Ever wonder why some people crush their financial goals while others keep hitting snooze? Today, we’re talking about the secret sauce behind sticking to a financial plan—and no, it’s not just “wanting it more” (though that helps). Joining Joe in the basement is OG, alongside personal finance expert Jesse Kramer from The Best Interest and CFP Dana Anspach from Sensible Money. Together, they’ll break down why staying financially motivated is harder than it looks—and how to actually keep yourself on track, even when life (or a killer sale on Amazon) tries to derail you.
We’ll explore why people resist financial planning (hint: it’s not always laziness), how goal-setting psychology plays into money habits, and why tracking your finances can be as powerful as tracking your fitness. Dana shares the surprising link between logging your retirement balance and saving more, while OG and Jesse tackle the age-old debate: should financial advisors be more like sports agents—pushing, coaching, and sometimes delivering the tough love? Plus, we dig into why writing things down actually works (seriously, it’s science) and how a simple mindset shift can help you finally take action.
And of course, what’s a Friday without Doug’s trivia? This week, Doug takes us back to the boxing ring with a question about the legendary Joe Louis—and the sucker punch that is junk fees. ? Our roundtable throws their best guesses into the ring, but who will come out on top? Play along and see if you can take home the trivia belt!
This was a great finish to a week talking motivation and drive! From the seven steps to dynamic drive to sports agent Molly Fletcher on Wednesday and this discussion, it’s a well-rounded week that should help you get up and go…even if you think YOUR get up and go got up and went.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/motivation-habits-and-planning-1659
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 Topic:
The Power of Tracking (The American College of Financial Services)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Financial motivation strategies
- Sports agent mindset
- Resistance to planning
- Tracking financial progress
- Writing goals down
- Fear vs. excitement
- Short-term thinking traps
- Accountability in planning
- Investing vs. planning
- Financial behavior patterns
- Junk fees problem
- Retirement savings habits
- Spending vs. saving
- Income tracking importance
- Advisor tough love
- Retirement cash flow
- Overcoming financial apathy
- Financial planning myths
- Credit card pitfalls
- Financial goal setting
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Dana Anspach
Another thanks to Dana Anspach for joining us. To learn more about Dana and her firm, visit her website.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors at Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest Podcast – Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- What % of the price of a concert ticket is comprised of junk fees?
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we ponder, How should we NOT invest?
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Climb Out of Your Rut: Molly Fletcher on Sustainable Drive (SB1658).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Doug: 30 [00:00:01] OG: seconds [00:00:01] Doug: to hear. What do think about flowers? Show notes, taste. These are for the gas. More books for these mics. [00:00:07] OG: Anyone have the promo for the show notes? Wait, where’s the Fiji water? Is this This isn’t. Is this tap water? 15 seconds. [00:00:16] Doug: Somebody get the cat. I [00:00:17] OG: can’t drink tap. [00:00:19] Doug: Can someone tell Joe’s mom to sound vacuuming? [00:00:21] It’s [00:00:21] OG: not hard to find [00:00:23] Doug: my hair. [00:00:24] OG: Gelian, [00:00:25] Joe: watered, natural, quiet on the set. Live in three. Two. [00:00:36] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:52] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. This week our focus has been sustainable dynamic drive. How do you apply that drive to a great financial plan, and how do you create a plan that helps you consistently nail your goals? You’ll leave today with a purpose fueled game plan to chase even bigger dreams, but that’s not all at the halfway point In today’s show, our contributors will chase down the answer to my incredible trivia question. [00:01:19] And now a guy who knows the best investment is friendship because it’s the only one that doesn’t tank in a recession. It’s Joe Saul Sea High. [00:01:32] Joe: Hey there, stackers or friends, I’m super happy you’re here with me today because we have some friends who are gonna hopefully help you with your money and help push you. To higher and bigger things. Let’s say hello to the man across the table from me right now. Mr. OG is here. How are you man? [00:01:50] OG: Great. Just finished my lunch, pointed out in the, uh, chat already that I was, uh, eating rather quickly, someone noticed. [00:01:57] Um, so I just had to, uh, get that yogurt down the hatch and I’m ready to rock and roll. He’s all fueled and ready to go. [00:02:02] Joe: You also rode a bike today? Did, yep. Podcast is like riding a bike, just a bicycle. And the guy who finds every podcast like riding a bike. Of course, he’s the host of the personal finance for long-term investors. [00:02:15] Show Jesse Kramer’s here. How are you man? [00:02:17] Jesse: Hello. Hello. Doing well. Everything is good over here. And, uh, trying to think what’s exciting is going on. I don’t know. I’m just having some normal market conversations. It’s lots of fun. Lots of fun. [00:02:28] Joe: Yes. Uh, we record these about a week early. It is sad. Jesse, we actually talked about this on the Wednesday show, how much. [00:02:35] Consternation there is about something that if you’re working from a machinery point of view, right? We shouldn’t, we shouldn’t be talking about taking our money out of the, the market. We shouldn’t be talking about whether or not it’s the time to get rid of our Tesla stock, right? Is ’cause as Elon Dunn, we shouldn’t be talking about gold. [00:02:52] What else have I heard? Um, removing the money from our 401k. It’s crazy, Jesse. [00:02:56] Jesse: It is. There’s a lot of, um. I feel some empathy for people who say What’s going on in the world is very concerning to me. That’s fine. Totally get it. It’s challenging, but it is, the challenge is to separate those concerns about what’s going on in the world against concerns that are going on specifically within the stock market. [00:03:15] I. The world’s always had pretty big concerning things. There’s that Warren Buffet quote about World Wars pandemics Great depression. And yet here we are. And I think that’s an important message to, to keep in mind during times like these, [00:03:25] Joe: I love that Ibbitson chart where it goes up into the right, you know, over the long period of time. [00:03:30] Mm-hmm. But it points out all the reasons why you should get out along the way. Yeah, like that is, that is fantastic. And joining us again, I’m super happy she’s back and she’s walking her way to physical fitness while she’s on the podcast. Dana Sspa is here. How are you? I. [00:03:46] Dana: I’m doing great and, uh, I think I was a guest on this podcast about a year and a half ago when I first started this treadmill desk walking thing. [00:03:54] I’m still at it. We are actually getting ready for a hike through the Swiss Alps this summer. Scoreboard. Yes. Gonna be crazy. I’ve got a, every weekend I’m doing some serious hiking, and then during the week here I am going away on my treadmill. [00:04:08] Joe: That is so cool. Why’d you decide to do that? [00:04:11] Dana: You know, uh, my family did this trip. [00:04:13] I was in my twenties. I had just started as a broker at Merrill Lynch, and so I didn’t feel comfortable taking time off, and I have regretted it my entire life. I had back problems for years. I couldn’t hike. I couldn’t pickle ball. I. That’s all better. And so I told my husband at the end of last year, like, I’ve always wanted to do this trip. [00:04:33] It’s 99 miles over 12 days right through the mo block circuits. Oh my goodness. [00:04:38] Jesse: Wow. [00:04:38] Dana: Italy, Switzerland, and France. And so we, we booked it and we’ve been training every weekend since. [00:04:43] Joe: You [00:04:44] Dana: are walking around the base of Mount, [00:04:45] Joe: um, what’s [00:04:47] Dana: the [00:04:47] Joe: mountain? [00:04:47] Dana: Mont Blanc. Is the mountain. [00:04:49] Jesse: How many cigar breaks are there during your hike, Dana? [00:04:53] Dana: Well, this is really, this isn’t camping, so you get a, you know, a nice place to sleep at night, hot tubs, meals, wine. So no cigars for me, but, uh, this is the way to do it. [00:05:04] Doug: And they take your bags from one four star hotel to the next four star hotel for you. [00:05:09] Dana: Yes, they do. You have to carry a day pack and rain gear and things like that, but yes. [00:05:13] Oh my goodness. They take your bags. My goodness. Wow. [00:05:15] Doug: Well, I hope you [00:05:15] Joe: survive. [00:05:16] Doug: I really do. [00:05:18] Joe: For people, for people that wanna see more about this. By the way, Rick Steves actually did an episode of his, you know, Europe show, where he talked about doing that. He did it for just, I, I think three days. He did, but oh my goodness, Dana, it looked like so much fun. [00:05:33] Dana: I’m excited. [00:05:34] Joe: Yeah. That’s fantastic. Well, I’m excited that we’re talking today about getting our financial house in order at the same time, uh, using this analogy of a sports agent. I love the idea that Molly Fletcher, as a former sports agent, kind of brought to the table yesterday and I feel like. OG and Dana, you guys are CFPs. [00:05:54] You work with clients all the time. Jesse, you’re in a financial planning office working with clients all the time. So I really want to talk today, not so much about the financial plan itself that we’ll often get into on a Friday. What I wanna talk about is motivation. Like how do we keep people motivated? [00:06:12] How does this act of financial planning keep people motivated? So that’s the topic today, everybody. Before we get into that though, we have a couple. We have a couple, I almost had a couple clients. We have a couple sponsors who make this show go so that uh, you don’t have to pay anything for all of this goodness on Friday. [00:06:29] Sit back for a couple moments, we’ll hear from them. And then Dana, Jesse, OG Doug and I get a talk about motivation and your financial plan. [00:06:44] All right, let’s jump into this, and Dana, we’ll start with you. I used to get lots of resistance to planning way back. I haven’t been a financial planner in a long time, but I can’t imagine this resistance has gone away. You know, I’d start talking about the financial planning process, about the fact that I wanted to set up milestones about the fact that everything dovetails together, and I would have these people that would meet with me the go. [00:07:07] Let’s just invest the money. Like can we just invest? That’s what I’m here for, is to get that. I don’t wanna do all this extra, you know, mumbo jumbo crap, or you know, can’t we use just rules of thumb? Like, that’d be much better. What’s the, what’s the resistance? People have to actually putting this down on paper. [00:07:25] Dana: You know, we often can only think in short term increments As humans. It’s hard to think beyond five years and when you look back to your life 10 years ago, right? It’s probably completely different than maybe you would’ve thought. So I think that can contribute to the resistance as you were describing, that it, it reminded me of a client friend and CPA that I’ve worked with for years and to try to get him to save more. [00:07:49] I tried the a hundred thousand dollars challenge, like. Build up a hundred thousand in liquid savings. That didn’t work. Nothing really worked until now. He is, I think, 66 this year, and that retirement horizon is real. It’s suddenly real, and that is changing things. So I think of it as like. You really have to have something you’re planning for. [00:08:14] Just like my upcoming hike, like we are committed to getting in shape and hiking ’cause we have to be ready. And so financial planning for retirement, especially when you’re younger, it’s like so out there, so [00:08:25] Joe: far away. [00:08:26] Dana: Yeah. It’s hard to make it real. So you just kind of feel like, you know, sentiment, you express, oh, let’s just put the money away and invest it. [00:08:33] I don’t really know what I’m planning for. [00:08:35] Joe: I feel like it’s so much, Jesse, listening to what Dana’s talking about is really finding clients, you know, I don’t know if it’s pain point is the right word, or uh, finding really what the carrot of the stick or whatever you just came out of a client meeting, I think five minutes before we went live today. [00:08:52] How much of that meeting today was about behavior? [00:08:55] Jesse: Um, that’s a good question. How much was actually about behavior? Not a ton. Uh, just because these particular clients, I think are, as far as we would, you know, those of us speaking here on this podcast, we would say they’re pretty well behaved. They’re, they’re doing a lot of the things well in terms of whether it’s saving, investing, staying the course now during, during a challenging market, all, all those kind of things. [00:09:14] But in general, I so empathize with everything Dana was saying and just the, the whole idea behind the question, which is. One of the hardest parts, uh, whether it’s us working with clients or just the stories that I hear on the, the D IY or forums and that stuff is you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. [00:09:33] If there’s a magic potion of overcoming that hurdle, I mean, sign me up because I feel like for each individual person there’s a different type of motivation or a different trigger that gets them to start to drink that water. [00:09:44] Joe: But let’s talk about the efficacy OG of drinking the water, so to speak, to use Jesse Kramer terminology. [00:09:49] If I’m leading them to the water, I mean clearly. If, if they thought financial planning, the idea of planning everything together, planning for the future was important, they would wanna drink that water. Right. So how do you describe to people how drinking the water, so to speak, is gonna be better than, let’s just invest or using a rule of thumb, like what’s the thing to get them moving? [00:10:13] OG: Since we talk so much about planning, we don’t really run into. Too many folks that just wanna focus on one particular thing. I will say, however, that quite often people have a particular issue that’s going on and Joe Duran, who ran United Capital for a long time, he was on a podcast one time and he said, he said, it’s amazing to me how many advisors will go into their spiel. [00:10:34] With a potential client and the client says, I’ve got this really big issue I wanna deal with. And they go, yeah, yeah. Cool. Let me tell you about how great we are. Or let me tell you about all this stuff we do. And they’re like, you wanna get this one problem? I really wanna help help with this one problem. [00:10:46] And the advisor’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ll get to that. But lemme tell you about all this other stuff that we’re gonna do. And it’s really. It’s kind of this yin and yang or this struggle between advisors trying to show how smart they are and their clients or consumers who are like, no, I just got this one problem. [00:11:04] And I think it’s our job to recognize and validate that problem, solve it. Make sure there’s productive tension around it. That’s the way we talk about it. So people don’t make good decisions when they’re stressed and people don’t make good decisions when they’re in apathy, but they’ll make really good decisions if they’re at a, a level of productive tension around a particular issue. [00:11:21] And if they’re already there, solve that problem and let them know that there’s all these other things that are gonna happen because of that. I think the, the piece that most. People don’t really recognize in financial planning is that just ’cause you know, your taxes are all screwed up. You go, I just need, I just need to get my taxes fixed and then we can do that other stuff. [00:11:39] To your point, Joe, of like, I just want this one thing is, is like we can address this, but to not pay attention to how this affects your cash flow is silly. And to not, and to think, and to think we can solve your tax problem and not recognize that it’s gonna affect your estate tax or your estate planning, or it’s not gonna affect your retirement plan. [00:11:57] You know, this is ridiculous. We have to know how these, all these things are interrelated so that we make a good decision for the overall thing and bringing that to clients, I think, and bringing that recognition of, I understand your concern, I understand what’s going on in your world, and I’m totally committed to helping you fix that. [00:12:13] Also, we need to know what these other things are gonna do, these other areas of financial planning. When you, when you pull this one lever, what are these other dominoes that are gonna fall or these other levers that are gonna get pulled just because of the one thing you’re working on. [00:12:26] Joe: Does that resonate, Dana? [00:12:27] Is that similar to how you talk to clients? [00:12:30] Dana: Yeah, I mean, that definitely resonates. Everything in financial planning impacts all of the other things. We all work with different demographics, so you know, we work with people who are 55 and older who are near retirement. I wish they would start planning earlier, but they don’t. [00:12:47] So they often do when they’re younger. Have that one thing, as Josh was saying, you know, and then, oh, that leads to this and that leads to this. Or. I think of my own experience. So I was just at a conference and I think it was the Prudential booth that had, you know, the age you 20 years and print out the picture and show you what you might look like. [00:13:06] So they’ve said that, wow, it was terrifying. [00:13:09] OG: Joe’s picture is just skull and [00:13:10] Joe: crossbones. I’m right here. Red. I knew that was Kevin sitting right here. [00:13:15] Dana: But it, it’s supposed to get you thinking about the future, you, but for me, I was saving for retirement and doing my own financial plan because I didn’t wanna be a hypocrite. [00:13:25] Right? This is what I do for a living, so by golly, I better do it for myself too. But I had an experience last fall. We, my husband and I were in Beaver Creek, Colorado, and it was the first time I usually I take three days off and I’m bored. I need to get back to work, right? Like I’m just itching to go. But we had day 13, and I was like, I’m not ready to go home. [00:13:45] Like this has never happened to me before. [00:13:47] Jesse: Wow. [00:13:47] Dana: And it was the first time where I could at least see myself retired one day, like have a vision of what retirement life might be like. And it has completely changed my attitude even toward my own financial planning because now I have something. A positive, something I am saving for. [00:14:08] Whereas before it just felt like I love work and I still love work, but I just couldn’t even see like. What retirement could be. So that shift for me, I think sometimes that has to happen when, when it comes specifically to retirement, so that you are actually working toward a positive vision that you’re excited about. [00:14:26] Joe: It’s funny how, you know, the, the whole carrot versus the stick thing. Dana, I saw the Susie, the Susie Orbin talking about something. I really, really liked and it was much more of the stick. She said, I hear all the time from people I can’t save for retirement. I can’t do it. She goes, here’s what I want you to do. [00:14:45] I’d like you to close your eyes and imagine yourself 65 years old and you have done nothing. How do you feel now? This 35 year old’s, like, I gotta start saving like now. Like I gotta, I, I gotta do it. So to your point though, sometimes I think it’s the carrot, sometimes it is the stick. But Jesse, do you find it hard to, I, I mean, let’s stick with the stick for a second. [00:15:08] Do you find it hard to apply one or the other? Like, do you find that with your clients it’s mostly people that like the carrot and so you get to spend all day feeding carrots to people? Or are you. Cracking whips all the time in your, in your office. I don’t even know if I’d like that analogy, but [00:15:25] Jesse: one of my personal challenges is that on the one hand, I do think the stick works better. [00:15:32] I think you know that, that Susie Orman example was like, let me instill a little bit of fear and anxiety into you about the downsides of what could happen if you don’t act, and then that’s gonna motivate you to act. In my experience, just like that tends just more people I think will respond. They’ll respond in a way that is in their best interest if you give them a little bit of stick. [00:15:52] The problem though is I think of people like, I don’t know if I’m allowed to, you know, really like call people out here, but the author of Rich Dad, poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, [00:16:01] Joe: oh, let’s call out Robert Kiyosaki, please. You kind, [00:16:03] Jesse: kind of call him out, right? If you follow him at all and, and kind of, especially over recent years, his social media presence. [00:16:09] He is like. The Fearmonger in chief and his business model is, if I can scare you, then I can sell you my book, sell you my course. And, and that to me is like a despicable way of, of going about things. So it’s kind of about, to me at least, it’s about talking about realistic. Fears, realistic sticks, and then hoping that ends up being a motivating factor to get someone to take action that’s in their best interest. [00:16:33] Joe: So let’s go to the sports agent analogy then. Og, you know, if you have to apply the stick at all, I mean a, uh, with the client, how do you let them know? I’m on your team and my goal is to have you succeed. But by the same token, I’ve got to tell you that if we keep doing the thing we’re doing, we’re not gonna get where you want to go. [00:16:55] OG: I think that there’s a couple of things here. Firstly is this all has to come from a position of trust and mutual respect, and you earn that over long periods of time. You can talk about it at the beginning of a, of a relationship, and this is true for financial planning advisor relationships. This is true with I. [00:17:11] Couples, this is true with your kids. This is true with your business associates. You earn the ability to kind of preach the good news and be straightforward, uh, when you demonstrate your level of care for them over long periods of time. If you start a relationship. If you, if start, if you go to the gym and you’re like, okay, so I don’t really know what to do, and the trainer’s like, you are so fat. [00:17:34] It is unbelievable. You are gonna die an unhealthy death. And you know, you’re like, bro, chill. Like, I got it. You know, you like that is not a good way to start. But if you’re working out for a year and there’s just no progress and your trainer goes, look man, something’s going on here. You’re either not lifting the things you say you’re gonna do or you’re eating unhealthy. [00:17:55] Can we unpack that a little bit? Because, ’cause I’m frustrated for you, because we’ve been working together for this period of time and I, I, I would’ve thought you’d had some progress here. And so I think that’s true when you’re looking at your financial plan too. The other piece is people have to own it. [00:18:10] If you say to somebody, Hey, I think your plan sucks and it’s gonna, you know, fail miserably, like, okay, cool. That has very little weight to it. But if they say that their plan sucks or they recognize that it’s on the wrong path or going trending in the wrong direction, that has a lot more weight. I don’t know who said this, and this sounds like maybe like a Zig Ziglar thing from like 1987 or something, but when, when you say it’s propaganda, when they say it, it’s gospel. [00:18:39] When you own that, when you say, yeah, you’re right, I am eating unhealthy and I need to get, you know, I need to reign that in. Like now you have, you have ownership of that, right? That’s now your situation. That’s not somebody else’s. And I think that’s how we would approach that is where do you think we might’ve made a mistake in this calculation? [00:18:58] What do you wanna see different to kind of change the trajectory here? And here are my non-negotiables. I’m not gonna kill you sooner. We’re gonna make you live to a hundred. I can’t prove, you can’t prove to me you’re gonna die at 80 to make the the plan work. What other variables do you wanna work on here? [00:19:13] Because there’s no right answer to it, but let’s work together as a team. And I think that’s a way better approach than coming in and going, you’re super fat and your arteries are clogged and you’re gonna die soon. [00:19:23] Joe: How much of this Dana is just holding up the mirror? [00:19:26] Dana: It’s hard to say, you know, the, the people who are working with financial planners already clearly want a plan. [00:19:33] Right, right. [00:19:33] Jesse: Yeah. [00:19:34] Dana: I like the analogy of builds up trust and what can you say after a year or two? It’s interesting because I have found that oftentimes when people aren’t working toward the plan, they aren’t doing, they’re what they’re supposed to be doing in terms of hitting their savings targets. [00:19:48] There is something else going on. In one case, it was somebody who had, they knew a big inheritance coming one day, but they just never mentioned it. They weren’t comfortable mentioning it. ’cause it didn’t feel like a good thing to mention. Right. And yet it was real. So in their mind, saving for retirement wasn’t a priority. [00:20:07] And another case, it was a couple who, but withholding [00:20:09] Joe: that, hold on a second. But withholding that information, it’s gonna change your relationship with them. [00:20:14] Dana: Well, it might change my, mostly it’s gonna reduce my anxiety is what it would’ve done. Right, right. Because I’m over here like, oh my God. Like, you’re gonna be, you’re not gonna make it in retirement. [00:20:25] Yes. Get up. So it would’ve made me feel a lot better to know that. But, you know, people are uncomfortable with those kinds of things. Sometimes they don’t feel like it’s appropriate to talk about. Someone passing away. Sometimes it’s cultural, you know, their culture. It just, you know, that’s not an okay topic to bring up. [00:20:44] In another case, it was a couple who a few years into working with them announced they were getting divorced, so it made sense, right? They just couldn’t get in line on their financial goals. It all became clear like, okay, no wonder we couldn’t get them hitting these targets. So you just, you never really know what’s going on with someone. [00:21:02] I think that can be great. For listeners who aren’t working with someone to think like, what is it that’s holding you back, you know, if you’ve gone through that exercise, Suzy Orman exercise, what? What’s it gonna be like? It’s 65 and you got nothing. What is holding you back right now? [00:21:17] Joe: I think that’s a great question because I, I mean, those open-ended questions allow the client to explore. [00:21:24] I do feel like, Jesse, before we go to the halfway break here, I feel like people get disappointed in the financial planning industry when they don’t act enough like a sports agent, like somebody who’s like, listen, I’m trying to get you more money. I’m trying to be on your team. I’m trying to be the guy that gets you more of these contracts, more of this exposure. [00:21:41] I’m trying to make your life better and you’re not helping me. I feel like a lot of the time the financial planner is worried about coming across as too aggressive. Mm-hmm. And yet I feel like the thirst ever since I’ve been over here on the media side is No, no, no. I want you to be more aggressive with me. [00:21:57] Tell me what I, what you think. [00:21:59] Jesse: You remind me, Joe of, uh, one of our founders here who’s now 65, and he, he started Oh, good, thanks. This firm when he was, when he was 30. [00:22:10] In your [00:22:10] wisdom, you remind me in terms of wisdom, Joe, I couldn’t have come across any better. Jesse. [00:22:13] OG: That is fantastic. [00:22:17] Jesse: He’s got blue glasses as well. [00:22:18] No, um, something he told me really early on. When it was, I, I kind of asked him, ’cause he’s, he’s a very calm and like, thoughtful individual and I asked him how he delivered bad news or hard news and he basically said, you deliver it calmly and you stick to the facts and you tell them if they stay on their current trajectory, where they’ll end up. [00:22:37] It can be a very kind of empathetic and factual conversation at the end of the day. You do have to have that, whether it’s tough love or simply a matter of the, the example that just sticks out to me so much because I have a few clients suffering. This is simply withdrawing money too quickly. There are some clients where I’ve had this conversation many times with them, just factual and just even though, you know, hey, markets have been good, and so your portfolio is actually fine, but if you continue to withdraw 15% per year, here’s what is almost assuredly going to happen. [00:23:07] But at the end of the day, this is your money. And so if you really need this money right now for a new boat. I’m not gonna tell you no, but I am gonna tell you, every time you ask me for boat money, I am gonna remind you. I’m not mad. I’m just [00:23:18] OG: disappointed. [00:23:19] Jesse: Right. And it’s, it’s not even like, I hope I don’t come across as disappointed either, right? [00:23:24] It’s just a matter of my job is to be the third party truth teller, whether good or bad, I, I don’t wanna pass judgment on them, but I do want them to know what will happen. I do want them to know the truth as I see it, [00:23:36] OG: Jesse brings the hammer in meetings. I can, I can just see him be like, can you eat a boat? [00:23:40] Are you planning on eating this someday? Because that’s what’s gonna happen. You better light fiberglass. You’re worried about microplastics. Wait until you have to eat half a boat for dinner. [00:23:52] Joe: That sounds very effective and motivational. We’re gonna come back in the second half. Dana, you brought to the table as we were discussing this topic, a great piece about the value of writing it down. [00:24:03] I want to dive into that. Again, that’s not just gonna be about financial planning, it’s also applies to fitness and everything else in your life. I also have a piece about sports agents that I’m gonna use to kick it off. But before that, two things. I wanna say hi to everybody hanging out with us on YouTube where we started half an hour early and we still got some. [00:24:20] Nice people here. Dan’s here and a guy who calls himself the man in charge. I always thought that was og who was the man in charge. But apparently, yeah. Uh, it is this, this person, the man in charge wants to know, can OG say something nice about Doug? We’d all love that, wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we wouldn’t. We love that. [00:24:35] Doug been waiting 14 years. I spent four, [00:24:38] OG: four or five days with Doug recently and all the whole thing was me being nice to Doug. I was quite pleasant if I do say so, so people didn’t hear [00:24:47] Joe: the whole show on Wednesday. You’ll have no idea what we’re talking about, but, uh, I mean, [00:24:51] OG: even then I was just like, yo, we’re getting beers. [00:24:54] What’s up? Where are you at? [00:24:56] Doug: I I, did you notice how he made it sound like it was a choice he had to make to be nice to me [00:25:01] OG: it was, it was a conscious effort. It is definitely a conscious choice. Like, I wake up in the morning and rub my ear lobes and I’m like, be nice to Doug. Be nice to talk. [00:25:09] Joe: If you wanna hang out with us on YouTube, generally around, uh, 4:00 PM Eastern on Wednesdays, you will find us, uh, maybe a little bit before, but reliably almost every week around that if you wanna hang out and say hello, but glad you guys are with us. [00:25:23] Time for us though to take a little break here because at the halfway point of every Friday show, we have this year long competition going on between our three frequent contributors, OG Jesse and the Paula Pant and Dana. As I think most of the time you’ve been here, you’re playing on behalf of Paula. [00:25:38] Yeah, you and Paula kind of shadows passing in the night. Dana, that brings up some good news and some and some bad news. You want the good news or the bad news? [00:25:47] Dana: Let’s take the bad news first. [00:25:49] Joe: Well, the bad news is OG is running away with this thing early on. We have only done our trivia six times. We’ve had a few Special Friday shows so far this year, but OG has five and the good news is for once Dana Paula’s not in last, which does not happen, I, I just don’t know what happened. [00:26:07] Polo has one. Because Jesse, after when he first showed up, he was just roaring and scoring all kinds of points. Jesse is zero so far this year, so, uh oh. Geez. Gonna guess first Dana. That means you’re gonna guess second. And Jesse, you get the, the power of, uh, going last. All right, will Dana make a move for Paula toward OGs dominance? [00:26:30] Will Jesse get on the board? Is OG gonna pull further ahead? We need a trivia question to find out. So Doug. What’s on tap today, man? [00:26:43] Doug: Well, hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And speaking of sports agents, wonder who Joe Lewis’s agent was. For those of you who don’t know boxing, Joe Lewis was the man who on this day, way back in 1941, Kay owed Abe Simon to retain his belt as the heavyweight champion of the world. It was only Joe’s third defense of the belt that year, only his third by March, only three fights by March. [00:27:10] Yeah, he worked what, like a total of 90 minutes in those three fights. First three months of the year. I want that job, but here’s my question. If there had been as many junk fees on the tickets to see Lewis fight back then. As there are today, what percentage of your ticket to see the champ would’ve been attributed to those costs? [00:27:33] I’ll be back right after I take a jab at Joe’s Mom’s Brownies. Get it. Jab ha. What a right hook that pun was. Oh, seriously? I’m amazing. Oh, you’re a. [00:27:43] Joe: Fire. Just amazing. [00:27:44] Doug: Just [00:27:45] Joe: incredible ninja. All right, og, uh, junk fees, man. I hate it when I go to Ticketmaster or wherever else. I’m like, oh look, these tickets are 47 50. [00:27:54] Oh, no, they’re not. They’re a bunch more than that. Uh, what percentage of the ticket can I get [00:27:59] OG: done to ask the exact question again? I had it and then it faded away. If there were. It’s Huley written. [00:28:07] Joe: If there were the percentage of junk fees, then to see Joe Lewis fight that there are now, what percentage of your ticket would’ve been junk fees? [00:28:16] Jesse: So this really isn’t a Joe Lewis question, right? This is just about modern feast. [00:28:20] Doug: Wow. Nothing gets past you, does it, Jesse? [00:28:23] OG: If the percentage was the same this year as it was 25 years ago, what percent was it? Is that the question? We’ll just keep boiling [00:28:29] Doug: it down. I’m just gonna keep on distilling it down ’cause I realized it’s late in the day for all you guys. [00:28:33] Wait a guys a minute. Doug. [00:28:34] Joe: Doug, before you do that, Jesse, are you accusing us of obfuscating? The actual question? We’ve never done that before. We don’t do that. We [00:28:40] OG: don’t do never. That’s not how I heard it. No, I heard it like. If the percentage, if, if anyway, say it again. [00:28:48] Doug: It’s this, what percentage of the average ticket price today to go see, pick an event of heavyweight boxing got match, a Taylor Swift concert, you name it. [00:28:57] What percent, what percentage are junk fees? [00:29:00] OG: Okay. Yeah, you did say it that way then like you did say it that way. Percent was the same today as it was 50 years ago. Yes. What would be the percent? It’s like, it’s so, it’s this, today’s percent. Got it. Okay. Percent junk fees. All right. That changes my math a little bit. [00:29:15] I’m gonna say that a solid, a solid 31%, almost a third is solid. 31% of your ticket is junk fees. [00:29:30] Joe: Dana, I saw the look on your face. I think you, you think that might be high? [00:29:33] Dana: I thought that was high. Yeah. I mean, initially I was thinking around maybe 20 to 25%, but then, you know, I don’t know. I’m gonna guess like I. [00:29:44] 18.70 [00:29:46] Doug: for God’s sakes. Oh, we can do decimals. [00:29:49] Dana: 8.7. [00:29:52] Doug: I gotta get the calculator out. [00:29:56] Dana: I gotta make it work. Doug, [00:29:58] Joe: it’s, it is not Dana’s first rodeo. You could tell she’s been here before. I’m surprised she didn’t say 18.721. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Jesse, you’ve got 18.7 and 31, [00:30:10] Jesse: 18 0.7 and 31, right? That’s what I have written down. [00:30:14] My initial thought was like I was thinking about the wedding industry, which, you know, the wedding industry has a lot of those just because fees, which I think are around 22%, usually in that 20 to 22% range. And then because of the guesses, 31 and 18.7. I’m gonna split the uprights, but I’m gonna round it to make Doug’s life a little easier. [00:30:35] Oh, I [00:30:35] Doug: love you, Jason. A [00:30:36] Jesse: little easier. Uh, round it to the nearest, hundredth place. That is Doug. No? Yes. I’m gonna go with 25% flat. [00:30:46] Joe: 25%. So, all right. We got 31%, 18.7 and 25. We will find out who our winner is in just a minute. Oh gee, you kicked this off by saying 31% of your ticket fee is junk fees on average. [00:31:06] How you feeling now that everybody thought that was maybe a scot too high? Scoreboard Dana? 18.7. Jesse came in at 25. You feeling good? [00:31:18] Dana: I probably could have done like 24.3. [00:31:23] Joe: I don’t know if Jesse would’ve stayed with 25 though. Jesse feel comfortable with 25. [00:31:27] Jesse: I couldn’t do that math in my head. Yeah, yeah. I, I thought when Dana, when you asked Dana, I thought she was gonna say scoreboard too, just to really rub it in my face. [00:31:37] Joe: Well, she could because she’s one ahead of you. [00:31:40] Jesse: That’s good math, Joe. [00:31:42] Joe: Is Dana gonna get team Paula closer? OG pulling ahead or is Jesse on the board? Doug, who’s gonna win this thing? [00:31:53] Doug: Well, hey there stackers. I’m Brownie lover and the guy who just got jabbed by Joe’s mom for trying to grab one. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, at a time when our nation and the world was focused on racial divisions. The 1940s, Joe Lewis brought people together even while other sports like baseball were still segregated. [00:32:13] His son, Joe Lewis Jr. Said famously, what my father did was enable white American to think of him as an American, not as black. By winning, he became white. America’s first black hero. Our question today though, isn’t about how amazing the talented boxer from Detroit, Michigan was. Woo. Mm-hmm. It was about the fees we pay today to see greatness. [00:32:36] There had been the types of fees back then as there are today. What percentage of your ticket would’ve been attributed to water? OGs already lost. Like he can’t follow any of this. What I’m watching his eyes glaze over. Ed’s nodding. Uh, what percentage would’ve been attributed to what are now commonly called junk fees? [00:32:57] Well, I’ll say this. 8.3% more than what Dana guessed. 4% less than what? OG guessed. No way. And just 2% more than what Jesse guessed. No way. ’cause the correct answer is 27, making Jesse’s girl our winner. [00:33:16] Joe: Jesse Kramer on the board. Nice work. [00:33:19] Jesse: I’ll tell you what guessing third has its perks. [00:33:24] Joe: There is power being last. [00:33:25] Jesse. There is power in being last. Nice job. [00:33:28] Jesse: Thank you. Can I ask a question? If I say scoreboard now, what’s the score? What is it? [00:33:33] Joe: Five to [00:33:34] Doug: one to [00:33:34] Joe: one? [00:33:35] Jesse: Okay. [00:33:36] OG: Yeah, [00:33:37] Joe: yeah. We still got some work to [00:33:38] OG: do. I’d hold off on the scoreboard talk for a while there, buddy. [00:33:42] Joe: But still, Dana, 25, 20 7% junk fees. That’s horrible. [00:33:46] Dana: That’s high. That’s higher than I would’ve thought. [00:33:49] Joe: That just sucks. I, I actually read a piece about this and why they got away with so much of it, and it was that, uh, Ticketmaster decided to cut in the venue and the in instead of going against the venue and against the act, they cut them in on their junk fees going, Hey, we’re gonna charge another X amount and you guys will get part of it. [00:34:09] We’ll get part of it. And of course then the venue is like, heck yeah. Let’s do that. And the act was like, heck yeah. Until what? Who was, who was the act that famously was it? Uh, Metallica was the first act was, that was my gut. [00:34:20] OG: My gut said Metallica. As soon as you said who, who kind of raged against the machine. [00:34:26] Yeah. Wasn’t them? It could have been rage against the machine. Who knows? It was one of those, it was that. I think Metallica. Yeah, I think, yeah. [00:34:33] Joe: Uh, if only there was a place we could look that up. But we’ve got, we’ve got better stuff to do in the second half of the show. I, I kind of wanna kick it off with this, you know, they called Molly Fletcher, the female, Jerry McGuire. [00:34:44] So I think we gotta go to a source clip to, uh, kind of introduce the next topic here. This is from that older movie, uh, 1996. With, uh, Tom Cruise. This is Jerry McGuire. [00:34:58] Jerry McGuire: You want more from them? So let’s give them more. Let’s show them your pure joy of the game. Let’s bury the attitude a little bit and show them, wait, [00:35:07] you’re telling me to dance? [00:35:09] No, I’m saying to get back to the guy who [00:35:13] first started playing this game. Remember way back when, when you were a kid, it wasn’t just about the money, was it? Was it. [00:35:24] Was [00:35:24] it, [00:35:27] do your job, don’t you tell me to dance. [00:35:31] Fine. [00:35:31] Hey, hey, an athlete. I’m not an entertainer. Fine. These are the ABCs. Me baby. I do not dance and I do not start preseason without contract. [00:35:47] Breathe. Breathe. Jerry, [00:35:53] I am out here for you. You don’t know what it’s like to be me out here for you. It is an up at dawn pride swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about. Okay. Just God help me. Help me, rod, help me help you. Help [00:36:17] me [00:36:18] help [00:36:19] you. Help me help [00:36:22] Joe: you. [00:36:27] And then, uh, Cuba Gooding Junior starts laughing. And have you ever felt like that? OG Help me. Help you. [00:36:33] OG: I mean, I think in some context, like around being a planner, um, I don’t know. I. I feel responsible for outcomes. You know, like for clients when we create plans and, and we help make decisions, I feel responsible, immensely responsible for the outcomes of those. [00:36:56] But if you’re not gonna do your part of it, whatever that is, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just like, what else am I gonna do? If we’ve had discussions about it and you keep on going into credit card debt. I can’t, I’m not gonna take away your credit cards. You’re a grown adult, you know, like I’m not going to your house and cutting them up. [00:37:17] But I will say things like, if you say it’s really, gosh, it’s really important for me to pay off my house. I wanna, you know, I really wanna be debt free. That makes that be so great. And I’ll go, well get out your phone. Like you ma, you can make a mortgage payment on your phone. How much is left? 182,000. [00:37:32] Well, you got 190,000 in your savings account. Let’s make a payment. Let’s do it toge. Let’s do it right now. Let’s get a, you think so? Yes. Press the button. Send it. Well, what if it’s bad? Yeah, who cares? You can get another loan and send it. Let’s do it. Yes, you did it. Like I will push you in the direction you need to go as much as possible, but I don’t know that I’m gonna drag you. [00:37:53] Jerry McGuire had one client, so he had really nothing else to do. So he, he kinda, he had, you know, singular focus. [00:38:02] Joe: I think that is true, og, but I also think that what America and the world bought about that movie was Jerry’s intensity. The fact that he was there, and it wasn’t about the money, Dana, it wasn’t about the money, it was about more life. [00:38:14] And Cuba getting Junior is all about the money, and only when he realizes. That he loves football and football’s so damn fun. Is he able to then, uh, you know, make his own life better while Jerry’s able to get him more money? Have you ever had to have a emotional moment with a client to kind of get them, get them moving in the right direction? [00:38:32] Dana: I’ve definitely had those moments and there is balance. The one that comes to my mind is a client that I argued ve with about delaying their social security. His wife was six years younger. We ran the numbers every way possible. It absolutely made sense for him to wait until 70, and we argued every year during, in every year while he was delaying. [00:38:54] So from like 62 to 70 every year and sometimes in between meetings, we had to have this argument. Finally, he did it and, and he actually was quoted, I had a reporter reach out to me later and he agreed to be quoted in the story on it and sent me a thank you. And said, wow, thank you all those years for just being so passionate, not backing down. [00:39:16] You know, there’s definitely times where, I mean, I was just so adamant and they weren’t a super high net worth household. Like this was gonna make a meaningful difference. For them. And so it was my passion like that got him to listen to me. Even his CPA was like, oh, everybody claims it’s 62. You know, just claim it’s 62. [00:39:33] Yeah. Everybody does [00:39:33] OG: it. It’s my money. I’m gotta get it out of the government. [00:39:36] Dana: Yeah. So, and, and I, you know, a few stories like that where, you know, I will. Allow my passion to show through. Now, at the same time, we have a, something we talk about here in our firm that look at a certain point. If we care more than our clients, we have a problem. [00:39:55] How do you find that balance? I mean, and when it’s something you’re sure about and passionate about, we’ll often use this analogy of red, yellow, green with our client. Look, if it’s red and we say, don’t do it. Don’t do it. If it’s green and we say you should do it, like we’re gonna argue and convince you you need to do this. [00:40:09] But a lot of things fall in the yellow and then there’s a little bit more nuance. But if it’s something red and we’re telling ’em not to when they do it, or it’s green and we’re telling ’em to do it, and they won’t, at a certain point, like OG said, like, you gotta, you know, you could only do so much. Jesse, have [00:40:24] Joe: you had disagreements with clients like that where you had to get, uh, emotional as well? [00:40:29] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the short answer is yes. You know? Have you guys seen these action movies? I’m sure you can picture the scene where Never It’s funny, this one. Oh, she doesn’t watch [00:40:36] Joe: action movies. He’s totally against them. [00:40:39] Jesse: Yeah. This, this one involves a mountain. They’re falling off a cliff, or they’re, they’re falling down the railing and the, the protagonist usually, or some other main character. [00:40:47] Can you just tell us what movie it is? I’m just saying like, it’s a trope. Oh, it’s like every action, any movie, generic movie. As you guys can kind of picture and, and the listeners can picture in their head if the struggling person is like scrambling and the savior gives them that boost, like everybody’s happy. [00:41:02] But what if the struggling personally was just like, okay, you got me. I’m going limp. Drag me up. Like, okay, that that doesn’t quite work. Right. And there’s something very similar in these conversations where I think all three of us are saying like, we are more than happy to. Pull you and, and maybe even pull you more than we are. [00:41:18] We quote unquote, could or should and, and we’re, if you’re, if you’re trying, we’re gonna be here and, and help you and pull you. But if you just go limp and expect us to like, make magic things happen and, and just like if we’re the only one doing any pulling and you’re just not really pulling at all and you’re just limp like that, that’s not gonna work. [00:41:33] Fundamentally, that’s not gonna work. Are we [00:41:34] Doug: still talking about [00:41:34] Joe: money? What creates these, oh my goodness. Stop. Oh, it was such a nice show. Do you [00:41:41] Dana: know what crossed my mind is there’s also, what about things where I just had a a client email come in and they were somewhat joking that they wished I had talked them out of buying this house. [00:41:52] Are there times where. We think the client’s asking us for permission and what we’re really supposed to do is say, no, you shouldn’t do that. That’s what was going through my mind. As you were saying that, Jesse is like, it’s one thing to help ’em up, but what about the cases where maybe what they were really wanting us to do is say, no, don’t do that. [00:42:10] Joe: That’s funny, Dana. ’cause I got into the habit of finally saying, what do you wanna do? Let’s start with what do you want to do? Let’s not talk about what’s right because that’s always gonna end badly. Well, let’s start with what do you wanna do and can that actually happen? And um, if they were willing to do that, then I was in a much better for that very reason. [00:42:28] Yeah, because I totally misinterpret. [00:42:31] Jesse: Mm-hmm. [00:42:31] Joe: I wanna pivot from that, uh, Dana, to a piece that you shared from the American College with us. This has some interesting points about the power of a plan. Can you walk us through what you sent, uh, Jesse and OG and Doug and I. [00:42:47] Dana: Yeah, it was some interesting research on people who track fitness goals and the correlation between how much they save for retirement, and there’s a significant correlation that people who are tracking Now, this part I don’t necessarily like, but there may be logging in, looking at their retirement balances daily. [00:43:04] They tend to be people who save a much higher percentage of their income for retirement, and there’s a correlation with people who use tracking devices. I got this aura ring for Christmas. I, you know, I love it. It tracks all kinds of things. Or it might be your Apple Watch or a Fitbit that you wear, but that correlation between tracking behavior and improving was super high and I, I found that fascinating. [00:43:26] Joe: Yeah. Listen to these stats everybody. Do people who track save more for retirement? Yes. Quite a bit more. The piece says more than half a survey response to check their retirement balance daily. 13% check daily save more than 10% of their income for retirement. Those who checked our balances weekly or monthly, were about 30% more likely to save 10% of their income for retirement than those who check quarterly or annually. [00:43:50] And only 10% of those who never check their balance saved more than 10%. Those are some, some amazing numbers, but I gotta think, you know, when it comes to tracking og, it’s not just, it’s not just that. I mean, I think this is the reason why you and I like the weekly meeting, right? Just the weekly check-in. [00:44:03] Maybe it’s not checking your 401k balance as much as it’s thinking about, is my plan still healthy once a week? [00:44:10] OG: I think when it comes to keeping track of your money, you have to have a couple of different things. The first thing is you need to have a place where you can track your income and expenses. [00:44:19] If you don’t have any idea how much money is coming in or money that’s going out, you’re at a severe disadvantage. You might argue, Hey, you know, I, I know I already got extra money and that sort of thing. It’s not about having extra or not having extra, any of that sort, it’s, it’s being in charge of what you’re choosing to spend money on when you just kind of live your life and don’t ever have any reconciliation with that, whether it’s a weekly meeting with your spouse or partner or you’re using an app and once a week you check in and categorize your transactions and you know, just being aware of how many times you see the word Amazon changes the behavior of how many times you see the word Amazon. [00:44:59] What I mean, like you just go, well this is ridiculous. Every other freaking word on my statement is Amazon. I just need to do something about that. And you know, life is better. So I think you gotta track your income and expenses. You know, you don’t have to put it in the right categories, but you need to know what’s going on. [00:45:14] The second thing you need to track are balances, and you have to have an idea of who do I owe money to? What is the commitment of capital to that place that I owe money to? If I have a mortgage, how much money do I have to pay to it? Am I on track for what I want to have done with that? A lot of times people just willy-nilly go, well, my mortgage payment’s 1500 bucks a month, so I’m gonna pay 1500. [00:45:35] Well, what if you wanna pay that off in 20 years? Would you be surprised to learn that if instead of paying 1500 you paid 1750, it’d be done 10 years early? If you don’t know that, then you can’t see whether or not you’re making progress toward that. Same thing with your retirement accounts and, um, you know, and your investment accounts. [00:45:52] You gotta be, have a place to track basically your net worth, right? So you gotta track your income expenses, you gotta track your net worth. And if you review those things. On a, I think, expenses every other week, because that’s pretty contemporary balances every six months. Think of it this way, and we throw this to clients in this manner. [00:46:10] If you’re 40 and you wanna retire when you’re 60 and you spend an hour every six months thinking about your retirement plan, you will have spent one work week on your retirement planning over the next 20 years. You have 20 years of six month meetings for an hour. That’s 40 hours of. Thought or conversation, whether it’s with an advisor like one of the three of us or on your own one, only one work week for the rest of your life. [00:46:40] Joe: And you know what my next point there will be, you are gonna have planned far more than not percent of the people around you. Not that it’s a race. Oh, [00:46:49] OG: absolutely. Yeah. [00:46:50] Joe: But that’s a pretty damn low bar. Better outcomes. Yeah. Jesse, is there something you’d like to track that OG did mention? Not [00:46:57] Jesse: really. ’cause to me those are the big four and, and I think of a, a spreadsheet that I keep personally, I think of the app that we use. [00:47:04] It’s e-money. If, if you’re familiar that the app that our clients use, I mean those are the big four. It’s income versus expenses, it’s assets versus debts. Create a balance sheet, create a cash flow. I’m not sure what else you really need to be tracking on a weekly, monthly, annual basis. Other than what about performance? [00:47:21] I mean performance. Okay. Here’s what I’ll say. It’s a good question, og. I. If someone out there is regularly underperforming benchmarks or if the conversations that you’ve either had with your advisor or your own personal investor policy statement, and for some reason it’s just not lining up, then yeah, I, I think that’s worth definitely looking at og, but that’s gonna be like you look at it once a year and only after three or five years do you maybe have enough data to realize that there’s something fundamentally wrong. [00:47:48] Joe: I love benchmarks when it comes to performance, because when I think of performance, I, I don’t really care if it’s the market or me that created the performance. I like knowing what I gotta do to get to this milestone by July. And if I know that the market’s not giving me the performance, then my head is based on what do I gotta do to make that up? [00:48:05] Or if I’m ahead, can I take my foot off the gas? Like, I really like tracking milestones. Dana, anything, anything that they didn’t mention that you’d like to track? [00:48:15] Dana: Yeah, actually it’s fascinating for me because there’s such a difference in the accumulation phase and then what we would call cash flow phase. [00:48:22] So I agree with all of those things while you’re saving for retirement. But once you’re in retirement, the metrics change. So we use a series of metrics to track, like, is your plan still well funded to now meet these cash flow goals? And it’s completely different. You know, one of the things we track is what did we project you would withdraw this year from each account relative to what you actually was. [00:48:43] Through. So, you know, we have a, a sense of, okay, you know, are you taking out too much relative to the projection? And another thing we project is, you know, their total financial account values and then are they ahead or behind where we thought their year end balances would be. As they get farther and farther ahead, it leaves us some room there to say, okay, you could potentially increase your spending, but if your total account values are falling below the projections that we had laid out when you retired, then maybe we need to make some downward adjustments. [00:49:16] So the things you track completely change when you enter that cash flow phase [00:49:20] Joe: boy, and that makes those ugly talks that we were talking about earlier so much easier. When you’re like, Hey, um, the past five years you’ve been spending way too much money and now you’re screwed. Turns into a, Hey, it’s been six months and you know what I mean? [00:49:34] Dana, you can have a much smaller conversation early on. I. [00:49:38] Dana: You can and in retirement, you know, we know if you have a 30 year time horizon and we can catch problems in the first few years, we have plenty of time to course correct. You know, nobody gets to your 30 and goes, oh, oh my gosh, I ran outta money. [00:49:51] Surprise it. You know, it doesn’t work that way. You would see it coming in the plan 20 years in advance, which is plenty of time to make a course correction as long as you’re monitoring these things on a consistent basis. [00:50:04] Joe: I love this discussion around having people in your corner. I love the discussion around how everything dovetailing keeps you motivated, and I think that’s a great way to wind out this fantastic week talking about motivation and your financial plan and earlier in the week, making more money using that same motivation. [00:50:21] Well, let’s say one last hello to the people hanging out with us today on YouTube, because the man in charge says, as ESPY’s biggest fanboy, I demand, we look into Neighbor Doug Statistics. So he’s Doug. You’ve already got somebody doubting the trivia already today. [00:50:38] Doug: Which part is he doubting? The, the Joe Lewis uh, boxing, uh, three title defenses by March of 41 or 27%. [00:50:48] I mean, come on, man. I don’t know. [00:50:50] Joe: I don’t know. Google [00:50:51] OG: it. Doug ain’t wrong, [00:50:53] Joe: but I do know this. He does ask, asks for a friend, should I file taxes earlier? Wait until the deadline. Is there any difference? Anybody wanna opine on that? [00:51:02] Dana: Oh, I’ll opine on file an extension. So not either of those answers. You know what? [00:51:08] Just put it off for. I want my tax person. Now, it depends on if you’re doing your own right, but I want my tax person looking at my stuff when they are not busy and up against the deadline. So I always file an extension. That’s, that’s my personal opinion. [00:51:21] OG: That’s interesting. I, I put a note in there. I think if you’re just kind of W2 doing your thing, there’s a significant reduction in. [00:51:31] Tax filing fraud if you get it done early so you don’t have to pay. Right. If you owe money, you don’t have to pay till April 15th, just ’cause you file your taxes February 28th. You know, you don’t have to write the check yet. Still have to pay by April. But, and, and to Dana’s point, if you file an extension and owe money, you still owe them money on April 15th, you’re just saying I’ll write the check but do the paperwork some other day. [00:51:53] Yep. I also filed generally file extensions. Uh, although the last couple years I’m quite proud of myself. I did get all my stuff into the CPA early. I was one of the early birds. But if you’ve got a fairly simple tax situation, especially if you’re doing it yourself, I would file that as, as soon as you’re comfortable, that you have all of your information and that it’s accurate and it just reduces the opportunity for there to be some tax filing fraud, which is. [00:52:16] Quite pervasive. [00:52:17] Joe: So one answer for business owners, more complex, and another answer for the straightforward. Let’s find out. Speaking of straightforward, let’s find all the straightforward stuff you guys got going on, og. What are you doing, uh, this weekend besides bathing in March Madness? [00:52:32] OG: Oh, I’m absolutely not doing that. [00:52:34] In fact, uh, when Dana said she was at Beaver Creek, uh, of on vacation, that’s where we’re headed. As a matter of fact, this week we’re spring breaking in our favorite ski location, beaver Creek. And, uh, we’ve got, uh. All the, all the skiing going on. I, I got all warmed up with Doug. You did ditch your family [00:52:50] Doug: for like an hour and just go to the bar. [00:52:53] OG: Yes, absolutely. I’m gonna do that. [00:52:55] Doug: See, now that I, I’m a fan of that. Did your family go to the bar? [00:52:58] Joe: Just speaking hypothetically, Doug? Just speaking hypothetically, not that [00:53:02] Doug: he’s ever done that before. When, [00:53:03] OG: when my boys text me and go. Dad, we’re up at the little hotdog. Stand up there, where are you? And I’ll be like, OGs at the bar. [00:53:11] Joe: And when he talks about himself in the third person, you know how long [00:53:14] OG: he’s been at the bar? Upgrade des at the Ritz Carlton. [00:53:16] Joe: That’s right. Dana. Thanks for hanging out with us, my friend. Uh, I noticed when I went to sensible money.com that you’ve got a webinar coming up. [00:53:25] Dana: We do, it’s this month, I couldn’t even tell you the date, but it’s on how to make a retirement income plan where we walk through all of the upcoming steps and I am also working. [00:53:35] Finally, on my next book, what that I’m super excited about. So it’s been almost a decade, but I am riding, it’s gonna be called Living Off Your Acorns, your Guide to the. Four phases of retirement. So we’ll be talking about the Prego phase, the 10 years leading up to retirement, and then the go-go phase, the slow-go phase and the no-go phase. [00:53:54] So I’m spending a lot of my weekends when I’m not riding Right now, I’m hiking. Oh, when I’m not, wait, I got that backwards. When I’m not hiking, I’m writing. You’re not writing. Yeah. Yes, exactly. [00:54:05] Joe: Yes. You got two big things going on. Uh, and by the way, I, I did just see this on your website. It is, uh, March 27th at, uh, 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM Eastern Standard Time. [00:54:17] Oh, [00:54:17] Dana: thank you. I would have to go to the website. That myself, ’cause I don’t remember the date. It just shows up on my calendar and I know what I’m supposed to do. [00:54:24] Joe: We, we will link to it on the show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. Jesse, my friend, what’s coming up on personal financial planning for long-term investors? [00:54:34] Jesse: Close. Close. Um, [00:54:36] Joe: personal, personal [00:54:37] Jesse: finance. Finance for long-term investors. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which, a, as as we discussed Stacking Benjamin’s fans. Do not like the name change. That’s okay. That’s okay. We’ll give them time. I took a really deep dive. I hadn’t really found a resource that explained to me, at least to my satisfaction, this whole deal with the national debt. [00:54:56] And like how we got here and whether it’s a really big problem or a small problem or maybe not a problem at all. And so I, I released an episode last week that just is like a 45 minute deep dive on the national debt and, and how it affects us on a personal basis. And so I’m hoping it can be this cool, evergreen resource for people to, uh, share around the communities if, if there’s ever, if that topic ever comes up. [00:55:17] Joe: That sounds like something somebody with an engineering background might, uh, might take on. [00:55:21] Jesse: Yeah, slightly. Slightly. It, it helps a little bit. [00:55:25] Joe: I wouldn’t even think to do that. You’re like, oh, let’s talk about the national debt. And you [00:55:30] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, some of the national debt is from those telescopes that I used to work on. [00:55:34] But not, not a lot of it, you know, not a lot of it. [00:55:37] Joe: Well, thanks to all of you for helping our stackers today. Og. Thanks to you, Dana. Thanks to you, Jesse. Thanks to you. Thanks to everybody hanging out with us on YouTube, Doug. I got a lot to unpack here, but what do you think our top three would be? [00:55:49] Doug: Well, I’m gonna get some help from our contributors today. [00:55:52] Here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list. Joe, first take some advice from super passionate Dana Osba, how important is passion in a financial relationship? Dana, I. [00:56:03] Dana: Oh, incredibly important. You have to be passionate to get your advice across. [00:56:08] Doug: Hmm. Second, take a note from our financial stalker. Og, what are some key things you tell your clients to track? [00:56:14] Eminently og. [00:56:19] OG: What, uh, what did I say? Uh, you need to track income and expenses and also assets and liabilities or debts. I like debts better than liability, [00:56:31] Doug: but the big lesson, don’t share stories about the great Joe Lewis with Joe’s mom. She’ll immediately share with you stories about how she’ll drop you in the third round if the dishes don’t get washed. [00:56:44] I wanna ask how I know. I gotta go wash some dishes. So let’s just move on to the credit, shall we? Thanks to Dana Opo for joining us today. Head to sensible money.com for more on Dana for practice and our upcoming free webinar. How to Make a Retirement Plan. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. [00:57:05] Dana, I would suggest using our link to go to your own website to find out when you have to do your, your webinar. It’s very helpful. Just a little, little tip there for me. Thanks to the Jesse Kramer for hanging out with us today. You’ll find his fabulous podcast. Personal finance for long-term investors who like listening to Jesse on podcasts, wherever you listen to finer podcasts. [00:57:29] Thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning. Help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:58:00] Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:58:30] Jerry McGuire: What was that? It’s called the medium sketch. The Medium sketch, yeah. It wasn’t rare and it certainly wasn’t well done.
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