The founder of one of the nation’s most loved budgeting tools says he dislikes the term “budget.” Why? Because most of us see a budget as restrictive and limiting. The good news? Jesse Mecham from budgeting program YNAB to dive into how to make your money go further and align with your goals. We’ll share thoughts about giving every dollar a job before you earn it, “aging” your money like a fine wine, the struggle every app builder has with interfacing with banks, and much more. If you either have a budget, a “kinda” budget, or are looking for a budget that works, this show is for you!
But before that, in our headline, long time bond manager Bill Gross says that bonds may be overheated in this current market. What does that mean? What does it mean for your long term money? We take some time to talk through the not-so-simple idea of tying your funds to the timeline you’ve built to spend that dollar. If you need a long term investment strategy, you’ll especially want to listen in to our headline.
In today’s TikTok minute, consumer finance guru Clark Howard discusses pricing schemes at both Costco and Sam’s Club. Is that deal your scoring really a deal? Is it as budget friendly as they make it seem? Some deals are great and others aren’t, and both of these retailers hide their strategy in plain site.
Think that’s all? Oh, of course we have more! This week we debut a NEW call in segment for the show. No more life line…today we’ll share how we are going to handle YOUR call when you need some help with your money? Have a question? Head to stackingbenjamins.com/voicemail and you may hear yourself on the show!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch On Our YouTube Channel:
Our Headlines
- Bill Gross says 10-Year Treasuries are ‘overvalued’ at 4% (InvestmentNews)
Our TikTok Minute
Jesse Mecham
Big thanks to Jesse Mecham for joining us today. To learn more about Jesse, visit About Us | YNAB. Grab yourself a copy of the book You Need a Budget: The Proven System for Breaking the Paycheck-to-Paycheck Cycle, Getting Out of Debt, and Living the Life You Want.
Doug’s Trivia
- On this day in 1861, Elijah Otis secured the patent for what invention?
Better call Saul…Sehy & OG (formerly “Stacking Benjamins Lifeline”)
- Torin has a house down payment fund established, and his anticipated home purchase date has moved up to 2025. He wants to know if he should move that stack to a high-yield savings account or CD, or should he redistribute the money into a more conservative investment mix?
Have a question for the show?
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Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when you’ll learn about the importance of community with the founder of the Fi Freedom Retreat, Amy Minkley.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: 24 Smart Money Moves for 2024 (SB1463) » The Stacking Benjamins Show
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Oh, gee. You heard any good jokes lately? Knock. Knock.Who’s there? Daisy. Daisy. Who? Daisy. Me. Roland,
on behalf of the Men and Women making podcast in Mom’s basement, the men and women working hard at Navy Federal Credit Union, a shout out to our troops. Here’s to you. Thanks for keeping us safe so the OG can, uh, keep bringing the humor They deserve
so much better than that though. I just
like how it was like a slow burn for Doug.
That was my favorite
part of that whole thing. Well, I was actually just laughing at you trying to execute that rap song, chorus. It’s my,
my 7-year-old daughter’s favorite joke right now. Yeah,
Joe’s still holding up his mug. Here’s to our troops. Thanks everybody. TER
playoff present the National Championship Trophy Coach Jim.[00:01:00]
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. Today you’ll learn how to plan your money with a man who created an entirely new approach to divvying up your income. The founder of YA Jesse Mecu. In our headline, a big bond manager gives his 2 cents on rates of return. Should we be expecting more from our money? We’ll dive in just before our TikTok minute where we’ll find out the magic behind Costco and Sam’s Club’s pricing schemes.
Are you really getting a deal? And today we throw away the lifeline. For a new segment, we’ll be helping a stacker with their money. But in a new, you should have seen this [00:02:00] coming kinda way. And of course, dear I’ll now I’m not saying that of
course, dear
and of course, dear, I’ll sprinkle in some of my patented trivia.
And now two guys who rode here on a tandem bicycle. God did they look cute. It’s Joe and oh
Jean.
Hey everybody.
Welcome to the baseball cards in the Spokes podcast. I’m Joe Saul-Sehy, average Joe money on X. Sit back, relax because we’re about to have an hour of, uh, money. Fun. You know what? All the fun here in the basement, the guy who puts F You in Fun.
Mr.
og, what’s happening? It’s another beautiful
Monday.
You, you walk down to the basement, you sit down. Sit down. I don’t know what was wrong, Doug, but he starts cracking jokes this morning. Like, who is this man? I don’t know. I
still am [00:03:00] waiting for the other shoe to drop ’cause it’s a harbinger of bad things to come.
Hashtag New Year, new
me. Well, speaking of New Year, new you.
Congratulations by the way people heard our snippet. We obviously record a couple days early for last Wednesday and Friday’s episode, so we weren’t able to congratulate you OG on the big, uh, university of Michigan win. Sorry, just hmm. Just thought, uh, it was a big win.
I had so
much to do with it. The fact that you were there says everything.
Yes. I think that had something to do with it. You know what I did like? For all of the vitriol that I give to Jim Harbaugh, the coach of the Michigan Wolverines, for people that don’t follow sports and everybody else, I did like what he had to say. When he won, they asked him how he felt and in his family, his dad, Jack Harbaugh, either won, was it a national championship or a Super Bowl?
A national championship. His dad won a national championship. His brother of course is won Super Bowl and he said, you know, at [00:04:00] family dinner I now get to sit at the, the, the big kids table. And I thought that was a great response for as much hell as I give Jim Harbaugh, that was great. But it is funny, OG and I know we’re gonna talk about a lot of different things today.
I never considered the pressure in the Harbaugh family. Like we talk about surrounding yourself with the right people. When you’ve got a brother who won a Super Bowl, a dad who won a national championship, Jim Harbaugh has done amazing things his entire career. Right. But to begin with, I now feel like I finally considered the big kid table.
Yeah. At 60. Yeah, at
60 years old. It was the Jeb Bush of the Harbaugh
family. It was, it was so, so wild to
see that you’re only a governor. Nice try. Yeah.
That’s so cute. A governor. Oh, neat. Well, speaking of neat, we’ve got Jesse Mecu here with us. He’s gonna talk about budgets. How’s your budget been looking lately?
OG with, uh, going to the national championship to the Rose Bowl?
Let’s go through it. Line item by [00:05:00] line item here. Hold on. And then you spent money on what? I
mean, they’re souvenir. Well, so you have to get ’em right. Well,
but the fact they’re so sparkly on your jeans though. I just. It lights up. Yeah, well you want everybody to, you know, watch you walk, right? If you’re going down the sidewalk.
Exactly. Fantastic. OG with the souvenirs, we got Jesse Mika, maybe helping OG and all of us get our budget under control. You know, our mentors so far this year had been more on the personal development side of money. Today we’re gonna pivot over to the money side, diving into how to not just get the budget in order, but your spending plan.
And of course, before that, big headlines. So let’s go. Hello Doling. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking Benjamins headlines headline today comes to us from Bloomberg News. Uh, bill Gross, who is a longtime Bond money manager. [00:06:00] Ran a huge bond. Mutual fund has some stuff OG to say about where treasury bills are at.
Of course, a lot of our stackers went out and bought treasuries when interest rates went way up. People locked in. Bill Gross now says, and this is the headline, tenure treasuries are quote overvalued at 4%. And he says that maybe we wanna look for shorter end notes that those might make sense. Which kind of made me laugh, OG, because if somebody’s in treasuries and you think that 4% or somebody that knows the bond market thinks 4% is a phenomenal deal right now, I think maybe I’m not running for shorter term notes.
I’m probably running for something that beats inflation by more.
You think that’s what he means by that, or do you think that he means that the 4% number, you’re not getting enough for 10 years like you should be getting. A higher [00:07:00] number for 10 years, ergo by a shorter term that maybe is a little less interest, but you get to take advantage of interest rate changes that might happen over the next decade.
Agree on both accounts, which is why I think, okay, I see where he’s going with that. But a, do we wanna play that game if we’re trying to stack our Benjamins? And then second, if 4% is a number that isn’t real to build gross right now, and I look at inflation over long periods of time, just south of 4%. If 4% is a great deal, I’m gonna have to save dollar for dollar.
Every dollar I need for retirement. Think about, you know, if I wanna live on $70,000 a year in retirement, I’m gonna be retired for 20 years. Do that math, like how am I gonna save all that money in short term notes or in treasuries? I’m not gonna be able to do that. It’s, it’s crazy when a big [00:08:00] bond manager tells me that, I’m not
entirely sure why you would have a 10 year anything treasury bond, bill note, whatever they’re called after the first couple, because you’re implying a 10 year holding timeframe.
Right? I mean, the whole idea of a fixed income position or, or a bond position is that you lend your money to somebody for 10 years. In this case, the US Treasury, they pay you interest every six months for 10 years, and at the end of the 10th year, you get all your money back. In the time. In between that, between the time that you lend the money, when you write your contract and the time that you get your money back, that price is gonna change a lot as interest rates go up and down and do whatever they’re gonna do.
So, you know, you might be locked in at 6%. Well, guess what? Your bond price has gone up. You could sell it for more today because you’re getting six and the market’s. Asking for four, somebody will pay you a higher price to get your six. They’re like, well, hell, [00:09:00] I’ll take six, and they’ll pay you extra.
Likewise, if you buy a 4% one today and interest rates go up in two or three years from now, no one’s gonna want your crappy 4%. One if interest rates are at six. And so you’re gonna lose money if you try to sell it. So by definition, a 10 year treasury is a 10 year time horizon investment, or should be anyway.
If that’s what you’re thinking about it. And if you have 10 years, why wouldn’t you invest that in best companies in the world? You know, let them hang onto your money for 10 years and see what happens. To
illustrate this point, og, I was thinking about like what are some of the crappiest last 10 year investments in the stock market you could have made, right?
Like if you really did something that on paper was a good thing to do, I. But didn’t have the return you expected, like how would that compare to a Trent tenure treasury? So I went with international growth, which everybody will tell you for. [00:10:00] Diversification is a great idea over long periods of time. And yet if you look at those, but you’re saying for the last 10 years?
Yeah, for the last 10 years, correct. Uh, so I pulled up a middle of the road fund. This is a Morningstar rates at three stars on a scale of one to five. So very much middle of the road. The Vanguard International Growth Fund, not a fantastic
fund. Wait, hold on, hold on. Morningstar didn’t rate a Vanguard Fund.
Five and a half Stars gold medals all around.
Wait, what? I think we need to cancel Morningstar. We gotta cancel.
Oh my God. Absolutely.
We got, we, we gotta cancel them. Not a wonderful fun, not a horrible, fun, uh, Vanguard International Growth Fund. Over a 10 year period of time, the last 10 years, which by the way, probably the worst time timeframe to rate international of a 10 year period, 6.86% give it 15 years, including that time.
You average 9.73. Back to this though, [00:11:00] 6.86 in one of the most horrible asset classes to be in in the last 10 years with your stock portfolio. Not one that you’re gonna base most of your portfolio on, you’re gonna do it for diversification. You still came out well over 50% ahead of where these 10 year treasuries would be.
You’re about 60 what? 65% ahead? Like people go, oh, it’s only 2%. But no, it’s not. It’s a 65% difference. Well,
it’s even more than that because it’s 6% versus four, and that compounds on top of itself. Yeah. So 6% compounding for 10 years is a, it’s a big, big difference. Way different than, I mean, in gross dollars, depending on how much you put in, it might not look like that much.
Sure. But, but yeah. A 1% difference for 30 years is millions of dollars on a, on a million bucks. Yeah. It’s magical. I
saw today, right after I picked this headline in another forum, somebody saying, Hey, [00:12:00] I’ve got $200,000 I don’t need. And by the way, I thought what a great place to be. I,
me too. Lemme throw this on the internet.
Yeah. Let me ask the internet what to do, like, like a little subtle flex.
Well, and, but this is what they said. Oh gee. They followed it up with, Hey, I’m looking at 10 year treasuries because I don’t need it. I, I don’t wanna do anything quote risky. I thought the riskiest thing you can do with a 10 year time horizon is trusted in a treasury.
Like we need to redefine what we think of as risk. The risk is you’re gonna set all this money that you quote don’t need. It’s gonna go nowhere. It’s gonna go Absolutely. Yeah. Nowhere even worse, by the way, if you need the money, oh God, don’t put it in a treasury if you’ve got 10 years, if you need the money.
’cause well it’s, it’s not gonna
be much. You’ve got some price volatility that’s gonna happen. I mean, the definition of risk is different than what people say. Risk is the chance of loss, right? A treasury is riskless if you use the right time horizon. But if you’re using it in the [00:13:00] context of chance of living, outliving my money in retirement, cash and fixed income is the riskiest monster risk.
And that’s not to say that you don’t have short term. Money for short-term goals. I have a junior in college. We’re starting to make sure that we have short-term money, you know? And it seems really silly ’cause I’m like, oh man, what if, what if the next 18 months are just like gangbusters? And I miss out on that, like that 25% number, like one last time in the 5 29 before he goes to college.
It’s like, well that could happen. Absolutely. It also could be the minus 25 that makes it so that I don’t have enough for his college, you know? So it’s
hard to shut up that little gambler in the back of your head.
Well, I have a big gambler in the back of my head. It’s like
screaming at him all the
time.
It’s like John Goodman in the back of my mind, except he’s doing all the bad things. Like in the gambler, when he tells Mark Wahlberg to like take his two and a half million and set aside his FU money, my gambler, John Goodman’s like. Do it, put it on [00:14:00] margin. Double down, but it’s an eight. Double down. It’s like literally a
gambler.
You’ve already got 21.
I know. Split it. Sir. You can’t split 21, but I want 21 Twice.
I’m gonna be the first
John Goodman’s in my head going, you should go to the national championship game. That would be a great idea.
Bring your in-Law where you can pay 1650 for a hot dog.
I don’t even know. We, we, we went, Alyssa went out.
She’s like, I’m gonna go get food. Who wants what? She just came back with Three Chick-fil-A sandwiches, two orders of chicken fingers, and a hot dog. I have no idea how much it was, but I bet it was a solid 120 bucks.
Oh, yeah. Oh, I bet you it was a lot more than that.
You think
so? I don’t know. Yeah, I saw some pr, I mean, did she get any drinks?
Water was $7 for
a bottle of water. Yeah, we had some crappy Dasani water.
Speaking of big events, and a guy who’s gone to big events time for our TikTok minute, this is, uh, the part of the [00:15:00] show where we shine the light on a TikTok creator who’s either talking some brilliance or some air quotes, brilliance about a topic in personal finance.
Oh gee. Uh, which one do you think we have today?
This is good brilliance. This is good stuff.
What? Wow. What, who is he today? Maybe it was my foreshadowing, but today’s TikTok comes to us from a man who went to the Super Bowl. And made a video about how he ate ahead of time and only drank water from the water fountain.
Of course, it’s our good friend of the show, Clark Howard, who’s just amazing. He will pay for the experience, but he’s not gonna pay for that overpriced food at the concession stand. Uh, Clark Howard in a recent TikTok video, talked about Sam’s Club and Costco pricing, and you can look at the last two digits, like the number of cents at the end, and find out what’s going on with their pricing.
This is Clark giving us a little bit of the Costco slash Sam’s Club magic.
Let’s go. Uh, [00:16:00] 97 cents is a regional or corporate office markdown. They are selling below their cost because they overestimated demand for a particular item. And the way Costco’s inventory management works, they want those items to turn over in 21 days.
If it goes past 35, they’re just trying to move it out and they will go ahead and 97 the item and take the hit and sell it below cost. The other thing that can happen at a Costco, so when you see something end in zero zero, that means the store manager decided an item was not moving well, corporate wasn’t listening, and they have the authority to go ahead and do a zero zero.
If it’s an asterisk, it means they’re not gonna restock the item again At Sam’s Club, they use a different system ending in one penny. That means it’s the same thing as a Costco 97. Sam’s Club uses a number sign instead of an asterisk for an item. They are doing sell
through on. How about that? So if it says 97 [00:17:00] cents on the end of a Costco item, you know that you buy as much as you can.
Yes. And if it has an asterisk and it’s your favorite thing, realize it ain’t coming back. Right. So buy a pallet. That’s a
problem. I’ve had some amazing products. Just grabbed it. Didn’t pay attention to the price. Just got attracted by, you know, whatever the product was. Some kind of chicken nugget, usually hair gel.
Right? And then you go back for it. Didn’t catch the asterisk the first time I bought it. Fell in love with it.
It’s gone. No more attendees for you.
Good stuff from Clark Howard, uh, that we can all take and use the next time we go to what, uh, Cheryl affectionately calls the a hundred dollars store. Oh,
it’s, that’s 15 years ago, right?
If she’s still calling it the a hundred dollars store. She hasn’t been there in a while. She has not been in a while. It is tough to make it out for under three. Yeah, I’m with you on that. And I’m, I’m not exaggerating. I don’t even buy for, you know, lots of kids anymore. And it’s not far from three most trips.
Coming up next, Jesse Meum is a [00:18:00] guy who created this little program called You Need a Budget, and he’s here to start us off with a spending plan. And the big question I wanna ask Jesse, I heard a rumor recently that Jesse doesn’t like the term budget and yet. He thinks we all need one. He need one. Gonna dive into why Jesse is always entertaining.
Glad he’s coming back to mentor us today on our spending plan and our budget as we dive into 2024. But before that, Doug, you’ve got some trivia for
us today. I do. The trivia question I actually really want an answer to is, why is OG so chipper this morning? Throw away the question I’ve got for us. We need to dive into this.
We
would do that one if we had an answer. We don’t have an answer to that one though. It’s just
not right. Thinks the TikTok minute’s gonna be brilliant. It’s rolling in here with jokes. I’ll see if we can’t get things back on track. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Every year around this time when I’m taking [00:19:00] down Christmas lights, the neighborhood kids stand under the ladder and tease me.
Being afraid of heights all because of that one time, one one time when I let out a high-pitched squeal when I slipped on the roof, but my throat was dry. I like to see them climb around on what could have been very loose shingles, you know, doing like super manly work. It’s just one time. Matter of fact, let’s prove that I’m not afraid of heights.
The last time I was in New York City, I went to the glass observation deck at the Empire State Building. Didn’t even flinch. Not once. Some of the kids around me kept closing their eyes, but no, not me. I kept my eyes open the entire time. Even if my hand was attached to the rail, I had to hold the building steady.
If anything, I feel safer in the Empire State Building than other high rises. You know why? Because the longest free fall that a person survived in an elevator happened there after being injured by a B 52 that crashed into the building. Betty [00:20:00] Lou Oliver was put into an elevator by paramedics only to then free fall 75 stories.
She was having a bad day. She survived with only a broken neck. Only back and pelvis only, right? That’s it. By the sounds of that, I’m pretty confident that I would’ve walked away from it with only minor scratches, cuts, and bruises, and probably the key to the city. Another one. Today’s trivia question is on this day in 1861, Elijah Otis secured the patent for what invention.
I’ll be back right after I prove to the neighborhood kids that I’m not afraid of snakes either,
not.
Hey
there, stackers. I’m heights lover, and definitely not afraid of almost all [00:21:00] snakes. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. After surviving, what you could argue was the most efficient elevator ride in history. Just cracks me up. Betty,
Betty Lou Oliver declined all interview requests about her experience, which is really a shame. I guess I gotta be the one to write a book of elevator crash survival techniques. Now she’s not gonna do it. Today’s trivia question was, on this day in 1861, Elijah Otis secured the patent for what invention.
The answer after debuting his invention at the World’s Fair at Crystal Palace in London, Elijah Otis secured the patent for the elevator in 1861. And now here to teach you how you can ride your money elevator all the way to the top. It’s today’s mentor, Jesse Meka.
Chassis. Have a seat, man. Super happy you’re back with us.
How have you been? Yeah, I’m
happy to be here. I’ve been really well. I’ve, I, I cannot [00:22:00] complain, honestly. I’m, I’m just glad to be
back, dude. A little bird told me that the guy behind a, a brand, I think called you need a budget, doesn’t like the word budget. Is that true?
That is absolutely true. I think I’ve spent the last 20 years trying to change the definition of the word, and at this point, I’m ready to wave the white flag.
Like, I, I don’t wanna, we, we can’t do it. We can’t change it. We know, we tried to convince people like, oh, a budget means freedom. A budget means, you know, you spend on what you want. A budget means your priorities are lined up with your values and. At the end of the day, when someone hears the word budget, unless they gimme at least five minutes, they’re gonna think it’s restriction.
They’re gonna think they’re gonna be cutting back, they’re gonna think that they’re, there’s just, I don’t know, it just carries a lot of baggage. So we literally are moving away from the name. You need a budget and we’re just using our acronym. Just why it’s, it’s why nab? Yeah. Yeah. And if someone asks, I’ll tell ’em the whole story if they want, but I, I feel like now wine A stands for You’re not a budget.
Oh, nice. You know, that’s, [00:23:00] that’s where, you know, so we’ll see where that lands. But yeah, 20 years of tried to change the definition of a standard English word, you know, I, I give up.
But it is frustrating. And you see this year. I mean, we’re very early into 2024, Jesse, and people are already done with their New Year’s resolutions.
Like how, how do we screw up this spending plan stuff so early in the year? Yeah.
I, I think honestly people, well, they, they look at it as well, one, that they need to be perfect at it and that they don’t give themselves reps. It’s, it would be like if someone walked in the gym and they’re just like, I’ll just, I’ll bench 300.
You’re like, nah, you’re gonna start out quite a bit lighter, you know, we’ll get there. And, and so people need to give themselves a lot more grace in the process and kind of. Recognize that what they’re really doing when they’re trying to spend their money more intentionally, they’re really trying to express themselves more accurately.
And if we can start to think of spending not as like something external from yourself, like, well, I have to manage my money, this thing, I don’t really like this thing that causes me stress. If we actually can turn it around [00:24:00] and say, well, how do you wanna express yourself in the world? You know, your, your money is just an extension or a manifestation of all of your energy and efforts that you’ve poured into it.
I mean, you and I sitting here doing this show, we’re both expending energy. And then that energy hopefully turns around and becomes money. But then what do we do with that that stored up energy? And I wish people would just recognize, it’s just them trying to write a story, not trying to be something different than what
they are.
But I love that idea because instead of counting pennies. Are you familiar with John Acuff? Do you know John Acuff? I, uh, the name? Yes. Yeah. So John was on, uh, the first week of the year, Jesse and he talked about how instead of freaking out about our big goals, what’s our purpose, what’s our destiny like, all this stuff.
Yeah. Look back and go like, what lights us up and those things that light us up. Our goal should be to do more of that, right? Yeah. And so I think what you’re saying is an extension of that. Like now that I’ve got these goals, so I know I want to go on more [00:25:00] trips in 2024, I know I want to, um, I wanna take more time away from my nine to five and 2024.
Well, that’s gonna take money. And so to be able to do that, you’re saying express that in terms of the dollar bills coming in and out of my life.
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean like if you could imagine that that dollar is really you, it’s just you get to store up a little bit of you in that account and then just kind of be like, well, how do I want to use me?
It suddenly becomes more personal and it can be more, not like imposed on you from some external thinking, but just from you originally. So the funny thing is, Joe, is we’ll tell people like, we are not gonna tell you to cut your spending. We won’t. Money is meant to be spent, even if you’re like, well, I wanna retire.
Well, yeah. Then once you retire, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna try and spend that money as, as well as you can. So it’s supposed to be spent. If we can get people to a spot where they recognize that instead of cutting back, if they can find what lights them up, like you said, then all of the other stuff their money [00:26:00] was doing, they don’t feel like they’re cutting back.
But they’ll just naturally be like, I don’t, I don’t want to use my money for that or this. And, um, I hate to, you know, spoil the, the surprise, but. We’ve talked to hundreds of thousands of people over the years. Sure. You know, they’ll say, I paid off debt. They hit these big goals. And I’ll tell ’em, well, what was the, what?
Like, suddenly you just found all this money, like you didn’t, you weren’t making more what happened? And I’m not kidding you, it’s obnoxiously simple without exception. Every time I’ve asked someone this question, I said, where’d the money come from? And they will tell me, uh, we ate out less. Yeah. I’m not kidding.
I wish it were like it was there the whole time. Yeah. I, I wish I could tell you like, well, I did some deep psychological analysis on the person, but at the end of the day they, they were just like, I want this thing more than I want that other thing. And they changed their behavior. But what you said is so important.
It’s framed around what they want, not what they can’t have. That mindset shift is, makes all the difference.
Well, so then if we use that kind of as our [00:27:00] North star, then Jesse, let’s get a little tactical here. I’m setting up my 2024 spending plan. You’re not a budget, you’re a spending plan. I’m setting that up.
How do we make sure that that
sticks? First of all, you need to say, uh, what habits, like what we talk about our four rules, our four habits, we’re trying to get people to think differently about the money. And so what we really wanna do is just start to have them do these simple little things and just no matter what happens, you just, you come back again.
So you create the spending plan, whatever that means. That’s just this arbitrary line in the sand. That’s like, I’m done for a moment, and then life starts to happen. Our third habit is we, we call it rolling with the punches, but it literally just means, Hey, if new information pops up. Adjust your plan. And we’re mad at professional coaches when we’re armchair quarterbacking and they don’t make the right adjustments during halftime or whatever.
Or you’ll have a, you’ll have a coach that makes this killer game plan studies film and just as ready, like they’ve done [00:28:00] every preparation possible for this big game. As soon as the ball is hiked or the clock starts, as soon as that happens, the coach is immediately ready to adjust. And we would never think otherwise.
But for some reason, when we set up our spending plan, we’re like chiseling it in stone, rigid. It’s the weirdest thing. And rid we, we say this often. Rigid plans break, or Mike Tyson said it best. Everyone has the plan until they get punched in the face. And so that probably from our, kind of anecdotally from years of people telling us what helped to stick was habit number three, rolling with the punches.
When new information comes, just make adjustments. Keep going. You know, I had a little shoulder tweak. I’m, I’m, I’m working on my lifting, you know, I’m making all this progress. Suddenly my shoulder’s hurting. And I talked to my coach and he’s like, oh, we’ll just, we’ll switch this out. We’ll do something different.
He was just rolling with the punches. He wasn’t saying, well, lifting weights doesn’t work now because Jesse has a little shoulder thing or whatever. So we have to make sure we don’t throw out the, uh, the baby with the bath water, so to speak.
Well, and I like that [00:29:00] because that speaks more to, I feel like you have more rules of engagement than like a money diet, right?
Oh, no, no diet. No diet. Yeah. Yeah. Let’s, let’s censor that out. Like do you do swear sensors? We need to do ’em for that right there. Steve. Steve,
bleep that for us. Please. You’ve a monster community. I’m wondering about this, like when you originally set up YN you’re like, okay, uh, I’ve got all these things that I think are important.
Every dollar gets a job and it’s gonna work this way. Your community must have surprised you, Jesse, over the years, about things that they wanted or they thought were important that you didn’t think of. What are some of those things? Your community came to you and goes, you know what? This is pretty damn important and helps us succeed.
Oh
man. If you could see the original product that I launched with, it would inspire everyone to launch something because it was so bare bones. Our original product had no concept of multiple accounts. It was just one register of all your transactions. So I just thought, well, the category is where the money sits.
That’s [00:30:00] what tells you what you need to do. That’s what tells you how to spend, that’s what tells you where your, you know, what your plan is. So we just had one long register and it didn’t matter if you had 19 savings accounts or one, three checking accounts, two credit cards, none of it matter. It was like, that’s a transaction.
It doesn’t matter. Credit cards were treated like cash, which actually we still do to this day. A little, a little more fancy. But I had been rolling with that for a couple years successfully with a meager income with, with Julie and I, and then suddenly these early adopters were like, could we get away to like see what one account has in it?
And we’re like, I guess, yeah. I mean, it was just,
it was so, so
basic. I can’t believe that we launched with it, but it’s a testament to, I think. The power of the thinking that we were teaching versus this little just basic piece of software that we launched with. ’cause we were teaching people these four habits and that’s what was resonating with them.
The software was just like, Hey, you know, I could help you think a little better. And so that was one. Another one that was hard for me is connecting to bank [00:31:00] accounts. Oh yeah. I
wanted people to in the moment. It still sucks,
doesn’t it? It does. It’s a horrible it, it’s no one’s fault. Except, except the banks.
Yeah, I’ll say that. Yeah. Yeah. They don’t play nice. They don’t want people to have their data. It’s a whole other thing, but. Still, it’s a horrible feature. When it works. It, it’s great. But I, I was afraid that if people didn’t engage with their spending and manually record it, that we would lose them. That they would just be like, oh, it’s on autopilot.
It’s taken care of by the import. And I had to back off of that one. People just said, this is tedium. It’s not, it’s not engagement. And so that’s been kind of a rule for us, is we want people engaged, but we don’t want tedium. And we’re always trying to strip away tedium without automating at the loss of engagement with your
decisions.
Well, that way then you’re engaging at the a hundred dollars level instead of the, the stupid Yeah. 10
cent level. Yeah, exactly. And the old, like, you’ve been around so long and the old like latte thing, everyone makes fun of it. ’cause they’re like, well you won’t make a bunch of money cutting out lattes.[00:32:00]
And I kind of have started thinking about that different, you know, you have the $5 coffee or whatever. I think we’re missing the boat. If you’re saying, I’m gonna cut that out so I can save money, cool. If you’re saying, Hey, that doesn’t move the needle, it’s not a big thing, that’s also right. You know? But there’s this sweet spot where every time you spend something as nominal as $5, it feels good.
And that is, I think, where we were missing between like, I mean, Ramit, Satie, he says a lot of the time, like, who cares about that? Go for the big step. And he’s mathematically absolutely correct. And then I think it was Bach originally, not the composer, but David Bach. David Bach might’ve said it too. He was a smart guy.
But, but yeah, David Bach was like, Hey, this adds up. Especially if you compound it. So he was also right, even mathematically. And where I, where I’ve landed recently, I just thought, you know, those small things can be something enjoyable. A daily enjoyable spending moment I think is a win. I think we lose that sometimes and think it’s about the money and it’s, it’s not, it’s, it’s [00:33:00] actually about what you’re
getting from it.
That’s so funny, Jesse. We’re on the same page there. I’m, I’m part of this workout group at 5:00 AM which by the way, workout is awesome. 5:00 AM sucks. Yes, you’ll always suck, but today it’s every Monday, Wednesday, and today because of the fact that I’m getting back into it after the holidays and I did both days, I promised myself that I would go get a coffee and a muffin from the place.
So I used it, I used the latte thing, to your point as this, this treat, and I gotta tell you, it had nothing to do with the coffee as much as it had to do the celebration of Yeah, I’m, I’m deploying. And I like, you know, when you said being intentional with your money, I made a decision to deploy this money as a celebratory moment to go, you know what?
I stuck the landing for a full week.
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s, that’s the moment. And I to think that your day, I mean, we spend our money. Every single day, big or small. And so to think that that spending that moment is always causing us consternation. [00:34:00] And then to think that you spend 8, 9, 10, 11 hours a day working to earn that money.
So now it’s like we’re spending half our day earning it, hopefully some amount sleeping, and then the rest of the time we’re stressed about spending the thing we spend half the day earning. And that to me is like, we’re so at odds with how things could be. I hope the whole, I hope we can change it. Not, I mean, not just for YA, like I hope we can just get there on the whole where people, I mean, they give up time with family.
They spend so much energy to earn money and it’s important. But then to think that they can’t turn around and enjoy the deployment of it is a tragedy.
It totally is. I got people, I gotta circle back, Jesse, because people are yelling at their device. You give us rule number three, everybody’s like, I don’t know, one, two, and four.
So can you briefly go
through the four? Yeah, you bet. So the first rule you, you mentioned is give every dollar a job. And it’s that intentionality, their habits of thinking for better decision making, that that is all it is. So [00:35:00] whether or not you decide, oh, I should try yap or use pencil and paper or whatever, the thinking is the important thing here.
So you’re given every dollar a job where you’re starting to feel trade offs. If I do this, I can’t do this. Every other mechanism in the financial world is built to not have you feel the trade off. It’s built to have you just walk right past zero, borrow a little money, you’ll take care of it later, you’ll pay for it after.
That kind of thing where we wanna get away from. So you want to feel the trade off because when you do. Your priorities are clear. That’s habit number one. Number two, we call it embracing your true expenses. And all this means is you’re looking ahead to larger, less frequent expenses and you’re bringing ’em into the present.
So it would be like, like Joe, if you’re sitting there saying, Hey, uh, do we wanna go to sushi? Or do we wanna do Christmas? No one actually makes that decision. But what we wanna do is bring Christmas into the present. Here we are, you know, at this time of recording New Year. We’re bringing it into the present.
And now [00:36:00] you’re saying like, do I wanna do this thing or do I wanna set myself up for Christmas 2024? And lo and behold, people make really good decisions when it’s presented in that way. You know, you never have someone say, ah, let’s just burn the bridges for the future. Let’s just do it now. If you present it correctly, they’ll do it.
I liken it also. ’cause sometimes like car repairs get a, get a bad rap. ’cause people say, I don’t know how much it’ll cost. And you’re like, well, it’ll be more than zero, you know, so like, let’s start there. Right, right. And put a little money aside, but thanks, I, I liken it often to like, you’re standing at the car repair, you know, the tire place, and they’re like, you need to do tires.
And then there’s like a pizza guy that’s like, or, or you could have this pizza and no one in their right mind is like, well, I’ll take the pizza, let’s forget about the tires. Like, everyone chooses the tires. So in a sense, habit two is just like bringing the future you. Back to the present and kind of negotiating with him or her saying, what do you think we should do with this money?
What kind of trade off should we make? Habit three, I mentioned
this and before we, well, lemme pause for just a second. Habit one and two also lead me to something. You [00:37:00] know, a lot of places draw difference really between tracking expenses and your budget, your spending plan, right? Yeah. That those are two different things.
You’re actually kind of saying you’re exploding that, Jesse, you’re saying these are really the same function, like tracking you expense. If you give a dollar ahead of time, there’s no such thing between tracking how you spend and watching how you deployed it later. It should be the same function.
It’s the same thing.
One, they’re just interlinked. ’cause if you’re saying, I will spend my money on this, then the next thing you must know is how did you do? So they, they have to be together. The the miss is if you just track and don’t think beforehand what you wanna do, it would be like at the end of the day, writing down everything you did.
You would get information and I think it could start to kinda steer your behavior for the next day. So it, it’s not for nothing, but the real power comes when you, at the beginning of the day say, okay, I’ve got the recording with Joe. I’ve got this thing, I’ve got this thing. And you, you prep and plan
for it.
We wrote about that and stacked about how Thomas Jefferson, phenomenal Tracker, Jesse, just an amazing tracker. [00:38:00] People that know anything about TJ as we call him, you know, our buddy horrible with money just owed everybody money. ’cause he tracked but he never did anything with the data.
Yeah. Maybe he was an eternal optimist or something like, ah, this will
take care of itself.
Yeah. It’s if I just make a little more money. ’cause that’s a lie I told myself for a long time, if I just make more money, life will be better.
Yeah. It’s absolutely, I mean, I like the optimist in all of us. I think that’s okay, but we just wanna make sure that we’re, we’re holding on to reality as we’re having those positive conversations.
And, I’m sorry, what’s the fourth one? So the fourth one, it’s called Aging Your Money and it’s, it’s like a wine that sits and gets better over time when your money is allowed to sit for a little while. So you earned it today if you could let it sit for 45, 50, 60 days. The difference that makes in. Every part of your life is palpable.
You sleep better, you have more time between like the moment that a decision must be made and the need for the money. So if you already have the money and then you’re like, Hey, this thing happened, we gotta make this adjustment, this disaster [00:39:00] struck, or whatever, you know, roof is leaking, you now aren’t scrambling.
Worrying about only the repair for the roof, but also the fact that like, where’s the money gonna come from in that ability to let money sit creates distance between when you earn it and when you spend it. And that distance gives you time to make better decisions. And when you’re under the gun, I mean, they’ve proven this over and over again, you know, split decision making.
And when you’re under the gun in the most mundane task, that means nothing. No stress should be there. They can just tell you there’s stress because there’s a timer and the timer means nothing. And people still see their decision quality decrease. So what we wanna do is build buffer between when we earn the money and when that money is needed for spending.
And the app tracks it for you. So you can say like, oh, it’s, you know, my money is on average, 60 days old, 70 days old. It’s an old accounting trick. We, we track how long it sits before it leaves again, and it works Well. It’s, it’s an interesting thing because it’s this [00:40:00] kind of overarching habit of, um, I don’t need the money right now.
So instead of earning it Friday and having it all spent Monday instead. You have this power over it that I think manifests itself in a lot of different ways for people where there’s something they’ve never felt before where the money lands and they don’t need it right now. It, it’s kind of a new feeling and it’s quite empowering.
I feel like
money that’s not aged by the way, you have me at the wine analogy. So this job, money that hasn’t aged. I don’t know. I feel like it makes my brain lazy. Yeah. If I’m gonna spend that money right away, if I’m gonna take it and just spend it, because if I can just easily take out my credit card today, then I don’t have to think of creative ways to get around whatever the problem of the day is.
Yeah. But if I’ve got the money sitting and I actually have to go to that money seller to take out the, the bottle of money and open it up and uncork it and get it, like put myself through some hassle, like that’s why it, I think that also works, not just for your budget. I mean, [00:41:00] now you’ve attacked your budget to your investment strategy.
Because knowing what I’m aging that for and how long that dollar needs to sit for, the thing is gonna tell me what type of quote seller I use. Meaning, am I gonna use a stock investment? Am I gonna use real estate? Am I gonna use a cd? Because, you know, different things do better with different ages.
Yeah, absolutely.
That, that horizon is, is relevant. I mean, we steer clear of the in, you know, investment as far as what our app does. Sure. But the, the thinking behind it is absolutely on point. Yeah.
Just for our average stacker, I mean, for them it’ll lead you to, oh, if I’m aging this for a long time, what do I use?
Yeah, absolutely.
And yeah, you’re right. Different instruments for different purposes. Absolutely. That’s
fabulous. If, if only Jesse, if only you weren’t just mentoring us today. If only you had a tool that might be able to help people with this, this, uh, you’re not a budget problem. Tell me There might be a tool out there.
There is. It used to [00:42:00] be a spreadsheet back when I launched it, but now it’s so much more and I’m so glad. Yeah. Uh, why nab.com people can go, there’s a 34 day free trial to give it a, you know, kick the tires. Like, to adopt new software into your daily routine is a big deal. And so people need to really stress test it and, and, uh, see if it works.
It’s a different way of thinking about money and so you kind of gotta. Go into the app knowing, okay, I’m not just gonna track I’m, it’s not just gonna gimme this like whole picture view. It’s all great, but it’s going to try, the app will try and start to teach you these four habits of better
thinking.
Well, for me to jump in for just a second, Jesse, because I think this is really important for me over the time that I’ve done this, why NAB is not even about the app for me, it is so much more about the community jump into this community of people because it truly is, you know, we talk about the importance of surround sound, holding yourself accountable, helping other people celebrating wins.
Oh my god, Jesse, it’s like you guys designed this clubhouse in these, [00:43:00] I think of some of my wide nabers that are also stackers as just freaks. Like they, they’re
just crazy. I apologize in advance for those fans. Yeah. I don’t know where it comes from. Well, I have some guesses, but they, they’re crazy in the best kind of way.
Um, so good. Yeah, they’re, they’re phenomenal. They’re so friendly for some reason, like our community is so friendly with each other, it’s unbelievable. But you know, if you go back and you think about it, you took something as fundamental as money. And I, I put that right up there with health relationships.
Like money is a, it’s not something that you just do the necessary bit for and try and avoid. I think you should run toward it and be like, I’m gonna master this part of life. If you do that and you really change your life, you can’t help but kind of be like, oh my gosh, everybody needs this. And that’s where we have a whole bunch of fans that, that can’t, uh, you know, I mean, Thanksgiving dinners, you know, they, they always go one direction with them, basically.
And I love it. Love it.
Jesse, thanks [00:44:00] for mentoring us on our spending plan today. I super appreciate you.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, this is Jen Pilcher, Navy spouse of 23 years. And when I’m not helping military spouses connect and our digital community, I’m Stacking Benjamins. Big thanks to Jesse for mentoring us.
I’m moving that elevator to the top. Speaking of elevators, how? How? I just can’t imagine living. Oh my God. After free falling that far,
a BAB 52 crashes into the building and then you’re drop down the elevator. Unbelievable. My bad.
Yeah, not a great day. Hey, let’s get people a better day time for us to debut our brand new segment.
I wish we had horns. We don’t have any. Steve, you got some horns.
Welcome
to the new Colin segment on the Stacking Benjamin Show, which we like to call Better Call Saul. See hi [00:45:00] and og the spot where you get to ask OG and I a question about your money and we answer it. How the hell OG that’s been there for this many years? You’re welcome. And uh, we didn’t take advantage of that.
Yes, OG calls me incessantly, which again, Doug, I don’t know what the hell’s going on happen. All of a sudden he’s like, I have an idea for the show. Like, what? Caller,
Brian caller, hold on. You gotta find some of the background music or something for it, can’t you?
We’ve been looking for it. If somebody’s got a great iconic, uh, better call Saul Line that we can add to this brand new segment of ours, uh, help us out.
Just write me Joe at Stacking Benjamins dot com. For today though, we’re just gonna go with this. Torin is, uh, calling Saul. See hi and OG with this question. Hey, Joe and og.
I have some money set aside for a down payment on a house and a general investment account because my time horizon for buying a house was pretty
indefinite.
Now I’ll be buying a house in
[00:46:00] 2025. Given my time Horizon is more defined and shorter, should I move it from the investment account into a high yield savings account or a CD rate, or keep it in a more conservative investment mix?Thanks
Toin. Great question. And OG, this is the same, you can hear in the back of his voice, that same gambler mentality that you were talking about with your kids’ college fund.
Yeah, Yolo. I mean, this is the exact thing that we were just talking about earlier, both with the college stuff but also with the treasuries. This money belongs in your savings account or you know, a CD if you want it. But listen, if you’re thinking you’re gonna buy a house in the next year, there’s a strange thing the universe does, which is to like put that stuff in front of you a lot sooner than you think.
So I don’t know that I would, I don’t know that I would use a CD because what if you find your dream house in October of this year and you’re like, oh crap, my CD’s not available until January of 25 and you gotta pay a penalty and it’s gross. Just find a. A good high [00:47:00] yield savings account, they’re out there, go to deposit accounts and figure it out.
It’s super easy and make sure you’re getting 5% and let it sit there. So I don’t like the phraseology that people use, like, I wanna be conservative in my investment account. That doesn’t make any sense to me. You have a goal and you have a timeframe, and so you just figure out how much money your, your money has to make to make that goal.
That’s neither conservative nor aggressive, nor anything that’s just accomplishing your goal. And when you use like dichotomous words, like it conservative investment together, it screws it up in our brains. You know what I mean? Like, like investing is long-term money, long-term money should be invested.
The conservative nature of a long-term investment is the fact that it’s a long-term investment because you know you’re gonna get paid out over the next 20 or 30 years. Like that’s, that’s what makes it conservative like we were talking about earlier. Being aggressive or being [00:48:00] risky is having your money in, in, in the wrong thing for the wrong time horizon.
So you have a timeframe, you have a goal. Make sure the money matches the timeframe and the goal and move it. Yeah. So you pay some taxes if your money’s gone up, if, if it was invested and it’s, and, and you’ve made some, uh, returns on it, that’s, that’s the cost of doing business. It’s totally fine to pay taxes.
You made money how it works in real life. So boom, put it in cash. Have fun shopping for houses. I
feel like all of that, Joe was just so that he could use the phrase dichotomous.
I, I actually was, there was a 50 50 shot in my brain that I was like, this might not actually be a word, but I feel like it should be.
That was perfect, dude. So I’m gonna say it with all the confidence that, oh, nailed it. That a man of my stature has already nailed it and just let it go. Because I knew if it was bad, one of the two of you, and especially you, Doug would’ve go, you gonna. You had a thesaurus me outta that, outta that
paragraph in the, no, I liked it.
[00:49:00] I enjoyed it and well done. Great explanation. Thank you. I approvecompletely unrelated, by the way. My window that I can see outta the basement here faces the street. And I have a neighbor who goes on a walk, but apparently he does it backwards and I’m trying to figure out the benefit to that. He walks the opposite
way around the No,
but he’s literally walking backwards.
He’s literally walking backwards. Oh, it’s a, it’s an incredible workout for, I don’t know the names of the muscles down your shins, but it’s an incredible workout for that. It’s really good actually. Backwards. Agree to disagree. He just looks dumb. I mean, I’m not saying he doesn’t look like an idiot, but there is value to it.
Sir, sir, you’re going the wrong way, sir. Sir, you’re going the wrong
way. It’s not worth having. Put it in drive, having ripped
shit muscles. Put it in drive.
I know. Just let it roll in. Neutral, brother. It’ll eventually go.
I was behind this guy at the mall and his shins were, oh God, dude, nothing sexier, flexing one leg.
Torin, uh, if I may interrupt to [00:50:00] get back to your question. You know, you know what? What always. Solves this for me is instead of thinking what makes me the most money, I think, which would make me the most unhappy if I went to buy my house, if the market took off a bajillion and I didn’t get that money, or the market tanked and I had the money in the wrong spot, now I have a third less money to put toward my house.
And it almost always gives me the, you know, you talk about the word conservative, og, it almost gives me, it gives me the timeframe answer every time. Yeah. It’s like, wait, if I didn’t have the down payment around, so I like locking it in. And by the way, OG said goes. Yeah.
Statistically losing feels twice as bad as winning.
Feels good. Yeah. Going
to deposit accounts.com. Uh, right now, a savings account paying, uh, 4.96% as we record this, if you’re in the top 1% of savings accounts, there you go. Pretty good For a one year. Yeah. It’s not
zero. You’re gonna get some cash and then it’s sitting there.
And to your point, he could get [00:51:00] close to six if he did a one year cd.
But again, OG the universe is the second, it’s, it’s 5.66. If you’re in the top 1% of CDs. So higher,
it’s $600 on a hundred K.
The cost of your freedom. Yeah. And if you break it, you just lose all the, in, in most cases, you lose every penny of that
interest or, or significant amount of it. Yeah. Absolutely. More than
600 is one of the bullet points coming outta your explanation or your answer there, og, that the only difference between conservative or aggressive investing is the timeline of your goal.
Uh,
I mean, yes, in, in the sense that the conservative or aggressive component of it is backwards for what people think. I think the most conservative thing to be is to be fully invested in the biggest and best companies in the world all of the time until you need the money. Like that’s, to me, the most conservative thing.
You just look at all of the expansive history that we have in terms of investing. Which, you know, reliably goes to [00:52:00] 1926 and then seagull’s got info back into the 18 hundreds where there’s a lot less like public data and that sort of thing. But he’s done a lot of research on that and the, and it tracks then as well that the best place you can be for long-term money is in the ownership of companies.
It’s just that simple. So to me that seems very conservative because we’ve seen the math play out, we’ve seen how to make the cake, and we’ve seen it be successful time and time and time and time and time again. The most aggressive thing to do, in my opinion, is to be ultra cons. Ultra conservancy, I can’t even do it, is to be is, is to have your money in like a savings account or something like that.
Because to your point, Joe, from earlier, you need the value of compounding. I’ll give you a great example of this. I was looking at chat, GPTI was just kind of flowing around with it a couple of weeks ago and I said, here’s my net worth. Here’s my age. How much do I have to save every single month to reach a billion dollars by the time I’m 90?[00:53:00]
And it was like, you need giggle, giggle. You need to save this much for a year or whatever it was. Insane amount of money, millions of dollars. Okay, so then the next thing I said was, what if I lived to be 110? So I added 20 years on the backend, right? I said, my timeframe is now 110 years old instead of 90 to be a billionaire.
And it went, yeah, you’re already there. You don’t have to save any more money because of the value of comp. No, no, no. Because of the value of compounding, right? I’ve already saved enough money to be a billionaire at 110, I’m, you know, I’m gonna live to be 140, so this is good for me. But my point is that we don’t get to see the value of compounding forward looking.
We only see it in, in the rear view mirror. And so you have to have faith and patience. And discipline to believe that that’s gonna happen. Like all those things have to be in your soul at all times to do that. Because when the [00:54:00] stock market goes up and down or we see like all this stuff, the day to day, it makes us wanna do the quote conservative thing.
But in actuality is the aggressive thing of going, I need to be quote conservative with my money and put it into a savings account or put it into whatever, like the, like the, uh, you know, like you said, the person from Reddit said that’s the most aggressive he could be. Because to be financially independent, to your point, Joe, from earlier, if all you do is get inflation level returns, you have to save every dollar necessary for your future living.
Now I. That’s just not possible to do. Like mathematically, challenge me on this. Do the math. Figure out how old you are. Add inflation to whenever you wanna retire. Add inflation to that number every single year. Say, okay, I’m 40 right now. I live on 80 grand a year by the time I’m 65. I’m need to live on 120,000 a year.
’cause that’s inflation. And then from [00:55:00] 65 to 95 every year, that’s this dollar amount, right? Add all those years up and then add up how much money you make today. You don’t make enough money from 40 to 65 if you saved every penny and never paid a dollar in taxes or any expenses to save all the money you would need if you got just cash returns.
To me, that is ultra aggressive. Like there’s no way to do it. That’s the lottery ticket versus going, oh, I’ll just use the power of compounding. That’s worked for basically. Two centuries of public investing. And this is easy. I just need, I just need the right time horizon. Yo, I can’t be a billionaire by the time I’m 90.
No problem. Change the change the time horizon. I’ll be a billionaire by the time I’m 110, then fine. Goodbye me. Still works. Math checks. Well,
and this is a great lesson also for our younger stackers. Right? Pile up the money early. Man, I wish I knew this in my
twenties. Oh my God. Well, and again, you and I knew this in our twenties actually executed, executed it, but we didn’t know it in our soul though.
You know what I mean? Like we were talking about it. We’re like, Hey Stuart Roth, [00:56:00] IRA should, but I got time. I don’t get, I got
blah, blah, blah. Yeah, yeah. Because you’re an idiot when you’re
- Hey, easy. There’s some 20 threes out there listening that are brilliant.
Sorry, there’s probably some 20 of you guys are geniuses ‘
cause you’re listening to the show.
We idiots. We were 23.
Well, I, yes. No, I mean the vast majority of people are, and it’s not intentional. That’s the other piece with this I think that people get wrapped up in is you, you know, your past doesn’t define your future. Future. And you know, most of the time. You’re not sitting there at 23, the proverbial idiot, 23-year-old.
You’re not sitting there going, I’m gonna try to figure out a way to screw up my life for the next 15 years. What should I do? What should I do? What should I do? You know, you’re just doing your thing, right? You’re living your life and, and trying to do as best as you can. My son is, like I said, almost 17, and he said the other day, he’s like, how, how do I know how to pay taxes?
Like, who tells me how to do that? And I said, what do you mean? And he said, you know, like I know that you guys are talking about taxes. When do I know how to do that? Do I have to do that now? Who tells me [00:57:00] he’s 17? He is never, he’s not taught in school. You have to kind of learn all of this outside of the schooling environment generally.
And you know, we’re trying to help with Stacking, Benjamins and our partners are, and Jesse’s helping, and trying to spread his message as well. But it is what it is. You are where you are. And so if you wake up and you’re listening to this and you’re like, yeah, I did screw up my life when I was.
23 to 40, there’s no hope. Yeah, there is. You just have to have a little different time horizon. Trust me if, if the math says I could be a billionaire by the time I’m 110, I’ve done everything wrong. You got a shot, bro. Lemme tell you,
Joe, this first installment of Better Call Saul, see Hi and OG is about as long as an episode of Better Call Saul.
It probably
is great inaugural. And if you’ve got a question for this segment, head to stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail and uh, you for now can get a greatest money show on [00:58:00] Earth. Stacking Benjamin shirt. But you know what? We’re gonna see if we can change that thing over to the new, new design, the new new design.
I can’t wait. I always love it. What, what new crazy design are we gonna have in the Stacking Benjamin store with this brand new segment? And thanks to OG for coming up with that. By the way, if you don’t have a question about interest rates or about the down payment for a house, you just need to make better financial decisions.
Well, OG and his team are taking clients and imagine if you had a better board of directors in your corner to help you make better decisions. Well, that’s the first step. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG gets you on their calendar and schedules a meeting so that you can see how they can interface with you in 2024 and beyond.
That’s gonna do it for the main part of the show today. If you’re new to Stacking Benjamins, this is where we wander out to the back porch. We talk about all the fun going on in our community and stackers. You guys are rocking now. Doug, you’ve gotta just, we we, we got some, yeah. Phenomenal stuff going
on.
My favorite thing that’s [00:59:00] happened recently in the basement was stacker Maggie, Maggie Sporting the Doug 2024. 2024 T-shirt, a campfire southeast that was top of the pyramid. Maggie. Super appreciate
that. Congratulations by the way, to John for noticing it. Stacker. John noticed it went over there with a camera.
That’s right. And John and Maggie. A wonderful picture. Wow. And, and the campaign in full swing Doug, we, um, you know, looking at Iowa this week. Yeah. I think people need to look at the later states for the Doug campaign. Truly.
Well, yeah. I think I’ve already got Iowa locked up. Maggie promised to get me the swing states, and so, uh, she at the moment is my VP candidate.
She is, she’s sitting squarely in that
seat. Well, Doug winning the swing states important for you because I think you’ve always thought of yourself as a real swinger. Yeah, I’m definitely a swinger. Too bad. Og Doug has no idea what swinger truly, truly means. Or maybe, maybe like a, I
don’t know, a cool suave
guy.
Yes, [01:00:00] I think, yes, exactly. You take swings. That’s exactly what that means. Take your turn on the swing
set.
Smooth swinger. Hey, there’s another thing, uh, that we should talk about, Joe, and that’s that we’re gonna be joking off soon, right? Yes. Yeah. On
Wednesday the joke off begins. We’re
joking off on Wednesday.
Absolutely. The joke off starts Wednesday. We still have some, some slots available, but they gotta be math jokes and they gotta be clean math jokes. We have gotten a few that are absolutely chuckle inducing, to say the least, but there’s no way in hell we can read them on
air. But let’s be clear here. They can be math adjacent.
Okay. There are a few of those jokes that don’t have a lot of math in the joke, but are certainly math, but like if
the word bank is
in the joke. Exactly, yes. We got a good one there. Uh, our seeds, I’ve been seeding the numbers. We’ve got a little, a little time. And starting on Wednesday, show comedian Lisa Curry joins us for that entire episode.
And Lisa, by the way, Doug had a, [01:01:00] had a, you’re talking about OG doing your taxes. Lisa shared a great meme on her Instagram page, which is of course the Olympian, Lisa Curry, which gives you an idea, Lisa May be the furthest thing from an Olympian that, uh, Lisa had a meme that said, uh. I think taxes are just too hard for me to figure out.
I guess I’m just gonna go to jail. Yeah. Yes. Just tell your son that og just say, you know, forget about taxes. Just, it’s just easier. Yes. Just easier to go to jail, right? Yeah. You get three square meals, make some new friends. But
back to the joke off, Joe, we gotta remind everybody that you need to go to the basement.
If you’re not already in the basement, join the basement. Because all of the basement dwellers are the folks who get to vote on the joke off, right. Where it’s setting up like a tournament seating. Right. And so after Wednesday’s show, they’ll get a chance to vote on which joke they like the best would bench to the next round.
Is that right?
Yes. And let me tell you, every round there’s going to be prizes. But to kick this off, let me tell you what the [01:02:00] prizes are for a couple of our first round winners that we’re going to have on Wednesday, a signed copy of the book Stacked. And you know, on Wednesday Doug, we start our, not your mom’s book club where I’m going 10 weeks deep into the lessons of stacked with a small group of stackers.
So you get this small group walking through all the lessons in stacked all the achievements, 90 minutes each one. I’ll let you see exactly what the value is for that, but it’s not it, it is in small. We’re gonna give that away. We’re gonna give it away to the winners of these two first rounds. So they will get in our book club.
By the way, if you want to go join our book club, stack your Benjamins dot com slash book club to enroll in the book club. ’cause it starts Wednesday night. Uh, actually I take that back. Wednesday is our orientation. You’ll have another week until the first, uh, session, but. Uh, we’re gonna give that away and a signed copy of the book that’s, we’re gonna give away stuff Doug every round.
Wow.
Anyway, that starts on Wednesday, the joke off and, uh, the book club [01:03:00] orientation. So join us for both of those. Uh, Doug. Usually we say errors and omissions for a future episode. But you caught yourself
well. Yeah, and then all of the leers from OG told me something wasn’t right about the trivia question.
And then I realized dyslexia joined the party because it wasn’t a B 52 that crashed into the building. It didn’t even exist when the plane crash happened in 1945. It was a B 25. So just a number transposition there. Same, same. Maybe that’s a, can I do that as a
math joke? What’s that? What plane hit? The hit the Empire State Building.
There’s numbers in it. There’s, I don’t know how funny that was, especially for the woman that fell down the elevator. Might not have been. Holy. She woke up to live. Holy cow. What a, that’s, that’s incredible. Speaking of incredible, some incredible takeaways. Today, Wednesday, Amy Minkley talks about community.
We opened this, uh, show talking about, uh, coach Harbaugh from University of Michigan talking about his community and the people he surrounds himself with [01:04:00] have really pushed him to do more. How do you get, uh, maybe not just more, but more fulfilling? Amy Minkley iss gonna talk to us about that. But, uh, before we do that.
Get out the paper everybody. ’cause it’s time for our takeaways. What do we got? Doug. Well, Joe,
what’s stacked up on our to-do list today. First, take some advice from today’s mentor, Jesse Mecham. Give every dollar a job before you earn it and you won’t end your week asking, where did my money go? Second bonds in your 401k.
Only if you think you can save dollar for dollar. All that money you’ll need for retirement, because that’s nearly impossible for all of us. Look at risk a new way. The riskiest place for your long-term money. That guaranteed fund, you’re guaranteed to never accumulate enough money to reach your goals and that should scare you more than the ups and downs of the stock market.
So what’s the biggest to do? Never tell a teenager that you could maybe [01:05:00] possibly be afraid of something. If you do, you might suddenly start seeing that very thing like out in your front yard. Get the dentist away from my sidewalk kid. I don’t care if she is your mom. Those things are terrifying.
Thanks to Jesse Mecom for joining us today. You can find YNAB at ynab.com. That’s the letter Y and the letter N and the you’ll figure it out.
We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com for the three of you who couldn’t figure
it out.
The show is the property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast.
With help from me, Joe Kate Yakin, [01:06:00] Karen Repine, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1. You’ll find the 4 1 1 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1.
Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course you do, but you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of the show Engineered by Tina Ichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all the. I’m the best thing going for this podcast. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart.
Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude Stacey Doe and Julia Garib are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The [01:07:00] Basement. So say hello when you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement.
For more interactive fun, join us on Instagram every Tuesday and Thursday for our Instagram lives. Kate Yakin and Joe host those weekly. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.
I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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