What’s the most fun way to look at inflation? Well, even though it might not be fun to watch your wallet disappear at the grocery store, it is VERY fun to watch trends in food costs over time. Len Penzo began his annual sandwich study to just prove that packing your lunch is cheaper than buying food at a restaurant. He also wanted to show just how much money you could save to either pay down debt or invest. Instead, many years later, Len’s sandwich study is always compared to the classic “Big Mac” study, where they track the price of a Big Mac. We prefer Len’s study because making a sandwich is healthier, cheaper, and also maybe a little more fun. So today we’ll compare the cost of ten sandwiches and see which one is this year’s champion…but more importantly, we’ll see if your grocery bill has gone up or down from a year ago.
In our headline segment, your home is your castle so it probably holds LOTS of cash value that you may want to tap into during your retirement years. How do financial planners look at home prices that might not rise as quickly in the future as they have in the past? We’ll chat about housing, selling your house for retirement, how people navigate selling and “downsizing” in real life, and much more.
Of course, we still take a call from a Stacker on our Better Call Saul….Sehy and OG segment. Plus, we always leave room for a helping of Doug’s trivia.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
Len Penzo!
Big thanks to Len Penzo for joining us today. To learn more about Len, visit Len Penzo dot Com – The offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people.
Watch On YouTube:
Doug’s Trivia
- What was Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobile briefly named last year?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker JJ calls in with a question about the best 401(k) investment allocation over the course of a worker’s career.
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] bit: Hey, watch you got here. That’s worth living for. True [00:00:06] OG: love. True love. You heard him. You could not ask for a more noble cause than that. [00:00:12] bit: Yeah. Sunny, true love is the greatest thing in the world except for nice MLT, mud, lettuce and tomato sandwich. When the mud is nice and lean and the tomatoes ripe, they’re so perky. [00:00:24] I love that. [00:00:30] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:44] I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Today we are doing our annual check-in. On the cost of a sandwich with one of the direct descendants of the Earl of Sandwich, it’s Jimmy, John. God, forget it. All we could come up with was Len Benzo in our headlines with housing prices slowing. What does that mean for your financial plan? [00:01:05] Maybe more than you think. Plus we’ll answer a question from one stacker who thought, you know, I’d better call salt, see hi and og, and then I’ll share some weenie trivia. And now two guys who go together like peanut butter and pickles. It’s Joe and OG. [00:01:33] Hey, Don. Knock until you tried it. Doug. Have you tried that? The weenie, I mean, uh, the pickles and, and peanut butter have not, no peanut butter’s a banana. People do that. Well, of course. [00:01:43] Joe: Yeah. Peanut butter banana. I did that as a kid. Yeah. I think when you’re eight years old, that’s like getting crazy with your food groups. [00:01:51] Hey, everybody. Welcome to Wednesday. As you can hear, either we’re hungry or we got a big special guest today, Len Penso back for his annual look at inflation in the most hilariously amazing way possible. We’re looking at the cost of a lunch, and here’s a guy who packs his lunch every day. Well, doesn’t really, if you count, drive through his packing lunch. [00:02:14] Mr. OGs here. How are you, man? Has someone pack his lunch, crunchy or creamy? Crunchy. Crunchy [00:02:20] OG: all way. Yeah. Only psychos like creamy. Joe likes creamy. I can. He’s, I can see he’s just going, oh man. It’s like, wait, what? That bullshit, crunchy. How [00:02:30] Doug: do I recover from this? Gotta take the other side and the podcast is over. [00:02:35] That is, that’s so tough. Yeah, I’ve added whole peanuts to my peanut butter before. That’s how crunchy. I like it. Whoa. [00:02:41] Joe: There was a friend of mine in college that with the Kraft Macaroni and cheese, it wasn’t cheesy enough, so he would take. Slices the singles and he would add a bunch of singles to it. So it was super, super. [00:02:53] Doug: Oh, that sounds so gross. Was he trying to make it nutritious by adding the singles melted cheese product on top of powdered cheese polymers? [00:03:01] Joe: Yeah. Gross. Yeah, it’s a fantastic way to go. Well, we’ve got a great show today. We also have a, a very interesting headline about Real Estate og. So we’re going to help our stackers figure out their financial plan and how do you value the real estate in your plan, plus a great call from a stacker. [00:03:21] So time for us to get started. But before we do that, while you go get a sheet of paper so that you can take notes on all the goodness that Len Penso is gonna bring, and OG is gonna bring during our headline, we’re going to play today’s sponsor that helps keep this show free for you. Len Penso waiting upstairs, probably trading recipes with Mom for different sandwiches. [00:03:42] So while he’s doing that, let’s get you a headline. [00:03:46] bit: Hello Doling. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:03:52] Joe: Our headline comes to us from investment news today. That’s an industry rag online for financial advisors. The piece is written by a guy named Greg Greenberg. [00:04:04] Oh gee, this piece is interesting. The reason I like going to investment news sometimes on the show is we will have one set of discussions, but, you know, money geeks, people that love money chat, but often see if PS are having different discussions. And here is one that it appears financial advisors are having. [00:04:24] Greg writes, they say Home is where the heart is, but it’s also where the wealth is. Since a home’s equity is often the largest asset for US households, US single family home prices stayed unchanged, demand the annual increase with the least and nearly a year. Due to higher mortgage rates and increased supply. [00:04:44] According to a report a week ago from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage reached a six month high of 7.22% back in early May. They go into this idea, OG, that if you own a house, a lot of people to Greg’s point go, Hey, I got this equity sitting in my house, and now financial planners are going, you know, the equity in the house isn’t accelerating the way that it has the last decade, and predictions are that it might not. [00:05:18] So if the value of the equity in your house doesn’t go up, how does that change your net worth statement? How does that then change your retirement plan if this equity’s not doing what it has historically, og, when an asset class changes. What do you do when you’re helping a client with their financial plan? [00:05:37] OG: Well, I don’t think when it comes to residential real estate that, uh, I don’t know too many people that really count on the equity for living expenses or income in retirement. And I think we gotta delineate between real estate as an investment or, you know, public commercial real estate investment trusts. [00:05:56] You know, real estate investing is completely different than single family home ownership and what you should expect for that. I think historically we would like to see basically inflationary returns on real estate. Single family, you know, your primary residents. In the last maybe 10 years, it’s been somewhat higher than that. [00:06:18] But just like the stock market, if there’s some volatility on the upside, if you have some higher than expected returns over a period of time, I think it’s safe to assume that the, there’s some lower periods of return to even that out over, over the next period of time, perhaps. [00:06:35] Joe: Rohan, we are a man partner at Helium Advisors works in California, and she says, you know, you look at some of these prices in California, OG for houses, e even if somebody has accumulated some wealth, their house still could be valued at a couple million dollars. [00:06:54] Mm-Hmm. And, uh, could be the biggest asset that they have. So we, mantry says, many of our clients, the largest asset they have is their home. So to help them, they think through different retirement possibilities in the frame of what ifs, they will model out these what ifs scenarios to show them the impact of downsizing to a smaller house and potentially using the difference to supplement retirement income. [00:07:19] Do you see people, uh, people doing those what ifs Quite a bit. If they’re struggling with maybe not having been able to save enough. [00:07:28] OG: There’s a number of different programs that exist for people that have lots of equity in their house, but not other things. Primarily reverse mortgages, which for a long time had some pretty negative connotations. [00:07:39] Yeah. Some, some ugly players in that field. What is coming around and I think we’ll see some more right sizing of that sector of, of the market, so to speak, in terms of cost structure and whatnot. I think my experience has been in people who do the proverbial downsize, they don’t actually downsize to, they may downsize size, right? [00:08:01] They go from the 3000 square foot colonial with four bedrooms to the two bedroom town home. But that two bedroom town home is on the ocean in Sarasota. [00:08:13] Joe: The cost per square foot [00:08:15] OG: might change, but it is a very big driver. I think one of the mistakes people make in their financial plans as it relates to housing is they assume that the housing costs will go away. [00:08:26] You know, so you have this, you have this line item in your budget right now you’re, let’s say you’re, you know, you’re in your forties and you’re working and you’ve got your house and you’ve got a house payment and mortgage and taxes and you know the thing, right? Whatever that number is, you’re spending two grand a month or four grand a month or whatever your, your all in house cost is. [00:08:43] And people say, well, you know, and this gets paid off in 20 years. That’ll go to zero. And the reality is we’re seeing this in some higher cost of living areas where when that mortgage payment falls off, your property taxes and your insurance payment has increased to the point now where it’s the same payment that you were paying. [00:09:05] Joe: Oh, wow. [00:09:06] OG: Does that make sense? Like, yeah, like when you got the mortgage, you were paying 4,000 a month and maybe it’s ticked up over the years because of higher taxes and insurance costs, but then you go, oh, I got rid of my mortgage payment. That’s 2000 a month. It’s like, well, but now your taxes and insurance are still 4,000 a month. [00:09:22] And so it’s almost like a, a one for one replacement. And of course, taxes rise with inflation and we all know what’s going on in the property casualty market right now, depending on, you know, different areas where you’re living. You know, there’s some places that are reporting very large, 30, 40, 50% year over year increases. [00:09:40] There [00:09:40] Joe: companies that haven’t done that yet, OG warning people, it’s coming. [00:09:44] OG: Yeah. Yeah. So I think from a planning standpoint to say, oh, well my housing costs are gonna go away when I retire, or they’re gonna go away when I pay off my mortgage, I think, I think you’re doing yourself a disservice to think of that. [00:09:56] But by the same token, when you look at your net worth statement and you go, oh, I’ve got, you know, a million dollar house with a $200,000 mortgage balance, I’ve got 800 K in equity. It’s like, well, how are you using that? You can’t turn that $800,000 into cash into investments unless you do a reverse mortgage or unless you take another loan. [00:10:15] And even if you do downsize, you know, you’re not gonna free up all 800 K of that. You know what I mean? Like, there’s some sort of offset that you’re gonna have to spend even in the lower cost areas. So, you know, I think it’s important to do some different planning scenarios where, you know, where you’ve gone through and done some of those different calculations, but I rarely, if ever used the equity in a house for income needs in retirement. [00:10:41] Joe: I love that idea. Just take it off the table. Your house is your castle, but if you think it’s an asset that’s gonna help you retire, try to get rid of it. ’cause to your point, it’ll probably get rid of itself. [00:10:52] OG: I mean, there are some circumstances where people have done it for sure. You know, in that example of that 800 k, it’s like that, that pays for a lot of rent. [00:11:00] Yeah. You know, if you go, I’m just gonna downsize and I’ll just go rent a condo and I can spend $2,500 a month out of 800 K for a really long time. [00:11:07] Joe: Well, I think you gotta be incredibly intentional. Like maybe move from a high cost living area to a lower cost living area. You might have to move partway across the country. [00:11:16] I mean, but you’ve gotta be incre. And I do know some people that did that. What was interesting with this particular couple is. I really got the feeling, and we didn’t have a long discussion about this, but their quality of life value was not what they hoped it would be like it was. It was truly an economic decision. [00:11:34] We’re going to move to a lower cost living area. I’m gonna sell this really expensive, beautiful house I had. We’re gonna go to a pretty place on a much smaller lot, much smaller footprint of a house, but it’s still gonna be nice. But they just didn’t seem as happy afterwards. I don’t know if that’s everybody that’s a unit of one, but Yeah. [00:11:57] But I love the idea of taking it off the table. Let’s talk about buying homes just in general. OG buying that primary residence we talked about on Monday. The average person changes jobs every four years, just over, just over four years, which is crazy. How long should somebody expect to live in a house to make it. [00:12:19] Actually makes fi fiscal sense. And I realized that your primary house, we we’re taking that outta the financial plan. But it certainly will, if I spend a lot of money, it’s gonna affect the other parts of the financial plan. Sure. So how long should I expect to live there if I’m truly gonna buy a house to make it worth all of the costs associated with buying the property? [00:12:39] OG: I’m not sure that I can really answer that question. I know that the real estate folks, the real estate professionals, realtors have some data on this that are in our community. Certainly. Like the average person moves this number of times. We were just talking about how, um, how Doug’s looking at selling a house. [00:12:54] Can I say that? Can I say that? You’re selling a property for the first time in 30 years and Joe’s sold 30 properties in 30 years. So everybody’s a little different. And our personal story, we bought a house in metro Detroit, new subdivision, fast growing community, and we literally bought, I think as the rollercoaster was hitting, you know that spot when you’re at Cedar Point, right before you go. [00:13:17] Ah, on the road. Yeah, we were that guy and then at the top of the Millennium Force Hills. Yeah. You know, it was, we were like, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Oh, let’s buy now. Ah, so we, you know, we bought a house in 2004, sold it in 2014 for the same price. And so we lost our faces on that. [00:13:40] And then, uh, 18 months later, we bought a house in Dallas for slightly more than we bought our house for in Novi in Michigan. And it’s gone up 300%. So that’s cool. If I was gonna sell it, you know. Yeah. Or if I could afford to move to another place. To your point, it’s like a lateral move doesn’t save anything in the, but still, I don’t think in the balance sheet. [00:14:02] Joe: I think if I’m, if I’m going into a job and I think it’s gonna be four years that I’m gonna stay there, I’m not buying a house. I don’t think four years is a long enough timeframe to make up for all of the, uh, well, [00:14:13] OG: certainly not in terms of costs and that sort of thing. You can look at like just the refinance costs. [00:14:18] You know, if you look at how often should you refinance a mortgage, you know, that’s kind of fallen by the wayside now with interest rates having done what they did in the last five years. But that was a, a more common occurrence 10 years ago. But I think it also depends on what, what, you know, what kind of community you’re in. [00:14:33] You can change jobs 500 times if you live in a big city like New York, or if you live in a big city like Dallas or Detroit or something. You’re saying if you don’t mind the commute. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can live in the same, roughly in the same community, right? Without having to stress it too much. If you’re moving across country every so often, that becomes a little more challenging. [00:14:53] Joe: What about, uh, home improvements? I mean, people looking at, Hey, you know what, it’s about time to remodel the kitchen. I mean, we’ve seen inflation pretty high for. The last year, Len, coming on, I bet the sandwich prices are gonna reflect that. Just a prediction. Mm-Hmm. I haven’t talked to ’em yet. We’ll see. [00:15:10] But what do I do if I’m thinking about my budget to improve my home? [00:15:17] OG: Personally, I think that everything you do associated with living in your home has to be for your own personal edification or, or lifestyle improvement. I don’t know that there’s anything that’s going to quote, retain its value in terms of a cost to equity relationship in the future. [00:15:34] There’s some projects, certainly kitchens and bathrooms and, you know, so and so forth that have a higher residual value. You know, you spend 50,000 on redoing a kitchen, and maybe that makes your house value $30,000 more, unless you’re an investor, a real estate investor, where you’re buying a, a. Worn down property and you’re, you know, bringing it up to current specs, that’s a whole different thing, right? [00:15:57] That’s, that’s an investment perspective. If you’re looking at making a change in your primary residence, it has to be from the perspective of, do I want to do this when this make my life better? Here again, back to our personal example, when we bought our house in, in Michigan, we didn’t opt for, the only thing we didn’t add on was the prebuilt deck. [00:16:17] On our house. House, we were on kind of a sloped lot, a little bit. And so the kitchen sliding glass door kind of proverbial wrote Pulte style build of, that’s where the deck went, if you guys can picture that. But it was just high enough off the ground that you couldn’t not do that. And they’re like, well, we’ll just add, you know, we’ll just do, it’d be like another 10 grand, 10 thou, you’re crazy. [00:16:36] I can do this myself. Well, 10 years later, after having never built a deck on the house, I was like, I don’t wanna do projects like this anymore because I’m never gonna talk myself into it because of the inflationary cost. ’cause this year it’s 7,000. Next year it’s eight. The year after that’s nine. You know, it’s like every year it gets more expensive. [00:16:55] So I wanted a house that was already done. And uh, and we’ve done some things in our home now, most notably building our, our pool in the backyard. But that was a hundred percent like personal utilization. [00:17:07] bit: Yeah, [00:17:07] OG: it helps with the equity value, but it’s nowhere near what the value. The cost was associated with it. [00:17:13] Joe: Well, and if I’m taking the house off the table, which is what you said earlier, and it’s not part of my financial plan, I mean really then og, I gotta think that the Yeah, that’s, [00:17:22] OG: that’s a full expense. [00:17:23] Joe: Yeah. Then the big thing is the money I’m using for it. What does it do to my other goals, and if it doesn’t affect my other goals, or this is goal number one, well then fine spend the money. [00:17:33] Yeah, it, but if it hurts goal number one, then you probably shouldn’t put the pool in or remodel the kitchen or whatever the thing is. [00:17:39] OG: Or recognize back to what the person was saying about my what if ING put a different what if in there and say, well how much does this cost in terms of future financial independence? [00:17:48] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. If I do [00:17:49] OG: the pool, you know, I was, I was on track to be financially independent at 55, but now I’m gonna be 58. You know, it’s gonna cost, am I okay with that trade? Which some people, you know, might be, and some people might. [00:18:02] Joe: It’s an interesting discussion. I love this is, uh, a few financial planners going back and forth talking about the house. [00:18:10] We’ll link to it in our show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com if you’d like to dive in more. Of course, Kevin Bailey from our team is gonna dive in even more in the 2 0 1 newsletter tomorrow. So if you’re looking at, uh, different home improvement ideas or selling your house and how does that affect my financial plan, we will dive deeper in the 2 0 1 as we always do. [00:18:29] Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1, well, I’m super excited for this. Next gentleman, if you don’t know who Le Penso is, you are in for a treat. Len one, a Plutus award for the best personal finance blog. Also, a CBS money watch called his blog, the number one personal finance blog in America. He, every year looks at the price of sandwiches here at back to school, back to work time, and, uh, sees how. [00:19:00] Inflation may have hit your pocketbook either more or less than you think that it has. But before that we might have some, uh, meat related trivia. Doug say it ain’t so. Just what you’ve been waiting [00:19:13] Doug: for. Meats. The meats. We have the trivia. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug on Christmas Eve 1926. [00:19:23] You didn’t think I was going there, did you? No. Wheaties. Wheaties played the first ever commercial jingle on the radio, seemingly overnight. The simple song catapulted the serial into the number one spot, proving that the most effective way into people’s hearts is to find a way to get them to sing your name in the shower. [00:19:42] Not to brag, but I’ve been told that my name’s been sung in many a shower and I don’t even have, yeah, I don’t even have a jingle. Since I don’t need any help advertising my talents, I decided to write a little Diddy for Stacking Benjamin’s. And since it’s debuting here on our annual sandwich day, I was inspired to make it a play. [00:20:02] On the Baloney song goes a little something like this. [00:20:09] My podcast has a first name. It’s S-T-A-C-K ing. My podcast has a second name. It’s B-E-N-J-A. Hmm. Uh, something about that doesn’t quite sound right. I’m probably singing the wrong notes. Today’s trivia question is in 2023, Oscar Meyer briefly renamed his Wiener mobile as a part of a promotion. What was the new name? [00:20:39] It probably wasn’t a little Oscar. I’ll be back right after I double check the spelling of Benjamin. [00:21:00] Hey there, stackers. I’m Tex Ark’s most memorable guy, and soon to be Grammy Award-winning jingle writer, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Each year, 12 college seniors are chosen by Oscar Meyer to be brand ambassadors for a year known as Hotdogger. These Lucky Dozen are given the keys to the famous Wiener Mobile. [00:21:21] You know, I applied to drive the wiener when I was graduating from Southwest Bahama State Technical Institute and Beauty School. They didn’t pick me, but probably because I was too busy with the ladies. It just proves that sometimes being handsome comes at a price. God, I haven’t learned that lesson over and over. [00:21:40] Today’s trivia question is, what was Oscar Meyer’s Wienermobile briefly named last year? The answer. For the first time in the company’s 140 year history, Oscar Meyer changed the recipe for their famous 100% B Franks to help spread the word. They briefly changed the name of their famous vehicle to the Frank Mobile. [00:22:02] lame. And now back to Joe and og. Did you get it? og? Did you guess Frank Mobile, or did you say like the Steve Mobile? I, I didn’t, [00:22:13] OG: uh, didn’t pay attention. [00:22:16] Joe: I didn’t listen. Sure, you did. He was all, did you see him dancing to your, to your jingle? I was [00:22:22] OG: focusing on, uh, on the song. I was trying to make sure you spelled it right. [00:22:26] Joe: Yeah. [00:22:26] OG: The Frank Mobiles does sound pretty stupid. [00:22:30] Joe: That’s a long word for Doug. Did you see they had a, a wienermobile accident, like just last week, and I’m not kidding. No, I know. Yeah. Yeah. It didn’t fit in the tunnel. No, this was just down the side of the highway. [00:22:42] Doug: It was quite difficult. The engine had performance issues. [00:22:45] Joe: I also saw, yeah, when you saw the, did, did you see, by the way, there was a, there was a meme that had like a line of all those cars together, and when you see them all together, it’s pretty wild. All [00:22:56] Doug: wieners lined up next to each other. [00:22:58] Joe: There [00:22:58] Doug: must be like [00:22:59] Joe: 10 [00:22:59] Doug: of [00:22:59] Joe: them. [00:23:00] Doug: Yeah. [00:23:00] Joe: Anyway, [00:23:01] Doug: that was real sausage fest. [00:23:02] Well, let’s, [00:23:03] OG: let’s transition. [00:23:05] Doug: I got a hundred of ‘ [00:23:06] OG: em. Doug’s like, don’t threaten me with a good time. From [00:23:09] Joe: this, I’m gonna let you guys go and, uh, let’s invite Lynn Penso down to the basement. [00:23:23] Super happy to see this guy walking down the steps to the cart table. Have a seat, man. Let Penso in the house. How are you? I’m doing great. How are you, Joe? Well, why do I see you now when I get hungry? Like, especially when I know this segment’s coming, I’m like, I am starving for a sandwich and I just ate Lynn. [00:23:40] Len: Well, let me tell you something. Just coincidentally this weekend I was at, uh, subway and I went, went in and I ordered the, uh, sandwich and some chips. I got to the counter and the girl behind the counter, real pretty girl. She looks at me and she goes, do you wanna go for a drink? And I was like, well, first off this very pretty girl, probably late twenties. [00:23:59] And, and I said, you know, I’m very flattered, but you know, I’ve been married 28 years. I’m very happily married to my wife. And so thank you. But no. And she looked at me and she said, I was talking about the meal deal. So [00:24:15] Joe: you are like, no, the chips are enough. But thank you. Like, yes. Like I said, thank you. Just coincidentally, I thought I’m share that with you. All right. Last year, baloney was our top sandwich. It was number one, peanut butter and jelly and bologna go into blows. So we’re gonna save this till the end. But does Bologna defend its title this year or is it peanut butter and jelly? [00:24:40] But let’s start off, because we, we got a bunch of new stackers, Len, that don’t know about the fact that you do this every year. Tell me where this started. How did you get the sandwich survey going? [00:24:49] Len: Yeah, this started back, way back now. It’s hard to believe. 2009, I did my first sandwich survey. I did this because, [00:24:56] Joe: because you were homeless. [00:24:57] ’cause you’d lost your house during the, during the [00:25:01] Len: Yes. Yes. Way back when. When I was, yes. I, I had my kids in school. They were young at the time and just outta curiosity, I had just started my finance blog and um, it just dawned, I was like, well, when they went to school they could buy a lunch and I forget what it was at the time. [00:25:17] I think it was a dollar 50, you know, for a lunch. And I was thinking at the time, I was like, that seems kind of high for a lunch. I was, I was like, well, how much would it be if you pack a brown bag lunch? So. I decided I would do a survey and I wouldn’t just do the traditional peanut butter and jelly. I, I said, well, let’s, what are 10 common sandwiches that people, and not just school kids, but workers, people who go to work, commute and take their lunch to work. [00:25:39] Yeah. What are 10 different sandwiches that people commonly put into those bags? Let me take a survey of all the price ingredients and then I will compare that to the price of the school lunch. So at least I’ll know, you know, is, I’m sure it was, but was the school lunch more expensive than a brown bag lunch and just, just, Hey, by the way, if you’re going to work, how much are you saving, taking a brown bag rather than going to your local McDonald’s or whatever for lunch or subway and getting a date. [00:26:05] Yeah. So I said, Hey, and, and I was thinking, well, that’s a genius ideal and nobody else is doing this kind of thing. So, you know, and I just started this block. I said, be great. And little did I know, and, and, and frankly to no one’s surprise, it turned out that making your own lunch was way cheaper than going to a restaurant or, or even buying a school lunch. [00:26:22] But it’s just over the years now, it’s been 16 years and over time this has really become interesting. This is 16 surveys now, and you really get to see the price fluctuations over time, how that compares. It’s fascinating, and I thought this year’s results were extremely fascinating. It totally. Countered what I thought was gonna happen this year. [00:26:43] Joe: Well, it’s funny how you started off, I mean, when you started off, you were just trying to prove how much money you save by taking your lunch, and that’s not what’s, this has turned into the most fun way for me to look at inflation, Len. Exactly. [00:26:55] Len: That’s right. That’s what I’m saying. Over years now. That’s what this has turned into really. [00:26:59] It’s, it’s kind of like an inflation track. You know, you’ve heard of the Big Mac index. Well, this is Len Benzo’s Sandwich Survey Index, which is actually a little more detailed than the Big Mac index ’cause it, it takes into account about 20 different ingredients and it’s been the same ingredients. I’ve used the same methodology over time. [00:27:16] And that methodology is, I go to the same store, I’ve been shopping at the same store for all these years, this same grocery store. I buy whatever is cheapest. I, it has nothing to do with the brand. It has nothing to do with, it’s just cheapest by unit cost. So. The brand may change. It’s usually doesn’t, because usually it’s the store brand that will be the cheapest, but sometimes not. [00:27:37] They’ll have sales on a, on national brands, and that’ll actually become the cheapest item. But everything’s been consistent for 16 years. So it’s really, it’s a fascinating, uh, look at inflation over the years in addition to validating for yourself that yes, you can save a lot of money, uh, by making your own lunches at home. [00:27:54] Joe: Well, here’s the reason I like this versus the Big Mac. I’m gonna, I’m, I’m gonna smack the Big Mac index for a second, Len, because I was just reading. Some interesting stuff about McDonald’s and not just that, about the fast food industry in general, that the price of fast food has continued to go up while the price at the grocery store maybe has moderated. [00:28:10] We’ll see if we see that in these results or not. But, so the Big Mac index might not be what’s happening with your family, where what’s happening at the grocery store, I feel like is much closer to what’s happening for the average American household. Unless you’re like this one friend, I have this one friend that goes out for every meal. [00:28:27] I think he’s gonna die by the time he hits like 52. It’s nuts. He’s gonna, it’s really nuts. How could you go out for every meal? [00:28:34] Len: I don’t know. I, I’m sure you know, it’s not healthy either. I don’t think that’s very healthy of you to do that. [00:28:39] Joe: No, that’s what I was talking about, like the amount of sodium that’s gotta be in his diet has gotta be off the charts. [00:28:44] Len: Oh yeah. When you go to a grocery store and you put a brown bag lunch, and I mean, even today you wanna pop a, a banana in there with your, with your peanut butter and jelly and, uh, maybe a little, those little mini bags of chips. And it’s still so much cheaper than going out and buying something at a restaurant, and it’s healthier too. [00:29:01] Joe: What is the difference this year, because I know you track that every year, the average cost of a brown bag lunch or a sandwich versus, uh, doing something else? [00:29:09] Len: The average price of a sandwich this year, uh, what I do is I take the 10 sandwiches and I divide it by the number of sandwiches, which is 10 this year. [00:29:16] It came out at a dollar 39. [00:29:18] Joe: Okay. [00:29:18] Len: Last year it was a dollar 56. [00:29:21] Joe: Wow. So, [00:29:22] Len: yeah. So prices of, of the average sandwich this year dropped for the first time in four years, it dropped 11% This year, it might not feel that way, and it probably doesn’t because since 2021, the price of those sandwiches is still 24% higher. [00:29:37] In 2021. So you still feel the pain even though it’s 11% lower than last year. Last year the average sandwich at a dollar 56 was 47% higher than the price in 2018. So what, what is, you have the sticky effects of inflation. So inflation goes up. Relatively quicker than it comes down. And your wages, I’m sure for most people haven’t gone up 24% in the last three years. [00:30:00] Maybe. Maybe you’re lucky and it did, but I don’t think most people’s wages have gone up 24%. And that’s why people still feel kind of miserable when they go to the grocery store. But rest assured prices have come down from the last year. [00:30:11] Joe: Well, and that’s why we always talk about the fact that the average person does wanna rock the boat at work. [00:30:16] And yet you need a raise to keep up. You have to get a raise to keep up. So you’ve gotta be persistent. You have to understand what the boss is looking for. You have to know how to ask for the raise. It can’t be, Hey, uh, my peanut butter jelly sandwich price is up a ton, so I need more cash. Although the boss is gonna understand that. [00:30:35] But I think you gotta be a little more creative when you ask for the race. [00:30:38] Len: Absolutely. And you know, I’ve mentioned this before, one of the best ways to do that, for those of you at. Uh, working still. I’m retired now, but in the corporate world, here’s what I always did and it was always successful all year long. [00:30:49] I kept track of what I did that provided value to the company and why they should for the year. And at raise time, I went into the boss and I showed ’em those, that list of bullet points and it was really hard for them to deny me a, a decent raise because I laid it out on paper all year long. It’s hard when they job review comes up, performance review, and you have a couple days to think about, well, why, you know, what can I tell my boss? [00:31:11] Why am I worth a big raise? You know, if you do it all year long with all your achievements, keep marking them down. You’ll have that when the time comes for your performance review. So you should get a better raise, hopefully. [00:31:20] Joe: Oh, that’s great advice. Did you give them an exact number you wanted, by the way? [00:31:23] Did you say, here’s what I’m looking for, or did you let them No. [00:31:26] Len: Come to you? I didn’t, but I did let them know if I wasn’t happy with what I got. So I’d be nice about it, but I was like, gosh, that’s a little lesson I was expecting. But you know, did they change [00:31:35] Joe: it? Did they ever change it? [00:31:36] Len: Uh, no. Okay. But, but just to be fair, I, I almost always got a very good raise, so I was very fortunate. [00:31:44] Joe: But they might, I mean, they might have taken that into account the next year too. [00:31:47] Len: Yeah, that’s true. [00:31:48] Joe: Alright, the 10 sandwiches we have here, peanut butter and jelly bologna, American cheese, egg salad, ham and Swiss Turkey and Swiss salami, tuna salad, roast, beef and cheddar, and the BLT, the king sandwich, my favorite of sandwiches. [00:32:02] A yummy. Let’s start off with the condiments and then we’ll talk about the actual sandwiches. There’s a few condiments on here that actually went up in price. Len, tell me where the prices went up. [00:32:15] Len: Okay. The prices that went up, the biggest mover this year was the humble tomato. The price of a tomato was up 50%. [00:32:23] The tomato. Just to be fair, it is things such as tomatoes that are kind of dependent sometimes on the weather is not conducive to a good crop or not that’s gonna happen, but the price of tomatoes went up 50%. Same thing with eggs. Well eggs will also fluctuate due to various problems with the chickens and all that. [00:32:40] But tomato went up 50%. The price of bologna went up 25%. Dry salami went up 25%. Strawberry jelly, which is my favorite. I always get grief every year from people saying, who puts strawberry jelly on a, you know, I like grape. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m consistent. Strawberry jelly went up 20% this year. And Mayo, uh, the condiment mayo went up 21% this year. [00:33:02] So, oh, and cheddar, cheddar cheese also went up 12% this year. [00:33:06] Joe: You had a note about the price of bread really changed this year as well. [00:33:09] Len: Yeah, bread. Now last year, bread was at, its all time high. It was never high. The price was never higher. Last year was a dollar 99 for a loaf of wheat bread. This year, that price came down to a dollar 49, so it was a 25% drop. [00:33:23] That’s still a little high. Historically. It sometimes it’s been as low as a dollar nine or 99 cents, but 25%, I mean, it came down 50 cents, so Wow. That was a significant drop this year. And of course, being sandwiches, every sandwich has two slices of bread, so I think that goes a long ways towards affecting the overall price of all the sandwiches. [00:33:43] Joe: Yeah. Kevin, who writes our wonderful 2 0 1 newsletter, and I were talking about the fact you and I were gonna be talking today. And we were talking about ideas for the 2 0 1. We were talking about how when you said two slices of bread, I said specifically to Kevin, we gotta put in here the open face is bullshit. [00:33:58] That’s not a sandwich. A sandwich is defined by two pieces of bread you can open face is an abomination [00:34:04] Len: minimum. And then don’t forget the club, which I didn’t include, a club center has three slice slices of three. Three. [00:34:11] Joe: It isn’t really true. That club is cheddar lettuce. Under bacon. I dunno, that’s not what club really means. [00:34:20] Oh, CLUB. Yes. Oh, I, I didn’t think, oh, I have no idea. Shoulda led us under bacon. [00:34:24] Len: Oh, very cool. I, I know. Yeah. I don’t think [00:34:26] Joe: that’s true. I, I, I think somebody thought that was cute and made it up. But anyway, I don’t think [00:34:30] Len: you’re right. If, [00:34:31] Joe: if only there were a place let, I could look up this nonsense if there were a device by wish, but I’m too busy watching cat videos and talking about, uh, the price of amazing. [00:34:40] Len: Hey, your cats and my squirrels. That’s right. My squirrel videos. [00:34:44] Joe: Uh, speaking of the condiments though, you talked about the price of bread going down. Some of these condiments also went down by eye popping numbers. Let’s talk condiments. I. [00:34:51] Len: Okay, well, uh, I think the only two condi, well, I dunno, where do you consider condiment mustard? [00:34:56] Didn’t move. The price of mustard. Stayed stable, the exact same price as last year. Like I said, Mayo went up 21%. Uh, I don’t think I have any other condiments. What do you, do you consider peanut butter or jelly a condiment? Joe, I. [00:35:06] Joe: I did? Yes. Am I wrong? [00:35:09] Len: Okay. Peanut butter didn’t move. Uh, the price of jelly, as I said, strawberry jam, uh, went up 20%, which is interesting because for UPB and J fans out there, usually it’s a perennial battle between PPP and J and Bologna, uh, for the top spot. [00:35:25] And just to be fair, bologna has won the great majority. It’s either won the price for cheapest sandwich or it was tied for the, uh, title of cheapest sandwich. So there’s a little bit of stress there for PB and j lovers with knowing that the, uh, price of jelly went up 20%. [00:35:39] Joe: Do you know how people say that’s bologna? [00:35:42] They’re like, ah, that’s bologna. That’s a heap of bologna. Do you know where that, I found out just a couple weeks ago, Len, where that phrase came from. Do you know where that comes from? No. Do tell Joe? Yes. Well, baloney, as you know, is a processed amalgamation of different meats and back in the day, and it might be still today, they stuff a bunch of stuff in there that may or may not be meat. [00:36:02] And so. Instead of calling someone an out and outlier, someone came up with the cute phrase of saying, that’s bologna, which means it’s processed, it’s garbage, it’s full of crap. It’s, yeah, it’s just full of a bunch of stuff that may or may not be what you’re trying to present, [00:36:20] Len: which is very [00:36:20] Joe: straightforward, [00:36:21] Len: and I don’t care. [00:36:22] I love bologna. The price of bologna is usually a recession indicator, although the price per pound is huge. It actually ironically works for, it’s more of it is consumed in recessions. So there’s my little fun fact. You’ve got the CLUB thing and I’ve got the, [00:36:37] Joe: well, yours is real and based on data. Mine is something I heard on a TikTok video. [00:36:42] Yes. So who, who know? I think we’ll go with your data, Mr. Engineer. Right. Alright, uh, let’s take these in order. Countdown wise, last year, bacon, lettuce, and tomato. I mean that cost per sandwich is so much different than, oh yeah. Every other one. I’m assuming that must’ve been number 10 again this year. [00:37:00] Len: I think it has always been number 10. [00:37:01] Lemme do a quick check here. I, I don’t think it has ever worked its way out of the bottom slot. I put it in there because it’s one of my, it is probably my all time favorite sandwich and I have no, you can’t eat just [00:37:12] Joe: one. [00:37:13] Len: No you can’t. I’m looking here. It has never in 16 years, never been. Outside the number 10 slot. [00:37:20] So yes, it’s the perennial number 10. Sometimes it’s come close to climbing outta that basement, but this year it’s still at the bottom. The price did come down this year. It was $5 an all time high last year. This year it’s $4 and 4 cents. So there is good news for people like A BLT. Oh, and I bring this up every time. [00:37:38] The price of A BLT is $4 and 4 cents this year. The price of a Big Mac, if you just go and pick up a Big Mac is this year in 2024. As of June, according to CNN, is $5 and 29 cents. [00:37:49] Joe: Oh, there you go. So [00:37:49] Len: there you go. It’s still better, it’s still far cheaper. You could eat a BLT every day as opposed to a Big Mac and save, you know, a buck and a quarter every day, [00:37:58] Joe: and, uh, be a little healthier too, [00:38:00] Len: and you’d be a little healthier. [00:38:02] Joe: Number nine, last year was tuna salad and tuna cost. Every year. You and I talked tuna cost, I think. Gotta fluctuate more than anything else on the survey, I would think. [00:38:13] Len: Yeah. That’s another one that’s up there with the tomatoes. It’s up there with the lettuce, the tomato and the eggs. It’s dependent on how the catch is doing out in the oceans. [00:38:21] And you know how the, the tuna schools are. I, you know, and so it fluctuates too, the price of tuna. Actually, a couple years ago it doubled. It went up 97% in one year. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. And so the last two years, the price of tuna has dropped, not enough to overcome the 97% increase over the past two years, but it has dropped significantly, even though even there’s other ingredients in the tuna that caught the tuna salad sandwich that caused the price, namely the price of mayo that caused the price to rise 8% this year. [00:38:51] So tuna salad came in eighth place this year. Last year it was nine. It moved up a spot. [00:38:55] Joe: Yeah. Which is wild. [00:38:56] Len: So [00:38:57] Joe: what took its place in ninth [00:38:58] Len: that was roast beef and cheddar, that actually went to $2 and 2 cents. It’s a weird quirk of how things worked out, but the price of roast beef and cheddar dropped 15%, but it really wasn’t enough to overcome the tuna salad. [00:39:12] So even though the price of roast beef from cheddar dropped 15%, it’s still more expensive than the tuna salad. And folks, you’ll have to come to my website to, to look into the all the dirty details to see exactly why that happened. [00:39:24] Joe: Yeah. You’re gonna wanna head to len pezo.com ’cause we are clearly hitting the highlights. [00:39:28] Yeah. Len goes into, uh, a little bit of detail. Yeah. A slight bit of detail. Yeah. Big mover, by the way, you talked about salami. Salami was number three last year. Salami’s changed a ton. [00:39:40] Len: Yeah. Salami kind of, I’ll call it reverting to the mean now. For a long time, salami was one of the, it was in, in the middle of the pack, and then last year there was a huge drop in the price of salami. [00:39:52] Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was just because my store had a, a super sale on it. I don’t know. But this year it kind of reverted to the mean, and it, it fell from third place down to seventh place this year. Even though, even though the price change of that sandwich dropped 4%. Again, we’ve got a 4% price drop, but there were other sandwiches that dropped in price even more that pushed salami down to the seventh spot. [00:40:15] Joe: Yeah. Salami lovers. Last year, rejoiced, there were yes. Salami parties in the street. No, [00:40:21] Len: there, and, and I just wanna be clear, I take the price of what, what I call the dry salami. That’s the high quality salami. That’s not the, you can find the cheap salami. It’s almost like bologna that’s spiced a little differently. [00:40:32] Oh yeah. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the true deli salami that’s hanging on a rack. The butcher will pull it off and slice it up. Oh, now this is in package form, but it’s still that type of salami. It’s the hard dry salami. [00:40:45] Joe: Where is salami in Cabernet on here? [00:40:48] Len: I don’t, I don’t see it. [00:40:49] You know, maybe you should start a wine, uh, survey. I should. I, I totally should. [00:40:55] Joe: And that’s how Joe became an alcoholic. Yeah. Number six year did not move. One of my favorite sandwiches. [00:41:01] Len: Besides BLT, it’s the only other one that didn’t change positions this year, Turkey and Swiss, the price though, dropped 23%. [00:41:07] Wow. Think by now. Yeah. And let’s see, what was the cause of that? Price of Swiss did not budge, so Oh, maybe that’s why. Yeah, because the price of Swiss went up so much last year. Oh yeah. Yeah. Swiss, as a matter of fact, for like four years in a row, Swiss cheese had been going up. Pretty steadily. And this year it finally started dropping again. [00:41:27] Well, it held steady, so the price of Swiss did not move. And that allowed the Turkey and Swiss price to actually overtake some of the ones that fell below it. [00:41:35] Joe: Yeah. The price of bread, uh, down the, you said the bread too. [00:41:38] Len: You’re right. [00:41:38] Joe: Yeah. [00:41:39] Len: Yeah. [00:41:39] Joe: Why do you think the price of Swiss went up so much, so many years [00:41:42] Len: in [00:41:42] Joe: a row? [00:41:42] I, you [00:41:43] Len: know what? I survey American, Swiss, and Cheddar and it’s like they never move in lockstep. They’re always go to the beat of their own drummer. This year, American was down 20% Swiss. The price of Swiss didn’t budge, but cheddar cheese this year is the one that went up. It went up 12% this year. [00:41:58] Joe: Wow. [00:41:59] Yeah. Isn’t that something? I think we should make an argument that Swiss cheese is cheaper than the other cheese’s, Len, because you’re buying a lot of air. I mean, there’s less cheese per serving than there is [00:42:10] Len: cheddar cheese. Wouldn’t that make it more expensive? ’cause you’re getting less cheese for the price? [00:42:15] I don’t know. [00:42:16] Joe: Yes, it is more expensive. That’s what I’m saying. We should pay less. I’m like, what? Have you seen all the holes in this argument? Speaking of Swiss cheese, Hammond Swiss, by the [00:42:25] Len: way, do you know guitar players? Do you know what their favorite cheese is? Guitar players, string cheese. [00:42:31] Joe: Oh man, [00:42:32] Len: I’m here all week, folks. [00:42:34] Joe: I’m gonna lose my job, by the way, doing this because I love all these sandwiches and I just see myself gaining so much weight because you know, I just got a job led as a fitness model. [00:42:43] Len: You did? [00:42:44] Joe: I did, yeah. I’m the before. [00:42:47] Len: That makes two of us [00:42:51] Joe: we’re here all week. Wait, wait, is this thing on? [00:42:54] Len: Be sure to order the BLT too. [00:42:57] Joe: A big mover up. Hammond Swiss comes in at number five, but last year it was higher up the charts. Lynn. [00:43:03] Len: Yeah, it was number seven this year. It’s, it came in at number five. That’s sold almost entirely due to the price of ham, which fell 41% this year. Big mover. Wow. Yeah. So you, ham lovers, this is your chance. [00:43:14] Take advantage. Ham. Up of the ham and Swiss. Yeah. 91 cents, by the way, for the ham and Swiss sandwich this year. 91 cents [00:43:20] Joe: at number four. Are you a fan of egg salad? [00:43:22] Len: I love egg salad as long as you don’t put mustard in it. I know some people put mustard in it. I don’t like mustard in, we call [00:43:28] Joe: them heathens. [00:43:29] Len Heathens. [00:43:31] Len: I like the unadulterated mayo in there. And that’s, you leave it alone. And, uh, yes. I love egg salad. Traditionally, one of the cheapest sandwiches, it, it usually comes in very, uh, inexpensively. Usually within the top four. Uh, last year it fell to number five. And lemme say something about eggs. [00:43:46] I also get a lot of comments. On my survey, the price of eggs last year were high and people are like, the price of eggs wasn’t uh, high where I lived. Eggs are very regional, the price of eggs, so that’s the one thing in my survey that could differ quite a bit from where you live. It’s just eggs tend to be a regional pricing, so it’s based on your local farms. [00:44:05] And uh, they had some problems with the chickens out here in Southern California last year, which caused the price of eggs to go way up This year. The price of eggs here dropped 14% and that helped the price of egg, the egg salad sandwich, cost per sandwich 88 cents this year. [00:44:18] Joe: Wait, so they had all those issues in Hollywood last year and they had issues with chickens. [00:44:22] The chickens go on strike too. [00:44:24] Len: No, I think, what was it last year? I think it was something called the. I know that was supposed to be a joke, Joe. Yeah. I think it was something called New New Castle, some disease or something that decimated the ling population. That’s not good. [00:44:36] Joe: Number three is my favorite sandwich on this list. [00:44:39] It was number four last year. The reason it’s my favorite is because we had a comment in one of the early years that you and I, uh, did this recording for your amazing study together, and this woman said that this sandwich was borderline child abuse. [00:44:54] Len: You know, what was she referring to? The ones they give at the school? [00:44:57] The American cheese sandwich? Yes. Yes. That is child abuse, but I’m talking about some nice decent American cheese and it doesn’t have to be a cold American cheese that includes grilled cheese. You can grill it up, folks. Oh, really? Right. Well, why not? Yeah, no, that’s what I wanted to tell her. Yeah, grill it. [00:45:12] You elevate the sandwich. So yes, the American cheese, it’s a very inexpensive sandwich. That being said, it’s quite a bit more expensive than the top two on our list, which the two cheapest sandwiches, but still 72 cents a sandwich, you can’t beat it. The price of American cheese this year dropped 20%, so that moved American cheese up from the number four to the number three slot this year. [00:45:33] Joe: This is pretty amazing, Len, because I look at 72 cents for, uh, grilled cheese sandwich, and I go, like you just said, what a deal. I think what a flipping deal this is. Yet when I was, and maybe this is an old guy story, but I never really thought about inflation. And I remember when I was a young financial planner and people were like, you don’t think about inflation until it’s already occurred. [00:45:54] And then you realize your entire life, like it has just been seeping into everything and all of a sudden you look up and you go, how did that get that price? Like, how is that so. If we would’ve told your parents, Le, when you were eight years old that you pay 72 cents for a grilled cheese sandwich, what would your parents have said? [00:46:12] They’d be like, are you kidding me? That is highway robbery. Like you’re getting ripped off. [00:46:16] Len: Well, we’re about the same age. Do you remember being able to buy a candy bar for 15 cents? Do you remember that? Yeah. 15, 20, and 25. Yeah, I, yeah. I used to be able to go Here. Here, let’s share some old guy stories. You know what? [00:46:28] Sit [00:46:28] Joe: back for Grandpa Letting and Grandpa Joe, everybody. [00:46:30] Len: Yeah. I remember riding my bike to Thrifty’s, which is a drugstore. I don’t know if they’re everywhere in America, but here in California there was a Thrifty drugstore. I could get a triple scoop ice cream for 15 cents and a single scoop for a nickel, and now I, heck, I don’t know what an ice cream cone costs at those places. [00:46:45] Now I remember [00:46:45] Joe: the most expensive place to buy a candy bar was at the bowling alley, and my brother and I would go to this kid’s bowling league every Saturday morning. My mom just wanted some time off, right? So she dropped us off at the bowling alley with a quarter Len. She dropped us off with a quarter because they had a drinking fountain and I could buy one candy bar and, and a quarter. [00:47:07] It was highway robbery. It was so expensive. For the candy bar. Yes. Outrageous. And they were playing music and they’re playing these bands, and I don’t know if you saw this, but you know, there are no bands anymore in the billboard. Hot 100. They’re all individual artists. Like the concept of a band has kind of died from the billboard charts. [00:47:25] Len: Here’s another thing that I was, listen to my daughter’s music choices. I, you know, I’ll be in her car. She’s driving somewhere and I’m with her and, and I’m listening to her music and there’s almost zero female bands or female singers too. I’m like, she’s listening to all these boy bands, like, do women even ever sing anymore? [00:47:42] She just didn’t have any on her playlist. She says there’s not a lot, but there are a few, you know, that are, and she says they’re starting to pick up again now, but yeah. But when I was young, half the bands were female. Were women? Yeah. Or not a female lead singer. At least Pat Benatar. Yeah. Oh, I just saw her in concert a couple months ago. [00:47:58] Yeah. Just amazing. She’s still belting it. 70. She’s like 70. Oh yeah. I’m really sorry, Joe. I’m really killing your demographic. Uh, Stevie Nicks but these old, but they can belt it out still. [00:48:10] Joe: Still. Absolutely. It’s good to see like the Swifties and Chappelle Ron now. Sure. Like her stuff just amazing. Yes. [00:48:17] Alright. Uh, everybody’s like, are you guys gonna get back to sandwiches? Yes. We’ll, someday, but just American cheese at 72 cents seems like such a bargain now. Yeah. And then I go, wh when did that happen? Okay. Peanut butter and jelly. And bologna, as you said. Bologna’s been on top of this thing over and over and over and over and over. [00:48:35] Len: Yes. Of the 16 years, there’s only a, maybe a couple where bologna was not on the top or sharing the top [00:48:43] Joe: Is bologna on top this year? [00:48:46] Len: Drum roll. Got the drum roll, Joe. Uh, no, I, I just tagged that. Fix it in post. [00:48:52] Joe: That’s not, [00:48:54] Len: that’s not the one we’re looking for, I don’t think. No. Well, actually that’s it for Bologna. [00:48:56] That’s the right sound because bologna came in second this year. It, uh, wow. Yeah. And PB and J actually overtook bologna again, a very rare event. So only the third time ever. PBJ is sitting at the top at 46 cents a sandwich. And just for comparison, I’ll go back to 2009 for the prices of those sandwiches. [00:49:14] In 2009, A PBJ was 31 cents a sandwich. Now it is 46 cents a sandwich was at 15 cents. So it’s gone up only 50% in 16 years. Not bad at all, really, if you think about [00:49:28] Joe: that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I just look at both of these sandwiches you can buy for 50 cents. You can buy for less than 50 cents. Less than 50. And then you get the super bag of different chip choices, you know? [00:49:40] Yep. You can lower your cost of chips. I know how you feel about precut vegetables. Le Penso not a fan, uh, because the cost of cutting, but you could still buy those precut carrots, you know, the big, huge bag of those precut carrots. And you could have the carrots. You could have the chips, you can have your peanut butter and [00:49:57] Len: jelly piece of fruit in there is super cheap. [00:50:00] Yeah. You can still get out of there, Joe, for like a buck and a quarter for your whole lunch. [00:50:04] Joe: That’s incredible. And tap water [00:50:06] Len: and, and some nice water. Yeah, a nice glass of ice water. And you’re saving a lot of money even for school lunches, right? If you’re the average price of a school lunch this year, again, it’s, it’s held steady. [00:50:16] Now for three years, it’s been $3 and 50 cents, but if you have a couple kids that adds up, that’s a $1,260 for an 180 day school year. If you have two kids, if you give them a brown bag lunch every day, versus, uh, sending ’em to school and letting ’em buy their lunch, [00:50:32] Joe: you’ve got a, a few great tips here. [00:50:34] One is. Cooking your own Hammond, Turkey and slicing it yourself. Great way to reduce your grocery bill. [00:50:39] Len: Yes. Always better than buying the pre-packaged stuff. You can buy the whole stuff, the canned stuff, the bigger stuff or the bulk Turkey and, and oh, the bulk Turkey is delicious. Mm-Hmm. You can buy a big chunk of it for like 12 bucks. [00:50:52] I think it’s about a pound of it. And, uh, actually more than, it’s more than a pound. It’s, it’s probably closer to two pounds and Oh, it’s so much fresher tasting and delicious. Yeah. Highly recommend that. [00:51:01] Joe: And then well, a, um, because we’ve done this story before, while having a garden isn’t always economical, tomatoes with the high price of tomatoes, we’ve had Len, that could be a boon. [00:51:11] Len: Yeah, I used to grow tomatoes all the time, but the squirrels, which is why I have my squirrel can and I know everybody. Yes, I’ve heard of chicken wire, I’ve heard of it. Please. No, no more emails. I get it. They figure it out. They’ve stolen all my tomatoes. They’ll take and what’s really infuriating, they’ll take one bite outta the tomato and then throw it on the grass, like to taunt me. [00:51:30] And so I just finally gave up on growing my own tomatoes. But when you do grow ’em and if the squirrels don’t get, they are so good. So much better than the stuff you get at the store. [00:51:38] Joe: Well, and I’ll tell you what we do, we do, Saturday morning date is no longer we, we no longer go as often to the movie theater. [00:51:44] We’ll still go to the theater from time to timeline. But we go to the farmer’s market together and I spend a little extra date money ’cause we like just doing the farmer’s market together. Yeah. And I buy fresh. I overpay a little bit. They’re a little more expensive, but oh my God. The taste difference at the farmer’s market. [00:51:58] Len: Oh yeah. Farmer’s markets are so fun. Oh, I, I love Farmer’s Market. They’re so much fun and so much good food there. Good, healthy, wholesome food. [00:52:06] Joe: Yep. And it’s so fun to do on, uh, date day, even if it’s just a date by yourself. It’s a fantastic time. And then last, and you’ve preached this before with your other taste tests, your ice cream, which you still, that invited me for the ice cream taste test, but whatever you can save upwards of 40%. [00:52:21] By buying one brand over the others. [00:52:23] Len: Yeah. And And I’ve been doing those taste tests since 2009 as well. I think I’ve done on probably 20 different items and yeah, most of the time, not always, but almost always, these are blind taste tests. The store brand products are, they’re right up there with the national brands and many times they actually beat out the national brands. [00:52:41] And you say 40% generally, so that’s incredible. Yeah. That’s the way to do it. Yep. [00:52:45] Joe: If only there was a place where we could dive into the whole thing. ’cause we were only able to go through kind of the bones of it. I wish there was a place where this was all in writing Len, where I could actually go and I. [00:52:55] And see all the results myself. [00:52:57] Len: Well, Joe, thanks for bringing yes, len penso.com. Actually, folks, oh, there, that’s, there is, you know, you can, if you come on to my site, you can see all the dirty details. You can see all the individual prices for the ingredients. I also have posted the historic sandwich prices for everything from 2009 through 2020. [00:53:15] Four. So you can see for yourself just how the prices of sandwiches have moved over the years. And I’ve also got things like five-year averages, all kinds of stuff you can dig in and, and just see for fun. It’s just for fun. See, uh, how the prices of sandwiches have moved over the years. It’s really great. [00:53:29] 16 years now. It’s, it’s a lot of data and it’s really cool. I, I never thought it would get this, you know, be doing this 16 years, but, uh, but it’s so fun. I it’s, I’ll probably be doing this till the day I die. [00:53:39] Joe: Speaking of fun, by the way, uh, make sure you always read lens, uh, black coffee pieces ’cause those are, those are always a great time. [00:53:46] Len: Yeah. Thank you Joe. Yeah, those are, every Saturday I do a summary of the financial news for the week and I mix in a bunch of people’s, uh, tweets on x funny ones usually. And, uh, lots of memes and it’s just, just a fun way to hang out for on a Saturday morning [00:54:01] Joe: dude’s, so great seeing you again. And, uh, we’ll see you back here in a couple months, brother. [00:54:05] Len: Absolutely. Looking forward to it. Thanks, Joe. Hey, I’m Mr. Wow. [00:54:09] bit: And I’m Mrs. Wow. From Waffles on Wednesday. [00:54:11] Doug: And when we’re not eating waffles, [00:54:13] bit: we’re Stacking Benjamins. [00:54:15] Joe: Big thanks to Len. Always, always great seeing our good friend Len Penso. Hey, time for us to answer a question from a stacker who said, you know what? [00:54:26] I better call Saul, see hi and og, and today we’re gonna talk to jj. Hey jj, what’s going on? [00:54:35] caller: Hey, Joe and og and of course, Doug. This is jj, a long time, uh, listener and second time caller. I suddenly came up with an epiphany on investing in specifically 4 0 1 Ks. So I, I was thinking about the stock and bond allocation in 4 0 1 Ks, but I think if someone is starting in his early twenties, in his or early twenties, and, um, they have long time to retire, let’s say at 62, isn’t it prudent to, you know, just keep on allocating every, all of their, uh, investment in stocks till maybe 50. [00:55:10] And then from there onwards, they. Start moving the, some of the stocks to bonds, which could be market timing. Then you, you can ask me like, what if the stock market is down at that time? Okay. If that is the case, then I would say capital stocks, completely stocks or equities till 50 and then onward start in know, contributing to bonds. [00:55:32] That way you know, you’re not even timing the market and then balance it it out towards closer to sixties. I think this is a good idea, but I know you will definitely shoot it down. But I would before, uh, you guys steal it or someone else steals it, I’m gonna patent this idea so that, you know, I get some royalty. [00:55:51] By the way, you guys are awesome. Thank you and have a great day. [00:55:54] Joe: Oh no, you’re awesome JJ. And uh, clearly you wanna patent that idea, but you know what, we’re not gonna shoot it down. Blow it outta the water. Oh, [00:56:04] OG: annihilate it from all civilization, [00:56:07] Joe: jj. All equities all the time is a, uh, concept that Oh, gee’s. [00:56:13] Fully on board with. [00:56:15] OG: Yeah, it started out with such promise, like shouldn’t we just be all stock all the time? You’re 50 50. Alright, so here’s the thing. This is where I think mainstream. Media promotes this nonsense and I can’t figure out the reason why. You get to the spot, right? Where you have the most money in your life, probably your highest income and your highest savings rate and your highest amount of account balances, let’s say when you’re 50 or 52 relative to all other times exclusive of market fluctuation, right? [00:56:48] Like obviously you’re like, well, the market’s down 20%. Okay, cool, but it’s about that. And then you wanna do what? Go, nah, I’m good. I’ll slow down the rate of this acceleration. Why would you wanna do that when you get to retirement, when you’re 62 in J J’s example, you need to have money for 63. I get that completely. [00:57:06] You need to have money when you’re 64 and 65, but mostly you need money. That’s for your 72nd birthday and 82nd birthday and 92nd birthday, and probably 95th and 97th birthday. You need to have a little bit of cash that’s available for year 62, but you need a bunch of money that’s still sitting there growing for 67 and beyond. [00:57:30] And I think people have this sense of end. They’re like, oh, well I’m almost the end of my working life, therefore I need to be, I mean, unless you need all of the money when you’re 55 and you’re 50 years old, you should have all of your money still invested for long-term returns. [00:57:50] Doug: People must be not thinking about longevity and they’re, they correlate. [00:57:55] I gotta lock it in. I gotta lock in all my earnings for when I retire and not realizing you probably have 30 to 35 years left. [00:58:02] OG: Well, I think there’s two things. One is this fear of loss. Like the whole idea of, you know, okay, when I get to this age, I’ve, I’ve attained a certain account balance. I have, I’m 50 years old, I have a million dollars. [00:58:16] Oh my gosh, I, I can’t afford to let this go down. You know, I only have 10 more years to go, right? When in reality, the likelihood is over that 10 year period, that money’s gonna double at least once in some change. If it’s invested, probably closer to twice. As you get closer to that 62, 65 age, and the decision to go conservative at at 50. [00:58:39] And forego those two doublings, let’s say to 65, is a $3 million decision exclusive of your contribution. That’s the difference between retiring and you’ve got 1,000,005 and you’re like, alright, I feel pretty good and having five and a half million and going, I don’t care what happens. I am so in the clear and the fire people have different names for this and I don’t know where it goes, but there’s like fat and chubby and coast and all these different things. [00:59:04] ’cause I see ’em on Reddit. Agree. And I don’t know the hierarchy, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s better to be fat or chubby. I’m not sure the rules. I dunno. Uh, Jack and Tan should be in there somewhere I feel. But I’m Jack and Tan fire. How about you? I’m chubby, like, nah. Yeah. I [00:59:19] Joe: think Doug’s going for a fatty and tan. [00:59:22] Yeah. I’ll take it. [00:59:23] OG: I’ll take it. Pale, pale, chubby. [00:59:25] Doug: Pale, chubby. Good. [00:59:26] OG: That looks in a speedo. [00:59:27] Doug: Yeah. When [00:59:27] OG: you’re retired. Pasty. And uh, yeah. So I think that there’s some issue with fear of loss, but if you reframe this and say, a, what’s the opportunity cost? In that example, you’re missing those two doubles. [00:59:39] You’re missing on $3 million worth of potential growth. But not just that, but what is that money gonna do over that 20 or 30 year period between 50 and 80, if it’s gonna just barely keep, it flips above water as it relates to inflation. How are you going to be able to increase your income? Because that’s a really big thing. [01:00:01] You have to have investments that produce rising income opportunities throughout retirement. Just look back, you know, we talk about looking back in the stock market to see, you know, longer term trends. Download your social security statement. You can get it for free@ssa.gov. You should look at it every year anyway. [01:00:18] If you’re over 60, they send it to you. But if you’re under 60, you have to go online and get it and look at what your freaking earnings were 20 years ago. Like, just look at it and now ask yourself 20 years ago. Was your life materially better or worse, or is your life today markedly better or worse? The vast majority of people will look and go, yeah, I mean, I was happy in my twenties. [01:00:38] I’m happy in my forties. Maybe have some new cool stuff. I got a new car or lake house, or you know, whatever. I might have those things, but is life particularly better? Probably not, but what’s changed? The price of eggs went from a dollar to $5. The price of gas went from 78 cents to $3. The cost of electricity and all these things rise with regular inflation over periods of time. [01:01:03] And unless we have massive changes, which we’ve had in the last year and a half where people can noticeably see it, holy crap, my grocery bill went up a hundred bucks a week, then you can feel it. But if when it’s like postage stamp inflation, you just don’t feel it in short time, you just go, oh, 60 cents with 72 cents. [01:01:19] Like, I don’t know. I dunno, much stamps are, I don’t, I don’t see the change in 3 cents, right? It doesn’t feel that way. You can only see it when you look back 20 years and go, wait a second. Stamps used to cost 30 cents and now it’s 70. Milk used to be a dollar and now it’s five. What makes you think that over the next 30 years, that’s not gonna happen again? [01:01:37] And the re It’s hard to predict that. It’s hard to put that in your brain and go like, dude, milk’s never gonna be 15 bucks a gallon. Gas will never be $10 a gallon. Well, guess what? I bet you 25 years ago people were like, there’s no chance milk is $5 a gallon [01:01:52] Joe: after what we just talked to Len about. I think it’s a little more believable. [01:01:56] OG: Well, that’s what I’m saying, like when we have periods of like huge increases in inflation, like it’s on top of everybody’s mind and you can kind of believe a little bit more. But when, when, when it’s more historical and just kind of normal three to 4% a year, which is kind of the historical average, you don’t feel that as much because it just doesn’t hit you as hard in all the areas. [01:02:17] It’s when you know when you have a big increase in short period of time, you feel it. My point is, is that your income has to continue to rise throughout retirement and the only thing that has the opportunity to grow with inflation is the ownership of the things that actually produce the inflation. You have to own the company that’s driving the inflation. [01:02:36] I’m not saying that companies are in charge of that. I’m saying like, you wanna profit from that. Guess what? Coca-Cola is making money. They don’t care what’s going on. If they need to charge a dollar 10 for a Coke instead of a dollar five, they’re gonna do it because shareholders want results. And if you have an opportunity to own fractions of these businesses that are keeping up with inflation, their, their profits are rising with inflation. [01:02:58] Your income will rise with inflation, which is the only the case study only thing you have to do. [01:03:02] Joe: Case study on your point, I was reading about McDonald’s recently. McDonald’s really struggling as people have spent a lot less money eating at not just fast food like McDonald’s, but eating at restaurants. [01:03:15] Initially inflation was tough at the grocery store and at restaurants, but lately OG restaurant inflation has outpaced grocery store inflation by a ton. Yeah. So. Just this big news. To your point, if you own stock at McDonald, McDonald’s isn’t taking this just sitting down. Now they’re creating a whole new, they’re creating new products, they’re creating a new value meal. [01:03:38] They’re doing these things. I don’t know if it’s gonna work out or not, but clearly their shareholders are saying, you gotta get it together. So by owning that stock, McDonald’s probably will find a way through this. [01:03:54] OG: Yeah, and if they don’t, then you also own Burger King or you own Taco Bell, or you own Chipotle, or you own a diverse grouping of those things. [01:04:02] Culver’s Culver’s is Culver’s public, I dunno. [01:04:05] Doug: No, but you should own it anyway, finally, you should try to get in. [01:04:08] OG: And to further that analogy, Joe, all of your money isn’t also in fast casual. You also have some money in industrials and some money in technology and some money in telecommunications and some money in chip manufacturing. [01:04:20] And you know, ’cause different areas of the economy experience different results at different times. Whole idea of diversification is you get all of the returns of the economy all the time. You just, you know, happens to happen in different orders. So to me it’s the most logical thing because everyone’s incentives are aligned. [01:04:37] Back to your McDonald’s example, all those people that are sitting around that big boardroom and whatever, wherever their headquarters is in Illinois or someplace. They’re all looking at their balance sheets. Their balance sheets have a lot of McDonald’s sock and they’re like, oh my God, what boy, what are we doing guys? [01:04:52] We got, we gotta really like this is, this means life or death to me? [01:04:57] Joe: Yeah. Like I [01:04:57] OG: have a hundred million dollars of reasons if you’re the CEO or whatever to get this freaking right, like there’s a strong incentive structure for that person to be right. And then it trickles down and you’re a shareholder. [01:05:10] You own 10 shares via your ETF. Guess what you want them to be? Right? You want them to be going, oh my gosh, you know, what are we gonna do? Another great example of this is political change that happens, you know, depending on who wins, who loses. There’s different areas of the economy that feel like that’s good for them or not good for them. [01:05:29] Those industries aren’t just going, well, great, this guy’s president or this gal’s president or whatever, so I guess we’re screwed. We should shut up operations. They go, well, alright, what are we gonna do? How do we, how do we deal with this? How do we still make money? Here’s how we adjust. Yeah. They’re the smartest people in the world and if they don’t have ’em, they hire the smartest people in the world to try to help them figure out how do we make more money? [01:05:48] And, uh, for good or for bad. You wanna be on that same side of the table. [01:05:51] Doug: Because I just bought my third house in Winnetka and I joined Shore Acres and I can’t default on that. [01:05:57] OG: I don’t know any, what any of those words meant. I was, but I’m [01:06:00] Doug: thinking you mentioned the big wigs at McDonald’s there in downtown Chicago. [01:06:03] They bought a bunch of houses in Winnetka. It was a [01:06:06] Joe: Chicago reference right there. Chicago Flex by Doug Shore Acres. Super high-end [01:06:11] Doug: country feeling at home with the uh, [01:06:13] Joe: Chicago winds Come on right now. Keep up. Yeah. Coggins, Chicagoans, Chicago Whites, Chicago winds, Chicagoans, [01:06:20] OG: Chicago, Orum. [01:06:22] Joe: jj, thanks for the call and, uh, we’re gonna send some swag your way for calling in. [01:06:26] Thanks, man. Good to hear your voice Again, stack your Benjamins dot com slash voicemail if you wanna be like JJ and get your question answered by og. By the way, the only thing that can really blow up that strategy OG, is frankly you freaking out because when you go to a equity portfolio, you will see more motion in your ocean, and so you have to keep some cash on hand. [01:06:51] Correct? I don’t worry about the financial markets, I just worry about people blowing up their strategy motion in your ocean. Hey, time for us to, to say goodbye to this podcast. Before we do that though, we got a bunch of stuff on the back porch. We got a great note from a stacker Doug. Wow. Somebody talking about you, you recently. [01:07:10] We’re talking about the Wright Brothers. I believe we were celebrating, uh, their historic flight with our trivia a couple months ago. And a gentleman, yeah. Went to a museum that referenced another flyer who you talked about in your trivia question. [01:07:25] Doug: Yeah. Well, so he went to the Curtis Museum just outside of town in Hammond’s, port New York. [01:07:29] I’ve been there more times than I can count. We spent ham, spent Hammond Sport of that museum. Hammond Sport and the museum. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, we spent, I don’t know, I think his name was Robert, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not, uh uh, I’m not sure if he’s from there, but I spent 20 plus years on Cuco Lake. [01:07:45] Lord, uh, know it. Like the back of my hand scoreboard and a lot of time in Hammonds port and, and in that museum scoreboard. But I just, with all of those bonafide days, with all of the credibility, I just tried to establish, I got it wrong. The story I had heard, I did some research after we got that note from our stacker and I did some research and found out that the story I had been told by some local person who was more than likely more drunk than I was, uh, was incorrect. [01:08:11] Uh, and and wait, wait a minute. Are you saying there’s a person in upstate New York who, who gets drunk? Yeah, just a little bit. Uh, there’s not a lot to do up there. There’s a person, Ken Yan hanging out at Right Lloyd’s. Is that the name of the place? Oh, Lloyd’s is not there anymore. No, that was my favorite bar. [01:08:28] So good Lloyd. It’s fabulous. Lloyd’s Limited was fantastic. [01:08:32] Joe: I may have been drunk there before. Can either confirm nor deny, but probably confirm. You don’t even know ’cause you can’t remember. [01:08:37] Doug: But, uh, no. Hammonds Port had some great drinking establishments as well. But, uh, anyway, I had always heard that there was a huge argument, for lack of a better term, that Curtis flew first before the Wright brothers. [01:08:52] That was not in fact the case. There was a huge rift between them and it was because, and OG Iss gonna chomp at the bit when I start talking about this, but the Wright brothers patented their. Flying machine and what they really patented was the ability to warp the wings. And that was what really made their flying machine unique. [01:09:15] There were other fixed wing aircraft before them. They flew like 30 feet. The white brothers were able to fly a little longer, uh, because they were able to warp their wings, they’d cable systems that would change the shape of the wings, and they patented that. Curtis comes along and basically invents ailerons. [01:09:34] Now, OGs in the discussion, I can tell and ailerons, if you’re sitting on an airplane one day and you look at the trailing edge of the wings out towards the very end of the wing, you’ll see most people layman call ’em flaps, but they’re the things that move up or down towards the end of the wings and that it was Curtis’s new invention as a way. [01:09:53] Instead of moving and shaping the entire wing, you just shape that little bit at the end and that helps the plane turn and. Wright brothers were pissed. They’re like, Nope, we patented that huge lawsuit. And, uh, eventually they won. But that was what the argument was about. It wasn’t who flew first. The Wright brothers flew and was it oh three And Curtis really didn’t fly till, probably, there’s some discrepancy here, but between oh six and oh eight, uh, it was about how do you shape the wings now? [01:10:23] So what the, the deal that the Wrights family made with the Smithsonian was say that we invented this whole thing. We’ll give you aircraft. Uh, [01:10:33] Joe: there’s where the rift [01:10:34] Doug: was, so I had part of the story, right. But yeah, there was the Wright brother, the company, the Wright brothers ended up founding. They were essentially the first patent trolls, and they were out suing anybody who was trying to do anything with airplanes. [01:10:46] You’re not putting the Wright brothers in a very positive light here. No. They were jerks. They wanted to essentially own all of aircraft manufacturing in the United States. Anything that that got produced even look like or had. Right. Uh, that had to do with, with, uh, aircraft production or the like. I, folks at Boeing [01:11:02] OG: would love to sell you their shares because, uh, they’re like, we’re, we’re cool. [01:11:07] You wanna run this thing? We are all for a million lately. Well, and by the way, [01:11:11] Joe: that’s hilarious. And by the way, og, they also have some spare bolts. They’re not sure where they came from that they can just hand to you. [01:11:17] OG: Yeah. Just falling out of the sky. What? Too soon. We don’t know what these go to, but they’re included in the purchase. [01:11:22] Doug: All right. So that’s my part of the back porch. I was wrong. You’re correct that he did not claim to fly first. There were other issues between the interesting, the groups. [01:11:31] Joe: Hey, if you’re gonna be in Minneapolis St. Paul the Thursday before Labor Day, that is the 29th, I’ll be there with my son Nick. There’s gonna be a bunch of, uh, financial independence people hanging out at a place called River Siren in Stillwater near minneapolis. [01:11:47] Stacking Benjamins dot com slash meetup to meet me there. If you were with me last Tuesday, it was in a movie theater called The Cinema. Where I guys saw this little known film that, well, let’s just play a little quick trailer. Maybe you’ve heard of it. [01:12:08] bit: Deadpool and a Wolverine. [01:12:15] Are you ready? Yeah, I’m ready. [01:12:19] Joe: Whoa. Oh yeah. Little potty words. Somebody’s salty. I was ready too. I like it when Steve’s got a beep part of the trailer. How about that? That’s some classic Deadpool I saw. I saw a video online of this couple going. We went to see Deadpool and Wolverine and we walked out within 30 minutes because it was just horrible. [01:12:35] There was so much swearing and disparity and blood and it was just rotten and it always, different videos cut to another person going, Deadpool. Really? Like, did you do zero research before you went to, went to see Deadpool? This movie was, uh, if you’re not familiar with Deadpool, he swears he looks at the camera a lot. [01:12:56] He has jokes with the audience. He talks about how Hugh Jackman was being brought back out by Disney and now is gonna have to do films until he is like 93. Even though they killed him off before, they figured out a way to resurrect him because he’s a cash cow. That Jackman, that good looking dude. He’s always cracking jokes. [01:13:14] Movie was super funny. It has like a 90 on Rotten Tomatoes. I would disagree with that strongly. This movie, like all Marvel movies. Now I got sucked back in because it was Deadpool and I was like, Deadpool’s gonna be different. We’re not gonna have all this obnoxiousness about, um, about God. The, uh, different timelines. [01:13:34] What’s that called? The multiverse. We’re not gonna have this stuff. In fact, one of the funniest Deadpool lines in this movie was where Deadpool looks at the screen. Ryan Reynolds looks at the screen and goes, really? The multiverse there is, this has been, this has been fail after fail after fail, and we’re gonna do it again. [01:13:53] bit: Like he, [01:13:54] Joe: so in the script they acknowledge that everybody [01:13:57] Doug: hates this multiverse crap. So the plot was as bad as you just described, but was the humor as good as old Deadpool humor? Yes, because when, like when I watched the previous ones, I could care less. I couldn’t tell you the plot of any of them, but the lines are pheno. [01:14:12] Like they ha they come at you so fast. Yes. You can’t keep up like, I gotta remember that I’m gonna use that another time, or whatever. You can’t even keep up with ’em. ’cause there’s so many of ‘ [01:14:19] Joe: em. It’s at a slower rate this time, Doug and there’s big long action scenes and like a lot of Marvel movies lately, you just don’t care. [01:14:26] I’m watching these, these big long action scenes that I’m like, what? Who? Uh, ugh. Ugh. It. Yeah, I fell asleep. I actually fell asleep at one point, uh, during the movie and I got halfway through and I went to, I turned to Cheryl and I said. I am bored outta my mind. I’m just waiting for him to say something funny again. [01:14:45] Doug: So Old Man goes to action movie Falls asleep. [01:14:47] Joe: Yeah. Deadpool and, and Wolverine. Not good. Instead, I saw a movie with, uh, Scarlett Johansen and Channing Tatum called Fly Me to the Moon. Very little Romcom movie about this woman who gets hired to publicize the fact that NASA is going to the moon. And based on some of the characters, we’re actually real people. [01:15:10] But the funny part of this movie is Woody Harrelson, and this is the historical fiction piece. I think Woody Harrelson’s in charge of making sure that this is seen, he’s sent by the President Nixon to make sure that this is seen as a win by America. America needs a big win. We have to make it to the moon, and even if we don’t make it to the moon, people gotta think we make it to the moon. [01:15:30] So she’s in charge of creating a separate set. Making a filming of the moon landing. Oh. Which is what everybody talks about, right? Oh, about did they really go or did they really go? It’s a fun little movie. It’s a small movie. You may have never heard of it. I thought that was a solid seven. Good use of time. [01:15:48] Skip Deadpool, Wolverine. Go see. Flaming To the Moon. Fly. Me Too. The Moon. Fabulous. And we got that too. Extra OG. No, no extra charge Doug s singing twice during this episode. [01:16:03] Doug: I think we gotta [01:16:03] Joe: go Doug. What should we, can you sing the credits? What should we have learned on today’s episode? [01:16:11] Doug: Lemme see what life is like on Jupiter and Mars. [01:16:15] Hey, what should we learn today? First, take some advice from Len Penso, worried about inflation. Start with what inflation means to you, not with the consumer price index or news reports. By tracking your expenses, you can avoid some big mistakes with your money. Second, your home. It’s a great place to live, but probably not a part of your financial plan if you can avoid using it. [01:16:39] But what’s the biggest to do? Why would you change the name of the wienermobile? I mean, like, who’s frank? Here’s the rule. Never change your name when you’re already famous unless you’re Prince. Thanks to Len Pezo for joining us. You’ll find Len’s amazing blog at the cryptically titled len pezo.com. This show is the property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. [01:17:13] Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. [01:17:35] 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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