Today we share a fresh perspective on personal and financial risk, featuring the always insightful Len Penzo (LenPenzo.com). Joe, OG and Len will dive into the complexities of managing your 401k and understanding the risk tolerance required to meet your goals. We’ll share pivotal strategies for effective retirement planning and hopefully help you grasp why taking enough risk is crucial, especially for younger investors who have time to recover from potential losses. Listen in as we explore investment behaviors versus portfolio performance and how emotional decisions during market fluctuations can impact your financial journey.
We don’t just tackle numbers here. We’ll also examine whether widening your approach to include career risks and the often-overlooked social risks that can open doors to new opportunities is a good strategy. We’ll talk about on growing your employment opportunities, ensuring long-term wealth, and balancing financial and emotional satisfaction. Plus, there just may be a slight amount of banter about Halloween treats, the joys of IRS conundrums, and the misconceptions of viral TikTok financial advice.
To top it all off, we may or may not share stories about Joe’s adventures learning craps in Las Vegas, revealing the thrills and lessons of gambling. If you’re searching for lessons, it may include the importance of knowing when to walk away, and the camaraderie forged at the casino tables. Whether you’re tuning in for practical financial strategies or just to enjoy some relatable stories and laughs, this episode is packed with takeaways on looking at risk differently in every facet of your life.
RUN OF SHOW
- Vegas Stories and Gambling Tips
- Introduction to Debt Management
- Welcome to the Stacking Benjamin Show
- Discussing Risk with Len Penzo
- The Fortune Cookie Incident
- Understanding Risk Tolerance
- Career and Social Risks
- Halloween Treats and Risks
- Stocking Up for Halloween
- Diving into Risk Management
- TikTok Minute: Career Success
- Doug’s Trivia: Understanding 1031 Exchange
- Listener Question: Employer-Sponsor IRA Plans
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headline
- Investors Spend a Lot of Time Thinking About Risk. But They Do It All Wrong. (Wall Street Journal)
- 13 Yucky Halloween Treats Kids Would Rather Toss Than Eat (LenPenzo.com)
Doug’s Trivia
- What is a 1031 exchange?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG
- Stacker Suzanne has a question about investing through her and her husband’s workplace plan vs. ana external Roth IRA.
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Other Mentions
Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday when our roundtable tackles the topic of what do you do when the people around you…friends, relatives, or even your spouse…isn’t on the same page about your goals?
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Seth Godin’s Blueprint for Financial and Life Strategy (SB1590)
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] bit: Did you know millions of Americans live with death? They cannot control. That’s why I developed this unique new program from managing your debt. It is called Don’t buy stuff you cannot Afford. [00:00:15] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:30] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and it’s October the month full of things that go bump in the night. Feels risky, doesn’t it? Today we talk risk and more with the guy behind America’s most offbeat personal finance blog, Len Benzo. And how about the risk of not dominating your workplace? In our TikTok minute, we share the secret of one man who went from making $50,000 a year to over 300,000 and is now on the upper management fast track. [00:01:01] How did he do it? We’ll dive into the details. And speaking of risk, how risky is your retirement plan at work? We’ll field a call from Suzanne about her plan and then I’ll share some incredibly October trivia. And now three guys who are like the Three Stooges only not as good looking. It’s Joe OG and Lenzo [00:01:30] Joe: Len. Which of them are you? Are you Larry Curly or Mo? [00:01:33] Len: I’m Mo, absolutely. I’m Mo. [00:01:35] Joe: Would that make me curly? So OG you, Larry, I [00:01:39] OG: think you’re referencing a group of people that, uh, existed long before I did. But, uh, sometime when you two old guys did, and if you [00:01:47] Len: had Doug here, he could be shemp. [00:01:50] Joe: And, and again, two outta the three of us. [00:01:53] Get that reference too. Welcome, welcome to Old Guys Dominating the Radio. I’m Joe Sey. Hi. As, uh, Doug just said, welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I’m super excited about today’s episode. We’re gonna have a ton of fun. So sit back, relax, and get ready for about an hour of money. Geekery. I’m super excited, OG because as people already heard, we got Limp Pezo here with us. [00:02:20] How are you buddy? [00:02:21] Len: I’m doing well. Thank you very much. Retirement’s, uh, still, uh, I’m enjoying it. Doing uh, absolutely nothing and I wanted to do this live here with you just ’cause it’s always exciting. Uh, we went to, uh, PF Chang’s and we had, uh, our fortune cookies. Okay. And, uh, but I didn’t eat the fortune cookies last night, so I have one here in front of me, and I thought, let’s, let’s see what the, let’s see what you, you literally did. [00:02:44] Can we do that? [00:02:45] Joe: I, hold on a second. So for people not familiar with the magic of Len Penso, Len opens up with a dad joke usually, but this is not a joke. You literally have the fortune cookie and it is not open yet. [00:02:56] Len: There it is. It’s, it’s, um, it, it’s right there. And I will say this, uh, I’m sorry at PF Chang’s, but, um, we got the, uh, meal for four people and they only, uh, gave us one fortune cookie. [00:03:06] So this is the only fortune cookie that we actually got. Wait a minute, [00:03:08] Joe: Len. Len, what you’re saying is, is that you ordered the meal for four people and ate it all. Yeah. Which is why they only gave you [00:03:18] bit: one fortune cookie. [00:03:20] Joe: That’s what Len does. He spends all day at PF Chang. No, this is my lunch and day. [00:03:24] Isn’t [00:03:25] Len: this exciting? I mean, isn’t, I mean, what other podcast Can you do this where somebody’s gonna actually open a fortune cookie live? [00:03:30] Joe: It is, but hold on. Before you do that, lemme tell you let a p pf Chang story. Oh. Oh my gosh. That happened to me. So at the holiday time, I took the three wonderful women that worked for me to PF Chang for our, our holiday lunch together. [00:03:45] And we give each other some gifts. The fortune cookie comes and everybody gets their fortune cookie. You know what my fortune cookie said? I had three people at work for me sitting with me. I open up the fortune cookie and it literally said, whenever you point the finger, three fingers point back at you. [00:04:03] Just so, and they were all like, yes, [00:04:06] Len: 100%. There’s truth that the, you ever hear that thing too about the fortune cookies, where you always just end the fortune within bed? Yes. That’s another little trick that people like to do. [00:04:15] Joe: Yeah. All right. Here we go. Do, do we have, we don’t have a drum roll. Nope. I don’t have a drum roll either. [00:04:20] Len: Wow. All right. Shall we? [00:04:22] Joe: Here we go. All right. [00:04:22] Len: Here. Here we go. Because I’m really you? It’s hungry. Yeah, I’m hungry. Oh, [00:04:28] Joe: there’s a [00:04:28] Len: piece of paper coming out. People heard it. It says, you will soon become $20 poorer. In bed or if you get the buffet, you’ll be 1499 poorer. No, that’s not what it says. It’s, it’s issue. [00:04:46] Yeah, but what if it did say [00:04:47] bit: that I liked O Cheese line? You’ll be $20 poorer in bed, which is not good. [00:04:53] Len: Well, okay, I’m not gonna touch that because that’s what she said. That’s right. Okay. Not [00:05:00] OG: for $20. [00:05:04] Len: Alright folks. You will soon receive a long overdue ap, a long overdue apology in bed. [00:05:15] Joe: So the honeybee maybe later today. [00:05:20] Len: Let’s hope. [00:05:21] Joe: Yes, because I know your relationship enough letting know those apologies usually go the other way. You’re like my [00:05:26] Len: bad. I’m sorry. Always 100% of the time, Joe. I didn’t mean it usually before it’s even over. [00:05:36] You [00:05:36] bit: know what I mean? Sorry, I started crying. [00:05:40] OG: Why? My coffee is delicious. [00:05:45] bit: What? Leonard Pezo is [00:05:47] Joe: here. Oh gee is here. We’re gonna talk risk. We’ve got a great headline today. Fantastic. TikTok minute. So this is just the beginning. We got a couple sponsors that, uh, make this thing go so that, uh, we can keep it free for everybody. Let’s hear from them. And then, uh, as if we haven’t started rolling already, we’re we’re gonna, we’re gonna get moving. [00:06:08] headlines: Hello darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. [00:06:15] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. It is a piece written by, uh, professor Meyer Statman Meyer, by the way, is a professor of finance at Santa Clara University’s business school. [00:06:28] Also, author of a book called A Wealth of Wellbeing, A Holistic Approach to Behavioral Finance. What I really found great about this piece is actually not where the piece is going, og the headline is, investors spend a lot of time thinking about risk. But they do it all wrong. And I’ll read the open. Meyer writes, what’s your risk tolerance? [00:06:51] This is one of the main questions financial advisors wanna know from clients. A typical questionnaire ask investors to rate their investment risk tolerance on a scale from extremely low to extremely high. And by the way, before I go to UOG, Len, you worked for quote the Man for your career. I know you were in these 401k meetings where people would come in and the first damn thing I would see, every company I went to, they would bring this thing out before they even started. [00:07:17] Like you’d take this stupid questionnaire. Did you have the questionnaire throughout your career? Um, I’m not sure [00:07:24] Len: which questionnaire are you talking about? About [00:07:25] Joe: what? Yeah, about your risk tolerance. So they’d start talking about the 401k, like the first thing you gotta do is you take this questionnaire to see how much risk you should take. [00:07:33] No, honest to [00:07:33] Len: goodness, no, that is we, we, no, they never did. As a matter of fact, maybe, ’cause I’m so old now, and this was, you know, when I started 4 0 1 Ks were just kind of. Really new actually. They just said, Hey, here’s a 401k, and, uh, good luck. You know, do it if you want luck and if you don’t, they did. [00:07:50] Honest. Basically that’s what it was, was here it was, here’s your 401k, and, and now get back to work. And, and then I went to a new company. It got a little better than that and they said, uh, you know, oh, here’s our 401k plan. It’s really great. We have a matching thing. But they didn’t get into the details at all. [00:08:06] They said nothing other than, Hey, here’s a match. They didn’t explain why you, you’d be stupid not to take the match. Wow. Nothing. But it was only marginally better than from my first job when 4 0 1 Ks were just kind of getting started, where they just really, they just said, here’s a referral. Oh one K plan, you know, now get back to work. [00:08:21] Joe: Which is wild oog because ERISA law, I think is that not only do they put the plan in place, but they have to teach people how to use it. Isn’t education a part of the, part of the law? But I guess we’re seeing how much that’s enforced by what len’s saying. [00:08:34] OG: Well, I don’t know that it’s part of the lo but also who knows what it was back in the mid sixties or whenever the hell was that Lynn started working, brought the chariot to work. [00:08:44] You know, it’s certainly a lot different now, of course. And, and now they have auto enrollment plans where you don’t even get a chance to opt into it. You have to affirmatively opt out of it, which is a, a, a different approach, right? It’s the negative consent way of doing it, which is, uh, probably better for most people. [00:09:01] Joe: Did they spend all the time that they saved talking about how few bolts they can put in a plane and still have it fly? Yes. [00:09:08] Len: Easy to help partner. I don’t, don’t make me lose my pension. Okay. [00:09:12] bit: Is it too soon for that humor? Too soon? [00:09:16] Len: I have no comment on that. I’ll just say I was not on that side of the business. [00:09:24] You were working in drones, weren’t you? At the very tail end of my career, I actually was, I gotta be careful here too, because I, I was still obligated. But yes, I was working on advanced drones. I mean, heavy lift, huge drones, huge drones, testing motors and stuff like that. So yes, [00:09:40] Joe: well, maybe you can have a drone lift us outta this hole. [00:09:43] I’m trying to dig, apparently, or not doing great, but very seriously, I would see OG these companies with 401k plans do in most companies. Frankly, Lynn, I’m super surprised that you didn’t have this, but they always start with, okay, how much risk can you take as if risk exists in a vacuum? And I can just check, oh, I don’t want much risk. [00:10:06] I think the better place to start is how much risk do you need to take to reach the goal that you have, and then look at that level of risk and go, can you stomach it? At the very least, that’s a better approach. Why do we always start with risk? [00:10:23] OG: I personally even hate the word, you know, the terminology is incorrect because when we think about risk, it’s the chance of loss, right? [00:10:30] And if you’re investing in the 500 biggest companies in the world, your chance of loss of all of your money is, I mean, it’s almost zero. There’s some chance if you’re an individual stock investor, that that chance of risk, chance of loss to zero is some number, but it’s also somewhat small. Um, but if you’re a diversified investor, your chance of it, your portfolio going to zero is very close to zero. [00:10:57] That doesn’t mean it. Can’t happen, but I suspect that there’s a bunch of other crap that happens too, if all of a sudden all the companies in all of the world all go belly up all at the same time. Hey G, [00:11:08] Len: I wanna, there’s another side of that coin though, on risk. I mean, the main one that most people say is, like you said, is what’s the risk of me losing all my money? [00:11:15] There’s another area of risk, and I experienced it when I was younger, when I was first starting out, and it’s, are you under your, your risk of not having enough? Great point. Because you’ve, when you’re older and when it’s time to retire, because you were, you didn’t take enough risks. So there’s two risks. [00:11:30] There’s one of losing all your money and then the other risk is not saving enough. Yeah. So you got both. There’s two sides to that coin. And like I said, I was a victim. I was way too cautious in my early years if I had to do it all over again. I mean, my goodness. I’ve, I’ve made a big mistake. I was just so cautious early on, and that was, that was huge. [00:11:49] Joe: Well, when you don’t know a lot though, Len, I mean, and there’s nobody teaching you when you go to the 401k meeting, like you said, there’s nobody in there telling you how to use it. You look at bonds as an example and you’re like, oh, I can just kind of incrementally grow this and the chance that it goes away is a lot less. [00:12:04] I’m only loaning money to people, man. I should put a bunch of bonds in my portfolio, which is, if you’re 25 years old, is probably the dumbest thing you could ever do. It is the dumbest do guy. [00:12:14] Len: And here’s the other thing. When I look back now and, and I have the, the, the hindsight, you know, the wisdom that’s comes with age only because. [00:12:21] When I was younger, I didn’t, I wish I had this system, but you’re starting from such a small amount. There’s really nothing to fear when you’re first starting out. You, you, the amount of money you have, and I know this might sound kind of crass, but you don’t have that much to lose. If you did lose by taking that risk, when you know, it’s not like when you’re older and you’re getting close to retirement and you have this huge bigger pile of money, you know, then that might hurt a little more. [00:12:43] But when you’re younger and you have the smaller pile of money, you can recover it so fast if the worst case did happen. And I wasn’t thinking that way when I was younger. I was just thinking, oh, I don’t wanna lose any money. I don’t wanna take a 50% haircut on my small pile of money, which was really stupid, you know, I didn’t wake up till I was, you know, 30 years old and finally the light came on. [00:13:00] Joe: Let’s got a great point, OG. That 30% drop hits differently for a 50-year-old than it does for a 25-year-old. [00:13:08] OG: Well, it really does. And when we’re talking about risk tolerance questionnaires like the professor’s talking about here, I think what we’re really trying to get to is what’s your tolerance for the ups and downs? [00:13:17] What’s your tolerance for the variability for the roller coaster? Because it definitely changes. You know, a 30% decline with a $30,000 portfolio is a heck of a lot different than a 30% decline with a $2 million portfolio, despite the fact that it’s still 30%. And I believe that you should invest the same your entire life. [00:13:36] You know, I don’t think you should get conservative at all, because why would you lend knowing the last 30 years of your life of investing, why would you want to do it differently, assuming that you had the precautions, Joe and I talked about this, uh, earlier this week, assuming that you had the precautions of an adequate cash reserve and a distribution strategy that can ride out those ups and downs. [00:13:57] But I think a lot of times people equate risk with variability and like, look, I don’t like looking at my portfolio and seeing a code down 10% or 20% or 30% anymore than the next guy does. I see everything in aggregate in our firm. So I see like these insanely big numbers that swing around the place and you know, talk about getting seasick. [00:14:15] But I also have the confidence and the belief that everybody who is in charge of all these companies are focused singularly on one goal, which is to make themselves rich. And as long as you know, the CEOs of these big companies and the directors and the higher up people of all these companies are rewarded with high amounts of compensation in their company stock. [00:14:36] They want that number to get bigger. They want that stock price to go up, and they’re gonna do whatever they need to do, regardless of who’s in office or who wins or who loses, or what political climate there is. Those people are tasked with the responsibility of growing their organization regardless of circumstances, and their personal net worths are tied to that outcome. [00:14:58] Largely so, which means [00:15:00] Joe: tying yours to it in a diversified manner is the way to go. [00:15:04] OG: Yeah. I mean, I can’t see of a better results based plan, but the reality is the biggest issue as it relates to investor performance is singularly investor behavior. That is the beginning, middle, and end of the story every single time. [00:15:19] And there’s so many anecdotal stories about during market declines, what people do, groups of people do, what the people on TV tell us to do. You know, all these different things that happen around volatility and, and the right answer is often don’t do anything, just keep investing and keep being diversified and stay the course. [00:15:42] But when we make these big, giant mistakes, we make them because it’s a bigger number than we remember. We, for whatever reason, don’t see percentage losses in our portfolios as percentages. We see them only as dollars. The words that we use around that really enforce it. Like, can you believe I lost $600,000 last year in my portfolio? [00:16:07] Think about the weight of all those words. You know what I mean? And we think about Joe, earlier this week, I think you were talking about how our brain works as it relates to marketing, different marketing websites and things like that, how we equate different things. I believe that our brain works in multiples of our earning capability. [00:16:24] So if you’re out there and you’re living your life and working your job and you’re making a hundred grand a year and your account goes down a hundred thousand, you immediately go, that’s a year worth of work. That’s what I think that connection makes. Oh yeah. So when you see minus 600, [00:16:38] Joe: you stop thinking in percentages. [00:16:40] Yeah. You don’t think 30% loss when it’s a $2 million portfolio. [00:16:43] OG: Yeah. You think I just lost six years of earnings. And again, think of all the weight that just happens with that. I lost, I. $600,000. Like all of those things stack. No, you didn’t, you didn’t lose it. It’s not misplaced. The price of the companies have gone down a little bit. [00:17:01] You still have the same share. You know what I mean? If you kind of peel away those layers, you didn’t lose it. Losing, it’s like Grandpa Barry’s stuff in the backyard and forgetting where he put it, you know, like that’s loss. You know where it [00:17:13] Joe: is. It just happens [00:17:14] OG: to [00:17:14] Joe: be worthless today. It just happens to be worthless today. [00:17:16] Let me [00:17:16] Len: real quick, Joe, I know you’re gonna go to another question there, but I, I just wanna, because OG was talking about companies going, you know, up and then if CEOs don’t want their company to lose all its value and they’re gonna, and that’s true over time. I mean my company, ’cause I was invested in my company stock pretty heavily during my career. [00:17:34] Uh, I’ll just give an example. So the great financial crash in. 2008, I think the stock went from, it was like 120, went down to almost 30 of bottomed out at like 30. Yeah. But okay, so that’s, uh, what is that? 75% drop? I lost how much money that that was. Okay. So here’s the thing with risk though. In time when you’re young, and I mean even under 50, as long as you’re under 50, the fullness of time, if you’re just stay the course, you’re gonna make that back. [00:18:03] So that stock fell to $30 around, and I’m doing this from the best of my brain from back, but I remember it was like 27 or 30. This was in 2008. By 2020, that stock was up to, I think it topped at $440. So do the math. It went up 10 times. As long as you didn’t panic, you know, you’re in it for the long haul. [00:18:24] You went from $30 to 440 in 10 years, and that’s a 10 times gain. That’s 70%. Loss that you had in the great financial crisis. You made it all back and mocho more over the 10 years and then X more. Yeah. Comment. Is it? Yeah, it’s It’s a lot. Yeah. I think it’s like 10 x more. Right? But you had to stay the course and not panic. [00:18:46] Just be cool. Know what your final goal was and everything takes care of itself. This is what I like about [00:18:52] Joe: this piece though, guys, that discussion that we just had is what I’m interested in and I think we look at risk wrong. I love, I would direct people back to Ben Orlin who was on talking about making math fun just over a week ago. [00:19:05] Ben and I talked about standard deviation, which OG is what you’re talking about. Once you know that this rollercoaster can go up and down 30%, and that is in the course of normal activity, it calms you down as a passenger on that plane. And I know how much OG loves the airplane analogy, which is why I keep using it, but it does when the captain tells you there’s turbulence. [00:19:26] In fact, it’s funny, I had never seen this, I’m sure, oh, gee’s, a pilot, you’ve seen this before. Uh, some pilot on TikTok was showing the instruments that they use upfront and he had these areas that were in yellow on the route they were taking, where he knew where the turbulence was most likely to be on the route. [00:19:44] And if you follow standard deviation on your portfolio, you can take a look at this measurement and just go back to last Monday, Ben Orland’s episode and dive in. And we talk a little bit about how standard deviation works. And it’s, it’s such a great indicator of, Hey, this is all normal, but this guy’s not going there. [00:20:01] Let’s, let’s pivot. This guy’s going to something different. Meir says, but by focusing solely on investment risk and financial returns, people often misunderstand the best path to accumulating wealth and emotional satisfaction. Many people, for instance, think the best way to increase wealth is by tolerating investment risk. [00:20:23] What we’ve been talking about, perhaps picking stocks with spectacular returns, we definitely didn’t talk about that. In truth, wealthy people gain their wealth mostly by tolerating wait for it career and social risk risks that pay great returns in turning them into successful physicians and lawyers or owners of businesses, large and small. [00:20:45] And then. I think this piece is brilliant because I feel like often we want our portfolio to do the heavy lifting. Where Len, I gotta believe in your career. The fact that you were an engine that could bring home a nice paycheck and you took career risk to make that happen was a part of your success. Oh gee, you see this all the time when people come in and they haven’t thought about getting a raise from work, and every study shows that your boss wants to give you a raise, you just haven’t presented it, uh, the right way. [00:21:18] I love this idea of what risk could I take with my career that might bring in money? What do you guys think about that? [00:21:26] Len: I mean, you can’t argue with it. I mean, lemme give one example of career risk that I think a lot of people don’t think about. And, and I’ll, again, I’ll use my son as an example. He, uh, did something quite amazing. [00:21:36] He dropped outta high school because he had a DD and dyslexia and it, he couldn’t cope in, in that environment. He just the way to learn. But he’s an extremely bright kid and he self-taught himself computer coding. He became extremely good at it and he worked his way up through jobs getting, working at bigger companies and bigger companies. [00:22:00] Uh, coding without a college degree. Here’s, here’s a big risk he took. There was a job at a big aerospace company that he, um, applied for that required a, a, an engineering degree, and he applied for the job even though he didn’t have a day of college. That in itself, I think is just, that takes some mox, some chutzpah to even try that. [00:22:19] Moxie. Yeah, that’s a good word. Moxie takes some real moxie to even do that. The demand was so great for that position that they couldn’t fill it. They gave them a call. He actually ended up getting the job after, and now they didn’t just take his word for it. Luckily he had a pro, he was working for another company, so they referred to that, but then they gave him a, a very difficult technical test just to make sure Absolutely. [00:22:41] Before they Sure. Jumped to do this and he passed it with flying colors and he ended up getting a job that was required, an engineering degree. He doesn’t have a day of college experience and he doesn’t have a high school degree. Wow. And now he’s working. Yeah. He wasn’t afraid just because the application said you had to have a degree to apply anyways, give it a shot. [00:23:01] If you have the experience for something and the uh, application or the job application out there asks for a degree, but you have the experience, go take a chance. I mean, why not? You have nothing to lose. [00:23:13] Joe: That’s an amazing story, Len. And it exactly illustrates this point, OG that I feel like we define the financial plan so narrowly. [00:23:20] I want my portfolio to do more lifting. I want it to take more risk. I want it to do all this stuff. And yet. And this is the reason why we had Seth Godin on on Monday. This is the reason why we talk about making more money at work because of the fact that if we widen our financial plan to include risk using Meyer Attman’s, uh, phraseology risk in our career and what things we’re gonna do to bring more money home, you can give your portfolio a little more of a break. [00:23:51] Like, I, I think I totally agree with this. Like, why are you relying on your portfolio so much to do the heavy lifting when you’ve got this amazing engine that’s wasting time playing video games or whatever it might be? [00:24:03] OG: Well, especially early on, it takes such a while for your money to make as much money as you make. [00:24:08] And that’s a really fun day when that day happens when you’re like going, oh, you know, I made a hundred grand and oh, geez, my money made a hundred grand. Like, there’s two of me working now, you know, and then there’s three of me working and, and so on and so forth. But the power of getting all of that money in faster. [00:24:25] We talk a lot about the last double being the, the really important one, but the speed at which you can get cash invested so that that other person, that person being your investment account, it also is working for you. The faster that that can happen, the faster that, that stuff doubles. The, the funny thing that I see happen a lot is I don’t think that anybody believes compounding in advance. [00:24:51] So when you run the calculations on your financial plan, or you do it in Excel, or you take out your HP calculator and you go, okay, so I’m 25, I’m gonna work home 65 and I’m gonna put in this amount of money and da da, and it goes, you’ll have $8 million. You go, okay, yeah, that’s wrong. You know, you don’t know why. [00:25:09] Yeah. You just go, that’s, that’s not right. Or when we have financial plans and we’re like, it says here you’ll be a hundred with 80 million. It’s like, yeah, that’s wrong. I don’t know why it’s wrong, it just, that’s not right. But math is math. We just can’t believe it. ’cause we can’t do it in our brains. It just doesn’t make sense to us the power of compounding. [00:25:26] But we see it in the rear view mirror all the time. You know, using your example, Len, if I told you, Hey, you know, your company stock went to 400, it stands to reason that it will be at 807 years from now, or it stands to reason it’ll be at 1600 in 12 or 15 years from now, right? That’s a normal return. [00:25:44] You’d go No, no, no, no, no. It wouldn’t do not gonna happen. No. I believe that it’s done this, but it’s not gonna do that. I believe that it can 10 x in 12 years, but no way in hell it can go up, you know, double in the next 10 that happened back then it won’t happen again. But we also use the same thinking around market declines. [00:26:04] We say, well, I know that in the great recession, the market went down and came back, but this time it won’t. I know that in the depression, the market went down, but this time it won’t. But let’s go [00:26:12] Joe: back to the job risk. Oh, gee. To take that further, I know this happened in the past. I heard the story about Len’s sun, but there’s no way that that would happen to me. [00:26:21] Yeah. There’s no way my boss is gonna give me a raise, so I’m not gonna ask. Sure. There is no way this other company wants me, so I’m not gonna do that. There’s no way that an artist can make money, so I’m not gonna charge anything for, it’s too [00:26:32] OG: big of a risk to move across the country and yeah, take that new job or whatever I, you know, he [00:26:36] Joe: compounds this. [00:26:37] This next risk is one that I personally am very bad at the willingness to take social risks is also a key to accumulating wealthy rights. I marvel my wife’s tolerance for social risk. She regularly initiates conversations with fellow shoppers at grocery stores while I keep quiet as I gather my groceries and stand in the checkout line. [00:26:57] As we record this, I’m getting ready to go to FinCon. I am so afraid of talking to people at every FinCon. It is so stressful and so whatever, but it’s what I’m there to do. And the social quote risk. But every time I meet new people creates new opportunities for the show for us. Len, you were the first person that convinced me to go to FinCon. [00:27:19] You were like, make sure it pays for itself. And I remember you saying that, and I looked at what it cost to go to FinCon, but in the back of my mind I’m like, okay, I gotta find a sponsor. And this is way back in the early days. And we didn’t. And I walked up to Fidelity’s table and I said, Hey, would you wanna sponsor a podcast? [00:27:37] And I was like, they’re gonna laugh me out of everything. And the guy standing at the table, Ben goes, well, how much are you looking for? I. And it was pretty funny by the way. So immediately I’m thinking, biggest check ever. Right? This is Fidelity events, at least 500, right? Let’s take as much as I can. And then I realized, because it was in the early days, the bigger risk was to bet on myself and bet on our show. [00:28:01] And then I realized the bigger win for me was gonna be able to say, Stacking Benjamins is brought to you by Fidelity Investments. Bam. A show that at that point nobody listened to, and it just gave us this social proof, this credibility. So all of a sudden my head went from taking the risk of asking them for a lot of money to taking what ended up being a bigger risk. [00:28:21] Let’s ask it for almost no money. Like let’s just see if I can get them as a sponsor by making sure they said yes. So I gave them a ridiculously no low number, and they said yes. For two months on Stacking Benjamins. We said Stacking Benjamins brought to you by Fidelity Investments, which was pretty, pretty amazing at the time. [00:28:39] But this idea of social risk, I think is another one. I’m horrible at that. I know. Oh gee, that’s not your favorite thing either, is going into a crowd of people and initiating conversations. [00:28:49] OG: Um, yeah. I would never in a million years talk to a, a stranger at a grocery store. Like I purposefully either am on the phone or have headphones blasting the loudest music I can think of so that I don’t have to hear it. [00:29:03] I’m like, exactly, Hey, can I, and I’m like, I’m just doing my thing, you know? I don’t have to worry about turning him down because, you know, it’s like, so this dude’s wife who’s like, Hey, hey, you wanna have a conversation? Like, I’ll never hear her? Nope. Because the, the music is so loud in my headphones. So [00:29:17] Joe: just, I want nothing to do with it. [00:29:18] And yet I see other people and I’m jealous. People that are really good at it. Yeah. And they get all these connections that I could have if I took that risk. Glen, how about you? You could social risk. You know [00:29:27] Len: what I’m, I am an introvert, but I force myself to be open and talk to people at parties or wherever we’re at. [00:29:34] I I’m always asking, Hey, how, you know, trying to initiate the conversation. You’ve become the guy in the progressive commercials, haven’t you? You’re the old guy in the progressive commercials. Yeah. Well, lemme just say that. Talking to people on the elevator, lemme tell you, the older you get, the more dangerous it gets. [00:29:46] Because now as I’m getting older and grayer and looking like an old wrinkly guy, now when I try to initiate a conversation, like in a grocery store, I get like, you old man get away from me. You dirty old, you know, you pervert. It’s like I’m, hey, what? I’m just trying to, so it gets harder as you get older. [00:30:03] Joe: Uh, let’s talk about big risk because we got a holiday coming up. So we’ve got, uh, one more risk I’d like to talk about on this topic. This risk is big and that is. The risk that you’re gonna be the house that everybody hates at Halloween. This comes to us from a blog called zo.com, and it is a 13 yucky Halloween treats. [00:30:23] Kids would rather toss than eat. There is some significant risk when to be in the a-hole that gives out the really [00:30:33] bit: crappy kid. Like, I don’t wanna be that guy. [00:30:35] OG: I wonder how many of these I could get. What, how much is on the [00:30:37] Len: list? There’s 13. [00:30:39] OG: There’s 13. 13. [00:30:40] Len: And let me just say this, this article, this is article is now 11 or 12 years old. [00:30:44] I think it, it, it was originally, I interviewed my kids when they were younger. Nina and Matthew, they were single digit in age, I think, let me lemme do a quick look here. What year did I, oh my god. You know what I, I, I’m in a new browser here and I didn’t realize how many ads my dumb website has. Look at this, these ads, well, you could click lots of those ads. [00:31:02] Chaching. Yeah, there’s lots of chaching. You know what? Hey, if you stop by here, folks. Please click on those ads. Uh, they’re very helpful to me. Speaking of, anyways, let’s see. This is, uh, April 20th, 2011. So, wow. This is 13 years, years ago. It’s 2011, so yeah, my, yeah, that’s from my kid, but these are my kids. I gotta say fruits on this list, right? [00:31:21] Apples. That’s, no, somebody actually chastised me for not having apples on that list. [00:31:25] OG: Okay. [00:31:26] Len: Alright. Candy, corn, [00:31:27] Joe: candy. [00:31:27] Len: Corn isn’t [00:31:28] Joe: on [00:31:28] Len: your [00:31:28] Joe: list [00:31:28] Len: either. Well, well, don’t you like Candy Corn? Who doesn’t like candy? Corn? Not that much. You don’t like candy Corn? I’m not that much. No. I mean, oh my gosh. I don’t know if you get a handful of it. [00:31:36] I like, like, that’s just kind of weird. Right. How about Baby Ruth? Baby Ruth is on here. Do you guys, those are, those are mess. Does Nikki gag when you were a kid getting a baby Ruth? Yep. [00:31:44] Joe: No. The fun thing to do when my kids were, uh, my kids were lifeguards, somebody would throw a baby Ruth in the deep end of the pool so the lifeguards would get a break. [00:31:52] Huh. [00:31:53] Len: Okay. Candy Shack, caddy Shack. How about, okay, so another one on here is Jawbreakers. Yeah. Okay. Nina penalized Jawbreakers. ’cause she said it was too much work for her. She said it was, uh, it is too much work. Yeah, [00:32:03] Joe: I agree. Well, and Dennis will tell you, people chip their teeth on those things. [00:32:07] Len: Yes, that’s true. [00:32:08] Yes, that’s absolutely true. You know the [00:32:09] Joe: one I like that’s on here, Len. I like the one, anything with coconut. Coconut is gross [00:32:15] Len: to me. It’s in moderation. I can eat one almond joy or one mounds, but boy, you gimme more than that. And I’m, I’m gagging. I’m gagging. [00:32:21] OG: I can put a bunch of booze in a coconut and drink [00:32:24] Len: it. [00:32:25] Oh, another one here that I thought was really makes sense. It was Halloween pencils. Yeah. I mean, pencils, pencils are a terrible Halloween treat. I mean, the splinters that they, you know, on your tongue when you eat. I mean, it’s just terrible. So you say, yeah, stay away from eating those, those are, those are bad. [00:32:39] Joe: What should everybody be serving? Like literally guys, og the ultimate house on Halloween. What should they be serving? [00:32:48] OG: Well, we’re a little, uh. Spoiled here in our little, uh, slice of paradise because we have, on our little street, we have a family that makes hot dogs and, uh, we have a family Wow. That serves hot chocolate. [00:33:01] We have a family that has nice adult hot chocolate too, so it’s kind of kids and adult people across the street have ice cream sandwiches and a big ice cream bar. Oh my really? You know, like literally like a cold stone thing set up. So that’s kind of fun. We just go to Costco and get the big giant bag of multi candy. [00:33:19] I think, uh, Hershey kisses kind of suck, so I’d stay away from that. That’s kind of a crappy Halloween candy. It’s a lot. Just too small. [00:33:26] Joe: Too little. [00:33:27] OG: Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t like the, you know, the self-serve Halloween candy. Because some people do that now. They just set out a bowl and be like, they’re lazy. Hey, you know, just take one or whatever. [00:33:37] It’s like, dude, if that stuff happened when I was a kid, I would just take the bowl. And they do. They do. They do. I would just be like, this is so dumb. I’m just going to, I have all the candy from the neighbors now, so don’t do that. All the candy can’t hand. I get it. Maybe not your thing. You don’t wanna hand out candy. [00:33:51] Don’t do it. But [00:33:53] Len: don’t leave a big bowl out there that’s, you know, one year my kids actually got, and this is on the list of things you shouldn’t or was old Easter candy. They actually both got chocolate bonies [00:34:02] OG: like peeps or something. Yeah. Seven [00:34:04] Len: month old candy people are cheap enough. They got little mini chocolate bunnies. [00:34:08] Yeah. Yeah. Now that’s pretty bad. Yeah. Don’t do that. That deserves a toilet paper ring of the house right there. [00:34:14] Joe: Valentine’s. Those little Valentine’s Day hard candies, [00:34:18] OG: little the dove hearts [00:34:19] Joe: for Halloween. Yeah. [00:34:22] OG: I aspire to be the fulls size candy bar family. That’s my yes. That life, life aspiration. [00:34:27] Len: I’ll just say on this article I have at the bottom it, I also pulled my kids on the best treats and that was their number one best treat was those giant sized candy bars. [00:34:36] OG: The full candy bars. I mean, [00:34:37] Len: no, I mean the Django ones. Oh, well. Oh, the oh my. Huge. Somebody does that. Yes. We have one in, we have somebody in our neighborhood to actually pass out those massive candy bars. Yes. Wow. I wonder what his risk tolerance is. [00:34:50] Joe: We do full size because, uh, we only get up six or seven trick or treaters. [00:34:54] The kids from the neighborhood that we know, our houses are fairly far apart where I live, so they have to. Know that they want to come to our house, so we reward them. [00:35:01] Len: Even those are, yeah, even the regular sized bars. That, that’d be great. Yeah. Heck yeah. Yeah. And it’s one of three. [00:35:07] Joe: It’s either Kit Kat, Nestle Crunch, uh, three Musketeers. [00:35:12] Those are the three that we do. ’cause those are what? No, my favorites. And I’m always hoping for whatever’s [00:35:18] OG: left. Joe’s like we better stock up just in case we got a rash of kids. I do that every year. Uh, [00:35:23] Joe: I’m like, we gotta get four bags. This could be the year. [00:35:26] OG: This could be the year you can’t run out. [00:35:28] It’s like Thanksgiving dinner. [00:35:30] Len: Do you run out? I’ve run out of candy before. But don’t you get a sense of panic when you run out? Oh, it’s getting low and it’s just dusk. You’re like, oh crap. I’m gonna beat those people. I have some old boxes of mac and cheese in the pantry. I guess I can start giving that out. [00:35:43] Joe: You’re not pork and beans cans. [00:35:46] Len: Who wants cashews? What am I gonna do? [00:35:52] Joe: Uh, if you wanna dive more into this, we’ll have a link to both the lens pieces at, uh, stacky Benjamins dot com in the show notes page. And if you wanna dive more into this area of risk, we’ll also have a link to this piece, although it’s behind a Wall Street Journal paywall. [00:36:06] Um, you know what though? Uh, Kevin Bailey, our writer of our 2 0 1 newsletter, is gonna dive even more into this topic as he does all the di We didn’t talk about interest rate, risk, or inflationary risk, any of these other, there’s many different types of risk. He’ll dive into those in the 2 0 1 tomorrow, our newsletter, stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. [00:36:25] Coming up next, our TikTok minute, listen to this. Speaking of career risk guys. This guy was on the management fast track. Used to make $50,000 a year. Now makes 300,000. And on the upper management fast track, how did he do it? TikTok video explains, we’ll listen to that. Plus we’re gonna answer your question from a stacker. [00:36:46] That’s all. After Doug’s trivia, ’cause Doug Doug, where have you been? We’ve had this whole thing. Okay. All right man, he’s ready to go. Doug, what’s our trivia question today? [00:36:59] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and sometimes I think the guys are so busy clowning around that they aren’t paying attention to the calendar. So as usual, old Doug is here to do the heavy lifting. We are now only eight days away from October 31st. And you know what that means? No, not Halloween. [00:37:19] Duh. This is much scarier. You only have eight days to get your 10 31 exchange done. Really? You didn’t know that’s how it got its name. What? You didn’t even know what a 10 31 exchange is. Okay, well then here’s today’s trivia question. In celebration of 10 31, only being eight days away, what is a 10 31 exchange? [00:37:44] I’ll be back with the answer. So you’ll use these next eight days wisely right after I go, you know, look it up to make sure I’ve got all the details right. I mean, I totally know what it is, but I. [00:38:04] Hey there, stackers. I’m guy dressed as a tax man this Halloween, and Mr. I hate fake news. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Hey, speaking of fake news, uh, you know, this, this is kind of funny, a little awkward, but today’s trivia question is what is a 10 31 exchange? And turns out that the whole, uh, you know, 10 31 reference to the date, 10 31 is purely, um, how do I put this? [00:38:32] Uh, it’s just, believe it or not, man, this is awkward. It’s, uh, you, it’s just coincidental. 10 31, in fact has nothing to do with the date 10 31, making it totally misleading. I’m gonna have to talk to somebody about that, but I’m sure you’re super happy I looked it up. A 10 31 exchange is actually an exchange of real estate that you’ve held for another property, which allows you to defer taxes. [00:38:58] How does it work? Uh, lemme see if I can explain it. If you take the money you made on say, property A and use that to purchase your next property, we’ll call that property B, you can then avoid a capital gains tax until you finally sell real estate and use the money for something else. Of course, there’s a bunch of rules and some people will use more complicated and expensive tools like a Delaware statutory trust to avoid taxes. [00:39:25] So get some help on this. But hey, at least we know you don’t have to worry about a deadline eight days away. And now back to three guys who are thinking about your money eight days a week. Hey, that’s pretty good. I should run with that phrase back to Joe OG and Len Penso. That’s a pretty good one. [00:39:43] Joe: Len. [00:39:43] Doug: That was good. [00:39:45] Joe: I can’t believe he thought of that. Eight days a week. Where have we heard that before? Oh my God. I don’t know. Time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we shine the light on a TikTok creator who’s either doing something brilliant or air quotes brilliant. Our stacker, Lynn Marie sent this to us, was making $50,000 a year, now making 3000. [00:40:05] You think this is brilliant, Len, we’re about to hear or air quotes. Brilliant. [00:40:10] Len: I think it’s brilliant. That’s, uh, anytime you can, uh, what is that? Uh, sex Tuple Your income. That’s a pretty darn game. Easy cowboy. Oh, sex tle G 13, bro. I’m just gonna go back to my fortune cookie here. That’s a [00:40:20] Joe: wild game of twister right there. [00:40:22] Len: Yeah. I’ll tell you. [00:40:23] Joe: Getting Sex tuple this Instagram reel. Well, let’s listen to this guy and how he did it. [00:40:30] tiktok: Well, I started using this simple but effective technique. I was only making about 55 KA year since my promotion. I’m making triple that and I’m on a management fast track to make 300 K in just about two years. [00:40:41] This is actually how I got promoted. This is called the scepter of Amond Raw. It gives you unlimited power, persuasion, and influence over everyone in your life. It’s actually fairly easy to obtain. All you have to do is venture into a clearing in the woods under a full moon, and then recite horse’s prayer from the book of the dead. [00:40:59] From there, a jackal headed of monstrosity will emerge from the woods and hand you the scepter. I did get unlimited power and riches, just like the monstrosity promise. So that part definitely lives up to the hype. The only downsides are that I can no longer feel happiness or sadness. I sleep, but I cannot rest much like the cursed priest, alman raw himself. [00:41:19] Also, when I close my eyes, all I can see are scenes of betrayal. I’m suspicious of all my loved ones and my dog doesn’t recognize my scent anymore. Overall, I’m so glad I bartered for this. I’m feared by my coworkers, my wife, cowers, when she sees me and my best friends have turned into yes man and sycophants. [00:41:36] I’ve also used the scepter get pretty good financing on a rivian, so it’s versatility alone makes it worth your eternal mortality. [00:41:45] Joe: He’s got more benefits, but I think at Halloween season, if we just get this scepter, og. It will solve all your problems. [00:41:52] OG: I wish I had the sound of the, um, you know, the sound of like the windows pong, like when it like crashes. [00:41:59] That’s how I feel right now. I feel like just walking away. [00:42:04] Joe: You don’t like Lynn Marie’s strategy here that she sent us. I, I think especially at Halloween time. It’s a good, it might be a little risky. We talked about risk earlier. Len, can we [00:42:14] OG: please move on to whatever the next thing is? [00:42:19] Len: Okay. I’m just sorry I didn’t, I didn’t think of that earlier. I mean, it was, that’s brilliant. [00:42:23] OG: It’s brilliant. Of all the strategies, who would think to buy the, I appreciate you proving my point over and over and over again about how everything on any of these social media platforms is utter trash. [00:42:36] bit: I don’t know what you’re talking about, but that’s every [00:42:38] OG: single [00:42:39] Len: time pretty garbage. [00:42:41] Sounds reasonable to me. [00:42:42] Joe: I know. I dunno what is, apparently he’s never worked in corporate America. I guess [00:42:46] Len: not. [00:42:47] Joe: I’ve, I’ve worked with people who no longer feel a feelings or any happiness or sadness. They just seem like a zombie. Coming into work every day. All right, fine. Let’s shine the real light on a stacker that said, you know what? [00:42:59] I better call Saul. See hi and OG and Len on this, on this part of the show. We’re helping a stacker in need and today, you know what? We’ve got a great one. We are going to help Suzanne and I know, you know, we give people for calling in. We give them swag. So Len Sporting one of our awesome classic Stacking Benjamin shirts, but Suzanne’s like, forget the swag. [00:43:25] I just got a question. [00:43:28] caller: Hey guys, this is Suzanne. I am a second time caller, so I’m not really interested in another T-shirt though I’ve been rocking my Doug president 2024 shirt. Proudly. The question about the benefit of employer sponsored IRA plans. My husband had been laid off from his place of employment during Covid and we eventually rolled over his IRA into in Empower. [00:44:01] A, and so we have about 840,000 in our traditional IRA through Empower and about 22,000 in a Roth IRA through Empower and now his employer is offering a traditional IRA plan. However, no matching funds or anything like that. Is there really any benefit to switching to this plan from Empower? Right now we’re putting all our contributions into the Roth and not even doing anything other than just passive investing with the IRA. [00:44:35] So I just not sure where to go from here. If you could provide any insight, that would be fantastic. Thank you. Take care. [00:44:42] Joe: Hey Suzanne, thanks for the question. And sounds like not a 401k, but just a regular IRA that you can put money into OG with payroll deduction. [00:44:52] OG: Is there any chance that this is maybe a simple IRA. [00:44:56] It’s an employer sponsored IRAI [00:44:58] Joe: very rarely will hear about, and it’s very small employers that will just go, you know what, if you wanna put money in your IRA, we’ll make it easier. Kinda like a pseudo helping you out with this thing you can do on your own. But, but no, I think it’s gotta be a simple IRAI would verify that terminology, Suzanne. [00:45:17] I would verify that it This is what you think it is. [00:45:20] OG: Yeah. Because ultimately if it’s just a conduit of somehow we’ll help you. That doesn’t even make sense either. But somehow we’ll help you take money from your payroll and put it into an IRA. You’re already doing that by doing a Roth IRA. You can’t do both an IRA and a Roth. [00:45:36] Well, I mean you can, but the limit is the same. Right? The limit’s the 7,000 limit. So if you’re already doing 7,000 in your Roth, this wouldn’t even be an option for you. If it’s a simple IRA, which is a type of, uh, retirement plan that really small business owners sometimes offer, it does come with an employer match, or at least it’s supposed to. [00:45:55] Every so often they have to match 3% and do that three outta five years. So there would be some sort of employer match there. Then you can do both. You can do a simple IRA and your Roth IRA. You know, if you have the cashflow to do that, of course I would a hundred percent do that. But if this is just a conduit of. [00:46:14] You work for this small company and you should be putting money in an IRA and if you want us to direct some of your payroll to it as like a secondary deposit, you know, you know, sometimes you can take your paycheck and say, I want some of it to go to my savings and some of it go to my checking and it’s, that’s basically what they’re doing then No, you can’t do both. [00:46:32] Well, you, you can again, but you’re up to the, the limit. And I would err on the side of Roth contributions anyway, given the choice between Roth and traditional IRA. [00:46:40] Joe: But if it is the simple, you’ll be able to put a lot more in there as well. So stick with the workplace plan. [00:46:48] OG: Well the simple as you get to 15,000, or maybe it’s 15 five, they’ve gotta do a 3% match. [00:46:52] Now we’re starting to get some real money in there. So yeah, if you can do both, that’s obviously the best scenario, right? Sure. Is to do, do the simple plan, get the match, and then also do your Roth if you can. And then Suzanne can also do a Roth too, if her husband’s working, you know, you can do a spousal contribution there. [00:47:07] So there’s lots of money to be saved. Even if your employer doesn’t offer it, you know, you can. You can do other things too. [00:47:14] Joe: I gotta tell you, Len, the thing I really like about investing through work is that payroll deduction, I think for most people is just so great. ’cause you forget that that money’s, you know what I mean, by the time you get your paycheck, it’s gone. [00:47:29] You’ve already done the deed. [00:47:30] Len: Yeah. You don’t really miss it. And um, if you make automatic increases every year, you know, to kind of. Peel off some of your rays that you might have gotten. You’re increasing that contribution and again, you don’t even feel it. So yeah, that’s really nice. Uh, may I suggest also that she might wanna try that scepter of Aman Raw, uh, that might give her some definite insight into what the correct answer might be, and who knows, they might even up the match or something if you use it properly. [00:47:57] So. Oh, we do have the cricket sound. I see we have the cricket sound. [00:48:03] Joe: I’m with you, Len. I don’t know where all this negativity comes from. OGs never negative. You don’t, you don’t get that at all from this guy. If your bosses have a crappy plan, take the scepter in there and chase the plan. [00:48:18] bit: Yeah. Can you repeat the part of the stuff where you said all about the things? [00:48:25] Joe: Uh, thank you for the question, Suzanne. And you know what? You need to give the swag to somebody else. You know the purpose. It’s a holiday [00:48:33] OG: gift at this point. That’s what I [00:48:34] Joe: was gonna say. O it up. [00:48:35] OG: I got you a soft T-shirt. [00:48:37] Joe: Imagine the joy in your family under the Christmas tree, the Hanukkah bush, whatever it might be. [00:48:45] Open this thing up Hanah Bush, and it just, the glow on little Timmy or Joanne’s face as she or he opens this up. There’ll be giggling and skipping. The rest of the week, it’ll be amazing and they don’t need to know you got it for free. ’cause you called in. By the way, you know, we’ve been talking a lot lately about reviews and thank you to people that have left us a review. [00:49:10] And I’ll more on that in just a second. But, um, we have not been emphasizing this and now because we haven’t talked about the fact that we answer questions, the barrel’s getting a little more empty. So if you want an answer more quickly, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. It’s a great time to leave us a voicemail and oh gee, we’ll answer your question and if len’s here, he’ll tell you to pull out the scepter. [00:49:35] Len: I’ve got my scepter out right now. I dunno. [00:49:41] And [00:49:41] OG: scene [00:49:45] Joe: on that note. Let’s wander out to the back porch for a second before we say hey. Goodbye. Hey, uh, [00:49:49] OG: I’m gonna say goodbye to Len right now ’cause you guys have some fortune cookie stuff to get through. Can’t wait to hear what that, uh, sounds like. Sounds like this. Hmm. Good cooking. I haven’t eaten breakfast yet, so I gotta do that. [00:50:03] But actually I do have to go, so I’ll see you guys. [00:50:06] Joe: Bio’s not good. I’m getting hungry too. Yeah, y you know it’s an important meeting when he can’t stay for the last four minutes of the show. When we mentioned to our stackers land that if people left us a review, I’ve got all of these books I use for interviews, so people send me their books for the interview. [00:50:23] I just don’t have room for ’em all. So I know we’ve got a lot of great stackers out there who write me all the time. And if you’re somebody that would be nice enough to leave us review, I said that we would throw in a book. Well, a lot of you wanted Ben Orland’s book last Monday. We, we, I got a ton of people going. [00:50:40] I’d like a copy of Ben Orland’s book number one. I can’t take requests. I will give you a list of a few books that I have, and you pick one that’s going to get read or that a friend of yours will like. But unfortunately I don’t have Ben Orland’s book, so I love Ben Orland’s book, by the way, but I just got a PDF for that one. [00:50:58] So if you want Ben Orland’s book, go to stacky Benjamins dot com slash store or to our show notes, click on the Amazon link and if you click there, you’ll help the show and you’ll also still get Ben Orland’s book. [00:51:12] Len: How about one of your old games that you don’t play anymore? Well, you can you send those out. [00:51:15] I play ’em all. [00:51:15] Joe: Lynn, stay away from my games. There’s not a [00:51:17] Len: single game that you, you get tired of. Whoa, [00:51:19] Joe: whoa, whoa. I need to get rid of books so I can buy more games. [00:51:25] Len: Oh, okay. So you have room on the shelf for the games. I gotcha. [00:51:28] Joe: Yeah. Alright. That’s, that’s the deal there. Okay. The big thing though is we have our new benefits guide. [00:51:33] If you’re somebody looking at your HR stuff, I know we said this was gonna be out a month ago, this got held up, but our benefits guide is out Stacking Benjamins dot com slash benefits. You know what? The average person changes jobs every 4.2 years. The government’s always changing the game. Len, when you and I started the Roth IRA was not a thing. [00:51:51] The Roth 401k, not a thing. Flex spending accounts, not even a thing when I started that. I remember, you know, HSAs, all this stuff. As the game changes, you buy our benefits guy one time and you have it as long as we make it. So for details, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash benefits, that is. That’s all on the back porch. [00:52:12] Len, what’s, dude, thanks for hanging out. I know we’re going to have Len join us one more time this year, and then we’re trying to get on Len’s calendar as much as the honeybee will let him. [00:52:23] Len: Yes, my busy calendar. Yes. Yes. Very busy. We’ll let [00:52:26] Joe: him stay away from the squirrel cam squirrel. Squirrels got wild. [00:52:31] Uh, but what’s going on@lezo.com man? [00:52:33] Len: Oh, you know, you know the real important stuff like the yucky treats and the good treats for Halloween. Uh, you know what? We did have an article out there right now on the Five Money Personalities. Oh yeah, I saw that one, which I thought is pretty interesting. And how we’re all, our personal finances are kind of tied to our personality, so we just goes through the five. [00:52:51] Money, personalities and ways to overcome or improve upon them for your personal finances have, it’s a good article. It’s by, uh, Anna yume, who’s, uh, uh, writes for my website every once in a while. And, um, yeah. So come on by. And, uh, again, be sure to click on those ads. People really, I, I don’t have Fidelity Financial or anything like that. [00:53:11] Nobody dares to come over there, so I, I depend on you clicking those ads. Uh, so I can have a little money for, uh, a cup of coffee every once in a while. [00:53:19] Joe: Yeah, just get over your social anxiety. Go to LTO and click every I listen [00:53:22] Len: this. Yeah. Every Saturday I, I do my black coffee. That’s, uh, super fun. Come on by. [00:53:26] Yeah. It’s the weekly roundup. It’s really fun. It’s the best, uh, tweets and memes I find of the week. And I throw in a little commentary. There’s a joke and, uh, uh, all kinds of funny stuff. A letter that, uh, I get, I always address one of those. It’s just kinda a fun thing on Saturdays, if you wanna kill a little time, have a cup of coffee and three or four minute read, it’s fun. [00:53:44] Joe: Come on by. Everybody stack. Yeah. Come on. Stack Benjamins dot com we’ll send you to, or just go to len penso.com. But we’ll have the link in the show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. Either way, no matter how you get there, and, um, Len has promised me some more squirrel videos, so you can watch. Squirrels going wild. [00:53:58] Len: Yes, yes, they’re coming. They’re coming. I’ll send ’em to you, Joe, and you can, uh, post ’em on your, on your website. [00:54:03] Joe: Len, thanks a ton. Uh, everyone, thanks for hanging out with us. If you know a friend that needs this, needs to talk about career risk, needs to talk about the scepter that OG loves so much, what, whatever, whatever it might be, thank you for the referral and, uh, Doug, you got it from your man. [00:54:20] What should we have learned on today’s show? [00:54:22] Doug: So, what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from Len Penso. He said that, uh, you know, that really, really good thing. What was it [00:54:30] Len: again, Len? As long as you’re under 50, here’s the thing with risk and time, just stay the course and not panic. Just be cool. [00:54:38] Know what your final goal was. Everything takes care of itself. [00:54:42] Doug: Oh yeah, that was great. Second, take some advice from me. Get that 10 31 exchange done. You know when you, when you own real estate, and definitely not before October 31st, you know, I mean, un unless you wanna do it before 10 31, which is totally your prerogative. [00:54:59] But the big lesson, don’t ask Joe’s mom what the best Halloween candy is. Biker babe, and combat boots. Not age appropriate. Some would say, but hey, I mean, at least she’s not going as the hot prison guard this year, that almost got us kicked outta the neighborhood. Huge thanks to Len Pezo for joining us today. [00:55:20] When Len isn’t pontificating about the best and worst Halloween candies, you’ll find him and his team of offbeat bloggers working away@lenpezo.com. This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul Sea. Hi, 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. [00:55:51] Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:57:04] bit: Here’s some Newsland. [00:57:05] Joe: You’re not that far from Vegas? Nope. How long would it take you to drive to Vegas? [00:57:09] bit: Mm, [00:57:10] Joe: probably three hours. I love how you’re still mu munching on the fortune cookie now, Rick. I’m sorry. I’m, it’s alright. [00:57:18] bit: It’s like I need [00:57:18] Joe: to stack, I forgot I bring that up because you don’t know this, but, uh, and some of our stackers don’t know this, but I’m coming to Las Vegas. [00:57:26] We’re gonna do a, we’re gonna do a meetup on the seventh. I’m interviewing a person who shall be named later on the seventh, and then 6:30 PM. Las Vegas brewing on the seventh. We’re gonna hang out, we’re gonna have a few foamy beverages or whatever the heck you need. I, you know what Joe, I’d have come out to see, [00:57:46] Len: I’m gonna be out of town and I’m gonna be outta the country. [00:57:48] Actually one star on that day. So one star, one star review. Yeah. One star review for Len. I’m sorry. [00:57:54] Joe: But the reason I bring that up is because OG and I on Monday, we’re talking about gambling during the after show. So, and by the way, before I get to that, ’cause I do wanna talk about gambling, uh, stack because it’s a financial show and you gotta make money somehow. [00:58:12] Stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup and tell us you’re coming so we can tell the brewery, the people, the brewery have been so nice and working with us and geez, some of these places let, we go to the like $2,000 minimum and you’re like, we’re a podcast. What are you talking about? Yeah. But these guys are like, Nope, no minimum everybody can come. [00:58:30] We’re gonna have this own our own special area. They were so nice. And, uh, just great people. Las Las Vegas brewing. So can’t wait to go, but come join us if you’re in the Vegas area in that time. Alright, I wanted to bring up Vegas and gambling and maybe some of the shows you and the honeybee ever go gambling. [00:58:50] Len: Uh, you know, I used to go twice a year. I’d go once in the summer for, uh, three or four days, and then, uh, it was a family thing. And I’m talking about, not, not the honeybee, I’m talking about the Penso family, my dad, my mom, and some cousins. And we’d, all the Italians, we’d all go out to Vegas and we’d take over for, you know, three or four days and then we would do it between Christmas and New Year’s. [00:59:10] So, and that was always fun. We would spend three or four days between Christmas and New Year’s in, in Vegas and just had a blast. Um, once I had, we had kids, no, really didn’t. And the HoneyBee’s not a gambler. So we stopped going after that. But I love Vegas. I love gambling. Nothing better than being at the craps table and you know, a hot craps table. [00:59:31] It’s just, oh my God, it’s so fun. It is so much fun. [00:59:34] Joe: That’s the game. Oh good. That is for me, maybe the only game that I like. It’s the only game I like because I do love the table where everybody is hollering and hot. [00:59:45] Len: Yes. Yeah. It’s gotta be a hot table, but nothing, there’s the comradery is just, it’s electric. [00:59:50] When it happens. It’s just fantastic. [00:59:52] Joe: I actually stood at a table one night where, you know, ’cause you can bet with the table for people that don’t know craps, we’ll get into it here in a second. But people that bet with the table, which is 99% of people, but I had these guys one time betting big money against the table. [01:00:06] Len: And you know what? They’re lucky they don’t get run out of the casino by the people, uh, the other people around the table. ’cause usually that’s. Bad mojo when people do that. [01:00:14] Joe: Everybody hated them. Yeah. And they loved being the, at the table. They were getting into it and they were winning. The table went cold and everybody left. [01:00:22] Everybody left. Yep. It was horrible. But I gotta tell you, did I ever tell you about how I learned craps? No. Tell me Joe. I used to give back when I was with American Express, I would have people, ’cause people own their own franchises, I would’ve advisors hire me to go speak for them. So I would come and, you know, I’m sure many people have been to the old, like rubber chicken dinners. [01:00:44] You know where you Mm-Hmm. Impress upon them how great you are. And so these advisors would put on these things and instead of them talking, they would send me up. And I was much better at talking about them and financial planning than they were just because I did it so often our number one advisor in the United States. [01:01:04] Had an office in Vegas and he was building that office. And so he hired me to come to Vegas, put me up in the Luxor Hotel. I didn’t gamble at the time at all, so I would just go, people watching. ’cause to your point, what a fun place to just walk down the street and see everybody. I mean the tube tops on some of these dudes or just, just amazing. [01:01:28] But there are a lot of people where I’m like, you probably shouldn’t be wearing that, but who am I to talk? Because people watch videos of me and they’re like, yeah, you shouldn’t Joe. It just, you got a face for radio. Anyway, one night, mark, one of the advisors in this practice goes, do you guys ever wanna learn craps? [01:01:48] And I said, heck yeah, because you walk through these casinos and people yelling, it’s always around the crap. It’s nowhere else. You never see blackjack people, I mean, every once in a while, roulette or blackjack, but not like the crap stable. Right. The whole table getting excited. So he said, because his assistant, Beth also wanted to learn. [01:02:10] He’s like, well, heck, the three of us, let’s meet like at nine o’clock. I think our seminar thing ended at like seven 30. Let’s just meet about nine o’clock. Let’s go to Excalibur. Which at that part of the strip had the cheapest tables. He goes, bring some money and meet me. And I go, how much money should we bring? [01:02:28] And being a guy that doesn’t gamble, I’m thinking [01:02:30] Len: five, $10. [01:02:33] Joe: Yeah, exactly. Do I do what my mom does and bring pennies? Can I bring like a, a, a mason jar full of pennies? [01:02:40] Len: Yeah. [01:02:40] Joe: He’s like, bring 200 bucks. And this is like 1998. And dude, I am so broke. I’m just, for people that know my story, I’m just trying to und dig myself outta this hole. [01:02:52] And gambling was against everything. I was finally getting some momentum and things were going the right way. I’m like, there’s no way in hell Cheryl, my spouse is gonna agree for me to take $200 out of the ATM mm-Hmm. To gamble it. So I did what any smart person did. I went to the ATM and I didn’t tell her. [01:03:13] Right, because that’s what smart people do. Just hide. Yeah, just hide. Hiding the stuff from your spouse is what all the marriage therapists say is the the thing to do. So I take it out and I’m nervous as hell. I’m like, oh, this is dumb. A hiding it. Dumb B $200 when you finally got momentum. Dumb. And I go, and I’m so nervous with this a and frankly, that much money in my pocket is something I’ve never liked. [01:03:41] Mm-Hmm. I know people that will casually have that kind of money on them all the time. I never do. Like never, never, never. So you [01:03:48] Len: gotta say though, Joe, when you play crap, you’ve gotta have a good bank role. I mean, you can’t play craps. Like you can play blackjack. Oh, $5 or $10 for No, you’ve gotta cover the, well go ahead. [01:03:58] But you need a bunch of money to play craps. Yes. [01:04:01] Joe: To your point, the standard deviation on the table is enough. A normal swing is enough that if you only come with $10 or $20, you’ll just get wiped out in a normal swing. You’ll be Oh [01:04:11] Len: yeah, [01:04:11] Joe: yeah. Even if the table’s hot, you’ll get wiped out. [01:04:14] Len: Yeah. You need a bankroll, a good one. [01:04:16] Joe: So I, uh, and this was a $5 table. It was at the time, the only $5 tables on the, on the south end of the strip. So we go to Excalibur, mark meets, I see Mark and Beth standing there. And the three of us have been friends for a long time. We’re gonna have fun. But he walks us over to a craps table. We find one that has a little space. [01:04:37] We stand back at first though, and Marcos, okay, do you guys want the, you guys wanna know how to learn crafts? Like Yes, absolutely. He goes, you wanna know the quick way or the long way. And you know, Len, what would you say if somebody’s teaching you crafts? You want the quick instruction or the long instruction? [01:04:55] Len: Yeah, just the quick, yeah, just gimme a quick one. Say seven 11, you win, you know, two in, oh, no, no, no. 12. You, you, you lose. And mark cut to the chase. [01:05:03] Joe: Mark said, okay, here’s the quick version. You see the guy with the stick? I said, yes. Beth said yes. He said, take your $200 and hand it to him. ’cause that’s where it’s going. [01:05:19] My my, oh no, I shouldn’t be do this. Turned into, oh, there’s no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And so we’re like, okay. The long way. So then he tells us how to play, you know, six and eight. Yeah. And how to, how to really play conservatively. Yeah. The fact that it’s still not in your favor, but when it is that, um, you know, you get a little lucky, you might be able to win. [01:05:46] ’cause the odds are close enough in your favor that I’ve got a, you might be able to get some money. [01:05:50] Len: I’ve, I’ve got a little system. It’s not, it’s not foolproof. It’s obviously, ’cause I’m, I’ve never made a ton of money playing crabs. I’ve always usually lost or broke even. But, you know, there is a system you, you can play where you can just stretch it out for a long time and have a lot of fun. [01:06:03] And if the table gets hot. You make money, but you know, if you just throw the seven, you know, put your money on the comm line and then if it doesn’t come up, seven 11, say it comes up a six or an eight or a four, you know, and then they move that money to those numbers, right? Yeah. 4, 6, 8. And you play that. [01:06:18] You keep playing that. As long as they don’t, the roller doesn’t crap out. And this is what I do until there’s three of those numbers up. Could be six, could be eight, could be 10, could be four, and then you just sit there and wait until one of those, those numbers hit, or the seven, well then you don’t want the seven or 11, but. [01:06:34] That’s how you play. You just play until it comes out. You have the, the thing can’t, you have the whole board covered and uh, it kind of extends your playing. You know, you’re not gonna get rich, but it’s, it’s fun. And hey, if, if the table gets hot, oh my god, there’s nothing better. There’s nothing better than being at a, a table that’s hot and fun, my God. [01:06:52] Oh, it’s so fun. So fun. I can’t tell you folks how much fun it is when you’ve got a hot roller. It’s just amazing because you got the huge [01:07:01] Joe: dopamine hit every time. Yes. It’s dopamine for sure. That hits your number. You’re like, I just made $35 on a single roll. It just, I can see why gamblers anonymous is a thing, because if I was seriously into it, it, I can see why this could be a problem for somebody. [01:07:17] And the [01:07:17] Len: Energy’s electric, isn’t it? Electric? It’s just electric when it’s hot. Oh my God. Until, and that, until that roll keeps going, until that roller finally throws that seven, or, or it, it’s just, just a main, when that’s seven finally comes and the crap out, it’s like, ugh. It’s like, but yes, you know, usually I’ve, I’ve been at tables where the roller gets an ovation and it’s so much fun. [01:07:35] Just, just, oh boy, Joe, we’re gonna have to go play crops one day. We’ll have to go out to Vegas and play some crap. We’re gonna have to, [01:07:41] Joe: I gotta tell you that first night I made 70, I made, I didn’t make, I did, what’s the word for? I, I, I gained, I guess. ’cause it wasn’t me. Uh, $70 on my 200. [01:07:53] Len: You know what, if I break even, I consider it a win. [01:07:55] It’s just fun, you know, just having an evening of fun. If you can play the evening and break even. You won. Plus you got all the free drinks and what have you. [01:08:03] Joe: Dude, I had the horror story. So then I did this thing the next time I was out there. I didn’t have to go on stage until like, uh, 5 30, 6 o’clock, maybe six 30. [01:08:14] And so I’m there in the middle of the day. I’m like, Hey, let’s go down to the crap table. And I got 70 bucks again. Sure. And then the next time they hired me, I went in the middle of the day. I got like 80 bucks. And generally, by the way, when I get to 70 or 80, I just stop. I’m just like, I don’t care what’s going on. [01:08:29] I’m just gonna lock this in. Well then I’m back in Detroit one night and I’m at the casino in Detroit after a hockey game. I remember who I was with, but I was with some friends and I’m like, Hey, let’s go play craps. ’cause this game’s easy. ’cause I like win 70 bucks every time. So I take my $200 out, Len, it’s gone in like four minutes. [01:08:49] Len: Yeah, it can happen. It was gone. You can have a cold table, just as you know, probably more so than a hot table. But yeah, that it, if the dice are cold, yeah, you can lose your money fast. [01:08:58] Joe: Well, here’s the lesson. This is the Karma thing. The karma thing is then, because that never happened to me and because I was in my head really good at this and I knew the answer and there was no way I could lose money, I was like, no, no, no. [01:09:11] This is, I’m a winner. This is not it. I went and took out $200 more. Oh [01:09:15] Len: no you didn’t. And I lost. Oh no you didn’t [01:09:19] Joe: in another 10 [01:09:20] Len: minutes. Oh yeah, yeah. Bad. That’s bad. And [01:09:24] Joe: then I realized that, uh, yeah, [01:09:26] Len: luck. That’s when you go to the buffet table and, and uh, you know, call it a night. [01:09:33] Joe: Well, I called it a year. [01:09:34] ’cause like I’ll play craps like once every three years now. I’m like, yeah, uh, we’ll have to do that, Joe. Seriously, one of these, we’re gonna have to do that. That’ll be so fun. Oh my goodness. That’s fun. And I do to say this before you say goodbye, I like craps actually better in the middle of the day. [01:09:47] Because you’re playing with these old locals. I find a table with older men and women who look like they work in the industry and they’re just on their time off before their shift or after their shift. They just stop at the craps table letting these people know what they’re doing. Yeah, and I feel like every time I’ve, I’ve played craps in the middle of the day with a table of these crusty locals. [01:10:12] Things go really well. When I have gone then, since I know better, at 11 o’clock at night and there’s a drunk person walks up to the table and throws money down and they grab the dye and they start like madly shaking it. Mm-hmm. You’re like, oh, there goes my money. [01:10:27] Len: Yeah. It is funny how you can say it’s like, oh no, not this person. [01:10:30] Don’t, don’t let this person roll. Yes, I know the exact feeling. Yes. [01:10:33] Joe: Yeah. So I avoid playing at night. I avoid playing when I’m drinking. You know? I, I feel like I’m gonna lose money either way. I’d rather be sober. I’d rather, ’cause I’m not gonna do dumb crap with it. But anyway. Well, let’s do that. Yes, absolutely. [01:10:48] Len: That’ll be fun. Let’s get the [01:10:48] bit: hell outta here, Linda. [01:10:50] Joe: Lets go.
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