Touchdown Tips to Boost Your Financial Game (featuring ex- NFL star Brandon Copeland) SB1572

Today we focus on resilience in both personal finance and investments, featuring an engaging discussion with Wharton professor and former NFL player Brandon Copeland. Highlights from this episode include Copeland’s mission to teach financial literacy, strategies for managing cash reserves for retirees, and handling fraud cases with banks like USAA. The team emphasizes the importance of giving investments time to recover, as shown by the S&P 500 rebound post-COVID. They warn against keeping retirement accounts in cash and offer practical tips such as monitoring bank transactions, freezing credit, and aligning your portfolio with your goals. A contest on historical investment returns based on political parties is extended, and as you’d expect from a financial podcast, there’s a recap of dramatic events from ‘Below Deck Mediterranean’ Season 5.

Breakfast Banter and Donut Discussions

Shrek and Movie Moments

Salute to the Troops

Football Season Kickoff

Interview with Brandon Copeland

Athletes and Income Streams

Real Estate and Passive Income

Mentorship and Life Optimization

Book Promotion: Your Money Playbook

NFL Trivia and Humor

NFL Franchise Worth Trivia

Personal Anecdote: Hotel Encounter

Financial Lessons from Brandon Copeland

USAA’s fraud problem

Retirement Cash Strategy

Contest Announcement and Wrap-Up

FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/kick-off-your-money-plan-brandon-copeland-1570

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

Enjoy!

Our Headlines

More and more USAA members who lost thousands of dollars are sharing their stories of fraud — say they’ve now lost trust in the bank (Moneywise)

Brandon Copeland

Big thanks to Brandon Copeland for joining us today. To learn more about Brandon, visit Home | Brandon Copeland. Grab yourself a copy of the book Your Money Playbook: How to Earn More, Build Wealth, and Win at Life.

Doug’s Trivia

Which NFL franchise is worth the most money?

Better call Saul…Sehy & OG

Stacker Dan calls in with a question about how to increase his cash position as he approaches retirement.

Have a question for the show?

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Join Us Wednesday

Tune in on Wednesday when three experienced dads share their tips for helping teens and people just starting out in life and with money, to get moving in the right direction.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: The Case For and Against Hiring a Coach (plus the top countries for digital nomads) GREATEST HITS WEEK (SB1571)

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Joe: It’s money in America. And I can see OG that you have not finished your breakfast yet.

[00:00:03] OG: Costco, Kirkland Protein Bars. Ooh. It’s like peanuts and chocolate because everybody needs a little chocolate for breakfast. Did you stop by them? Of course, of course.

[00:00:12] Joe: That’s, uh, what donuts, right?

[00:00:14] OG: The cornerstone of every nutritious breakfast

[00:00:16] Joe: you have to somebody on TikTok the other day was calling it, and I’m sure this is a thing in the, in the Northeast, but I have not heard it.

[00:00:23] Have you ever heard, uh, dunking Donuts referred to as dunk? Bring me a dunk. Oh, they, I used to call it Dunky. Yeah. This woman was talking about, uh, her boy. She had her boyfriend bring her a dunk. And I’m like, what does that mean? And then she shows herself drinking it and it’s a Dunking Donuts drink.

[00:00:38] OG: My daughter calls Starbucks star Bees.

[00:00:41] Can you get me a star beast?

[00:00:42] Joe: I’ve heard that one of my favorite scenes in the movie of all time was when Shrek in Shrek when, hold on everybody, just to be

[00:00:49] OG: clear, one of your favorite scenes of all time came in the movie Shrek. It

[00:00:54] Joe: did. This was hilarious. When everybody says, the guyes out guy who tries

[00:00:58] OG: to see all the Oscar winning movies and has done for 25 years, one of the greatest scenes of all time that you’ve ever seen.

[00:01:09] Is there any hyperbole

[00:01:10] Doug: in this by any chance? Takes a day off every week just to watch movies. I

[00:01:15] Joe: don’t think. I don’t think though Doug, you were laughing about what OG saying and I think you were laughing ’cause you know the scene I’m about to talk about.

[00:01:21] Doug: No, I was laughing at exactly what OG is saying.

[00:01:23] Oh. When you said favorite scenes of all time followed by Shrek. I could not restrain myself,

[00:01:29] OG: but let’s hear it. I mean, I’m really curious. I feel

[00:01:31] Joe: like I’ve seen Shrek. Yeah, you go girl. Where I don’t remember what’s happening but every ’cause it was such a mental movie. Well, it’s the greatest

[00:01:36] OG: scene of all time.

[00:01:37] Joe: It was everybody. Well, ’cause you had to watch carefully for it. I don’t think most people caught this at first. Everybody runs out of one Starbucks because like these marauders are coming through and they run outta one Starbucks and they run across to another Starbucks across the street and go hide there.

[00:01:53] Thought it was pretty good.

[00:01:54] Doug: That’s one of the greatest scenes of all time. It was

[00:01:56] Joe: hilarious. It’s very much awesome. It’s either that and something from Schindler’s List, probably up at the top. Wow.

[00:02:05] bit: Yeah. Um, wow.

[00:02:06] Joe: Can you repeat the

[00:02:07] bit: part of the stuff where you said all about the things?

[00:02:11] Joe: Alright, let’s raise our glass, shall we?

[00:02:13] Moving on. It’s time for us to do our Monday salute to the troops, our amazing troops that kept us safe all weekend and will this week as well and into the future. Here’s to our troops. On behalf of the men and women at Navy, federal Credit Union, men and Women, and making podcast in mom’s basement. Thank you for all you do.

[00:02:31] Go stack some s now, shall we? Thanks everybody.

[00:02:34] OG: Oh, this is going to be fun. We can stay up late swapping Manless stories and in the morning, I’m making waffles

[00:02:46] Doug: live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:03:00] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug and happy football season Stackers. And to help you kick off gett Kick any who here to help us start strong with our money. We welcome Wharton professor, money expert and ex NFL star Brandon Copeland in our headlines, customers of one bank experienced fraud in their accounts and the bank did nothing about it.

[00:03:25] What if it happens to you? What was the bank? We’ll share Plus we’ll answer a question from one stacker who thought, you know. I better call Saul, see hi and og and of course we can’t start the football season without some football. Theme trivia. And now two guys who are about to help you put the W in the wind column with your Benjamins Barf.

[00:03:48] It’s Joe and o Ju ju.

[00:03:58] Joe: You don’t like Ws? You don’t like Ws. You go for the Ls, you go right for the, let’s just lose it quickly.

[00:04:03] Doug: We all play our strengths.

[00:04:05] Joe: You get to go home sooner. Hit the couch. Seriously, if you’re gonna win a title, you know how many more weeks you gotta play in a row? Oh my God, she golfing

[00:04:13] Doug: all that time.

[00:04:14] Joe: Horrible. Hey everybody, welcome to the press, the Easy Button podcast. I’m Joe Sulci. Hi, average Joe Money on Twitter. Hope you, uh, had a fantastic week last week with our greatest hits episode, but we are back. We’re all stretched out, especially the man across the card table from me. Mr. og, you have any words coach for the team as we start the next eight week season?

[00:04:37] OG: Rah, rah, ri. Kick him in the knee. Rah rah RAs kick him in the other knee. Doug. What are we doing?

[00:04:43] Joe: What are we doing? Doug. Wow.

[00:04:44] Doug: He has never coached a team in his life. No clue. Go out there and bite him in the kneecaps. Yeah, we just gotta go out there and, and uh, play our game, you know, and stick to the fundamentals and just do, you know, do what we do best.

[00:04:58] Just focus. If we score more touchdowns, the other

[00:05:00] Joe: team, we will win. Kids. We will win. It’s gonna be good. Well, it was the start of the NFL football season. I know you guys are probably glued this weekend to your televisions. I know. I was. Oh gee. How about you?

[00:05:13] OG: Oh yeah. Sunday ticket. Yeah. Included in my YouTube TV package.

[00:05:17] Joe: The only

[00:05:17] OG: reason I have YouTube TV isn’t.

[00:05:20] Doug: Just included or is that like an upper tier that you’re paying for?

[00:05:24] OG: I, I’m sure

[00:05:24] Doug: it’s extra. I don’t even know.

[00:05:29] Joe: Hey, today we’re talking about the line items in your budget, right? That you’ve never seen before. Take a lesson from OG and just, you know, hit that button and have somebody else, uh, uh, look at it. No, uh uh, we do have a big headline today for you. Brandon Copeland is here. He played 10 years, I think I told you at one point Doug, he played 12 years in the NFL

[00:05:48] Doug: played 10 grievous mistake.

[00:05:50] Joe: Yes. He actually played for Penn, not a football powerhouse. By by, sorry Penn. You’re known for a lot of cool stuff, but not known as a football powerhouse. But when he was the team captain, they won back to back, uh, championships as the captain. He walked on to the Baltimore Ravens and Wow. His, uh, wow, that’s amazing.

[00:06:10] Went from there. He actually was gonna get his first start with the Detroit Lions, with our Detroit Lions. So we’ll talk to him about all that, but mostly about your money playbook.

[00:06:18] bit: We’re

[00:06:18] Joe: kind of taking the theme from the NFL. Let’s start off the fall season strong, but to start this podcast strong, we have a couple sponsors who are gonna make sure this is all free for you.

[00:06:28] We’ll have a couple now, and during Doug’s trivia and the whole second half of this and the whole time we talk to Brandon, we will not have any works from sponsors. So let’s have a couple right now. Big thanks to them and we’ll be right back. Brandon Copeland, AKA, cope here with us to teach you about your money playbook.

[00:06:47] So let’s go meet him

[00:06:58] and I’m super happy he’s here with us in Mob’s basement. Brandon Copeland’s here. AKA cope. How are you man?

[00:07:04] Brandon: I’m doing phenomenal. How you doing?

[00:07:06] Joe: I’m so happy you’re here with us kicking off NFL kickoff week. This has gotta be a big week for you. Are, are you in a fantasy football league? That’s question number one,

[00:07:15] Brandon: man.

[00:07:15] Do you know what? I am not. I’ve never gotten a fantasy football because every time I give people and friends advice on it, I am looking at the game plan. I’m looking at how we’re gonna stop this person and I’ve heard that my. Advice is terrible when it comes to fantasy football. So it has made me say, you know what?

[00:07:36] This may not be a challenge or a mountain that I want to climb. Uh, let me just stick to what I know, so to speak.

[00:07:42] Joe: Well, and so is that why you’re not in coaching and instead in, well, you are in coaching, but you’re in financial coaching Yeah. Rather than football coaching. Is that why? Because you’re like, well, maybe, maybe there’s a greener past year for cope.

[00:07:53] Brandon: Yeah, no, I mean, I think coaching is something I’m interested in, but I also realize, you know, hey listen, look, in business, you gotta know your strengths and you gotta know your weaknesses. And I know one of my weaknesses is I’m very impatient and my delivery when I’m impatient can come off a little harsh.

[00:08:10] So I. With that being said, I’m like, you know, let me wait until I’m maybe a softer soul and then get into coaching. You know, right now I’m good though. I’m, I got my kids, I’m not, they coach like Deion Sanders yet or anything like that. I don’t know if I’m, I’m ever gonna do that, but I will. I mean, my, my oldest is five years old and my youngest is two and a half, but like.

[00:08:29] The coaches at the YMCA let me jump in with them and, and help out and all of that stuff. And so I’ll run drills with them and all that stuff. And that’s a good, I I’m, I’m, I’m working my way up. I’m building my resume.

[00:08:40] Joe: That’s the middle ground. Yeah. I gotta tell you, I remember those days that my twins were two and a half and five and well, that’s where all my hair went cope.

[00:08:47] So yeah. You talk about this in this project, you get this question all the time, and it was the first question I thought, and you dive into this, you know, football versus Wall Street, you had an internship where you were working on Wall Street, is my understanding. Mm-Hmm. You had this background, you had this great college career at Penn, not as, you know, considered a football powerhouse, even though you guys kicked ass the years that you were there.

[00:09:12] Yeah. But you know, they’re not head to head against Notre Dame or Alabama. Yeah. You’re at this fantastic school with this. Economics degree that’s gonna open up so many doors. Why pursue football versus pursuing economics outta the gate?

[00:09:30] Brandon: Yeah. The funny thing is, when I was on Wall Street, I was at UBS, my sophomore going into my junior year, and it was shortly after the oh eight financial crisis.

[00:09:43] And so there was still layoffs going on all the time. And at one point in time they were doing like 2000 layoffs across the entire bank. And you know, for me as a young person coming up and you know, you go into Wall Street and people talk about, oh, I want financial freedom and I wanna own this and I own that.

[00:09:59] And I saw so many adults afraid for their lives and afraid for their jobs. I was having a conversation with one person who ended up becoming a great mentor of mine. I won’t put his name out there. And he’s sitting down and he is got this Bloomberg terminals up and he’s a trader and, and he’s trading and.

[00:10:16] And we have a convo and somehow it evolves to happiness. And I’m sitting there talking with him. I’m like, so are you happy? And it was, frankly, you know, it was a ballsy move for an intern to ask something like that, but I’m like, are you happy? And he literally stops. He looks out the window, he looks back at his desk and he is like.

[00:10:42] No, I’m not happy. I work extremely hard. I have three beautiful daughters and he had picture frames of his daughters underneath the, the monitors. He was like, I have three beautiful daughters. I can buy them anything that they want in the world, but I’m pushing around pieces of paper. Uh, this isn’t really as fulfilling as I thought it would be.

[00:11:03] And right there in that moment I was like, oh, I might as well just go for it. I might as well go for the dream. I might as well go try to do everything that I’ve ever wanted to do in this world. And I’m glad I asked that question, but when you asked, you know, why go for the NFL one, it was the dream come true.

[00:11:19] Two, I got a picture of my grandfather up here. He is my, one of my heroes. My mother’s my hero. He played 11 years in the NFL and it was something that. You can’t go backwards, you know, as I, I, I can go into many different tangents, so you’ll pull me back here, Joe. But my last year in the NFLI was going into year 10.

[00:11:42] I had a bunch of different surgeries and I had at that point racked up three knee surgeries and I was just like, man, I don’t, I don’t know if I want to put my body through another year. Like I, I’m starting to feel my grandfather gave me advice going into the NFL. It was like, if he could do anything different, he just wouldn’t play as long ’cause he paid for it the rest of his life.

[00:12:00] And so, you know, I told my accountant, you know, I don’t know if I should do this or not. And my accountant was like, well, I’m 50 something. I’ve never played in the NFL and my knees still hurt and I still gotta get a knee replacement. So you might as well go ahead and live it for as long as you can and then be able to, you know, walk away safely and make sure that you don’t look back with those regrets.

[00:12:21] So, uh, long-winded way to answer your question. For me, it’s about going for the things that, that I’ve dreamed of the things that it makes a younger version of me extremely proud of who I’m becoming today. And for me, at that time, the NFL was the opportunity not only to live that dream and to go out through the white smoke and to hear fans screaming and also fans booing, but also for me to create the startup capital that I needed to.

[00:12:48] Create the life that I want financially for me to have the influence over younger versions of myself to be able to walk into a classroom in a Detroit and get kids to stop doing what they’re doing and sit down and, and listen. Right? And so the opportunity for that was something that I would, you know, never pass up and I would do 10 times over.

[00:13:09] Joe: Did your grandfather ever get to see you play in the NFL?

[00:13:12] Brandon: Yes, he did. He passed away in 2019, so he got to see the first six years of my career. And the first couple were real up and down, fired multiple times. Sat out my second year. Um, I didn’t sit out, sorry, let me not make it seem like it was voluntary.

[00:13:27] I was fired and told I wasn’t good enough. And, you know, the whole second season in 2014, um, outside of the first two weeks I sat out and 2015 is when I really got on. And he was there with me as many games as Zeke possibly could be. Unfortunately battled dementia, Alzheimer’s, CTE. So the last couple of years, um, weren’t, you know, his, his greatest that he would’ve loved.

[00:13:50] But, um, the one thing I will say, I. His final year. So in 2018, my grandfather was able to come to a game of me with the New York Jets and um, he came on the sideline and it was the same week of the 50th anniversary of the Baltimore Colts playing the New York Jets and losing the Super Bowl. Well, oh wow.

[00:14:11] It wasn’t the, it wasn’t the same date, but they were honoring that team. And my grandfather played for the Baltimore Colts and actually lost that game. But he was able to come to that game, be on the sidelines with my wife and my mom and all that stuff, and see a lot of his old friends from when he played.

[00:14:29] Um, unfortunately his, his disease picked up after that. But again, one of the greatest moments of my life, ’cause he was just on cloud nine because it’s funny how, I mean, I’m not sure if you ever dealt with people who have dementia, but there’s certain things that you see them come back. And that was a really cool thing for us to be able to make happen.

[00:14:52] Joe: Just wild that you could meld those moments together into something that cool. That’s just one of those, I, I don’t know, one of those phenomenal life moments. You know, you were talking about getting fired. I don’t know what statistic, the number of people that last 10 years in the NFL like you did, but man, it’s gotta be a tiny percentage of people that even start in the NFL and you truly cope.

[00:15:15] You truly did it in a grinded out way. And I know a big part of this project you have on financial literacy and helping people get a leg up and get started and get the playbook is about hustle. Mm-Hmm. I just wanna go through this ’cause I don’t think that a lot of our stackers know just how much goes into becoming an NFL.

[00:15:35] Athlete. You sign with Jacksonville, you get cut, you sign with the Titans, you make the practice squad, you get cut you, but then you come back and you’re with them. You sign with the Lions, the best team in the NFL by far, the Detroit Lions. Absolutely. And you get hurt, which I just, I just, I’m groaning as I’m reading this, I’m like, he’s finally there and he gets hurt.

[00:15:58] And then, uh, finally rocking with the JETE Jets. Right? And really things started to roll there. So many setbacks. I guess this idea of financial literacy, you know, how frustrating it was for you, and I think we’ll get into this, you know how frustrating it’s when you’re teaching people about financial literacy, what the hell’s a Roth?

[00:16:15] IRA? Like how do I, how do I, yeah. What taxes being taken on my paycheck? What the hell are you talking about? Mm-Hmm. Like all these things that we never learned. Talk to me about resilience because you had to have, with all those setbacks, cope. I just don’t know how you kept coming back and coming back and coming back before it finally worked out with the jets.

[00:16:34] Brandon: Yeah. One, I mean, thank you for highlighting a bit of the journey. I start my class every single year with, I teach at the University of Pennsylvania. Um, started teaching there six years ago in the off seasons. And I start my class every year with a class called Secure the Bag. One of the lines I quote, I love music and I love some of the lessons that some of your favorite artists actually teach through their art.

[00:17:01] And Rick Ross always says in the song, I’m a boss, he says, A boss is one who guarantees we’re going to eat. And frankly, there is no excuse for me to not create the life that I want. And so, whether it’s the NFL, whether it was Wall Street, whether it was becoming a painter or artist, or a entrepreneur, there’s a dream and a vision and a why that I have for my life.

[00:17:29] And I can’t leave this earth without accomplishing it. I always tell people with the NFL in particular, there was one that competitive drive that ego, but two, that true understanding that I am actually good enough to be in the NFL and not just good enough. I’m actually really good. I haven’t really said this publicly because I don’t want to sound egotistical or anything like that, but you know, you come into the NFL and when you’re classified as a journeyman or something, you start to naturally start to eat away at how good and how talented you actually are.

[00:18:05] But when you’re able to, to have the epiphany or, or the chance to take a step back and look at it, you’re like, hold on. I was one of the best athletes in the world for an extended period of time. And although whenever it was contract negotiation time, you know, people tell you all the things they hate about you.

[00:18:23] Whenever you stepped on the field on Sunday, there was people who never could argue with the play that you, I. Put out there on the field. And so for me, understanding that, hey, I’m good enough to do this, it gave me this relentlessness of like, I just gotta keep going until I get my shot. I gotta keep going until I get my shot.

[00:18:42] And like you said, there were so many setbacks, whether that was coaches saying, Hey, you may not be good enough to make it in this league. Or like you mentioned, when I was with the Detroit Lines, my third year there in 2017, the day before I tore my pec muscle, my linebacker coach, bill Sheridan, came to me and and said, Hey, cope, I’m gonna let you know.

[00:19:04] You’re gonna be our starter this year. Wow. The only reason why I’m telling you this is because I know your journey has been a rollercoaster ride to get here, and I’m very proud of the way, the effort that you put in and how hard you worked. And we had a joint practice against the Indianapolis Colts that whole week, and I was crushing them.

[00:19:21] There were sometimes I was looking at myself like, wow, who am did I did was, was there a space jam ball around here that I knew? That’s when you know it’s

[00:19:29] Joe: good.

[00:19:30] Brandon: Yeah. And he came and gave me that, that feedback, and then the next day to go out there tore my pec. And frankly, because it was a clean tear of the, the tendon I.

[00:19:40] It didn’t feel painful. So, you know, I went into the, the back with the trainer. I’m sitting down on the training table, he’s feeling on my arm. He was like, Hey, cope, I, I hate to tell you this, but you tore your pet. And I’m literally like, oh man, that’s, that sounds bad, but, okay. What’s that? Two weeks, three weeks?

[00:19:57] It was the first preseason game. So I’m like, you know, two weeks, three weeks, I’ll be back out there. He was like, uh, sorry. Cope. That’s, that’s six months. Uh, I think your season may be over, buddy. I’m like, whoa. Listen, Kevin, his name was Kevin. Kevin. I don’t, maybe they haven’t told you yet, but I’m the starter man, so I’m gonna need you to go back there, find some band-aids, find some rockside.

[00:20:20] Let’s, let’s take this thing up. But I’ve been working really, really hard to finally be the starter in the NFL and, you know, let’s figure this out, Kev. And, and he said, I’m sorry, Coke. This is. Six months, if this was the last week of the season or we are in the playoffs, maybe we go for it. But you would ruin probably the rest of your life if you tried to play on this the whole season.

[00:20:41] So with that being said, having that mental resilience and that non quit attitude is what I took onto the field because really it wasn’t about my egos, about what I believed that I could do and what I wanted for my life. And I think I take the same approach to my finances, to my family life and to the different things that we’ve created in this world.

[00:21:04] Joe: Is it then getting competent that builds the confidence?

[00:21:07] Brandon: Yeah. I do agree that it is getting competent, but I think it’s also, frankly, when you have that no quit attitude, you know that it’s just a matter of time. You just gotta, you know, I, I don’t want to jock other people’s quotes and stuff like that. I, I like to give credit to my resources, but like Alex Ey, who went to my high school and is doing some amazing things in the world.

[00:21:30] Did he go to your high school inspiring people? Yeah, he did.

[00:21:32] Joe: He, I can’t watch that guy’s videos ’cause he’s too jacked.

[00:21:34] Brandon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mickey like, oh man, what am I doing? All right? You know, you start pushing up the, pushing up the stuff. It’s

[00:21:41] Joe: seriously distracting. It’s so distracting. I can listen to him all day, man.

[00:21:44] If he talks, I could listen to him. And he seems like a brilliant guy, but dude, I cannot watch it.

[00:21:49] Brandon: Yeah, yeah. I completely understand, man. And what he says is, if you stay in the game long enough, then you’re bound to win. And you know, I, I’ve never heard somebody say it like that, but it’s like the infinite game theory.

[00:22:02] The infinite mindset. But I think building that competence, also, knowing that you have no quit in your body. And if you stay in the game, if you really want something, you can achieve it. And then the last thing is. Being willing to roll up your sleeves and put the actual work in. There’s a lot of people who want things, and I’m not trying to talk down on them, but there’s people who want things and there’s people who are willing to work for things.

[00:22:25] And if you’re not willing to put in the work, the research, the time, the mentorship, the, the shadowing, the due diligence, et cetera, then do you really want it? Is it really going to pan out? And I think when you have that combination of those three things, that’s what makes you really, really dangerous.

[00:22:44] Joe: I think that’s so apropos because I’ve seen so many people, frankly, that are competent and do nothing with that, right?

[00:22:49] Mm-Hmm. I mean, they read and they read and they read. And someday they’re actually gonna pull the trigger. They’re gonna deploy what they know. And, and that’s really when rubber meets the road. This blew me away when I read this. And I know your book doesn’t come out till tomorrow, but can you tell everyone when the first time was that you really had somebody sit down with you and teach you about budgeting, taxes, financial planning?

[00:23:13] ’cause this wasn’t like, you weren’t 12 cope when this

[00:23:16] Brandon: happened. No. Yeah. No. I sign from the University of Pennsylvania. I go to the Baltimore Ravens, my hometown team, and I’m loving it. I’m excited. All of that good stuff. And the NFL Players Association comes into the building and they start talking to us about these things.

[00:23:35] 4 0 1 Ks, I’m. Wow. And they tell us, you know, Hey, if you make it, you get accredited season and this, this, this, then you can get your 401k and the league will match it at this rate. And I’m like being a numbers guy. I’m like, Hey, you know. Wow. This is, this is pretty nice. You’ve already

[00:23:53] Joe: been through, just so everybody hears this, you’ve already been through Wharton with a degree in economics.

[00:23:59] Yes. Yeah. And you’re like, we’re actually finally talking about economics that matter, like the economics of cope and what it’s gonna take to manage a paycheck.

[00:24:07] Brandon: Yeah, absolutely. I mean you, for me, that’s what was really shocking. So at that time I had to like lock back in ’cause I’m like, Hey, these numbers are cool, but if I don’t make the team, none of this stuff matters.

[00:24:19] So let me lock back in on playing and practicing. Well in about an hour and a half. But going away from that, I’m just like, hold on. I interned on Wall Street for multiple years. I interned at a hedge fund in high school. I went to the Wharton Business School of Business. I’m just learning about what a 401k is like, okay.

[00:24:39] I had to make it to the Baltimore Ravens for that to happen. Well, who’s gonna teach my mom about this stuff? Who’s gonna teach my brother about this stuff? Who’s gonna teach the world about this stuff? Do you really have to make it to the NFL to hear the term 401k for the first time? And so, yeah, it was, I don’t wanna say appall, it was enlightening to me that that is the real case.

[00:25:01] But it also showed just the disparity or the discrepancy in what we learn on a day-to-day basis in school and all these years of education versus what we’re actually going to use. And so, yeah, it was a enlightening experience being a Raven.

[00:25:17] Joe: And I love then that then becoming your mission to help people get that.

[00:25:21] Information quicker than you did, and frankly when I did too with my own personal story. But before we get there, the college season also in full force, finally. Yeah. As well, you’re seeing college players getting paid. You see, in fact, the, the head coach at the University of Maryland talking about how surreal it is to him when his third string running back says, coach, I don’t want a lot, I just want a hundred thousand bucks.

[00:25:43] I dunno if you saw that, that crazy quote, but I can’t imagine with the lack of education that you had about money, even with your upbringing, with the the Wall Street stuff, Wharton hedge fund in high school, you still didn’t know. I can’t imagine how you feel about college kids getting paid tons of money without any of that literacy.

[00:26:03] Brandon: I, I think it’s great that college athletes are making money. I think it’s phenomenal that they get to earn a piece of what they actually help schools and universities produce. Right? And we can have a full long form conversation about that. I do think that it is outrageous that schools aren’t having true life skills classes, right?

[00:26:26] Like, yeah. Yeah. And it shouldn’t even, ’cause a lot of times people are like, well, does the NL teach you these things? And it’s like, it shouldn’t even be the NFL’s responsibility, right? Like, you, you should be learning this in high school. Don’t teach me the tangent of a 45 degree angle. Teach me what a Roth IRA is, or what a closing disclosure of a house looks like.

[00:26:45] Right? Mm-Hmm. And so there are a lot of athletes who are making money now, and I’m co-founder and CEO of a company called athletes.org as well too, which is the players Association for College athletes. We’re trying to get them. The true revenue they deserve from their schools as opposed to them having to do A NIL deal, which is really a marketing deal.

[00:27:08] It’s really a Pat Mahome State Farm deal, not as check from the chiefs. And fortunately, tides a turn. Revenue sharing is happening, and now we’re just making sure the athletes actually have a seat at the table to voice their opinions in how they get that money. Hey, some of it should be into a retirement account.

[00:27:24] Some of it should be in my pocket today. Some of this. What about our mental wellness resources? What about our health insurance after our careers? And things of that nature? But there are a lot of athletes right now who are getting paid a tremendous amount of money, really life-changing money for them.

[00:27:41] And unfortunately, there’s nobody who is, I don’t wanna say mandating, mandating is a tough word, but impressing upon them the importance of how. Strong financial plan can change the rest of your life. The money that some of these athletes are making today in college is the difference between them going through the rest of their lives with pressure versus them going through the rest of their lives, feeling in somewhat in control of their finances.

[00:28:10] And you know, fortunately, platforms like this exist, but you know, we’re doing our work as well too to try to make sure that athletes don’t have to keep making the same mistakes that their predecessors have made with their money. You can use the money that you’re making as a trampoline for the rest of your life because unfortunately, a lot of college athletes.

[00:28:31] Prior to them making money. And regardless of whether you make money or not, when you’re done playing your sport, there’s a lot of us who fall off a cliff and mentally, physically and spiritually and emotionally. And hopefully not that money solves it all as we know, but hopefully it can help you in that transition period as opposed to being a complete debilitating factor for your life.

[00:28:55] Joe: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I, I just think having the time to cope with the huge life change, you know, we have a lot of military members cope that listen to our podcast and that transition, much like a transition outta the NFL, is just, you know, it’s a whole new world for our men and women. Let’s get our stackers a little bit ready.

[00:29:12] Obviously we can’t do it the way you did it in the book, but I do wanna start where you start, which is all these athletes now this week coming out of training camp and you talk about how we need training camp with our financial health. So walk me through what training camp means when it comes to building your financial plan.

[00:29:30] Brandon: Yeah, I think before you go into the season for everybody’s context, you go into training camp, and training camp is to basically pressure test you and get you prepared for the actual ups and downs and ebbs and flows of the season. Doing that with your finances is getting yourself in order. It’s making sure that you’re organized so that you can actually make the best financial decisions for you as you continue to build on that strong financial foundation that you set during training camp, making sure that you’re in touch with your why, making sure you understand what you are truly working for so that you’re not working for what your neighbor is working for.

[00:30:06] You’re not working for the car that they have or, or that they want, or what you want on, uh, what social media wants for you, but you’re working for the freedom of life and the freedom of choice that you choose to pinpoint. Making sure that you have a strong budget. There’s a lot of us who are afraid of the term budget, but also there’s a lot of us who are working extremely hard to create more revenue, create more income.

[00:30:31] But ultimately, there’s a, I always say you’re trying to heat up your whole house in the winter, and if, imagine if you have multiple windows in your house that are just open while you’re blasting the heat and you, you’re going to work against yourself. And so a lot of these things can be done more efficiently once you sit down, create time for you to really think through your goals, the quickest routes for you to get there, but then also for you to map out what your current financial situation is.

[00:31:02] Because a lot of times every year it happens when people just do a budget, a lot of times you end up making money just because you start to see a. From a 30,000 foot view, oh, I still got this subscription draining me every single month. Oh, I’m giving way too much money to this cousin. Right? Like there’s different things that you start seeing that make you start to look a little differently at every single purchase that you make.

[00:31:26] Joe: I absolutely love that advice. ’cause I remember back when I was a financial planner, which was a long time ago, and I have clients that would say, this is like going to the dentist. I feel horrible coming in to see you. And then when I leave, I feel great, which is every trip to the dentist I’ve ever had is is like that.

[00:31:39] Oh God, I gotta go. And then later on I’m like, man, my mouth feels good, but, but when you get those numbers in front of you, to your point, you see the warts and then your brain starts working on those things, which I think is super cool. The first quarter of your book, of course it’s in quarters and you’ve got plays to run.

[00:31:55] We’ve got practice, we’ve got the film that we watch, which are case studies. But I wanna talk about chapter one ’cause you say something and chapter one’s all about hustle. And I think we’ve done a good job today about talking about, begin with betting on yourself and hustle. But one thing I’ve never heard before, cope, which is you have people take out a sheet of paper or their phone or whatever and write down five sources of income.

[00:32:19] Not one, not three, but five. Why? Why do you want us to have five jobs?

[00:32:25] Brandon: Yeah. I think people have always said wealthy people have multiple streams of income. Right. And I think by starting and mapping out those things and also applying them to what you’re actually good. At, right. What you’re naturally passionate about.

[00:32:40] It gives you the ability to start to create some diversification for yourself. Now, will you go and apply hours and hours of your life to all five of these places equally? No. You should definitely have some focus, right? When I was a NFL player. The NFL is the main thing, right? However, by you even sitting down and spending this time mapping these things out, it gives you the ability to start to create freedom of mind, but also it starts to help you allocate your most important asset, which is your time to, towards some of these different things that can help hopefully become revenue streams and bigger revenue streams for you throughout your lifetime.

[00:33:18] So I love having multiple streams of income. I think in this day and age, the side hustle mentality can sometimes be good and bad because it, it can detract your focus from that main source of income.

[00:33:31] OG: Yeah.

[00:33:31] Brandon: However, you never want to be as the guy who was fired from the NFL multiple times. You never wanna be too dependent on one person to feed you and your family.

[00:33:40] Joe: You said when you were driving around Detroit with some of your teammates, you guys were looking at houses and obviously Detroit has just done a phenomenal job of really economic development and that city’s just such a kick ass place now. My son, by the way, has 14 rental houses in Detroit, lives in Seattle.

[00:33:55] Wow. But he just wants to rebuild his hometown that he grew up with. You guys were talking about the same thing about, look at all these houses. We could be a part of the solution here. Did you ever invest money in Detroit?

[00:34:06] Brandon: Yeah, that’s where I got my start in real estate was like you said, we were riding around looking at, you know, where’s going to be the next downtown of Detroit and how it’s gonna continue to grow and expand from there.

[00:34:18] Detroit was coming off the back of declaring bankruptcy in that entire ordeal, so to speak. But yeah, I started doing real estate investing in Detroit, doing single family property, flips a lot of properties at auction. Earlier when I mentioned I, I tore my peck. Literally that season. I always laugh thinking about it that season because I had so much time on my hands because all I would do was rehab and, you know, be at home.

[00:34:47] Yeah. I decided to start a little real estate business and, and we would buy properties at auction. My wife, she works at Google. She’d go to work in New York. She’d come back home and we’d be sitting over at dinner and, and she’d be like, you know, I’d be like, Hey, how, how, how was your day? She’s, oh, it was good.

[00:35:02] This happened. This happened, and all good. And she was like, how was yours? I was like, oh, you know. Wife was good, and day went by pretty fast. I bought a house today and, you know, we just keep it moving. You just keep it going. And that happened five times during the year. We already had a couple and we would buy these properties, you know, auction sight unseen.

[00:35:19] And, and by the fifth one, my wife was like, Hey, don’t, don’t buy another house. Let’s, uh, let’s make sure these things work first. But by me being able to start in Detroit, being able to be there, being able to see it, learn about the entire process. And again, I, I had tore my pec, so I was able to spend a lot of time in all of the details, managing the properties myself.

[00:35:44] It just sped up my learning curve so much tremendously. And I’m fortunate to have mentors like the guys who were riding with me, Tahir Whitehead, Theo Riddick. Yeah. But then also guys in the city. Calvin Johnson, Megatron Calvin Johnson, AKA Megatron. Rob Sims, golden tape of Rob Sims. He brought me around the city as well too.

[00:36:03] They showed me some of the single family flips that I was investing in already. Um, he started taking me to apartment buildings that he was working on that were 12 to 25 units. Then he started taking me to commercial space and I was fortunate because he basically showed me just through driving, uh, me around and just allowing me to learn and sit with ’em for a few days that there are levels to this thing and there’s more than just a single family flips and there’s no, nothing wrong with any of that.

[00:36:33] Sure. But it showed me, okay, well I’m learning and I’m gonna keep learning so that I can eventually grow to. Other spaces within the real estate industry?

[00:36:43] Joe: Well, I think it’s just like your book, right? Ju just focused on trading camp. Then let’s go into the first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter.

[00:36:49] Let’s build a a solid foundation. There was a great analogy. I heard you, I’m gonna kind of misquote you, but the gist of what you said was people go watch the games for fun. You played in the NFL because A, you loved it and B, because you were being paid, right? Mm-hmm. To be there. But the people that own these teams creating all this goodness, this is a side hustle for them.

[00:37:15] Like, like none of these people. That was just a wow moment when I’m like, these people are writing all these fricking checks and creating all this goodness. Yeah, and this is their quote side project.

[00:37:26] Brandon: Yeah. It’s pretty. Incredible when you think about it that you know, when you are buying a team, you’re getting that capital or you’re getting your legs in the business from something else, right?

[00:37:39] Yeah. And although some of them bought it at lower valuations years ago, hey, these still you own a team. And you know, having some conversations with some owners, some of them are at the point now where they do it just to keep the family together and, you know, we all come back and go to the game and things of that nature.

[00:37:56] I’m like, wow, this is not a vacation home. This is a,

[00:37:59] Joe: a

[00:37:59] Brandon: vacation

[00:38:00] Joe: stadium.

[00:38:01] Brandon: Yeah. You, you know, invite 80,000

[00:38:03] Joe: of my closest friends.

[00:38:06] Brandon: Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, it’s pretty incredible to think about and, and it’s also for a player, I mean, any athlete out there, I think you should be looking at the people and the things around you and taking as much as you can for yourself.

[00:38:24] And you didn’t necessarily ask this question, but I’m gonna go ahead and Yeah. Sound like the, the OG or the old guy out here and, and, and give some advice. The reason why I lasted 10 years in the NFL was because I will learn from anyone, anywhere at any time. I’ve been around a lot of athletes and a lot of people will, man, I’m not learning from him.

[00:38:44] He’s a rookie or man, I’m not going, what can that coach teach me? They never played the game or anything like that. Right. And for me, when I was at the Patriots, I have a whole set of notes on Bill Belichick and just how he manages an organization and how he leads and how he’s created a culture. And whatever you wanna say about Bill Belichick, again, one of the winningest coaches ever.

[00:39:07] Right? And so the same thing can be said for the athletes in the locker room with these team owners as well too, right? You are literally sitting next to. Somebody who has built a business and they’re making more than all of us, and they don’t have to have pet surgeries, they don’t have to run through people every Sunday.

[00:39:32] And they found a way to evolve from having to physically work, to earn and make money. And so this may be a selfish thing, but it, but it is a message to athletes, but it’s also a message to people, right? And when we talk about writing down those five different income streams and things like that, now you start to think about, okay, well what are the income streams that really take me, Brandon Copeland, physically working and sweating and doing things, versus what are the things that I can set up?

[00:40:02] And basically push in the water like a boat and just let ’em flow and let ’em grow. And you know, a lot of people say real estate is passive. It’s not passive, right? Depending on the level you’re at, maybe it gets to seem passive, but it’s not passive, right? And, and so you starting to figure out what the life that you want is, but then also taking mentorship and guidance and cues from as many people as possible.

[00:40:26] And as you continue to get older and, and progress along those, those chapters or those quarters, you can continue to. Refine where you spend your time, what you say yes to, what you say no to, and I, I just have to have that optimism that life will work out for you if you do that.

[00:40:47] Joe: Well, I think just remembering that there’s levels and what a level these owners are playing on.

[00:40:51] You know, the fifth level, but you can’t play in the Super Bowl if you don’t start in training camp. Like if you don’t have that, don’t have that foundation. The book which comes out tomorrow is called Your Money Playbook and Cope. It’s available everywhere, right?

[00:41:03] Brandon: Uh, everywhere. You can go to brandon copeland.com/playbook and go and purchase your copy if you want to.

[00:41:10] Uh, you can get it on Amazon audiobook, all of that good stuff. But, uh, ultimately, again, Brandon copeland.com/playbook and, and I just appreciate you taking the time to read it, but then also for spending your time highlighting it today.

[00:41:23] Joe: Well man, thank you so much for helping our, uh, stackers score lots of touchdowns this fall and winter with their money ’cause uh, this has been great use of time.

[00:41:30] Thank you so much.

[00:41:31] Brandon: Thanks Joe.

[00:41:37] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And how about cope? Bringing it to kick off the football season. And by the way, rest of the world, I’m talking about the real football. Not that thing yet. Kick around for 90 minutes and never score a goal. Wait, that actually sounds like OGs dating life back in the day.

[00:41:55] Haha. The National Football League, it’s a huge money operation. The average ticket price is now $151 according to SeatGeek. And concessions like hot dogs and popcorn come with an application to refinance your house so you can afford to eat. But here’s today’s trivia question. Which NFL franchise is worth the most money?

[00:42:18] I’ll be back right after I go give Joe’s mom and Cooper a season opening pep talk. We gotta cheer on those Detroit lions, right?

[00:42:34] Hey there stackers. I’m diehard Fairweather Lions fan and the guy about to win a Super Bowl. Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug. The NFL kickoff was this weekend and the season’s first Monday night. Football game starts in just a few hours, so we’re celebrating with some football meets money trivia. Today’s question, what NFL franchise is worth the most money worth?

[00:42:57] Approximately 10.2 BB billion dollars. It’s the team that calls itself America’s team, though they can’t seem to win big games without help from the referees. Oh, what? Dallas fans too soon from a Detroit fan, he reported it’s the Dallas Cowboys fucking cowboy.

[00:43:20] And now here to help you score with your money. Back to Joe and OG

[00:43:26] Joe: Dallas Cowboy Football. I wonder if they’ve, uh, signed the wide receiver yet.

[00:43:30] OG: So, last year we had some family in town, so, uh, the wife and I had some free points in the Marriott app. So we decided to go to the, uh, hotel, stay the night, do a little massage, dinner, whatever.

[00:43:41] And, uh, we get to the hotel, there’s, it’s like completely empty. I’m like, oh, this is perfect. Like, we’re gonna have a run of the run of the place, go upstairs, have a cocktail, come downstairs to have another drink before dinner. And it’s packed. The lobby is packed with people. There’s 500 people and I start looking around and a lot of ’em have these NFL shields on, you know, the, the, the logo, the NFL logo, right?

[00:44:05] Like on their lapels or whatever. And I’m going, what’s going on here? And then I go, I think, I know, I recognize, oh, this is the Packers team hotel. Oh wow. The night before the Cowboys Packers playoff game. Wow. Woo. So really cool, right? All these players and their families, you know, it’s a playoff environment for them too, right?

[00:44:25] They’re excited. It’s play off football.

[00:44:27] Joe: Well, they came in and took care of business too. Yeah, they did.

[00:44:30] OG: Well, hold on, hold on, hold on. So we go have dinner, we come back out and you know, just kinda mind our own business. Get in the elevator and two packers players get on, don’t know who they are, recognize ’em, but you go, oh, I’ve seen that guy at tv, but I couldn’t tell what his name is.

[00:44:42] And I said, uh, you guys ready for the long cold bus ride home tomorrow afternoon? He goes, oh, you must be a Cowboys fan. And I said, ah, yeah, you know, just I’ll tell ’em to take it easy on you. Or something like that. Right? Just kind of, I’ve had a couple drinks, so I feel a little sporty and something in my mind was pretty witty to come out and he was very nice.

[00:45:00] I said, I honestly hope you guys have a good game and you know, I, I, I know who I hope wins, but hope everybody’s safe and whatever. And I told my kids that and my kids go, dad, what? You, you get ’em all riled up. You’re gonna, they’re gonna, and I’m like, it’s not me. They’re not. ’cause it’s not ’cause of me that they wanna be riled up.

[00:45:17] I’m sure

[00:45:18] Joe: it was locker room bulletin

[00:45:19] OG: board. Yeah. Hey guys, there was a dude in the, the guy in elevator,

[00:45:22] Doug: some elevator rando.

[00:45:25] OG: He was 5 9 2 0 5 soaking wet and he was talking smack, we gotta win. So anyway, of course they beat the brakes off of Dallas and my kids blame me. So

[00:45:37] Joe: anyway, yeah, not Dallas’ finest hour.

[00:45:39] Definitely by the way, big, big thanks to COPE for coming in. And you know what, og if COPE can struggle as long as he struggled to finally, finally play in the actual NFL instead of being on practice squads and off and on, you know, and getting cut over and over. If he can struggle that much. I think the lesson is you can open a Roth IRA, you can save into your 401k.

[00:46:05] You can apply for the life insurance.

[00:46:07] OG: Hmm. You can do it. Just a small step. I think it’s powerful stuff. Pretty much same, same grit in determination.

[00:46:15] Joe: Uh, hey, you can also save money into a bank, but listen to this one. This, uh, headline comes to us, uh, from Moneywise and it is written by Sarah Lewis. It’s just a nightmare.

[00:46:27] These customers said more and more, this is the weirdest, more and more. USAA members who lost thousands of dollars of sharing their stories of fraud, say they’ve now lost trust in the bank. Wow. USAA is one of, I think, you know, you talk about OG America’s team being the Dallas Cowboys. Generally people say USAA and it’s in hushed tones like, oh, USAA good, good stuff.

[00:46:52] Here’s what happened. Curtis Murra says he’s been a loyal customer, USAA for 28 years till his wife rang him up one day saying she couldn’t make their mortgage payment ’cause there wasn’t any money in their account. Murra based in Georgia says he took a closer look at his accounts and discovered someone was making deposits in and out of his account.

[00:47:11] It was like they were playing mind games. He told News four San Antonio, they would deposit $9,800 in term right around and withdraw 9,800. They deposit 4,000 term right around and withdrew it. Murra contacted USA and convinced the institution to conduct an investigation, but USA allegedly told him there was no evidence of fraud.

[00:47:29] Despite a $14,174 loss across two of his accounts, including his emergency fund. Then the bank unexpectedly closed his account. Now, gee, you know why they closed his account? Because they suspected because of fraud. Yeah. That he was doing fraud. So they closed his account on him, and then he’s, uh, out, uh, he says the transactions were taking place in totally different states.

[00:47:50] They could see everything. They knew it wasn’t me, but for some reason they said that it, that it wasn’t fraud. I don’t know the whole case against USAA and I certainly, uh, I don’t wanna just shine the spotlight here on USAA, but I think while this is definitely OG USAA’s problem, also looking at your bank account from time to time to just look at transactions.

[00:48:12] I know you and I do this with the Stacking Benjamins bank account. You’re like, Hey, what about this transaction, this one, this one, this one. We go over that every month. We go over that. I think just looking at the transactions, luckily Murray was able to, you know, shine a light on it, at least with USA, but had they not looked, it could have been even worse.

[00:48:32] OG: There’s so many different ways that fraud can happen at your bank and credit card. This is one of the major pros of locking down your bank account and the pro against the Dave Ramsey Use cash only debit card because if I use my American Express card and somebody steals it, if there’s an incorrect transaction, I’ve been a customer for a long time, it very quickly gets resolved.

[00:48:59] And even if this were to happen in the American Express world where they’re like, or credit card world, not just Amex, but where they’re like, no, dude, this is you. Or This isn’t fraud, this is you doing this, and, and you know, I’m meanwhile, I can pay my bills, right? Like I’m in an argument with Amex over this debt or over this credit card issue.

[00:49:21] The rest of my world still functions when you have access to your bank that’s out there. It can go in any direction and it’s usually bad. And think about all the places that you have signed up that have access to it. Utility companies, I mean, how many stories do we hear about like such and such of, you know, utility company was hacked and, and you go, well, are they hacking the electric grid?

[00:49:43] Or they hacking to get my bank account? You know what I mean? Like everything is available if it’s on the internet. So the opportunity you have is to limit it as much as possible. So there’s this few places as possible where you have that connection between your information in the outside world, you know, a lot of times, here’s another great example.

[00:50:02] A lot of times people have brokerage account, an IRA and a Roth, right? They got their bank account and they go, I’m gonna set up a link to my brokerage account, link to my IRA and a link to my Roth. You don’t have to do that. You can just do one to your brokerage account and then transfer from your brokerage account.

[00:50:15] Like once you’re in that ecosystem of Schwab, for example, just move the money within the Schwab ecosystem, have one connection to your bank, not three that just. Makes it that much more opportunity for somebody to get one piece of the pie, one piece of the puzzle, to kind of have access to things that they don’t want to.

[00:50:35] It’s just, it’s so frustrating.

[00:50:37] Doug: But og it feels a little bit like what you’re saying. Maybe I’m just not hearing you thoroughly enough or reading between the lines, but we’ve also talked for 10 years about automating your finances as much as possible. And obviously the easy one to think about is savings.

[00:50:52] But others that we’ve talked about are automating your bill payment to do that. A lot of ’em will not take credit card anymore. I, I’ve tried, I used to be able to put most of my utilities on credit cards. Most of them aren’t allowing it anymore, so I have to give them routing information so they can pull it right outta my bank account.

[00:51:08] So now we’re exposing again, it’s not just, I think that might be unique to you. What

[00:51:13] OG: I would be curious what other people say about this. That’s not an issue here. It’s not an issue with any of the utility bills that I pay for any of,

[00:51:20] Doug: for any of the many homes

[00:51:21] OG: that I own.

[00:51:21] Doug: What’s not a, what’s not an issue?

[00:51:24] Credit card usage.

[00:51:25] Joe: I’m not taking the credit card.

[00:51:26] Doug: Oh, you can? Yeah. You’re able to do that? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I see. Yeah, I can’t, I mean,

[00:51:31] OG: so yeah, there might be, you know, some communities, I do know that sometimes it costs you money to do that, so you know, there’s some downside there. But I don’t know. It’s an insurance premium of, of protection.

[00:51:41] I would rather have this argument with Chase on my Visa bill, then Chase on my checking account. You know, you can’t go get money from your credit card to pay your mortgage. It’s a lot harder and it certainly costs a lot more. So I think that’s a thing you can do is kind of review who has access to things and some things.

[00:51:58] You’re right, Doug, you just, it just is what it is, right? Like there’s gonna be access to it. The second thing you can do is make sure that you have your credit reports frozen. I’m surprised how many people just don’t freeze their credit. It’s so easy. Like literally you can Google, have your credit report frozen.

[00:52:13] Have your

[00:52:13] Joe: credit frozen. You mean your credit report? Yeah. What did I say? Not your credit report. Just your credit. Have your credit frozen. Your credit reports the thing, you get that reports on your credit, just your actual credit. Have it frozen. Oh, I’m, yeah,

[00:52:28] OG: I guess, I don’t know. I say credit report, but tomato, tomato.

[00:52:32] You say tomato. I say tomato. I don’t, I don’t know. Anyways, but yeah, you just go on Experian, TransUnion, Equifax, type in Experian credit frozen, I guess is what Joe would type in. I might type credit report frozen. I think it’ll take you to the same place. Yeah. You put your information in there, it and, and you toggle it off so that there’s not, you just have another layer of pretty easy protection against some unwanted access.

[00:52:57] Um, for this story in particular, here’s the nuclear option and it’s really not that nuclear. If you are having a problem with a financial institution, you have to send a report to the Consumer Finance Protection Board or bureau Board Bureau CFPB. I don’t know what B stands for. But it’s Border Bureau.

[00:53:17] It’s one of those two, try both. That is such a bomb that gets dropped at that company’s lap that they hate it. They will do everything in their power to make that go away. So if this person is having this issue with USA, not getting anywhere, going on CFP b.gov probably and saying, I have a complaint, here’s what happened.

[00:53:39] That goes to a person, that person sends it to the, to their counterpart who is in charge of compliance at that financial institution. That is a big strike against them, and they will do everything to make that go away. So put that in your back pocket if you’re having trouble with financial institutions getting what you need to get done.

[00:53:56] Joe: According to the Better Business Bureau, there have been 4,122 total complaints against USA in the last three years. Yeah. Last April, federal grand jury in Louisiana indicted 21 people involved with stealing nearly $7 million from USAA customers, particularly the accounts of course, ’cause there’s a inner circle of hell for this.

[00:54:13] Older individuals with high bank balances. Three of the defendants OG worked for a call center that provided customer service for USAA and help the rest of the group to access customer banking details, to create counterfeit checks. Reporting the Dayton Daily News. Uh, last year they also, USA had a data breach that may have impacted around 19,000 members.

[00:54:33] After employees at another USA contractor shared their access credentials with unauthorized individuals. And of course, in 2022, they paid a stunning $140 million in civil fines to two federal regulators, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and the comptroller, the currency for falling behind and reporting suspicious transactions.

[00:54:52] There’s been a lot going on at USAA and it ain’t good lately. OG.

[00:54:55] OG: And this is true. I mean, you could run the same report for Chase Bank of America, Wells Fargo. Yeah. Well, I mean, they would probably leave the pack, but you know, like any of these institutions, I mean, there was just a big thing. The SEC find a bunch of firms, $500 million for not keeping record of their text messages with clients.

[00:55:12] It’s like, you know, if there’s a will, there’s a way to find sure institutions, but some of this is warranted, right? If you’re not following the rules that are in place to protect your consumer. You ought to get slapped around a little bit Crazy.

[00:55:24] Joe: Absolutely, yes. You should have Stacking Benjamins talking about you in their headline segment.

[00:55:30] That’s what should happen. That’s the big thing. You know, a couple things OG talking to people in banking, the reason they want that direct deposit and banks will give you all kinds of incentives to open an account. If you direct deposit stuff. There is, direct deposits are sticky. It’s, it’s difficult.

[00:55:46] It’s a pain point to move your direct deposit. So whenever you see, hey, X Bank is gonna give me a big incentive, if I open an account, it will almost always, always have, as long as you deposit your paycheck there. As long as you deposit, you know, direct deposit something there, they, they really want that direct deposit for that reason.

[00:56:05] But I also think that this weekly money meeting that Cheryl and I have really helps this as well. You know, we Truck, obviously Monarch is a sponsor of our show. They help Cheryl and I with our tracking. But you, you frankly don’t even need an app. You just need to sit down with your bank app. And if you do it once a week, it takes 10 minutes to just scroll through and go, oh, why are, there’s these money going in and out of our bank app all the time.

[00:56:28] Cheryl has gotten to the point where, at our bank we are allowed alerts. We get alerts whenever there’s any activity in our bank. And so she just gets a text message whenever anything hits the checking account. By the way, I tried that OG and, and it was just. Too many fricking texts. I

[00:56:43] OG: was gonna say that wouldn’t, that wouldn’t work in the og.

[00:56:46] It was ding dink, ding ding, dink dink, ding ding. Dink dink dink d dink dink. DD dink. It’s, it’s like the Bellagio. That’s exactly what it sounds like. Only the wrong way. What does it sound like at the Bellagio when you don’t win money out of the slot machine? It’d just be like this over and over again.

[00:57:08] Joe: We’ll continue this conversation tomorrow in the 2 0 1, our, uh, amazing newsletter. That, that, by the way, uh, last month. Welcome to all the new 2 0 1 subscribers. And we hope, well, we can see tons of people opening it. It looks like people love it, and we thank you for getting it. But we grew the, uh, newsletter by 10% last month.

[00:57:29] Big, big, big month. So welcome to all the new stackers out there. Glad that you’re with us. Uh, but if you don’t get the 2 0 1 yet, stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1, which is comes to your email, and we’ll continue the conversation about all of this. Time for us to shine the light on one stacker that said, you know what?

[00:57:45] I better call sa See hi NOG. This is the part of the show where we help you get your questions answered about your money. So if you’ve got one, send it to me. You head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail, and uh, you then can sound as cool as Dan does. Dan from Charleston, who’s asking today’s question, Hey Dan.

[00:58:07] Hey Joe and OG and neighbor Doug. This is Dan from Charleston, longtime listener, second time caller. I think, uh, and I have a procedural question. Assuming one was going to follow OGs, general retirement advice, and that is to be in a hundred percent securities, equities, uh, all the up to retirement, Rocky.

[00:58:31] How do you recommend clients go about piling up that cash? Uh, have you found it to be better for them to, in the eight or 10 years before they reach the age in which they plan to retire, to divert their retirement savings into cash? For us at, at $30,000 a year, if we need to do that for about eight or 10 years to get to about 300,000, which is where we would need to be in cash, or do you recommend they go past 59 and a half and then at some point between 59 and a half and the age at which they plan to retire, they begin to pull that money out of investments and putting it into cash?

[00:59:03] And if so, is it better to do that from your Roth or from your tax deferred accounts? And I know, I know, I know the answer is gonna be, well, it depends on your situation, but surely you have some rules of thumb that you guys go by to help clients make that decision, and I would love to hear those. Thank you guys so much.

[00:59:21] Joe: Uh, I love this question, Dan. I’d love the order of operations question. Thank you so much for that. So OG you strongly advocate having no bonds in a portfolio and to uh, Dan’s point then instead keep cash on hand. So when the market fluctuates, like it may have a couple weeks ago, we, fluctuates is a nice word.

[00:59:42] We don’t have worry about it, that we can stay invested. So how do we get to that cash position? And he used a number of $300,000 sitting in cash about how much cash are we looking at?

[00:59:52] OG: Just to be clear about a couple of things, it’s not about the market fluctuating because obviously last week or, or you know, over the last month really since the 1st of July, the stock market’s generally gone down over that period of time, still up for the year, which is great, but we don’t remember the good times.

[01:00:08] We only remember the bad when the market’s going down. It’s, it’s more around preventing your withdrawal from assets that have declined a lot. So say for example that you’re the person who retired January 1st, 2008. You know, you have a million dollars, you’re gonna withdraw $40,000 a year. That’s your distribution plan.

[01:00:24] You’re gonna do the 4% thing. By the time you got to September, and certainly beyond, as you got into March of 2009, your portfolio was down 40, 50% at that point. So somewhere along the line, you had to make a decision of when am I gonna stop taking money from this portfolio? And what we recommend is picking a dollar amount or picking, most people don’t spend percentages, so it’s tough to live in percentage world.

[01:00:52] But looking at your balance and saying, all right, I have a million dollars in my brokerage account. I’m taking 40 grand a year. If this thing goes down below 800 K, I’m gonna not take any money from my brokerage account until it recovers. And statistically, giving yourself the opportunity for that to, you know, for the market to have recession and recover and all that sort of stuff, you need about two years.

[01:01:12] If you wanna be conservative, you need about three. So in that example. Somewhere between 80 and $120,000 you’d have in cash to support your $40,000 a year withdrawal. So it’s not just, Hey, the market’s down this week, I’m gonna take it outta cash instead of my account. It’s once I’ve breached this point, then I’m gonna completely stop from withdrawals from the equity portion of the portfolio until I’ve run through all the cash because it’s gone down and now we have to give it enough time for it to do whatever it’s gonna do, the recession to happen, the recovery to start happening, and for the market to recover.

[01:01:43] So it’s a long process. And so the question that he had at the beginning was, when do I start building that excess cash and how do I get to it? So in that example of, Hey, I’ve got a million bucks. I wanna have $40,000 a year, that’s my spending and I wanna have $80,000 worth of distributions and cash. How do I get that 80,000?

[01:02:04] I would have that $80,000 on the day that you’re retired. Now, there’s a couple of different ways to do it. One way he said was, well, should I divert some savings over the course of the preceding few years to kind of increase to 80,000? Should I just sell something when I get to retirement, boom, that day I rebalance and all of a sudden I have 80,000 in cash.

[01:02:22] My preference would be for that option because you’re having your money be invested as long as possible. Now, there could be opportunities more tactically as you are getting close to retirement. Maybe you’re rebalancing, you’re two years away and a portion of your portfolio has gone up a whole bunch.

[01:02:39] You own Nvidia stock or something and you go, I’m gonna take a little off the table. Maybe that’s a good time to tactically say, I’m gonna take a little bit and that’ll start building that cash. That’s not as much of a rebalance issue, but my preference would be when your situation changes, that’s when you’re gonna change your portfolio.

[01:02:55] Not like I think it’s gonna change in 10 years from now. Therefore. And that’s what we’re trying to prevent, right? We’re trying to prevent you from being too conservative too early in your portfolio. And so if you go, well, I’m gonna take 10 years to build up this cash, well that’s 10 years that that cash wasn’t being invested.

[01:03:11] And over the course of that 10 year period, that’s another doubling of that cash give or take, right? So my preference would be to wait as late as possible. Obviously there’s some situations where maybe tactically it would make sense to get a little ahead of that, but generally speaking, I would wait. The next part of the question he asked was, and so where do I put that cash?

[01:03:30] Do I put that in my IRA? Do I put it in my brokerage? Do I put in my Roth? That is gonna very much depend, unfortunately, based on, you know, where all the rest of your money is. If you have a whole bunch of money in a Roth and a little bit of money in a brokerage account, not very much money, that’s pre-tax, well then obviously your distributions are largely gonna come from your Roth throughout retirement.

[01:03:50] I would look at where the distributions are coming from. You know, where’s the allocation of your portfolio in terms of asset location. As you plan on your distributions over that period of time, over the next, whatever, three years, where are the asset locations for the distributions gonna come from? And that’s largely where I would have the, the excess, uh, cash reserve.

[01:04:09] He said something about 300,000. I don’t know what that was tied to unless he was trying to give an example of how much, 300,000 in cash. To me, you would need to be spending 150 KA year to have 300,000 cash. And if you’re spending one 50 a year, 300 in cash, you probably have a three or $4 million investment portfolio.

[01:04:27] You know, give or take maybe a little bit more, you know, while 300,000 seems like a lot in cash, like, holy cow, what am I gonna do with all that cash against the backdrop of a $4 million portfolio? It’s like 90%, a little under 10. So it’s really not that much as part of your overall portfolio. You’re not as cash heavy as it might sound to some people listening.

[01:04:45] I mean, it’s a lot of money undoubtedly in absolute amounts. And, you know, the whole purpose of this isn’t to. Optimize a bunch of stuff. It’s to say, how do I stay invested as long as possible and then give myself the opportunity to wait it out? ’cause the last thing that you wanna do is be drawing money from a portfolio as the market’s in a recession and you’re down 30%.

[01:05:08] And Covid is a great example, is down 30% in 17 days. If you executed this, if you’re the person who has a million dollars 80,000 in cash March 1st, you would’ve taken your money out like normal by April 1st. Let’s say that your threshold was a minus 25%. The portfolio was down. If it’s all s and p portfolio was down roughly 30% by April 1st, right?

[01:05:32] So you’re gonna switch over to cash, and from April 1st, 2020 through March 31st, 2022, that two year period, all you do is spend all your cash, regardless of what happens in the market. You spend all your cash. So you know you had a million dollars, it went down to 700,000, and then. By the end of that two year period later, you’re outta cash, right?

[01:05:54] You’re like, okay. Now what? Your s and p fund had gone from basically 700,000 back to 1,000,003, just by giving it time to sort out what was happening during that, during, you know, in this case it was covid, but that’s true in all the recessionary periods. About 30 months is the time. So you just wanna give yourself enough time to ride out the wave, and that’s what the cash does.

[01:06:16] Joe: Dan, thanks for the question. And if, uh, you’ve got a question for us, much like Dan’s stack, Benjamins dot com slash voicemail is the way to get there. But if you are not worried about just, uh, cash in your portfolio, really you need to make sure that your portfolio dovetails with your goals. And I know for a lot of people that doesn’t happen.

[01:06:37] We did a story og, remember the story just last week about too many people roll over the IRA and leave it in cash. I had so many people write to me after we put out the 2 0 1 the next day telling me they just hit reply on the 2 0 1 newsletter and told me, yep, this is me. I feel like I’m seen. My IRA is still sitting in cash, not sure what to do.

[01:06:59] OG: Yep.

[01:06:59] Joe: A lot of people, I mean,

[01:07:00] OG: Vanguard said it was a third of people, right?

[01:07:01] Joe: Yeah. Gotten caught in that trap. If you need to make sure your plan dovetails, so Gina’s team are taking clients, so went to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og. That’s the link to OGs team’s calendar. It’s the first step to see how you can find yourself skipping through the rest of 2024.

[01:07:18] Like it’s a field of dandelions and sunflowers and beautiful flowers with some wonderful music playing in the background. The rest of your life is just giggling, and

[01:07:31] OG: that’s exactly what

[01:07:31] Joe: it’s like. Does that sound a little, A little over the top? No, I don’t know. Stucky bedrooms.com/slash og Time for us Doug to mosey out onto the back porch.

[01:07:40] The first thing Doug though, before I hand over the reins is that we promised people that a contest we were running before our greatest hits week break, that we would discuss a contest. But you know what? We’ve had so many new stackers, uh, as evidenced by the huge number of people now getting the 2 0 1, the big influx of people there and just looking at the numbers for the show that uh, we’re gonna keep this open OG for another week.

[01:08:03] So you wanna re-explain the contest. Years. We open another eight weeks. Yeah, we’ll do

[01:08:07] OG: it. Let’s do it for another week. So a couple weeks ago, we talked about this on a Wednesday show, I believe this is the unofficial last week, the unofficial start to the election season. Did you know that Labor Day is the unofficial start?

[01:08:21] Doug: Hmm. Apparently. Well, to tell my campaign crew that.

[01:08:24] OG: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re a week behind, bro. Just so you know. But I’ve been getting some questions and I, and I saw this in a news article. I just thought it was so great about, well, what happens if this person wins? How should I do my investing? What if this person wins?

[01:08:37] How should, what if this person doesn’t win? How’s that gonna change? And so I found this and I thought it was super interesting. So back to 1961. So we’re gonna back in time, 60 years. You have $10,000 on January 1st, and you invest it, but you only invest during Republicans. So red team in office, you’re invested.

[01:08:56] If they’re not, we’re talking about

[01:08:56] Joe: president only, not who’s in p in charge of Congress, correct? Yep.

[01:08:59] OG: Just president. And so you’re only investing in Republicans, or you have your $10,000 January 1st, and you only invest during Democrats. So the question is, is how much would you have? End of 2023, if you had followed that strategy.

[01:09:16] So you’re like, I’m diehard red, I only invest in red. I’m diehard blue. I only invest in blue. Two different numbers, right? And then there’s the third person who says, I don’t care who’s president because I’m gonna make money no matter what happens. And you put your $10,000 in on January 1st and you let it ride for 62 years.

[01:09:36] So no prizes for being closest to, I just wanna go with your gut. I just want you to put three answers in. How much were the Republicans? How much were Democrats? How much have I left it in altogether? And, uh, just ’cause we’ve been getting some good conversation around this, I figure let’s go another week.

[01:09:51] We’ll give everybody the real answers next week. We do have some prizes we’re giving away for people who enter. It’s not for, you know, being closest to or anything. So there’s no sense in getting out your HP 10 B2C calculator. What? And, uh, trying to, it’s a calculator. Doug, you wouldn’t know. They don’t use it in campaign school.

[01:10:10] Uh, figuring out what this could be.

[01:10:12] Doug: Can you walk me through? It’s, what did you say? Just remind me again. You invest a thousand bucks in 1961 and only win your party a hundred bucks. What was it? 10 K. 10 K.

[01:10:20] OG: 10 k Jan. One through December 31, 20, 23. There it is. Only red, only blue. Let it ride. Those are your three.

[01:10:29] Doug: And we’re guessing how much is it worth? Not percentage increase. It’s, what’s that? 10 K?

[01:10:33] OG: No. How much is it worth? How much you got? Gotcha. Gotcha. How much you got, bro? Okay. How many benes

[01:10:37] Joe: have you stacked? And we’re looking for your gut feeling, which is why we’re not going to, we’re not gonna encourage people to look it up.

[01:10:44] We don’t want you to um, we don’t want you to think about it. We want you to just go in and go, oh. I think if it’s Democrats, if it’s Republicans, if I just let it ride, these are the cumulative returns that I would’ve had. This is how much money I would’ve had now. And we are gonna give away some cool prizes.

[01:11:00] We have a brand new guide. I know it’s becoming open enrollment time for many of our stackers out there. And because the average person, uh, changes jobs every 4.2 years, this is the first of five guides that we’re going to offer. Another one, uh, hopefully coming near the end of this year that I’ll talk about then.

[01:11:17] But the benefits guide helps you choose the best benefits for you. We not only teach you about benefits, we talk about how people get it wrong. Uh, we give you tons of resources to our benefits. And the cool thing is you pay for the benefits guide once, whether the government changes things, your business changes things, or you change jobs, which is going to happen several times.

[01:11:38] Uh, you have lifetime access. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash Benjamins gets you to the page, but we’re gonna give away three of them for free to people that take part in OGs contest. Plus, I think it’ll be fun when we talk about it next week. Doug, though, on the back porch, I’m sure there is one show that you probably need to talk about.

[01:11:57] Tell me I.

[01:11:59] Doug: Pride and Prejudice Tale of two Cities. What are we? Pride and prejudice. The below definition. Oh, are you talking about the Yes. The really highbrow. I thought, I thought we were just talking about, you know, pulp fiction stuff by, you know, Bronte and Dickens, but, oh, but if you wanna, if you wanna hear about the really sort of mentally challenging show that I watch called Below Deck Mediterranean.

[01:12:19] Never knew you watched that show. I’m on Season five, man. It was an up and down season. The biggest crew turnover I’ve seen. Long time Chief Steward s spoiler alert, this was like six years ago. So I’m not worried about spoiling anything. You haven’t watched it yet? No. The chief steward, they say Steward SI like that she had been on, I think every season so far.

[01:12:43] She got canned. Wow. For a shocking reason. So that was pretty, and then, you know, they had a chef who misrepresented herself, uh, and she got fired because she was not all that in a bag of chips. Uh, another chef quit. I mean, it was. There were ups, there were downs. We laughed, we cried. It was, uh, it was quite an adventure.

[01:13:03] Season five. Just wrapped it up tonight, probably. We’ll watch the, um, the reunion episode. Oh my God. The reunion episode. Oh, they fact actually, oh shoot me even more controversial. One of the guys party, Pete, who was one of the deckhands, he was in like the first four episodes, A complete nozzle, just an aw, just a not a great dude on the first four or five seasons.

[01:13:26] Said some awful stuff to some of the female crew members. And then all of a sudden he disappears. He’s still on the boat. He gets no screen time for like the next 15 episodes. ’cause it was a 20 episode season. I look it up last night. Turns out he’s posting even awful stuff online while the season was airing so that the producers quickly go in and edit him out of the show for the rest of the season.

[01:13:52] I love about Doug, like six years later is spilling the tea.

[01:13:56] Joe: Oh. You’ll never believe this. You had your chance. People, if you just go back six years into stinky

[01:14:02] OG: Pete’s, uh, like a silly, silly amount of time researching. Via, you

[01:14:08] Doug: know,

[01:14:08] OG: six year ago Instagram posts of what happened to crazy Pete. But, uh, what else

[01:14:13] Doug: am I gonna do while I’m watching you?

[01:14:15] Look, nobody watches TV anymore without their phone in their hand. So I’m multitasking. I’m like, what, what happened to Pete? Let me go find out. While the show is playing before my eyes, I’m doing deep research. Doug doesn’t have time to check out his USAA account. Make sure people aren’t

[01:14:30] Joe: swindling him.

[01:14:31] Yeah, he doesn’t have it. Uh, I think we got, uh, top three things that, uh, should be on people’s to-do list today. Doug, uh,

[01:14:39] Doug: take us through ’em, man. Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today. First, take some advice from Brandon Copeland or Copeland as we like to call ’em. The basics of finance aren’t difficult, and that’s where people make big mistakes.

[01:14:52] Focus on setting up a strong foundation and you’ll be ready to score a touchdown with your money. Second. Wanna avoid fraud with your bank account? Track your spending. Hold a family budget Meeting weekly, 20 minutes a week could save you lots of Benjamins and lots of headaches, but the big lesson, don’t cry too hard.

[01:15:13] Dallas Cowboy fans, at least you’ve still got a world class cheerleading squad. Thanks to Brandon Copeland for joining us. You’ll find his new book, your Money Playbook, earn More, build Wealth and Win At Life wherever Books are Sold. You know what, because I’m your favorite teammate, I got you covered. I’ll also make sure my people include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com.

[01:15:38] This show is the Property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024 and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. 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.

[01:15:58] 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.

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