Mid-Year Financial Reset: Key Takeaways from the First Half of 2025 (SB1708)

Still on track to crush your 2025 goals? Or has the year felt more like a Super Mario Kart banana peel moment?

In this special mid-year review episode of The Stacking Benjamins Show, Joe Saul-Sehy and OG take a pause from the summer sprint to look back at the most impactful lessons, conversations, and themes from the first half of 2025. Whether you’re rethinking your budget, fine-tuning your risk tolerance, or just trying to remember where you wrote down your resolutions, this is your nudge to hit the financial reset button—with style.

From Alex Hormozi’s take on embracing risk and skill-building to JL Collins’ wisdom on why buying happiness with money is a flawed formula, this episode pulls powerful insights from our brightest guests so far. We revisit career advice from media powerhouse Bonnie Hammer, dig into intentional spending habits, and reflect on the subtle connection between mindset and long-term success.

Oh—and don’t miss a moment of Joe and OG’s always-wise, occasionally-weird banter as they break down topics like:

• Why goal setting isn’t just for January—and how to mid-course correct before December sneaks up on you.
• Risk management in real life (not the textbook version).
• Why mindful consumption isn’t about cutting back, but tuning in.
• What makes retirement joyful beyond the spreadsheets.
• How your community can be the most underrated part of your portfolio.

If you’ve felt a little off-course—or just want a chance to recalibrate without the guilt trip—this episode delivers practical steps and encouraging reminders to help you make the second half of 2025 your strongest yet.

Got goals? Let’s reset ‘em. And if not, we’ve got a few ideas for those, too.

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FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/our-review-of-first-half-2025-1708

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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Highlights from the first half of 2025

@stackingbenjamins

Feeling off lately? It might not be burnout. It could be loneliness. We’re built for real connection, not just Zoom calls. During COVID, we all learned that community isn’t a bonus. It’s the baseline. #stackingbenjamins #communitymatters #mentalhealth #personaldevelopment #joinordie

♬ original sound – Stacking Benjamins

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Doug’s Trivia

• On today’s date in 1960 a young woman set out to to study chimpanzees in what would later be Tanzania. Who was she?

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Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?

• Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurance to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).

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Join Us Wednesday

Tune in on Wednesday when we’re joined by formal Naval officer, Gary MacDermid. He’s here to help us actually follow through and accomplish the goals we set.

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Greatest Hits Week: Dump These 8 Things To Clear Clutter and Save Money (SB1707)

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Joe: Is this thing on? Hello? Hello. Wow. Feels like it’s been a long time. Greatest this week. Last week, but we begin this week as I’m waiting for OG and Doug to come down the stairs. Begin this week like we do with every other one. Stackers. Raise your mugs because on behalf of the Men and Women Creating Podcast in mom’s basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, like to begin our week with a sloop to our troops, kept us safe during the weekend and over our greatest its week.

[00:00:36] Joe: Thanks for all that you do. Thank you for your service. Let’s go stack some s together now, shall we? 

[00:00:42] opener: Here’s the song that we’d like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers, and what have you. This one’s called Vacation Over

[00:00:54] opener: Vacations Over. 

[00:00:59] Doug: How are your 2025 goals coming along stackers? Let’s get ready to reset for the second half of the year. Shall we live from Joe’s mom’s basement? It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:01:22] Doug: I am Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Doug, and look at how the year’s gone. We’re halfway done. What have you accomplished today? We’ll look back at the hot topics we covered during the first half of 2025, so you can either fill in what you’ve missed or get moving. Stacker, I said stacker, not slacker. I believe in you.

[00:01:42] Doug: I promise. And because you’ve come to demand it each show, I’ll call a timeout so you can score a helping of my incredible trivia to amaze your friends. And now, here come two guys who are still arguing over whether Nintendo cartridges count as collectibles or asset backed investments. It’s Joe and oh G.

[00:02:10] Joe: Welcome back, stackers from Greatest Hits Week. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. Average show money on Twitter and across the cart table from me, the guy who we call the asset on this asset backed podcast, Mr. Og. 

[00:02:25] OG: Better to be an asset than a liability, I suppose, just keeps going off, which is, which is what you mostly call me.

[00:02:32] Joe: I’m trying not to. Isn’t Nintendo cartridge an asset backed? Uh. Asset backed? Uh, no. No, 

[00:02:40] OG: no, no. In fact, uh, we performed a little, uh, surgery on our, uh, one of our gaming consoles the other day. It, uh, was not successful. The patient died. 

[00:02:49] Joe: Oh, that’s a bad day. 

[00:02:50] OG: Did you have a moment of silence? Yeah, mostly moment of silence for the repurchase requirement.

[00:02:56] OG: That’s what I was thinking. 

[00:02:57] Joe: Just moment of silence. You could focus on Amazon to go get the next one. Mm-hmm. It’s a great day down here in the basement. Og, how are your 2025 goals coming along? 

[00:03:07] OG: Uh, you know, today’s a new day. I’ll be honest. Today’s a day. Something’s okay. Something’s not okay. 

[00:03:19] Joe: We have goal setting week here on the podcast because I love this idea of milestones, as do you, the fact that if you have a year long goal and you get a quarter of the way through, halfway through three quarters of the way through, stop.

[00:03:32] Joe: See where you’re at and then go, you know what? I need to make a minor correction versus a major correction if I wait until the very end. So often we set a goal and then we, we don’t do anything along the way. And then we realize at the end that we didn’t get where we wanted. Uh, Gary McDermott joins us on Wednesday.

[00:03:51] Joe: He’s a guy OG who worked with nuclear reactors in the Navy. It’s amazing. He’s gonna talk about goal setting. I know all of our stackers are gonna go. Yeah, goal setting, whatever. This guy breaks it down. It, it isn’t rocket science, but it’s the way the Navy gets stuff done. It’s the way multi bajillion dollar companies get things done.

[00:04:10] Joe: And yet you and I go, yeah, goal setting, putting it down on paper, building milestones. I don’t need that. Smart goals, forget it. And yet I think it’s a great time for that reset. I 

[00:04:19] OG: think equally important too, goal setting is recognizing that it’s a whole process. It’s not just, here’s where I am, here’s where I want to go.

[00:04:28] OG: That’s the end, because the reality is. Your idea of what your goal is, especially if you don’t write it down, especially if you don’t have any specific milestones. If you’re like, oh, I just wanna, you know, lose weight, or I wanna be in shape, or I wanna have more money, right? All of those things are things that have no end to them.

[00:04:50] OG: You will never get to it. You’ll never get to, I have enough money. I know people say, oh, if I had a million dollars, I’d have no, you won’t. Trust me. You looked a million. And be like, ah, if I got a million too, that’d be great too. But if you can, and I catch myself doing this too, right? We talk about it being in our parlance from Strategic Coach called The Gap, right?

[00:05:07] OG: We’re always looking at this ideal outcome or this ideal future as opposed to recognizing how far we’ve come. I was looking at just kinda some financial stuff the other day, not really, not really doing a deep dive on progress, but I was mentally thinking about from one number to the next. I hit this number, and now I’m about to hit this other number.

[00:05:27] OG: How long has it been since I went from one to the next, and it took me a second to go back and go, my goodness, it’s only been like 19 months, 18 months since I hit that first number, and I’m on the doorstep of hitting the next one. Meanwhile, I’ve got this idea of like, well, it’s still not enough. I gotta, you know, I’m, I’m not even close, right?

[00:05:45] OG: It’s like, well, hold on, go backwards and go, remember you hit this milestone just a year and a half ago, and you’re like, oh, that’s a pretty cool milestone. Like, that’s awesome and now you’re gonna hit effectively double it in another 18 months. But meanwhile, my mind goes immediately to, yeah, that’s not good.

[00:05:59] OG: I’m still the negative, I’m still far behind, so I’m guilty of this. If you don’t write down the progress that you’re trying to make, if you’re active in like the fitness blog world, and one of the major things they say to do is you have to take pictures. Like, I don’t want like half naked pictures of me and my phone and I just put ’em in like the secret folder.

[00:06:18] OG: Apparently that exists somewhere. But the only way that you can tell if you’ve made progress is by looking at the progress, right? Because you don’t see, you know, minus two pounds is like looking good. And then you look at the picture, you go, oh, you know, because it happened so small 

[00:06:34] Joe: and there’s other things that happen along the way.

[00:06:36] Joe: You could lose two pounds but gain muscle. You know, there’s other unintended outcomes. That’s a reason why I love the approach of milestones. So today at the six month milestone stackers, we’re gonna jump on this, we’re gonna take you back, it’s kind of seven 

[00:06:49] OG: months, but semantics 

[00:06:50] Joe: ish. The amazing through some of the amazing mentors we’ve had on this show during the last six months we’re to go back, we’re gonna go through some of their lessons.

[00:07:01] Joe: This is an episode, if there ever was one where you’re gonna wanna have either the notes app on your phone, open a piece of paper, whatever it takes. I’m gonna give you the episode number, so if you need more. To make sure that you’re actually working toward these things that we gave you on a silver platter the last six months.

[00:07:20] Joe: Well, now’s the time to really reset and get moving so that by the end of the year you have made some progress on 2025 and you’re roaring into 2026. So we’re gonna start that journey here in just a second, but we got a couple sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on You don’t pay a dime for any of the Stacky Benjamin Show.

[00:07:40] Joe: We’re gonna hear from them. And then OG and I taking you through just a few of the big themes from the start of 2025.

[00:07:58] Joe: We began the year in a spot that, for you and IOG made a lot of sense, which was the first thing you do. In your financial plan, the very first thing is get income moving the right way. Too often you and I see people try to optimize everything. They try to wr every nickel out of the experience, and yet making more money can solve so, so, so many problems.

[00:08:27] OG: If you have a good system. 

[00:08:28] Joe: If you have a good system. So what do you mean by that? 

[00:08:30] OG: Well, if you are poor with money and you make $70,000 a year, and you think that magically if I make a hundred thousand dollars a year, I’m gonna be magically good with money. That’s not gonna, you’ll just have a hundred thousand dollars worth of problems instead of 70.

[00:08:43] Joe: A hundred percent, which is why we went there. Second, we’re gonna talk about that system second, but first, because, you know, WW which one do you put first? Make more money or have the good system, make more money, have a good system, those two things in order. So we started off by talking to a gentleman who has made tons of money.

[00:09:01] Joe: Og uh, you know him well, I know him well. Alex Hormoze. I flew out to Las Vegas to his headquarters, sat in his studio. This is a guy who works with multimillionaires. May make, he doesn’t, uh, tell you exactly how much he makes, but it’s, what do you think? 80, 90, a hundred million dollars a year. 

[00:09:22] OG: It’s a good start.

[00:09:23] Joe: Yeah. 

[00:09:24] OG: You probably can’t retire on it. 

[00:09:25] Joe: Yeah. The guy was making, uh, $30 million a couple years into his career and he just dropped gold and I. I kind of hate that ’cause it’s so cliche. Oh, golden nuggets. He’s just laying it out. Pick up a nugget. 

[00:09:41] OG: You’re gonna get a nugget every time you go to a conference.

[00:09:43] OG: You wanna get yourself a nugget. 

[00:09:45] Joe: There was so much here though, that we spent so many nuggets. We spent two episodes decoding it. But let’s start off here. Everything in 2025 or any year begins with mindset. And Alex Har Moey talks about earning more money means changing your mindset. By the way, we’re playing these off of our YouTube channel, YouTube shorts, clips that we made.

[00:10:07] Joe: So you’re gonna hear some sound effects that we put in there. So sometimes you’ll hear some sound effects in these. That’s because we’re at our Stacking Benjamins YouTube page. Just pulling these right up. But here’s Alex Hormoz talking about mindset. 

[00:10:21] bit: If you want to make more within a business. You need to take on more risk.

[00:10:25] bit: The people who are most highly compensated in any business are the ones who incur more risk. Sales guys incur risk. They have commissions. Some people are only commissioned. You take on more risk. If you’re an insurance sales guy, you work within an organization, but you’re a mini entrepreneur, if you will.

[00:10:37] bit: If you’re willing to take on risk, you will get disproportionately rewarded. Where you get the real outside returns is where it looks sort like risk to other people, but to you, you understand it and then it’s not risky, and then you just get the outsize returns without the risk 

[00:10:50] Joe: skill is how you mitigate the risk a hundred percent.

[00:10:52] Joe: That’s what you’re saying. You build skills that take things that other people think are risky, that to you OG, are not risky. Here’s how I look at this over the years. Where do we spend a lot of time on this podcast? We talk about risk in the portfolio. How much risk do I want to take? And people go, oh, I’m a risk taker.

[00:11:13] Joe: I take a bunch of risk in my portfolio, or I wanna take more risk in my portfolio. But when we look at the way that you make money. Where you’re taking no risk in your career, you’re not doing anything to move the ball faster, to move the needle further, yet you’re demanding your portfolio take more risk.

[00:11:32] Joe: I think we need to look at risk wider and Zi says, if you just learn a few of these skills and you get the game down where you’re building a muscle that our people don’t have, looks risky to other people, you’re used to it. The guy in the high wire doesn’t think it’s risky ’cause he’s done it a bajillion times.

[00:11:48] OG: Right. Well and he is. And he is got the skills and the process and maybe even some protection that you don’t know exists. Like those idiots that like walk across the Grand Canyon, don’t. Right. You know, like at the circus they do, right? They got a net and they’re like, yeah, if I fall, it’s the show gets screwed up.

[00:12:04] OG: But yeah, I think, you know, if you look at your company, if you look at your industry and they’re not going down the path of like, what’s good. Is capitalism good or bad, or like wealthy people, good or bad? Jeff Bezos is in the news lately, right? For having his wedding. And maybe it was a little over the top, a smidge, slightly, you know?

[00:12:25] OG: I mean, it’s cool. You can rent a city. I didn’t know that existed. Um, or half a one or whatever he did. But anyways, he’s one of the wealthiest guys in the world because he took all the risk at the front end. And for those of you who have only experienced Amazon, of where it’s everything, and Amazon Prime has always been around in your life, and it’s always been a stock that’s gone up.

[00:12:51] OG: Go back and look at the stock of Amazon from like 1995 through, I don’t know, maybe 2005, 2010, maybe. And there was a very profound interview that he gave, and they were talking with him when he was a CEO about the stock price, and he’s like, I don’t care about the stock price right now. I’m, I’m interested in the client experience and the client journey and dah, dah, dah, dah da and all this stuff.

[00:13:14] OG: Meanwhile, his company was losing like a hundred million dollars a day or something. He was like, and then the host, he was on CNBC or something like that. Host is like, but you’re losing hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s like, yeah, but we’ll make it up. It’ll be fine. 

[00:13:25] Joe: Here’s Bezos talking about risk with, I believe this is with Fortune Magazine.

[00:13:30] bit: One observation I would have is that I think it’s generally human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity, and so I think. Entrepreneurs in general would be well advised to try and bias against that piece of human nature. The risks are probably not as big as you perceive, and the opportunities may be bigger than you perceive.

[00:14:02] bit: You say it’s confidence, but maybe it’s just trying to compensate for that, accepting that that’s a human bias and trying to compensate against it. 

[00:14:10] Joe: That’s, by the way, with the New York Times. Mm-hmm. Not with Fortune Magazine. 

[00:14:13] OG: Yeah. So if you look at your own organization and you say, well, who are the people or what are the sections of our organization that have a good ROI, right?

[00:14:24] OG: Like have a good, if I do really well, I get rewarded at a much greater scale than I do for my normal things. And when Mosey talks about it, he gives it a couple of examples, right? Like if you work at an insurance agency as an example. Get a W2 salary, there’s virtually no risk with that, right? The risk is you do a bad job and they fire you, and you just go get another job.

[00:14:48] OG: If you work with a based salary, well, you get a little commission, you’re gonna have a little bit higher upside because you’re taking a little bit more ownership and a little bit more risk is what he says. If you say, well, I don’t want any base salary, I want all upside, you’re gonna have more opportunity on the upside.

[00:15:06] OG: And if you’re the owner of the insurance agency, you have all the upside, you get all of it, you’re on the hook for every single solitary thing. So think about, you know, in your own organization, are there places where you can pivot to? Are there places that you can dip your toe into and say, well, let me experience a little bit of this to see if there’s an opportunity for me to take a little bit more ownership over results.

[00:15:31] OG: And that’s really what it boils down to. If you’re in charge of outcomes, if you’re in charge of results for your organization, you’re gonna be rewarded for those results. 

[00:15:39] Joe: I like hearing two successful entrepreneurs. Obviously hermo a very successful Bezos, uh, a thousand x times more successful. But when you hear two successful people tell you the same thing, that you need to look at risk differently, I think that’s a truism and it’s something we need to do.

[00:15:55] Joe: And I think that’s job number one, stackers. What are you doing in your life to look at risk differently? And risk is always gonna be there. And if you learn to accept it more money often comes along with that. I wanna move on to Ozzy’s next point. And there’s so many, as I mentioned, Ozzi talks about asking better questions as well.

[00:16:16] bit: One of my favorite questions to ask when you want something is what would it take? Because it assumes yes. Like I won’t let you marry my daughter. What would it take? What do I have to do? Because then they give you an equation, then you can just solve it. And it’s my number one strategy for negotiation too.

[00:16:26] bit: Like when you go in for and ask for the raise, don’t say, I would like to make $180,000. Say, what would it take for me to make 180 grand a year here? What would I have to do? And then you can make the assessment of whatever the equation they give you, if you think that’s reasonable, or you can do it. 

[00:16:37] Joe: Whole different way to negotiate.

[00:16:39] Joe: What would it take? It’s not about, yes, no, can I have a raise? It’s what would it take for me to make this? All of a sudden, you’re taking the person across the table from you and you’re helping them think differently. 

[00:16:48] OG: Well, they’ve come on your team. They’re like, yeah, bang. That’s what I want to do. Like, nobody think about this from a, if you’ve ever been a boss of anybody, right?

[00:16:56] OG: A leadership role of any kind, you’re, Hey, go do this. This is what we’re doing, da da, da. You, you know? And then finally you get the one person who shows up and goes, how can I help you? You know? Like, what do you need me to do? Here’s what I would like to do. How do I get that? Gimme the roadmap of how to do this.

[00:17:10] OG: You’re like, oh, somebody that wants to row with me, not just against me. Let’s do this, man. It’s a, it’s a breath of fresh air sometimes. I love that. What would it take? 

[00:17:20] Joe: The person gets super excited. The owner of the company or manager, whoever’s running the department gets more excited because they’re like, yeah, this person wants to go faster.

[00:17:28] Joe: Like, how cool is that? We’re all gonna reach our goals. I’ll tell you how to make 180,000 bucks. You do this, this, this, this, this. Yeah. We’re all making more money. Yeah. It is fantastic. So we began the year with Alex and it’s funny how, again, themes reverberate. He talks specifically to entrepreneurs and we spent the, the first two episodes, you and I rounding out those lessons so that they were also good for the majority of our audience, which are people that work in an organization for somebody else becoming an intrapreneur.

[00:17:58] Joe: As much as Hormoz is talking to entrepreneurs, right? Entrepreneur, somebody entrepreneurial, but working inside of a company for somebody else. Later on in the year, we bridge this same territory talking about who is the person who’s going to get the job, who’s the person that’s going to get the promotion?

[00:18:18] Joe: Who’s the person that people want to work with? Hor talks about it. Hey, be the guy on the team. What would it take? Bonnie Hammer. In episode 1687, our Memorial Day episode, Bonnie, for a long time was the NBC Universal Vice Chairperson. She OG connects the dots to people working in the corporate world as well, that you know what doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur.

[00:18:42] Joe: Here’s what’s important to get the raise or get the job. 

[00:18:47] bit: As you start showing people you’re willing to work hard at something, they look at you as, okay, they’re earning this. I want them around because they’re gonna do just about anything. They will succeed. Some of the research I’ve been looking into literally is saying there were eight out of 10 different people that were interviewed in Corporations are very leery about hiring a Gen Z person right outta college right now because they do not believe they have a work ethic.

[00:19:14] bit: Their assumption is number one, they don’t wanna be in the office. They’re gonna fight to basically work remotely. I’m not a big believer in that because if you’re not in the room. You are never gonna be in the room. There’s a belief that they just don’t understand. Starting out in a work world and having to earn that worth 

[00:19:33] Joe: working hard, gets you the job.

[00:19:35] Joe: Being in the room gets you the job. Familiarity gets you the job asking OG what will it take? Gets you the job. And it’s funny, I think we say that about every generation, you know, she’s picking on Gen Z right now about how eight outta 10 employers are saying, I’m worried about kids outta college. ’cause they don’t have a work ethic.

[00:19:52] Joe: I remember when I was 18 and people were saying that about, about us, you know every, every person. But if you wanna stand out, regardless of how old you are, be the person that’s going to show up. 

[00:20:04] OG: Yeah. If you are the problem solver, you get to be in the room. Like she said, if you’re the one that somebody goes, you know, who can help with this?

[00:20:12] OG: This guy, right? I don’t know why, but somehow they always solve the problems. Then you’ll get invited in the room. I. 

[00:20:18] Joe: Once we talked about making more money, we moved on then to OG your second half of that equation, which was, now we need a good system now we need to make sure that we hold onto those dollars.

[00:20:28] Joe: So we spoke with Jen Smith and Jill Siri to talk Mindset on 1627, and what I liked about their appearance, and I don’t have a clip from it, but living a frugal life isn’t about having enough. It’s about knowing what you really want. What do you truly want? Why am I buying this thing? Am I frugal because I want to be cheap?

[00:20:47] Joe: Or am I frugal because I only buy the stuff that really moves the needle in my life? So they kinda reset your whole feeling about a budget. People find a budget limiting, they’re like, no, no, no, no. Starting off with this mindset of I know what I want and I’m gonna spend money on that. That stuff really makes it so there’s always money available for the stuff that lights you up.

[00:21:07] Joe: Mm-hmm. I actually have some family members that frustrate the hell outta me. ’cause they’re so busy spending money on crap. They don’t want that. They never have money when everybody wants to do the big cool thing, like yeah, we’re too broke to do that. Well, I can tell you why you’re broke because I was at your house when you got DoorDash on Thanksgiving from Burger King down the street.

[00:21:28] Joe: Literally we could have walked down the street to Burger King and they door dashed it. And why are we going to Burger King when we got a house full of food? 

[00:21:36] OG: No idea. I haven’t had a good whopper in a long time. I’ve been seeing those ads lately and honestly I’m like, I should probably go get a whopper just to double check it.

[00:21:43] OG: ’cause I remember liking ’em a lot, but it’s been a while so. Also, I haven’t had breakfast yesterday, so I just basically, I just heard like, you know, have you seen those cartoons where like the cat’s only thinking about the bird to eat, you know, or whatever. Right. Tweety Burger. Once you see Whopper, you’re like, now I have this Whopper with like a big melty cheese, maybe a double whopper.

[00:22:03] OG: It’s got the onions on it. Stop. Stop. No, don’t. ’cause I’m hungry 

[00:22:06] Joe: too. Uh, that discussion led us into tools, though. ’cause people, okay, I got the mindset. We’ve talked a lot about mindset these first 20 minutes. Let’s talk about tools. Episode 1648, we dove into budgeting tools and basics. And here’s, uh, Kristen Wade.

[00:22:23] Joe: I asked her, uh, where should you start? 

[00:22:26] bit: When people are looking at budgeting, they think it has to be this huge undertaking and a really intense process. And stop eating out, stop having fun. So my best advice is just to start, start observing what your spending is before you control it. Because then you’ll come at it from a place of, uh, non-judgment as opposed to shame.

[00:22:44] bit: Because if we start with the shame cycle from the get go, you’re not gonna stick with it. 

[00:22:48] Joe: Not just the shame cycle, og, but I also like the fact of start simple. Just observe. How do I spend money? Track just a couple things. Don’t try to track every single little thing. Big mistake I see people make when they budget, they get this kick ass budgeting tool.

[00:23:04] Joe: Let’s say Monarch who sponsored the show in the past that I use myself or Tiller money, whatever it might be, but they create 18,000 categories three weeks later. They’re not using any of it because it’s so convoluted and it takes so many hours to even input your stuff that you don’t use the system. 

[00:23:22] OG: It reminds me a lot of the craze that’s going on.

[00:23:26] OG: Uh, maybe it’s just ’cause this is what’s visible to me ’cause I pay attention to it around health and supplements and tracking and you know, and because you can do all this stuff for food, right? You can take pictures of your food. I did this, uh, cheche to PT did a really great job. Uh, we were at our, uh, family’s cottage in northern Michigan for a couple weeks, uh, a couple weeks ago.

[00:23:46] OG: And, uh, there’s this ice cream store that we love to go to. I think we were there 14 days and I think we went to Nibbles. 11 of those days, which according to my kids was 17. Too few times. Yeah. Yeah. You need to go more. And uh, they had a creation last year that they did like, um, staff creation competition.

[00:24:03] OG: And then the winner of the thing stayed on the menu and it’s called the Salty Dog. And let me just explain it to you since we’re talking about food. It’s a 16 or 20 ounce cup of ice cream. But before you put that in there, they put brownies in there and then some caramel and then maybe some more brownies, and then some more caramel and some pretzels and some more caramel and whipped cream and a little bit more caramel and some pretzels.

[00:24:23] OG: It’s really good. And Chet, GBT exclaimed that it was about 1500 calories. So you can track all this stuff, how much fat and saturated fat and you know, all this sort of stuff. Or you can say, all I’m gonna keep track of is my protein target. I’m just trying to get the protein number because if I eat a bunch of protein, I’m probably gonna be pretty full and I’m not gonna want to have cookies and you know, whatever.

[00:24:44] OG: And just see how that goes. If you’re gonna do money tracking, you don’t have to track. Just track how much comes in and how much goes out. Just start there. The systems, like you said, Monarch or whatever, they’re pretty close, right? Like they’ll, they’ll say, yeah, you know, this looks like DoorDash, this looks like a whopper.

[00:25:01] OG: You know, it’s gonna be close enough. And if you’re starting big picture, your big picture is how much do I have coming in and how much do I have going out? That’s the basis of everything else, right? If, if it’s like, I’ve got 10,000 coming in and 11,000 going out and it’s July, and then in August I have 10,000 comes in and 11,000 goes out in August, and then on September 10,000 comes in and 11,000 goes out.

[00:25:22] OG: I think you’ve established the issue, right? It doesn’t matter that, well, this is categorized incorrectly. So start big picture and then when you find the thing that’s gonna, you know, when you wanna dive into it, then you have the technology already built up. 

[00:25:36] Joe: Yeah, take it just a step at a time. So if your budget didn’t work in the first half of 2025, stackers.

[00:25:42] Joe: Just zoom back out maybe for the next couple months. Make it just track. Just a couple things. And then another piece I think that’s important from episode 1688. By the way, Sean Morgan was on with Kristen Wade. They’re both budget coaches, so they were leading us through these tools. But on episode 1688. A guy named Brian sut took what?

[00:26:03] Joe: Sean Morgan. Sean Morgan pointed to food waste. Talked about us eating at restaurants a lot that that’s an easy one to cut out. Kristen Wade said, don’t even get on the shame cycle where you shame yourself around restaurants first, but if you identify restaurants or you identify food waste, well, Brian and his spouse, they turned it into a game.

[00:26:23] bit: We’d always been in a habit of trying to throw away as little as possible with tight budget. But as soon as we took notice of the volume that was going to the trash, it became this internal competition to see if we could find a way to stop putting food into the trash. It became a over the top competition with ourselves to get creative and to pay attention to that cost, and we drove that number to an insanely low number.

[00:26:44] bit: At first, we would just speak it out loud. If I threw something away, I would just to other working. Of pasta, dairy, butter, and cheese that we just put into the trash. And after that year of just keeping a mental tally, we put a post-it note on the fridge and we would write down what was wasted, what the cost was and what date it happened.

[00:27:05] bit: Everything that we bought and put in that fridge had a value and uh, we didn’t want that value to go to the trash. 

[00:27:11] Joe: What I love about Brian Suttas appearance was, and we had a great discussion with, uh, frequent contributor Lynn Penso about this og. In fact, you and I went and bought the blue uh, 

[00:27:20] OG: yeah, the blue apple.

[00:27:21] OG: Yeah, the blue apple. I don’t know where it is, but we bought a bunch of ’em, or one or the packer. Mine 

[00:27:26] Joe: is in the refrigerator. And we just had a pepper that was probably in there four or five days longer than peppers had been in before we had the blue apple. So I’m already a fan of the blue apple, but I didn’t wanna get into food waste as much as look at what Brian and his wife did.

[00:27:42] Joe: Kristen talked about the shame cycle. You don’t want to get in there. He yells, Hey, we just threw away a dollar 50 of pasta. But it was a game. It was like, let’s see if we could lower that number. And it was playful. And they started putting post-it notes on the fridge, right, of seeing if we can get that number lower and lower and lower.

[00:27:59] Joe: And they did get it to an insanely low number. People can listen in, but I think, uh, in 2023, I believe they threw away about $3 and 50 cents worth of food all year long. It was, it was a crazy number that we will never get to stay away from the shame. But gamification, og, turning it into a game wins almost every time.

[00:28:20] Joe: And we hear that over and over on the podcast. Well, 

[00:28:21] OG: and the stuff that you pay attention to, the stuff that you focus your energy on is the stuff that you’re gonna improve. I mean, it’s just, it, it just, a hundred percent happens. Tell me, this has not happened to you. You got a new car, not brand new, not you, whatever.

[00:28:35] OG: You get a new car and now everybody’s driving the same car. Right. You haven’t seen this color ever in your life, and you get it on your, you’re like, ah, nobody’s got this color. It’s all, you see, everyone’s got the green Mazda. All of a sudden you’re like, huh, where’d they, we’d just walk into the Green Mazda store.

[00:28:50] OG: You know, like, how’d this happen? 

[00:28:51] Joe: When my kids were driving a Volkswagen Beetle, I’m like, man, I barely ever see Volkswagen Beetles on the road. The second my kids had a Volkswagen Beetle. 

[00:28:59] OG: Yeah, because you know why I thought about this today? As a matter of fact, I was driving the kids to their practice and camp and stuff this morning, and I saw two cars that look exactly like Alex’s car.

[00:29:09] OG: And I know why, because I pay attention to that. ’cause I go, oh, that’s my kid. And I remember thinking like, why is Alex driving his cars? And he had orientation, oh no, it’s not Alex’s car, but it’s, I never saw that car ever. And now I see it everywhere. It’s the stuff that you tell your mind to pay attention to that normally it filters out.

[00:29:25] OG: So if you pay attention to money and you say, Hey, I’m gonna pay attention to food waste, or I’m gonna pay attention to my budget, you are going to improve it. Without any effort. It’s just, it’s magical. 

[00:29:35] Joe: Yeah. This idea of what we look at is really important. And we did, we did a week on consumerism. Mm-hmm.

[00:29:43] Joe: My favorite in June. And, well, and it’s interesting, OG, because I was gonna save this for the back porch, but this is a good place to, to put this, is that I not only lost you when I brought this up. You lost everybody. Well, I lost a bunch of our stackers, and let me go into this because Vicki Robbins says this and everybody goes, this is phenomenal.

[00:30:03] Joe: Katie Gatty Tossin talks about it on the show on Wednesday, and I was trying to set it up on Monday by broadening out what she was gonna talk about, which is the clip I’m about to play. I was broadening it out and I lose you. I didn’t lose Doug. Doug and I were like, no, no, no, no, no. But man, we, the thing that we have when we start saying the word consumerism that I found out is that there is a lot of judgment that people assigned to that word that I did not mean.

[00:30:29] Joe: Consumerism specifically is just the act of being a consumer. If I am a consumer, I need to then look at whether this is worth it or not, and realize if there’s somebody who’s influencing me to play a game, is that game important? And so during our episode on this, which was uh, 1693, if people wanna listen, I.

[00:30:55] Joe: You said, I feel like I’m fat shaming you, which took me by surprise because sounds like something I would say. Well, I wasn’t assigning any judgment to the word consumerism, but you clearly were. And even afterwards, og a lot of our stackers, uh, we had a great discussion on Spotify as we often do. A lot of great comments.

[00:31:13] Joe: And these comments show that a lot of us assign a lot of negativity to this word. Our friend Sj Fjord says, um, Joe seems to have selective amnesia flying to Egypt and Nepal and all the other places he’s visited is a form of consumerism. SJ Fjord. That’s a hundred percent correct. That is a hundred. It, it is a hundred percent consumerism.

[00:31:35] Joe: Uh, he says, why not drive to the Alamo or Yellowstone, or fly to Niagara Falls? Anything and anytime you spend money is consumption, period. A big amen. Which is why silent shade. Who’s also commented before says that, uh, Joe’s about to actually agree with everything OG was saying that Joe was taking issue with, and I wasn’t OG when we changed the argument halfway through from judgment, which is not at all where I wanted to go.

[00:32:01] Joe: And you said, well, wait a minute. Doug wants to buy pocketknives. If Doug’s buying a pocket knife and he really likes pocket knives and he buys another one and it’s in the budget, who gives a shit? And I said, yes. And you’re like, oh, all of a sudden you’re agreeing with me. And I went, no. I’m saying the same thing I’ve been saying, which is I’m not assigning judgment to consumerism.

[00:32:22] Joe: I’m just saying if I go to a NASCAR race, NASCAR wants me to go to the NASCAR race. I love nascar. Everybody knows that Disney, I like Disney. But if Disney has commercials to go to Disney, I decide to go to Disney. I am involved in consumerism. Now, am I going to Disneyland on day one because I’m a quote influencer with my phone and I just wanna take pictures of me at Disney so people think I’m cool.

[00:32:45] Joe: Is that a reason to go to Disney? Like, do I need to rethink that or am I going to Disney because somehow it resonates with me in a different way, and it truly is the happiest place on earth for me. Thinking through that, the way Vicki Robin talks about and the way that Katie Gassen talks about frankly, was exactly what I was trying to get to.

[00:33:05] Joe: And I apologize because, well, I 

[00:33:06] OG: think it, I think it ties into what you were saying just a few moments ago about if you are being intentional around spending, then you’re doing the stuff that makes you the happy. So I was watching this clip by Simon Sinek, love that guy. I don’t know how it came up, but he was talking to a woman who had survived a cancer scare, and she was talking about how she kind of lived her life in a sense during that period of time of like, I’ve got two years.

[00:33:32] OG: I’m not, I’m just, I got two years and that was how she lived her life. And now it seems based on this interview that she has, uh, conquered that disease, if not just temporarily. So, but anyway, their discussion was around, if you think about like, what if I had two years and you don’t change anything, then you’re doing the thing you should be doing.

[00:33:50] OG: Right? Like, if you’re like, I hate my job, I’ll quit, da da da, well then quit, man. Like, then just go, then just go do something different. You know? And I think what your point is about frugal and like, we do assign words to that. Like when I hear the word frugal, I go, oh, that’s not me. Yeah. ’cause we think cheap.

[00:34:05] OG: I think cheap. Yeah. I think you’re leaving something on the table. When I hear the word consumerism, I think that everybody thinks that that’s a bad thing. And I don’t have a problem with that. Like to me, I go, yeah, I, I’m happy to prop up the economy. It’s one of my favorite things to do. 

[00:34:20] Joe: But it was interesting, and this is where I triggered you OG, was we talked about what Katie’s about to talk about, which is women who play the game of beauty products, Uhhuh.

[00:34:28] Joe: And I said. Your kids and you play the game of college sports and you go, but that’s not consumerism. That’s an experience. And I said, yes, it’s consumerism though, but I lost you because of the judgment that we signed. Yeah. The, 

[00:34:42] OG: the language really matters. 

[00:34:43] Joe: Yeah. So I apologized to everybody for that. ’cause I, I didn’t realize until I got back from my vacation and I read these after I got 

[00:34:49] OG: back from, uh, how many people I, from my overseas vacation where I was definitely not a consumer.

[00:34:57] OG: My private experience in Greece, that’s 

[00:35:00] Doug: not 

[00:35:00] OG: consumers with all my friends, with all of my rich friends. And I was like, I am not a consumer. I don’t understand what their problem is. 

[00:35:08] Joe: A 

[00:35:08] OG: hundred 

[00:35:09] Joe: percent consumerism headed to Greece. Oh my. You can’t not involve 

[00:35:13] OG: yourself, consumer. But, but yeah, we do assign meanings to words.

[00:35:15] OG: And I vaguely remember this conversation. I, I kind of dump a lot of stuff in the show. I’m like, oh, you’re like, yeah, we talked about that last year. I’m like, I don’t remember. But, um, like what, I vaguely remember this two things that I think about here. One is. It’s totally fine to spend money any way that you want.

[00:35:34] OG: I, I don’t owe you an explanation. I don’t owe the internet an explanation. Maybe my family, to some extent I do. Right. ’cause I’m responsible for them. But if we do the things that we wanna do, I don’t owe you a reason for why I do it. And as long as I’m not burdening you with my decision making. Right.

[00:35:51] OG: Exactly. So like, if I’m taking care of my business, if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing for my family and my community and you know, and up to the extent that I feel responsible for that and I decide to go to Greece. Okay. I, I don’t owe you an explanation for why I chose to do that. Because it’s okay.

[00:36:08] OG: And the a hundred percent key hero 

[00:36:10] Joe: G is mindfulness, right? Yeah. Make 

[00:36:12] OG: the decision that gives you the joy. Like, as opposed to your friends who you said, you know, we can’t do this thing because we’re broke. It’s like, well you’re broke ’cause you mindly spend money. 

[00:36:21] Joe: Yeah. And then they do frustrate me even though they still don’t owe me an explanation.

[00:36:24] Joe: They frustrate Oh me. ’cause I wanna do stuff with them. I wanna do stuff without me having to pay for them to go along because they wasted all their money on stuff that they hadn’t examined. Look at what happened to Katie Gatty Tossin when she looked in into her budget and actually saw, even though she thought she was spending money mindfully.

[00:36:42] Joe: Well, let’s take a listen to Katie. I. 

[00:36:44] bit: Living within my means. I’m not driving a Lexus food spending pretty reasonable. But as I did that personal finance audit and I got everything down on paper, there was something that jumped out at me that I had never seen anyone talk about in all of the personal finance dogma that I was ingesting.

[00:37:03] bit: And that was my beauty and personal care budget, 10% of my income on beauty and personal. That’s interesting. So at the time I was spending around $300 a month on beauty and personal care. I start thinking about my take home pay, and I’m like, whoa, I’m working for an entire month every year just to support all of these appointments.

[00:37:21] bit: And that was a real aha moment for me. I find that, oh wow, if I do this for an entire 40 year working career, I am giving up a million dollars. That’s not a trade off I’m willing to make. 

[00:37:33] Joe: And, and that last line, that’s not a trade off I’m willing to make now for some people I’m 

[00:37:37] OG: willing to make 

[00:37:38] Joe: right? I’m willing to make, there’s a beauty industry Katie talks about that’s designed to have women tell other women, Hey, you deserve it, girl.

[00:37:46] Joe: Hey, you need to buy this beauty product. You need to, and if Katie examines that and it makes sense to her. Then it’s money well spent for me and going to NASCAR races. Hey, I go to a, you know, for a while I was going to a NASCAR race every year. Is it actually a trade off? When I look at that money and I go, okay, I spent X amount on this whole NASCAR weekend, going to races Friday, Saturday, Sunday, camping out there, spending the money on groceries, I’m getting myself there, all of these expenses.

[00:38:14] Joe: Is that worth it? And the answer I came back with was, hell yeah, Katie came back with hell no. So. I apologize about trying to open that up. I think Katie said it better than I did though. Good stuff there. We’ve got a whole second half where we’re gonna go into a few more of the big themes from the year.

[00:38:32] Joe: Have you gone through your budget and mindfully looked at all these expenses? What a great, great use of time to spend an hour just looking through your bank app and doing that. But before we get back to this, Doug, uh, let’s take a little break because you’ve got some, uh, great trivia about today’s date in history.

[00:38:52] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and how you doing on your 2025 calls? I know things are rolling along for me. I’ve taught these two knuckleheads on a podcast, even though they only recently figured out how to use their thumbs back on today’s date in 1960, a young woman with a goal began a remarkable career journey.

[00:39:12] Doug: She used funds raised by her friend and mentor and set off for Gumby Stream National Park. In what would later become Tanzania to study chimpanzees. And here’s today’s question. Who was this remarkable woman? I’ll be back right after I go peel a banana.

[00:39:41] Doug: Hey there, it’s Jackers. I’m banana peeler and guy who doesn’t like double entendres. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug Chimpanzees. Now there’s a species that can teach us great money lessons, no racing around to score a bigger raise. No decisions on the right outfit to wear. Just eat, sleep, and repeat. Boy, that’s the dream, isn’t it?

[00:40:02] Doug: On today’s date in 1960, a young woman set out to study chimpanzees in what would later become Tanzania. Who was she? Of course, it was the amazing Jane Goodall. And now back to two guys who confound even Jane. It’s Joe and og.

[00:40:23] Joe: OG is opposable thumbs. You have opposable thumbs, don’t you? Still Absolutely. At least one. Ah, let’s pick this up because we have a lot of ground still to cover. We had some fantastic round table episodes the first half of the year, one episode that resonated with a lot of people. And because we don’t think about it enough, if disaster strikes what’s in your financial go bag?

[00:40:47] Joe: You remember this one? Og, uh, Amy, what’s in your financial go bag? There were some great takes about what really is the holdup to getting at things. If we have an emergency and it turns out there’s one thing we own. That we need to do a better job of making sure that it’s available in the case of an emergency at, uh, estate planning experts on our show.

[00:41:14] Joe: But as part of your emergency, somebody else that can get into your online stuff besides you. Everything’s stored on my phone and nobody knows my access code to my phone Isn’t yours, just password? One, two, exclamation, exclamation. No, it’s, well, it’s a number sequence on my phone, right? So it’s just one, one, one, one.

[00:41:28] Joe: But who’s gonna guess that? One, one, 

[00:41:30] bit: if I had an estate planning attorney or if there was any attorney that I was regularly working with and I had a, a recurring relationship with that person, that’s the person I would give it to. 

[00:41:37] OG: This is one of the things that I think is really overlooked in, in an estate planning process overall, which is how do other people get access to the two-factor authentication thing?

[00:41:45] OG: Yeah. I think generally speaking, the two-factor authentication stuff you can bypass, not easily, but you can call Schwab and say, I don’t have that device anymore. Grandpa died. I. What can we do to access this and kind of proceed with the estate plan, but to your point, all about the master password that needs to be somewhere so that somebody you know, whether it’s with your attorney written in code in your estate plan, like every 15th letter of my trust is my master pass.

[00:42:08] bit: That would be cool. 

[00:42:10] OG: Wow, that’s an interesting way to do it. I don’t remember saying that 

[00:42:16] Joe: though. No, but who’s got the master password? And this is an important thing for people to do right now. Just pause the podcast OG and make sure somebody’s got that master password into Dashlane or whatever thing you use to get into your phone because holy moly.

[00:42:33] Joe: We went from there into your financial plan, and of course, being a financial planning show. This is for us where the rubber meets the road. And I think a big theme OG in 2025 has been redefining retirement, right? What does retirement really mean and what are we looking for? And a lot of the time, the things that we’re looking for truly don’t make us happier.

[00:42:57] Joe: They don’t give us longevity. They don’t give us more, more or better. I almost have more better retirement, more or better retirement. And uh, Benjamin Brand, a CFP friend of ours came on episode 1639 and really early in the year, started shaking up the podcast with, does the retirement date really matter?

[00:43:23] Joe: Should we be doing things pre-retirement that makes sense of retirement? Benjamin thinks that we should be looking at ourself all the time as a science experiment to think about what truly makes us happy so that when we leave our job, whenever that is, we’re actually filling our hours with things that we appreciate.

[00:43:42] bit: Good data and bad data are both good data. I tried volunteering at the Humane Society. I don’t like it. I don’t even like dogs. That’s good data. Check that off. That’s not something we’re gonna do in retirement. So I want you to take small risks of time, money and energy, figure out what you like and what you don’t like, and then we need to artificially create that in retirement.

[00:43:58] bit: That could also go for your career as well. Write down what specifically you like about your job and you might like. I like being an engineer. There’s probably more pieces of that. Like I love working on projects with people. I love bringing something across the table under budget and on time, or I like collaborating with other people, or I like just hanging out in the break room and chewing the cud with friends specific notes of that than recreate that in retirement.

[00:44:20] bit: Again, bad data is also good data. Write down what you hate about your life and make sure you don’t do that in retirement. 

[00:44:26] Joe: How often do people work? 30, 35, 40 years at a job and they build up this stuff, quote that I’m going to do when I retire, and they get there and they’re disappointed because those things, og, that they thought were gonna be the fun things that they were gonna do in their retirement years did not bring them the joy that they thought to Benjamin’s point.

[00:44:49] Joe: Turns out, I don’t even like dogs. 

[00:44:53] OG: I think that it’s a good idea to try to do the things that you think you’re gonna do. If you’ve been working for 20 or 30 years, you probably have some pretty decent vacation days built up. Go test it out. You know, you famously said that you’ve tested out moving and living in different places, and I.

[00:45:14] OG: You know, say, Hey, let’s travel a lot. And you know, and you went, yeah, that sucks. You know, if you think you’re gonna go play golf every day, go take a week and go play golf every day. Report back, let me know how you feel. Most of us can’t do it every day. We can do it twice a week, three maybe. But every day is a lot.

[00:45:33] OG: It just, you know, A, it gets boring and then B, it’s like, it’s tough to do. You know? It’s a lot of walking. And as you hit the ball as many times as I do, it tires you up. 

[00:45:44] Joe: Well, it’s amazing the number of times people will go on a vacation and you’re bored on the third day, fourth day, right? You go to the beach and by day four you’re bored.

[00:45:51] Joe: Think about this. You retire and you haven’t really thought about it. You’re four days in and you’re already bored. Yeah, I think you need a lot more data. Think 

[00:45:59] OG: about how much time you spend planning a vacation. We literally have, we, we won this condo in an auction, so we’re gonna go to Park City in a week for a week.

[00:46:08] OG: We’re like, all right, cool. Just go to Park City. And we’ve spent weeks talking about like, what are we gonna do? Oh, they have zip lining. Let’s, let’s schedule that. Oh, they have the little toboggan thing. ’cause it’s by the Olympic, you know, testing thing. So let’s do that. Oh, they have a concert. We’ll go to the concert.

[00:46:22] OG: You know, we’re like booking all this stuff out. We spent weeks trying to plan a five day trip of which two days are travel. So it’s really like a three day trip. And then how many people think about retirement and go, yeah, I mean, I’m just gonna play golf all the time. And, uh, maybe do some traveling. Okay.

[00:46:37] OG: Pencil it out. Write it down. Tell me what you think that looks like. 

[00:46:41] Joe: We’re gonna talk again on Wednesday with Gary McDermott about setting better goals, about making them work the way they worked in the Navy for him, the way that they work in big business. I. So we’re gonna dive more because I think setting this goal of gathering data is important.

[00:46:55] Joe: But we also looked at what makes people flourish. And this is different than what we thought. In fact, it’s funny. I remember when Christine Ben was on late, uh, 2024 OG from Morningstar. Christine interviewed a lot of people and found out that, you know, this idea of waking up whenever you want to doesn’t really work in retirement.

[00:47:13] Joe: It still needs to be mission based. There still needs to be a mission. There needs to be a purpose. There needs to be a reason to jump out of bed that freaks people out. Ryan Doolittle was with us on episode 1689 and was talking about some data we had about why people flourish in retirement. People 80 and older report that they are flourishing the most.

[00:47:37] Joe: Why do you think that is? 

[00:47:39] bit: I interviewed a guy who runs a horse retirement stable, for lack of a better word. It’s a big horse retirement community of race horses that used to be successful. 

[00:47:49] Doug: I used to be something horses. Is there a glue factory right next door and this guy’s just finding multiple revenue streams.

[00:47:55] bit: His last 

[00:47:56] Doug: name was Elmers. 

[00:47:57] bit: So I’m not sure. He said, man, being old is awesome. I love being old. I like it so much better than being young. 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 dependent.

[00:48:11] bit: There’s a sense of freedom of being older. There’s obviously a lot more to it. You might be more financially independent. When you’re younger, you’re thinking, I don’t know who I am. I don’t know how I’m gonna get to be who I wanna be. All of that. 

[00:48:23] Joe: It’s funny, OG because later on in the year we had a round table about the 4% rule and about setting up distribution channels.

[00:48:35] Joe: We had Dana sba, CP, Carsten, jetski, a k, a big earn, who during his professional career was an economist and uh uh, Frank Vazquez, who in his professional career was a lawyer and now is interested in Ray Dalio and setting up risk parity portfolios. When we get close to the 4% rule and we have just barely enough, and I think this is why 80 year olds are flourishing, we have just barely enough the fighting that happened on that episode between four of us who knew what we were doing when it came to setting up retirement portfolios and how we didn’t agree.

[00:49:12] Joe: And we had some people say, I left that more confused. I think that was a great lesson. I think the great lesson is there are a lot of ways that work, and these are four people that know what the hell they’re doing and they can’t agree on the best way to set up a retirement distribution strategy that’s the most efficient because some on paper look good, but the practitioners, Dana and.

[00:49:34] Joe: In my past life, me go, yeah, that sounds great on paper, but trying to implement that crap, you’re gonna blow yourself up. It’s not gonna work. And the quote theorist, Frank and Karten, look at what Dana’s saying and what I really applaud and go, that is so inefficient. It could be so much more efficient.

[00:49:54] Joe: Yeah. But you can blow yourself up. Mm-hmm. Like, like the argument that that creates, the biggest thing to do OG, I think is something past guest Paul Merriman talked about, which is people are flourishing in their eighties because they know they have enough money and they’re not worried anymore about the negative consequences.

[00:50:12] Joe: So if you can retire and be sufficiently above the 4% rule, and I know that’s not what people wanna hear, but you can be sufficiently ahead of it, that you don’t have to worry so much about every damn penny. We’re gonna stay away from these, these arguments around tracking nickels. 

[00:50:30] OG: Yeah. But the other side of that is if you wait until success is a hundred percent guaranteed, oh, then you’re leaving life on the table.

[00:50:39] OG: Agreed. And so back to the very first thing that we talked about, which was risk. I think this applies to an investment portfolio as well. People overestimate the amount of risk that’s in their portfolio relative to market risk and underestimate the risk relative to behavioral risk. And so I think that most people have a bad experience if they’re gonna have a bad experience with their money relative to the ups and downs of the market.

[00:51:11] OG: It’s because of the decisions that they made, not because of decisions or not because of outcomes of the market. It sounds really easy. You know when you’re 35 and you have 150 grand in your brokerage account and you go, ah, just, and I just totally stay the course. I just live, I just live life, man. I’m totally all equities all the time.

[00:51:30] OG: High five. Woo-hoo. You go, okay, all right. Report back when you’re 69 and you have 4 million and you’re 4 million just turned to three point, you know, one or 2.9 and you’re like, uh, this doesn’t appear to have an end in sight. It’s easy to stay the course when you know your swings are 50 grand. When they’re 500, it’s a different thing.

[00:51:54] OG: And when they’re 1,000,005, it’s a way different thing, even though the percentages are the same. 

[00:51:59] Joe: But if I start off with the amount of money that I want to live on. And I know that, let’s say I can live on 3%, three and a half percent, and I know Monte Carlo, simulation wise, I got a 75% chance of this working the rest of my life.

[00:52:14] Joe: Like for me, that’s a great number. But if I’ve got a 75% chance of it working and I’m taking what Bill Bangin just talked about, you know, just over 5% and I have a 75% chance of it working, I think I get a little bit more worried, don’t you? 

[00:52:28] OG: No, no, no, I don’t. Because first of all, I think we use back to, back to what we were saying before around, you know, using the language correctly.

[00:52:36] OG: We use the word risk when we mean volatility, when we mean ups and downs, we use Monte Carlo numbers. Like I have a 75% chance of success as if failure is the other one. That’s not what it means. It means 75% of the time you, you had to make zero changes to your portfolio, zero changes to your spending, zero changes to your goals.

[00:52:57] OG: It might mean like, okay, well you just go on vacation every other year while the market’s down. Yeah. This goes back to milestones, right? 

[00:53:04] Joe: Yeah. You’re saying you’re just course correct. Yeah. If you’ve set up milestones to check it over and over, it’s 

[00:53:08] OG: not zero. It’s not like, yeah, it’s not a binary thing. I either have money or I don’t.

[00:53:13] OG: The other thing is, what number are you using for Monte Carlo? I think it’s totally realistic to use a hundred for your life expectancy. My wife’s grandfather is gonna turn 99 this year. Man was born in 1926. Think about the life that dude’s gone through, right? Like world wars and famines and all sort of crazy stuff that’s happened.

[00:53:34] OG: And so, yeah, I do think life expectancy is gonna be longer in the future despite the fact that the statistics are saying The other thing is go that it’s not, but I think it’s reasonable to plan for a hundred. But I’ve seen a post on YouTube recently from a show that we did where you talk about your healthy life expectancy is 66.

[00:53:57] OG: So how do you balance all that stuff out? Well, you just have to be okay with making changes. You have to be okay with the fact that, hey, it’s not gonna be a perfect straight line. You know, there’s gonna be years where the market does well and years where it doesn’t. There’s gonna be times when I spend money within budget and there’s gonna be times when I blow it up.

[00:54:14] OG: But if you’re just waiting for, okay, I need this, I need the Monte Carlo to say a hundred percent, I need the Monte Carlo to say 99%. I gotta, I can only do 4%, you know, the 4% rule because 4.1, my God, the horrors, I think you’re leaving a lot of life on the table. And the other side of that is the other side of it, right?

[00:54:33] OG: I have a client who retired way earlier than he should have in terms of the math. And the reason for that, he came to us as a client after he had already made his decision to retire and was already into it. But he retired at the beginning of 2000 because his advisor at the time said, you got 700 grand, 10% a year, 70.

[00:54:54] OG: Just live on the, just live on the 10%. Of course that’s great. When the market’s doing 10%, when it doesn’t do 10%. Like happened in, oh, I don’t know, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2000 half of 2003, 2007, 2008, 2009. You know. And so he experienced a lot of volatility and he spent all of his money. He retired when he was 52. He, by the time he was 72, uh, roughly 20 20, 20 22 timeframe, he was pretty, his, his account was at zero.

[00:55:26] OG: And you know what he said? He goes, I want you to know I’m not mad. And I said, well, okay, well, I appreciate that. I mean, we did what we could. Right. You, you were kind of into it by the time he came to us and he said, I’m so happy that I retired at 52, even though now I have to make these changes. Yeah. Now I have to, I had to downsize.

[00:55:42] OG: Yeah. I have to be very cautious on our spending. We have a small pension in social security between me and the wife, but you know what? I spent 20 years of my prime life. Hanging out with my kids, hanging out with my grandkids. I went to every baseball game, every track meet, every softball game, every dance recital across the country.

[00:56:00] OG: I didn’t care. I was like, I’m good. I can make it. He’s like, so yeah, now I’m 75 and I gotta pay better attention to what we spend money on. Okay. That was a good trade. There’s a balancing act between those two wild extremes I think of, Hey, I retired at 50, maybe foolishly a few years too early. Yeah. Or I wait until all the numbers exactly line up perfectly and there’s no chance of ever running out.

[00:56:24] OG: There’s somewhere in between there. This is 

[00:56:26] Joe: where we go back to milestones, because if you haven’t in the first half of 2025, set up these milestones and today is a milestone that we’re helping you celebrate halfway through, uh, this year. Do you have those milestones in place so you can make those course?

[00:56:41] Joe: Imagine if you course corrected a little bit. You know what I mean? If he made small changes earlier, would he have to make the big changes? Big changes now. I think though, focusing on. How much money can I spend versus what do I want to do is a mistake. And, uh, we were joined by the JL Collins on episode, uh, 1685 and listen to this discussion.

[00:57:05] bit: The only caveat I put to that is sometimes when people shift the conversation to time, it becomes spend more money because that’s how you make yourself happy. Anybody who thinks that spending money is gonna make them happy, by definition, is gonna be severely disappointed. 

[00:57:20] Joe: I heard a guy tell me once he goes, you would see a lot more happy multimillionaires.

[00:57:24] Joe: And whenever you see these multimillionaires in the media, three quarters of ’em are still miserable. 

[00:57:29] bit: There are times when buying things can make your life better, but don’t spend money for the sake of spending money, thinking somehow it’s gonna make you happy. 

[00:57:38] Joe: It was about time we got j Collins on the show and you can hear jail joining us on episode.

[00:57:44] Joe: 1685 spending more money. You’ve tried it. I’ve tried it. It could be a lot of fun, og. But that alone doesn’t make you happier. 

[00:57:53] OG: Yeah. I mean, spending money for the sake of spending it is not ever a good thing. But if there is some opportunity, right, to improve your life style or improve your life in some way, shape or form by spending money, freeing up time or energy to do other things.

[00:58:10] OG: I think in conjunction with what Alex was talking about or whoever was talking about risk, oh, it was Bezos. It was saying that risk is underappreciated. I think, um, freeing up time is also underappreciated in terms of its usefulness to you, whether it’s personal utility, like I can do other things that provide more joy in my life or that frees up time or energy to make more money to do the thing that I’m really good at.

[00:58:37] OG: This week, my wife’s been gone. And, uh, it’s been kind of a quiet week for me, just kind of coming off vacation and checking emails and that sort of thing. But I’ve done, uh, and you know this ’cause it’s affected our recording schedule. I’ve done four trips so far today. It’s 1135 to and from school, four times since 7 45 this morning.

[00:58:58] OG: Well, good football practice and then cheerleading and then back for football and then over to Dunkin Donuts and then back to school and then back to this, you know, it’s like, do, do, do. When I have got my partner here, that’s what she does, which is a full-time job, right? Everybody is like, oh, just a stay at home mom.

[00:59:12] OG: It’s like, well stay-at-home. Moms work eight hours too. They just work from like 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM and then from like 4:00 PM to like 9:00 PM That’s, those are their eight hours. You know, there’s no way that I could do this every single day and be successful and, and be as successful at work. You know what I mean?

[00:59:29] OG: Like, I’d have to find a way to invest in having somebody else do this if I was a single parent. I look at this and go, well this is killing my productivity. This is killing my opportunity to get in the zone or to, I mean, even work really, we’ve recorded a little bit of, you know, recording today, but it’s broken up, right?

[00:59:49] OG: So like that affects the flow and it affects the quality and that sort of thing. So would it be stupid of me to have my kids Uber say, well that costs money. I know, but is that an investment or is that an expense? You know what I mean? So you have to be careful with that. You know, you have to be careful with justifying expenses as investments, you know, ’cause that’s a slippery slope, but there’s a time where spending more money would increase your productivity.

[01:00:15] Joe: Well, and that also becomes the currency. I mean this idea of, of time, right? It’s not the money in Uber, it’s do I wanna spend, is that quality time that I spend with my kid in the car driving and talking? Or is it just I am an Uber? 

[01:00:29] OG: Yeah, that’s certainly something to consider using that as an example for sure.

[01:00:32] OG: Because you know, there, there’s kinda that forced, uh. The forced communication, 

[01:00:37] Joe: because I’ll tell you, that becomes the currency I worry about now that I have a large degree of financial certainty. It isn’t the cost of the object as much as the fact that I have to spend time on it. Yeah. Even if it’s a shirt, will this shirt just sit in a closet or am I going to wear it?

[01:00:53] Joe: Like the, the time that I spend a board game, I’m like, Ooh, that sounds great. I got a closet full of board games. What am I gonna play this one? Like the, you know what I mean? The time that represents is horrible. 

[01:01:03] OG: You know, it’s really funny, I was on Reddit again, you know, the algos just show you what you wanna see.

[01:01:10] OG: Apparently. I don’t know. But it was this couple of threads about like downsizing and kind of the transitional stage of like, kids are graduating high school and college and you know, we’re at the front end of that, right? Like, Alex is gonna college in, you know, a month and we’ve got some time, but we’re on the front end of it.

[01:01:26] OG: So it just happens to be what shows up for me for one of the, uh, overriding themes that I’ve seen repeatedly is nobody wants your crap. And you can’t give away your parents crap, like kind of in the Gen X, you know, thread community type stuff. And it’s like all your boomer folks have given you all these knick-knacks and all this stuff, right?

[01:01:49] OG: That was important to them. And it’s not important to you, but you’re like, whatever, I’ll take it, mom. You know? And then, and then as you start downsizing, you’re like, Hey, I’ve got all this stuff. You guys want it? And your kids are like, I don’t wanna, sure crap. I, I don’t want any of that. Can I give it away?

[01:02:03] OG: No, no, no. No place wants it. You know, it’s like, and basically the, what this thread was talking about was, do your best to stop accumulating things for the sake of accumulating them. You know, like you don’t need another couch and you don’t need another like basket of tchotchkes or whatever it is. Do your best to start.

[01:02:24] OG: Eliminating these things from your life and, and basically the person who wrote this piece was advocating how Stressless life became when they downsized, how stressful it was when they had to try to get rid of it. But once they’ve moved and downsized, they’re like, I have so little stuff now. I, cleaning is easier.

[01:02:43] OG: Nothing 

[01:02:43] Joe: more fun in my life than that time when we lived in the three bedroom apartment, simplifying like that was ama, not three bedroom, what have I talked about? Three bedroom apartment. Three room, apartment. ’cause we didn’t have room for all that stuff, og. And it was so simple. Everything was so simple.

[01:02:59] Joe: If it was completely necessary, we had it. If not, we didn’t. And I thought at the time, I’m like, what are we gonna do with all this stuff? Yeah. And, and now I think, why, why did I burden myself with all this crap? Now I got all this crap again. 

[01:03:11] OG: Yeah. I know. Hey, you have big houses and you gotta fill big houses with a bunch of stuff.

[01:03:15] OG: You know, it’s, uh, so it’s, so, it’s consumerism. Oh, wait, no, sorry. I 

[01:03:20] Joe: don’t wanna, don’t need to, 

[01:03:20] OG: yes. Don’t need to 

[01:03:21] Joe: go back to that one. No, we don’t need any more stank on that word. We also talked to one of the most famous financial planners in, besides me in the world, frankly, Barry Riol, besides me, came on the show besides OG Barry Riol came on the show.

[01:03:34] Joe: You know, he was talking about chasing trends versus just doing straight up timeless, classic investing. And, uh, Barry said, you know, a lot of people to catch the trend, they go listen to all of these. CBC personalities, which is funny because he’s kind of one Yeah. At his, uh, his cohort downtown, Josh Brown, who’s been on the show as well, is also another one.

[01:04:01] Joe: Well, here’s what Barry had to say about listening to Talking Heads. 

[01:04:05] bit: When experts are wrong, it’s because they’re experts in the way the world used to be. It has to be that. ’cause whenever you got your doctorate, it’s always in the past. Whatever we know today is pretty much backwards looking and historical.

[01:04:20] bit: And if things are changing, if the world is changing, well then an expert piece in. The way the world used to be. It’ll only get you so far. You have to be willing to adjust to changing conditions, and I don’t mean day trading or turning your portfolio over. I mean philosophically understanding how to interact with the markets, the economy, and investing.

[01:04:45] bit: He 

[01:04:46] Joe: also went into, by the way, on that note, og, he goes into ai and of course a lot of people afraid of ai. We spent. Some significant time this year talking about ai. And here’s Barry’s take on ai. 

[01:04:58] bit: Everything is cheaper, faster, better than it ever was before. Financially. When you start to observe these big shifts, these big changes, I’m not telling you liquidate your portfolio or go all in on ai, but pay attention to what’s happening and find ways to use these new tools to your best advantage.

[01:05:19] bit: I just think about what we used to do with the blogs and the podcasts. My quarterly call to clients was a painful or deal four times a year. ’cause everything had to be done manually and everything had to been, uh, was one take. So now the technology to put that together is so 

[01:05:40] Joe: easy. We spent so much time prepping for all this stuff back in the day, og and everybody’s like, how, how can we do that?

[01:05:47] Joe: How, how are we gonna remain productive when AI comes around? It’s like people, oh my goodness. The car. Like, how none have we got this car? What am I gonna do with all this time that I save? We’ve always found a way. 

[01:05:59] OG: Mm-hmm. 

[01:06:00] Joe: Adjusting, staying broad based, not listening to people that are promising you. They know the future when they know the past.

[01:06:08] Joe: Alright, just a couple more themes I wanna point to on, on retirement. Well, one more. That was a big one. It turns out truly when it comes to retirement planning, this idea, you know, and a lot of people pointed this og, this idea of. Sitting in a rocking chair, we thought that it was bad. Well, it turns out that it’s really, really bad.

[01:06:33] Joe: Pete Rebecca Davis were the creators of a, uh, wonderful documentary called Join or Die, and Pete, Dave, and, and, and by the way, join or Die Sounds horrible. They truly weren’t kidding. This is, uh, the takeaway that Pete had about this project as they worked on it. 

[01:06:51] bit: People are starting to understand that actually it’s not that our default state is isolated and community is a nice to have.

[01:06:58] bit: Our default state is in community, and when we are away from it, our body senses that something is lacking, that causes stress to our body. We felt this during COVID. COVID was a surprise to us. Suddenly we get hit with this massive global social experiment of can we just live life on Zoom and through a computer?

[01:07:17] bit: And I don’t think any of your listeners need us to share any data to know that the happy hour on Zoom stopped being fun about one month into COVID-19 Pandemic. And no one wants to wave to their grandparent on their birthday through a screen. 

[01:07:35] Joe: No, nobody Remember the first happy hour you had during COVID?

[01:07:38] Joe: Hey, we’ll just get together on Zoom. Oh, that sucked. 

[01:07:42] OG: That sucks. Basically just get drunk by myself looking at a screen. Got it. 

[01:07:46] Joe: But we still, we spend a lot of time arguing with people that we don’t know on social media, online. I know you’ve tried to get rid of this in your life. It’s funny, we were listening to Catherine Price is the power of fun.

[01:07:57] Joe: Where she goes into why the phone not only sucks the fun outta the moment by not being fun, but it also makes future fun. You’re gonna have less fun. It turns out that we also get energy, even if we’re an introvert from being a part of a community and you just don’t get that online. Fantastic lesson from Pete and Rebecca in 60 97.

[01:08:18] Joe: If, and if you have a chance to, um, watch that documentary Join or Die, it’s, it’s great. So I think the takeaway there is if you didn’t, I. Join a group, or you’re not a part of a group, and by by group I mean the Kiwanis, the Rotary, a nonprofit in your community, some group of people that gets together periodically working on something that’s not clearly attached to your financial goals.

[01:08:45] Joe: It’s time to do that. And if you don’t believe me again, listen to Pete and Rebecca on episode 1697. Of course, we studied the career of Taylor Swift with Kevin Evers from Harvard Business Review. We also looked at the history of the stock market, just the ups and downs over time, 130 years of stock market crashes.

[01:09:11] Joe: That was on episode 1695. We dove into that great debate. Again, buying versus renting your house. In fact, I got a lot of emails about that one. Uh, that’s episode 1677. I think one of my favorites and, and we’ll end today on this, uh, a sports agent, Molly Fletcher came on and, you know, we opened this up OG with maybe you need to change your mindset.

[01:09:37] Joe: Molly Fletcher went through story after story after story about how some of her clients succeeded purely when they had les talent. Just by having the right mindset when others. Failed. Who should have on paper been far better off, and I think that might be a great place to to leave today is with Molly Fletcher, 

[01:09:59] bit: 80,000 Automatic Thoughts a day You can imagine if you weren’t really intentional about shifting the self-talk.

[01:10:07] bit: What is sometimes an inner critic, sometimes a story that we tell ourselves that’s keeping us stuck in this place. Let’s say exercise is a high priority to you, but the story that you tell yourself is, I don’t have time. How in the world am I supposed to have time to work out? I’ve got all these emails, I have this job, I lead other people.

[01:10:24] bit: I have kids, I’m married. So that’s the story that keeps you from doing something that you’ve identified matters, rather than pulling back and saying, wait a minute. You know what? When I take the time to exercise, I feel better. I sleep better. I show up better for the people in my life who matter. I might live longer and be healthier.

[01:10:42] bit: You wanna recognize what is that inner critic that’s keeping you stuck from what you’ve identified you want most, and then shifting that to a new script that allows you to go after what you really want. 

[01:10:54] Joe: I think that may be the overarching theme of the last six months. Flip the script. Flip the script, flip the script.

[01:11:00] Joe: Okay, flip. Whether it’s this consumerism idea, whether it is your portfolio and managing your portfolio, whether it is, uh, what brings you happiness. Flip the script. Get, get mindful about it. Bleeding, retirement into today, even if you’re not retired, uh, gathering data. Flip the script. Be in control of the script.

[01:11:23] Joe: All right, stackers. I hope you got a great to-do list for today, og. Thanks for another great six months. Here’s to the next six months. Rock and rolling, or, well, now we’re down to what? Uh, five. And we have 

[01:11:35] OG: like five or five and a half. You count December, not counting, pretty much nobody does anything in December.

[01:11:39] OG: Really like four. But then there’s also like Thanksgiving and Halloween and Labor Day weekend and opening weekend of NFL season. So basically you got like three, it’s like 90 days basically. And what school starts? And, uh, wrap up summer vacation. So 87 days left. It’s time to go now. Stackers, get 

[01:11:58] Joe: after it.

[01:11:58] Joe: It’s time to go. Now, normally in an episode today, we head out to the back porch, which is our community piece. I’ll say this about community, and we just talked about community and surround sound. If today’s episode got you thinking, yeah, I’m not where I wanted to be with my goals this year. We made this episode because we know that you are not alone.

[01:12:22] Joe: It’s always great to listen to a podcast and talk about all the cool things I’m gonna do, and maybe you do it, maybe you don’t. If you’re a successful Gen Xer or high earning millennial trying to manage income, equity, comp, taxes, and life all on your own, maybe it’s time to bring in a team og. And the pros at Bannerman Wealth are opening just 10 to 15 new spots this fall for families who are ready to stop guessing and to start planning.

[01:12:48] Joe: So if you’re ready to turn things around. And finish the year strong. Now’s the time to grab a spot on OGs calendar. Head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG to schedule the call. That’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og four, his calendar, the idea of surround sound, I can’t get enough of, man, you gotta put it in your life and hopefully today gave you a shove.

[01:13:10] Joe: And if you need more of a shove stack your Benjamins dot com slash og. All right, that’s gonna do it for today. Doug, as always, man, you were quiet today. You need to wrap this thing up, buddy. What are our big takeaways from today’s show? 

[01:13:21] Doug: So what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from our team.

[01:13:26] Doug: We made some great podcasts for you. Now go implement. Second. While our topics covered a wide range of tools, lessons, and strategies, overwhelmingly it’s mindset that changes everything. Focus there first, then on more money, and then on locking down your budget. But the big lesson. Maybe Jane Goodall should have come to Texarkana.

[01:13:50] Doug: These two guys are nearly as entertaining as chimpanzees, and you truly aren’t sure what they’re gonna do next.

[01:14:00] Doug: 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.

[01:14:21] Doug: 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.