How much should personal passion factor into our choice of job/career/professional pursuit? Is it acceptable to be content with going after a sweet stack of Benjamins, even if the way you earn them doesn’t align with your passion? Why do we have to choose between success and passion? Joining us today to tackle the money or passion debate is thought leader, Fortune 500 member, entrepreneur, and passion advocate Liz Elting. She’ll help us learn how we can influence our career paths so that it aligns more with our passions.
In our headline, we see evidence of a cooling off rental market (finally). We dive into the repercussions for renters, landlords, and the economy as a whole. In our Haven Lifeline segment, we take a call from Christine in Seattle about opening investment accounts for minors – and what special considerations, if any, there are if a non-parental, non-guardian relative wants to help the minor open it.
Finally, Doug chips in with some space-related trivia. It’s guaranteed to be out of this world!
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
Our TikTok Minute
Liz Elting
Big thanks to Liz Elting for joining us today. Grab yourself a copy of the book Dream Big and Win: Translating Passion into Purpose and Creating a Billion-Dollar Business.
Doug’s Trivia
- According to urban legend, the USA spent millions developing a pen that worked in outer space. What did the Russian space team do to solve the same issue in a simpler, cost-effective way?
Need life insurance? You could be insured in 20 minutes or less and build your family’s safety net for the future. Use StackingBenjamins.com/HavenLife to calculate how much you need and apply.
- Christine from Seattle wants our take on how she can best help her nephew open a custodial investment account for a minor (UTMA/UGMA), given that she is the child’s aunt and the parents/guardians don’t really have any interest in it.
Have a question for the show?
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- 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).
Join Us Wednesday
Be sure to tune in on Wednesday where you’ll learn how to use fear to make better financial decisions with the host of So Money, Farnoosh Torabi.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: How Polluted Is Your Financial Plan?
Episode transcript
Are we, are we talking about how to solve OG’s TV issue? Yeah,
I get a major commission if I can convince them to come to Fubo. So that’s, I’m going to keep talking about it until I get them to switch over.
If there only were a way OG that they would take all these different apps and stuff and package them up, that would be just amazing.
All the different networks.
He’s got that. He’s just paying. He just had to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.
That is true. Well, you know what you didn’t take out a second mortgage for? All the safety we got this weekend, the feeling of just being able to watch our, uh, beloved Detroit Lions do whatever they did on Sunday.
Epic
finish. So, let’s raise a glass. What you got there, Joseph? North Cascades
today. What are you packing? What kind heat are you
packing? North Cascades mug. Look at that. Isn’t that is?
That is a, uh, gray spotted mug.
That, you’re a Michigander. How do you not know what that
is? Are those Petoskey stones? It’s a Petoskey stone,
yeah. Wow, how about that? Freaking
out of a rock. OG, how about you? Bring it. Oh,
God, no. Hail to the victors valiant.
Just what I grabbed. No. There’s
no meaning behind it.
Oh, I love the way he just held that. How was the
Spartans? Oh, he waited. Last couple weeks. Waited and waited. Yeah. On with our toast. Let’s not talk about the Spartans. They’re amazing coach and they’re amazing. Oh my goodness. Ah, here’s to our troops people. Big shout out to our troops on behalf of the men and women making podcasts, mom’s basement and the men and women at Navy federal credit union.
Big salute. Let’s all go stack some Benjamins together. Shall we?
Thanks everybody.
They’re dogs, and they’re playing poker.
Live
from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And today you’ll learn how to pivot to a more satisfying career from a woman who made billions doing it. Founder and CEO, Liz Elting. In our headline segment, Big News in Rental Real Estate Land, we’ll share some disturbing stats. And in our TikTok Minute, some advice from the Shark Tank.
Plus, we’ll throw out the Haven Lifeline to Christine. And then, as if you need more… I’ll share some inventive trivia and now two guys who dropped outta Space Camp ’cause the other kids kept pointing at ’em like they were aliens. It’s Joe and Oh,
it’s always difficult when you’re trying to explain to the little brains about how to double your money. Og. I mean, they’re at Space Camp, but they just. They just have a hard time keeping up, but we’re going to help them today. Hopefully all the space camp kids listening to us. Hey everybody. Welcome to double your money slowly for the win podcast.
I’m Joe Saul Sehy, average Joe money on Twitter, and we’re ready to start off another week with the guy across the card table from me, Mr. OG is here.
I did want to go to space camp when I was a kid.
Never made it though. Huh? Nope. It was too out of this world. But did you set up like the, the. The fake rocket in your living room, you know?
No. No? You didn’t do, like, the tent thing? No? Nope.
This is the part where you keep the conversation going, OG.
It’s not monosyllabic answers.
How does this podcasting work again? Well, Doug,
who needs OG to be with it because we got a guest who’s with it today. Liz Elting joining us, one of the most wealthy self made women in America. joining us on the show. She’s going to talk about, uh, OG, something I know that is near and dear to you, your heart, doing things that serve you, not just financially, but, uh, but also spiritually, she’s going to talk about follow your passion today.
That was the
nicest way you could have said that OG was self centered and egotistical. It was
like a weird backhanded slap across the face, but it was like with a feather pillow.
Very low speed. I’m sure OG wants to reprimand me. We’ll give him a second to do that. Uh, hold on. Ouch, man. That hurt too. Stop.
Stop,
OG. Well, just be nicer, Joe. It’s when I’m the nice one.
Well, hold on. Just wait. Let me tell you this. So sticks and stones can break my bones. But words, O. G., will never hurt me.
Why are you crying so much?
Liz Helting is here. Believe it or not, we actually have a show about money coming. Let’s go.
Hello, darlings.
And now, it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking
Benjamins headlines. Our headline today comes to us from Fortune. A little bit of disturbing news coming out of the real estate market. This piece is written by… Elena Botros. The rental market’s softening so fast in some pockets of the country landlords have no choice but to offer concessions.
Elena writes, it looks like home builders aren’t the only ones offering incentives in this housing market. Landlords are too, even though the median asking rents at a near record high, according to Redfin. Last month, the median U. S. asking rent was 2, 052, just 2 below the record high set a year ago. And it’s up slightly from the previous months, 2038.
Still landlords are finding a way to attract renters, whether that’s a one time discount or a few months free per Redfin. Lily Katz, Redfin’s data journalist, wrote in a report published just a couple of weeks ago, while asking rents are near their all time high. Tenants in some parts of the country are finding deals with vacancies on the rise.
Some landlords are doling out one time discounts to attract renters while maintaining high asking rents on paper. She said that because of this, rents are effectively coming down in some areas, but they don’t show up in asking rent data. The rental vacancy rate in the U. S. is 6. 3 percent as tracked by the St.
Louis Fed. A year ago, it was 5. 6%. So, OG, we’re seeing vacancies in rentals starting to tick up. We’re seeing landlords starting to put little carrots out there to get people. The official numbers still look fairly good. But, um, but if you’re a landlord I’m trying to figure
out where, where are people going?
Is it just a supply issue? Because I, I’m certainly by us, they’re building properties like crazy. But I’m thinking, you know, traditionally, where do renters go? They go from one rental place either to another or they go to housing, you know, permanent housing, they buy their own place. But with interest rates sucky, I’m not sure that that’s a transition path that a lot of people are doing.
So it must be, must just be a supply issue
then, right? It is. It is a hundred percent supply. This from the piece, higher end properties, especially are coming under pressure in some markets as demand declines while supply increases. Meanwhile, more affordable units are still in demand as there’s lower supply and consumers are less willing or unable to afford higher end units.
At this time, so if you’re in the higher end spaces, that’s where you’re seeing it because we, you know, we got big companies now like Goldman Sachs, OG buying complete neighborhoods and turning them all into higher end rentals. I
mean, yeah, I guess this would be part of that, that metric. I’m thinking apartment buildings, but, but even so, I mean, when the economy is great and you’ve got extra money and you’ve getting paid bonuses and all this other source and you’re working from home.
You’re more likely to splurge on things like, Hey, I want a nice place that’s got a gym and a pool and a hot tub and amenities. And now if my boss is going to make me come to work every so often, now I’ve got to be a little bit more practical. I need to live close to my work and, and, uh, that extra space that I had my office in isn’t as important to me anymore.
And if the money gets a little tighter, I don’t need the sauna and the ice bath in my, in my apartment building. So, you know, I can see people kind of shifting around a little bit for sure.
Doug, were you going to say something? I
was going to ask if it specified, like, where were there specific cities that it talked about or types, because the supply issue makes sense to me outside of city centers, because they’re not building a lot more supply in downtown Chicago or in New York, but whereas like out in Dallas, out kind of out on the perimeter or, you know, pick another larger city where they, they can do that building out in the, in the burbs to OG’s point about.
People working from home and that sort of thing, I can see that being an issue, but I would imagine we’ve got listeners who are in some of those inner cities saying, Where the heck is that happening? Because I’m not getting any concessions from my landlord. I haven’t seen a Slurpee or a Coney Dog yet.
The issue seems to be… that rents went up really quickly. This is from the end of this fortune piece. The rental markets cooled quickly in the West and the South in part because those markets saw outsized rent increases during the pandemic, Katz explained, adding later that both rental markets had begun to stabilize.
Rents skyrocketed as people flooded into Sunbelt cities like Phoenix, Miami, and Dallas. But once the rental frenzy cooled, rents in those regions had more room to fall. The West has also been disproportionately impacted by layoffs in the tech sector, which may be contributing to its off rental markets.
Yeah, that math checks. So not only do we have increased supply, I think, I think the reason I like this piece OG is that we back in 2006, 2007 said real estate prices. never going to fall. So buying property always makes sense. And then I really feel like with the surge in, uh, you know, real estate, people wanting to become landlords that we’ve had this rush into tons of people, tons of new people becoming landlords and going, you know, this is where it’s at.
This is never going to die. People always need someplace to live. And so, Hey, rents are never going to go down. Rents will always have ups. and downs and then ups and downs and ups and downs. And the way to buy real estate, like anything, is to mitigate your risk somewhat, be a little more conservative, get into it, have a long term view.
I don’t know. I saw a video last week too, of with all the Airbnb activity and the huge surge of new Airbnbs across the country, that you’re going to see that balloon pop as interest rates go up. And some of these people that went in for short term and obvious are going to get washed out. Well, the thing that
happens, especially at commercial loan rates that I don’t think everybody pays attention to or maybe even doesn’t even know is that most commercial loan rates, anything on a four bedroom apartment or bigger or a, uh, an actual apartment building or, or an Airbnb that they’re going to, you know, you’re going to lump together as one package deal.
Most of those rates adjust every four to six years. You know, that’s just how banks do it. And so, you know, we’re sitting here right now with current interest rates really high, but you might be holding on to a rate that you got recalculated in 2021 or 2020. And in a few years from now, as those mature and start coming back around to current interest rates, I’ve already talked to a number of people who have said their plan for the next three years is save as much money as they can so that they can pay the loan off.
Because when that interest rate adjusts, the cash flow numbers change dramatically. You know, you go from being cash flow positive, you know, 100, 200, 300 a door per month, which is kind of the metric that you want to use, right? To be a landlord. To being three four five hundred dollars negative every single month per door just because the interest rate change Yeah And if you can see that coming if you’ve if you’re fortunate enough to be on the front, you know I have a little bit of runway here.
One of the ways to mitigate that is to Aggressively pay off that debt on the back end
I think you got to think through very carefully what, what are all the things that could go wrong and try to eliminate those things at a time, or at least know what they are, right? Every investment has an Achilles heel and do that when you’re not emotional, put it in your investment policy statement and think about, okay, this investment goes down by.
30 percent or whatever it might be, or my rent goes down or the, the, the mortgage adjust. What, what is my next move going to be? And, uh, take care of that early on. You don’t want to have to, I think you’ve said this best in the past. Uh, you don’t want to be reacting to the news. Like what the people in the media always ask is, so how are you reacting to this news?
Your perfect answer is I’m not. Yeah. I’ve thought about
it already following the plan.
If you want to dive deeper into bubbles and the nature of, of bubbles and setting up your investment policy statement, Kevin Bailey will have that in the 201. That’s our newsletter that comes out free every Tuesday and Thursday, uh, stackybenjamins.
com slash 201. If you want more about real estate, particularly we have a sister show. That’s a real estate show. Crystal Hammond, uh, who’s a real estate investor joins me on that show. And that comes out every Tuesday. Go just subscribe to that. Time now though, for our TikTok minute, this is the part of the podcast where we shine the light on a TikTok, uh, either some TikTok brilliance or TikTok air quote brilliance.
Actually today, it’s a YouTube short. Same thing, but on YouTube, O. G., we got brilliance or air quotes.
Oh, if it’s on YouTube, it’s, it’s amazing. It’s gotta be. TikTok is the, ugh,
gross. I think you’re going to, I think you’re going to know this voice. This is a man who calls himself Mr. Wonderful from Shark Tank.
You have to get to a place where you have 5 million in the bank. Because you can survive the rest of your life, no matter what happens, and your family. You can take care of a lot of people making 6 or 7 percent of 5 million dollars. When you make that, you have to set that aside and you don’t risk it.
Then after that, you can start to take risk capital and put it to work. Uh, OG, I think you found this video.
Uh, okay. I’ll leave you. No. Short term memory loss. I’m like, what? I’m like Dory
from. All he does is sit on his phone looking at reels and YouTube shorts and TikTok. That’s all he does all day long.
So he can poo poo them
later. Yeah, but he gets on the show. I don’t watch
any of that. Dory from Finding Nemo. I don’t remember anything. I just,
uh. Hey Doug, can you wake up grandpa and see if he remembers this particular video? Kevin Leary there from Shark Tank. Oh, gee, my favorite. Well, there’s a few things I like about that.
The first thing is I love watching Kevin Leary because he’s like, all you got to do just get to 5 million. And yeah, and just get to 5 million
and don’t risk it. And once you get to 5 million, then everything above that, you just, yes,
that’s all you do. But it does. He talks about it. So cavalierly. I saw a guy,
a Tik I surrounded myself with people who thought 5 million was easy, I made my first million. fairly quickly. Like I changed what I was focused on and I made, I made the million happen. I didn’t focus on the little things anymore. I focused on things that got me to a million. Yeah. I think that the
message here is you have to have a little bit of safety and security money and whether or not you look at 5 million as being like, holy cow, that’s so much cash, then fine.
Maybe your number is 2 million. Maybe your number is a million dollars. Maybe your million is, and that doesn’t mean you don’t invest it. That doesn’t mean it’s sitting in cash. That means that you’re not starting a donut business with it. You’re not going to go out on a limb and try to do new things or crazy, you know, leverage type ideas.
That’s kind of your base, whatever that number is. And once you get there, then you have the flexibility to be more aggressive. We talk a lot about this when it comes to cash. And the argument that people have sometimes is, you know, I’ve got 50, 000 available on my credit card, can’t I use that as cash? And the reality is, is that you don’t have cash so that you don’t have credit, you have cash so that you can be invested aggressively on the other end.
It’s almost like a, like a barbell type strategy, right? So the same thing is true here, and this is what O’Leary is saying, is When you’ve got a base of whatever your number is and you’re prudent with it and you know, invest it appropriately, then you can be really aggressive with other things because you don’t have to worry about the risk capital of that initial base.
If you’ve got a TikTok, a YouTube short that you think we should be shining a light on, send that to me, joe at stackingbenjamins. com. Coming up next, Liz Elting has been on Forbes richest self made women list every year since they started it back in 2015. She won the American Express Entrepreneur Magazine Women of the Year Award.
She’s, uh, the Distinguished Alumni Award from NYU Stern’s Women in Business. She also, by the way, is, uh, I believe on the Board of Directors at, uh, NYU Stern’s School of Business. She is somebody who has not only created a business, But also learned that to create a great business and a great life for yourself, you really, to some degree, got to do something that we’ve talked negatively about a lot lately, which is follow your passion.
She started off following what she thought she was supposed to do, and we’ll hear that story from her in a moment, but. Before we get there, Doug, you’re pretty passionate, I think, about today’s trivia question. Oh, it’s a good one.
Hey there stackers I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug. You know, there are over 7, 000 known languages and I am fluent in four of them English, Canadian, Minnesotan, and Pig Latin, itty pray impressive, right?
I forgot the word for impressive. Lucky for me, English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Its use is so widespread, in fact, that it’s even the official language of the International Space Station. And here I assume they work with some sort of alien tongue. Even Russian cosmonauts work primarily in English out there.
By the way, I just remembered, the cosmonaut is Russian for astronaut, so make that five languages I speak. This stuff is easy. During the space race between the U. S. and the Soviet Union in the 1960s, NASA scientists learned that regular ink pens don’t work in outer space. According to legend, they paid millions of dollars to create a pen that could write upside down while withstanding the pressure and temperature variations of space travel.
However they did it, they weren’t inspired by those crappy pens they keep tied to chains at the bank, I can tell you that much! Those things don’t even work on Earth! Today’s trivia question is, according to an urban legend, now debunked, what did the Russian space team do to solve the same issue in a simpler, more Benjamin saving way?
Ready for the answer? Well, I’ll be back with it right after I figure out how to get post it notes to work in the shower.
Hey
there, stackers! I’m space cadet and paper mache artist Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. In the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to be the first country to conquer space exploration. You know, after the aliens, of course. I’ve seen X Files. Today’s trivia question is, The USA spent millions developing a pen that worked in outer space.
According to urban legend, what did the Russian space team do to solve the same issue in a simpler, more cost effective way? The answer? It’s long been rumored that the Russians solved the problem of pens not working in space by… Using a pencil. In reality, it was NASA that initially commissioned specialized mechanical pencils at roughly 130 a pop.
Soon after, the Fisher Pen Company spent 1 million on the development of what is known now as the Space Pen. That same pen, which retails at about 80, has been used on all manned space flights since its debut on the Apollo 7 mission in 1968. And now, let’s rocket you toward success by showing you how to follow your curiosity to build the career of your dreams with
Liz Elting.
And I’m super happy she’s at the card table with us. Liz Elting is here. How are you?
I’m doing great. Thank you, Joe. How are
you? Well, I’m better now that you’re here. And I have to start here with all the lessons in this project that you have. So many of these, I feel like, are just noticing some of the little things.
I’ll give you an example. You learned a lot about clothing and the importance of dress. At a laundromat early on. I think this is a great place to start. Do you mind sharing that story?
No, I would love to share that story. So it’s interesting because I worked growing up. I worked a lot from very early on from the time I was 10, but when I turned 16, I was actually able to get.
A real job, an official job, where you get a paycheck and they take the taxes out. And that first job I got was at a dry cleaners, and it was called Cadet Cleaners. And it was a chain in the city I grew up in, Toronto. And I stood behind a counter and dealt with cash and worked in that dry cleaners. And I can tell you a little more about it if you’re
interested.
I know. Yeah, sure. You had this woman that walked in though, and she was telling you about how she dressed. And that kind of, I mean, look at you versus look at me today for people not watching on YouTube. You are dressed way better than me, but, but you learned this working at the dry cleaner.
You know, it was interesting because I did always love clothes.
Clothes were something that I thought, wow, one day, one day I’ll be able to afford these clothes. And I remember people would walk in and drop off the most beautiful clothes and I’d be… Admiring them after they left. It was a little, maybe a little crazy, a little sick, but you know, beautiful fuchsia silk blouses and white linen pants.
I remember them so well. And I do remember speaking to a woman and I figured she had some high powered career and that’s how she, um, bought these beautiful clothes and she said. And she told me what she did for a living when I asked, and then she said, but dress for the career you want, not the career you have.
And I thought, okay, that’s an easy thing. Yeah, once I can afford to buy these clothes, I’m going to dress to kill. And I, I do love fashion. So that was the fun part of working in the
cleaners. And my question today for our young people listening, Liz, when I was with American Express, we had casual Fridays, and it was cool that one day a week we would wear jeans.
Now you walk into any business in America, and as you know, it’s way more casual than when I started, probably more casual than when you started. If you’re 25 today listening to you and I talk, do you still like that advice? Still dress up above everybody
else? I do. I do. And I always have. I’ve always dressed for the job I wanted, not the job I had.
And then even when I was an entrepreneur and all the years I was a CEO, I always was the most formally dressed in the entire place. And I just feel like if you dress that way, you feel that way, you know, even if you’re working from home. You put it on, you get in front of your computer, and it’s game time, and you feel it when you’re in the outfit.
So whether you’re alone, or certainly when you’re with people, yes, that’s just how I do it, and I, and I love. And
even hearing you talk, I just think about the process of getting more dressed up puts me in the right frame of mind to go face the day.
Exactly. And that’s, that’s how I’ve always felt since I started working and I’ve loved beautiful clothes, as I said, but then it gets you in that frame of mind, that professional frame of mind.
And yes, even with casual every day now, even with working from home. I’ll still be here in my jacket.
I didn’t mean to belabor that. And by the way, for everybody, it’s not a big piece of this project. It’s just this little tiny piece, but there’s so many of these. And I think that’s something we haven’t talked about so much here for somebody that’s had as much success as you’ve had.
I think focusing on that just a little bit is important. The next thing I wanted to talk about was, so you begin this story talking about you just got your M B A and you’re moving into the dorms, congrat, . Congratulations. Let’s talk about getting the M B A and why and how. You got your m b. Thank you
for catching that, because that is exactly how it happened.
People always say, oh, you started your company from a college dorm room. And it’s like, well, no, it wasn’t college, and it was right after grad school. So yes, what happened was, I, just to go a little further back, I loved languages growing up. I had studied four languages by the time I graduated from high school.
I majored in languages in college. You lived in
Portugal for a
while. Yes. When I was growing up, exactly. When I was eight and nine, I lived in Portugal. And then when I was 10, I moved to Toronto. So by the time I graduated from high school, as I said, I was able to study four languages, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and Latin.
And then I came back to the U S for college, but then did my junior year in Spain, which I loved best year of my life. And then worked in Venezuela briefly after college. So, after Venezuela, and that adventure, and boy was that an adventure, I came to New York, and I have lived here ever since. When I got to New York, I was able to find a job at a translation company.
And I thought, wow, how perfect is that, combining my love for languages and business. I didn’t know such a thing existed, but it was a wonderful place. I loved the culture, and I loved the industry. Thought it could be done better. So, after three years there, I went back to school, got my MBA from NYU Stern, right here in the city, and then graduated.
Now, shortly after graduating, I still didn’t have a job. And I had no money. And this was a recession. This was in 1992, sort of the end of a recession. So, moved back into NYU dorms, and this is what happened. I ended up getting a job in finance. And should I tell you about that brief stint in finance,
or? I would love to, but I actually want to rewind, if that’s alright, just a bit, because I just have so many questions about, you’re in this career, you’re working for this company, you’re doing something you clearly love, right, and your book even has the word passion on it.
You’re passionate about this. So why the decision then to go into and get an MBA? Cause I know there’s people listening to us right now or watching us right now that are maybe at that point, they’re like, do I go back to school? Do I not go back to school? What was your decision making criteria to leave that job?
That’s a great question. You’re absolutely right, because as I said, it was the perfect way to combine my passion for languages and my desire to be a business person. So I did love the company. I was first in production there, and then I moved over to the sales side, so I had first dealt with getting the jobs done, and then I started really dealing with the clients, and I saw a real gap between what clients needed and what was available in the industry.
As far as service, as far as quality, as far as turnaround time, as far as deliverables, as far as creating a one stop shop. And I also, the other piece of it is, even though this company at the time was the largest translation company in the industry, it was about 90 people, it was a relatively flat organization.
I didn’t know how I really was going to grow there over time. So I thought, okay, I majored in modern languages in college, but I’m missing the business Peace from an educational standpoint. Yes, I’m learning business, but an MBA could really help me. It could help me get a job in another industry, maybe international banking, maybe something else.
And I even put the idea in my head, maybe one day I will start a translation company because I love this industry and I have a thought on how it can be done better. But, I need to first get the business education, number one, and number two, save some money. Because how do you start a company with no money?
So that was the thought. With that in mind, I went back to school and got my MBA, both for the educational piece and to get a job where I could make some money before embarking on whatever I
ultimately did. There’s a part of the story, Liz, that I love. And there’s a part that I hate. The part, the part that I love is that you said, I’m going to need to have some money to start this company.
And I need to, I can’t start a company with nothing. So I definitely am going to have to put some money away. So I like that. The part that I didn’t love, maybe hate was a strong term, but the part that I didn’t love was that you have this thing that you really like doing and you’re in this industry. And you even say in the book, you kind of stifled that to go into this thing where he thought you could make big money.
In fact, you went to your dad for advice, right? And he told you, he gave you, I think, some great advice about your money follows.
Yes, he did. Well, certainly he did when I was torn on what to do when I was in college. And I said, well, I love languages, but what on earth am I going to do with a modern language major?
You know, I’m interested in business. And he said, pursue your passion. And the rest will work out and obviously that’s precisely what happened, but you’re right. Why did I stop being in the translation industry? I think as I said, it was because I thought the company could do things better and I didn’t have the power at the company.
I was just a kid. I was in my early 20s. So I couldn’t change what the company was doing. So that was one issue. I didn’t know how I would grow in that company. So I thought maybe having a language degree, a degree in modern languages was great for undergrad but that MBA could be helpful in opening up my opportunities for different jobs.
So that’s why I went back to school. And I’m glad I did. And I’m so glad I did. I mean, I had a wonderful experience getting my MBA, meeting wonderful people, networking, then I can go on. But it, it was wonderful. But
it also seems like you having that three years of work experience before you went back, like you see Liz all the time, people that go right from undergrad.
into grad school. And just after reading your work, I bet that you would tell me that would be a mistake.
Oh, a huge mistake. And in fact, I’m on the board of NYU business school now. So I’m dealing with Stern a lot and how it works. And now the average time between undergrad and an MBA is five to seven years.
So it used to be about three years way back in the day when I went, now it’s five to seven years. And that’s for great reason. I mean, people get so much. Out of their time between undergrad and grad school, I’m glad I had it. Those three years were key to my whole career, but what people do in those years is so important to learn what you like, what you love and what you don’t love or hate is so important to make connections with people, to network, and then finally to maybe get an idea on how something can be done better, right?
To ultimately start that company.
Just a little life experience under your belt. Absolutely. So, you finish your MBA, you get this job working for a trading firm, and being a money podcast… I want to talk about this for a little bit, Liz, because you’re super excited. The first company you work for with your undergrad has a lot of camaraderie, a lot of friends.
So you’re thinking I’m going to go in here. I’m going to be, I’m going to be friends with all these people. Tell us about this experience, give us a view, a little story about what that trading floor was like. Yes,
as you said Joe, the other company I worked at, it was my second family, all these great people who became my friends.
Walked into the trading floor, first thing I noticed was, I’m the only woman here. The only woman. And I love men. I do. I was always boy crazy my entire time growing up. But I thought, okay, I might feel a little bit awkward here, but that’s okay. And then, very quickly, a few things happened. Whenever the phone rang, the guys would yell, Liz, phone!
Because I was the woman. So I had to get the phone. I was the receptionist, even though that was not part of the deal. None of them were going to get the phone. So that was one
thing. That was a problem. And by the way, not to cut you off, but you’re one of the only people in this room with an MBA. Most of the people there don’t have half of the work experience, half of the day training, but just because you’re a woman.
And in fact, one thing that made me laugh, Liz, was when you said, not only was I the only woman, I feel like around some of these guys, I might’ve been the only woman they’d ever met just ’cause of the way they acted. , you are
so good at you. Really thank you for reading this. You know the story so well.
That’s precisely how it happened. It was though they had never met a woman because they were yelling, there were swearing, like left and right. I mean the, you know, the, the F-bombs that came out, I mean, between that. And quoting crazy TV skits, and then finally, you know, with the sports. I mean, it was all how the different teams did.
And the truth is, I actually like sports. I worked for the Toronto Blue Jays for four summers during college. So I, more than a lot of people, do love professional sports. But it was all sports, all swearing. All kind of like they were from another planet in a way that I thought I will probably not find my close friends here.
So you’re right, a very different environment and obviously sexism. First it was the phone, and then when I went back to my boss to say, Is there anything else I can do when I finish my work early and stayed till midnight? And he said, well, you can go in the supply closet and see what supplies we need.
And you can go around to each of the guys and ask them what they need. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And then finally, and this is the most important point though of all, I had loved the translation industry. As I said, I loved languages. I loved solving clients problems. I loved people. And at this proprietary trading division of the French bank.
There was none of that. It was literally putting numbers in a spreadsheet. Numbers after numbers after numbers, and then filling out forms and faxing them. And then faxing another form, and another form, and another form. And it was such a different industry, and I thought, I don’t enjoy this job, and I can’t imagine enjoying anybody’s jobs here.
But, you’re right. You’re right. That’s exactly
how it happened. Once again, you take lessons from these little things that most people notice much like at the dry cleaner with a Woman who’s dressed to the nines and you learn that that’s important at the same time You talk about in your book when Liz’s lessons is asking for a raise and when you go to your boss and you say hey I want more aka I’m asking for a raise.
I’m asking for more responsibility He goes, Hey, you can become the supply clerk, totally misrepresents it, but you make a great point. We always make the point at Stacking Benjamins, Liz, that people, you know, your boss has a lot of different things going on in their head. Studies show that your boss will entertain the idea of giving you a raise if you ask.
You take that one step further and say women ask for less than men by roughly, I think it was 6, 000 you say? Is that the number? That’s right.
That’s right. And so there I was. I was doing extra work. I was finishing everything I was given earlier. I was staying until midnight to get it done. And then it still didn’t work because of the environment, because of the situation, and as you said, most of these guys didn’t even have their MBAs, but that was besides the point, but I think another quote I say is, no one will value you if you first don’t value yourself, and I just thought, I can’t make this my life, and even though I, Always believe in the philosophy quitters never win and winners never quit.
So I thought, Oh my God, I just got my MBA. I have this job. It’s doing equity arbitrage. That sounds really good. At a French bank. How perfect. How can I quit now that I just started? But I realized in my heart, it was not sustainable. I could not do it. So after four weeks, I said to my boss. I’m so sorry, I made a mistake after only four weeks and how much time do you need?
And he said, two weeks is fine, Liz. So I worked two more weeks and then out the door. That was my aha moment when I, when I gave notice. And that’s when I, as I said, gave notice and quit and decided to start my translation company.
I want to dive into that next, but before we do, I want to pause for another second to talk about this idea of passion.
And so. You put your, quote, passion aside to make some money. You go into this field that you don’t care about as much. You end up in this bro culture, right? It’s, it’s absolutely from the moon. And I wonder about this idea of passion because well, being on the board at Stern and a gentleman who we both know, who’s been a guest on the show, uh, Scott Galloway wrote a great blurb for your book.
Scott said, I think when he was on our show, Scott was the one that said, you know, passion is something that. Very rich old guys say to go chase, but they’ve already made the money. They’ve already made it. So where is that line between passion and money? Because on one hand, you had the job you were passionate about, but you couldn’t make any money.
On the other hand, then you went without passion and you know, you end up in this place that just doesn’t fit. Where is that, where’s that line for you? No,
and that’s so true, because I’ve heard Scott say that recently, yes, that is what he’s saying, I’ve heard him say it, and I, I think to myself every time he says it, it’s like, I understand why he’s saying that, but for me, it would have never worked if I had tried to stay In finance, even if I had left that company and found a better environment, because I’m sure they weren’t all such a bro culture, such a boys club, I mean, not quite to that extent, my heart wasn’t in it, and then I think what actually happens, and this happens a lot to women, quite frankly, is then they quit when they have kids, and not that there’s anything wrong with that, people should do what they choose, But it’s because they’re not loving their job or perhaps they’re dealing with sexism or both or the company doesn’t have the right family leave or whatever.
If they pursue something they’re passionate about, they’re loving it, the culture is right, it can work for when they have a family, then they’re likely to stay in it and rise to the top. They’re able to dream big and win. So I think with respect to women. That can certainly be the case, and I’ve known so many women that that’s happened to.
And, you know, once you leave for five years, when you have kids, before your kids go to kindergarten, it’s very hard to get back in. We all know that. As far as men, though, to some degree, because I see it with men too, if they’re not doing what they love… They do it as long as they can, often they’re miserable, often they try to change, I know a lot of people who’ve been in this situation, then they move over to something else and perhaps they like it a little better, in both cases it’s paying the bills, but their heart isn’t in it, and their goal is just to make enough money so they can quit and never work another day in their lives.
And is that really what we all want? Not that that’s a terrible thing, but they’re just getting through it to pay the bills, and not because they’re happy. And in the end, happiness is what it’s really all about. So I think the key is finding something you love, that you’re passionate about, and then finding a way to make money at it.
I understand Scott may be saying, well, yeah, you may love playing the guitar, but can you make any money? I get that. But if you can find a way, even if it’s something like where the industry. On the surface doesn’t sound that great, but the job involves working with people all day long and you love working with people like finding ways within a company that you’re doing what you love, just so you stay with it and you’re happy.
And so that’s my thought on all that. I think you can find ways to, to enjoy what you’re doing. And last, last thing I’ll say, I’ll say on it is. In my case, I loved languages, and that’s why I got into the industry. But then over time, there were other things I loved about it. And so, that can work well too.
And in my case, it was the working with people, and the developing people. And all of that. So I think the key is whatever you do, find what you love in it and then stick with it or find the thing you love and make money. If I had a way to make money at it.
It’s interesting you say that because, you know, I, I look at people in this, I don’t know how familiar with the fire movement and these people talking about retiring really early.
And I feel like it’s exactly what you’re saying, Liz. They’re so disenfranchised. I’m just going to drop out. And then what I’m seeing now from people that have retired at 40 years old, they feel at 45, like, what the hell is my life for? Like they retire from nothing to
nothing. Exactly. They were miserable all those years, but they stuck with it to pay the bills.
Then they have nothing they can do at that point. So instead quit it, take a risk, find a way to make money at it. And then you can do it the rest of your life and be happy, or, you know, fine tune it so that you’re doing it in a way that makes you happy, but it’s something you love.
I’m glad you said risk, by the way, because your next chapter is called Risk.
What’s the first thing, so you’re obviously going from this job that it was just so horrible, but you are now risking everything. You’re going to start this business. What’s the first thing that you thought about when you’re starting your new business?
The first thing I thought about was sales, sales, sales, you know.
I was not thinking about, okay, need to create the perfect business plan, the perfect debt and go get funding. No, not in a million years. I knew that would take a lot of time and effort and is very difficult to do. I also felt, and that’s still the case today, I mean, at least as much. I also knew that even if I went through all that, in the end, those still, those investors and I would still need revenues.
We still need sales. Right? I mean, it’s interesting because all the years I was doing what I did, we used to say revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. Now, that was because people would talk all about their revenues, but they’d be losing money. But now I’d even say funding is vanity and revenue and profit are sanity because usually once you get that revenue in, you can figure out a way to be profitable.
You do your best to, and certainly profit is what it all comes down to. It’s like the blood flow. Yes, you need that revenue. There is no way you will last if you don’t have it. The number one reason companies go out of business is they run out of cash. So you need that revenue, you need it more than anything, and you can’t be spending all your time, or most of your time, fundraising.
Because in the end, if you don’t have the sales, you’re not going to make it. And the sales take time. Especially in the beginning, as we know, the first million is by far the toughest or the first five million that can take years. And then once you get that action in, then it becomes so much easier. So that’s where the
effort needs to go.
You spent a lot of time at the beginning cold calling. You’ve a hilarious section early in your book called you never forget your first time. So the phone rings one day. You must remember this like it’s yesterday, the day the phone finally rings, Liz.
I do, because it was all outbound calls, it was all me calling them.
And finally, the phone rang, and I picked it up and they said, Um, okay, are you able to translate a document from English into Slovak? It’s a contract, it’s three pages. I said, yes, absolutely. We do that all the time. And I took that job and it was for a company called Damovsky Lawyer Service. I remember it well.
DLS. And I said, yes. And they said, how long will that take? I said, we can do it in three days. Does that work for you? And they said, yes, absolutely. And I hung up the phone like, Oh my God, did we really do this? Did this really come through? Because even though I had done that type of thing before for three years and, you know, hundreds or thousands of jobs at the other company I was at, Your America, there’s nothing like your first job, your first project, all that work for that project.
And that was just the best feeling.
I just, even, even hearing you say it now, I just think, just even just this idea that my baby has some legs. My baby’s taken off.
Yes. Yes. And then I tell a couple of funny stories in the book, which we don’t have to talk about now, but about how somehow that very client, that first client wanted to stop by and check out the office when it was time to return the job.
And I dealt with that issue and then the same thing and they didn’t even tell me they were coming by they surprised me at the front door so lots of drama in the beginning in that dorm room and what that taught me was that along with the roaches I mean what that taught me was We, I know, we had, we had all kinds of things happen in that dorm room.
The goal was to be able to pay for an office, and back then, you really needed an office. Obviously now, everybody works remotely, but back then, you needed an impressive address. Even if you had almost no space, you needed an impressive address. So, the goal was, within six months, to be able to move into a real office.
And, we took all the actions we needed to do. Sales, sales, sales, 300 phone calls a day, 300 letters a day. To get the revenue, to be able to pay for that first office, and at the end of six months, we were able to move into that
first office. I love the, I love the underlying message that you survived it, had created a billion dollar, a billion dollar business.
And now you can look back and laugh at some of these things, which I’m sure weren’t funny at the time. Like when you, when you, the coffee, you open up the coffee, you pour the water, and then these cockroaches just come streaming out.
Like a clown car. It was about a hundred of them. I thought, I was exhausted on no sleep, just signing letters, stuffing letters.
I thought, I’ll go get a cup of coffee, maybe that’ll help. I open up the coffee maker. A hundred roaches just streamed out of it. And that was, as I said, when I realized, okay, between the two clients showing up, we got to get ourselves out of here and get into a real office. And. Ideally a nicer, I mean another apartment, another apartment.
There is one thing from early on I saw you in another interview talk about that you do regret. And that’s, that’s with a partner that you hadn’t really paid any attention to contracts at the beginning. Can we talk to our future business owners out there about what you learned from that experience, Liz?
Because I think this is huge for anybody starting a business.
It is huge. And, and by the way, and you know, my book and I, I appreciate so much of what you’re bringing up and what you remember from the early days. It’s about what I did right and what I did wrong and, and you know, it’s kind of beach read business read, but this is a very important lesson and it was a huge mistake in the early days.
I started with a partner as I said, we had no money. And we didn’t hire an attorney to start the company, we didn’t hire an accountant, we just did it on our own. But obviously we had to spend money on something, I mean the minimal money we had, that money has to go to something we didn’t have, and that would be a shareholder’s agreement.
We had no shareholder’s agreement. And we set it up as 50 50 owners, that we were each 50 50 owners. Without a shareholder’s agreement. So what that meant is we didn’t have anything defined as far as roles, responsibilities, decision making, dispute resolution, what happens in the event of death, disability, divorce, and a buy sell provision.
If one of us wants to sell, if we’re not getting along and someone needs to buy and someone needs to sell, nothing. No way that the company would be valued. So, you know, no process for that. And that caused all kinds of problems along the way. And finally, ultimately, I had to litigate to get myself out of that situation.
You know, it’s interesting because after, I guess it was 22 years, I finally needed to pursue litigation. And what I asked for was a custodian to be put in charge to resolve deadlock in the short term and oversee the sale of the company in the longer term, whereby. I could buy him out, he could buy me out, my partner that is, or a third party could buy us both out.
And I did get what I wanted, which was that custodian to set up a plan for sale where that happened. And it was to maximize shareholder value in the process. But I needed to spend 50 million dollars. Number one, but the other piece of it is This is all because I didn’t have a proper shareholder’s agreement, but the other piece of it was there was something else missing that I should have had in that shareholder’s agreement.
And I’ve even had conversations in the last week with a few different people who don’t necessarily have this in their shareholder’s agreement. So for people who are starting companies and creating these, assuming you don’t want the flexibility to go and compete after you sell your company, make sure you have a non compete agreement with your partner or partners.
Because in my case. I was never able to get that, and even when I litigated, I couldn’t get that, and had I gotten that, I would have been able to cash out for quite a bit more. And I did very well. I’m very fortunate. It could have made a difference in, as far as, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars more had I had that non compete, had we had to sign that with one another.
So I think that’s an important piece too. But I think the big lesson there is. You certainly, you need a shareholder agreement. Secondly, I would avoid being 50 50 oners, if you can. If you only have one partner, make it so you own more than 50 percent and you are the deciding vote. 51. 51. Yes. Exactly. 51.
Because that was hard. Every day. Every day we were fighting, we were disagreeing. Somehow we made it through and we made it through 26 years, which is longer than a lot of partnerships, but it was rocky. There were fights. It was crazy. And so you want to be the decision maker if you can. Very important.
Wow.
Just a 50 million lesson. It just, well, even more than that, to your point, and it put a pit in my stomach. Well, as I’m hoping our stackers can see, there were so many lessons here and I just, I was laughing with you, Liz. I was crying with you. I was learning so much from Liz’s lessons. The book is Dream Big and Win.
Translating passion into purpose and creating a billion dollar business and, uh, tomorrow, it’s available everywhere, correct? Thank
you so much for mentioning that, Joe. Yes, and it can be bought on Amazon or other online retailers like Barnes Noble, etc.
Liz, thank you so much for helping our stackers. We have so many discussions, you know, now about passion and purpose.
And I just, you helped us so much today. Thank you. Thank
you so much, Joe. I loved our conversation.
This is Matt from Gainesville, Georgia. And when I’m not delivering all this consumerism in a big brown package parcel, I’m
stacking
Benjamins. Big thanks to Liz Elting. I like how she talks about follow your passion.
A lot different than Scott Galloway did. I’m glad she was able to bring that out.
Yeah, I agree with Liz. There’s definitely a middle ground there. You may not be passionate about whatever your company’s product is, let’s say you’re building stop signs or something like that. But you can be incredibly passionate about building a business and being highly successful at that.
A lot of people get really charged up almost at winning it like it’s a game. And you can be really passionate about that. And, and, um, I think that’s probably where that middle ground is.
We take questions all the time from people that want to be financial advisors, OG and, uh, about starting your career as a financial advisor, starting.
My career as a financial advisor, maybe yours too, you described it was ugly. It’s just like, like Liz was talking about the early years being not that great. It’s going to be ugly at the beginning of any career. You’re going to hit a lot of bumps in the road. Yeah. I
mean, there’s all sorts of stuff that are in the way.
I mean, just the normal growing pains Entrepreneurship, the normal growing pains of learning your craft, whatever it is, and then the changes that happen over time in whatever industry or business that you happen to be in. I mean, look at, you know, in the last 25 years of doing financial planning, all the different changes that have happened or, you know, the, I guess maybe in the stop sign business to use Doug’s analogy, there’s probably not been a lot of changes, but maybe different reflective paint perhaps.
No,
this one’s more octagon.
Our obtuse angles are
more angular. There’s a little known fact that if a stop sign is bordered in white… You don’t actually have to stop. No, you don’t. There’s a white border around your steps and you don’t have to stop.
Look at Joe’s face. He’s trying to think, wait, is that, do they all wait? So we, okay.
Quick story
about that. I don’t want anybody to believe that. I don’t want anybody listening.
Believe that. So in college, uh, go Boilermakers. I was getting a ride home, like. There were three of us getting a ride home back to our hometown from a young woman who also lived there And we got close to home dropping somebody off in their neighborhood.
So kind of residential, but one of the guys says that he says You know, all the white border ones are optional, right? No, I didn’t know that so we start blowing through stop signs in the neighborhood. Oh my god The third one! And it’s night time! After the third one, finally, I’m like grabbing the guy’s shoulder like, dude, say something.
He finally broke the news to her, but that was terrifying. Don’t do that while you’re in a car.
At the very least, if I said that, I wouldn’t be in the car. I wouldn’t say that anyway, but at the very least, I wouldn’t be in the car. Well, that’s,
that’s how smart we were as college
kids. Well, on that note, it’s time to throw out the Haven Lifeline.
It seems
appropriate. Seems. What an amazing transition. If you’re risking your life…
We’re going to tackle some of life’s most important questions. Like, why are you in the car when you say that? Our friends at Haven Life Insurance Agency put what you value first, not being in the car with that guy and, uh, being able to live another day.
It’s why they made buying quality term life insurance actually simple. You go to StackyBenjamins. com slash HavenLife now for a free quote at HavenLife. Their prices are affordable, no waiting several weeks for a decision, lovely customer support, and of course, they’re not a company that, uh, has never done this before.
Their policies are backed by MassMutual, which is more than a hundred. And 60 years old. Today we’re gonna throw out the lifeline to who are we throwing out the lifeline to? We are throwing out the lifeline to Christine. Christine, it’s about time. Christine, how are you?
Hey Joe and Oji. This is Christine from Seattle.
I’m calling because I’ve been talking recently with my nine year old nephew about personal finance. He is gotten really into saving money and how to make money, and as part of that conversation we started talking about investment accounts. And he really wants me to open him a custodial brokerage account.
His parents don’t really have any interest in this process, so I would mainly be responsible for it. Initially, he wanted me to invest in Tesla for him. However, after more discussion, he decided that An S& P 500 index fund is a better fit for him. Needless to say, I’m very proud of this discussion we’re having, and I’m very happy to open him a custodial brokerage account to continue his learning.
However, I’m wondering if you have any advice on things I should keep in mind when I open a custodial brokerage account, both generally as well as being an aunt and not a parental guardian of my nephew. Uh, if you have any advice as well on how I can keep my nephew continuously inspired and not have this be sort of a passing fancy, I would very much appreciate your advice.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to my t shirt. I would give it to Doug, but I’m pretty sure a woman’s extra small would not fit him.
Looking forward to your response. You have no idea, Christine. I would look so good in that shirt.
Doug already wears other, uh, extra small women’s shirts and it’s, it’s not good.
It is not, not good. Christine talking to her nine year old nephew. That’s pretty bad ass. That is awesome. Yeah, pretty sweet. I love this topic. Clearly, OG, your vice is going to be teaching them option spreads, like first thing. Yeah,
obviously. Calls and puts. Get them on Reddit, WallStreetBets. Sooner the
better.
If he could short AMC,
I was going to say, just keep putting your own capital into his account. He’ll get pretty excited. Yeah.
So, uh, where does she go with this, OG? Uh, how does she create maybe a curriculum around
this? I don’t know that there’s anything really to be concerned with or thinking about in terms of being the aunt on an account versus a mom or a dad.
The best way to do this, I think, has got to be through a regular, like, UGMA or UPMOD count. Knowing that that money becomes and is the kid’s money at age 18. That’s basically the moral of that story. It’s his money or her money. It’s going to be very difficult to impress upon them the importance of time.
Because a 9 year old, much like a 19 year old, much like a 39 year old, thinks that there’s… All the time in the world is still to go. And while that’s true, the hard part is seeing the length of the value of that compounding and stuff over time. So you have to kind of bring it back into the short term.
What’s worked really well for us in our family is contrasting the difference between what the savings account is paying versus the brokerage account. And you don’t even have to look at return on investment because there’s going to be years when the market goes down, there’s going to be periods of time where, you know, I had a thousand bucks and now I got 900.
This isn’t what I thought it would be type of thing. But just looking at just dividend payout versus the interest rate earned is profoundly different. You know, say, well, you’ve got 200 in your savings account with a credit union and they gave you two and a half cents this quarter. Your 200 in your brokerage account earned you 4 this year.
You know, that’s, it’s an order of magnitude higher in terms of the income produced from a stock portfolio versus money in the bank. And, and I think that’s the biggest way to compare and contrast, you know, to kind of keep their eye on the prize. Using long term things like, hey, if you put 6, 000 a year in here for the next 20 years, you’ll have 10 million when you’re 55.
I don’t think a nine year old cares about any of that stuff. And then the last piece I would say is it can’t always be about like 25, 50 years from now, right? Like I think it’s important to also have some short and medium term timeframes also, as you’re talking about money, as you’re talking about goals and that sort of thing, especially for younger people.
And that’s just not nine year olds also. That’s 29 year olds too. You know, it’s hard, it’s hard for us to think about 40 years from now as being a really big benefit when. There’s a really nice car I want to buy now. I will
say this. I totally agree that there’s got to be some living today and teaching people just all delay, delay, delay versus I can have it today and tomorrow if I balance.
Yeah, I think that’s great. I do know talking to a few people that have worked extensively with kids and with teenagers, the thing that excites them. It’s not topics about don’t get into debt or have a budget or those, you know, whatever. Those are fine. The rule of 72 OG and the doubling of your money and the, Hey, if we keep putting more money in this and looking at that doubling and doubling again, doubling again, doubling again, and showing them how a thousand dollars today ends up being a huge amount of money by the time I’m 60.
builds in that delay gratification. The kid wants to delay it, but the kid also then starts to get excited about, I’m doing these things today that are going to make me wealthy later on. Like kids get that. I’ve seen that over and over and over the people work with kids. Do you like the index fund versus the individual stock Tesla S& P 500 versus Tesla?
Yeah, I can take it or leave it. Yeah, I can make a case either way there. If the kid invests in Tesla, he will get much more, much more, it’ll be much more real that when I invest in the S& P 500, this is a collection of these companies. There’s a piece of me that kind of like starting there because you then you’ve been in an individual stock.
You’ve seen it go up, you’ve seen it go down, and now you can see what the S& P 500 really does. I think you get it even more.
It’s the contrasting thing like the, like the interest in dividend stuff. That’s, that’s how we started with our kids. You know, we used a company that we don’t really like anymore called Stockpile and they invested in the brands that they recognized and did business with.
Xboxes and McDonald’s and Hasbro and, you know, all of these companies that the Hershey’s, you know, these companies that they interact with all the time. So it was easy for them to see like Hey, I’m eating a Hershey bar. I own part of this company or I, you know, mom and dad just got something in the mail from Amazon.
I own a little teeny tiny bit of that company. And to your point, Once you kind of understand how that conceptualness of I own a really small part of this organization Then you can have the discussion of well Do you think it’s better to try to pick and choose the winners? Or do you think it’s better to own all of the companies that are the biggest companies in America?
And we can do that all in one you know, one line item as opposed to having 500 on your statement. So that’s a good observation.
Thanks for the question, Christine. If you’ve got a question for us, stackybenjamins. com slash voicemail. And then, uh, we will send you like we’re sending Christine a code where she can just go in and order herself whatever size shirt she wants.
Um, and one preferably that doesn’t fit Doug. So stackybenjamins. com slash voicemail gets you there. Hey, time for our last segment of the show. This we call the back porch. Let’s, uh, see a little bit about what’s going on in our community. Later this week, Kate is going to be on Instagram live. Usually that is.
Thursdays at 5 p. m. Eastern. Hopefully, uh, I unfortunately won’t be there this week, but, uh, we plan on doing that again this week. If you want all the places where you can interface with our, our brand, whether it’s our YouTube channel, it’s Instagram or other social media accounts, stackingbenjamins. com slash welcome.
But Doug, speaking of those accounts, we have got some fun stuff happening. Yeah.
Great stuff going on in the community. One of the things I love about our basement group on Facebook is that it’s like a real community. You got your neighbors who are just, they want to have fun. You’ll stroll over to their lawn because they’ve always got a cooler, a beer sitting in their garage.
You can just grab one and hang out and have fun. You got your other serious neighbors who are asking questions like Brandon, Stacker Brandon in the basement not too long ago asked a great question about whether or not he should add an annuity into his retirement portfolio as part of his. Uh, his company options.
And he got
a great response to that. Yeah.
But, but the point is he, yeah, he got several responses. Actually, Stacker Andy replied to him, but I love that people look to our community to ask some of those serious questions about, you know, how to approach their
financial planning. What did Andy say? What did Andy say?
Oh, I wasn’t planning
on going there, but Andy said, assuming it’s a fixed lifetime annuity, the pros would be that an insurance company takes on the risk that you’ll live to be a hundred and provide guaranteed lifetime income. The cons are everything else.
Well put, Andy.
He goes on to say a few other things, but that’s a great answer.
It can be a positive OG. I mean, he nailed it. It can, an annuity can be a positive, but. Could be. Yeah,
it could be. But you got other people like Stacker Paul, who, uh, completely understands my obsession with Bucky’s espresso, chocolate espresso beans, uh, I mean, he just gets me, he just gets me.
Another one I really liked, here’s the thing, Joe, I really want to get to this because what people are talking about in the basement right now are what we’re talking about right now at the back porch. There’s a big discussion going on right now and we’re recording this, uh, you know, a little ahead of time.
Um, so. When you hear this, it happened a little bit ago, but they’re talking about getting rid of dessert and adding in the back porch. And this is, this is causing almost as much discussion as our work from home, uh, thing, which is still ongoing. The good
news is, this is not us debating against each other.
This is us fighting with Apple and losing.
Fighting the man! But, uh,
Instead of sticking it to the man, though, we’re like, We’re letting the man stick it to us. Right.
Uncle! Uncle! But here’s, uh, here’s a stacker, uh, Jeffrey Rose says, As long as this is one of my favorite comments. Uh, as long as the back porch is as good as dessert, I’m okay with it.
Totally makes sense regarding completion rates. That probably explains why stacking Benjamins is not ranked even high. Well, that and the curmudgeon OG is. Good thing there is neighbor Doug to carry the show where it is today.
Yes! Oh, who put him in charge of reading this crap, OG? That’s just
not good. But it’s actually a pretty long discussion.
It’s good. Yeah. My favorite poll lately was. The other stacker, Paul, from when Aaron Skye Kelly was on a few weeks ago, which is what do you like on your twat waffle?
Are we back to that
again? It was just perfect. Fantastic. Uh, OG, what are you watching on TV? Football. Just football. Yeah.
Well, you can, you can watch football six days a week.
I watch it every day of the week now, because it’s football season, obviously. What games are on Tuesdays? Reruns from games on Saturday. Reruns. You’ll watch reruns. Games I didn’t see all the way on
Saturday. Have you guys watched the games on Amazon Prime? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like Al Michaels is a little unhinged versus the way he was on another.
He’s got maybe more latitude to roam. Like, they’re like, Al, why don’t you just say whatever’s on your mind? There’s no rules on
the internet. That’s why Herbie’s there. To rein him in.
Yeah. And he’s the antithesis
of that. I didn’t realize how much that guy had to be reined
in. I was like your old uncle Al, you know, walking down the street and doesn’t realize he still has his pajamas on. Uh, sometimes. Well, it’s that bad.
Thanks for that visual. It
just, it just feels like that sometimes. I don’t, I don’t know.
We’re watching, uh, because I know you’re about to ask, Joe. Have we talked about Only Murders in the Building yet on the show?
I
don’t know if we have. Well, I didn’t remember if we had or not, uh, but I know you’ve been watching that. Cheryl is up on the current season. It’s the most asked question I get in my neighborhood from my friends. Ooh, you watching Only Murders in the Building? That’s the hot thing right now, Doug.
We’re late to the party because I think they’re on season three.
We’re only about halfway through season two. And when I first tried it… The first episode, I wasn’t into it. And, uh, I tried it again because we were looking for something to watch, and now I really dig it. It’s constructed really well. They put the story together really well, and it’s a little over the top.
It’s a little Broadway y in some cases, but I just think all the acting performances are fantastic, and, uh, they do a great job of keeping the mystery going with a couple of little plot twists, but not in a thriller way, almost like in a semi
comedic way. Yeah, you and Mrs. O. G. watching this, it all…
No, this is not his kind of show at all.
There’s no way OG would like this show. It’s not
football. We just began watching a documentary. I think both you guys would watch a welcome to Wrexham. Uh, which is the story of the guys buying, uh, buying the Wrexham football club. I didn’t know that was a documentary. Yeah, it’s on FX. It’s, uh, I watch it via Hulu.
So, uh, good stuff.
Ryan,
Ryan, Ryan Reynolds and, uh, Ryan Reynolds and, uh, Rob McElhinney. And it’s actually Rob’s idea. And it’s funny because one of my favorite quotes from the first episode was, as Rob’s talking about buying this team and his idea of doing it, he’s like, but I only have TV money. He goes, what I really need is movie star money.
Actually, that’s not enough money. He goes, actually, what I need is movie star meets superhero money. And wait, that’s not enough. I need movie star meets superhero meets a gin manufacturer money. No, wait, I need movie star, a superhero gin maker and a mobile phone money. No, wait, I need, he goes, and then he kind of turns, he’s like, how much stuff is this guy into?
I didn’t know that Rob and Ryan had never met before they bought this team together. Oh, wow. They had never, I thought they were like these old friends, you know, sitting around over a beer going, Hey OG, you want to go buy a football team?
And OG, when this happened, I, first thing I thought of was Roman from Succession buying that team.
Yeah. That’s
funny. Speaking of Roman, how often do you guys think about the Roman empire? Maybe we’ll get into the Roman empire later. However, a couple of quick things before we go. Big thanks to everybody for hanging out with us coming up on Wednesday, another great show. We have. The amazing Farnoosh Tarabi, who is so money coming on the show talking about how fear might need a better agent, might need a better PR person talking about using fear to help you make better decisions.
That’s coming up on Wednesday, but before that, if you’re here, because maybe you are fearing that you’re making sub optimal decisions, OG and his team are taking clients. So head to stackingbenjamins. com slash OG. And that gets you to he and his team’s calendar, stackingbenjamins. com slash OG to make better decisions in the future.
All right. Uh, Doug, you got it from here, man. What should we have learned today? Well, Joe, first
take some advice from Liz Elting and switch your dreaming to doing. in order to fulfill your highest potential. Second, every investment strategy has a bubble problem, not just stocks or real estate. That is why you diversify your funds.
How’s your diversification? But the big lesson? Forget Pig Latin. I need to learn how to speak IKEA. Unless Liz Elting can help me translate IKEA into English, I might never finish setting up Joe’s mom’s…
Thanks to Liz for joining us today. Her book, Dream Big and Win, translating passion into purpose and creating a billion dollar business is available everywhere. We’ll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins. com. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul Sehy.
Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast, with help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn Invest podcast. Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called The 201.
You’ll find the 411 on all things money at the 201. Just visit stackingbenjamins. com slash 201. Wonder how beautiful we all are? Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t check out our YouTube version of this show, Engineered by Tina Ikenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want to chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Youngkin are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
Say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the basement fun with other stackers type stackingbenjamins. com slash basement Not only should you not take advice from these nerds don’t take advice from people you don’t know This show is for entertainment purposes only before making any financial decisions speak with a real financial advisor I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug and we’ll see you next time back here at the stacking Benjamin show
Okay I’ve sat here trying to think of something pleasant to say after that, and I can’t.
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