Inspiring Financial Independence Stories and Lessons from Missteps (LIVE from CampFI Midwest 2025) SB1579

What does retirement mean in today’s world? For some, it’s no longer about quitting work for good, but about transitioning to something more purposeful and fulfilling. Today, Joe, Doc G, and our guests explore the many facets of retirement, purpose, and the balance between work and personal passion. Join us as we take you to CampFI Midwest 2025, where we’ll share stories from amazing Stackers on their journey to financial independence. Discover how Kristen finds community and purpose, Donna navigates major life transitions, and Tom redefines retirement with passion and flexibility. You’ll also hear Joe Saul-Sehy discuss misguided stock purchases, Chris’s investment in outdated tech, Kristen’s high-fee investments, Jordan’s tech stock downturn, and a humorous tale of timeshare regret. Tune in for actionable insights, personal experiences, and valuable lessons that highlight both the triumphs and challenges faced by even the smartest investors.

Topics:

Introduction and Setting the Scene
Campfire Guests and Trivia Contest
Doug’s Hilarious Commentary
Journey to Campfire and Minnesota Vibes
Inspiring Stories and Personal Growth
Kristin’s Journey to Financial Independence
Trivia Challenge Begins
Chelsea Brennan’s Bold Move
Guessing Game Tension
Doug’s Hitchcock Trivia Answer
Donna’s FIRE Journey
Financial Empowerment and Mindset
Tom’s Story and Retirement Insights
Lessons from CampFI
Dumb Money Mistakes That Smart People Made

Whether you’re planning for retirement or just looking for inspiration to find more meaning in your second half, this episode is packed with insights, laughs, and the wisdom of experience.

What You’ll Learn:

How retirement has evolved from leaving the workforce to finding purpose.
Why it’s important to fill your time with meaningful activities, paid or unpaid.
The concept of “strength to strength” and how it shapes a fulfilling second half of life.
Financial lessons and humorous stories from our hosts and guests.
How to avoid common money mistakes, and what to do if you’ve already made them!

FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/live-from-camp-fi-1579

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

Enjoy!

Stackers Kristen, Donna, Tom

Big thanks to Stackers Kristen, Donna, and Tom for joining us today and sharing their stories.

Doug’s Trivia

Hitchcock LOVED the work of composer Bernard Herrman so much that he doubled his pay on the film Psycho to how much?

Better call Saul…Sehy & OG

Write listener question here

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Other Mentions

Join Us Friday!

Join our roundtable discussion on Friday when we be diving into the topic of accountability.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Lobsters, Lincoln, and Financial Lessons (SB1578) (stackingbenjamins.com)

Episode transcript

STACK 09-25 Camp FI Live -steve

[00:00:00] And now we’re pleased to bring you our presentation

live from a retreat center near Minneapolis. That’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and have you ever seen those horror films where they’re at? Some retreat way out in the woods. Well, I’m not saying this place reminds me of that, but now who am I kidding? It looks just like one of those horror flicks. We’re all gonna die. Nah, I’m just kidding. On today’s live show, we welcome three camp fight guests who are making big strides in their lives.

We’ll hear their inspiring stories and more. Of course, we’ll stop midway through to [00:01:00] see which Camp Phi Camper can successfully nail my Twin Cities trivia contest. And now two guys who look a lot like those guys from Dumb and Dumber. It’s Joe and Doc Gene. Hey there, camp by.

Joe: Thanks a ton, Doug. And it doesn’t feel at all like we’re gonna get murdered. I, I, I don’t think Doug paid for a ticket. I don’t know how he slipped in here,

Doc G: but I don’t think he paid. How is he here? Duck G you’re here. How are you man? I am excited. This is my favorite Camp Phi. It’s in beautiful Minnesota and every time I come to this camp Phi, I just leave reinvigorated.

Joe: Are you just saying that to suck up to the crowd? Totally. A hundred percent. Because I remember a couple years ago, you’re like, oh, camp Phi Southwest. Totally my favorite. Totally my favorite.

Doc G: Yes. It’s, it’s, it’s [00:02:00] my favorite is always the one I’m with. Yes.

Joe: And on that note, on that weird note, yeah. So anyway, did you have a good time coming in?

You drove here ’cause you’re from Chicago.

Doc G: Yeah, it’s, it’s about a six hour drive. Uh, if you go 80 to 85 miles per hour now the speed limit is 70. And so what we learned in Chicago is. Speed limit plus 20 is okay. Yeah. Speed limit plus 25.

Joe: Not so much, but we’re in the Midwest like everybody’s like super nice, like when people are passing people they like waving at you.

Hello neighbor. No,

Doc G: no one’s waving at me.

Joe: No, I say you got too much Chicago in you. I think.

Doc G: Yeah, we’ve got a little bit of an attitude. People are nicer here in Minnesota. In fact, every Minnesota person I meet is like nice and cool and friendly. You betcha.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Well we got a great show man. We are going to do what I love doing at Campfire.

We’re gonna play stories that we often don’t get to hear on the Stacky Benjamin Show people [00:03:00] that are doing amazing things that normally don’t have a microphone in their face like you and I do. They’re gonna get to tell their stories, and you already know the stories that are coming. These are some powerful, powerful stories.

Doc G: Yeah. The thing about it is we’re used to listening to podcasts and hearing experts, but sometimes we don’t connect with experts. It’s actually people like us. We want to hear people are going through the same things that we are, and I think that’s the magic of getting this many people together. We’re collectively going through some of the same things, so these stories are gonna sound familiar.

It’s not gonna sound like someone far away who did something that you could never do. No. This is what we’re all going through at the same time,

Joe: but this is what we were talking about. My table just at dinner is that knowing that everyday people are doing some really, really cool stuff has given me the confidence.

In fact, it was funny at the start of Covid, Cheryl and I sold all of our possessions. We sold everything we had. She was going to take a job in Arizona and I was going to follow. Well, at first she’s like, you’re [00:04:00] doing here? She didn’t like what she was doing, so she’s like, I’m gonna go to Arizona. And then she said, you know, you really like it here in Detroit, so we’ll just meet up on weekends.

And I let that go for like a week and I’m like, you know, there’s a reason I like being married to you. Like I really like spending time with you and unless you’re trying to hint something to me that you don’t like. So I did something because of people like that are in this room that I would’ve never done.

I said, let’s sell all of our stuff. ’cause it’s only stuff, which is something that 10 years before that I would’ve went, who? What the hell? Like 10 year ago me would’ve gone, who the hell are you? Let’s sell all of our stuff. I’ll go where you are and we’ll just live wherever you’re working. I can podcast from anywhere.

And then while she’s looking for her next gig, we will go to that place. After Arizona, I decided we were gonna go to Bali. We ended up going to Bali, but this is a whole different story. We went to B, we were gonna go to Bali, and I booked a place in Bali and then Cheryl quit her job. I. And Covid hit, [00:05:00] we still were able to sell our house.

Finally, when they finally opened stuff up in Michigan, we were able to sell our house. Our house sold in three days first, and they were offers, all offers from day one, right houses off the market. In three days we had an estate sale. It was one of those deals where, you know, four people allowed my house at one time, all masked up.

And, but man, your stuff went quick. And if you ever want to feel bad about yourself and also know how little your possessions matter, when, when you take all this stuff that means something, quote unquote to you, and you see how little money you get for it from your state sale, I get as wild. So we sell all of our stuff and we, uh, we’re just waiting for one.

What Cheryl does requires a license. And so we’re just waiting by the car. House is sold, stuff is gone. The phone rings. There’s no job and we’re not moving to Arizona. But this is what’s cool about people in this room is it is because of stories. Like people in this room, we were already in a spot. We don’t need to work.

We can live [00:06:00] anywhere. We have a nice cash cushion. But it was the first aha I ever had. We literally, doc, we look at each other and we’re like, where do we want to go? Because we have nothing. We literally have nothing but each other. And so we lived in Vermont for a month. We lived in, and this is cool ’cause we we’re gonna talk about sabbaticals here.

What’s cool is, is that I learned that sabbatical’s great, but I am not a nomad. I need a house.

Doc G: No

Joe: hashtag van life. No hashtag van life. Yeah. Daniel, who’s here is gonna be doing van life and that’s totally not for me.

Doc G: You know, Joe, it was literally six years almost to this day. At this Camp Phi in 2018 that I developed the courage to leave my job after knowing I was financially independent for four or five years.

Whoa. But the reason why is I came here and met people like Leif dalene, physician on fire, who was in the process of doing it. And I met some other physicians and I met a bunch of people who had left their jobs. And the [00:07:00] thing is, and we all know this, it’s easy to calculate the numbers and say, I have enough money.

It’s easy to get your mindset to the point where you’re like, I can do this, but what’s going on in your mind and actually taking action are two separate things. Absolutely. That was one of the big things for me was I had to go and be in the place with the people. Yes. Who had had the courage to do this, to develop the courage myself.

Joe: The people in this room are the people that give me courage. Absolutely. Definitely. And it’s a great thing. And if you’ve never been to a campfire, you gotta come join us next time. But for this time. We are going to hear three stories from three amazing campers, but we also have some amazing companies that make sure this is free for everybody.

We’re gonna hear from them for just a second. We’ll be right back and we are back. Man, that felt like a long time, but I learned a lot. Thank you. Our sponsors. Thank you. They thank you so much. We’ve got three amazing stories. We’ve got a special edition of Doug’s [00:08:00] trivia, so let’s get this party started.

All right. Our first camper to kick this off, our friend Kristin, come on down. Kristen.

I feel like it’s like Kristen, come on down. You’re the next contestant. Guess what you want. What do I win? Yeah, you get to sweat. We’re gonna say I don’t sweat. We’ve got you

Doc G: cornered here. Okay.

Joe: That’s right. That’s right. Doesn’t it feel weird? We’re looking at you from both sides. Yeah. I don’t know which way

Kristen: to look guys.

We don’t need, I don’t know

Joe: if sitting you in the middle was a, was a great idea. I’m just gonna

Kristen: look at these guys. That that’s right. Blame it on Joe’s. His idea.

Joe: Uh, uh, the reason I wanted you to kick this off is you are somebody who started coming to campfires after I did. Mm-Hmm. But man, you passed me in a hurry.

You’ve gone more campfires that I’ve done. I just saw on Facebook that you, uh, you traveling with a bunch of friends you made here. Mm-Hmm. Let’s talk about this community doc and I talked about what the community means to me. How did you get. [00:09:00] Involved in this community. How’d you first hear about it? Okay.

And, um, what has it done for you?

Kristen: I grew up in poverty and I was frugal out of necessity. I taught myself as much as I could, as early as I could, because I looked around at my family and thought, this is not the life that I want. I gotta figure this out. So this is pre-internet. What do you mean by that though?

What were they doing that you did not want? It was just so much struggle, right? Creditors calling, making my mom cry. Like there was never enough money. It was, it was bad. It was bad.

Joe: Mm-Hmm.

Kristen: So I had a subscription to like Money Magazine and I learned about mutual funds and Wait, how

Joe: old are you when you have a subscription to Money Magazine?

Probably like 16. At 16 you read a money magazine? Yeah.

Kristen: Yeah.

Joe: Yes. What kind of weird kid were you?

Kristen: I was a numbers nerd. Yeah. I was always a math and science nerd. Right. Yeah. I also looked around and said, this is not gonna be my life. I’m gonna do whatever it takes. I’m gonna go to college. You know, else had, had gone to college in my family.

So I go through college, you know, working two jobs. Um, it took me like the next 15 years to dig out from underneath all of that debt, but I was not going to live that same life. Right. I was gonna do whatever it took. So I’ve been working as a meteorologist [00:10:00] for 28 years at this point. But, um, I have always been frugal, like I said, out of necessity and always was an optimizer and wanted to stretch my dollar as far as possible and, and.

You know, I, so I’m into travel hacking of course. ’cause I love, feel like I’m getting a deal on something. Well, wait a minute. Hold the,

Joe: yeah. But even before travel hacking, giving hand myself. Yeah, no, you and I are gonna talk about travel hacking. Just a second. Okay. But let’s talk about community. You said sorry, community.

No, no, no. But that’s okay. You mentioned making your dollar stretch. Yeah. And I know there’s tons of stackers out there going, okay, what’s she doing to make her dollar stretch? Give us some examples of things that you did to stretch that dollar further.

Kristen: You know, I, I’m fortunate, fortunately, a little further removed from this now because I finally got out from underneath all of my dad about 15 years ago and have been able to breathe for the last 15 years.

But I also just turned 50. So there was a lot of years of struggle where I’m stretching those dollars, right? Yeah. So, yeah, couponing, right? Always just trying to find the best deal, you know, shopping something all different sort of stores. Where can I get the best [00:11:00] deal? You know, buying older cars. Like all the things.

All the things we know the things, right? I, I, people here do, I don’t know. I can’t think of any. I, I’m fortunate that I’m far enough removed from it that I don’t have to do that as much now.

Joe: Yeah.

Kristen: Okay. So as far as the community goes, I had never heard of this movement. I’d never heard of Fire Phi, anything like that.

And in 2018, a dear friend of mine who had discovered Mr. Money mustache, mentions this to me, mentions fire to me. And I was like, oh my gosh. So resonated just immediately really, really deeply. So I immediately start going down all the rabbit holes, reading our, what does that resonated?

Joe: Were you thinking about quitting your job?

Because,

Kristen: no, I just, I was just always different than everybody else. Okay. Living this certain way. Okay. And when he. Did

Joe: you think? Was it the, was it the math? Was it the simple math?

Kristen: Yeah. I think Mr. Money mustaches

Joe: piece that really blew up the internet was about the simple math.

Kristen: I never knew the math. I just knew that I saved more than most.

I’d never thought about retiring early, [00:12:00] but once he told me about this, I’m like, oh my gosh, that makes so much sense. Tell me more. How can I do those things? Give me more this goodness. Give me more. So I, I, I read j Collins book. I started listening to the Choose Fi podcast. I’m going down all the rabbit holes.

Not Wrong podcast. I’m sorry. Yes. I cannot tell a lie, Joe. I cannot tell a lie. That was in 2018. And then in 2022, this same friend ended up at a campfire. It was like, this was amazing. You have to go with me to this next one. There’s one in Colorado coming up this summer. So I went, I had no idea what I was walking into.

Joe: What did you tell your friends when you were coming to this camp?

Kristen: I, I, you’re

Joe: like, I’m going out to the woods. I

Kristen: still don’t know what to tell them honestly. ’cause I say camp and they’re like, what do you mean when you say camping? And I’m like, well, it’s more of just kind of like a casual conference.

Joe: Yeah. But oh, it’s very casual. We’re gonna sit around and talk about money and purpose.

Kristen: Yeah. Well, but I’m like, we’re not really camping. And I say it’s, you know, we’re talking about personal finance, but at the same time, and this is what I found at my first camp and what I imagine a lot of you guys have found as well, if you’re a first timer, [00:13:00] is that when money values align, you tend to find that a lot of other things about you align and then you have a lot of things in common.

Mm-Hmm. I helped lead the introductions, uh, campfire Mid-Atlantic back in May. And people were talking about how I’m just so blown away because it’s just night one. And I’ve always made, I’ve already made all these amazing friends and we haven’t even talked about money. You know, and that’s so great. So I lost my voice that weekend.

I learned to pack throat lozenges and five hour energies because I didn’t wanna miss anything. First person up, last person to bed. Didn’t wanna miss any good conversations. Major fomo. I’ve learned to pace myself. This is my fourth camp find now. So I’ve learned to pace myself. But that sense of finding your tribe, I’d never really felt like I fit in anywhere.

I, I’d never had, I always just kind of had a random friend here and a random friend over there. And now I feel like I’m part of something and that brings me such joy. I’ve never experienced that in my life until I found these people.

Joe: And so, well ’cause everybody thinks, ’cause there’s a bunch of people that see you on television all the time and they always think, because I [00:14:00] was on TV for nine years now, I was on for like two minute segment twice a week as the money guy.

But they’d look at the meteorologist, they’d look at the news anchors and they’re like, their life is perfect. They have tons of friends all the time.

Kristen: And she probably grew up with a lot of money and had this really great life. And everybody makes these assumptions about me that are completely false.

Yeah,

Joe: that’s so wild. But how do you get to the point then that you start traveling to people? You just did a trip. With a bunch of can’t fight people.

Kristen: Mm-Hmm. Yeah. So I love to travel and I’ve found that a lot of people in this community like to travel as well. So if I’m going on a group trip and there’s spots available, we tend to kind of just spread the word and like, who else wants to come, you know?

So I did in December, we did 12 days in Egypt and found a couple five people to come along, and then we just did 12 days in the Alps, celebrating my 50th birthday in July and found some people to come along and I wanna do more of this. Here’s what I found. I don’t know if it’s just getting older, but I find that a lot of my older friends, like I don’t have as much patience for anymore, you guys.

Is it just me? I, I feel bad. What do you, what do you mean? What do you mean? [00:15:00] I don’t know. I just enjoy hanging around these people more.

Doc G: Do you, do you find yourself, do you find yourself talking about money anymore

Kristen: to people outside of this group? Not so much the people in this group. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But there’s definitely, it’s not all of that.

Right. We talk about a lot of other things too. I’ve been talking about a lot of travel this weekend. ’cause that’s where one of my passion lies. Travel planning, traveling, travel hacking. Like I, and I don’t know where that gene came from ’cause I wasn’t raised that way certainly. But I just have such a desire to see the world and it seems like there’s a lot of other people in this community that feel the same way.

And we like to be together, we like to travel, so why not travel together? Right. It just kinda makes all the sense.

Tom: Yeah.

Kristen: So, and it seems like everything new someone in this community puts out there, whether it’s a new camp, an exotic location, or a cruise somewhere, or you know, whatever it might be. There’s always a ton of interest and there’s how many, so many people that wanna participate.

So I’m like, well, what are some things that we’re not doing? We’re not doing 12 day tours of Egypt. Maybe I should take a group to do that. Maybe I should take a [00:16:00] group to Morocco. So I’ve been thinking about kind of, well, I’ve been more than thinking like I’ve been talking anybody old enough to

Joe: remember like the love boat?

Or is this an old guy reference? Yeah. Remember like, she’s like Julie the cruise director, isn’t she? Yeah,

Kristen: no, I am. I am.

Joe: Although didn’t she end up like hopped up on drugs and Oh, geez. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.

Kristen: What? I’m not projecting the future presence. Yeah. Um, I love being with my people and I love traveling, and I know a lot of you do too.

So why not do it together? You know? So I’m gonna try to, uh, get some of this going in the next year.

Joe: So let’s talk about you personally then, because you’re also looking at maybe shifting

Kristen: Okay.

Joe: Away from

Kristen: your career. Yeah. So I have done TV news for 28 years. It’s a little bit of a dying industry. I mean, how many of you guys regularly watch the local news.

What is Okay. Three hands out of like once a week. 50. Yeah. Like, anyway, not a lot. So it’s a bit of a dying industry. I’m kind of glad I’m on the tail end of it because of this community. I would’ve never, the whole idea of a fi number and, and [00:17:00] when you can fi or whatever, that had never occurred to me. And so I came to my first camp.

So right after my first camp, I had my fight date. Okay. 2026, my birthday. July 5th, 2026. Great. And then within the next year I started thinking, Hmm, maybe I can move to part-time now. ’cause somebody suggested to me, and I honestly, I don’t know if this is gonna be a problem, but they’re like, you’ve been doing TV for so long, it might.

Be a little challenging for you to be full-time meteorologist, you know, whatever, to like not the next day. Mm-Hmm. Maybe you slowly downshift. I’m like, why have I ever thought about that before? That makes a lot of sense. So I crunched the numbers, which is something I would’ve not have been confident enough to do if it wasn’t for this community.

But I looked at it and if my husband and I didn’t contribute another dollar. To our investments, we would be where we needed to be by the time he wants to retire in 2028. So we basically just dialed our savings way back, which just allowed me to go to part-time work. And I worked two days a week, 16 hours.

Joe: What did the, what did the station say when you said, I want to dial it back?

Kristen: I think they thought I was gonna quit because I told him we needed to have a [00:18:00] talk. And they’re like, what’s this about? And I’m like, my future at KOB, they’re like, Ooh, that sounds scary. And I’m like, well, no, I think it’s gonna be a win-win for everybody.

’cause they, they save a ton of money by doing this with me. So the things they had me doing three days a week weren’t weather. They were, well, they were, if we had bad weather or somebody was sick. But if it was a normal week, you know, I’m live at the zoo with the new seal baby. Okay. Which was cute and fun and all of that.

But I didn’t really wanna do that. If I was gonna do something, I really just wanted to do weather. ’cause again, I’m a numbers nerd. I’m a science nerd. This is what I love. I didn’t really wanna do that anymore, so it was kind of an easy sell. I’m just like, look, I’ll be there when you need me. I’ll work with our chief meteorologist to make sure we don’t go on vacation at the same time.

So I’ll be there to fill in when you need me. I’ll be there assuming I’m in town. We have a tornado, gimme a call, I’ll come in, I’ll help out, you know. But mostly I just work two nights a week, three to 11:00 PM on the weekends. I’m trying to do some more traveling during the week, and it all works because we’ve saved so much for so long.

Joe: But have you found that filling that time has been. Difficult or fun? Do you like it? You know, I was [00:19:00]

Kristen: actually really nervous about it. Sure. Like, I think I actually discussed with you purpose a little bit because I was very hung up on purpose and, and what was gonna be my next thing and like I, it, it needed to be something important and I need to change the world.

And I’m like, no, I really don’t. I needed to settle down about that. So I started thinking, um, I’m just experimenting really. I started volunteering at the Humane Society with the doggies, which I love. I’ve been taking some pickleball classes. I’ve been taking some cooking classes. I’m getting ready to take some pottery classes.

I’ve been spending a lot more time on health and wellness and I’m traveling a lot more and it’s been amazing and I was so afraid I was gonna be bored. I imagine like many of you, it’s important to feel productive and I was afraid I wasn’t gonna feel productive and I knew. That would make me feel like a loser and that was gonna make me depressed, which is gonna make me sit around even more and feel like even more of a loser.

And I was afraid I was gonna get into this vicious, you know, cycle.

Joe: The self-loathing

Doc G: kind of cycle. Yeah. Yeah.

Kristen: Never happened.

Doc G: It’s funny because people get into that cycle of life, they can never reach financial [00:20:00] independence and it’s then the same cycle they get when they’re talking about leaving their job.

And so it’s the series of self-talk Mm-Hmm. That we do to ourselves whenever we have a big transition. But the funny thing is when people, I think go through financial independence is they get much better at counteracting that kind of negative self-talk. Which it sounds like exactly what you

Joe: do. Yeah.

How, wait a minute. Talk. Is there a methodology to that? Like is there some way that we get better at that self-talk?

Doc G: I think what happens is you experientially know that all this time you told yourself there’s no way I could retire and not work anymore. And then the concept, the inkling, I read the blog, I listened to the podcast, I read the book and realized that you could.

And then living that life, meeting the people, figuring out your finances gives you a new context, a new way of questioning yourself. And so then you’re like, I handled this one difficult thing and my mind told me one thing, but reality ended up being something [00:21:00] else. And so now we call those limiting beliefs, right?

And so what happens is you start realizing, oh, like my self-talk is not necessarily reality. And I’ve seen that once in my life now. And I think you carry that into other transitions. And so it becomes about, you know, I could never leave my job ’cause I’ll have nothing to do. You’re like, well that’s kind of funny.

Self-talk. Where did that come from? What is this limiting belief? And I think you’re a perfect example of someone who can now talk through that.

Joe: Mm-Hmm.

Doc G: Uh, because you realize that those voices we have in our head, those stories we’re telling ourselves aren’t always reality. And since it wasn’t reality, once.

It’s not necessarily reality the second time either.

Kristen: I sort of proactively overfilled my time and now I’ve gotten to a point where I’m like, whoa, I need to do less. So, um, let’s talk about the other important thing, which is this idea

Joe: of pickleball. Oh, do you, is is like, I’m very bad. Is is like pickleball, like the CrossFit for older people now, is that the.

Kristen: It. I hear it’s the new golf

Joe: it.

Kristen: Yeah. Yeah. It kind

Joe: of is. You know what’s, you know what’s funny that I read? I mean, I’m joking because, you know, [00:22:00] we’ve all heard the, and, and I think you’re a CrossFit dude, aren’t you? I am, yeah. Uh, but you know, the whole joke about CrossFit, which is how do you know somebody does CrossFit?

They’re gonna tell you, I feel that way about pickleball now, don’t you? Yes. It’s like, everybody’s like, oh, pickleball. I was on a pickleball podcast last week. Somebody I got invited on. I’m like, I’ve never played pickleball. Like, who cares? All right.

Kristen: How are you about it? Because I found that I am not very skilled.

Joe: I, I’ve never played pickleball. He wanted to talk to me about money topics. Oh, I’ve never played either. No one, no idea. But it was a pickleball podcast. I

Kristen: honestly dunno that I’m gonna continue, but at least I gave it a try. I’m just, I’m experimenting and I’m enjoying that. Here’s,

Joe: here’s the interesting thing about pickleball for older people.

Maybe you guys have, have you guys seen the science? There’s something that when you play a racket sport, that as you age, the little thing in the doc, you’re gonna know what, this is the little thing in the back of your brain. The little tiny, uh, delio in the back of your brain. You mean the spinal cord?

I’m very scientific guy. I’m mean the spinal cord. No, no, no, no, no. There’s a part of your brain amygdala. Is that amygdala. Amygdala. That’s not the back though. But that’s okay. Well then that’s not [00:23:00] the thing. ’cause it’s this little thing in the back of your brain. Cerebellum, maybe something, there’s this thing you can tell, I studied this a lot.

You can tell I know exactly what I’m talking about. But there is this piece of your brain, a racket sport requires so much control and so many parts of your brain to open up that as you age, studies have shown that that opens up the rest of your mind, other pieces of your mind. And it makes it so it’s like an anti pickleball is actually an anti pickleball in tennis.

Like anti-aging things,

Doc G: you know? You know who sponsored that study? I saw it myself too. It’s pickleball. It’s the American Pickleball Association.

Joe: That’s right. They paid good money for those results. Yeah. That’s great. Well, so are you nervous about the next step?

Kristen: I am nervous about the travel thing a little bit because I’m afraid of failure, but I keep telling myself, what’s the worst thing that could happen?

I put it out there and we don’t get enough people to go and we don’t go and people get their deposits back. What’s the big deal?

Joe: But I love the fact you’re nervous about the adventure. ’cause that’s not at all what I was meaning.

Kristen: Oh, that’s not what you meant. What were you

Joe: at saying? Are you nervous about leaving the station finally?

Oh, I mean, I [00:24:00] mean, saying goodbye to this whole thing that you’ve been doing for so long.

Kristen: Umm,

Joe: I love that you’re nervous about the future, though. Think about it because that’s, that’s

Kristen: kick ass. Yeah, I’m not thinking about it.

Joe: That’s fantastic.

Kristen: I suppose as I get a little bit closer right now, pe you know, ’cause my original thought was I was gonna work full-time straight up through 2026, but now that I’ve moved to part-time, I’m like, well, do I just keep working part-time until my husband retires in 2028?

Or maybe you see me in three months and I’m like, nah, I’m done. I don’t know. I’m kind of just living in my life and just gonna kinda see, I feel like I’m gonna get some clarity at some point.

Doc G: You know what I love about that? I use the term agency a lot, right? This idea that you can control what happens next.

And of course there’s gonna be some anxiety ’cause we don’t know what happens next. But what’s fantastic to hear you say is what you’re basically saying is, I have complete control for better or for worse of what happens next. And I want all of you to think about your lives right now. How much of your lives have you felt out of control where someone was telling you what to [00:25:00] do or you had to show up that job to make money, or you had to be a place you didn’t wanna be in, doing something you didn’t wanna do for someone you didn’t like.

You don’t have to do that anymore.

Kristen: Right? But that took a long time to get there and it was partially figuring out this money stuff and being part of this community and getting the famous fu money we’ve all heard about, right? And just getting to a place. And man, when you get to that place, the peace that I felt after living for so long a certain way and being able to sleep at night and not having to worry about stuff anymore.

Oh my gosh, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.

Joe: Big and for Kristen there, buddy. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

That’s some great stuff.

Doc G: Yeah. I, I think we don’t realize how profound these changes are until we hear people start talking about ’em and you realize again, she’s a star, right? She’s on tv. Mm-Hmm. But when it comes to financial independence, it’s just like most of the people here building a [00:26:00] better life for themselves, taking control of what they do every day, and questioning those limiting beliefs and realizing that just because someone told me my whole life, I have to work, I have to have job, I have to make lots of money.

You can’t retire at this age.

Joe: Maybe those things aren’t true. She says, people think her life is perfect. I think my life is perfect for two reasons. A ’cause I get to spend time with you. And then B, there’s no B after that. Nearly as important. But way down here is we got this awesome trivia competition we do.

Which is amazing and

Doc G: I’m so glad that I’m not answering the trivia ’cause I get it wrong every time he gets it wrong. So one of y’all has to figure that out. The,

Joe: the deal with our trivia is we have a, uh, normally on a Friday, it’s gonna show up on a Wednesday on the Stacky Benjamin Show. We’re doing a very special edition to trivia.

I wanna meet three contestants. Raise your hand if you wanna be part of our trivia challenge doc. Uh, point at three people. Bring ’em up. Grab your, grab your microphone. We have this [00:27:00] fantastic trivia challenge. Let’s meet our contestants. Well, I’m glad you got a lot of people that weren’t men.

They were the only ones who raised

Doc G: their hand

Joe: face and, and I don’t know if we can have relatives also on the show. Nice job doc. We’ll, we’ll see how good. Turn them. We’ll, we’ll see how

Doc G: good the gene pool is. Have the have, have, there’s a reason I don’t do my own trivia question. Uh, all contestant number one.

Before we get to the trivia, will you please introduce yourself? Hi, my name is Scott. Um, I live in St. Paul. Excellent contestant. Two maybe, or maybe not related to someone sitting at the table over there. I’m Nick. Nick ci.

Joe: Oh, you outed yourself completely. And

Doc G: you

Joe: live in, and you live in where?

Doc G: Seattle, Washington.

And last but not least, my name is Rob. I live in New Ulm, Minnesota. Woo. Awesome. I like the way he says

Joe: Minnesota. Minnesota. Alright, well here’s the deal. Do you guys wanna know what you’re playing for? [00:28:00] Of course, of course. So whoever wins, everybody gets a prize for being brave. Don’t you think that’s what we should do?

Absolutely. I was, I was lucky enough to be the, uh, mc of Ed slots, uh, event. People have heard the show heard, uh, ed on our show and heard a little clip from that. But Ed signed some books about retirement 2.0. It’s the Retirement Savings Bomb. Ticks louder. Uh, so Ed Slot’s new book also because we’re in Minnesota, we’ve got these wonderful Stacking Benjamins hats.

We also have these, uh, for people in Minnesota that are stackers that want to, uh, join our local group on Facebook. You just find, put in Stacking Benjamin’s Twin Cities and you can join our local meetup group. But, uh, Stacking Benjamin’s hat, very good for you. Northern Dudes don’t you know. And then, uh, third, this amazing book called Stack Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management, which CNN called amazing.

Doc G: I’ve heard that’s a good book. Yes.

Joe: I felt like it’s, it is so funny when when they said that, I’m like, I owe somebody 10 bucks because I, I was like, wow, it was a lot more than

Doc G: 10. You’re welcome.

Joe: You work for CNN now? [00:29:00] Yeah. Uh, alright, so you guys ready? We’re just playing the closest. All right, closest wins.

And we’ll just go in order from left to right. So, Scott, you’ll go first. Nick, you’ll go second then Rob. You’ve got the advantage kinda so if you don’t win, if you don’t win, you, you know what that says. I’m just, I’m just saying you guys need a question though. Doug, do you have today’s trivia question?

Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor Doug. And because we are back in the Midwest, I think we need some Minnesota money trivia. Don’t you wait on, I thought we were live. I said we need some Minnesota money trivia, don’t you? There you go. Sure you do. And hold on a minute. Is that snow outside? It is Labor Day Weekend in Minnesota.

The unofficial start to six [00:30:00] months of cold and darkness should have worn my mittens. Nah, I’m kidding. A little bit. But besides an early snowfall, Minnesota is also known for great musicians. Prince people say he and I look a lot alike. Sker Dew, Bob Dylan, the Replacements, they’re all from here. But do you know there are also great actors for Minnesota?

Judy Garland. Yep. Minnesota. I mean, could you see her singing? Okay, dear. Somewhere over the Rainbow. Oops. Sorry about that. I mean, that could have been a hit, right? She’s a notable one, but, uh, let’s focus on One guy many people don’t know is from Minnesota. Vince Vaughn. Vince has starred in tons of roles.

His first being in the eighties hit Rudy. Many people forget that he also played Norman Bates in the remake of the Alfred Hitchcock Thriller Psycho Man. Was that movie Scary? [00:31:00] Luckily, a motel in the middle of nowhere where a bunch of people who barely know each other come together and live next to each other is like zero in common with Campfire,

Joe: huh?

Well, now that you mention it, it psycho been set in a retreat center inside of a motel. I think it could have been set right here. And that dude, that dude right there in the third row? No, no, not him. No, no, you, yeah. You could have been Norman Bass. I could totally see you dressing up as your mother moving on.

Hitchcock said that the original psycho was a hit largely because of the music and sound effects. In fact, let’s go with that for today’s trivia question. In the original, sir Alfred Hitchcock was so impressed by the score written by Bernard Herman that he doubled the composer’s salary to what amount of money?

I’ll be back right after I go check behind the shower curtains for, you know that guy in the third row?[00:32:00]

Joe: Guy in the third row? I dunno. Mysteriously not here. Yeah. Alright. Uh, uh, the score including, and he said this, it, it was the eat, eat, eat sound was the composer that came up with that and Hitchcock was like, that made the movie, right? I mean, that’s what you remember. So Scott, how much money did he double the composer’s salary to $130,000?

130 thou? Tell me the scientific way you came up with that.

I’m just thinking it was the sixties and he was sort of a, just a journeyman composer and went from being a fairly well paid guy to a really well paid guy. Do you know, do you sound like you know the history of this guy? Um, I know a little. Yeah.

Wow. I was like, wow. Yeah. I had not heard any of this. Our first date we saw, um, vertigo, and he did the score. Wait a minute. Your first date with your spouse, you went to see

Joe: Hitchcock.

Yeah. Remake of it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Rerelease.

Joe: Yeah. Yeah. I Vertigo is my favorite Hitchcock movie, by the way. That’s right.

Yeah. But just think I was thinking something [00:33:00] romantic. Let’s go see Hitchcock.

That Jimmy. Yeah.

Joe: It was funny. Cheryl and I were, uh, we were hiking at a national park, black Canyon of the Gunnison, and we’re walking along in the park. There’s almost nobody there. And I remember this great joke about these two people that walk into the woods and, and the one person says to the other one, they go, man, it’s really scary walking into the woods.

And the, the dude goes, well, it, it’s gonna be scary for me ’cause I gotta walk out alone.

And Cheryl’s like, why the hell you tell

me that

Joe: now? I’m like, this is this a bad idea? So anyway, I thought a Hitchcock and I’m Yeah. Romance where a lot of likes, Scott. That’s right. Yes. So Nikki said,

Doc G: yeah. So Scott’s answer is 130,030, which is about what I should get paid to listen to jokes, to Joe’s jokes on a regular basis.

Joe: Let me pontificate more about that, Nick.

trivia: Uh, we’ll go 90,000. Why you think 130 is too high? Yeah, I mean, [00:34:00] 1960. I feel like it, that’s a lot of money for what, 60 years ago? So, yeah, I think the composer makes a lot either.

Joe: Okay.

trivia: Yeah.

Joe: Rob, you got 90,000, you got 130,000. I am gonna go for a buck lower than

Doc G: Nick.

So the 8, 9, 9, 9, 9. I mean, it’s, well, like you said, it’s in the sixties and stuff.

Joe: Okay. Uh, Rob, you’ve heard the show before?

Doc G: Yes.

Joe: Because you said P pant,

Doc G: correct?

Joe: P Pant’s. Gut is always to go one way.

Doc G: So you’re, what you’re telling me is I was wrong. I went the wrong way. I don’t

Joe: know if you’re right or wrong.

I’m just saying that Paula’s never Right. Which she goes with her gut. Right,

Doc G: right. And then yesterday’s podcast. Right. She was wrong.

Joe: Yeah. I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna talk you out of it as I write down your answer, but you’re thinking it’s even lower than, than Nicks. Okay. But it, it was a fine Chelsea Brennan.

It was. Oh, of course it was. It was very, very much. Everybody’s like wondering what the hell’s a Chelsea Brennan? Mm-Hmm. She was the first guest, Chelsea Brennan’s an amazing human being that came on our show and for, [00:35:00] she was the first person to sweat. Everybody always plays nice. And Chelsea came on and she goes, oh hell no.

I’m gonna dollar lower and just capped off somebody at the knees. I don’t remember all. Uh, Scotts said 130,000 at 90, robs at 89,000. Who’s closest? We’re gonna find out just a minute. Scott, you led us off with 130,000, how you feel, and now that you heard Nick and Rob say, man, he’s high. Yeah. I mean, I don’t mean you’re high.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. Uh, a little nervous, but you know that, that’s my answer. All right. Nick. Feeling good? Yeah, for sure. Even though Rob took the bottom half. I rob taking the bottom. That didn’t sound good either.

trivia: Yeah.

Doc G: I’m

trivia: your son,

Doc G: so, so Scott is high and Nick is taking the bottom. Rob, how do you feel? Doing good.

Joe: Yeah. Rob, you were right in the middle. That feels really, yeah. Alright. Rob’s the sandwich. [00:36:00] We’ve got, we we say little spoon. This went south in a hurry. It’s just like being back in Texarkana, back in the basement. Alright, let’s see who’s gonna win Doug.

Hey there. Stackers. I’m frequent motel, non-creepy visitor and guy who loves a good shower as much as the next person. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Vince Vaughn is one famous American from Minnesota and he starred in the remake of the famous Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, which is about a guy in a remote location camp.

I mean, uh, sorry, motel who isn’t quite in his right mind. Kinda like someone who would go out to the woods to chat about money for a whole holiday weekend. Don’t you think? I mean, those people are just weird. The question was, Hitchcock loved the work of Composer Bernard Herman so much that he doubled his pay on the film to how much money.

Well, Hitchcock was quoted as saying that. Fully a third of the success of Psycho [00:37:00] was because of the score, including that knifing sound. So he doubled Herman’s salary to the whopping sum of $34,501. Rob was way back in 1960, so that would be just less than $370,000 today. Wow. And now back to Joe and Doji.

Nice job Rob. Big hand for Rob.

trivia: No, I wanna thank Nick for giving me all this room to roll that this one’s for you, Paul,

Joe: but it’s amazing when you don’t think about inflation, that’d be $340,000 today in 1960. That much money. And Scott, you were saying, you know, you’re like, I don’t think it was that much money.

Uh, but even in 1960,

yeah.

Joe: Yeah, it’s

way

Doc G: off.

Joe: Yeah. But, but still. Nice job. Uh, although you get to guess third,

Doc G: do you think he was just sitting around one day and he was like,

Joe: ee He’s like, oh, I should put that in. No. You know what happened, doc? He had heat, he had the score almost completely done, and he went out with his sneakers when it was [00:38:00] wet and he was on the tile and he heard the EE and he’s like, oh my.

I got it. Yeah. All right. Let’s get the podcast working again and let’s say hello to camper. Donna. Come on up. Donna.

Donna sounds a lot like some of you’re, you’re from, you’re local, aren’t you?

Donna: Yeah, of course. Should I, should I say gday?

Joe: You can hear immediately, yes. So you, did you get the award for coming here from the, for this, uh, spot?

Donna: I think so, yeah. Stevens looked after me really good.

Joe: Awesome. And, and tell everybody where you’re from.

Donna: From Australia, Western Australia.

Joe: All right. How about that? From right down the street to Western Australia. Um, so let’s talk about your fight journey. How did you hear about this? Why did you decide to swim here from Australia and um, yeah. How did you end up here?

Donna: For those of you that are not in the room.

I’m in a dock and Joe Sandwich right now. It’s, uh, it’s my, I feel like I’m watching tennis

Joe: or [00:39:00] pickleball. You’re watching pickleball. You’re watching pickleball. I’ve

Donna: never seen, I don’t even know what pickleball is. We don’t have that in Australia.

Joe: It’s, it’s, it’s another competi. It’s gonna be the new thing, I’m sure.

Very soon, dude. You have CrossFit.

Donna: Yes.

Joe: Well then pickle balls on the way. Right? Excellent. We we’re

Donna: always a little bit behind, so

Joe: that’s, well, well let’s talk about this because you’ve got exciting stuff going on in your life right now.

Donna: I do. Yeah. So you asked how I heard about Campfire. Yes. Through a myriad of different podcasts and blogs.

I think. And this year for me was the final year after doing one more year syndrome, couple of times changing the number couple of times. So this year the commitment was three fire retreats. So I went to Fire Spark in Melbourne, Australia in March, which was incredible. My first ever camp fire here in the beautiful Minnesota and then going to Fire Freedom in Bali in November, which

Joe: is also amazing.

Yeah, it is

Doc G: Fire

Joe: big

Doc G: in Australia. I didn’t know there was a Fire Australia event.

Donna: Yeah. Uh, the March one [00:40:00] was the first event, so Brenda James organized it in Victoria. And then there’s another, um, event happening in Sydney in October. So our first two ever fire camps.

Joe: That’s exciting. That’s cool. Yeah. So you though are really.

You’re in the middle of a big thing right now.

Donna: Yes.

Big thanks to Don, everybody. I mean, that was the, that, you know, open-ended questions, John. It was.

Joe: I know. I’m, I’m not that great at it. Nice job. Tell us about what you’re considering. You told everybody here. Yes. Tell us, tell us what you’re thinking about

Donna: making the commitment to finish up the corporate job at the end of the year and live my purpose from this point onwards or from next year onwards.

Doc G: You mentioned the concept of one more year syndrome. How are you able to get over it? Because I feel like it could [00:41:00] be endless and it often is for people. What changed where you’re finding like, okay, this is it.

Donna: Yeah, it was definitely a challenge and I’ve spoken to lots and lots of people on this camp, but also in the fire community in general, and I think a lot of us struggle with it.

This community attracts a lot of people who are quite risk adverse, who are planners and all about the numbers. And when you are planning and working towards your goals and your numbers, that’s really, that’s really great. ’cause you’ve got all these goals, you’ve got a job, you’ve got a goal, you’ve got things to work towards, and then you hit them and you, you freak out.

Um, because we are a bit risk adverse. So I think for me it was a, a combination of working on, um, mindset. So reading amazing books like Taking Stock and Diver Zero. Um, working on mindset around, I, we don’t know how much longer we’re gonna be here, right? My dad passed away at 52. I am 45, so if I have seven years left, what do I wanna do with those seven years?

Because we just don’t [00:42:00] know how long we’ve got. So one piece is kind of focusing on just making the most of every day and every year. The other is getting as much certainty as we can and control a little bit of a control freak with our numbers. So I use projection labs, so that’s my favorite tool for modeling and I’ve modeled all of the different scenarios and all these what if things?

Joe: Yeah, yeah. So

Donna: many what ifs. Yeah. Um, but that has really helped me because not only has it given me some certainty, you know, I’ve modeled everything as worst case scenario and as never generating an income ever again, which is completely unrealistic because I have so many passions and so many things that I want to do with my life.

I’m gonna generate income. It would be stupid to think that I’m not, because I wanna add value and help people. So yeah, I think I’ve underestimated big time and I just had to set a date and I’m gonna stick to it this time.

Joe: What, what’s interesting about what you said is a difficulty I find Doc with, uh, money nerds especially, [00:43:00] which is that money nerds really have respect for money and the value of money and what it can bring.

And d Donna, to your point, because of that, you’re very careful. You do lots of models. But the thing that we don’t value enough, and I love you talking about your dad dying because I feel like often we don’t value time, which is another limited resource. I mean, we don’t feel that as much as we feel the pain of the money.

Do you agree?

Doc G: Yeah. You know, I had this conversation with Jesse Kramer from Best Interest Podcast recently. We tend to stack conservative projections and we do this with our finances so much, and we don’t realize when you stack them, it becomes exponential. So you say, well, I’m just gonna work another year to have a little extra money.

I’m just gonna calculate my safe withdrawal rate of 3.5 instead of four. I’m just gonna assume that inflation is 6% instead of three. I’m just gonna assume the stock market is gonna return 6% instead of 8%. And we stack these conservative projections. And what happens then is [00:44:00] we way underestimate and we end up with a lot more money than we thought we would have because they all, maybe one or two of these things come through true.

But

Joe: even more than that, we end up with a lot less life. ’cause we wait too long. Correct.

Doc G: And so what we do is we, but we under, we are way under conservative when it comes to our time. And so what we do is we don’t stack those projections at all. We don’t say. I might not have as long to live. I might not have as many good years when I’m active.

I might not have as much time with my children. If we started Stacking, those types of projections, it would actually work in, in the opposite way. And we’d be like, no, no, no. We need to retire even faster. And so it’s kind of funny how exactly what you’re saying, we tend to value the money more than the time, and then we become way over conservative with it.

Yeah.

Joe: And so now you’re, now you’re taking the leap. How do you feel?

Donna: Yeah, I’m really excited. I think, you know, what I’ve worked on this [00:45:00] year is about who am I and who do I identify as when it’s not my corporate job? Because for, you know, 25 years that has been who I identify as. So that’s something else that I’ve really worked on this year.

And reflecting on, you know, what are the problems I like to solve? I love Mark Manson’s book, the Subtle Art of Not Giving a

Joe: a something.

Donna: Um, you know, that’s an amazing book, talking about that our brain needs to have problems to solve. So it’s our job to figure out what are the problems that we love solving, because regardless of whether you’re getting paid or not getting paid, you need to have those problems in your life.

Mm-Hmm. So that’s something this year that has just been a focus and yeah, focusing on the passion.

Joe: We gotta, we spent the first week of this year on Stacking Benjamins talking about kind of that, looking into the void, like looking at what’s my purpose? What’s next? How are you looking at what’s next?

Donna: Yeah, definitely.

One of the, the passions that’s popped up for me over the last year has been working with women on financial empowerment. I also grew up, um, similar to Kristen with not a lot of money. My, my parents went [00:46:00] bankrupt when I was about 10 years old. So not understanding money and also being very fearful around money.

And a lot of the women that I meet in the tech industry where I work have that similar lack of confidence around, you know, the technology space, but also financial. So I’ve been able to work with quite a few women just to kind of help them out and give them some general advice. And again, watching them build their confidence is really, um, inspiring to me.

So that’s something that I wanna do a lot more of when I’m not working full time.

Joe: That’s fabulous.

Doc G: Yeah. I wanna take a moment to recognize something you just said. You said kind of, I grew up and my parents went bankrupt when I was 10. To make the decision you’re making is incredible. And part of the reason it’s incredible is I imagine you had a lot of stories in your head about money and enough and running out.

And I think to be at this place where you can recognize those stories that you probably had from childhood and be able to take this next step is really courageous. And again, [00:47:00] one of the things about coming around people, like all of you right here, is when you have to do these courageous things, when you have to step out of your childhood and realize that my parents’ problems weren’t mine.

Being around people like all of you who have experienced this, who can give us many positive stories about not running out and about living a life of purpose and doing things they wanna do is really wonderful. So I just wanna recognize how difficult this must be for you and yet to see you kind of proud and ready and moving forward is just amazing.

Donna: Thank you. Yeah, it’s definitely taken a while, but we’ve got here.

Joe: You didn’t tell him that was close ended.

Lead

Doc G: with

Joe: the compliment. Lead with the compliment. I should have. I gotta learn. Gotta learn.

Donna: You told me you were gonna grill me, so That’s right. I was,

Joe: I always jokingly say, we’re gonna make you sweat. Yes. But congratulations. It sounds like a fantastic journey and thanks for coming halfway around the world to spend time with us.

Donna: Thank you. It’s an amazing community. I’ve had so much fun meeting most of you. I still have more [00:48:00] people to meet yet, but just getting to hear everyone’s stories, it’s so inspiring and it’s really helping me just feel extra confident and extra excited that I’m doing this

Joe: big hand for Donna. Everybody

I’m reading, I feel like I’m the last guy at the table with this book, but I’m reading this book called Strength to Strength by, I think it’s Arthur C. Brooks and, uh, fantastic. Uh, that’s Chris Luger, everybody who, who, who apparently likes a book even more than I did. But it is a great book, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a fantastic book.

But what’s cool is, is that it really doc, what we’re hearing is like from Donna, she had the strength, she had this thing she was doing before and now really leaning into what her strength would be for really second half of her life.

Doc G: Yeah. I think we have to get rid of this idea that when you leave your job, it’s a voltage drop.

I don’t think it has to be that at all. And in fact, if you don’t like your job. You might be stepping up the voltage, but it’s in a much different way. I think it’s in a much [00:49:00] pure, more happy, more self-directed way. And I think that’s the whole point of this, right, is we’re not stepping into fear and anxiety and weakness.

We’re stepping into strength.

Joe: I’d encourage everybody to read that book, by the way, because it talks about how younger people are better at certain types of things and then older people are better at other things. And really finding that strength of the second half, as an example. Older people are better teachers.

You’ve got so much stuff stuffed into that brain. But if you ask, uh, I think he calls it the librarian, doesn’t he? Chris, if you ask that librarian to get to it quickly, which is why older people are not phenomenal innovators. If you ask ’em to get to it quickly. The librarian’s really slow, really worn out, maybe needs to do CrossFit or play more pickleball or something.

I dunno. But there’s a lot up there and it’s hard to find stuff. But man, there’s a lot up there and makes you a great teacher. But he talks about the strengths that older people have and really leaning into those instead of trying to. Be that that person that we’ve all met that’s living the lie, that I’m still, you know, 25 and everybody knows [00:50:00] that you’re not.

Yeah, Joe

Doc G: sometimes looking around, I feel like we’re we’re, that’s us, the other people. Yeah.

Joe: That’s us. Yeah. Let’s meet another great camper with another story. Uh, let’s say head to Tom.

Tom. I feel like now because uh, doc Chi knows how to pick him, we’ve had, uh, one half of the family on, apparently we had to have the other half of the family on now. Yes, you are. Rob’s brother.

Tom: Yes. More mature brother.

Joe: I like way he establishes dominance in the family, like immediately. Not older, not wiser, more mature.

Tom: He’s my baby brother. Yeah.

Joe: Yes. So, Tom, tell us your story because I was really interested, we do this thing, Steven had us do this thing where, where we all tell a little bit of our story, but you had a very interesting story that you told all the campers.

Can you tell the stackers the same thing?

Tom: Okay. Rob and I, our father is 101 years old, and so he went through the Great Depression and World War II and all this kind of stuff. Raised a family, had three kids who are, um, now in their seventies, and I was a bonus, [00:51:00] or back in the seventies there was a commercial new and improved.

So that’s when I came and then Rob followed. But in any case, what he taught us was that, is that new and

Joe: improved? Improved.

Tom: That’s good. But he taught us that I got your background ethic right. And he taught us to work in a really early age. So we had paper routes and we had, we were caddies at the local golf course and all that, and we saved our money and as I recall, we had to pay for our shoes and our clothing and all that kind of stuff at that age, which was a little unusual.

And we were living in a pretty decent neighborhood. We didn’t know it that we were wealthy, but we lived so under our means. And so simply that underneath the surface, our dad had plenty, more than enough, but he worked till age 90. And he worked for New York Life Insurance for 65 years, but in his mid fifties, took on our paper routes, added more and was delivering newspapers 450 papers a day till age 90.

Wow. On the side.

Joe: That’s what we came from As his side gig. Yeah. Until age 90.

Tom: Well, he was so encouraged. People love to get their [00:52:00] paper by 5:00 AM in the morning, and so at Christmas time he was just like, people are doubt, you know, throwing cash and all sorts of good stuff at him and just saying, thank you for your service.

Joe: Wow. Well, let’s talk about your story though. ’cause you’ve got a really interesting story too.

Tom: Oh, really?

Joe: Yes. You said a term that interests me. I think you said, I worked as a minister for X number of years, which implied you’re no longer a minister. Are you retired or are you a minister now?

Tom: I’ve been a pastor for about 30 years.

I, I’m, I’m loving it. It’s easy now. It’s my craft. Right. And I’ve, I’m in a sweet spot. When you’re in the right culture, I. You can thrive. And so I’ve got incredible support. I surround myself with Ultra Type A women who do their job extremely well, and they know direction. And then my leadership, they’re like pseudo pastors and staff.

So they’ll do things that a staff, a large staff would do. So I’m in a small church. There’s about 110 at Worship on a weekend, and it’s super manageable. They gimme a free house, which is a parsonage that they totally renovated and got [00:53:00] it updated and it’s right next door. So I walk about 60 yards. That’s tough.

And yeah, right. I know. Tough commute. And they pay me. What I would say very well. Okay. And I get a pension and all that kind of stuff, and I’m at the point of Coast Fi, but I have four children and we homeschooled them for 22 years. And now the last one just left the nest. And so as of this week, we’re empty nesters.

Doc G: Wow. Yes. Joe. Joe, I believe they call this passify.

Joe: We got the new term. You know how I love all the terms. Somebody even said that, that was new here. I don’t remember who it was, but they’re like, I didn’t even know what this cofi means. Like what the Yeah,

Doc G: I thought it was a coffee shop. That’s

Joe: right. Sounds good.

Passify is a good one. Yeah. So what I’m hearing though, well let me just ask you, because apparently Donna, I’m gonna ask an open-ended question. What does, what does retirement actually mean to you? Then if you love what you do, it sounds like something you’re very passionate about. What does retirement mean?

Tom: I’ve [00:54:00] got incredible flexibility. I get 12 weeks off a year and I can direct those weeks. So I have now created, so I get a mini sabbatical every summer. My wife just started teaching kindergarten, so she gets the summers off. So we’re gonna leverage those summers and do whatever we want, but continue to learn and grow.

And then we You

Joe: can take the summer off too.

Tom: I could,

Joe: yeah.

Tom: But I’m only taking a month, well actually two weeks at the end and all that stuff, so probably six to eight weeks of the summer off.

Joe: Okay.

Tom: It’s a real luxury. I love what I’m doing. It gives me energy and purpose. There’s a lot of influence. And on the di the disc thing, I’m into, you know, influence.

Right. And I love the people I strap on a guitar sing and, um, inspire people and I get paid to do that. Are you kidding me?

Joe: Can you s somewhere over the rainbow? Like Doug

Tom: more John Denver. Yeah.

Joe: He kinda has got a John Denver look going, doesn’t he? Yeah. He looks like John Denver. Yeah. Just painting the, the picture at home.

Anyway.

Tom: Yeah. He people on. Yeah.

Joe: Continue.

Tom: Oh, I, I mean, we’re really at a, at a sweet spot now, the thing is,

Joe: but what does that [00:55:00] mean for retirement, though? You haven’t answered my question. You kinda walked around it. What’s, what does retirement mean to you?

Tom: It’s really, it’s living a life of impact. And so I, I studied in my thirties the whole thing of halftime, what do you do in your second half of life?

And so I love what I’m doing. So what I’ve been doing is experimenting with other kind of vocations. So I’ve, I’ve been trained as a life coach, as a grief and end of life coach. And now I call myself a funeral specialist. What does that mean? Most people no longer have a church or a pastor. They’re connected to, they want somebody to do their funeral.

I’m requested to do that. I learned their life story from the people who are there. And I put together a service, whatever music they want and all that stuff, but make sure it’s very personal. And I’ve gotten more affirmation in my whole years of ministry, more so in doing people’s funerals than anything else I.

Joe: That’s really cool. But when you said funeral specialist, I still wanted to say, oh, you’re killing us. Tom and I held back, but I couldn’t hold back forever. I know it still had to come out. I love

Doc G: this [00:56:00] concept though, of doing what you want, when you want. Like this idea of, to a lot of people, retirement is not quote unquote working, but for you, I don’t even think work is the point.

It’s doing what you want. Right?

Tom: Exactly. There’s so much flexibility. I have tasks to get done. I’m super efficient. I’m a type A personality. I couldn’t tell. I had

Joe: no idea.

Tom: Yeah, but they’ll get done. And so if somebody says, Hey, you wanna go golfing? I can go golfing, I play softball, I hike, I do all those things.

I can do that anytime. If I need to be gone, I will record my message and they’ll put it on the screen. So the flexibility, there’s a shortage of pastors, churches are declining. They need me. And they, they desire, I mean, it’s nice to be wanted and so they will accommodate and it it just a synergistic relationship.

Joe: I always get a little bit sad when I hear somebody saying, who’s 29, 30 years old that I am retiring or I’m retired. It makes me even sadder, by the way, when a big time influencer says, I’m 30 years old, I’m retired. And I’m like, no, you’re not. You’re making crap [00:57:00] loads of money off YouTube, but that’s a whole, that’s a whole different deal.

And I know how hard they work on their YouTube, so are you really retired? But anyway, that’s a whole different thing. But I love what Tom’s saying that, you know, he still really has an answer to my question because I love the idea that instead of checking out at age 30, there’s no such thing as reti. I, I’m listening to Tom.

I feel like Doc, there’s no such thing for him as retirement.

Doc G: And I think when we really look at those people who say they’re retiring at 30. They only use the word retire because they’re not working for the man anymore. But the truth of the matter is most of us are going to continue doing some kind of work for the rest of our lives.

It may be paid, it may not be paid, it may be for employer, it may be for yourself. But if we want to walk through that second half, if we wanna move from strength to strength, we actually have to fill our time with things that feel purposeful, exciting, worthwhile, intentional things that fill us up. It’s kind of like work.

It’s just nicer. Mm-Hmm. Well,

Joe: and on that point, you and [00:58:00] I both talked to the amazing Christine Bens from Morningstar with her new project. You are in her new book, which is awesome. But she addressed this issue on our show, and I know she did on your show too, which is. Retirement is not checking out. If you’re doing it right, it’s that the purpose changes and you, you gotta still get up in the morning.

You gotta have the, you gotta have the things that you wanna do. I mean, if you don’t, longevity experts tell you you’re not gonna last very long.

Doc G: Yeah. You know, the studies are clear. Um, people live longer, are happier and more healthy when they’re getting up for a reason. Mm-Hmm. Right. When they actually have these activities that fill their day, that feels deeply purposeful and Mm-Hmm.

What’s wonderful is within a community of people who I wouldn’t say are anti work, ’cause I think we’ve moved past that, but you can proudly walk in to say, this is my life’s work. Yes. Different than this is my job. Yes.

Tom: Mm-Hmm.

Doc G: And that

Tom: I think was true for my dad. Yeah. That’s why he’s 101. Good modeling.

He’s still enthusiastic, doesn’t have his [00:59:00] hearing, his eyesight, but he can interact with the people who serve him at the care center. Right. And that’s pretty amazing. So I love his role model, but again, I have the flexibility. I’m not working all the time like he did, but that gave him life and for me, what I do gives me life.

It gives me joy.

Joe: Yeah, I was gonna say, it doesn’t hold true for your dad. I think it’s you. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Good stuff. Thank you so much, Tom, for sharing your story.

Thank you. Thank you. Three amazing stories there, doc. I love, I love Kristen’s story about community, and this community is so amazing. And then Donna’s incredible story and this time of change that she’s in and the importance of, you could hear the clock ticking, you know? And Tom about really having this thing that drives him is all really cool.

Kind of a continuum.

Doc G: Yeah. I mean, I love it and I think you hit it on the head about strength to strength. It’s that we continue growing and we don’t stop. You move [01:00:00] from one phase to the next, but they’re more elevated phases. We spend a lot of our time when we’re kids trying to become a thing, and then we spend a lot of time in the middle trying to do that thing.

And I think that we spend the rest of our lives transcending that thing to something better. And I think all of the people here are in that kind of transcendence stage. They’re, they’ve passed doing the thing just to do the thing and now they’re growing. And so I, I feel like that’s a, it’s a very optimistic look at what this second half

Joe: looks like.

Big thanks to Steven Boyer for letting us do this. Thank you so much, Steven. Good work. Thanks. Thanks to Doc G for hanging out. Nice job Doc G thank, thanks to all of you. Thanks to, thanks to Kristen. Thanks to Donna. Thanks to Tom. Great job. Yes. Alright.

Doug. You got it [01:01:00] from here, man. So what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from, uh, from that one person who was totally paying attention in the front row. No, no, no, no, no. Joe. Not that one. No. They’re giving me Jason vibes not little further down the road. Yep. That one. That we have so much to learn from each other.

Okay. Second, how about a takeaway from somebody else who doesn’t look like a murderer?

aftershow guest: Composers were seriously underpaid. But the big lesson,

okay, the comparisons between campfire and psycho are maybe a step too far. Okay? I mean, what would be worse? Being killed by a psycho killer and a gruesome shower sequence, or being trapped in a conversation about sequence of return risk in a mega backdoor Roth. IRA pass. Thanks to everyone at Campfire who made this possible.

Come on campers. Let’s hear ya. [01:02:00] See? You don’t sound like serial killers to me, do they? I mean, except that one guy. Thanks also to Steven Boyer for making campfire in the first place. We could have had all this fun. He hadn’t gotten this off the ground. Find out about how to attend one of these amazing events at camp.

five.org and thanks to Doc G for pitching in, you’ll find his amazing podcast called Earn and Invest wherever you are listening to us right now. This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Salhi. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.

Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for [01:03:00] entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug saying, happy camping, everyone.

Doc G: So Joe, we talked about kfi. We know what that means. We just introduced Pastor Fi, what do you call it when you’re financially independent, but you don’t know what it means. Oh [01:04:00] God. I don’t know. Wifi.

Joe: It’s like I love all the different fires. You know, you’ve got all these different fires. My favorite though is dumpster fire, and you’ve like given up. Yeah.

Doc G: All right. So we wanna have people,

Joe: these are some very smart people with their money. We have, uh, just amazing people here that’ve done great money things.

I told a story to everyone here. A lot of our stackers already know my story about my lumen stock, about how I just made the dumbest purchase. I’ll share one more dumb one. And then if you guys, if somebody has a dumb money thing that you did, everybody already, if you’re not here listening, these people are brilliant with money.

And the fact that they will show some dumb stuff that they did shows that even the smartest people on earth make some mistakes. But, uh, another dumb thing I did was this. I was a big fan of XM radio. I thought that XM was a very cool company. Again, I didn’t pay any attention to the fact that they had tons of debt.

And that company overpaid for Howard Stern, Martha Stewart, a bunch of [01:05:00] talent. I bought their stock, right? The stock, uh, through a bunch of cool things that happen goes from about $3, where I bought it up to 30, which was really cool, and I thought, I’ve got way too much money in, in that stock. So I sold that stock.

So I sold my serious stock and I took half of it to diversify it. And I bought xm, I think. And for people that don’t know what happened, Sirius and XM later merged and I had all the same money. That’s right back.

Doc G: That’s called a serious mistake.

Who are you, Joe? This is me. This is it. You guys just don’t know. Joe knows this. Welcome to do g Comedy

Joe: Channel Tip Your wait staff. He’s zero a week. Anybody else got one? Who’s, who’s got a? Who’s got anybody? Got a train wreck? I. So many train wrecks. Come on,

Chris. Do do You got a good one. I did. You know, one thing [01:06:00] I did, so back in the day, I actually, when high definition was first a thing in HDTV and the big fight between Blu-Ray and H-D-D-V-D.

Oh yeah. Knocked down, drag out. Oh man. I spent so much money on H-D-D-V-D, like literally, I mean, I’ve a thousand bucks on the player, all these movies. And then Blu-Ray just destroyed it. You just couldn’t. So I just, I basically bought a paperweight and all the other things. So yeah, I mean, I, you know, that was one mistake.

Joe: That’s a good one. My parents, when I was, this is an old guy story, sorry. But my parents, um, bought me a stereo for my room. It actually glowed like blue doc. It glowed blue. It was really neat. Those were the coolest ones. Yes. And you could hear like air supply and all, all kinds of like, mellow tunes.

Journey. Journey. Yes. All the,

Doc G: all the old people. Music. Just, just a small town girl. But, but you know what was cool about it? Living in a lonely world, it

Joe: had an eight track.

Doc G: Yes.

Joe: And by the way, you know that it’s the death of a track when Joe’s parents are buying the thing with the A track that’s like the sure side.[01:07:00]

It’s over. You know, it’s funny. Yeah. Does somebody else have one? And you are?

aftershow guest: I’m Kirsten. And Kirsten. Yeah. I followed in my parents’ footsteps and I followed their financial planner. I was like, obviously they’re smart with money. I’m gonna be smart with money. Do what they do.

Joe: Oh, this is gonna end well.

aftershow guest: It, it is gonna end well.

So in 2016, I opened 5 29 for my first son. And then when my second son was born, I opened a second five twenty nine. I opened my own IRA through them. So 2016 until March of this year, I was paying a monthly automatic payment. I was so smart. I was doing it automatic and then in. April of this year, I decided to actually look at the numbers and I was like, wow, I’m returning 17%.

I’m so good. And they were taking 3.5% every month. Every month, every automatic transaction they took 3.5 off the top. Off the top. And I was so proud ’cause I was over 16%. And then I actually looked at the numbers and I went, oh [01:08:00] my God. So

Joe: what’s amazing though, I, I mean, don’t get me wrong, that sucks and that, that’s horrible.

But you survived. You survived. And you’re here, which is amazing. Like, like of the two things. Because seriously, I see a lot of advice online. I don’t wanna take our funny segments and make this all serious, but this is kind of serious. We see people online with all these horror stories and you know what it does to the average person who listens to our show, it makes them freeze and do nothing.

But you’re so much better off than if you’d done nothing. You know what I mean? But yeah, don’t make that mistake. Don’t, don’t listen to mom and

Doc G: dad. So, so Joe, I got a good one myself when I was. Getting outta college, I inherited a lot of money from my grandmother. Not a lot of money, but some money from my grandmother.

And it was invested. My mom had taken it and put it with a financial advisor who the family was using. And towards the end of maybe it was the beginning of medical school and middle and medical school, I decided I could manage it better. And so I took it all out and it was maybe 2000. And I went into Fidelity and I put it all in [01:09:00] tech stocks in 2000.

Joe: 2000, all in tech stocks. So I told the, I told the campfire people here this, but people listening haven’t heard this. I got fired in 2000 by somebody. ’cause we only did 47% and in 2000, that’s when What happened, Jordan, how did that work out for you?

Doc G: So the tech stock crash, my money was worth about a quarter.

And then I found a good financial advisor who then liquidated it all and locked in all the losses. Oh. And, uh, it was a learning experience. And again, though you are still here. I am not only here, I’m with you guys. So look how great that is. And you are financially

Joe: independent.

Doc G: I’m financially independent and you know, you, you survive.

And the truth of the matter is if you’re gonna make mistakes, make ’em when you’re in your twenties. Right. Right. That’s when you’re, you’re gonna make more money, you’re gonna learn more. And if you fall in your face, in your [01:10:00] twenties, your likelihood of getting back up and doing better next time is so huge.

Mean, on the other hand, when you fall on your face, when you’re in your fifties or your sixties, it takes a little longer to recover. A lot. A lot, lot longer.

Joe: Yeah. Better. You’re not day trading the account now.

Doc G: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No day trading Never did, never did that. Yeah. Thank God.

Joe: Anyone, uh, Dan, you got one.

Oh. Oh. Uh, Scott,

Kristen. Probably like, uh, eight years of contributing to whole life insurance. Eight years. I, I think around that, a lot of money went in before we realized using whole

Joe: life insurance as an investment.

As an investment, yeah, yeah, yeah. Before we realized this is, uh, we can’t afford to keep paying for these, if we want to put money into 401k and everything else, you know, it’s bad

Joe: when you’re like, I have this investment I can’t afford to keep.

If I want to invest.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And we just cut our losses and, and got up. Yeah.

Doc G: Yeah.

And we survived.

Doc G: Yeah. And you’re here. Yeah. Kristen, can we talk to [01:11:00] someone who didn’t survive and isn’t here?

Kristen: Good boy. In my late twenties, I got suckered into a timeshare in Las Vegas.

Doc G: Oh, you know, my parents love their timeshare.

Kristen: Oh my gosh. For the next several years after that, I would try every year to get a big group of girls together. How many can we squeeze into this room so they can pay my annual fee that I had to pay? And I did that for six or seven years. And then I finally was like, I gotta get outta this. So I mean, obviously I sold it for next to nothing.

But anyway, the time share. It was in my twenties and I’m still here.

Joe: How you’re still here? Did you have like a six hour sales pitch?

Kristen: I don’t think it was that long.

Joe: No. Um, they didn’t like take your coat and put you like in some back room and No, it was

Kristen: like two hours. But you know, those salespeople are so good and they, they really just make it seem like it’s a can’t miss opportunity.

Yes. They’re giving you such a good deal and Yeah, it wasn’t,

Joe: and I’m like, you, doc, I do know a few people that love their timeshare and if you know exactly what you’re getting into and it’s a lifestyle choice and [01:12:00] not an investment, okay. You know, maybe, but I know people that absolutely love it as well.

Here’s something funny. We had an attorney on our show recently, Tim Ro. Tim had a great one, which is we asked him about what happens if the beneficiary doesn’t want something? Can you, can you say I don’t want it? And he said, this is what smart people do when they get gifted. The timeshare. Because the timeshare people think it’s gonna pass on and you can’t get rid of it, right?

It’s hard as hell to get rid of the timeshare. So what happens when your relative of the timeshare dies and they gift you the estate? You can literally say, I do not want that gift. And the timeshare people can do nothing about it. So the timeshare dies when you die, Kristen.

Doc G: So we, we know how many people are financially independent and smart here.

So we know that not many of you have timeshares, but can I see a show of hands of how many of you have sat through a timeshare presentation to get a free hotel or [01:13:00] vacation? Oh, there’s a lot of ’em.

Joe: You, you cheap asses.

Doc G: That’s like me stopping to get the coffee at the car shop,

the

Doc G: free coffee at the car dealer and the, and the sandwich.

That’s so pretending you’re getting your oil changed. And, and, and Toyota didn’t even blink the fact that I had a Nissan I, that’s a great way to end it. Thanks everybody. Good night.

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