How can simply being kind (and using math) bring more Benjamins into your life? Today we explore the topic of how changing your outlook towards others can attract more abundance and wealth in life when Joe sits down with our mentor, the brilliant James Rhee, MIT professor and author of the hit book red helicopter: a parable for our times: lead change with kindness (plus a little math).
In our headline, we talk about the recent cutback in spending on lavish weddings, and how much is too much to expect to spend on your nuptials? Plus, how do you get out of budget for attending a wedding you’ve been invited to?
Stick around for Doug’s wandering trivia! You’re sure to not feel any older after his knowledge!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
James Rhee
Big thanks to James Rhee for joining us today. To learn more about James, visit James C. Rhee | MIT Sloan. Grab yourself a copy of the book red helicopter―a parable for our times: lead change with kindness (plus a little math).
Doug’s Trivia
- What, according to popular legend, was Ponce DeLeon hoping to find when exploring The Americas shortly after they were first discovered by the Europeans?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Monal from Chicago has a question about what the difference between recasting her mortgage vs. just making an additional payment towards principal.
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- Learn to Steal Like an Artist (with Austin Kleon).
- Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative.
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’re diving into best uses for tax refunds, windfalls, and found money on today’s show. Plus, some horror stories of what NOT to do if you hit a jackpot, score a bonus, claim an estate, or are owed a refund.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Party Like It’s 1499 (SB1499).
Episode transcript
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─ Monday in America. I have pecan flavored coffee. Oh God. ━ Actually it’s not pecan flavored. It just is. It’s, it’s roasted in northeast Texas. We have a lot of pecan trees and, um, isn’t it pecan ─ pe? ─━ Does it depend on where you’re from? What do you have?
We talked og iss, the guy who says salmon too. ─────────── It’s got an L in it.
Wheat thins. I always
say salmon when I’m just completely cranked ── and then the waiter’s threatening to kick me outta the restaurant. But that’s a different
day. Why are you telling us about your pecan smoked coffee, Joe? Well, because
we’re about to salute the troops. Oh. So I just wanna tell you what I’m, what I’m drinking.
What are you guys drinking? Like it is, it’s coffee, flavored coffee With a tinge of pecan. He can pecan
he can. ─── I, I got moonshine. ━━
I’m with perfect.
I’m with Doug. OG Scotch. Uh, sorry. Uh, uh, pecan smoked moonshine. Yes. You gotta power those stills somehow.
Oh, Doug. Have you, have you had that? og have you, have you actually had that?
The pecan, uh, flavored Um, what
about me suggest that I would have That’s pecan flavored anything. That’s not a thing,
Joe. Oh, it’s delicious. It is so delicious. Coffee or booze Right here in northeast Texas. Oh God. Booze. It is so good. ━━━─ It’s so good. Okay. I said the same thing until I had it. But anyway.
Raise your glasses. You morons. You heathens. ── ’cause it’s time to salute the people that are incredible. Love is in the air. Me and these two idiots would like to salute the troops. ─ Two dudes that don’t get a damn me. ─────━─────────━─ all those people working their butt off.
At Navy Federal Credit Unions, people that work their butt off way more than we do are troops. ─ Thanks for all you do. ─ Let’s go stack some Benjamins together. Rah. Amen. Where’s
the kaboom? ─ There was supposed to be an earth chattering. Kaboom. ─━━━━━─━━━━━─━━━━━─━━━━━─━
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s ━ the Stacking Benjamin Show. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and think you have to be cutthroat to get ahead at work. Today’s guest says that kindness and a little math might be the formula you are looking for. You’ve seen his Ted talk and maybe heard him with. Brene Brown. Well now he’s here in the basement with us. It’s James Ree.
In our headlines planning a Wedding, we’ll share the latest trends this spring as love is in the air. Plus we’ll answer a better call solved. See hi and og, call from a stacker in need, and then I’ll share some absolutely riveting trivia. And now two guys who are all stretched out and ready to roll. It’s Joe.
Oh, and oh. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hey there stackers. Happy Monday. I hope you had a great weekend. Sit back, relax. You made it. You found us. Welcome to the Stacky Benjamin Show. And what a special treat I have of sitting in the basement across from these two Yahoos. ──━── Duck is here. You heard him, but the other voice you’re about to hear is my, uh, compadre. ━
og. How are you man? Yahoo. It’s like that
chocolate
milk drink. Yahoo. ━
Yahoo. ━━─
I know it. No, that’s Yahoo.
I can’t do it. That’s way different thing. Yuhoo Yuhoo. Now
that’s gross. The first time that I had one of those, I’m like, oh, chocolate. And then I took one sip and I went, oh God no.
But there’s people who are all in on that like spam, like it’s a bizarre little cult on Yuhoo
Yuhoo.
My mind could be changed if you wanna sponsor the show. ─── It could be changed. Probably can’t be. Actually we’d have to say no to you. Who Uh, that’d be like Robin Hood calling us, wouldn’t it? Hey, can we sponsor the shot now? How? I love how sorry. It be like the
live tour. We’ve welcomed OG to the show and he said like seven words and we’re just talking right over the top of him. ─
I’ll get mine. Don’t worry, ─ I’ll get mine. ━━
Hey og, how
you doing? So anyway, Doug, he gets whole sections of the damn show. Yes. ──
We should probably wrap up the open because we’ve got a lot of great stuff, including the amazing, when I say amazing. There’s amazing, and then there is amazing James Ree waiting upstairs with mom.
Uh, but before that, you know, to keep this show free, we are advertiser supported, so please hang out with us through the advertisements as we take you on a little journey to listen to this. ────── All right, thanks for sticking with us through those. We got James Ree waiting in the wings, but before that, love is in the air and OGs thinking about weddings.
So let’s go. ━━ Hello
Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines.
Our headline today comes to us from CNN is written by Samantha Deh. It’s that time of year guys. Love is in the air. It’s, uh, coming on wedding season and we actually have a good trend this year.
Guys, listen to this. Uh, Samantha writes, it’s not you, it’s them. Engaged couples are cutting back on lavish weddings. She writes, multi-tiered cakes, elaborate floral displays, and how much Doug loves those. There was a cake choreograph, first dances. That’s all. og. ── The traditional white wedding, whoa. Hey, has been long considered a hallmark of American life.
The obsession with lavish weddings go to a fever pitch. In the years following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, inflation soared and the average cost of a wedding broke $30,000 for the first time in 2023, according to the wedding reporter research company tracking wedding data, man wedding costs just outta control.
Now, the reason people are scaling back, it said, is because inflation has finally come down, and they also are postulating that because of the pandemic of people being locked up, like we got this huge bump in weddings because everybody’s like, I know. Woohoo. Party time. We’ve been outta the house. Let’s have a wedding.
Embolic. Yes. ── Let’s go to Tahiti and get this thing done. ─ And then finally all the friends are restoring sanity. ’cause the last thing I wanna do is go to a destination wedding. Yeah. Have you guys
done those before? I mean, the thing I hate most about weddings is when somebody puts it on a holiday weekend, I’ll go to any other, I’ll go to horrible, you know, Hey, do your thing.
Have fun.
It’s like, I thought you guys were gonna be traveling anyway. So I booked it on uh, Memorial Day
weekend. ─ Just shoot me just vacation. I got stuff planned like with the family. Yeah, this is like a vacation. It’s just like, it’s fun. You can come to Tahiti with us. It’s like us and the rest of America on holiday weekend or 4th of July or
you know, and the whole time you’re there, you won’t see anything because you’re at all the wedding festivities and you’re gonna hang out with people that in real life you try to avoid.
And it’s a
holiday weekend, so you get that extra special Sturge pricing ━─━━━─ also give us $200. What’s
not to like for the buffet? Oh, you weren’t doing anything New Year’s Eve. Anyway. We thought it’d be crazy to
do it New Year’s Eve. It’d be great. I haven’t been to a wedding in a while. Maybe this is why.
Yeah, no, you’re just not at the, your, your, your kids and your friend’s kids are not at the right age yet. Yeah, but it’s coming. There’s a, it’s like a balloon payment on a loan. It’s just sitting out there waiting for you and then suddenly it becomes a line item in your budget, having to buy
all those gifts.
I’m going to a wedding in a month and it’s a little bit of a destination wedding. It’s four hours away. ────
Shreveport. That’s a destination. ━━━━━── It’s
that crawfish boil in Alexandria. It is that
it actually is great. It’s in northwest Arkansas, so it’s four hours away. We get to drive through the Ozarks to get there, which is great.
And um, it’s at Crystal Bridges Museum, one of the most beautiful museums in the United States. So is it out a holiday weekend? No, but it was funny, og when, when I heard it was going to be four hours away, I’m like, yeah, we’re not going. And then I heard it was Crystal Bridges and I went, oh yeah, we’re going. ─────━━━
Is, is it bad that I’m super interested in in the place?
When I heard it was a wedding, I’m like, oh yeah, we’re not going. ─━─━━ That won’t last. Yeah, that’s what I was hoping you were gonna say. There’s a new trend in weddings. You don’t have to go.
People aren’t going well. Speaking of this, why don’t we give some financial advice around weddings?
’cause I’ll tell you that, that when it comes to wedding budgets, if the bride and group can’t keep it under control, if you are the parent of one of these people getting married, what I always advocated for og, and I’ll be curious to get your take on this, was the preemptive strike I. Where you say, Hey congratulate, you guys are getting wedding.
You guys are getting wedding. You guys are getting wedding, wedding. Ding, ding, ding, ding. Uh, you’re getting married. And so, uh, you know, we talked about it as the mother and father of the bride, and we have $15,000 that we’d like to contribute. You go crazy, do whatever you want, but we’ve got $15,000 and hey, it’s great.
Like, do that before, because every time it just escalates outta control. Oh, we didn’t know how much the band was gonna be, what you hired the freaking eagles. Like what are. ━────── Of course would, would somebody I, sorry, let’s change that. You hire Post Malone. ━ What? What are you, what are you talking about? That would be a
nice get, honestly, you hired Taylor.
I would Who? I would probably go to both of those weddings. ━━━━── Yeah. Post he’s planned weddings. Now what happened?
Or it gets outta control? Uh, the Eagles opening for Post Malone. Oh, nice. ━
All our stackers are like, you could pick any number outta the hat on the, on your preemptive strike, Joe. And you pick 15 K, what would you do?
$15? 1500? Yeah. I mean 1500, 1500 bucks.
Father of the bride. No one. Thank God you don’t have girls.
The bar tabs more than that, bro. I know. What are you
talking about? You’re on the hook for the bar tab $1,500. I’m giving you 1500. I’m glad one of your sons, I can’t wait for, for their future spouse when the father of the groom steps up with a big $1,500 preemptive.
Don’t
spend it all in one
place. Kids. There are VFW halls that are hurting to stay open right now, and I’m just trying to push things in that direction. ─
I also sprang for the honeymoon suite at the Motel six for you and a stack of quarters. Berated be great. og, how did you
handle it? I think from a planning standpoint, if you’re thinking about your kids, it’s actually a great idea to have the goal in your financial plan already.
You know, depending on what kind of financial planning software you use or what kind of tools you have access to and that sort of thing, you can say, Hey, I think that when my kids are 30, that’s when I want to have the money available. And you can, you can put that in there and see how it impacts your financial plan.
The good news is, is that even if you spend 30 grand. Probably if you’ve thought about it for, you know, the better part of 10 or 15 years, you’re probably gonna be able to accumulate that money and, and not have a really profound impact to your overall plan. But where it surprises you is, you know, like my daughter’s eight.
I don’t think we have anything to worry about for the next, uh, I don’t know, at least year and a half, 10 years. Um, you know, ── but it is Texas. So there’s that to consider. But I would be foolish to be waiting until she’s 25 to go, oh, we should probably think about setting aside some money for a potential wedding, maybe if she wants to do that.
So I think having it in your financial plan is a good idea. I’m interested in talking about the people who have to attend all these weddings. ’cause that’s where the budget really gets blown up. If you’re the father of a bride or father of a groom and you’re, you know, you knew that the proposal was happening or you, you know, that runway is usually a couple of years.
You know, it’s like they got engaged and they’re getting married, you know, in two summers from now or something. ── The surprise is when you get the thing in the, the envelope in the mail, it’s like, you know, Jack and Jill are getting married ── in five weeks from now and it’s in Tahiti who’s coming. You know, or to your point, even a close one that’s in, you know, just a different state that’s a little bit of a drive can nuke your whole budget because that takes days off of your vacation schedule.
You know, you’ve gotta travel, you’ve got gifts to buy a new tie. Mama wants a new dress. You know, like all this stuff that goes with, it’s a
wedding. Yay. It’s like the new house. Yeah. You know, the new house doesn’t blow up the budget. You do all the mortgage work, you know what the down payment is. You move into the new house.
It’s the 15 trips to Home Depot or Lowe’s. Yeah. That kill the budget afterwards that you didn’t
expect. And to Doug’s point, you know, this is seasonality right, of your life. And so we don’t really have that going on. You two older fellas, you know, maybe are getting experience with this right now, but it wouldn’t be uncommon to have.
Two weddings a summer, three weddings, a summer of friends of you know, kids of friends and you know, friends of your kids and you know, all these other sorts of people that you’re quasi ── interacting with over your lifetime. Yeah. And you take three trips of 1500 bucks or 2000 bucks a weekend. I mean, geez, that’s like, it’s like two
paychecks.
That’s ridiculous. Definitely needs to be a line item in the budget. ’cause it was these things, even when my kids were younger though, og to your point, it was the birthday parties, which weren’t expensive. It was just outta the blue. Oh, it’s Saturday. Just there’s 20 of them. Yeah. Nick and ’em are headed to this and they both got bring a gift to the thing.
The gift is, you know, 25 bucks each and now I’ve got 50 bucks just that I didn’t plan on and I’m doing it over and over and over for all the kids in their class every weekend.
For the entire school year. Yeah. Basically.
Yeah, I think it’s a great idea in your budget to have this slop, this, this area, which is unexpected
surprise.
Well, especially if it’s that that’s the time of the life that you are, right? Sure. If you’re a young person and all your friends are getting married, if you’re middle aged and all of your friends kids are getting married to pretend that this isn’t happening, you know, this is where the rounding error becomes pretty evident.
And by the way, this, uh, quote, traditional idea that the family of the bride is the one that covers the wedding. Like, we all agree that if weddings on average not high, but on average were 30,000 bucks, that was the average wedding that the family of the groom going, no, that’s not, you know, it’s tradition that you pick up that and I just get to high five myself and, and go to the thing.
Oh, you gotta, you gotta take care of the keg.
But yeah. ━
Yeah. ━ Actually that was even, you know, back in the nineties and probably long before that, I thought the grooms family picked up the alcohol usually. And the, the hall and booze. That’s the Oh, and the hall. Okay.
I think at 30,000 bucks they’re still off, right?
Yeah. Actually, yeah, that’s what my parents did. Yeah. Yeah. I think this idea of traditional wedding stuff is out the window. Mm-Hmm. With these prices, I think the two families gotta get together and go, okay, how are we gonna make this not throw any, let’s not throw somebody under the bus. How are we
gonna prevent these kids from making this mistake?
I mean, pay for this wedding.
Well, Doug, that’s also a great point. You know, you have, we all know these people, right? They say Bridezilla, but I’ve seen Groomzilla before too, which is, no, I need to add this, or I need to add this. Or, you know, mother of the bribe, mother of the groom, that’s like, it’s escalating more than the Cold War did ─ to make this the most epic party ever.
And then everybody leaves with debt and a bunch of regret. Like, we’ve gotta realize this is one day and you’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you. ─── It’s so frustrating to see people start off on just completely the wrong foot after what’s supposed to be beautiful night. ── Just think a little bit about this party and how it goes.
Here’s uh, one of our favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan, who has a word to say about weddings? ─────────
Jim, you have a 9-year-old daughter. Don’t you wanna be at her wedding? Not really, no. ━━━━━ Wait, is there gonna be ice cream at her wedding? No, ━─ because if you promise, I still
don’t want to go. ━━━
How would attending a wedding, why would that be an incentive?
It’s like, don’t you die in 18 years? There’s an awkward party you have to pay for ━━━━━━ and we need you to write a check. ━━━━━━── No, I understand. Weddings are an important event where we spend a lot of money so that the bride can pretend to be a princess ━━━━━ and marry her plants and live happily ever after because magic exists ━━━━━━
and we’re
a bunch of weirdos. ─━──━━━━
Weddings are kind of weird. I mean, what’s the logic? It’s like, well, we love each other. Why don’t we pretend we have a kingdom? ━━━━━━━━ We’ll invite your parents friends and my parents friends, and we’ll have a banquet, ━━━━━ and the two kingdoms shall come together as one, ━━━ and we can start our married life with a total fantasy ━━ before we go on a completely unjustified vacation. ━━━━━━
It’s strange, right? I mean, weddings started off as these crude medieval ceremonies where women daughters were exchanged as property. Yet over the course of centuries, they got worse. ━━━━━━━
That’s why people cry at weddings. ━━━
Can’t believe we’re still wasting money
on this. ━━━━━─━━━ I
can’t believe we’re wasting money. So good.
Uh, wedding season. Don’t let the, uh, don’t let that get beyond you stackers. It’s an expensive time, but it can be a great time or it can be a horrible time ─── coming up next. Uh, James Re was a high school teacher. He was a Harvard Law School graduate. He was a private equity investor. And then when a clothing company was failing, he decided, uh, you know what?
He put his hat in the ring and become the CEO of this company that was maybe gonna shut down in the next few weeks. Serving a population that had, uh, nothing to do with men like him. I’ll let him tell the story. He is a guy who’s given a wonderful Ted talk on this topic about a red helicopter, and today he’s gonna tell us what a little kindness and some math has to do with career success and just life success.
It’s a wonderful guy, ── James Ree, coming up next. But first Doug, you’ve got some, uh, particularly brilliant trivia.
I think so. It’s riveting even. Hey, there’s stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug, and you, ━ you’ve got what I need. ━─ You know what I need. I need to know which celebrity’s birthday it is. And today is none other than the guy who’s been told that he’ll just be friends.
Something that would be way better than what I’ve been told at the Sizzler happy hour meet and greets. Friends would be an upgrade, but it’s the Biz Markys birthday, sadly. Oh. ─ Huh? I said, oh. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sadly, Marcel Theo Hall, AKA biz died back in 2021, but we miss him so much because he had what we all needed, a good singing voice, and the hope that love was around the corner.
It’s another celebrity’s birthday today too. Pon de Leon, slightly older than Biz Poncy, as I’m sure he was called by his crew, even made it all the way over to Texarkana, spring Lake Park. True story. Pon de Leon was searching for something, and if he sang to all of these locations, he visited ─ from St.
Augustine, Florida all the way to Texas. You, you’ve got what I need. Well, what, according to popular legend was DeLeone hoping any of these locations had. I’ll be back right after I go apply some facial cream. These trivia questions give
me wrinkles. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━──────────────────────━─━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Hey
there, stackers. I’m professional wingman and explorer by another mother, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. True story. Po. De Leon’s. First trip to the USA was with Columbus’s second expedition in 1493. He later was the first Westerner to Puerto Rico, and then made his way to Florida, probably hoping to ride Space Mountain while he was there.
Okay. That, that part might not be true. Also not true was what he was supposedly looking for in Florida. Or you’re in Texas for that matter. He sang to Florida. You, you’ve got what I need. The Florida legend has it that he was hoping they had the Fountain of Youth. And now here’s a fountain of inspiration for your Monday.
James Ree. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
I’m super
happy he’s joining us at Mom’s Basement. James Ree, heres, how are you?
Hey, I like mom’s basement. Thanks for having me. ━──
Well, I feel like it’s Wayne’s World and you’re about to serenade us because for people not watching the video of this, you, uh, you brought your guitar with you. Yeah,
it’s like I’m sitting in my little home office and I usually have a musical instrument always sitting next to me.
I tend to play it constantly when I’m thinking, or my brain sort of works that way. Sort of works like a music. ─
Can I ask you about that? Because I didn’t intend to start there, but it’s interesting. You know, you hear one of our guests come on and they say something that is unique and different and you think, okay, that’s James Reese spin on life.
But then I hear four or five people say something similar. Maybe it’s not a guitar, maybe it’s something different. But there is this connection. I remember we interviewed, uh, I don’t know if you know Austin Cleon, the Steel, like an artist author. And I asked him about his guitar playing and about his passions, the things that he does outside of work.
And it was interesting because he said often we focus too much on side hustles and we focus on how everything can help us make more money. Yeah. And instead. Having that nice guitar riff helps us kind of get clear, get this clarity around things. Is that you? Yeah,
totally. And I’m getting better at it.
Have been getting better at it as a, in the last 10 years was really good at it. As a teenager and a young guy before the world sort of, uh, world all can be overwhelming, right? Like there’s just a lot of expectations and credentials and you’re working nonstop and yeah, so like I’ve made a lot more time for hobbies.
Um, there’s a lot of research out there, right? We, no one has hobbies anymore. We don’t, that’s free time to think downtime. I mean, there’s all sorts of neuroscience on it, right? Just in terms of just, um, giving your brain a break, like starting to make different connections between different ideas. Like for me, like the brain too.
Music makes you use both sides of your brain. I think a lot of my life has been not wanting to be stuck in a compartment, nor do I do that to other people ever. Like I really enjoy. The fullness of people good and bad. It’s just, I’ve got tons of bad, right? It’s just like who we are. And then ─ I think the other thing too is like, I really believe that it took me a long time to sort of get to this point to realize that I think I listened to people’s voice very well.
You know, like what they really are saying or what they really want, or they pretend they’re being happy, but they’re sad. I, I hear it and I’ve heard it in people, in brands, you know, like a voice of a brand. And so I, music for me, I tend to meet someone, maybe by the end of this, I’ll say to you, um, oh, I think that, you know, you’re f major, ─━ uh, slide guitar.
Like, I tend to sort of hear it that way. Why thank you. You know, like, and I, it’s, and then you remember things, you know how you can remember music forever. Like, like sure. I tend to remember conversations because I put them in like a song almost. It helps me be really present. I’m like, oh, like I remember what you said six years ago.
Like, and then Who doesn’t appreciate that, right? It’s like, yeah, you listen to me. I’m like, yeah, listen to you. Like I’m not messing around, like we’re together. So anyway, all those reasons and more, that’s kind of why music’s important to me.
I like that analogy as people as music because you know, I think about some of my favorite books and how they talk about like, oh, we’ll take Beethoven for an example.
Like it starts off with, uh, Beethoven’s fifth with da da da, and it’s all big and dramatic. But then as you may know, then it gets subtle and it changes. And I think it shows that people have these different size. I’m wondering though, ─ you write a lot, especially in the second chapter of your book, about the past and about growing up and your parents being first generation Americans trying to fit in.
I remember the story of them immediately. You get to this neighborhood in the Bronx and uh, they wanna fit in with all these Jewish families, so they try to fit in and then you’re in Long Island and you know, everybody’s Catholic there, so they try to fit in. Do you mind telling some of those stories?
Because I feel like you talking about connection. Maybe started with these examples of your parents trying so hard to connect with the communities around them.
Yeah. You have two young Korean people in their mid twenties. One of the first Koreans allowed to immigrate here because after the law changed, both caregivers away from their family, completely alone, 400 bucks in their pocket.
Dad’s a resident, mom’s a nurse, and doing the best they can. And like you underappreciate that as a kid. But when I look back, I can’t even imagine. I mean, that’s true entrepreneurship, right? It’s courage. I mean, it’s, it’s a little crazy. ━━━── And, um, yeah, I, I would watch them. It was, it’s bittersweet. I think a lot of the way I view life, it’s kind of bittersweet, right?
It’s not toxic optimism or morose, it’s just sort of like, yeah, there’s good and bad always. So looking at my parents, I. You know, they tried really hard to fit in. They tried to learn the English language, they tried to buy new clothes and new foods and took on new names. You know, some of the names they picked were not like, I wrote in music terms slightly offbeat.
Like they were just, I’m like, really? Mom Phyllis, you, that was the word name. Really? And she’s like, what? Like Phyllis George Phyllis Diller. I’m like, okay. It’s not a common name, but, okay. And you know, I think when you’re little and you’re watching your parents, and they were always very strong outwardly.
’cause they wanted to create confidence in their children that we were okay. Right. But as I look back now, a parent now, yeah. I saw moments when they weren’t so Okay. Right. They weren’t so strong and in private moments and just trying to fit in. It’s a little bit sad too, right. That they thought that it wouldn’t be good for them or particularly me, to ━─ keep more of their traditions.
And, you know, assimilation, awesome. But my friendship base is not homogenous. Like I really like the idiosyncrasies in everybody and like it when everyone’s the same and it’s boring, you know? And so like, I wish they had had sort of exposed me more to some of their upbringing and some of their traditions and um, I’m doing a better job now as a grownup to sort of exploring those.
And I
still found it heartwarming, James. I mean, they moved to a Jewish neighborhood. Everybody has menorahs. So they go by a menorah and put it in their window. And what was nice was how, it seemed like some of your neighbors had like the heart of teachers, right? Where they go, do you know this? This has religious meaning?
Not like not putting them down, just saying, this has religious and your mom, you know? No, I had no idea. And she’s exploring the fact that they are different. And then when you move into the Catholic community deciding we’re gonna be Catholic too, like, then she’s exploring what Catholicism is. I really get this feeling from your upbringing, like there was this, let’s go explore other people and how other people are maybe this different.
Celebrating this difference is a great thing. Totally. And
we were surrounded by so many, you know the book I write that my parents always used to say, it’s just the five of us. ─ And it was true. But when you, I look back, there were so many families who helped out the re family. They really did. There was so much generosity and you overlook it, you can’t overlook it.
Like people were generous, they were teachers and there was a tone to a lot of my parents’ friends and my neighbors and they wanted us, ── and particularly my parents, to, to make it, you know? And it was, I think it’s changed a bit in this country where people unfortunately seemed very angry and quick to judge, but you know, and we had a little bit of that.
We always did. It wasn’t like a heaven in 1970s either. But people really wanted us to fit in and do well and um, I’m very grateful
for it. The heart of this story though, and your family obviously weighs large into it. Your past weighs, there’s so many things that weigh on the story, but the heart of the story is you leave your work in venture capitalism to actually go run a company.
Do you mind telling us about what type of company this was that you’re running? ’cause it’s not the first thing. That you would think of a guy born of Korean immigrants, that’s not the type of company James, I would’ve expected you to run.
Yeah. And I, it’s a great segue from what you just, we talked about with my parents, right?
So most of my life, they really wanted me to be, you know, a hundred percent eighth generation red-blooded American. Right. And, you know, I resisted that a lot, as you know, from the book. Right, right. Um, but yeah, like I love Bruce and I loved Bon Jovi and like, you know, like I grew up just, uh, you know, I was always the only, um, non-white kid in my high schools.
And I’m an equal opportunity like her. Like I have tons of friends and I wasn’t around a lot of black folks growing up. It just, that’s the way our neighborhood worked. And, um, yeah, so I lived the life up until my forties. Like, I was like a, I sort of did the job for my parents in some ways. I went to like the schools that they wanted me to go to, you know, I’m in the fancy top buildings in Boston and like, oh, he’s made it.
And so, yeah, I 42, I made a pretty abrupt move. For many reasons which we can get into. You know, my dad’s dying, I’m thinking about what we just talked about, right? I just said, you know, I’m really proud of my parents. I’m really, you know, and like you wanted me to fit in so bad. And there are a lot of things about you that the best parts of you that are also from Korea, it’s both like, and I had that, right?
Like I’m, I have Korean genetics and I was raised in a Korean household, so there were parts of that me that were buried a bit, I think that’s fair to say. And so this company, Ashley Stewart, which was, um, one of the largest businesses employing and serving black women and size 12 and up black women on the surface of it.
Yeah. It’s not a great, what, like, what are you talking about? Like Korean American private equity guy who dresses like crap, has no fashion sense, has never run a company before. All of a sudden it’s now the CEO of this company. But to me it made a lot of sense in the sense that, you know, I saw in these women the same.
It’s the same sort of, particularly the women, the, the same sort of quiet leadership and the thing, how they nurtured their kids that my mom did from me. ── And I think that this place was a really good place for these women. A lot of times these women are not, it’s not easy for them. Sometimes it wasn’t easy for my mom.
And so when I looked into the, what the business really was, I was like, ah, this is a place where ─ this woman’s like perspective changes. Like she’s really confident and she’s feels safe and she feels like someone recognizes her. And I was like, I know that woman. I grew up with one. And so yeah, I did it. I mean, I, I didn’t think it was gonna be for basically my entire forties and I had no idea what was to come, but I knew I wanted to do it for six months to try to make sure the company didn’t go away. ─
And then no one came to help really. Um, so six months became seven years and. ── Yeah, it wasn’t easy and when I look back it was, I’m really happy, like it was a lot of joy from that experience. I made a lot of really good friends and they helped, both, helped bury my parents during this time, and I think I understand myself a lot better, ─
which is wild because all these great experiences stem from something like, I feel like you made this conscious choice.
You could have either been, this company has nothing to do with me, so different than me. ─ And yet you have this wonderful passage early in your book about the other, and you actually spend a lot of time talking about the other. Right. And I feel like you’re connecting yourself as somebody who is the other to these black women who haven’t had clothing made for them who are also the other, like it felt to me, James, like you had made the choice to find the commonality versus the fact that, you know, zero about fashion
and yeah, I’m not black, I’m not female, I’m not, you know, like Yeah.
I look back in my life. I think that’s one of my defining ─ like personality traits. I just, I don’t know. When I look back in junior high school and elementary school and I had a lot of friends I really did like, and I was always sort of the kid that I’m like, oh, I would stick up for kids that were getting bullied or.
I was, and I think that it was harder to be that person in the throes of, you know, high stakes private equity. And the culture has changed a bit in this country. Let’s be real about some things. And ─ I didn’t like myself as much as I did when I was younger. I, you know, I really fought hard to keep that personality.
I taught high school after college, right? I made 12 grand a year. It’s like my value system, I think is pretty clear about my actions. Like I, like I know how to make money and I’ve been paid to make money. I didn’t grow up with money, but it’s a tool. Like I know how to utilize it, right? Like I know how to do it.
And so ─ I kind of liked myself better, I think when I was in high school, like 18 and younger than I did when I was in my thirties. I thought I was a more well-rounded, better person.
Well, and the question that we get all the time from our stackers, James, is, you know, what’s the correct path? What’s the purpose?
How do I get there quicker? How do I optimize, how do I, whatever. And I think. You do such a wonderful job of showing that it isn’t so much about, there’s a Harvard professor actually who just, who I’m about to quote and I’m, and I’m not gonna remember her name, but she was talking about, it’s not so much about picking the right choice as it is about making the choice, you picked right.
About making that work. And I really feel that from you as an example, you didn’t go to school in any way. Uh, looking for an MBA, I mean, let’s talk about your undergraduate because I was an English creative writing major James, and it has informed my time in finance for you. You have a, I mean, not the same major, but a similar, I feel like background.
Can you talk about how your liberal arts education kind of helped you along the way, lead this company and lead people? ━
I studied American and English history and literature, king James 1603 to 1914, world War I,
which clearly has to do with black women and ━
or private equity or cap M theory and like, but it does in the sense that it’s, um, you can tell I love people.
I’m fascinated by people and like a big cheerleader of people. I’m like, um. I like to know how people behave and you know how to, why they do the things they do. That’s basically what I studied, right. So economics, in literature and in history, why people behaved back then it was much more balanced. It wasn’t all just quant.
You actually described how people behaved. Economists were actually writers, right? Charles Dickens was a writer, and Jane Austen was, they were economists. And so like, I like to understand how people behave and be able to translate it into lots of different ways. Not just numbers, but poetry, right? Or a bill, a legislative bill.
And you get to study and understand the richness of, of somebody and of a society. And so, yeah, for me, like you know, economics these days, economics people, you say it and it’s the problem. They immediately equate it with like with money or finance or accounting. It’s not economics. A social science. So why I write about kindness a lot is that the founders of capitalism, like Adam Smith and Liberty Rousseau, they used to write about kindness, secular kindness ── when they were devising these theories that we take for granted now, things like free markets and and liberty.
It’s about agency. It’s about people with desire to have agency to choose their life. And so that’s been my philosophy. I like to help people choose their path, whether that’s as an investor or CEO coach. Teacher doesn’t, dad doesn’t matter. And I just think in this country we say we want to give people agency and like, but we don’t explain to them money or CogSci. ──
We don’t even give ’em the tools to have agency. And so that’s why I structure the book the way I did Life. Money Joy. I’m like, how can you think someone can have agency when you don’t even teach ’em the basics? ─ It’s so
frustrating. Well, even beyond frustrating, we talk about kindness. When you first get to this company, just briefly, how close is it until everybody’s about to lose their job?
Like, how many weeks away are you? Six. Six
weeks to utter liquidation. Three years removed from a first bankruptcy so bad that it didn’t even have wifi. That’s the condition of the company. And I had to hire as you read a police officer to protect the employees because the vendors and creditors were so pissed that they weren’t getting paid, that they were threatening the, my new colleagues.
That was the chaos that I entered into. And yeah, and you’re gonna laugh at me and say, tell my listeners what you said. I said, yeah, I get it. I know. Look at me. I know I’m not, I’m, but the, I’m the only one who showed up and I know I’m not qualified to do this. I get it. But I’m a good listener and I’m gonna ask a lot of questions and, and then I said, uh, can we just be. ─
Kind and mathematically correct. It’s literally I spit it. These words just came out of my like stomach. ─ And I look back now and I remember when I said it, I was like, oh no. Like where did that come from? In some ways when I look back, it was, I think pretty wise, right? Like ─ in a chaos when you have nothing, those are pretty two truthful things, right?
You everyone knows what kindness is. It’s obvious. You just know. And math is, math is taught a lot. True. Like math is true. So I was like, if we can do these, just these two things in this chaos, it’s a good first step, isn’t it? Like that’s basically what I was saying. Can we just do that? And it calmed everybody.
So the, the fear factor went down and people were able to make ─ pretty rational decisions and feel safe in chaos. And I often think about that moment. I always sort of fast forward to the sort of ─ chaos. People feel all chaos now, right? It’s just. That’s why I’m writing the book now. It’s like, can we be kind and can we be mathematically honest? ─
And that’s a good start, right? That’s 80% of the, of the battle. ─
One of my favorite characters in reality television has always been Gordon Ramsey, and maybe he needs some more velvet on his hammer. James, maybe you have more velvet on yours. But I love the fact that he, you know, during all these shows, he wanted the restaurant to succeed, right?
It’s clear he wants a restaurant to succeed. He’s going to go over the mathematics of, no, if you don’t cook this stuff better, people aren’t gonna come. If you don’t use real ingredients, people are gonna, like, he’s very blunt with them, but by the end they’re all crying together because they realize that, I dunno, sometimes being brutally honest with people is the way to get to that kindness.
Yeah. Like,
uh, and we were, you know, just right before we went on, we just chit-chatting a little bit about this. I, I’m very direct. I just call things out. I think that is kind in my career, in my life, the worst things have been people that they say one thing to your face and they don’t, they don’t hate it.
They, they behave differently. I hate it. Or it’s people who ostensibly care about you and they don’t take the initiative. They’re not willing to be uncomfortable a little bit to tell you that, Hey, James, consider not doing that habit or you’re doing something wrong. It’s like the Jewish women with the menorah, with my parents, right?
Just, just teach and say, and to have some faith that I’m gonna receive the feedback if they care about me. Like, well, like, thank you for telling me that. It’s, I think kindness. If you really care about somebody, you do take the time, you make the investment, you’re willing to stomach short-term discomfort because you actually care about your long-term relationship with this person.
It’s an investment. You don’t make that investment if you don’t care about this person. So I’ve always, whenever I learned and started about managing money and things, I was like, you know, I think, I feel like I treat people like an investment in that way, relationships. So I just, why don’t we use that terminology, that math and thus kindness in math.
You noticed early on when you were evaluating this company, you and other people on your team, this is before, I believe, before you took over the company, that for all the things going wrong with this company, the stores and the store managers were truly part of that winning formula. Like, I felt like, like you, you were able to see that it wasn’t all numbers.
You have this great metric that you talk about at the beginning of the book that that comes from hockey. I don’t know what a big hockey fan you are James, but, but plus minus. I love this idea of plus minus on your team. Can you talk to us about plus minus a little bit? Yeah. Plus
minus ratio in hockey is, um, it measures the goals that are scored minus the goals that are scored against you when you’re on the ice.
It’s what the team is doing. So you could have zero assist, zero goals yourself, but there are people when they’re on the ice, good things happen,
good
things happen. You know, I think to me it’s like a, I think my mom was like that by the way. And I, that’s real leadership. It is leadership. And we sort of have gone away with that paradigm a little bit, I think in a lot of facets of our lives.
But, um, leaders are generally, I think, pretty quiet and leaders make other people better. They make teams better. And they don’t ask for credit. They don’t have to score, they don’t have to shoot, but they do make the team better than team wins. And that’s my definition of leadership. And ─ I see that a lot. I see that there are a lot of leaders every day in like the women who helped my mother and I see it in this country a lot, um, with a lot of different types of people.
And one of the reasons I wrote the book was because I think a lot of those people, I. Who live perfectly decent, impactful lives. Sometimes they doubt themselves, you know, they feel small or they’re like, I don’t have purpose. And I’m almost like, what do you, what do you mean? Like, you, you have great family and you’re, you know, kids are in really good public schools and like you coach soccer and like, you have a really good job.
Like you’re good. Like you don’t have to be some Insta star. Like that’s not living a really good life. And I feel like my parents lived that life, you know, like I think they were really decent people and they kept a very low profile. And when the readers, you know, sort of when they both pass away, you, you’ll read what the proof of that, what they lived a really good life.
And I, I, that’s the type of life that I, I really, um, want my children to lead. And I’m, I’m, I’m trying to lead a life like that. It’s, um, I think most Americans want that. But without being unrealistic about like money is part of the equation of, but it’s not, I found it’s not this, it’s not the primary input, it’s an input.
I love this qualitative idea of plus minus and kind of judging your life in terms of plus minus, like, am I making a difference to other people? I might not be the person getting the score. I might not be getting the assist, but when I’m on the ice, good things happen. ─ The book is called Red Helicopter. We haven’t talked at all during our time together here about red helicopters at all.
So I, I definitely need to ask you about the red helicopter. You’re standing in front of this group at the new company that you’re about to lead and you, for the first time in a long time, remember the the red helicopter? What’s the red helicopter?
Yeah, it, and we all have one I think, and that’s the what I’m trying to prompt in people.
So it’s um, metaphoric. But my particular red helicopter story was, um, picture 1976. Bull Cut James. ━
Looking
good. Yeah, looking good, right? Mom’s cutting the hair. Like, not with a literal bowl, but ━ I look like a bowl. I mean, I’m in public school in kindergarten, long Island. And you know, I came home with a toy red helicopter.
It was probably three bucks at the five and dime. And I, my parents, you know, a lot of things, it’s a series of, oh, something’s wrong. Like, oh, did you steal it? No. Did you take from school? No. ── Oh, we messed up in America. We didn’t know five year olds are supposed to exchange Christmas gifts. And I said, no.
Like, I’m the only one who got one family came in. Oh, why did they give it to you? I don’t know. I’m not sure. And then, you know, dad’s annoyed. So a lot of, we think it’s wrong. And in the end of the day, I got it. My parents found out because I’d been sharing my perfectly manicured Korean mother lunch with this boy who never had, you know, often didn’t have lunch.
And so I would share half my lunch all fall. ─━ That morning the dad and his two brothers came in to just, they just gave me the gift. They didn’t tell me why. They just gave it to me. So my dad asked me, um, I remember in this family room, so it’s very Korean parenting. You have to sort of stand up in front of your, it’s old school.
You’re standing up in front of your parents. It’s a little bit of an interrogation. I think I’d be sweating
James. Oh,
I was sweating. It was not a pleasant, it was nervous. I’m like, I’m in trouble. ’cause they said, you know, we found out why you, that family gave it to you and you were wrong. The whole family didn’t come in.
There was no mom. And I said, uh, like, yeah, I guess I was wrong. I was five years old, man. Okay. So ─ anyway, it turns out, you know, like they told me that his mom, my friend’s mom had died that summer. And you had this dad, you know, with four kids under the age of 10. I guess he was beside himself. He was a young, young mom and, uh.
And I thought I was in trouble for sharing my lunch because, you know, I was like, we didn’t have a lot of money and like it’s, it was a show of emotion than my dad sometimes was. I think dudes sometimes have a hard time showing emotion. I think in the 1970s it was even more that way. And we all have to fix that by the way.
But my dad was very, he was just very proud of me and he just said, you think I’m mad at you? He’s like, that’s unbelievable. Like, he’s like, you know, like, and he, it was an abundance mindset, right? Yeah. Even though we didn’t have a lot, it’s that feeling of abundance and that there’s always enough and like, we’ll just create more together and, you know, it’s so wise. ─
Like dumb dumb five-year-old is, it’s a very wise act. And as I got older and older and you’re sort of trying to quite accomplish things and do things, we mistake education for wisdom number one, right? And you get older, there are all sorts of reasons why you can come up with, to justify why you wouldn’t, that boy didn’t have lunch.
Well, that’s their problem, right? Or they didn’t, they should have had insurance or they should have had you come up. All these things that it’s this family’s fault and it’s not like, and so for me, red Helicopter is just a symbol of just it’s wisdom, it’s intuitive wisdom, it’s just truth. And just do it. ━
Be kind like, be gracious, right? It’s this, it’s just that. And when I think about Red Helicopter now, whenever there’s a, where’s chaos or there’s a complicated problem, I think about a red helicopter, I visualize it and say, what’s the simple answer? And that’s how I approach all my problems these days. I’m like, it’s not that hard. ─━
Like get outta your own way. Like just don’t create problems, just let things go too. You know?
That’s the hardest part for me. Just let it go. Yeah.
It’s why like, you know, and later on I, when I talk about like money and things, like it’s really, you see, I know it’s about, about money, this show too. It’s about like, you know, it’s like having a clean balance sheet, right?
Like don’t have a lot of lingering liabilities, like lingering, just things like let it go. Like we should all be living life as clean, the clean a balance sheet as you possibly can. That applies in your personal life, but also businesses, right? You want a clean balance sheet. You don’t want any off balance sheet liabilities and just live clean. ─
The book is called Red Helicopter, A Parable for Our Times Lead Change with Kindness Plus a Little Math. I think we just talked a little bit about a little bit of the math, James, but it’s available tomorrow, everywhere, correct? Correct. Awesome. Wherever books are sold. Thank you so much for for mentoring our stackers on kindness and on leadership and on the Red helicopter.
Thank you. This
was fun. ━─ Hi, I am David Stein. When I’m not talking to other people about money, on Money, for the rest of us,
I’m Stacking Benjamins. ━ What I love about that story, OG, is you never know when a little kindness is gonna pay off. Number one, some stranger, somebody in this case, a good friend, and you also don’t know ─ how you can help people that seemingly aren’t like you.
Sometimes, bringing a fresh perspective into. ━─ An area where you think you might not belong really helps everyone. If you listen, you’re kind, you’re a little blunt about what the problem is, and you apply a little, you apply a little math, you’re like, Hey, we’re all screwed. Here’s the math. We’re all screwed if we don’t solve this problem ─ and I’m here, you’re here and let’s get it done. ─
I’ve got the blunt thing
covered. ─ You got, you got half of that. But I am always impressed with the number of people who know other people in a similar genre. You know, you talk about like FinCon and the financial blogger or financial media type of space, right? How many times have you been somewhere and talked to somebody completely unrelated to you know this, and then you find out that that person knows that person and they connected to you because of the fact that they knew one another and it was like this weird third party communication.
And so I’ve always tried to remember in just about any interaction that there’s a good chance this person knows somebody that I know somehow. Or at least know somebody that knows somebody that knows me somehow. And, you know, when it comes to helping people or, you know, you said kindness. I think it’s important to remember you’re not, you know, you’re not on an island here.
Like there’s a, there’s a chance, there’s some connections there,
spot on. And I think that, especially in election year, where it’s gonna be driven in over the next several months, hadn’t noticed months how different we all are. Right. And how we’re different. And there’s them and there’s us that these people that are supposedly completely different from, I mean, a, a Korean man knowing nothing ─ about fashion to lead a plus size company for black women is just, ── I mean, the number of interviews that I’ve had, I’m thinking about when, uh, Gigi Gonzalez was here and talking about growing up in Mexico, and how about how it was color culture, you know, in her Latino household.
And I’m thinking, I grew up in redneck West Michigan and it was car culture in, in all white. ── Redneck West Michigan different look, but we, we have so much more in common than we think we do. And if we just embrace the fact that we’re different, we can help each other. I don’t know. It’s, it’s really cool. I, I do have to say this.
We get these brilliant people here, ─ and of course the reason we can get them is because they’re on a tour, because whatever project they’re on, they’re either made a documentary, they put their thoughts down in a book in a way that we can actually talk about some of the issues. ──── We don’t wanna be Barnes and Noble, we don’t wanna sell books.
I just wanna get these very smart people to mentor us like James did today. But I will say this og, there are good books and there are really, really, really good books. Thi this book, red Helicopter is, what is it called? Is yeah, red Helicopter’s probably one of the best. Well, not even one. The Best helicopter, best books.
It is amazing. What did I say? Did you say helicopter? Yeah. I said helicopter. ── Are you helicopter? Oh my goodness. Oh boy. It’s pecan, pecan. He’s, he’s on fire. ──────
I mean, it’s not HILL.
Helicopter. A helicopter. Hey, guess what? Uh, I see it. It’s the bat signal guys. Somebody said I better call sa. See, hi and og. ─ We are gonna swoop in and we’re gonna help out a stacker in need.
If you’re somebody that has a financial question, a financial problem, well, you know what, we’re here for you. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash oh. ─ Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail gets you to our helpline. And ─ who thought they better call Saul? Well, none other than Monal. ───────
Hi, Joan
og. This is Monal from Chicago.
I saw a video on Instagram recently where a guy talked about recasting your mortgage. I’m planning on making a payment towards the principal of my mortgage. I’m thinking that this might be a good idea. I like the idea of lowering my monthly payments, but I don’t really know what the difference is between that and just making a payment towards the principal.
In the long run. I am hoping to pay off my mortgage in about 10, and so I’m to debate whether I make a payment towards the ━─ or if I call the ━━━━━━━━── any on ━━━━ thanks. ────
This is a great question, Monal a a couple things. Recasting your mortgage for people that don’t know what that is, that is changing the terms of your mortgage without refinancing.
So can we change either the length of time it takes to pay it off, or number two, officially change it in the contract, or can we change the interest rate and OG recasting a mortgage?
You know, when you think about the mortgage, I think ultimately what you wanna do is figure out what your goal is. And, and, uh, Mona said that she wants to have the house paid off in 10 years.
So the question is, is, is if you recast it and you have a lower payment, which is what would happen, right? You’re, you’re basically saying, redo this mortgage as if the balance was X instead of Y after I put this big payment down and now tell me the new payment. ─── Well, first of all, you have to assume that your bank allows you to do that, which not everyone does, but let’s assume they do. ─
Does that increase or decrease the likelihood of you reaching your goal? Because the bank is gonna look at that and go, okay, yeah, sure, another 25 year mortgage at X percent interest. Even if they don’t change that, they’re still gonna try to run that out over 25 years. So they get their, you know, long-term payout on your money, basically.
So if you’re trying to pay the house off in a relatively short period of time, I don’t know why lowering the payment would make sense, unless you’re not sure that that cash flow or the, you know, it’s lumpy or you, you know, you’re not sure how your bonuses are gonna work out and that sort of thing. And that’s, that’s maybe where it comes from.
But if you’re trying to aggressively pay the house down, I would just keep it where it is. ── I see the benefits of redoing the mortgage, recasting it, as it were to lower the payment because it gives you some flexibility from a cashflow standpoint and that sort of thing. But I think this comes back to, you know, what your goal is first.
Back in the early two thousands, ─ there was a period when interest rates went from higher to lower, and we found a couple banks, ochi, that were recasting mortgages in the other way. So you’ve got these two variables, right? You’ve got the payment and you have the interest rate. ─ We actually found a couple banks that would recast the mortgage by just lowering the interest rate on the loan.
As interest rates went down, they would lower the, the interest rate that you owed, which was pretty cool. And basically their thought process was, we’re losing this loan, ─ somebody’s just gonna go refinance someplace else. Mm-Hmm. So rather than lose the loan to some other institution, we’re gonna keep the loan on the books.
And if somebody asked to recast it, not change the terms in terms of the amount of payments, but change that interest rate to a lower payment. So if you got in when it was high, and let’s say it was 8%, and now as we record this, we’re just below seven. So if you’re at six and three quarters now, let’s say, and you’re able to lock that number in versus eight. ─
And I think that they attach just a small fee, like a seriously, like a couple hundred bucks to just recast it versus the full blown refinance. That’s another way to recast that I haven’t, that I’m just not hearing about anymore. I don’t know if it’s a thing. I don’t know if anybody’s doing. I’d love to hear from mortgage people in our community if they’ve seen that return now that we’re getting some people who might be in that situation again.
Yeah. Obviously
there’s the interest rate changes that that are going on. They’re quite negative changes for most borrowers. I think through the rest of this year. I think we might see some positive changes. Right. Yeah. Interest rates might start coming down. I haven’t seen
any evidence though that recasting the rate. ─
I haven’t seen anybody doing that. I’d love to hear from ’em. Well, I
can’t imagine that they would do that to a lower rate. Oh,
no, no, no, no. Without a substantial, those people that got in high. ─ Those people that got in at a high, at over 8% when it spiked up there. Mm-Hmm. And they just said, you know, there’s, in the real estate world there is marry the property date, the rate, because the rate you can, if it’s at a high interest rate, you can get in on a property when a lot of people aren’t in because interest rates are high.
So you might get a better deal, and then later when the rate goes down, you just refinance. Or in this case, I’m wondering if Monal could, uh, recast that way if she’s at a, at a higher rate. That’s the question is we don’t know what rate she’s at, but I’m with you OG behaviorally, why would I extend the term?
Yeah. If your goal
is to, to pay it off, it’s, and, and I don’t even know that it’s, she would be extending the term in so much as it would be more like lowering the payment, taking away the tension of paying it off faster. You know what I mean? It’s like if you make this big lump sum and then you pull forward that table and now you’re on payment.
You were on payment 15 and now you’re on payment 77 on that table. It’s like, why would you wanna like let off the gas and go back to payment 18? ── Because that’s what the bank will do. They’ll say, oh, you, your payment was 2000 a month and now we can change it to
1200. Yeah. The only reason to do that I would think, is if you were really squeezed and you barely got into a house.
You know, Len Pezo, our Friday contributor, talks about one of the houses he bought when he was first out of college. He took every cent he had and bought more houses than he could afford. And then as he got pay raises, he was able to afford that house recasting for that reason. Maybe to make it easier to handle is great.
You know, a strategy that I’ve liked in the past is take a 30 year loan, make payments on the 15, make them automatic so you don’t have to, you don’t have to send an extra every month ’cause you never will just have it autopay 15 year loan. But man, if somebody in the house gets disabled or you lose your job or whatever, now you’ve only got the 30 year payment.
But behaviorally, when people give themself that flexibility, I think this is a little bit of know yourself. ’cause some people give themself that flexibility. Before you know it, you’ve extended your loan by 15 more years and you’re not sending in the extra anymore. ─ It can be super frustrating. I’m totally with you.
I think recasting it to pay it off sooner. I don’t ─ unless it’s lowering the interest rate. ─ She didn’t mention what rate she has, did she? No. ─── Mo I hope that was helpful. I know that we had a discussion recently in our Facebook group, the basement, about the same thing. So I hope all those people tuning in too.
I’m gonna circle back and tell them that we’re talking about this on the show today. Uh, so thanks for the question and for being brave and for asking the question. A lot of people apparently asking this right now, we’re gonna send you out some. Stacking Benjamins swag and, uh, Brad over at Flying Pork Apparel, working on some new swag for us, which is pretty awesome.
Stacking Benjamins dot com slash shirts. You can take a look at all the cool Stacking Benjamins wearables. By the way, if you’re not here, just about recasting your mortgage, about paying your mortgage off early. It’s part of a bigger financial plan, and it’s not working the way that you hope that it would.
OG and his team are taking clients, so head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash ━ og. That’s the link to his team’s calendar. It’s the first step in seeing how they can interface with you to make better money decisions in the future, and have a brighter 2024 and beyond. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og. ─
Doug, we’re gonna meander out to the back porch maybe. You know, I, I, I think every segment of the show is my favorite, but this, uh, today seems like my favorite. ’cause I think, uh, you said some people have left said some nice things about us.
They have, uh, here’s a great one that caught my eye. Starts with I can’t listen to this show in public. ━━━━──────────────━─━━
And, and while they, while they didn’t type this, I think right after that, it should say, and I mean that in the nicest possible way ━━── because they say, these guys are so funny and sometimes so ridiculous while delivering serious information and content. It’s my favorite podcast by far. I never miss it.
That’s from, uh, I love trying to pronounce these, these names. Cki, maybe Evenki, uh, an Apple podcast. So that, that was a great one. Uh, fantastic. We’ve got another one. Fantastic interviews. Yes. These guys are funny and it’s amazing ear bubble gum when the guys are talking back and forth, but I have to say, they’re fantastic at finding great guests and Joe is a skilled interviewer.
Oh, the genuine connection and conversation keeps me coming back to listen. That’s from Practical Nurse. I want a review from Impractical Nurse ─━━── to see if it’s the same person I saw in that movie that one
time. We work hard to get great mentors on the show for these Monday episodes and to vary them and make sure that you’ve got a lot of great people and personally a nurse.
I think I’m enjoying the comedian Ridealongs that we do every several weeks and I really like the community episode, so thanks for, for all that. That’s great. ─ I especially enjoy singing cross emoji. ── I bets
best part. Yeah. Are we, are you gonna give me like 11 seconds to review any more shows today or, oh, that’s a great idea.
As long as the right, if I just do it right, as you guys said last time,
hold on, let me get the, the timer out. Uh, Doug’s, Doug’s reviews. I love that I get to do Cabrini and give myself 18 minutes. Yeah. And I do like the dramatic tension of the, of the, my favorite thing about playing the trailer, I have two favorite things.
I like the dramatic tension ’cause they do that movie podcast, and I listen to a bunch of good movie podcasts. They always play the trailer and I love it. But even better than that is watching Doug have a complete mental breakdown as I play the trailer. But we’re not gonna do that today. We’re gonna give you a minute.
Ready? Doug. You ready? Yep, I’m ready. Here we go. ─────━
Alright. The Gentleman, which is a series, it’s a, uh, guy Richie series on Netflix. That’s, I think, oh gee, you’d really like this one. You would? Yeah. Uh, it’s based off a movie. He did a movie called The Gentleman in like 20, I don’t know, 18 or 19. And now this is a series.
It’s really similar, but if you like that sort of British, ━ um, mob, uh, quick editing, dark humor. The gentleman’s awesome thumbs up. We watched,
we watched episode number one of this Doug Cheryl and I watched episode one and then I asked her the next day. I’m like, that was so good. You wanna watch episode two?
She goes, it’s too intense. ─ ’cause epi episode one is so intense and of course the brother gets into some ridiculous, horrible stuff immediately setting up the entire plot. I’m like, we just gotta keep going this, it’s so, it’s funny. It’s funny and intense. It’s funny, it’s intense, it’s quirky, it’s everything.
Guy Richie is, what are some of the other movies that Richie’s done? No,
no. We’re moving on to my next one ’cause I know the timer is going. Love is Blind Season six. Funny and Intense. Gotta watch that. It is the best trash. Oh my God. No. It’s the best trash out there. It’s so good. And we’re out of time. No, we’re not.
I’m going
busy, busy,
busy. I’m bad. ─ No, there’s two more I’m doing. I don’t give a shit about the timer. There’s two more. I have a meeting to get to go back. Everybody needs to watch this if you haven’t, if you’ve seen it, but it’s been a couple of years. Watch it again. We can do it next time. No Whiplash.
Whiplash is probably JK Simmons’ best role ever. It’s Miles Teller and, and JK Simmons. Uh, at a super elite music school, it talk about intense. That movie is intense and it is amazing. I saw
Whiplash when it came out. Yeah, it was. I don’t remember who was up for the Academy Award that year, but that was up for Best movie.
And that could have been a best movie
for you. It should have been, frankly, compared to what won that was 2014. So it’s 10 years old now. I think JK Simmons did win. He actually won 42 awards for his role in that film. That’s how good he is in that. He’s such a jerk. Oh, it’s, it’s, he’s the best jerk ever.
And some amazing one lines he screams out there, og. You’d love
that. Do you know what’s funny is I don’t love Miles Teller, but Miles Teller’s great in that he’s great. In the one we talked about with the Godfather, the making of the Godfather movie. He’s really good in that as well. ─ No, it’s great. That’s a called The
Offer.
The Offer. That’s a great series. He actually does like 60% of his own drumming in that movie. When they cast him, they didn’t know that he started drumming when he was 15 years old. So Also Teller did? Yeah, teller did. So a whole bunch of what you see is actually him playing the drums in that movie. Some of the super complex stuff, they actually kind of brought in a double and you just see that person’s
hands.
What made you go back and watch this?
Uh, we just needed something to come up with. We were on vacation and, and, uh. People I was with hadn’t seen it yet, and I forgot how amazing. Like I knew it was good and I’ve recommended it to people and never once have anybody come back and said, yeah, it was okay.
Everybody comes back and says, that’s an incredible movie. You’re on the edge of your
seat the whole time. Which makes it feel short. But I also think it isn’t a long movie. I think it might be 90 minutes, correct? Yeah,
it is a shorter movie. But man, it, you pay for it. ’cause it just draws you in and it wears you down.
It’s awesome. And then not in a bad way. It, it’s not gonna make you feel like
crap. It’s just exciting. It’s the same team that did, uh, LA Land, by the way.
What was it really? I didn’t know that. Yes. And then my last one, thumb Sideways at most. Thumb sideways, slightly down. This is gonna piss you off, Joe. Why are we still going the
holdovers.
Shut the Uhhuh. Okay, we’re done. Oh my God, you’re an idiot. ─ You’re a bigger moron than I thought you were. My favorite movie of last year. ─ Nah, I don’t know. It was Paul Giamatti. He’s okay.
Okay. Paul gi. And I know that’s one of OGs favorites. Paul Giamatti. That dude’s amazing. We gotta go. He’s probably, we gotta go. ─
No. Giamatti is probably the best actor we’ve got right now. He’s, he is incredible. Like, and it’s an American actor. That dude’s amazing. ─── He’s it. That’s it.
That’s the whole movie Holdovers. Best movie of last year. No. Far none. Nope.
And because all it was, they just concatenated. Dead Poet Society and sent of a woman.
That’s the plot of the movie. They just put those two together and said, Hey, Paul, go,
this is what it looks like when somebody’s just way wrong. Way, way, way wrong. You could say that about every movie. Oh, star Wars is just the hero’s journey. Like
we, oh, creativity is derivative. We’ve seen this
before. Like if you wanna put some stake on it, do something.
Yeah. Let’s go fight in another room. Doug, we gotta go. What’s in our to list today? That’s a horrible way to end. Thanks. Good
job, Doug. Thanks Doug. ───────
Hey, so what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today? First, take some advice from James Ree, lead with kindness and seek to understand the people around you.
Be blunt, but collaborative. And maybe you can move mountains or clothing in this case where others before you could not second take some advice from our headline Planning a Wedding. Remember, this is a one day party, and while that should be a day to remember, you don’t wanna start off in debt up to your eyeballs while Uncle Harry helps himself to all the horse Dovers and all the Scot he can drink.
Put the big lesson. ━──── Imagine if Po Leon would’ve found the Fountain of Youth, someone by now would’ve found a way to build a theme park around it and charge us all 46 bucks admission. Unless we bought the priority parking for another 10 bucks, we could drink from a extra 20 years of life. Well, if we paid another 15 bucks, and while one sip is 46, a second sip is a discount of 25, probably available in four easy payments, you know, but I’m not being cynical or anything. ─────────────
Thanks to James Ree for joining us today. Check out his book, red Helicopter, A parable for our Times Lead Change with kindness plus a little math wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. ─ This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.
Our producer is Karen, Repine. Karen and Joe. Get 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, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. ━━━━━━─━━━━━━──────────────────────━━
But it’s the Bismark’s birthday, sadly. Oh. ─ Huh? I said, oh. Oh yeah. Okay. Sadly, Marcel Theo Hall, AKA biz died back in 2021, but we miss him so much because he had what we all needed. You’ve got what I need. ── I think I nailed that. You’ve got what I, I’m gonna, that was perfect. I gotta do that in karaoke.
I just want it to be horrible and. ━━━━──────────
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