning where you see like, I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. You know, like the Stuart Smalley thing from, from Saturday Life from a long time ago.

I think all of us probably have some examples of this that have happened in our lives that if you piece it together, you go, huh, that’s interesting. And I’ll give you one of mine. When I got married, sometimes the two new spouses will gift each other some gifts, right? And so my wife got me sometimes. I mean, is that a normal thing?

I don’t know. I just, I’ve only been married once, Doug. I don’t know the rules. I just know what it was 25 years ago. 

[00:45:39] Joe: Sometimes when a man and women love each other very much. They will bestow upon each other a gift. 

[00:45:44] Doug: The wife occasionally, like every sixth year, decides to give you a gift. I get it. 

[00:45:49] OG: I got a, uh, I got a briefcase.

Not a hard sided, you know, whatever, but like a computer bag, you know, nice leather one. Sure. I don’t really use it, haven’t used it in a long time, but I, you know, back in the day, had to take my computer back and forth, whatever. Some years ago, I don’t remember when, this was probably 10 years ago at this point in time, I was going through that bag and there was a little, uh, goal setting exercise in there that I had done on a Tony Robbins cassette tape.

That’ll tell you how old, how old it was. You know, it was just basically, you know, write down some things, five, 10 year goals and, you know, lifetime goals, whatever. I remember doing this and I remember thinking like, okay, cool. Yeah. Okay, that’s done. Put that away. And all of the things that I had written down during this exercise 20 some odd years ago were completely done.

And blown away, you know, like in terms of I hope one day I can do, do, do, do, do. And it just, you know, all of it happened. And so the question is, is did it happen because that was there and I did that exercise or did it happen for some other reason? And I think that a lot of evidence points to giving your brain the, the ability to say, this is something that I’m interested in, and just letting your brain work and solve the problem and you know, get you there.

[00:47:04] Joe: What I’m fascinated by is also, the second piece of that is I believe og, once you write it down, I. Your subconscious brain helps you go find the people, right? Find those who’s as Dan Sullivan and company called them who can help you get there. Like, I feel like when I put that down in writing, my brain immediately goes to, who knows about this?

Who is it? And the one big takeaway I remember from Think and Grow Rich is proximity about if you’re around people that are doing X, you will probably end up doing X as well. It will probably rub off on you. 

[00:47:40] OG: I mean, yeah, it’s, uh, you think about that in the context of good things. I, I, I often think about the people that you surround yourself with as potentially a bad thing in the context of what, which is why he 

[00:47:52] Joe: just stays away, Doug.

[00:47:53] OG: I mean, you know, I’m sorry, this could be dangerous. 

[00:47:58] Joe: We’re about to hug. Can’t 

[00:48:00] Doug: have it. 

[00:48:00] OG: Well, there, there’s that no touching. Everybody knows that. 

[00:48:04] Doug: Oh, you’re, you’re moving to Texarkana Dallas will be perfect. Yeah, 

[00:48:07] OG: that’s, 

[00:48:08] Doug: that’s close enough by two and a half hours away. Yeah. 

[00:48:12] OG: But in all seriousness, when it comes to the people that you hang out with or the people that you’re around, you’re, you know that phrase, you’re the average of the five people you hang out with the most, and there’s a chance that you’re growing faster than those people, you know, and there’s a chance that you have to refresh your friend group from time to time.

And it’s feels kind of weird, right? It feels weird to be like, yeah, I’m not in the same, I’m not doing the same stuff as, you know, Doug anymore. And, and I feel weird about that, but you know, I either hang out with Doug and get stuck in the past or Wow, 

[00:48:46] Doug: what the hell? Or 

[00:48:46] OG: I, you know. Or I move forward, I’m just 

[00:48:49] Doug: sitting over here, get stuck with Doug crying all the time in a corner trying to drink my LaCroix.

[00:48:56] OG: I think all of that kind of feeds into it, you know, in terms of, you know, if you’re not getting where you wanna go. Right. Not saying that you can’t take responsibility for it, obviously. Like that’s, well, just, 

[00:49:05] Joe: just the idea you’re talking about being intentional. Being intentional. 

[00:49:10] OG: I have some family members that are like this.

You can only be around them for a short period of time because. Because they’re so wildly different than how I think about things. I mean, think about it, it takes something super simple like a political thing. You have friends who are super conservative. You have friends who are super liberal, you know, and, and, and depending on where you are, you either are like, I can only be around that person so long before they, you know, we find the thing that we don’t agree on.

And then it’s just like, okay, we need to go away now, now do that with money. Right. You know, you’ve got the person who’s like, oh, there’s never enough, and you know, and maybe you’re an abundance mindset type person. You’re like, no. I think, you know, there’s always a bigger, uh, bite at the apple. There’s always more, you know, I can, I can always continue to invest and save and, you know, there’s always money in the banana stand.

Maybe you’re that type of person and the person you’re hanging out with is like, you know, woe is me and the market sucks and it’s rigged and you know, much more, more 

[00:50:02] Joe: limited mentality. 

[00:50:03] OG: Yeah. And you’re like, okay, I can take it for a second, but eventually I need to take a break. I need to, I need to go kind of take some vitamin C to, to, to cleanse my soul of that.

And so, you know, that’s something too, right? It feel like you’re getting stuck for whatever reason. Evaluate the conversations that you’ve been having, evaluate the thinking that you’ve been having with the people that are around you because there’s some chance that some of that is rubbing off. See about having other friends.

[00:50:30] Joe: Yeah. Thanks to Sam for, uh, kicking off this week. We’ll have more of that of course. Uh, with Lisa Peterson, who, uh, is also gonna push us down the mindset pathway. Just like I 

[00:50:40] OG: pushed Doug down, maybe slightly different 

[00:50:44] Doug: PE people are like, you know, they always use the phrase, the man keeping you down. It’s og I found out who it was.

The OG keeping me down now. Yeah. 

[00:50:54] Joe: Let’s do a headline. 

[00:50:56] headlines: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. 

[00:51:02] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from a place I’ve gone for a while, strip for a headline, uh, napa-net.org. It’s the National Association of Plan Advisors, the people that handle.

Pension funds and retirement funds, those types of places. Schwab another big company, og, partnering with a company to help new employees, older employees pay off their student loans. Schwab partners with Candidly to expand student loan matching program. Schwab Retirement Plan Services has expanded to student loan and college planning resources available to 401k plan participants through an agreement with student loan and education benefit platform.

Candidly, because of a secure 2.0, now employers can implement a student loan retirement match for their 401k plan. I don’t know how. How do you feel about this, og? I think I, I like the fact that employers can step up and go, Hey, you know what? You’re a smart person. I wanna help with that. 

[00:52:01] OG: This is a challenge for a lot of people, right?

As you think about saving and investing, trying to decide. What takes priority? Do I pay off my student loans aggressively? Do I make payments at all on them? You know, do I defer them into Infinity or, and for a lot of people it’s a either or or do I put money in my 401k, which I know at 22 25, 30. ’cause I listen to Stacking Benjamins, I listen to all these podcasts.

They say like, just do something, get it going, get that snowball going, but I don’t have enough money. So what, which one of these is a hierarchy? Which one is more important? The Secure 2.0 Act allowed for the provision that if you allowed employers to create this provision that said if you put money in your student loans, if you, if you pay money to your student loans, we can match that contribution like a normal 401k match in your 401k.

So it’s not matching student loan payments, it’s matching inside your four. You kind of get a, I don’t know, double dip. Is that a way to look at it? Yeah. So it’s money. 

[00:53:02] Joe: It’s money that you’re putting toward your student loans that would’ve potentially gone in your 401k put in your four one K. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:09] OG: Yep. Yeah. But instead of doing that, you did it to your student loans and the secure act was saying you’re getting hosed twice. Right. You’re, you’re not putting money in your 401k and you’re not getting the company match. This allows employers to create this provision in their plan that says if you, in lieu of doing 401k contributions, you choose to do student loan payments, we can still match you as per our normal matching program.

I mean, I think it’s kind of cool. 

[00:53:34] Joe: Yeah. Here’s the question I have. Let’s widen this discussion a little bit because I don’t think there’s any, I don’t think anybody’s gonna disagree that this isn’t, 

[00:53:41] OG: uh, well, I, there’s gonna be some business owners that disagree with it. What do you mean? I mean, you know, I.

Potentially business owners could look at this and say, no, no, no. This is meant for us to help you save money for the future. You’re paying off debt. Like, why? Like, how is, how is a student loan debt pay off any different than somebody who overbought a mortgage and why should, you know what I mean? Like, you could have that discussion, I think.

I think it’s good. Yeah. But I can see some people having a little hissy fi about it. So 

[00:54:05] Joe: you mean some business owners are going, why is this my problem? 

[00:54:08] OG: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I’ve created this 401k to incentivize you to save for retirement. Sure. Now you’re saying, well, I can’t save for retirement. I want you to do it for me.

[00:54:17] Joe: Yeah. To your point, it isn’t the business owner’s fault that the, uh, cost of education has continued to skyrocket. And that’s a whole different, yeah. 

[00:54:26] OG: Yeah. Let’s, uh, barrel, let’s, let’s talk about that. That would be a fun way to spin this. That’s a 

[00:54:32] Joe: 30 minute dis 30. Oh. Probably longer than that. You’re right.

But I do wanna tackle something that our stackers with student debt are wondering the Inc. Cubase repayment or pay it off as soon as I can. Do I do income-based repayment, OG, and hope for forgiveness way down the road? Or do I just take the bull by the horns and get it done? Like what’s my decision making?

[00:54:56] OG: You know, this is tough for me because I think that there are, like, personally, I think there’s two sides to this. One side is I feel a strong responsibility. Personally. I hesitate to say morally ’cause you know, that’s a whole different issue. But I feel a strong personal responsibility to say, look, I took this debt, it’s on me to solve.

I chose to do this and Yeah. You know, and just playing devil’s advocate a little bit here, I understand that college costs are skyrocketing. I’m about to start writing those checks. So believe me, I am living it with y’all right now. But I also know that there’s other ways to solve that problem. Like I was talking to some parents at my kid’s school just about college in general.

Like, you know what, what, what is your kid doing? What’s my kid doing? That sort of thing. One parent said, you know, it’s just really too expensive for us. Um, so Junior’s gonna go to community college for a couple years and that’s a solution. That doesn’t mean it’s a great solution. That doesn’t mean it’s the best.

That’s a solution. And then you contrast it to another family that was like, but Nancy really wanted to go to this really expensive out-of-state school ’cause it’s supposedly ranked really good, so we’re gonna mortgage our future against it. And I go, huh, that’s an interesting way to do too. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, but I feel like I.

You have some choice in the matter, and so therefore if you chose to go to the really expensive school and it costs a lot of money, then I feel like you have some obligation to pay that back. That was your deal. 

[00:56:26] Joe: Well, here’s, and I think there’s even OG a broader piece of that, and this is just my opinion.

I don’t think we’re gonna change the cost of education going down until we teach administrators at these universities that there isn’t an out like that. We are going to help you by wiping out this debt, by creating these programs that make it so the debt is forgivable. Like until we have the unfortunate pain of people going.

I ain’t going that route because I don’t need whatever, you know, the new Yeah, the supply demand 

[00:56:57] OG: issue is what you’re saying. 

[00:56:58] Joe: Exactly. 

[00:56:59] OG: Yeah. 

[00:56:59] Joe: We have to, we have to stop making it a given that the college can jack up the money next year, can jack up the amount that it costs with no, with no, um, nobody on the other side going, no consequences.

Repercussions. Yeah. No repercussion. 

[00:57:14] OG: I think that’s a big piece of it. You know, demographics are gonna play a piece into this. We’re, you know, we’re seeing in our community, you know, we live in a suburb of Dallas, huge growing, huge, I mean, a hundred thousand people a year, moved to Texas. It’s skyrocketing.

Yet the population of young people is still pretty low. Is is going down. They’re closing elementary and middle schools. In our community, which is odd. ’cause you go, well what the heck? Why are we building all these houses? Then if it, well just ’cause it’s 30 year olds moving in, you know, it’s this wave of enrollment.

Anyways, so I think to answer your question, your question was like, what do we make of this? And, and I said two sides of it. One is I feel some personal responsibility to paying it off, but I also feel like there’s a pathway for people that are committed to call it the greater good, whatever you want to call it, that provides them a different, a different benefit, right?

I mean, if you’re gonna be a public servant of some kind, or you’re gonna be in healthcare in, you know, not be the million dollar thoracic surgeon, but instead you’re gonna be a different, you know, help a different community. You should have different benefits and that’s one of those benefits. So back to your idea about supply and demand.

In order to attract people to be teachers, let’s say you have to have a. Some incentive. Right? And one of the incentives is potentially you can have some of your student loans wiped out. That’s an incentive program, right? You know, is it 

[00:58:42] Joe: not? David Gerin, a couple years ago when he was on, was talking about the same thing, like, we need people in some of these leadership positions.

We need more people to take the lead in some of these positions. So why wouldn’t we incentivize them in this in this particular way? 

[00:58:56] OG: I think it’s mindboggling that some people are gonna go crazy about this. I think it’s mindboggling that we pay the president $400,000 and congresspeople 192,000. We pay Bob Iger 52 million.

The reason Bob Iger, I, I think he’s a good leader. Like I’ve read his stuff, I think he’s got some good, the reason he’s not running for president, in my opinion, is because there’s no incentive. Way better 

[00:59:19] Doug: gig. Didn’t want the pay cut way, way better gig. 

[00:59:21] OG: Like it’s a crappy job. That’s why people 

[00:59:23] Doug: don’t become teachers.

People don’t become teachers. You don’t that the world hates you, dude. The salary is an afterthought. It’s all of the insider trading information you get when you work with the government. That’s where the money is. He 

[00:59:34] OG: got, he’s got that at Disney too, I suppose, but, um, yeah, no, he doesn’t, he doesn’t have it at Disney.

He, he doesn’t instant trade. They have way, I, I just think the incentive structure’s jacked up. So I would say the answer to your question is, you know, which one of these do you pick? If you’re moving in a path that one of the payouts, one of the payment structures for your career path is the opportunity for student loan reduction or elimination of some kind, you 100% should take advantage of that if you’re trying to structure your life so that you can pull one over somebody and like, ha ha, ha, ha, ha.

I fiddled with it and therefore I got this benefit and I took advantage of a, a loophole or something. Not saying that other people don’t do it, I just, that wouldn’t be how I would do it. Where do you draw the line on that and say, well, but don’t rich people take loopholes on taxes all the time? I don’t know.

[01:00:21] Joe: Well, there’s also a great piece. I dunno where that happens, 

[01:00:24] OG: but 

[01:00:24] Joe: even without that argument, og, there’s just a great benefit to getting it done, get it done, get it behind you. 

[01:00:29] OG: So if you have student loans, I would encourage you strongly to aggressively pay them off because it’s like any other debt. Nobody gets to retirement.

We talk about this with the house thing. Nobody gets to retirement and goes, man, I’m sure glad I still got a mortgage. You know, boy, I, I really pulled one over on the bank on that one. I caught it at 4%. Invested the difference. Yeah. Like nobody says that. Yeah. Every, every single person who’s ever paid off a house in their life go.

That was the greatest thing I’ve ever done. No one, no one. I’ve never met anybody that’s like, you know, you know, I paid the house off a couple years ago. Yeah. I just wish I wouldn’t have done that mortgage. You shoulda stopped me. I went to the bank and got a new mortgage. It just felt weird to not have debt.

You know, it’s like nobody says that. I just, 

[01:01:09] Doug: I just saw this video. It was a woman sitting in her car eating chicken wings. And after watching it for way too long, realized this has to be rage bait. Like this can’t be real, but she was talking about how she has an undergrad and I think one or two grad degrees, and she has no intention of ever paying them off because, uh, and she’s not working in her fields that she has these degrees in.

This is 

[01:01:34] Joe: totally just somebody trying to make you angry. 

[01:01:36] Doug: Right. Because mission accomplished. I I don’t need to, you know, I wasn’t even gonna bring it up until we got on this discussion. I saw it like a day or two ago, and I got maybe, you know, three or four minutes into it. And I’m like, this is, this cannot be real.

Because a, she did not sound like she had the degree she claimed to have, but she’s like, the government’s gonna take care of it eventually. I don’t need to, I just wanna stay home with the kids. Just counting 

[01:01:54] Joe: viewers, 

[01:01:55] Doug: counting viewers need chicken wigs. 

[01:01:56] Joe: Yeah, 

[01:01:56] Doug: exactly. 

[01:01:57] Joe: Millions of viewers. 

[01:01:58] OG: And that could happen, right?

I mean, there could be some sort of, you know, just erasure of some kind. I, I don’t find it happening. To your point, Joe, about the. That, that, that doesn’t teach the lesson, you know, that doesn’t solve the problem. That actually would incentivize schools to be like, did, did we say tuition was 20,000? We meant to say 200,000.

Right? Like, like, who cares? We’re gonna get the money and then the government wipes it out in 50 years. Like that’s, you know, it doesn’t matter. Uh, news flash, if you don’t pay your student loans, they take your social security. Just so you know. 

[01:02:26] Doug: You waited until the end to say that. Well, I was, that’s a pretty major point.

[01:02:30] OG: No, I’m saying relative. They’ll 

[01:02:32] Doug: garnish your wages essentially. No. Garnish your retirement wages. That’s what I mean. Just save your social security. It’s the same thing. 

[01:02:38] OG: It’s a direct retort to your comment about the video of the person who said that. 

[01:02:42] opener: Yeah, 

[01:02:42] OG: uh, it’ll be fine. It’s like, well, it’ll be fine until you go to file Social Security.

They go, oh, hey look, and there’s a certain amount they can take. You used it all. I know as far as debt goes, look, you will always be happier the faster you pay it off. And so if you just kind of put these pieces together, you graduate school, you have student loans, whatever. Right. It is what it is. You’re working.

Presumably in a job that makes you more money than you did when you were in college, live like a college person for like just one more year. Just pretend you decided to take five years to graduate instead of four, or pretend that you decided to go get a a another degree and it’s gonna take you six years instead of five.

And if you live like a student for one more year or a year and a half, you can take all that extra money that you make in your new job and pay off your student loans. Oh dear. And then you’re fine. 

[01:03:30] Doug: People are gonna be screaming at their car stereos right now, or their head. I mean, they’re, they’re also car stereos.

They’re driving to work, they’re listening to us trying to get edified for the day. They’ll be yelling at their trek. They’re gonna be yelling at their, yeah. Uh, and they’re in their Oldsmobile 88 Deluxe Broome, but I’m sure they’re thinking right now. Dude, do you have any idea how much college debt is?

It’s not like I’m in debt for $7,000. It’s $270,000. I can’t do that in a year. No, the average 

[01:03:56] OG: is not 270,000. I know it, but there, it’s not even close. The average is 25,000. The average student debt is 25,000. Don’t say 200,000. That is horse. 

[01:04:06] Doug: Okay, 

[01:04:06] OG: fine. There is a person who has 200,000. They’re lawyers or doctors or whatever.

[01:04:10] Doug: I, I believe the data. I truly do. I’m just saying, most people are hearing this saying you can’t pay that off in one year, like the college student. And 

[01:04:17] OG: I’m saying, I’m saying you’re using radical examples that are completely unrealistic. The ones 

[01:04:22] Doug: that the 

[01:04:22] Joe: media showed. What I love though are those people that do extraordinary things because we featured them on our show where they have done that.

They’ve gone, you know what? I’m gonna live unreasonably. I’m gonna live like I’m still in college. I’m not going to adopt this new lifestyle. I’m gonna keep my old lifestyle until I get, I mean, we’ve had people on the, the show that have paid off $80,000 in a year, these ridiculous numbers, and certainly, and if you have 

[01:04:45] OG: $200,000 of student loan debt, you are a doctor probably, and you are now making $400,000 a year instead of.

A person who is a business degree with 65,000. So just, you know, just make it suck for a short period of time. You can have, you know, there’s two sucks in life, right? You can have it suck a long time, or you can have it suck a short time. You wanna suck short time. All it is, just get it over with, man. 

[01:05:09] Joe: The goal is 

[01:05:09] Doug: just to suck short time.

That’s the takeaway. I, I feel like we’ve somehow, 

[01:05:16] OG: I just, as you put it on a t-shirt, it just, there’s, you know, this, I’m telling you, 

[01:05:19] Joe: suck your short time. Get it over with, make it suck. Short time. Doug, you gotta put that in your takeaways at the end. I know you already kind of prew your takeaways, but, and, 

[01:05:29] Doug: and it’s going on.

My Doug 2028 

[01:05:31] Joe: T-shirt 

[01:05:32] Doug: suck. Short time suck. Short time. 

[01:05:35] OG: Get it over with. 

[01:05:37] Joe: Let’s set up before we get it over with here. Uh, uh, by the way, I think the, the true takeaway here is, is we’re seeing it roll out across the country. If you have student loans and your employer will help you pay off that debt, you wanna sign up for that program.

That’s a great way to get moving in the right direction. Let’s go out to the back porch. We got some fun stuff, Doug, on the, on the back porch. I remember, remember me saying that, uh, that, that, you know, it’s not like you need a nine 11. And then OG responded with, oh yes, I 

[01:06:08] Doug: gotta get from point A to point B.

I mean, it’s basic transportation. Yes. In the supercar world, that’s entry level. Duh. Apparently OG is using this podcast for his own personal needs because we got responses to that. Joe Jeffrey actually sent us the [email protected] for the nine 11. He has for sale. Do and I get a commission on this 

[01:06:30] Joe: deal.

Doug, do we, if, if, if OG buys Jeffrey’s car, I think we should get a percentage. 

[01:06:38] Doug: Abso freak. Absolutely. We should. If not, we’re blocking him from listening ever again. It’s a 

[01:06:41] Joe: 1977. 

[01:06:43] Doug: Oh, so sweet. I love the old ones. 

[01:06:46] Joe: Yellow. Yeah. Uh, Jeffrey’s selling it for 68,000 bucks. 

[01:06:50] Doug: Yeah. 

[01:06:51] Joe: Second owner of an exclusively California owned always garage, 19 77 9 11 s, always 

[01:06:56] Doug: in a little old lady’s garage probably.

He 

[01:06:59] Joe: said, that is not a typo. The original owner professionally dressed his car up in a pretty dress to look like a 9 93, which he thought was the most beautiful portrait ever. I lived next door to his widow during the pandemic, and all of a sudden she said she was gonna sell it. She’d sworn she’d never, I, I think Jeffrey’s making this crap up, like 

[01:07:16] Doug: he’s just, yeah, this lady had it.

Yeah. I don’t think you need to work this hard to sell a classic 77 Porsche. It sells itself. Jeffrey, back off a little, don’t go over the top like. I sometimes do. 

[01:07:29] Joe: Yeah, he did. He did a bunch. And Jeffrey, if you sell this to a stacker, uh, you know where to send the commission right here to, uh, to Doug and me.

Gary also asked, I mentioned that I mentioned the mug. We, I don’t have it today. I got a qua non falls mug today. Ooh. Yes. Beautiful. How long has it been, Doug, since you’re, how far are you from Taquan Falls? I 

[01:07:49] Doug: thought you were gonna say, how long has Taan Falls been there? Well, Joe Taan Falls was built in 19 74, 3 weeks ago.

They just got it finished. It’s amazing. It’s probably two and a half hours for me at the most. I still haven’t gone because, uh, it’s a pretty. Tourist dense location. So beautiful place. It’s gorgeous. It absolutely is. It’s one of those gorgeous spots that Michigan has thousands of. It took a beating this year, a bunch of the falls.

’cause there was so much snow in the, there was a snowstorm like a week ago in the up, so it’s still snowing up there. But, uh, there was so much runoff from the melt that taan and like the walkways and stuff around it took a beating bond. Falls, uh, you’re not gonna be able to go to, but it’s gorgeous. 

[01:08:37] Joe: They built a beautiful little very touristy area that you go to when you park it.

Taan Falls. I just said that to get Doug’s eye roll. 

[01:08:45] Doug: He’s like, yeah, 

[01:08:46] Joe: I know. Great. 

[01:08:46] Doug: That’s 

[01:08:47] Joe: super. But I gotta tell you, there never gonna see it. A there’s a micro brewer in there. Of course there is that of course. Yes. Because when you go to the falls, you gotta have. A microbrew and that was the first place that I had blueberry beer that I liked.

[01:09:03] Doug: Oh, it’s disgusting. It’s gross. 

[01:09:04] Joe: It was delicious With the actual blueberries in the top. A place in Louisiana makes blueberry beer. And I was like, oh yeah, I had this when I was in the up. You know what some, I got some good dipping 

[01:09:14] Doug: your own blueberries in it. It was disco. 

[01:09:17] Joe: It was, it was disgusting. Mine are more like walnut ducks.

Yeah, sure. They’re walnut beer would be more appropriate for mine. But it was, it was delicious. There’s a weird thing going with a, I don’t know, with the oxygen level where they, the blueberries sink to the bottom of your beer and then they come back up. Why the hell are we still talking about blueberry beer back?

It’s fan. Just because you hate it a hundred percent because you hate it. Yeah. 

[01:09:42] OG: It’s like coffee flavored coffee and beer flavored beer. Yeah. Like, let’s not get too crazy. 

[01:09:46] Joe: I don’t like, I don’t like flavored beer. Somebody, uh, was having a peach beer recently and I was like, yeah, that’s good for you. I’m never having that.

Yeah, A blueberry beer was the exception. 

[01:09:54] Doug: That by Dennis O’Leary. Dennis Leary. I think it’s Leary. Oly. Dennis O’Leary. Not O’Leary. He’s Dennis 

[01:09:59] OG: O’Leary. 

[01:10:00] Doug: He’s pretty, I think his cow was the one who might’ve burned down Chicago, but Dennis o Leary had the best. The best bit about coffee. Flavored coffee and beer.

Flavored beer. 

[01:10:09] OG: Beer. That’s where, that’s where I got it 

[01:10:10] Doug: from. I know. Anyway, 

[01:10:12] Joe: stacker Gary wanted to know about the new mug with the new Stacking Benjamins logo on it. We’ve got a couple one’s on his way to Doug right now. OG said, I don’t believe it. I’d love to have one, but I’ve already got 50 mugs. I do.

But Gary, we’re still trying to figure out how to get those in your hands. Gary wants to know where he can buy one. Coming soon. Coming soon. We will let you know about 

[01:10:33] OG: the, yeah. How bad do you want it, Gary? Yeah, right. Gary, 

[01:10:37] Doug: I think you gotta buy, I think you gotta buy Jeffrey’s Porsche first. 

[01:10:41] Joe: That’s a 

[01:10:41] Doug: prerequisite 

[01:10:42] Joe: for owning the mug.

$68,000 mug. There’s only one of them. It’s, it’s good. Uh, uh, last thing that I have, uh, for the back porch today is on Thursday. We are doing a live event. Remember, we used to do live events fairly often. We haven’t done a live event in a long, long, long time. And this Thursday we have Steve Chen from Bolden, our Favorite Do It Yourself retirement calculator.

Steve Chen coming back on to talk about mistakes people make with retirement calculators, og and I’ll be there. We’ll be talking through it. Maybe we can convince Doug to come and do some trivia. Haven’t even asked him yet, so we’ll just. Doing that live, taking it minute by minute. But that is going to be 8:00 PM on Thursday.

Either go to our YouTube channel and you’ll just see the live, or if you go to this link, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash bolden 2025 B-O-L-D-I-N, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash bolden 2025 8:00 PM Eastern, that’s 5:00 PM Pacific Mountain and Central. Do your own damn math. But we’re gonna have a great time talking to Steve Chen about retirement calculators and these mistakes people make all the time.

If you’re going to dive into the numbers, you don’t wanna make some of these, uh, mistakes. And Steve’s a guy that builds a calculator. We did this, oh gee, what, uh, five or six years ago with Steve and, uh, had maybe 400 people attend. So, uh, big piece of our audience. So come join us and we’re gonna have some fun live on Thursday night.

I think that’s it for the back porch, Doug, you got it from here with your brand new takeaway. What, what should we 

[01:12:22] Doug: have learned 

[01:12:23] Joe: on today’s show? 

[01:12:24] Doug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from Sam Dogan. Wanna Be a Millionaire? That journey starts in your head. Napoleon Hill had it right in the movie when he said, Tina, you Fat Lard, come get some dinner in the movie.

Isn’t that the, is that who you’re talking about thinking Grow rich Man. Oh, did you miss that whole thing? That napole? Napoleon Hill? I, I got my Napoleon mixed up. Yeah, he said, think and grow rich. Second, those student loans. Decide early how you’re gonna handle ’em and get living. Create a plan and get ’em behind you.

Because in the astute words of OG suck short time because you’ve got saving and living to do. That’s a T-shirt. But the big lesson, don’t ask Joe’s mom for a brownie. She’ll tell you that the per capita brownie consumption in this house doesn’t include a Doug only capitas. Now, once I figure out who these capitas are, I’m gonna have to infiltrate that gang Capitas seem to be running amok today.

Thanks to Mr. Financial Samurai, Sam Dogan for joining us today. You’ll find his new book, millionaire Milestones, which has been blurbed by Joe. Ooh. It’s disgusting. You should clean that up wherever books are sold while also share links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com at. The 2 0 1 newsletter, he blurbed all over his book.

This show is the Property of SP podcast, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets some 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. 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.

I’ll be back right after. I make sure I don’t offend anyone by saying per capita my bad. It’s so dumb. Well, at least we know. One guy is gonna laugh. He’s laughing right now. Even when I wrote it, I’m like, do I wanna write this? Look at, look at, look at OGs face. There’s just, it’s just nothing. He’s like, Sam the Eagle on the Muppets.

There’s just no nothing but a frown. 

[01:15:44] OG: That’s the Muppet guy. You think that I am 

[01:15:46] Doug: Sam the Eagle. Yeah. 

[01:15:48] OG: I’m not the guy in the balcony with the 

[01:15:50] Doug: No. ‘

[01:15:50] OG: cause, 

[01:15:51] Doug: no, Sam The Eagle’s gruff and opinionated. Right. The guys in the balcony have a sense of humor.

You totally Sam the Eagle. When you call me the picture of Sam, the eagle shows up. That’s, I’ve got that attached to your thing. 

[01:16:08] Joe: I’ve got a T-shirt that’s that. Um, like that Hope t-shirt, you know, but it’s Sam the Eagle and it says a salute to the world, but especially America. 

[01:16:19] Doug: I’m not sure how Sam the eagle fits that.

I mean, other than it’s an eagle. Same eagle said that. 

[01:16:23] Joe: That’s Sam the Eagles thing. Sam the Eagle. Every episode is gonna do a salute to the world, but especially America. 

[01:16:29] Doug: I don’t remember that. Yes, I do like Waldorf and Stadler up in the balcony. Those guys are pretty sweet though. 

[01:16:35] Joe: Yeah. 

[01:16:39] opener: Ugh, that was so bad.

It locked up my computer. Quick. Let’s get outta here before it finds the key. No, I mean it. Alright.