Three Stackers call into the basement today with three very different problems, but they all boil down to the same uncomfortable question: what do you do when the “obviously right” financial move doesn’t feel right? A generous employer match paired with fund choices you’re not thrilled about. A tax bracket so low it seems wasteful not to convert. A life that just took a turn nobody expected, and a whole new set of financial tools nobody teaches you about until you need them. Joe, OG, and Anna Allen tackle all three with real, usable answers.
What You’ll Walk Away With
- Why turning down a five-figure employer match over fund quality concerns is almost always the wrong move, and the workaround that fixes it anyway
- The real difference between an actively managed fund and a passive one, and why “active” isn’t automatically a red flag
- A little-known 401k feature that can give you far more investment control without giving up your match
- How to think through a Roth conversion when your income, your future tax bracket, and even the state you’ll retire in are all still unknown
- The single mistake that quietly wastes a Roth contribution opportunity for good, since you can never get that calendar year back
- What an ABLE account is, and how it’s different from a 529 in a way that matters enormously for a family navigating a new diagnosis
- Why a special needs trust often gets layered on top of an existing estate plan rather than replacing it, and the questions worth asking an attorney before that meeting
Why This Matters Now
Good financial advice usually comes with fine print that nobody mentions: what to do when the textbook answer doesn’t quite fit your actual life. A workplace retirement plan with mediocre fund choices, a temporary low-income window that might not last, a family circumstance nobody could have planned for. The goal isn’t finding a perfect answer; it’s understanding the real trade-offs well enough to make a confident decision and adjust as life changes. That’s true whether the stakes are a few hundred dollars in fees or a lifetime of care for someone you love.
From the Basement
A Financial Action Month detour into meal planning turns into a genuinely useful AI-assisted grocery hack, plus a spirited debate over Aldi loyalty and the eternal question of what actually counts as a proper turnover pastry. Some debates never get resolved in the basement, and that’s exactly as it should be.
Resources Mentioned
Yell Down the Stairs — submit a question for a future episode
Stacking Benjamins Field Kit — the all-in-one budgeting, net worth, and subscription tracking tool
Stacko Financial Action Month board — the interactive game with a money move for each square
Three Money Buckets video — Stacking Benjamins’ YouTube Financial Basics course
Doug’s Trivia
- On the day President James K. Polk signed the act creating the Smithsonian Institution, how many times had James Smithson visited the United States before leaving his fortune to the country?
Have a question for the show?
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Other Mentions
- Stacking Benjamins Field Kit – Find your path to stronger finances
- Have a question? Yell it down to us! – Stacking Benjamins
- Free Personal Finance Cheat Sheets
- Stacking Benjamins Basement: Your Guide To Better Money Habits | Facebook
- Get on Anna and OG’s Calendar
Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when Len Penzo is BACK with his famous school lunch sandwich survey. How much has the price of baloney gone up? Or the bacon in that BLT? We’ve. Got. Answers.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: What a Bad Boss Is Actually Costing You (SB1881) | Stacking Benjamins
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] opener: I mean, you’re living in your mother’s basement writing a blog on finance. Really, you should stay off the computer, son, and get a job. Seriously
[00:00:13] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement, it’s The Stacking Benjamins Show
[00:00:27] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s show, let’s move the spotlight off me because, baby, today it’s on you. We’re answering your questions on dumping your 401, setting up money for special needs situations, and converting your money toward Roth IRAs. And if that weren’t enough, we’re pulling another idea off the Stacko game card to help you win during Financial Action Month.
[00:00:53] Doug: And speaking of action, halfway through this festival, I’ll spring into action with some mind-bending financial trivia sure to impress your friends, neighbors, and colleagues. You’re gonna be famous. And now, two people who famously one time found themselves starting a financial podcast, and a third person who’s here to save it.
[00:01:15] Doug: It’s Joe, OG, and Anna L-L-L-L-L.
[00:01:22] Joe: Hey there, stackers. Happy Monday to you. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. I know that I did, and I know these people are all ready at the microphone. First of all, the gentleman across the card table from me, Mr. OG, is here. Ready to do another week, man?
[00:01:39] OG: Ready to do another week, man. Yep.
[00:01:41] Joe: W- w- we have
[00:01:45] Anna: That’s the spirit.
[00:01:46] Joe: He’s … So it’s,
[00:01:47] Doug: it’s week with two E’s, right?
[00:01:49] OG: Sure.
[00:01:50] Joe: He’s like, E-E, E-A. Who’s counting? Who knows? Uh, and of course, the other voice you hear, the one we hear the- I was told to be
[00:01:57] OG: nice today.
[00:01:59] Anna: And we can really sense the change in attitude. This is me
[00:02:02] Doug: being nice. Yeah. We tell you that every day, and it never works.
[00:02:06] Joe: Wanna go from 15% to 18% today, ’cause it’s gonna be good. Anna Alum’s here. How are you, Anna?
[00:02:12] Anna: I’m good, Joe. How are you doing?
[00:02:14] Joe: I am better now that you’re here with us. You ready to answer some listener questions?
[00:02:18] Anna: Yeah, let’s hear ’em.
[00:02:19] Joe: We got some stackers that have some great questions. By the way, if you wanna leave your questions for us, head to stackingbenjamins.com/yelldownstairs, and you can yell your question down the steps to the basement and we’ll be happy to answer them on a future show.
[00:02:34] Joe: And some of you did today, and man, Doug, as you mentioned, we’ve got some great ones today.
[00:02:39] Doug: We do. Yeah. I’m looking forward to these. I c- I’m waiting for the person who literally yells down the basement, “Hey, Ma, meatloaf.”
[00:02:48] Joe: That’s all you gotta do. Yeah. That’s all you gotta do. We’ve got a couple sponsors who help us make sure we can keep on keeping on.
[00:02:54] Joe: We’re gonna hear from a couple of them now, and then we’re gonna hear from a couple while you’re contemplating Doug’s cleverly worded trivia halfway through today’s extravaganza, Monday festival, here on the podcast. We’re gonna hear from a couple of them now, and then Anna, OG, Doug, and I tackling your questions.
[00:03:14] Joe: Let’s do it. Well, I love the fact that I can finally say these words, stackers. The Field Kit is ready. So if you have always wondered, what’s a place where I can combine all these financial apps into one simple place, my budgeting app, my net worth tracking app, my privacy protection app, my subscription app, and the app that I use to make sure that my credit is not being stolen all in one place, Field Kit does all that.
[00:03:45] Joe: You wanna spend your time exploring, stackers, not worrying about your money. Field Kit takes care of all that. Stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit. And if you get the 201, our newsletter, you’ll also find out we’re gonna be doing some walkthroughs, so you can take a look at it. Head to stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit for more.
[00:04:11] Joe: We got stackers lined up ready to ask some questions. Let’s start off with our good friend Shane. Hey, Shane. What’s going on, man? Hi. I’m
[00:04:22] caller: calling because my wife and I aren’t satisfied with the investment options in her four oh one K. I understand the traditional advice in this situation is to at least invest the minimum to get the match and then just put the rest in your brokerage. However, my wife is very well compensated, and contributing the minimum to get the match actually maxes out the four oh one K.
[00:04:41] caller: Match ends up being around twenty thousand dollars, which is great, but then we have to find somewhere to actually invest all this money. Her four oh one K is through T. Rowe Price. It’s not the fees that give us pause, but the prevalence of active funds without broad diversification and with turnover rates generally greater than fifty percent, including one with a whopping two hundred and thirty.
[00:05:00] caller: The index offerings are all Spartan Index Pools, which I understand are collective investment trusts. I’ve found it hard to find information about their holdings, and I can’t speak to the bonds ’cause we’re a hundred percent equities. So my question is that the four oh one K prospectus offers a self-directed brokerage through a Schwab Personal Choice Retirement Account.
[00:05:20] caller: I’m a bit unnerved because this sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. It says they’re gonna charge us about fifty bucks a year. Uh, but is that gonna be the only fee if I stick to something simple like ETFs? And I can’t find a list of the investments available in this type of account, but the prospectus does say that the plan may limit the investment alternatives we may purchase in the brokerage account but provide some further details.
[00:05:43] caller: Is this oddly what I’m looking for? Thanks.
[00:05:47] Joe: Shane, thanks so much for the question, and congratulations, by the way, on having a 401that you can actually use, although it sounds, OG, like he’s not in love with, uh, the choices. But let’s go through some of this because T. Rowe Price, a responsible company, he said fees are…
[00:06:05] Joe: You know, he’s not that worried about the fees, but he is worried about the fact that they’re active funds, and he’s worried about the turnover. Can we talk first of all about the turnover? Because frankly, I don’t think turnover really matters inside a 401, does it?
[00:06:20] OG: I thought he was talking about, like, apple or cherry turnovers.
[00:06:24] OG: Oh. And I would 100% agree that the turnover matters when you’re talking about fruit.
[00:06:31] opener: Wait a minute. Hold on, hold on.
[00:06:34] OG: I’m okay with either apple or cherry.
[00:06:36] Doug: No. I’ve
[00:06:37] OG: never had a peach one, but I’m kind of a fan of peaches, so…
[00:06:41] Joe: Millions of peaches. Peaches for me.
[00:06:42] Doug: There’s…
[00:06:43] OG: D- I was told to be nice, Doug. Don’t shake your head back and forth- There’s
[00:06:46] Doug: only…
[00:06:46] OG: No,
[00:06:46] Doug: I’m disagreeing with
[00:06:47] OG: your- … because
[00:06:47] Doug: if I
[00:06:47] OG: actually talk about what I wanna talk about, I’ll get yelled at for being mean.
[00:06:50] Doug: Your fruit choices are wrong. There’s only one kind of turnover. It’s an apple turnover. None of the others are allowed.
[00:06:56] Joe: Okay.
[00:06:57] Anna: And why is that, Doug?
[00:06:59] Doug: Because it’s the only one that’s good.
[00:07:01] Doug: The rest of them are just imposters. There’s no cherry turnover.
[00:07:05] Joe: In this case, let’s talk about what turnover actually means, which is something completely different. A turnover is the number of times that a manager will sell a position. If turnover’s 100%, that means that 100% of the slate gets wiped clean.
[00:07:20] Joe: They’re buying all different stuff, which means that if you’re in a taxable brokerage account, that, you know, your tax obligation on that might be, could be potentially hefty. But inside of a 401, turnover isn’t something that we generally pay a lot of attention to because of the fact that- There’s no friction.
[00:07:42] Joe: Yeah. There’s no tax friction on, on this position.
[00:07:45] OG: This, uh, whole idea of, uh, active versus passive thing I think goes to an extreme. It’s just not a hill that I wanna die on. We get saved here because of the PCRA account, which I’m sure Anna can talk about. But to entertain the idea of not getting… Did he say he gets a $28,000 match?
[00:08:04] Joe: He gets a $20,000.
[00:08:06] Anna: Yeah. He doesn’t get anything. His sugar mama gets it. Let me just clarify that. Okay.
[00:08:11] Joe: Okay.
[00:08:12] OG: I like
[00:08:12] Joe: where
[00:08:12] OG: this is going. So to entertain the idea of giving up $20,000 because I’m not enamored with, you know, the fund choices, I think is absolutely insanity.
[00:08:24] Joe: Well, he’s still gonna do it. He’s just looking at the self-directed brokerage, which we’ll get into
[00:08:28] OG: later on.
[00:08:28] OG: No, I’m saying, like, I, I know, but that’s why we get saved by that. Yeah. But it sounded like at the beginning it was, you know, the question was like, “I might not do this because, you know- Oh, yeah. Right … I don’t like the options.” Right. You know? And he said, “Well, the, usually it’s just get the match, but the match in our case would be 20K.”
[00:08:44] OG: The other thing that I think might be worth exploring here is, um, it sounds like the missus here is fairly highly compensated, maybe high up in the organization, maybe has a little weight behind an email or two to the HR department and go like, “Hey- We don’t love these choices. Like, what are we getting out of this deal?
[00:09:02] OG: Can we, you know, can we entertain a- another proposal? And maybe the company’s big enough to entertain a couple other proposals from some other companies as well. So that would be something, you know, like a longer term process, you know, if you’re so hellbent on getting rid of T. Rowe Price. Active management, passive management, this is a 5% solution thing, right?
[00:09:21] OG: Like, this is the thing that matters, like, that much in the overall outcome of your lifetime goal. So don’t get hung up on that. Don’t get hung up on the fees, although, you know, they can be pricey in a retirement plan. Th- there was another question that I saw that somebody asked about. Look, these things cost money to maintain.
[00:09:41] OG: You know, there’s actuaries, there’s f- tax forms that have to get filed timely. There’s people that literally are signing off on it with the threat of jail time saying, “Hey, if this isn’t right, you are subject to, you know, criminal prosecution.” So there’s a lot of liability associated with making sure that these plans are designed correctly and executed correctly on an annual basis.
[00:10:03] OG: Somebody’s gotta write the check for that. And when you’re in a small organization, a lot of times that gets passed on to the participants because the owner has a choice of, do we have this tool and we all kind of collectively pay for it, or do we just not have the tool? ‘Cause I’m not gonna spend thousands of dollars on my own to do this.
[00:10:22] Joe: Which means then, rightly so, people like Shane then, let’s say that it was high fee, and I understand, Shane, that we’re not talking about you here- Yeah … because you said the fees are not an issue, and I would generally T. Rowe Price- Yeah, T. Rowe
[00:10:32] OG: Price is
[00:10:32] Joe: reasonable.
[00:10:33] OG: Yeah.
[00:10:33] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. But for people that have that, I think it’s right for them to think, “Well, what if I don’t invest here?
[00:10:40] Joe: Let’s go elsewhere.” However, when we look at two things, when we look at the cost of not putting money in a 401, your options outside of there, OG, not phenomenal. And then number two- In terms of
[00:10:53] OG: taxes …
[00:10:54] Joe: in terms of taxes, not phenomenal. And then what’s the benefit, like, in terms of real dollars that you get from that, but second also behavior, right?
[00:11:02] OG: Yeah.
[00:11:02] Joe: It’s just so much damn easier to put money in your 401.
[00:11:06] OG: The reality is, is that the vast majority of people would not save a penny if it wasn’t automatically taken out of their accounts on a frequent basis. So the fact that it comes out of your paycheck before you get it is for a lot of people, and I’m not saying that this is true for Shane and his family, but for some people, like, that’s the only savings that’s happening is because it’s coming out automatically, you know, before I get that net paycheck.
[00:11:28] OG: Uh, if you are gonna play that game of like, “This is too expensive, and I’m, I’m just gonna invest a little bit and save the rest elsewhere,” make sure you’re actually doing the saving elsewhere because statistically you won’t do it, you know, because life happens. Ana, do you wanna talk about PCRA option?
[00:11:43] OG: Sure. And what that looks like in, uh, in this guy’s case or anybody’s case for that matter.
[00:11:47] Anna: I think it’s a great option that you have that as a, as a savings tool instead of just the straight 401option. So I think some of the questions along with that Basically, some 401ks, and you have to check with your plan to see if you have this as an option, will offer you a separate account where you can basically take the money, and you might have to keep some money in the regular 401k bucket, but you can take some money and put it into this brokerage account.
[00:12:18] Anna: It’s still your 401k, but you manage it. You have a lot more options, if not almost unlimited options in what you wanna invest. So I think that answers one of Shane’s questions. Like, they typically aren’t gonna give you a list because the list would be-
[00:12:34] Joe: Ginormous …
[00:12:34] Anna: massive. Yeah. It’s
[00:12:35] OG: everything. Yeah.
[00:12:36] Anna: It’s everything.
[00:12:37] Anna: They just might limit you on, like, some alternatives and other things like that.
[00:12:40] Joe: And when they say they limit you, Anna, historically what they limit you on isn’t the vanilla choices, like-
[00:12:47] Anna: No …
[00:12:47] Joe: a straight up ETF. They’re not g- They might not let you do the Wisdom Tree 3X-
[00:12:52] Anna: Leverage …
[00:12:53] Joe: leverage thingy. Yeah. You know, where you’re really betting more than investing.
[00:12:57] Anna: Yeah, exactly. So you’re gonna be able to find the Vanguard or Fidelity funds that you wanna invest in. That will, that’s not gonna be a problem, which sounds like what he’s looking for You might have to keep some money within the actual 401into the funds that you don’t like, but hopefully OG made that feel a little bit better.
[00:13:16] Anna: And then you can take a portion of that and put it over into the brokerage account. Now, along with the fees, you should call them and ask what are there trading fees involved with this. Obviously you’ve already found out that there’s some sort of platform fee involved. There’s gonna be an expense ratio within the ETFs, but again, you probably already understand that.
[00:13:34] Anna: But other than that, you could just call them and ask, like, what fees are involved in using this brokerage
[00:13:39] Joe: platform. But generally speaking, in the past, Anna, to me it’s been that $50 fee to use it. Mm-hmm. And then the expense of the investment. There it is.
[00:13:46] Anna: Yeah, especially if you’re working with Schwab, more than likely that’s really all you’re gonna see.
[00:13:51] Joe: Super, super easy. I do have a question, Anna, for you about these, uh, ’cause he s- he said the Spartan indexes, which are more collectives and he can’t find them on Morningstar as easily, but my understanding about these indexes are, ’cause he said, “You know, I, I really don’t know what I’m looking at.” If it’s a Spartan S&P 500, you have the S and P you have the- Yeah
[00:14:12] Joe: Spartan
[00:14:12] Anna: S&P
[00:14:12] Joe: 500.
[00:14:14] Anna: They’re just not showing you all of the details within Morningstar, like it’s not gonna be on there. You might be able to find it on their website a little bit more clearly. That might be a good option. But again, like, if you go the self-directed route, and it sounds like Shane understands the basics of how this functions, I don’t think you’re, like, I don’t think it should be a scary endeavor to go down.
[00:14:35] OG: Yeah, and for the PCRA account, super easy to set up and manage if you’ve got some capacity there and understanding of Schwab’s platform, and maybe you have to leave some money in the other side, you know, there’s some ratio there perhaps. The other thing I would add is this is a great use case for AI. If you don’t know what’s in a fund or how it works or whatever, put that into chat and be like, “Give me a primer” Doug’s not even listening.
[00:15:03] OG: Um- Yeah, I am.
[00:15:04] Doug: Well done. Well done …
[00:15:05] OG: I, I just feel dirty saying it that way. On what this is about. Like, you know, how, how do I know what’s in here? My goal is to be low cost, passive, market-based. Like, does this accomplish the goal? What asset allocation could I use with this, these tools? You know, whatever.
[00:15:19] OG: It’s a great use case for getting some research, some kind of deep research behind there, to find out what it is exactly that you are buying, uh, if you do have questions. But at least I’m glad Shane’s still putting money in his… Shane’s wife is still putting money in her 401, getting 20 grand of matching contributions.
[00:15:37] OG: Whew. That’s a lot of cash.
[00:15:39] Joe: It, it is a lot of cash, and it’s great that he is able to get that money invested fairly, fairly easily. And-
[00:15:46] OG: 45,000 a year …
[00:15:49] Joe: it’s nice.
[00:15:49] OG: Cha-ching.
[00:15:50] Joe: The self direct directed account is great. I think a great point, too, is if you don’t have that available, I wouldn’t be afraid of those Spartan funds
[00:15:58] OG: I wouldn’t be afraid of any of them.
[00:15:59] OG: Yeah. T. Rowe Price is a great company. I think the thin universe of obsessive Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagramming, probably not as much there, has just bashed this to the point where it’s like, “Oh my God, you’re going to the seventh layer of hell if you happen to buy a fund that’s…” You know, it’s like, come on, you’re fine.
[00:16:22] OG: These are all great people who are investing well and probably have a pretty decent track record, honestly.
[00:16:27] Joe: I was gonna say, yeah, T. Rowe Price funds generally very highly rated funds. Yeah. You can look them up in Morningstar.
[00:16:33] OG: Yeah, I mean, we could talk about this for hours, but people say the thing that they don’t mean to say and then treat it as gospel.
[00:16:39] OG: What they say is, “You can’t beat the market, therefore I have to go passive.” And the reality is, is that, no, people do beat the market. It’s not predictable in advance, and it costs them money to do, hence the little bit higher fee. So statistically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to pay the extra money to try to beat the market.
[00:16:58] OG: But every day somebody beats the market. You look at the stock market tomorrow, and whatever it does, you could look at your own account and be like, you either did better than it or worse than it. Rarely did you peg it exactly on the number. So guess what? On the day you did better, congratulations. You’re an active manager.
[00:17:13] OG: You did better than the market. Whoa, stop the presses. It’s doable. We just don’t believe that it’s worth paying for trying to do it. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. So, you know, if your options are T. Rowe Price or Fidelity, by the way, plenty of active funds at Fidelity. Schwab, plenty of active funds at Schwab.
[00:17:31] Joe: Active funds at Vanguard.
[00:17:33] OG: Vanguard, all of their bond funds are active. Who knew? You know, like, oh, wait, wait, wait. What are you talking about? Yeah. Surprise, everybody.
[00:17:42] Joe: Yeah. Great question, Shane. Thank you so much for that.
[00:17:45] OG: How did I do on being nice? Is that okay? Is that-
[00:17:47] Joe: I, I, I thought, Andy, he did pretty well.
[00:17:49] Joe: He was pretty nice on that one.
[00:17:50] OG: Plenty of velvet?
[00:17:51] Doug: It’s not as entertaining, but it’s certainly better for the listener.
[00:17:54] OG: Okay. All right. I’ll try to strike the better balance for you, Doug.
[00:17:58] Joe: All right. Let’s see if he can do even better as we chat with Kyle. Hey, Kyle. What’s on your mind?
[00:18:07] opener: Hi, Joe and OG. My wife has been in the military for twenty years, and we are stationed overseas.
[00:18:12] opener: She is forty-one and I am forty-four. I do not have a job right now, so our taxable income for federal taxes is in the twelve percent tax bracket. We are Nevada state residents, so we do not pay any state income tax. We are overseas for the next two to three years, and my wife may go the full thirty years in the military.
[00:18:30] opener: I currently have about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in a traditional IRA that I moved from a work 401k last year and have been thinking maybe I should convert that into a Roth IRA the next few years to the cap of the twelve percent tax bracket I have money in savings to pay for the conversion, but my question is would I be better served investing that money that I was going to use to pay the taxes for the conversion into my Roth IRA, or would I be smarter going with the conversion?
[00:19:02] opener: We do not know where and when we will eventually settle down, and it may be into a income tax heavy state. With military pension, social security, and possible funds from a second career, I am wary of a big jump in taxes, and then healthcare costs when we turn 65 from the transition to Medicare from TRICARE.
[00:19:23] opener: Thanks for your help. Appreciate it.
[00:19:26] Joe: Hey, Kyle. Thanks for the call, and thank you to your wife for her service. Anna, this is an interesting question because he’s got this money sitting in savings. He’s looking at the fact that he’s in a really low tax bracket right now, so this says Roth conversion time maybe written all over it because you’re going to pay the tax this year.
[00:19:45] Joe: For people who don’t know how this works, you’re going to pay the tax right now on that Roth conversion. There’ll be no penalty, which is really cool that the government lets you do that. Is he better served to just put that money in a new Roth, or to use it for the tax to convert money into a Roth?
[00:20:02] Anna: This is really hard because I, I don’t think Kyle can go wrong with either direction he goes in.
[00:20:10] Anna: Like you said, this is- Well, that’s the great
[00:20:11] Joe: answer, right- … Roth- … is that they’re both great.
[00:20:13] Anna: Yeah. And it’s also because we don’t know what the future looks like. We don’t even know what his future looks like. Like, he’s saying second source of income, are they moving back to the States, and he’s gonna get a job at that time.
[00:20:25] Anna: Like, his future is probably a little bit unknown, too. And on top of that, tax rates are also completely unknown for the future. So there’s a lot that you can do right now, and it could be more beneficial to do the conversion. It could be more beneficial to invest it. If you have to pick one, I would probably go down the route of converting if you have the mindset of in the future I’m gonna have extra cash flow, and we are gonna be able to do additional savings.
[00:20:54] Anna: But if you keep it in the pre-tax bucket and then you invest that, I also don’t think that’s a bad idea because then you’ll have those buckets. You’re gonna have the bucket system. I don’t know if you’ve listened to OG and I talk about how it’s important to kind of think about entering into retirement with these different buckets of savings.
[00:21:16] Anna: So you have your pre-tax, your 401, your IRA, then you have your after tax, tax-free, which is your Roth, and then also your brokerage account. It’s not bad if we enter into retirement and you have some money sitting in that pre-tax bucket. But let’s kind of shift our focus over to maybe the Roth at this point if we’re not doing that conversion.
[00:21:40] Anna: So again, I don’t think you can go wrong.
[00:21:42] Joe: Yeah, we talk about
[00:21:42] Anna: the three- OG, do you feel differently?
[00:21:44] Joe: Before we go to OG, we talk about the three money buckets on our YouTube channel. If you just go to youtube.com/stackingbenjamins, you’ll find it under the Financial Basics course. You’ll see a three money buckets, uh, video that you can watch where we dive into that.
[00:21:58] Joe: But OG, how do you feel about this one? ‘Cause I have a little different take than Anna does.
[00:22:03] OG: Well, I think that there’s two things with Roth conversions, just kind of big picture. Number one is you’re trying to decide whether or not the tax rate in the future is gonna be less than what you’re paying taxes on right now.
[00:22:15] OG: So if you have $100,000 in your IRA, I think that’s about what he said, and you can convert part of that and pay 12% taxes on that versus what that will grow to in the future and what the tax rates might be in the future with all of your income. That’s the evaluation that you’re doing, and you’re gambling and saying, “You know, I think in the future, tax rates are gonna be higher than what I’m paying right now,” which I think at 12% is pretty rational to say, especially when you forecast out, “Well, I’ll probably get some Social Security, you know, wife will have some pension, wife will have some VA disability,” although that’s tax-free, you know.
[00:22:50] OG: And then at some point in time we’ll have required minimum distributions and, you know, you can kind of run a spreadsheet and think about what that looks like. So I think at 12% is a pretty attractive conversion number. The only thing that’ll give me a little bit of pause is that the benefit of every calendar year is that every year anew you get 7,000 bucks you can put in your f- in your Roth.
[00:23:12] OG: And the downside is, is that on December 31 or when the taxes are due, I guess maybe April 15th, your, your 2026 in this case is over. You don’t get to go back and say, “You know, I finally have enough money to put money in my Roth again, so I’m gonna backdate and do the last… You know, get my 10 years’ worth of Roth contributions in that I didn’t have the savings for.”
[00:23:34] OG: So my concern with the skipping the contribution component is you never get to recontribute that money. And it’s the same math whether you’re putting 7,000 bucks in or you’re converting 7,000 bucks. Both are in tax-free buckets. In order to contribute $7,000 you had to have made 8,500 bucks to pay taxes on the, you know, $8,500 at 12% to have 7,000 left over to put in your account, or you convert 8,500 bucks- Make 8,500, right, by your conversion, and then you pay ta- You know what I mean?
[00:24:07] OG: Like- Yeah. Right … in my book, it’s the same math. I, my, my take on this would be to look at it a different way. Can you stretch and do both? You know, can you go like, “You know what? This is the one time where we are in this, like, ultra low tax bracket. We’ve got some money on hand. There are some tax benefits from being in the military and working overseas,” you know, potentially, depending on where you’re located and that sort of stuff.
[00:24:30] OG: You get some… You know, can I overdo all of this right now, really stretch and say, “This is a three-year opportunity to dump 14,000 bucks in my and my wife’s Roth and do a conversion. Can we just tighten it a little bit to make this work?” Uh, and I don’t know that that’s the case. I mean, the military, it’s not like these guys are getting paid like, you know, hand surgeons.
[00:24:51] OG: But I might turn this around just a little bit and look at the problem a different way and say, “Can I do both?” Or whatever. But I’m, I’m ultimately with Anna. Tomato, tomato. You’ll be happy that you have a bunch of Roth money in 20 years from now. Make it so.
[00:25:02] Joe: Yeah, and that’s why I said I had a little bit different take, ’cause I kind of felt the same way.
[00:25:06] Joe: That I would bias toward, I would bias toward the new money if possible. And then with whatever money there still is, if there’s money left, then convert as much as I possibly can because of that ticking clock, um-
[00:25:21] OG: Yeah. Could you be okay with, let’s say, for example, that you’ve got a cash reserve of $30,000.
[00:25:26] OG: Well, the most you can put in the Roth right now is 14, right? Between, you know, husband and wife, you can do 7,000 each, right? So that still leaves you, whatever that number is, $16,000 left for taxes. Can you burn the cash reserve down to kind of bare bones for the next two years? Y- you know, can you do all of this and just say, “Yeah, we’re gonna look a little tighter on paper than we should,” because you can always get your Roth money if you need it, right?
[00:25:50] OG: You can always do a loan from your TSP. That’s a terrible idea. But it’s, you know, there’s money still around. That’s my point. I think people look at these silos, just like Shane earlier, looks at these decisions in, like, one, one decision tree. It’s like, “This is my 401decision.” Well, no, all of this is your money.
[00:26:08] OG: It all counts.
[00:26:09] Joe: It all dovetails together. Anna, when you’re talking to a young investor, you know, Kyle put the money in as a traditional 401originally. Maybe that’s all he had available, and now he wants to make it a Roth. But a lot of people now, when they get out of college, they’re looking at, “Hey, I’ve got the Roth available right away.”
[00:26:26] Joe: Which one do you like better for a young investor? Do you, like, go Roth 100% if possible?
[00:26:32] Anna: Yeah, absolutely. If you are young and you’re starting out and- You have the ability to save into a Roth, and you’re educated enough to know what that is, ’cause that’s the other big thing.
[00:26:45] caller: Mm.
[00:26:45] Anna: If you’re investing into a 401, it’s your first corporate job, you might not even know that Roth is an option.
[00:26:51] Anna: But if you do, get it into the Roth now because there are times where we have conversations with clients when they’re into, well into their career a little bit more, or they’re approaching retirement age, they have that hefty Roth bucket, and we actually need to start switching them over to pre-tax. Or just start to do a combination of the two a little bit just because the, their taxes are so heavy they need some extra cash flow because, you know, they got daycare costs or whatever is coming through, college expenses.
[00:27:21] Anna: We need to open up some cash flow, so we start shifting over to the pre-tax bucket if we can. So it just gives you some of that flexibility in the future to then switch over to pre-tax so that you’re still saving, but you get a little bit more cash flow opened up with reduced taxes.
[00:27:39] Joe: Yeah, the Roth IRA is such a horrible name.
[00:27:42] Joe: I actually like the way the Canadians do it here with tax-free savings account. If it said tax-free 401, that’d be- Mm-hmm … that’d be so much better. Would love that. Kyle, thank you so much for the question. Love to hear what you decided. By the way, I would love to also hear, Shane, from you, if you wanna call back and, uh, tell us how you handled the 401, what you did.
[00:28:05] Joe: We love hearing success stories from people as they solve these questions that they have. All right. We’re gonna take a quick break right now because Doug is like, “Hey, when’s it my turn?” So we’re gonna give Doug the turn right now in the driver’s seat, and I go to him right as he fills his mouth with food- Peanuts
[00:28:22] Joe: which is exactly what we do here. Peanuts. And we’ll be back. We’ve got another question from Kat. Kat wonders about some special accounts for a member of her family, and I can’t wait to dive into what she asks. And for all those of you playing our Stacko game here for Financial Action Month, Anna’s gonna pick a square, and she’s gonna help you work through that.
[00:28:50] Joe: All right, that’s coming up in the second half, but Doug, what do we got, man?
[00:28:57] Doug: Hey there, Stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and you might not have known this, but on this wacky calendar Joe’s mom got me, it says it’s National Lazy Day. So I was thinking about having you, now, now, now hear me out here, write your own damn trivia question for once. Then Joe’s mom told me to remember my manners.
[00:29:17] Doug: So today we’ll let you be lazy again, and I’ll do the heavy lifting again. Here’s the question: on today’s date in American history, President James K. Polk, yes, there was a president with that name, signed an act creating the Smithsonian Institution, proving again just how much Americans love free stuff.
[00:29:39] Doug: But here’s the bigger question. The Smithsonian sprang from a gift from Englishman James Smithson, a scientist who left his fortune to the United States. How many times did Smithson visit the USA before leaving his money to us? I’ll be back right after I go ask Joe’s mom how much she’s leaving me in her will after coming down to the basement about 15 times a day.
[00:30:05] Doug: Seriously, some people are ladder climbers. She’s like a stair descender
[00:30:18] Doug: Hi there, Stackers. I’m your golden trivia voice and guy who starts every trip to Washington DC at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum because it’s just so cool, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. It was on today’s date in history that the Smithsonian came to be, donated by James Smithson, an English scientist who left his fortune to the USA.
[00:30:40] Doug: True story, the IRS demands that each of us leave a portion of our fortunes as well every April 15th, though that money doesn’t go in a museum. Why not? That’s another trivia question right there. For today, we wanna know how many times did Smithson visit the USA before gifting us all his cash? The answer: zero, which is why I feel comfortable saying yes to this prince in Africa.
[00:31:07] Doug: I don’t need to go to Africa to understand that he needs financial help for his friends, which apparently will somehow also make me rich as well. Bonus.
[00:31:16] Joe: You ever think about that, about just randomly gifting money to some country that you’ve never visited, some place you’ve never visited? Some podcast host.
[00:31:25] Joe: I know that’s on your mind all the time, I’m sure.
[00:31:27] Anna: Mm-hmm. Yep, definitely.
[00:31:29] Joe: You know what, Norway? I’m thinking about leaving all the Anna Allen money.
[00:31:35] Anna: I’ve been there, though.
[00:31:36] Joe: Oh, you’ve been to Norway? Oh, so you- Mm-hmm … couldn’t go.
[00:31:39] Anna: It wouldn’t count.
[00:31:40] Joe: No. All right. No. Well, how about, um, have you been to, uh, Taiwan?
[00:31:45] Joe: How about Taiwan?
[00:31:46] Anna: No.
[00:31:47] Joe: Oh. Well, there you go. Anna’s gonna leave all her money to Taiwan. You heard it here first. Yep. Yes. It’s in his
[00:31:51] Anna: will.
[00:31:53] Joe: Today… She’s like, “Hold your breath. It’s gonna happen right now.” What we’re not gonna hold our breath for is the next call, because we know it comes from Kat. Hey, Kat.
[00:32:03] Joe: What’s going on?
[00:32:06] caller: Hi guys, this is Kat from Ohio. I sent an email that you addressed on the show back in November of twenty twenty-four. At the time, I was excited to be expecting our second child and completing our family. A lot has happened since then as we found out a few months after our son was born that he has an ultra-rare genetic condition that affects neurodevelopment.
[00:32:23] caller: I think a realistic outcome for him would be a diagnosis of mild intellectual disability, autism, delayed but functional speech, and possibly the ability to work in a structured setting someday. This has presented some financial concerns I did not have previously. By the way, I want to put in a quick plug here that having grown my HSA over previous years has been invaluable.
[00:32:41] caller: While paying out-of-pocket and saving receipts for thirty years sounds like a great fun, using it for its intended purpose has helped to alleviate a lot of stress in a year that has proven to be the hardest of our lives. My real question is fairly broad, however. What can you tell me about special needs trusts and any other relevant accounts?
[00:32:57] caller: I have a meeting with our lawyer later this month to set up the special needs trust as we already have a revocable trust in place. Anything I should be aware of going into this meeting? Questions to ask? We received a monetary gift from a family member last year equaling thirty thousand that we decided to put in a high-yield savings account for our son until we understood where best to place the money for him based on his likely future abilities.
[00:33:18] caller: Our four-year-old neurotypical daughter already has roughly seventy thousand in a five twenty-nine account. We basically tsunamied her savings, so we wouldn’t need to contribute more in the future. Can I trademark that term? Anyways, we’d like to do something similar for him. Any advice on what to do with it?
[00:33:32] caller: Thanks for all you do
[00:33:34] Joe: Wow, Cat, that is a tsunami. She should be able to tree bark that.
[00:33:38] Doug: Yeah, I’ll look into that. I’ll look into that, Joe. The other thing I just wanna point out before I let Anna and OG dive into this is she is going through an incredibly challenging time. How positive and upbeat does Cat sound?
[00:33:51] Doug: Like, I am so impressed with… Like, I wanna be, I, I wanna be in, like, a sinking ship with her because she’s gonna be like, “Look, we got this. It’s all good.” Uh, she’s amazing. Listen to her voice.
[00:34:02] Joe: She’s doing so many things well, $70,000 in the 529 plan, money in the high-yield savings account. The HSA, and OG, let’s start there.
[00:34:11] Joe: You know, a lot of people go, “Oh, I can max out the HSA and just use it way, way, way later.” But to Cat’s point, HSA, using it now for its intended purpose can be quite a boon.
[00:34:22] OG: Yeah, if you don’t have anything to use your HSA money on, it’s fantastic to save the receipts for 30 years and, you know, so on and so forth.
[00:34:29] OG: I absolutely love the fact that when we go to the doctor or whatever, like, you just use H- it doesn’t, like, affect your budget. You know what I mean? Like, it’s… Like, it, it could, right? Sure. You could have a, a year where it does affect your budget, but, um, you know, I’ve talked to, on the show before about being able to pay cash instead of running it through the insurance, because the insurance costs a little bit more to do a something, and, and the cash price is always markedly less.
[00:34:58] OG: And having that, uh, HSA, you know, cash buffer that, you know, just 200 bucks
[00:35:05] Anna: and you’re done. OG, do you know what girl math is?
[00:35:07] OG: Yeah
[00:35:08] Anna: This sounds like girl math. It’s free money.
[00:35:12] OG: Well, it’s not free money ex- except for the fact that-
[00:35:15] Joe: We don’t call it, we don’t call it girl math here. We call it OG math.
[00:35:17] Anna: OG-
[00:35:17] OG: Yeah
[00:35:17] OG: OG
[00:35:18] Anna: math equals girl math.
[00:35:20] OG: Yeah. I mean, but like to Cat’s point- … it’s like if you’ve got 50 grand in your HSA and the market’s up 10% this year, you know, that’s $5,000 of free healthcare, plus you’re already putting, you know, if you’re maxing out the HSA, that’s another $8,500 that’s going in. So that $8,000 is spent regardless, right?
[00:35:42] OG: Whether you’re gonna spend it on healthcare or you’re gonna save it, like that’s in your budget, right? You’re saying, “Okay, I’ve got this money set aside for healthcare.” So it’s like that 8,500 bucks, if you’re maxing it out, and if, if you have 50 grand and then the market goes up another five, like you have $13,000 to spend on healthcare this year before you get into the 50 or you get into your cash flow or you get into…
[00:36:02] OG: You know? So when you have the ability to save money, frigging save it. Like this is a lesson that, you know, her story is, um, you know, is drumming home, right? It’s like I was able to save money, max out my kids, or not max it out but like really front load my kids’ uh, 529. That’s done. 70 grand for a four-year-old, you’re good, bro.
[00:36:24] Anna: Yeah, that’s crazy.
[00:36:25] OG: Yeah, you’re good.
[00:36:27] Joe: We’re gonna
[00:36:27] OG: do- You’re good. Yeah. We’re not gonna have to worry about money no more. I invested in a fruit company, and Mama said we don’t have to worry about money no more. You good.
[00:36:37] Joe: We’re gonna do two things for you, Cat. Number one, we’re gonna handle this from a financial planner standpoint first, and then we’re also going to ask Attorney Tim Sumrow about this one as well.
[00:36:48] Joe: But let’s dive into this, Anna. So- Tim’s in
[00:36:50] OG: Ireland. How are you asking Tim?
[00:36:52] Joe: Magically. Oh, okay. We’re gonna click our heels together three times. We’re not asking him today, I’m saying on our big week coming up where we’re gonna do contracts.
[00:37:00] OG: I see.
[00:37:01] Joe: I love that. So we’re gonna talk to him on our annual estate planning episode.
[00:37:04] Joe: Who decided to
[00:37:05] OG: invite him back?
[00:37:06] Joe: Yeah, I did.
[00:37:06] Anna: What if Tim just like popped in?
[00:37:09] Joe: Wouldn’t that be great? From Ire- Like 3G1 … live from Ireland right now. No, not today, but we will answer it today from a financial planning perspective. So there is a lot that she needs to be aware of, Anna.
[00:37:22] Anna: There is a lot, and as a mom of a kid who also has some medical stuff going on too, we have a good amount of…
[00:37:31] Anna: Our family has a good amount of experience with navigating this life. And so I understand where you are right now. Like, it is a lot to take in, a lot to process. And one of the biggest things, this is not a question that you had, but something that I would encourage you to start doing if you haven’t already is like talking to the clinic that you’re gonna be working with who specializes in this And talking to their social worker.
[00:37:58] Anna: They should have a social worker who can help you with a lot of the financial stuff, and these social workers have seen everything, and they know your state specifically. And the state that I’m in has the genetic condition that my child has, it qualifies that condition to children and adults with it get access to Medicaid.
[00:38:17] Anna: So from a financial aspect, all of our medical decisions do not revolve around money and, you know, if we go down this route and get this procedure done or this medication done. Like, we don’t think about any of that ever. So maybe that’s something that you should look into with your baby. And if you guys aren’t tied to that state, finding…
[00:38:37] Anna: I know a lot of people in our community move to states that have access to… Especially where I live, like we’re really close to state borders, and so people who live in one state might come over to our state just so that they can get access to this, and then their child gets access to these super expensive medications and treatments and all of that kind of stuff.
[00:38:57] Anna: So that’s one big thing that I think a lot of people who are s- first navigating this are starting to figure out is like what, what kind of financial resources do we have for the actual medical treatments of my kid. So those social workers are really, really great. The other piece of this is do we wanna talk about like special needs trusts and ABLE accounts and all that?
[00:39:21] Joe: Yeah. I was thinking maybe we talk ABLE accounts first-
[00:39:24] Anna: Okay …
[00:39:24] Joe: because this is a big thing that I think a lot of people also don’t know about is a resource.
[00:39:29] Anna: Yeah. So an ABLE account is, you can think of it similarly to a 529, but there’s a lot more flexibility in what you can use it for. You can use it for anything that’s gonna support your child and their development.
[00:39:46] Anna: So if they need housing, if they need like… This could be something that you’re saving for now so that when you are older and you want them to start exploring independent living and things like that, they have this financial resource that they can tap into, and it shouldn’t affect their other government support.
[00:40:08] Anna: So that’s the big thing with special needs trusts and ABLE accounts is these accounts are put in place so that if they’re getting disability income, if they’re getting Medicaid, any sort of government support around them because of their diagnosis, you can put these accounts in place so that the government can’t actually look at that and say, “Oh, you’re disqualified because of- Mm-hmm
[00:40:31] Anna: this account or because of these assets that you have.”
[00:40:34] Joe: Really important to understand how that works and to look into that, ’cause that, that’s a huge relief when people understand ABLE accounts, Anna, to be able to use that and put that in place. When you’ve looked at special needs trusts, though, with people, what are some of the considerations she should be talking to her attorney about?
[00:40:52] Anna: Since you already have a revocable trust in place, now your attorney’s gonna be able to tell you exactly what you should be doing. Um, but more than likely, you’re gonna layer like a special needs trust on top of the existing revocable trust. And then there’s two ways that they’re gonna basically activate the special needs trust.
[00:41:11] Anna: It might be s- activated now and it’s sitting as an actual trust today, or it might be activated upon you and your spouse’s passing so that that child, their proceeds from their inheritance sit into that special needs trust as opposed to sitting in a revocable trust where it’s then gonna be distributed out to them where it’s gonna impact again all of these other government supports So really the big thing with the special needs trust is having them explain to you like how all of this is gonna work.
[00:41:45] Anna: Number one, if your child does not have any sort of government support, they don’t have to activate the special needs trust upon your passing. They’ll make that decision to say, “Is this gonna be beneficial for them if we utilize this?” So you don’t have to utilize it in that moment. And then what is it protecting them from?
[00:42:05] Anna: So if we do activate this, we put money in here, what are they going to be protected from, from, um, their benefits, like past benefits, future benefits, all of that. How is this gonna protect them in that moment? So it’s really just understanding that picture for the child.
[00:42:23] Joe: I think an important piece just of a trust, and I think becomes even more important, Anna, is just thinking about the people that are gonna be involved if you can’t be there.
[00:42:30] Anna: Mm-hmm.
[00:42:31] Joe: And maybe that changes. Somebody that is great with one child may not be great with another child, and having a child with special needs may mean that you change who the custodian of your children would be.
[00:42:42] Anna: Mm-hmm. And changing, like this also flows into guardianship too. Like maybe if you did have two neurotypical children, like you would pick your sister, but in this situation, there’s more complexity and there’s more time that’s needed and more support.
[00:42:57] Anna: And the other thing I thought about with this question was insurance needs. Calculating insurance needs is a little bit different with you than it would be with another family. So that’s another thing to think about, like what does this child need in terms of support and what kind of life do you… And, and that’s gonna change as you see how they develop and they grow up.
[00:43:16] Anna: And so it’s just kind of like re-looking at this picture over and over again as they change and figuring out what, what needs they need.
[00:43:25] Joe: I think that that’s where I, I would begin is just what do you wanna have happen? If you’re not there, what would you like to make sure happens? And to your point earlier about flexibility, what do I wanna make sure doesn’t happen, right?
[00:43:35] Joe: Mm-hmm. That’s, that’s the other, what do I wanna guard against? Cat, thank you so much for the call. I’d love to hear how it goes with the attorney as well if you would like to call back and tell us how that meeting was. Was it a smooth meeting? Was it a bumpy meeting? Were there things you should have known that you didn’t know?
[00:43:52] Joe: Were there questions that you should have asked? Uh, I would love to hear about that. Uh, stackingbenjamins.com/yell downstairs for any of the people that called in today or anybody, uh, if any of you have questions for us. We’re gonna be doing these a little bit more often in the fall as, uh, we’ve got some juggling going on.
[00:44:12] Joe: It’s a great time for us to help you, so you can help us make some shows. And at the same time we can answer a lot of your questions this fall
[00:44:22] bumper: This is Rebecca from Connecticut. Instead of stacking Hamiltons and Jacksons, I’d much rather be stacking Benjamins.
[00:44:30] Joe: It is Financial Action Month here. You know, we have Financial Literacy Month, but what is learning worth if you don’t put it into action?
[00:44:39] Joe: So here in mom’s basement, we’re all about action and making sure we do the right things. And if you’re not yet playing our Stacko bingo game, head to stackingbenjamins.com/stacko and, uh, download your bingo game, and let’s see if you can fill up your bingo card with some great actions. And last week, OG, you talked about the subscriptions box.
[00:45:01] Joe: Anna, you’ve got our Stacko board in front of you. Which one are we gonna help our Stackers do today?
[00:45:07] Anna: Okay, I’m choosing meal plan and shop with a list.
[00:45:11] Joe: Oh.
[00:45:13] Anna: As a mama who’s meal planning every three days it feels like, that’s what we’re, we’re doing.
[00:45:18] Joe: Wait a minute.
[00:45:19] Anna: Are those two different boxes? I don’t
[00:45:20] Joe: have it open.
[00:45:20] Joe: No. I should have it open.
[00:45:20] Anna: No, it’s number, it’s number 22, meal plan and shop with a list.
[00:45:24] Joe: Yep, I got it here now. Okay. Well, let’s talk about meal planning. How do you meal plan?
[00:45:29] Anna: I’m sure, like, everyone who’s listening uses Pinterest or Google just to search different meal ideas. I also have, like, a list of just basic meals that are super, super easy, like your BLTs.
[00:45:41] Anna: I have another- Mm … like, egg roll in a bowl one that’s just so- Mm. Like, you know, it’s just those simple ones. You gotta add those in. I also use Chat, and I have a specific project within Chat. You know, in the instructions it says, “I need to make a, a dinner in under 30 min- like, under 20 minutes, really. This is what my daughter likes.
[00:45:59] Anna: This is what I like to try to feed her, if you can try to incorporate that into the meals. I don’t like raw red onions.” Like, it has those kinds of things in it, like, specific stuff so that when it gives me a recipe, I’m not having to read through it to be like, “Is this gonna include stuff that we don’t really eat?”
[00:46:16] Anna: It saves me so much time. So that’s what I’ve been doing recently on top of my, you know, Pinterest board or whatever. It makes it so much quicker, and I’m in and out of the store pretty quick.
[00:46:29] Joe: Ever since we interviewed Brian Sudduth, what, a year and a half ago, he’s Mr. Anti-Food Waste. They got down to the point that they saved…
[00:46:38] Joe: Th- they only threw away, I believe, $1.85 worth of food one year. Like, they ate- That’s really impressive. I know. They ate everything in the fridge. Cheryl and I are not that militant, but I love meal planning from that standpoint, too. Like, what’s in my fridge that’s going to go bad if I don’t use it today, and how do I round out that meal to make sure that I don’t have much food waste?
[00:46:59] Joe: And I, and I’ll tell you, the amount of money we spent on groceries has gone down by a full 20%. Wow. Because of the fact that we’re just eating everything that’s in the fridge.
[00:47:10] Anna: Yeah. I think the other thing is don’t be afraid to try out a grocery store that might be, like, a discount one. I grew up going to one grocery store, and always did that, and everything is expensive there, ’cause it’s a really nice experience, and my husband encouraged me to go to this other grocery store.
[00:47:29] Anna: You have to put a quarter in to get your cart. Aldi. You gotta bring your own bag. Yeah, I didn’t wanna shout them out, but –
[00:47:34] Joe: That’s fine …
[00:47:34] Anna: free, free advertising. I s-
[00:47:36] Joe: we’ve got an Aldi here. I never went to one. We had one, Doug, when I lived by you in Detroit. We had one there. I never went. I never went. People would call, would tell us about Aldi all the time.
[00:47:46] Joe: I never went. We got one here. I went immediately. That place is awesome.
[00:47:49] Anna: It’s amazing, not just for the savings, but the time savings. You are in and out of that store in 13 minutes. Like, it is so quick. Y- you don’t have options, so you might need to stop at the other store. But-
[00:48:03] OG: Well, we were gonna have burger, but I guess we’re having pork loin.
[00:48:08] Anna: Yeah. You gotta be flexible, okay?
[00:48:09] OG: No carrots. Uh, parsnips, though- … so we’re gonna go with that.
[00:48:13] Anna: It’s not that bad. It’s not that bad. They call it
[00:48:15] Joe: Hamburger Helper, but it works fine on its own, Clark.
[00:48:18] Anna: Yeah. It’s just if you need the fire-roasted tomatoes, you ain’t getting that at Aldi. You know what I mean? But you’re gonna get, like-
[00:48:25] Joe: Maybe you will.
[00:48:25] Joe: You might … but it depends. You’re, you’re rolling the dice on what- Mm-hmm … discounted products they have that week.
[00:48:31] Anna: But don’t be afraid to try it, ’cause I did, and for the last couple years we’ve been going there, and it’s amazing.
[00:48:37] Joe: My friend Mike, who knows that from time to time you’ll have people over at their…
[00:48:42] Joe: Heck, they’re the people in our, in our community that have a swimming pool, and as you know, OG, as the people with a swimming pool, like you gotta have people knocking on your door, going, “Hey.” And so Mike always has people over with the swimming pool in Texas. Do
[00:48:55] Doug: you really think OG has a lot of just pop-in visitors?
[00:48:59] Doug: Do you think he’s giving out that warm vibe, like, “Yeah, everybody’s welcome. Sure, come on over and hang out in my pool”?
[00:49:04] Joe: With that swimming pool of his? If I was his neighbor, I’d be there whether he wanted me or not. Like, I would be knocking on his door- … constantly. But, uh, just a beautiful pool at the OG residence.
[00:49:14] Joe: So anyway, so Mike at Aldi has made a list of wines, Anna, like the wines that don’t suck for $7 at Aldi.
[00:49:23] Anna: Our Aldi doesn’t sell alcohol. Oh. I
[00:49:26] Joe: didn’t even know
[00:49:26] Anna: that they did that.
[00:49:27] Joe: Yeah. That’s cool. Not the wines that are good, ’cause you’re not gonna find that at Aldi. Mm-hmm. But the wines that if you have friends over and it’s just a random Friday night and you’re out by the pool, like how can we make this not break the bank and be a lot of fun?
[00:49:39] Joe: So that- Anna,
[00:49:39] Doug: they’re in Texas. There’s no rules there.
[00:49:41] Anna: No. That’s
[00:49:42] Joe: right.
[00:49:43] Anna: We’re much more restricted in the North.
[00:49:45] Joe: The other thing we started doing, too, and I don’t know if you do this, Anna, but, uh, spices, like our spice rack, and w- we’ll buy these different spices or different, um, vinegars and stuff. Like, I’ll put that into ChatGPT.
[00:49:58] Joe: I’m like, “What goes well so I can use this-” Mm-hmm … so it doesn’t sit and go bad?
[00:50:02] Anna: Yeah. We do that. I’ve been doing that with my sauces, too. Like, all of a sudden I have these, like, chicken tikka masala sauces, and I’m like, “All right. What do you want me to do with this?” Or, like, some Thai sauce, and I’ll do the same thing with chat.
[00:50:13] Anna: I’m like, “Send a picture and give me a recipe for this.”
[00:50:17] Joe: OG, you and I talked about this. We did the clean out the freezer challenge just over a year ago. I thought that was gonna be, like, maybe three weeks. It took us a good two months of cleaning out the freeze, all the different things in the freezer before we went and bought new meats.
[00:50:31] Joe: I was surprised by that. I gotta do that one again, ’cause that’s starting to add up.
[00:50:35] caller: Mm-hmm.
[00:50:36] Joe: All right. There, we helped you filled in another square, Stackers. How did you do on that one? And if you wanna share what squares you’re working on, uh, go to our Facebook group, The Basement, and share.
[00:50:47] Joe: Stackingbenjamins.com/basement is the quick way to get there, or just put Stacking Benjamins Basement into your Facebook browser and you’ll find us. Big thanks to everybody who called in today. Thank you for helping us make today’s show. And, uh, thanks for the great questions. Just nice, diverse questions and showing our Stackers doing a lot of cool things.
[00:51:07] Joe: And all over the world, Kyle and his family, overseas, didn’t say where they are, but people listen to the Stack of Benjamins show in 48 different countries, and Kyle and his family’s in one of those. If you know somebody that has any of those issues that we talked about today, please pass this on to them.
[00:51:24] Joe: I’ve got a bunch of books that I need to get off the shelves here. So I don’t want you to give us a review in exchange for a book, but if you do give us a review, please write to me and tell me that you reviewed our show and, uh, help me get some books off my shelf. Because, uh, as people send me books, either trying to be on the show or people that, that we’ve had on as mentors on the show that have sent me books to prep for the show, I’d be happy to help you increase your financial literacy as well for you and in your community.
[00:51:55] Joe: Read the book, pass it around. Just send that to me, joe@stackingbenjamins.com. All right, we’re gonna turn this over to Doug. Doug, what should be on our list of takeaways after today’s show?
[00:52:05] Doug: Well, Joe, I struggled today a little bit. I was kinda down after toda- listening through today’s episode of questions. I, I struggled to come up with the top three things because it just…
[00:52:17] Doug: I mean, yeah, the questions that our listeners asked were good questions, but it was the way they asked them I didn’t love, Joe.
[00:52:25] Joe: Why is that, Doug? ‘
[00:52:27] Doug: Cause every single one of ’em said, “Hey, Joe and OG,” and not a single one of them said, “Hey, Joe, OG, and Doug,” or, “My question is for Doug.” Or Anna. There was no Doug mentioned anywhere.
[00:52:37] Doug: Like, I’m just not even here, so why should I even give, like, the top three things we talked about?
[00:52:42] Joe: They didn’t say Anna, either. Also
[00:52:44] Doug: a crime.
[00:52:44] Joe: By the way, thanks to Anna, before we say goodbye. Thank you so much, Anna, for hanging out
[00:52:52] Anna: with us today again. Thanks, Joe. Yeah. I’m happy to be here. It’s okay if they don’t give me any recognition.
[00:52:54] Anna: I get it.
[00:52:55] Doug: Would it kill ’em to say Joe and Anna and Doug and maybe OG? Would that be so hard? Little love for Anna and Doug, a little bit?
[00:53:04] Anna: Doug, you need to take a walk, take a lap. Wow.
[00:53:07] Joe: Yeah. You want something- would you like Anna to read the what should we have done
[00:53:13] Doug: today? Yeah, yeah. Let’s see what Anna’s got for the top three things we should have learned today.
[00:53:16] Anna: That’s not my job.
[00:53:17] Doug: She just gets to speak off the top of her head. Just all that knowledge she’s got just shoved in there. All right, here we go. Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our answers today to your questions that never mentioned Anna or Doug. That 401at work, maybe there are advantages just to using the workplace plan, and more good news, there’s little need to get fancy about how you use it.
[00:53:45] Doug: Second, special needs? Yeah, those deserve special treatment. Look into special needs trusts and ABLE accounts early, as Cat is, and you’ll tsunami your way toward better Benjamin stacking and preservation. But the big lesson, don’t propose to Joe’s mom that you start your own Dougsonian. First, I don’t think laughing should have been on the card of acceptable answers, Mom, and B, she apparently won’t be investing in the infrastructure required any time soon, according to her strongly worded certified letter she sent me.
[00:54:24] Doug: First off, sure, Cat, I’ll grant you that trademark on Tsunami Savings. And yes, I have the authority. You can pay me the $50 filing fee on your way out. Thanks to Shane, Kyle, and Cat, and everyone else for submitting questions. Wanna help us create a future show? Head to stackingbenjamins.com/yelldownstairs and leave your own question for the show.
[00:54:47] Doug: We’ll be happy to help, and you’ll help us make a show. There’s a win-win. And thanks to Anna Alam for hanging out with us today to answer your questions. Wanna learn more about Anna and OG? They’re taking clients. Head to stackingbenjamins.com/OG for their calendar. This show is the property of SB Podcast, LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.
[00:55:13] Doug: You’ll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
[00:55:32] Doug: This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamins show
Leave a Reply