Is Flourishing Tied to Financial Freedom? A New Study Reveals Insights (SB1689)

This week, we’re getting deep (like, basement-deep) into what it means to flourish.

Join Joe, OG, Paula Pant, and special guest Ryan Doolittle as they unpack a brand-new study on happiness. Spoiler: it’s not just about stacking cash. From the influence of childhood experiences to the surprising power of community, autonomy, and faith, this episode asks whether true wealth is more emotional than numerical.

Plus, Ryan shares his adventures from his new series Try and Ryan—where he road-tests hobbies that might just add meaning to your retirement (and your Tuesdays).

What we’re exploring in the basement:

• 🌱 What the latest research says about flourishing—and why it’s not just for the rich
• 👶 How childhood trauma or support plays into long-term happiness
• ⛪ Religious attendance: a surprising common thread in many “happy” lives
• 🎯 Autonomy, mastery, and purpose at work—and why they might matter more than promotions
• 🌍 Why Finland keeps winning the “World’s Happiest Country” race (and what Americans might learn from it)
• 💰 How financial flexibility might be more valuable than financial freedom
• 🧓 Gender and retirement happiness: why the experience might not be equal across the board
• 🛠️ Ryan’s “Try and Ryan” series and how picking up hobbies can boost life satisfaction
• 🏎️ Also: Trivia mayhem involving the Indy 500, Paula’s cat gets a shoutout, and OG still won’t drive stick

🎙️ Want to be wealthy and well? Tune in for a conversation that’s as heartfelt as it is hilarious—because in the basement, we believe money’s just the fuel. Flourishing is the journey.

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

Enjoy!

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Our Topic:

What makes people flourish? A new survey of more than 200,000 people across 22 countries looks for global patterns and local differences (The Conversation)

During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:

• Common traits of happiest retirees
• Defining flourishing
• Subjective well-being
• Happiness ingredients
• Health connection
• Money’s role
• Enough concept
• Comparison trap
• Daily gratitude
• Purpose-driven living
• Meaningful goals
• Positive relationships
• Social support
• Community belonging
• Time affluence
• Nature benefits
• Rest importance
• Joy in small
• Learning mindset
• Personal growth
• Boundary setting
• Digital detox
• Helping others
• Intentional living
• Self-awareness
• Values alignment

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Our Contributors

A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.

Ryan Doolittle

Another thanks to Ryan Doolittle for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Ryan on his show, Happiest Retirees at Happiest Retirees – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.

Learn more about Ryan by visiting Ryan Doolittle – Capital Investment Advisors

Paula Pant

Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com 

Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything

OG

For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.

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Doug’s Game Show Trivia

• How long did the first race of the Indianapolis 500 take back in 1911?

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Mentioned in today’s show

• What the Happiest Retirees Know: 10 Habits for a Healthy, Secure, and Joyful Life

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Join Us on Monday!

Tune in on Monday when we’ll make the case for global investing, help you find the right investments and put in just the right amount

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Miss our last show? Check it out here: Here’s An Easy Way To Save $3,000 Per Year (with Bryan Suddith) SB1688.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Doug: You’re going to end up eating a steady diet of government cheese and 

[00:00:04] bit: living in a band down by the river.

[00:00:13] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And smiles everyone, because we’re asking the question, is happiness really about more money or about flourishing? A new study dives into this topic and we’ll cover the findings and much more with our round table contributors. What is much more you ask? Oh, I’ll tell ya.

I’ll ask all three of these beautiful people about today’s incredibly and intricately crafted trivia question. And now a guy who likes intricately crafting retirement portfolios, it’s Joe Sa.

[00:01:06] Joe: Hey stackers, is there anything more fun than, uh, playing around with the efficient frontier and making retirement portfolios? I think not. Welcome to Friday. We’re super happy you’re here. Sit back, relax, because we’re about to have a good time talking about flourishing. Let’s talk to three people who I think are flourishing.

Cross the card table from me. Mr. OG is here. You’re flourishing, right? 

[00:01:31] OG: I am, uh, I’m doing it. Yeah. Ready to go. 

[00:01:35] Joe: OG is flourishing so much everybody, that they actually took a needle and took some of the flourishing out of him. 

[00:01:41] OG: Yeah. I have so much extra flourishing that I had to donate it to other people and it makes you so sleepy.

I just wanna take a nap. 

[00:01:49] Joe: Oh, man. Well, you gotta wait now ’cause you gotta bring it first for our stackers, man. Come on. It’s Shelby 

[00:01:54] OG: brought. 

[00:01:54] Joe: Don’t sweat. The woman who’s flourishing in Manhattan. Paula Pant is here. How are you? 

[00:02:00] Paula: Oh, I’m, I’m fantastic. I’m a little bit under the weather, but that uh, well actually the weather here kind of sucks, so I might actually be matched to the weather.

You have a cold that 

[00:02:09] Joe: flourishing? 

[00:02:10] Paula: Yes, yes. The cold is flourishing. The germs, the bacteria, they are flourishing 

[00:02:15] Joe: in another news for people that heard the show last week, how is the kitty doing? 

[00:02:20] Paula: So far so good. She had her second round of chemotherapy yesterday. In between her two chemo appointments, she actually gained a little bit of weight, which is really good.

I 

[00:02:28] Joe: wish people would say that about me. Joe gained weight. Yeah. It’s so 

[00:02:32] Paula: good. Yeah. Yeah. She gained weight, which is exactly, that is good 

[00:02:36] Joe: news. 

[00:02:36] Paula: Yeah. That’s very, very good news. Her various counts of various things seem to be pretty good. You know, her, her bilirubin is down, her a LP is decent. So, um, yeah, the markers are all I.

So far so good. 

[00:02:49] Joe: Paul is the only friend I have where we’ve talked about bilirubin several times. 

[00:02:53] Paula: Oh, multiple times. Multiple times. Oh my goodness. Yes. Bilirubin is my nemesis. 

[00:02:58] OG: Doug and I are gonna go find Billy and beat the crap out of him. 

[00:03:01] Paula: I thought he played third base for the Yankees. Because Mr. 

[00:03:04] OG: Rubin is going down.

He 

[00:03:05] Paula: is trouble. For those of you wondering what it is, bilirubin is the name of a liver enzyme. I don’t know what it is in humans, but in cats it should be, I think under one. I don’t actually know what the proper level in cats is. I think one or less, but um, in mine it was five. The measure was 5.9, which is like elevated to 500 times, 600 times what it should be in your cats, 

[00:03:30] Joe: not yours.

[00:03:31] Paula: In in my cat. Yes. 

[00:03:32] Joe: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It fucking yours. And in my cat it was even. Yeah, 

[00:03:36] Paula: yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my cat’s bilirubin was 5.9, which is a very, for the veterinarians who are listening to this, 

[00:03:42] Joe: yes, 

[00:03:42] Paula: they’ll understand. That’s a very high marker. 

[00:03:45] Joe: Paula dug test his liver enzymes constantly to make sure that they’re working hard enough, just as often as he can.

Yeah. You like 

[00:03:52] Doug: push the envelope. It really, it’s like an engine that operates best, most efficiently, right at red line. That’s what I do to my liver. Keeps them on their toes. 

[00:04:00] Ryan: I think Doug’s liver enzymes are, are called Paul Rubins, which he’s played Ki Wee Herman. 

[00:04:04] Doug: Whoa. May he rest in peace. The new guy 

[00:04:10] Joe: and that voice that you just heard, he’s flourishing.

Out in Southern California. Last time I talked to him, he was avoiding fires and lots of people not flourishing. Ryan Doolittle’s here with us. How are you brother? 

[00:04:21] Ryan: You know, when I woke up today, I looked in the mirror and I said, so that’s what flourishing looks like. 

[00:04:27] Joe: Pinch me. Absolutely. Well, I wanted you, um, for this episode specifically because you are the host of the Happiest Retirees Podcast and part of T West Moss, and you guys study happiness in retirement.

I mean this really for you, Ryan, should be, I think, in your wheelhouse, isn’t it? 

[00:04:44] Ryan: It really is. Yeah. I was, I was really excited just to hear from you at all, but the fact that it was also relevant was pretty cool too. It seemed like a great fit. 

[00:04:52] Joe: See, and that’s another reason I like Ryan right there. Just come on, Ryan.

Keep it coming. I was so happy to hear from you. Yeah. Uh, and Happiest Retirees podcast. Tell everybody what you do. I mean, I guess it’s in the name. 

[00:05:04] Ryan: It is. Yeah. I, I interview happy retirees and, and basically the gist of it is I ask them how they got happy and I’m, I’m hoping people listening will, will take some inspiration from it if they, maybe some of them are retired and think I’m not very happy and I don’t know why they might listen to that and say, well, maybe I’ll just try what they’re doing.

Or maybe they’re about to retire and it gives them sort of like a head start. 

[00:05:28] Joe: Does anybody tell you they get happier like Doug does by testing their liver enzymes? Keeping ’em busy. 

[00:05:33] Ryan: A lot of people tell me if they just talk to Doug at all, their liver enzymes start getting happy, 

[00:05:39] Joe: their bilirubin goes to five.

Yeah. Maybe that’s what happened to Tassie Paula, is that she talked to Doug. You 

[00:05:46] Paula: know, it was ever since I started taking part in the round table from home. 

[00:05:50] Joe: That’s it. Right, 

[00:05:51] Paula: right. Shame 

[00:05:51] Joe: on you, Paula. 

[00:05:52] Paula: Correlation. Correlation, I’m gonna say is causation. 

[00:05:57] Joe: Alright. We’re talking about a new study that just came out about what makes people flourish.

We’re gonna get to that next first. We have a couple sponsors that make this engine ghost. You don’t have to pay a dime for any of this. Goodness. We’re gonna hear from them. And then Ryan, Paula, OG Doug and I diving into what actually makes people flourish and is more money part of it.

The inspiration for this discussion comes from a place that we found called The Conversation, and actually it’s funny. As I read through this study, I realized, I’ve seen past studies that this group has done, and I’ve also read several places about past studies because in the past, what this study has shown is that people historically have had kind of a U shape when it comes to flourishing.

In other words, people when they’re young, tend to flourish. They tend to be frustrated in their thirties, more frustrated in their forties, as they’re juggling so much stuff and they feel like they’re not flourishing. They’re swimming through, you know, the middle of their career. What do they call it? The messy middle, right?

They’re there and then as they get older, they flourish again. Now that doesn’t seem to be the case, Paula, when it, when we’re reading through this, it looks like now young people really not flourishing as much as they have in the past. 

[00:07:23] Paula: Yeah. You know, I think that there, they say happiness is expectations minus reality, and I think that as expectations have increased, the level of disappointment also has correspondingly increased for a lot of people.

It used to be the case that just getting a job, having shelter, food, clothing, that level of stability would’ve been enough to make you happy. But now I think there’s much more of a comparison game and that feeling that a lot of young people have that they are relatively being left behind, even though in absolute terms, their life might be still solid, can lead to a lot of disappointment.

I. 

[00:08:02] Joe: So you’re saying that because I have this device in my hand where I can FOMO over what everybody else is doing, by the way, a device in my hand not hooked up to anything where I can watch miraculously videos that are beamed into me in a way that they’ve never been able to be beam to me before. I’m learning that I suck versus everybody else.

That’s what you’re saying? 

[00:08:20] Paula: Well, I don’t wanna cast all the blame on social media Sure. Or on the internet. I think that that’s, it’s, it’s easy to do and it’s a convenient scapegoat. I think that is one of, one of a multitude of factors. 

[00:08:33] Joe: Yeah. Oh gee. Did it surprise you that, uh, young people appear to be not really flourishing now?

[00:08:39] OG: No. I mean, obviously there’s a lot of outside factors. You know, COVID obviously messed up a lot of stuff, right. Education in-person, learning social stuff, you know, that was just a disaster for people in different times of their lives. My kids were, I think, eighth grade and sixth grade when COVID happened, or maybe seventh and.

Fifth perhaps. But, um, you know, switching to virtual learning and not being around their friends and, you know, all of that has had an effect. And then there’s also obviously the financial impacts of different things, whether it’s just harder to get a job or, like Paula said, maybe the income isn’t exactly what you thought it was gonna be and you see some social media stuff or whatever the case may be.

I caught myself, I even caught myself today doing it. And I think some of it has to do with appreciation for hard work. It seems like sometimes we don’t give enough credit to the effort given when people do stuff. And I just literally did it today and I feel awful like having thought about it in the last, I don’t know, five hours since we recorded earlier.

I said, you guys remember me saying this? I, we were talking about kids graduating and I said on the podcast, congratulations for doing the thing you largely everyone expected you would do about graduating high school. And I know I’ve said that in jest to my kid, and I know in some point that’s funny. Ha ha ha.

Yeah, I graduated high school. Everybody does that. But I also recognize that it was a lot of work. Like it was, it’s harder to go to school today than it was when I was in school. I didn’t have the challenges of like, I could press the easy button and have chat GPT, gimme the answer, or do photo math on my phone where I just like take a picture of a math problem and it solves it.

You know? It was a different way of doing it. I didn’t have the stress of social media like Paula said. So I think we do ourselves and do people around us a little bit of a disservice when with just some of the language we use that like maybe diminishes something that was, you know, a pretty good accomplishment.

Like these graduates, whether high school or otherwise worked hard, you know, like that’s, that’s all they know right now. They don’t know. Yeah. Brick laying yet. That’s also hard work, but. This is an accomplishment and we should spend more time, I think praising people for successes as opposed to spending more time, you know, going Well, how come you can’t be better?

It’s close. Yeah. When I play golf with Doug, it’s like, you know, I’m, I’m constantly, I’m like, dude, eight’s a good score, bro. You know, that’s pretty good, man. Everybody loves a snowman that, that, yes. Snow. It’s like Olaf, put another Olaf on your card. So exciting. You broke one 20. Doug High five. 

[00:11:13] Joe: How did this go from talking about flourishing to talk about hazing, making sure Doug doesn’t flourish?

[00:11:17] OG: No, that’s not hazing. It’s the exact opposite of it. I’m what I’m trying to do. Yeah. Build, build people up around you. Right. Build 

[00:11:22] Joe: them up. Bad golf scores are good too. I wanna stick with you for just a second because you’ve got your oldest OG who’s right on the end of this, at 18 years old. Yeah. Are you seeing him really struggle with the transition from, you know, he’s just finishing high school and getting ready to go into college?

[00:11:38] OG: Yeah, we’re, we’re not at that spot yet. I mean, there’s still so much of the final wrap up of, of everything going, he hasn’t been in school for two and a half weeks. And I know he did say, you know, I don’t know, a few days ago, like, I’m kind of bored. I need some structure. Like, I, I, as much as I hate getting up at eight o’clock in the morning, that does provide some, you know, I just can’t always get up at noon.

That’s cool. When he says that, you know, a little self-awareness, I recognize. Yeah. But it’s also, you know, it’s like summer break, right? There’s no, until he starts college, it’s just another rotation of the seasons. Right. It’s like I finished high or I finished class. Now I get summer break. Now we start class again, but this time he is gonna start class four hours away on his own.

In a different town with all new people, you know, having to 

[00:12:20] Joe: decide to go to class to wake up to, yeah. And do the thing and the end. 

[00:12:24] OG: Mommy and daddy not there. Yeah, exactly. Nobody’s 

[00:12:25] Joe: there. Right. Ryan, I wanted to save your initial contribution for the other side of this because it’s what you do on the podcast.

So we got this straight line from 18 to 40, and then between 40 and and 50, this jump, 50 to 60, a jump, 60 to 70 a jump people, 80 and older report that they are flourishing the most. Why do you think that is? Why is we get older? Do we find that we’re. We’re really feeling more joyful every day we get outta bed.

[00:13:00] Ryan: You know, it, it reminds me, I, I interviewed a guy who, uh, runs a horse retirement stable, uh, for lack of a better word. It’s a big, big horse retirement community of race horses that used to be, you know, successful horses. 

[00:13:14] Doug: I used to, I used to be something horses. Is there? Yeah. Is there a glue factory Right next door.

And this guy’s just finding multiple revenue streams. His 

[00:13:21] Ryan: last name 

[00:13:22] Doug: was Elmers, 

[00:13:23] Ryan: so I’m not sure. No, 

[00:13:26] OG: no correlation. 

[00:13:27] Ryan: He said something that really I found it made me happier just hearing it. He said, man, being old is awesome. I love being old. I like it so much better than being young. Because if I, like for example, if someone invites me to something and I don’t really like them or I don’t want to go, I just say no.

And they go, well, he’s old. Whatever. They’re not offended. So I think there is something to, there’s a sense of freedom of being older. There’s obviously a lot more to it. You know, you might be more financially independent and, and you know, a list of other things. But I think there is a sense of freedom and when you’re younger you’re thinking, I don’t know who I am.

I don’t know how I’m gonna get to, to be who I wanna be. All of that 

[00:14:07] Joe: is part of it too. Ryan, I’m thinking about when I saw the Rolling Stones and, uh, Keith Richards came up to the microphone and he’s like, I’m so happy to see everybody here, Jacksonville. He goes, heck, I’m just, I’m just happy to see anybody here the way Keith Richards looks like.

[00:14:25] Ryan: Yeah. I know this is a little bit of the flip side of what you’re asking me, but I, I’m less surprised about young people being unhappy now because Wes and I were just talking and he found some research from a study by the Federal Reserve that said that, uh, because of all these financial hardships that especially millennials have been through, like the great financial crisis, and I mean, they’ve had more of a concentrated, uh, amount of like bad things happen that some of them are more scared to open a credit card than they are of dying.

And Wow. Uh, I never had that thought. I’m, I’m not really that surprised by it now as much as I would’ve been in the past. 

[00:15:06] Joe: That’s funny. Paula. We talked to Dr. Erika Rasher from, uh, beyond Finance on Monday about psychology and this idea of. Millennials, especially to Ryan’s point, just growing up at this time when you know good people losing their houses, smart people losing their houses, smart people declaring bankruptcy.

Just some of that horror story of 2007, 2008, when you’re coming right out of college. I. You know, that could weigh on you. 

[00:15:30] Paula: That was me. I was fresh out of college right at the great Recession. So I, I’m, I’m a millennial scoreboard, fresh out college. Right at the great, sorry. 

[00:15:38] Joe: He said scoreboard. 

[00:15:40] Paula: What a jerk.

I’m a millennial. Millennial now is synonymous with old, like, you gotta be Gen Z. Screw you, Paula. 

[00:15:47] Ryan: Are you a geriatric millennial? Isn’t that the pejorative term? 

[00:15:50] Paula: Ah, yeah. Yeah. I’m not in the geriatric category, but I’m the elder millennial. Oh, okay. You’ve got the geriatric band and underneath that you’ve got the elder millennial band.

You gotta be kidding me. Yeah, yeah. Seriously. Got around children and these god 

[00:16:03] OG: dang kids 

[00:16:04] Paula: I’m making 

[00:16:05] OG: up all the time. 

[00:16:07] Paula: And then bridging the gap in between millennial and Gen X. There’s a, I’d say about a four year window of people who arrive at that transition, who are the Oregon Trail generation. They’re technically young Gen X, but they’re close enough to millennial that they refer to themselves as Oregon Trail.

So yeah, there’s a lot of differentiation right around the turning point of these generations. 

[00:16:28] Doug: What’s your point, Paula? 

[00:16:32] Paula: Which I think goes to show how different life experience can be just by a factor of a couple of years. Yeah, just a 

[00:16:37] OG: couple years. 

[00:16:37] Paula: Yeah, 

[00:16:38] OG: absolutely. 

[00:16:39] Ryan: When I graduated co, I’m a, I would be that younger Gen X, Paula, and I remember at my college graduation the valedictorian, who by the way was not me, said that.

She said something like, in a few years, this undergraduate degree won’t be worth what it is. And I remember, like I, I was in such a good mood because Fonzie was our speaker, 

[00:16:59] Joe: Henry Winkler. Really? Really? Yeah. 

[00:17:02] Ryan: He, he gave the like, you know, inspirational address. That’d be fabulous. Wow. It was pretty cool.

Yeah. I gave him an A. 

[00:17:10] Doug: Oh God. Oh, we just got set up 

[00:17:15] Ryan: and Isn’t that your blood type? Oh my 

[00:17:19] Joe: God. And we thought Len Benzo was bad with those. Chris, I wanna say hi to everybody who’s hanging out with us in on YouTube. Chris, who is an upcoming guest on the Stacking Adventures podcast is joining us from Belize, which is great.

Andrea is in, uh, Santiago, Chile, like we are. We are all over the place today. Dan says, yeah, I can’t compete with any of those. I’m in Baltimore. Damn. Baltimore’s pretty exotic as well. And then, uh, Andrea says she’s rooting for Paula’s cat. 

[00:17:52] Paula: Aw, thank you. Andrea 

[00:17:53] Joe: Leonis, who I can’t not call Leonis ’cause they’re the town of Michigan.

Uh, hello from a rare, sunny western Pennsylvania today. So great to see all of you hanging out with us live on YouTube, but we generally record on Thursday afternoons. Come, come and join us Wednesday. Let’s dive in guys. What’s that? Normally Wednesdays. Oh, Wednesday. Sorry. Today, normally Wednesday. You’re right.

[00:18:13] Paula: Oh, can I finish my thought on, uh, the, my counterintuitive thought on millennials Bring it a, a lot of people say that, yeah, you graduated college right into the great recession. That’s a sucky time to be a, a human. I actually have the opposite perspective because by virtue of being in your early twenties, or even mid twenties in 2008, like right when the market was at its bottom, our early investor life was like capturing that market bottom.

And granted in terms of like raw dollars, we didn’t have a whole lot because we were at the beginning of our careers. But still, because we were in college, we never invested during those high heady years and then watched our portfolios drop. We got to come in right at 2008, 2009 and start there. And so we just saw a, like an 11 year bull run as the first 11 years of our investing history.

So I actually think being a millennial was hugely like fortuitous in terms of growing a portfolio, growing your net worth, 

[00:19:17] Joe: but doesn’t that rely on how much financial education you had? Like if you are. Surrounded by people who get that. Yeah. Then you’re right. It frankly was a phenomenal time. Right. It was a fantastic time, man.

If you started then, like right now is kind of a bad time. Yeah. Because this year, you know, the first half of this year, that six month downturn might’ve been, oh gee, have we seen a six month downturn since then? Like six months are down. We generally had like knife, I mean down then, I mean 22 comeback.

Yeah, 20. It wasn’t that like knife down then up and then just kind of malaise. 

[00:19:52] OG: No, no, 2022 was down. 

[00:19:54] Joe: Yeah, 

[00:19:54] OG: like all year. Sure. 2018 was down all year. 12 was down from August to the end of the year. 

[00:20:00] Joe: August to the end. Maybe I blocked it out. 

[00:20:02] OG: Yeah. But honestly, yeah, what Paul is saying is, is if you, even if you didn’t have any education and just went like, I don’t know, 401k, I guess, like whatever, like you said, you didn’t have to plan for it or you just got lucky.

Yeah. And part of investing is just pure luck and. You know, in timing, right? It’s just, just like you’re lucky that you started investing in March of 2009. There’s a bunch of people who are unlucky that retired on January of 2008. 

[00:20:25] Paula: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:20:26] OG: Just a random. Separation of a few years. 

[00:20:29] Paula: Yeah, I totally agree.

So, yeah, I, I think millennials, especially elder millennials, had it really good. I think we, we are probably one of the luckiest generations in that regard. 

[00:20:39] Ryan: Paula, did you have a lot of financial education at that point or No? 

[00:20:43] Paula: Mine was all from blogs. It was from reading the free financial advisor, you know, it was, uh, come on.

[00:20:50] bit: Nice. 

[00:20:51] Joe: Talking about why I love Ryan so much now. Why I love Paula, for people that Dunno. That was OG my first blog. Yeah. Back way back in the day. Uh uh Alright, let’s move on. Flourishing reflects job status. I want to start here because OG retired people show that they’re flourishing. The most self-employed people are second employed by someone else’s third student is fourth homemaker is fifth unemployed and looking for a job is last.

Anything surprising there to you? 

[00:21:27] OG: I don’t think there’s anything surprising. No. I mean, obviously there’s pros and cons about each one of those, but you know, as I read through this, you know, I just looked at the pictures. God, there’s so many words. I just looked at the pretty pictures and I was drawn by that, that that attracted my attention because I was like, okay, retirees self-employed.

That makes a ton of sense to me because Sure, if you’re financially independent, well, assuming that you’re retired and you’re financially independent, I guess that might be two separate things, but it makes sense that you’re at that stage of your life, right? You’re like, okay, we’re onto the next thing.

Like, I feel pretty good. The kids are gone. I’ve raised a couple good humans, like I’m in the grandkid stage where I can send them back. You know, like that’s a fun time. And being an entrepreneur, I, I don’t know. I don’t know why anybody would not do it from my perspective, because while there’s a lot of stress that goes with it, there’s so much freedom and, uh, specifically around time.

And then as you know, your business does better. Money freedom, where it’s like. You can design whatever sort of life you wanna design. And to me that’s kind of the ultimate freedom perspective is do I get to do what I wanna do when I want to do it? And if I can control most of those things, then I feel pretty good.

[00:22:39] Joe: Well, Ryan does retire being at the top of this, does that correlate you think with financial independence or like OG says the flexibility that I don’t want to show up at work every day. 

[00:22:50] Ryan: I think it’s what OG said about doing whatever you wanna do whenever you wanna do it. That’s what we have found has been really the new definition of retirement, at least for the happy retirees.

What people always associate retirement with is sitting in the lazboy and, you know, I’m, I’m not gonna go to work, so I’m automatically happy. And, and it’s really not about not doing anything. It’s about not doing the things you don’t like doing, which is often like going to the office and I. Doing whatever your boss wanted you to do.

So that, that part is really, really on point for everything that I’ve learned. 

[00:23:25] Joe: But how much does the, the money play into it? Just, it gives you the ability to do that, to wake up every day and do whatever the hell you want to. 

[00:23:31] Ryan: Yeah. From what we found, the money’s important, obviously, but only to get you to where you can.

It’s the fuel start. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. There’s some, what is that Maslow’s hierarchy? I, I, sure. Yeah. If you don’t have food, you can’t like, enjoy reading, you know, it’s like whatever. Yeah. So you need the money, but it’s not really the end. All 

[00:23:52] Joe: right. If Doug doesn’t have the drinks, he can’t test the liver, 

[00:23:55] Ryan: which 

[00:23:55] Joe: makes 

[00:23:55] Ryan: him happy.

Exactly. Yeah. Why do I 

[00:23:58] Joe: feel like this is an intervention for me? There’s a reason we. Paul, I wanna talk to you about something else that’s on here. If you talk to a lot of self-employed people mm-hmm. Or you just look at this from afar, you’re like man stuff. So being self-employed, being the boss, that’s, that’s somebody who’s stressed out all the time.

Like this is just, you know, you’re the backstop, you know, you employ X number of people and afford anything. Yeah. Self-employed though tracks happier than the safety of working in a business for somebody else. 

[00:24:31] Paula: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes complete sense to me. You know, there’s that expression, you’ll, you’ll work 80 hours in order to not work 40, avoid, yeah.

[00:24:40] Joe: Avoid 40 hours for somebody else, right? 

[00:24:42] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. You’ll work 80 hours for yourself in order to not work 40 for someone else. And that’s, that’s totally true. There’s research that shows that the three qualities that often correlate with workplace happiness are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And I think that when you, yourself, are.

The boss, when you’re calling the shots, when it’s your company and your project, you have all three of those. You have autonomy, you have the potential to develop mastery, and there’s typically, uh, a purpose behind why you’re doing it. 

[00:25:13] Joe: Yeah. Why is OG do you think, homemaker, at the bottom of this one, is it a sense of, I don’t know, guilt that you’re not bringing in the paycheck, somebody else’s?

Is it the fact that you’re the backstop for the family to be taking everybody, you know, you’re managing the house? Is it under appreciation? Like why? Why do you think homemaker so far down on this? 

[00:25:34] OG: Yeah, I, I mean obviously I don’t know ’cause that’s not a role that I have, but the first thing that I thought was under appreciation, that would be my first guess.

I can’t prove that. But I think a lot of it has to do, I mean, anything has to do with roles and responsibilities and making sure that everybody’s on the same page. I certainly can’t speak for my wife on how she feels about this, but when she decided to stay at home with the kids, we set out a bunch of rules like, who’s gonna be doing this and who’s not gonna be doing this?

And so she doesn’t do a, some stuff and I don’t do a bunch of stuff. Now, on occasion she’ll say, Hey, is there any chance? I know you’re busy, can you go? Do this thing for me and it’s, yeah, of course. If I can figure it out, I will. Just like she would. But I don’t know where she would rank on this, honestly. I don’t know where she would, where she would wanna put herself.

[00:26:19] Joe: Yeah. Ryan or Paula, you guys have any other insight into why homemaker be so low here? 

[00:26:24] Paula: My hypothesis is if a person were to dig deeper into that, there’s probably a distinction between people who aspired to be homemakers. Like that was what they really wanted to do, versus people who kind of felt like they were forced into it based on circumstance.

I had friends in college, even when we were 18, 19 years old, who were like, my goal in life, I wanna be a stay-at-home mom. I think they would be very happy, you know, or like, or are likely to be happy in that role. Whereas I know a few other people who were like, I didn’t really want to, but we took a look at what the cost of daycare looked like and we took, we just took a look at the numbers and it didn’t make sense.

[00:27:05] Joe: Take a one for the team. 

[00:27:07] Paula: Yeah. So they were like, even though I didn’t want to, I felt like I didn’t have, financially, I just felt like I didn’t have any other choice because I just couldn’t afford the cost of childcare and getting a house cleaner and all of that. 

[00:27:18] Joe: Yeah. Maybe putting your goals on the bottom shelf for the good of everybody else.

Al Leitis was back on when we were talking about, uh, millennials. Agrees with Paula got my first house at the bottom of the housing crisis and had a 10 year bull run, hashtag winning. It was, I mean I feel like that’s part of a growth mentality too, right? It’s like, okay, it’s either the worst of times, the best of times.

Doug, 

[00:27:40] Doug: Paula got me thinking about this. People who maybe don’t find satisfaction of that being a homemaker, it’s because they’re looking externally for validation and generally western society is not putting a lot of reward and value and hip hip array on homemakers. We don’t often completely lift them up and say what an incredibly valuable thing you’re doing, raising children and, and managing the, the home, which is like a business, right?

Managing the home is like a business. There’s a huge value there, but generally you don’t see a lot of that reinforced in social media and in your brother is the MovieMaker in his family, right? He was for the whole time his kids were growing up and until recently and, uh, I mean they just kind of threw traditional rules out the window and it was great.

Was he flourishing, do you think, or not? Let’s, uh, let, let’s move on 

[00:28:30] Joe: to the trivia, Joe. That’s a, that’s a whole different thing. Uh, it’s a whole 

[00:28:35] Doug: different 

[00:28:36] Joe: thing. Uh, back to, uh, Leonis. I’m, I’m gonna stumble on that word over and over and over. I’m a stay at home mom, and so far it’s my favorite job. She says, raising our sons exactly what I want to do.

Speaking of moving on to the trivia is that time and at the halfway point of the Stacky Benjamin Show, if you’re new here is where we have this amazing Friday competition between our three frequent contributors. Paula og and Jesse and Ryan, you’re playing for Team Jesse today, which means we got some good news for you and some bad news.

Which one of those would you like first? 

[00:29:10] Ryan: I’ll take the bad news. 

[00:29:12] Joe: Well, the bad news is you’re not winning. You are tied for second, which means you’re tied for last. So, 

[00:29:19] Ryan: hey, I’m used to that position, so it’s fine. I feel comfortable. Oog 

[00:29:22] Joe: has six. Uh, you and Jesse have four and a half and Paula has four and a half.

So because, uh, team Jesse beat team Paula last year, that means Oog will guess. First you will guess second. Ryan and Paula will guess last. All right. So that’s the way we play it. And for each of these of course, we need a question and that’s where Doug comes back. Doug, what do you got, man?

[00:29:50] Doug: Hey, there’s stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and get ready to rev those brain engines because here comes today’s trivia question. I know we’ve been talking about flourishing for these last 25 minutes, but you wanna flourish. I mean, do you really wanna flourish? Well, let creepy old Uncle Doug make it simple for you.

How would an extra 2.5 mil in your pocket feel? Huh? Would that make you smile? I said, would that make you smile? Yes. There we go. Okay. Well, that could be you if you just got extra good at turning left, because that’s how much money an Indy 500 winner takes home if they win. And today’s date back in 1911 is the anniversary of the first running of this iconic Midwestern race.

And while you may think running means they ran down the track, I’m told they actually used cars. Hashtag innovation. Hey, Ray Harun won the inaugural event, pocketing a whopping $14,000 back then. It’s about 450,000 today. But here’s today’s fun question. How long did that first race take? I love the look on our contributors faces when I come up with the question.

Just total blank terror. I’ll be back right after I see how long it takes me to get the garbage to the curb. Joe’s mom says it’s for research purposes. Pay attention to science kids. 

[00:31:11] Joe: Alright, the Indie 500 Run last weekend. If we weren’t recording ahead of time, we would’ve told you who won, but we have no idea.

Og, your first, first race way back in 1911, how long did the Indy 500 Mile race take? 

[00:31:32] OG: I’m somewhat of a fan of the Indy 500. Having attended two of them. I feel like this is something I should know. It seems like it’s written down somewhere, or it’s on a placard somewhere. Here was the running, it took Bob this many days to complete it outside the race or something.

Some sort of, you know, under the stands Yeah. Or came up in conversation. I’m gonna say that the first one. Let’s see. So, um, I, I was, I was like, man, I hope he asked how fast is the fastest lap ever? ’cause I’m pretty sure I know that to like the, the miles per hour and the thousands. Well, Doug, I’m 

[00:32:09] Joe: glad we said no to that one.

Yeah, yeah, we talked about that. 

[00:32:12] OG: Yeah, no, I felt pretty good about that one. Um, okay, so 1911, that, those are the facts. The Indy 500, they’re racing model Ts, you know, going 19 miles an hour. So I’m gonna say that it, uh, they really exceeded the speed of sound here. They, they were blowing people away. They were going 50 some odd miles an hour, maybe 75, maybe a hundred, split the difference, I’m gonna say it took, uh, five hours to do it.

[00:32:43] Joe: Five hours. Ryan, what do you wanna do with that? What do you, what was your thought? Five hours? High or low? 

[00:32:50] Ryan: I think that’s a little low. I, I use a very, so active, people don’t know this, but indies are a unit of measurement. So it took, it took 500 indies to finish the race. So first for, yeah, that’s, we gotta convert 

[00:33:03] Joe: that to indies to hours.

What’s the conversion on that? Do you got your conversion calculator? 

[00:33:07] Ryan: Yeah. Uh, let me see. I always go to metric and then I go back to indies and then, so hours, it’d be, I’d say it took 7.9 hours. 

[00:33:18] Joe: 7.9 hours. 9.9, what would that be? Seven hours and 55 minutes. Would that be 54 minutes? 

[00:33:26] Ryan: Uh oh. Seven hours and 

[00:33:29] Paula: 54 minutes.

[00:33:30] Ryan: Seven hours. Seven hours and 54 minutes. I was gonna say that. Thank you Paul. 

[00:33:37] Joe: We beat him to it. Yeah. Alright, Paula, you got seven hours and 54 minutes and five hours. 

[00:33:47] Paula: I’m gonna take the under so I will go You think 

[00:33:50] Joe: they went faster? Let’s not help her with the logic. I’m, I’m not questioning, I didn’t mean to be questioning.

I’m just sounded commenting. Sounded like a question mark if I ever heard one. 

[00:34:00] Paula: Yeah, that just seems like a very long time. Yeah. I’ll take the under. Why not? So OGs guest was five hours. Yep. So I’ll go four hours and 59 minutes and 59 seconds. Wow. There it’s, 

[00:34:14] Joe: she caps him off at the knees. That’s the way the game is played.

Who’s right? We’re gonna find out. Just a minute. We’ll be right back. All og you started off with five hours, which seemed really good until Paula took away half of your win. How you feeling? 

[00:34:29] OG: Yeah, I, um, you know, I just said a hundred miles an hour. I don’t know that that’s right. It might be like 50 miles an hour.

[00:34:35] Joe: So you think it might have taken longer? 

[00:34:37] OG: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think it’s longer than five. Wow. I was trying to pick a number that somebody initially would think is grossly too high. And, uh, I got right with half of them. Half of them. Got it. You wanted us all to pick under that? Yeah, I did like, oh my god, five hours, 85 hours is like two hours and 10 minutes now.

[00:34:56] Joe: Well, you didn’t take the bait. Ryan, you feeling pretty good after OG culpa there? 

[00:35:01] Ryan: I do, because it’s my understanding Jesse gets really angry when people screw up as four. 

[00:35:06] Joe: You know, Jesse, Jesse, Kramer’s angry guy. How would that guy, could you imagine that guy angry? I, I just, I can’t. Yeah. So Paula four hours and 59 minutes and OG thinks he ran it too quickly, so yours will be even quicker.

You feeling good? Yeah, 

[00:35:21] Paula: you know what? I am not feeling good about this fast answer actually, but 

[00:35:26] Joe: Well, Paula, you trusted your gut and it hasn’t worked for 10 years in a row. Like, alright, Doug, who is gonna win this Indy 500 flavored trivia today. 

[00:35:36] Doug: One second, Joe. I’ve got a lot of math to do. You don’t have to do that.

No one likes it. No. Only really? You don’t like it, doesn’t it? Because you 

[00:35:44] OG: don’t like it. The one person was one hour, 11 minutes, and 19 seconds too high. One guy was one hour, 19 minutes and 12 seconds 

[00:35:51] Joe: too. I just freaking say the answer. We can do the math ourselves. Andrea is wondering how many numbers can OG use in a single sentence?

Yeah, back when you were guessing. It’s just, it’s so good. 

[00:36:03] Doug: Okay, here we go. 

[00:36:05] OG: You done? 

[00:36:06] Doug: Uh, the calculus has been 

[00:36:08] OG: Can we completed, can we catch up now? We’re ready to roll. 

[00:36:10] bit: Okay, thanks.

[00:36:15] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m super fast garbage collector and Guy who now smells like a weak old glitter box left out in the sun. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, while the first running of the Indy 500 didn’t take a week, it sure took a lot longer than races today. While current races are completed in around three hours, so let’s call it 180 minutes, right?

That 1911 race took 372 minutes less than what Ryan guessed, 103. Less than what? Paul, excuse me more. You gotta, than what Paul, you gotta be kidding me. And 102 more than what jerk face guess, because the correct answer is 402 minutes and some change making. Oh gee. Ah, wow. Wow. So 400, two minutes, six hours, 

[00:37:04] Joe: and 40 

[00:37:04] Doug: and 42 minutes.

Six hours and 42 minutes. 

[00:37:07] Joe: Six hours and 42 minutes. Hold on. What did Ryan guess? Yeah, Ryan was closer. Wait. 

[00:37:12] Ryan: I was seven hours and so he 

[00:37:13] Joe: was an hour and 10 minutes. So he says Ryan won. Ryan’s off by 70 minutes. God pay attention. 

[00:37:20] Ryan: Uh, 

[00:37:21] OG: good job Ryan. I have the look on 

[00:37:22] Ryan: Doug’s face. 

[00:37:25] OG: One of us is off by an hour and 40 minutes there.

Math genius. I was one of us is off by an hour and 10 minutes. I was 

[00:37:30] Doug: trying to convert all of it to minutes. And you got, I got Doug, have you been, have you been 

[00:37:36] Joe: testing your liver already today? Yeah. I’m glad that this 

[00:37:39] OG: is backfired in a spectacular fashion. Yeah, on a public display. A great day for og. Yes.

[00:37:45] Joe: Congratulations Ryan, Nigel. Good job Ryan. 

[00:37:47] OG: Thank you so much. Thank you. Even though the judge has officially gave me the point, I will seat it to you og, still a jerk case. Could you 

[00:37:53] Joe: imagine sitting out there for, for six hours? OG having been there? I 

[00:37:57] OG: have been there for six hours. It’s called a rain delay.

[00:37:59] Joe: Oh really? Yeah. I went to the Brickyard 400 twice and just being in that, which is the NASCAR equivalent race that they run. It’s shorter, obviously the 400. But that’s just a cool place to be. 

[00:38:10] OG: Yeah, 

[00:38:10] Joe: it’s a good atmosphere. Whether you like racing or not, just being in the stands with all these people at this iconic racetrack, pretty neat place to be.

I’d love to go to the Indy 500 would be a lot of fun. Let’s get back into something else that I’ve really been enjoying, which is what makes people flourish. And this recent study that was done on the topic, I wanna talk about this idea, Ryan, of religious attendance. People that take part in religious. Uh, I dunno.

Ceremonies, I guess we’ll call it more than once a week, are the happiest to take a once a week. They are happy but not as happy. One to three times a month, less happy. If they never go, they’re they’re way unhappy. Did that surprise you? 

[00:38:53] Ryan: Uh, no it didn’t because for Wes’ last book it was called What the Happiest Retirees Know and that’s funny.

I have it right here in front of me. Oh, oh wow. Yeah. That’s great. I’ll send you a check later. But we interviewed about 2000 retirees and found that they were 1.5 times more likely to be happy if they attend church once per week. And attending twice per year seemed to be like the bare minimum of being somewhat happy.

Who knows what exactly that says about it. It didn’t really get specific about religions. It was just like that, that thing, you know, that community support. Which is kind of what the article was saying too. 

[00:39:32] Joe: Well, and that also is interesting, Paula, because we’re gonna do a week about retirement and accumulation planning, and as we’re setting this up, we’re going to be interviewing the creators of a documentary that came out a couple years ago called Join or Die, which is a documentary about how if we belong to some group that’s bigger than us, maybe not religious, maybe it’s the Kiwanis, the Rotary Club, but it could be your church.

Mm-hmm. That you are more likely to feel happiness. Do you think it’s the act of joining, or do you think there’s even something more with the fact that we’re in a worship service? 

[00:40:08] Paula: I think with religion it’s two things. Part of it is a belief in a higher power, and I think that belief can have a lot of positive effects in your life.

And then in addition to that, there’s also the community element. There’s a major, major community element when it comes to church or temple or synagogue or any kind of religious ceremony. And so I think it’s the combination of the two. 

[00:40:29] Joe: Oh gee. Were you surprised at all by this? 

[00:40:31] OG: No, not in the least, but not on the religious slash group type of thing.

I mean, it provides grounding and hope and regardless of what religion it is, it, they all have a similar flow to the thing, which is do some good stuff. Don’t be a jackass. People are looking out for you. It just provides a little bit of like, ah, 

[00:40:56] Joe: it’s 

[00:40:56] OG: okay. 

[00:40:58] Joe: I wanna hear that sermon, by the way. The Don’t be a jackass.

Don’t be a jackass. Be a very blunt minister. 

[00:41:06] Ryan: Yeah. I think it, uh, it’s also, I don’t have stats on this, but it seems like it’s also just like a sense of meditation. It’s an hour where you can’t look at your phone or Yeah. Think about the Indie 500. I guess you could think about the Indy 500, but you couldn’t actually watch it, 

[00:41:21] Joe: is the word.

Think about Ryan or gloat. Would the word be gloat 

[00:41:25] Ryan: about how you know more? Yeah. You don’t think about winning. Yeah. Some say that was a better win than the person who won the Indie 500. 

[00:41:33] Joe: Winning on the Stacky Benjamin Show. Sure. Beat’s doing the, doing the real thing. Paula, were you gonna say something? 

[00:41:38] Paula: Oh, I was gonna say, if you think you can’t look at your phone in church, you’ve never watched The Simpsons.

[00:41:45] Joe: Well, Paula, let’s stick with you because we hear people say women are flourishing, less, men are flourishing, less. And certainly there are different ways where we can say this segment of the population is really struggling in this area more than others. But when it comes to this study, just not money, but this overall happiness, men and women almost Exactly.

Even did that surprise you? 

[00:42:05] Paula: Yeah. No, it doesn’t, it doesn’t surprise me at all because I think both men and women are dealing with struggles. You know, and they might be different types of struggles, but they’re like both dealing with struggles. We live in this era of outrage media where there’s a, a huge industry of people who get paid to make us angry and who get paid to make us tribalistic.

And I think that that outrage media has created this narrative that we now live in this era of men versus women, when in fact, the reality is it’s not men versus women. It’s us together dealing with the fact that we live in a cold, inhospitable universe in which death is the final outcome. It is us together dealing with that.

We can forget that because there are a lot of people who get paid to make us tribal. 

[00:42:54] OG: Well, that sounds way better, Paula, than, well Paula is not getting 

[00:42:56] Paula: invited on the Happiness 

[00:42:57] OG: podcast. I know. 

[00:42:58] Doug: Anytime soon. 

[00:42:59] OG: That sounds way better than being angry at girls. Wait. We’re all in it together and we all end up in this cold, lifeless location that, uh, we’re barely trying to survive.

[00:43:10] Doug: You just got done reading camo, didn’t you? 

[00:43:13] OG: There’s 

no 

[00:43:13] Doug: point. 

[00:43:14] Joe: I know. Just sucks. Life’s a joke. You could see Paula’s religious optimism right there. Going back to the religious part, Ryan, does that changes? People get older though. Do you find women or men are happier in their retirement years? 

[00:43:28] Ryan: We didn’t necessarily find a a, a discrepancy between men and women.

No. 

[00:43:33] Joe: So just like in this study, men, women, 

[00:43:35] Ryan: we didn’t delve so much into the gender of it, so it’s really hard for me to say. I mean, it, I, as far as health, women’s health seemed to last longer. There was one interesting aspect we had found. In fact, Wes interviewed a, a neuroscientist who studied primates. He found that male primates struggled to keep social.

Like they, they, they sort of gave up on socializing as they got older, really. And the women primates seemed to do it much easier and better. And that, at least to my eye, that that correlates to humans. Uh, this is like a research study on Doug. Are Doug, are you the one of those guys that’s like, yeah, my friends are whoever my wife’s friends are, type of thing, or, 

[00:44:22] Doug: yeah, I’m not very, you can tell I’m an introvert.

I’m not very social, so I just kind of glom onto 

[00:44:28] Ryan: Yeah. 

[00:44:29] Doug: But 

[00:44:29] Joe: you’re 

[00:44:29] Doug: saying 

[00:44:30] Joe: men tend to isolate as they get older? 

[00:44:32] Ryan: Yeah. I don’t know exactly why, but yeah, they tend to like atrophy. You’ll see that, okay, that muscle almost atrophies or something, you know, they stop trying planned obsolescence and so that leads to problems in retirement.

Because ’cause now, especially with retirements lasting longer nowadays, like say you’ve got 20 years without friends, that’s, that’s a problem. Whereas in the past, maybe your retirement was so much shorter, you might be able to get away with it. 

[00:44:59] Joe: You know, it is a sad statistic that I heard, uh, maybe back in January, is the highest rate of suicide is among men over age 70.

Oh wow. So the isolation thing, very, very, very much problematic. Speaking of problematic childhood events, they talk about determine whether you are going to flourish or not. On the upside, if you had excellent health as a child, you flourished more often. If you were, in my case, dragged to religious services at age 12, you have a good relationship with your mother, very good health.

And then as you went down, things get worse if your parents were divorced than if you felt your family had a hard time financially it was even worse. If your parents were single, your parents died. Fair health felt like an outsider near the bottom. And of course, poor health and experienced abuse. I don’t think, Paul, any of this surprises you that your happiness kind of can, can stem from a sort of, I guess PTSD from childhood.

[00:45:57] Paula: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Those are, those are the most impressionable years. Did anything about that 

[00:46:03] Joe: surprise you, og? 

[00:46:05] OG: No. I’ll tell you the one thing. I don’t know if you’re gonna get to it, so tell me you’re gonna get to it. The thing I was most surprised by, or I found interesting, I don’t know, surprise, was the areas of the world.

’cause they, they did this across, that’s where I wanna go next. Yeah. Yeah. 22 different areas I think is what it said. Right? Different demographics. Yeah. And it was just mind boggling. So I’ll do the transition, but it was really interesting in what we would think in very western contemporary culture of, you know, gross excess.

We would think like, oh, based on everything else, we’ve got a great, you know, but we must be the. Cat meow of where everything is. It’s like, Nope. Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico, Morocco. And you’re going, wait, what? Those, those places don’t have any of the stuff that we do. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[00:46:53] Joe: Yeah, weird. That was, that was why I wanted to end here on this point, OG for that very reason. Because if there was anything that proves that flourishing isn’t just about the money. Yeah. 

[00:47:04] OG: It’s just not money. It’s not money at all. 

[00:47:05] Joe: It is this, having gone to Indonesia, those people are not what I would say flourishing.

[00:47:11] OG: Yeah. They don’t have the same money that you do. 

[00:47:13] Joe: That was an incredibly, incredibly poor country. Ryan, did this surprise you that Indonesia was on top Mexico second Philippines, number three? 

[00:47:21] Ryan: You know, it surprised me a little not because I think you have to be wealthy, but I, I thought they might be lower.

I mean, there’s a plateau effect certainly where you, I. Like we were talking about earlier, you make a little bit, or you know, the money helps you get to where you need to go. So I wasn’t sure they would have enough to get there, but it sounds like they do and, and maybe that figure’s lower than I thought it was.

[00:47:43] Paula: Yeah. Paula, what strikes me about this is that those are all emerging markets, right? Emerging economies. And so there’s a lot of, we were talking earlier about hope, right? There’s a lot of, the younger generation is doing better than their parents, and the parents are doing better than their grandparents.

And so you’re seeing a lot of progress. You’re seeing a lot of hope. Every successive generation does better than the previous generation. I think that when you have an economy that’s emerging and things are constantly getting better and you know that the next generation is probably gonna have it even better, which is what every parent wants for their kid.

I think that that combined with like strong community ties can result in a lot of happiness. ’cause it strikes me that there are also countries, there are plenty of countries. Where there may be strong community ties, but there’s no economic hope. Right. Like it strikes me that Syria and Somalia and Afghanistan are not on this list.

[00:48:37] bit: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

[00:48:38] Paula: Despite the fact that you have very strong community and very strong family ties there as well. So I think it’s that emerging economy, right? That the future will be better than the past. That really makes a a difference. 

[00:48:50] Doug: Paula, I think the next uh, white Lotus location is gonna be in Afghanistan, white 

[00:48:54] Paula: Lotus, Afghanistan, white lotus cobbles.

Cobble used to be the Paris of the, of the west or of the east, sorry. The Paris of the front lines. Yeah. 

[00:49:05] Ryan: Wait, this Lotus is a poppy seed and, and it’s being traffic. No. Yeah. 

[00:49:11] Joe: Whole 

[00:49:11] Ryan: different 

[00:49:11] Joe: show. Brazil, Poland on the list. By the way, we’ve been talking a lot about Poland. Uh, next week’s show we’re gonna be talking about Poland a little bit.

And Paula, you and I talked about how well the stock market’s done in Poland this year as well, right? Yeah. People pretty happy there. You know what’s wild is that I’ve seen other studies that show that people in the, um, Nordic regions right, are the quote, happiest people on earth. And I’m not seeing any of those countries on this list.

I don’t know if they were included or not included. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. But I’m not seeing that former research, uh, those people showing up. United States number 15 on this list, by the way. It’s interesting. We talk about flourishing when it comes to flourishing. Og, help us put a cap on this.

What do you think flourishing has to do with with finance? 

[00:49:56] OG: Ooh, what does it have to do with finance? I mean, the more comfortable you are with your circumstances, like Paula said, in terms of hope and optimism, that’s really the biggest thing. You know, I think that when it comes to making decisions about money or decisions about the future, if you can give yourself the most opportunity for choices in the future, like not locking yourself into one decision or not making the biggest mortgage purchase that you can exactly up to what the bank will allow you, so that every single day you have to exactly be on budget every single minute of every single day to afford it.

Like giving yourself flexibility and choices equates to, in my opinion, flexibility, which is I. Probably one of the biggest features or factors in being happy. 

[00:50:42] Joe: Ryan, how about for you? 

[00:50:43] Ryan: Well, first of all, I was surprised that India wasn’t higher. Yeah. On that, because they, I mean, a little bit of what Paula was saying, they seem like an emerging market may, maybe they’re more emerged, and so maybe that’s why, but they seem like they’re on the way up.

And like it would be that, that thing where you’re doing better than your parents 

[00:51:02] Joe: India down there, by the way. Right around the United States. Right. In the same 

[00:51:06] Ryan: general, general 

[00:51:07] Joe: spot. Yeah. 

[00:51:07] Ryan: And, and that’s one of the big things I hear people say here is, for the first time, kids are doing worse than their parents or something.

Right. So that’s like, not, obviously that’s not everyone, but that might play a big role in why we’re lower on that list. So, I don’t know. It was really eye-opening. I, I was surprised by some of these countries and like you said, the Nordic regions, maybe they weren’t included. ’cause I thought they would be up there.

[00:51:29] Joe: Yeah, I would’ve thought so too. Yeah. That we would’ve seen Norway, Denmark, on there. But money. Why do you think money plays into this? 

[00:51:35] Ryan: Uh, I, I think money plays. Into everything to some degree. But when you start looking at it as the savior is when you get into trouble. But if you just make the right choices and get to where you have it, it’s all about getting that flexibility.

And I, I, I’m kind of saying what someone else said with that, but if you can get to where you’re flexible enough to do the things that make you happy, you’re in the driver’s seat and you can win the Indy 500 because like, that, that’s what it, that’s really the, the purpose. But some people, like, they make money and then, and then they’re like, well, I got this dopamine rush for making money.

So I, I, I wanna, I guess that’s what I need to do is just keep making more money. That doesn’t really go anywhere. 

[00:52:15] Joe: And that may go back to what we talked about earlier, Paula, about uh, self-employed being employed by somebody else. Is that flexibility Ryan’s talking about? Right. What does it mean for you?

Where does money fit into it for you? 

[00:52:25] Paula: Well, I think money simply gives you choices. It gives you choices. It gives you options. And when you have choices and choices and options about your life, you are likely to be happier because whatever it is that you are doing or, you know, experiencing or buying is something that you chose, right?

It’s something that you freely chose and if you dislike it, then you can choose a different path. And so it gives you the ability to. To take control over your life rather than to be controlled by a lack of money. 

[00:52:56] Joe: And I love the fact that it’s only one part, like you still have to choose, right? You know, when you were talking about coming out of the financial crisis, you know, you can choose to have that be the weight or you can choose that that was a heck of a place to start from.

You choose to be work for somebody else or be, even if you do work for somebody to be an intrapreneur or you know, be an entrepreneur. Certainly there’s the childhood. Trauma stuff, you don’t choose that. And I think that’s important, but looking at, uh, joining and this idea of the religious aspect is really, really pretty interesting.

We will link to this on our show [email protected] for all of our stackers that want to take a look at this really, really wonderful study with some, some pretty surprising results. Let’s find out because you guys are always doing surprising stuff. So we’ll have our guest of honor go last here.

But og, what do you got going on this fine post, uh, Memorial Day weekend? 

[00:53:50] OG: Well, I’m lucky enough to have my in-laws still in town for, uh, just the last part of this, uh, two and a half week visit. So really blessed to be able to hang out with them. I will be spending the weekend at a golf tournament, so sadly, uh, they’re gonna have to hang out at my house and, and, uh, without you there.

I’m gonna miss those last few days. Oh, I know how heartbroken you are. Uh, we’ve been fortunate enough to have them around for the last, uh, 17. Days and some change who’s counting. But um, you know, we’re just beyond blessed. 

[00:54:17] Paula: Hashtag blessed, 

[00:54:19] OG: hashtag flourishing. 

[00:54:22] Joe: Paula, what’s going on at the Afford Anything Podcast?

[00:54:25] Paula: So on the Afford Anything podcast, we have an interview with Robert Rosencrantz. He is a billionaire who talks about. How he made his money. It’s really interesting because right up until when he talks about the work that he did in his twenties and early thirties, it’s all like very, very, very relatable.

He’s telling his story and you’re like, okay, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. That feels like my twenties. Yeah, that 20 by by 25. Yeah, by 35. Yeah. I can relate to that. And then like post 35, it just becomes nope. Whoa. 

[00:54:57] Joe: He did some amazing stuff, huh? 

[00:54:59] Paula: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so we talk about that he strongly believes in stoicism, and so we talk about the stoic philosophy and how that plays a role in any type of business enterprise or any type of financial enterprise.

Like in, in anything that you wanna do, how Stoicism can play a role in it. 

[00:55:18] Joe: That’s awesome. And that’s it. The Afford Anything Podcast, where finer podcasts are listened to or found the finest, only the finest. Speaking of finest, Ryan, thanks a lot for hanging out with us today, man. This was fun. Thank you so much.

[00:55:32] Ryan: I I had a really great time. So, you know, kicking our butt, the Honor was all mine. 

[00:55:37] Joe: Yeah. Alright, so what’s going on at the Happiest Retirees Podcast? What’s coming up? 

[00:55:41] Ryan: What I actually was gonna plug is, um, I, I’m starting a new video series called Try and Ryan. It’s where I go out and actually try some of these, what we call ’em, core pursuits.

It’s a bit like a hobby on steroids that. We found that the happiest retirees need 3.6 core pursuits to be happy. 

[00:56:00] Joe: I always feel bad for that 0.61, by the way, the one you’re kind of half-assing. I 

[00:56:04] Ryan: know. So I decided to just go out and try some of these things and, and hopefully like by showing people that I’m doing it and oftentimes not doing it well, but having fun, they might actually be inspired by it.

So the first episode, I learned how to cook Puerto Rican food from my wife. 

[00:56:20] Joe: Oh man. And 

[00:56:21] Ryan: yeah. Wow. That was tasty. I gotta 

[00:56:23] Joe: live closer to you. 

[00:56:23] Ryan: I know. I Hey, you’re, you’re welcome to move in if you need to. And then the second episode’s gonna be, I’m taking tennis lessons, so like, you know, we gotta balance between like, enjoying food and then burning the calories off.

[00:56:34] Joe: It’s a good one. Two punch. That’s nice. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:56:37] Ryan: Yeah. 

[00:56:37] Joe: You get test your liver enzymes during this, is that gonna be 

[00:56:41] Ryan: rub? Yeah. 

[00:56:45] Joe: And that’s at the Happiest Retirees Podcast, where, of course, also the finest podcasts are listened to wherever you’re listening to us now. Alright, uh, that’s gonna do for today.

Big thanks to everybody hanging out with us from all over the world on YouTube today. Thanks a lot for wealth, just being here with us. I guess, just for being you. Just for being you. Thank you for being a stacker and as I mentioned, most of the time we’re here on Wednesday, today, we’re here on Thursday making the show.

Doug, you always make the show. Go bye bye. By telling us what we should have learned today. Nobody can wrap up a party 

[00:57:20] Doug: like me. Joe.

First, take some advice from Paula when she revealed. The pointlessness of life and oblique frozen. TS Elliot, like wasteland. Care to elaborate, Paula? 

[00:57:34] Paula: Sure. It’s us together in this, um, darkness in which we will soon be forgotten and eventually the sun will turn into a red giant and explode. And everything that you’ve ever known will dissolve into a fiery hellscape.

[00:57:51] Joe: I can’t figure out why the US is further down on the scale with great, optimistic people like Paula. 

[00:57:59] Doug: Second, don’t forget Captain grumpy pants. Sermon on flourishing and not being a jackass. Hey, og, can you summarize that for us? 

[00:58:07] OG: Yeah. If you go to church, just listen for the sermon about Don’t Be a Jackass, and then you’ll be, uh, you’ll be inspired.

Moving forward to be nice to people, I guess, I don’t know. I haven’t paid attention to that one yet. 

[00:58:18] Joe: But you heard about it. I’d actually recommend to all the stackers out there, go to your religious leader and request it. Like, could you talk to us about not being a jackass? Yes. Use those 

[00:58:27] OG: exact words.

Paraphrase. Just a smidge, your Honor. If you can’t, I don’t know what you, what do you call them? Your ency, your, your your Highness, because you’re not allowed to use the word jackass, but I did see it on the Mountain Dew commercial, so I guess it’s okay. 

[00:58:42] Doug: But the big lesson don’t get Joe’s mom stuck on finding out how fast everything is now she says we need to test my speed at mowing her lawn.

I’m on ya ma. It’s time to drop my El Camino engine into the tractor. Thanks to Ryan Doolittle for joining us. Today, you’ll find Ryan happily hosting the Happiest Retirees Podcast. We’ll also include links in our show [email protected]. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her joyously, pontificating, and using all the polysyllabic words on afford anything available wherever you listen to finer podcasts.

And finally, thanks to Jerk Face OG for joining us today. Looking to looking for good financial planning help. It was because he corrected me in the trivia thing. I’m a little bit bitter looking for good financial planning. Help head to stacking benjamins.com/og for his calendar. Wait a minute, you’re bitter because he helped you get the trivia right?

It’s just the way it was. The tone of voice really. I just needed a hug and he punched me in the face. But he asked, he was right to correct me. I was trying to convert to minutes and I did the math wrong. 

[00:59:56] Joe: Well, you were thinking in indie units, that was a problem. 

[00:59:59] Doug: Yeah.

This show is the Property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul Sea. Hi, Joe gets some help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome [email protected], 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 entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.