Is good debt a myth? Should we all chase FIRE? The basement panel weighs in.
In today’s Financial Concepts Friday roundtable, Joe brings the basement crew together for a lively “In or Out” debate on some of the most polarizing personal finance topics out there. Are we in or out on the idea of “good debt”? Do budgets really matter when you’re just starting out? Should you talk about money with your friends and family… or is that still taboo?
Joining Joe are three financial thinkers who aren’t afraid to stir the pot:
- Paula Pant from Afford Anything
- Jesse Cramer from The Personal Finance for Long Term Investors Show
- OG from our own basement think tank (and planning headquarters)
Together, they dig into:
- Whether any debt can actually be considered good
- If living without a budget is a fast track to financial regret—or freedom
- The upside (and awkwardness) of open money conversations
- How FIRE goals like retiring by 35 sound… and feel, once you really unpack them
Plus, Mom’s neighbor Doug drops by with a trivia challenge that’ll have you laughing (and maybe yelling at your speaker). And of course, we wrap up with reflections that’ll leave you both entertained and a little bit wiser.
So grab a LaCroix from the mini fridge and join us in the basement—this one’s packed with laughs, insights, and hot takes on cold, hard cash.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/personal-finance-most-controversial-questions-1665
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic: We tackle some of the personal finance world’s most controversial questions.
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- The concept of “good” vs. “bad” debt
- Using debt as leverage for income-producing assets
- Risks of leverage seen during the 2008 housing crisis
- Auto loans with 0% interest financing
- Keeping low-interest mortgages while investing elsewhere
- Paying off a low-rate mortgage early for peace of mind
- Whether beginners need a strict budget to succeed
- Tracking expenses vs. traditional budgeting
- Paula’s “anti-budget” method
- Creating spending plans using a calendar-based approach
- The unrealistic nature of forecasting detailed monthly expenses
- Car wash budgeting as a metaphor for flexible spending
- Talking openly about money with friends and family
- Wage transparency and discovering salary discrepancies
- Cultural money messaging received during childhood
- Capital One’s approach to matching customer service based on credit behavior
- Being financially independent vs. simply debt-free
- Chasing FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) by age 35
- Trade-offs and sacrifices involved in reaching FIRE early
- Prioritizing financial flexibility over early retirement
- Living frugally vs. enjoying life experiences
- The emotional challenge of switching from saving to spending
- “One more year” syndrome in early retirees
- Building options and autonomy through early saving habits
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Jesse Cramer
Another thanks to Jesse Cramerfor joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors at Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors – The Best Interest – Podcast – Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
Paula Pant
Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- How much money disappeared from Americans’ pockets and went into annuities in 2024?
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’re joined by the host of the hit series, 60 Day Hustle, Rudy Mawer. He’s here to help motivate you to go from where you are now financially speaking to earning much more!
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Top 5 Eye-Roll Financial Tips You Should Just Ignore (SB1664).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
Spider-pig, spider-pig does whatever a spider-pig does. Can he swing from a web? No we can’t, he’s a pig. Look out, he is a spider-pig.
Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor Doug and today we’re asking our panel of contributors some of the personal finance world’s most controversial questions.
Are they in or out? We’ll parse the good, bad and ugly from budgets to debt and from investing to insurance on today’s show.
But that’s not all, we’ll pause about halfway through today’s discussion for the highlight of today’s show, the crown jewel in the Stacking Benjamin’s Media Empire.
Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about my trivia. And now a guy who knows that 0% aper isn’t nearly as fun as it sounds, it’s Joe.
Joe Salcihi. I love Doug how you got the pronunciation right too, right off SNL, aper. I’m pretty sure it’s aper.
Hey everybody, welcome to the Financial Concepts Friday episode of the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I am Joe Salcihi and we’re going to have some fun today with this construct that I borrowed from another podcast that I listened to, which,
Shock of Shocks is actually about Disney. My friend Lou Mangiello does this thing in or out and I thought this would be fun to play on a Friday with our contributors.
So let’s do it, let’s meet everybody. First of all, the guy across the card table from me here in Mom’s basement, Mr. OG is here. How are you, man?
I’m Doug, clinging to life. Sounds like you’re fading in and out yourself. I have half a bottle down of Day Quill.
You got the whole job. And a half a glass down of Johnny Walker Blue. So let’s get it. It can’t be bad. No, science. I mean, it all works together.
I don’t know what taste works. I got no idea. Straight Johnny Walker Blue or Vicks Day Quill.
Two great taste, Paula Pant, from a 4-day thing that go great together right there. Ooh, absolutely. And speaking of which, so here I’m surrounded by my lunch. I’ve got bone broth.
Bone broth for lunch. Delightful. Bone broth. It’s no longer just for breakfast anymore. I’ve also got half an avocado.
That is not an avocado. That’s like a baby avocado. It’s okay, the baby avocado. It’s proportional to me.
Did you kill a baby avocado to make that? It’s the lamb of the vegetable world. I know.
And then let’s see, modern Mexican soda, prickly pear. Prickly pear varieties. Prickly pear soda.
I’m no expert on lunch, but I feel like you need a few more calories. So the brand is Topache? Topache, yeah. Topache is the brand.
That’s great. So much like we did, which one did we do on Afford Anything where we talked about it? Spindrift. Spindrift, yeah.
Today’s episode not brought to you by Topache and Day Quill. A brand I’ve never heard of and sounds wonderful though. Is it delicious?
It is. It is delicious. It’s also high in vitamin C and craft fermented. Oh, see, we’re out. Wait, fermented? Wait a minute. Does that mean it’s alcoholic?
Oh, speaking of alcoholic, that would be would that be the worst intro? Jesse Craig.
Can I ask, maybe I should have asked this before we started recording, but who’s the extra person in our signal chat?
Too soon, buddy.
Too soon.
I got to say this joke is great because we cracked it on Wednesday and we cracked it again on Friday.
Did we? I missed it. I missed it. It’s all right, dude. The gift that keeps us giving. Hillary who tweeted, but my emails.
Jesse Kramer, how are you, my friend?
Doing well. Doing well. Thankfully, not as sick as it sounds like some of you folks are. But I think that’s because, you know, with the baby at home, we’ve we’ve already been through that enough times this winter.
So we’re on the up and up. Wait till you start the daycare thing, Jesse. I don’t know if you’ve done that yet, but that’s the gift that just keeps giving if you want golds.
Yeah, super, super excited to put my immune system through that gauntlet to the test.
Well, today we’re putting all you guys through the gauntlet because we’re going to ask you some fairly controversial stuff today.
And I’m going to ask you, are you in or are you out? I’m actually not going to ask it. I’m going to make a statement and then we’ll see if you’re in or out.
And we’re going to ask why you’re in or out on these. These are some some of these could be fighting words. We’ll see.
I’m not going to tell all of you what those statements are yet before we do anything.
We’ve got a couple of sponsors that make sure that this goodness is all free and you get it and our whole roundtable episode without paying a dime.
So let’s hear from those sponsors. And then we’re going to ask a roundtable. You guys can all play along at home. Are you in or out on these financial ideas?
All right, guys, question number one, are you in or out? I’m going to make the statement.
You tell me if you’re in or out. We’re going to start. We’ll go ladies first here.
Paul, a pant. There is such a thing as good debt. There is such a thing as good debt. Are you in or are you out? I am in with the spirit of the question, but I hate the words good and bad because they’re moralizing.
But I get what it’s fundamentally asking and I’m in. Why?
Debt when used as leverage to acquire assets, income producing assets, leverage is a lever. It can propel you forward as long as you use a reasonable amount of it in a reasonable way.
I was going to say, but can’t that leverage bite you in the ass? We saw a lot of that in 2007, 2008.
Yeah, just like any lever, like a lever can like fling you up into the stratosphere really quickly or it can fling you down into the earth really quickly.
It’s funny. I was talking to Josh Dorkin about exactly what you just said. He’s like, the thing I love about real estate is that it creates more millionaires faster and it also is the biggest toilet flush because real estate is almost always bought with leverage.
And you see all these brilliant people all of a sudden not brilliant all at the same time. Exactly.
Oh, gee, there is such a thing as good debt in or out. Yeah, I’m with Paula on the words good and assuming that the opposite of that is bad.
So I’m going to take that word out and say, is that good? And I’m going to say absolutely not. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it appropriately.
But I generally think that anything that’s going to continue to require you to make payments regardless of other outcomes can’t be good.
That doesn’t mean that it can’t be used appropriately. Obviously, Paula is talking about buying real estate.
My argument when people talk about real estate as being so fantastic is they’ll say, well, why don’t we just do that with your stock portfolio?
Certainly, leveraging the 500 biggest companies in America would be a much better outcome than leveraging the single family house in wherever America.
But because stocks are priced on a minute by minute basis, a lot of times we get really nervous with that.
Your house isn’t priced minute by minute, second by second, and you don’t necessarily see that.
But no, I’ve seen debt used appropriately. I’ve seen debt used inappropriately. Not saying that the person who’s talking here hasn’t is throwing stones and glass houses because Lord knows I’ve done both of those things.
But I fall down on the side of debt can never be good. It doesn’t mean it can’t be.
It sounds like you’re more out than in that. I’m out. Sounds like you’re out. Yeah, I know you can use it well, but I’m OK with not using it also.
I think you can be just as successful not using it. All right. Paula’s in. Oh, she is out. Jesse, there’s such a thing as good debt in or out.
I think it’s funny. I think OG was in and then he talked himself out of it. No, with the help of cough syrup. No, I was never in.
We played that tape back. Believe you me when it comes to debt, I’m an expert. I’m with you, Jesse. I thought, oh, gee, you started off with I’m with Paul.
Oh, I see what you’re saying, which which I thought meant I’m in good versus bad. And then you went the opposite way. I don’t like the terminology.
The court reporter will read that one back for you. I am in on the statement. Let me go back to the statement to make sure I understand it correctly.
There is such a thing as good debt. I’m in my first auto loan because my father was kind enough to co-sign it with me was zero percent for five years.
To me, that is much better than having to pay the full sticker price out of pocket. Some people right now who secured a mortgage kind of before maybe in like the late 2010s or the early 2020s, they might have a two and change percent mortgage.
And meanwhile, the cash that they could have used to pay that house upfront that cash is now and has been accruing interest in the last couple of years at three or 4%.
And so if I had a two and a half percent mortgage right now, I wouldn’t be paying it down any faster than I have to.
From that point of view, I think, you know, to me, at least the numbers make make sense to me that there can be situations where there’s good debt.
I’m grateful that I have a two and a half percent mortgage, but I’m using that so that I can get that darn thing gone versus, you know, and I know that it’s like, oh, well, you should take that extra money that you’d put on your two and a half percent mortgage and put it in the market and or better yet, put it in the market on margin, you know, four to one.
Why not? And that’s all I mean, it would work. I remember reading an article one time, it was a scientific article about investing.
They had put out basically the thesis that you should always be levered two to one in your stock portfolio, even if you bust like if you bust out, you just start over two to one because eventually it works out.
So somebody historically looked through this and said you would have come through way ahead if you were two to one leverage.
Absolutely. Even though you’re paying margin interest and all that other sort of jazz. But we can’t bring ourselves to do it. We were talking about debt earlier this week.
The reason I don’t like it is not because I don’t think it can work. It’s because I got to make $75,000 a year to pay for my mortgage payment of $50,000.
And I need to have $500,000 in my investment account to pay my $4,000 a month mortgage payment over my retirement time period if I still have it.
So in my mind, the faster I can get it done with, despite the fact that it’s at two and a half percent, the less stress I have on my life.
I don’t have to I don’t have to make 75 grand this year because I don’t have a house payment. That’s $75,000 less dollars.
We got some great stackers hanging out with us. We’d love to hear if you’re in or out on this.
We’re recording this YouTube at the regular time about 4 p.m. Eastern time. Paul from Texas is here.
Mike from Chicagoland. Margaret from Atlanta, among others, hanging out with us.
We’d love to hear from you guys. You’re in or out on that one. Let’s move on, though, while we wait for those to appear.
Jesse, let’s stick with you. Are you in or out?
When you start out, you must have a budget if you want to be great with money.
Jesse Kramer, are you in or are you out?
This is an interesting one, Joe. I hate to be the semantic person.
But when you say budget, can I substitute the word in tracking or do you really mean a budget where you prescribe exactly how much you plan on spending per category?
I said it the way I said it. You do it what you want, brother.
Then I am out because I don’t necessarily think that we need to sit at the beginning of every month, no matter where we are in our financial journey.
I don’t think we have to sit there and say, “Well, this month I’m going to put $300 in the grocery envelope and I’m going to put $20 in the car wash envelope.”
I don’t think that we have to do that. Do I think that by the end of the month you should be able to look backward and understand how you spent your money? 100%.
That’s where in some form or fashion we need to budget or track.
But I think for a lot of people, budgeting is annoying and tedious and they’ve tried it before and it hasn’t really worked for them.
I don’t really budget anymore, but I do track every single month.
The statement as spoken, I’m out.
Asterisk.
But there is that little asterisk.
Okay, but as I wrote in this brilliant book, Stacked, Your Super Serious Guide to Modern Money Management, available everywhere, Thomas Jefferson was phenomenal, Jesse, at tracking.
He wrote down everything.
It was a financial disaster his entire life and died, penniless, owed tons of people money.
So he did the tracking piece. It was worthless.
Sounds like a dummy. I mean, what do you want me to say?
But you said that’s the good part.
Okay. I mean, listen, I don’t know enough about the details of Thomas Jefferson’s life.
It does surprise me that he tracked everything he ever spent and wound up penniless.
I mean, perhaps he was doing something else.
Maybe he was over levered.
Yeah, maybe it’s maybe it was two to one. Maybe it’s two to one levered on the G2.
He had too much bad debt.
Might have been. All right.
Paula, when you start out, you must have a budget if you want to be great with money.
Are you in or are you out?
I am out. I’m out on that one. And actually for me, the sticking point is the when you start out,
that clause is the thing that knocked me out.
I think that if we were to say that some descriptor of person must have a budget,
if you are really paycheck to paycheck, when money is super tight, you must have a budget.
That would be my statement. But that statement is not necessarily correlated with when you start out.
It often is. People sometimes use that interchangeably.
But there are also people who start out and they’re making huge money right out of the gate.
Britney Spears, massive money right out of the gate.
By the time she was 15, 16 years old, she was making tons of money.
And of course, it’s easy to point to the celebrity.
But there are also people who straight out of college, depending on their major,
might be earning $90,000, $100,000 straight out of school.
Yeah, but I worked with people, Paula, that made half a million dollars working for the TV station that I was at.
Still found ways to overspend that money, like found ways.
And for them, had they had a budget in the beginning, it would have totally changed everything
when they brought that money home because they could have built the delta between the money in and the money out.
Right. So that goes back to if your paycheck to paycheck, if money is tight, no matter how much or how little you make,
if money is tight and you’re living paycheck to paycheck and you’re right at that line, you must have a budget.
That’s where your line is.
Yeah, exactly. But that’s not the same as when you start out.
All right, OG, when you start out, you must have a budget if you want to be great with money. Are you in or are you out?
No, I’m out. I hate budgets to begin with.
I think the vast majority of people have no concept of what their forecasting spend is going to be for a period of time.
And putting a budget in place is at best guessing.
I’d much rather sit down with a calendar and put together a spending plan, which again, sounds semantical, but not budget related.
I’m saying my budget for carwashes is $240 a year. Therefore, I’m spending $20, you know, for whatever it is.
You know what I mean? Like per month, it’s just this month there’s pollen everywhere.
I’m going every other day. Like I get to spend $200 this month on carwashes and $40 the rest of the year.
Like I want to be in charge of that. So I would much rather have a spending plan.
So even at the beginning of your financial journey, if I knew how much money I needed to save,
and I could just YOLO the rest of my life, knowing that I’m on track for my financial goals, I would much rather do that.
Like that, that frees up so much mental capacity to do whatever, you know, not stress about cups of coffee and carwashes.
Like that sounds like a miserable way to run your life versus being 20, like you said, or 22, like you said, Joe, and fresh out of school, making decent money going.
All I have to do is just make sure these things are good. I got to put money in my 401k, max out my Roth and my HSA. I’m rich.
But how is that not a budget? I’m disappointed in all of you. I’m jumping in here.
This is because I feel like you’re also talking about both sides.
Because I’m not saying like, and then you also go like, well, this is my groceries.
Oh, my gosh, my groceries were $300 and I spent 305. What was me?
Well, but most of you have said some level of you need a baseline to know.
And so that to me is a budget. I think maybe this is semantics.
But to at least do it once a year and know the big buckets. Here’s my rent.
Here’s my health care. Here’s my food. Here’s whatever installment loan payments I have to make.
Do that once a year so you know how much you have to work with.
OK, then don’t look at it for six months or another 12 months.
But you have to have some baseline to understand if there’s enough coming in to cover what’s going out.
Doug, do you need the court reporter to read back what I said before my answer?
It is semantics. It is semantics.
But what did you do? You guys all just thought it would be sexy to say I’m out.
Well, because I don’t budget for man. So I definitely am out on this one.
I’m an expert at debt. I hate it. And I don’t budget.
If you can’t lead by example, he’s got to be out. Yeah, Paula, you’ve got a thoughtful look on your face.
Yeah, well, because I often advocate for what I call the anti budget, which is even the anti budget is functionally a two category budget with the two categories being what you save and what you spend.
So even a not budget is still a budget, which means everything is budget, which means nothing. Oh, my gosh.
The Twilight Zone. Doug’s head is going to explode.
If the question in some form is do you need to measure your money? I’m all in. I’m all in.
And if we want to say that any form of measuring your money is technically budgeting.
OK, then I guess then I’m in.
If you’re hanging out with us live wins. I know that I asked.
I asked specifically Mike, Margaret and Paul about these questions, but feel free to chime in.
I don’t want it to just be those three.
But on the first question, is there such a thing as good debt? Margaret says she’s out.
There is no good debt. So she agrees with OG there.
Mike says I’m in on there being good or at least not bad debt, mainly for the reasons the panel cited.
Now, can I be in on more jokes from neighbor Doug?
It’s what Mike wants to know. And Paul says I’m with OG debt free since 2008.
I believe in using debt for first car and house, but his assets grew no more debt.
So like you, Jesse, the the car was a good thing, but he doesn’t think that’s good debt.
It’s just necessary debt. All right. We’ve got a couple more after our break, but we take a moment here at the halfway point of our Friday show to dive into our year long trivia challenge between our three frequent contributors.
We are returning to normalcy because OG has five. Jesse has now moved into second, which means Paula is back in her normal spot in third.
OG has five. Jesse has two. Paula has one. Can Paula turn it around?
Paula, you think so? You know, last time I came so close. So close. I really did.
You just followed your intuition again. I know. And I, you know, but I wasn’t even that far away.
So I think I think I’m I’m inching up to the finish line. I’m getting closer and closer. I think this might be the day.
I think it’s going to be 2029 when Paula gets us all figured out. We’ll see, though. Could start this week. It’s exciting.
We need a trivia question, though, to see who’s going to be right. Doug, what’s on tap today?
Hey, there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Doug, and you want to see a magic trick? Of course you do.
I only mention it because magician David Blaine, big fan of the show, I’m told, has a birthday today. Happy birthday, DB.
With how popular his street magic has become, you’d think David Blaine is the highest paid magician, but nay nay, as Joe’s mom says,
alas, he is not. That honor would go to another David, David Copperfield to David’s wonder if they’re related.
So, of course, today’s trivia is about magic. How much money disappeared from your pockets and went into annuities in twenty twenty four.
See what I did there? You were here at this hand, but I had the magic because over here, the other hand.
I’ll be back right after I get some lube because I have a feeling this answer is going to hurt.
Wow. That got overly descriptive, Doug. Annuities in twenty twenty four.
Too bad we don’t have Don back from last week who could do an annuity rant or two. Oh, gee, you’re going first.
How much money did people put in annuities? This information from the annuity industry.
So this will be worldwide amount of money into annuities.
In twenty twenty four in twenty twenty four.
But but but but but but but but but but but I feel like I should have at least a ballpark guess this is new money going into annuities.
This is new money into annuities in twenty twenty four worldwide worldwide wide wide wide.
Let’s say that the correct answer is going to be thirty seven point eight billion.
Thirty seven point eight billion with a B dollars. Jesse, what do you think about that number?
Worldwide wide wide wide wide.
I think that number is exceedingly low, I think. But I’m not sure I’m thinking about the question, right?
So I’m going to make it hard on you, Paula.
Let me think through this year. How many annuities are sold?
And these are private annuities, right, Joe? These are through insurance companies, insurance companies.
Yes. So how many annuities are sold and then what’s the average size of that annuity?
I’m going to go.
Five one point five trillion.
One point five. I can’t do that, Matt.
Matt, man. Good God.
The question was how many dollars? How many dollars?
One point five trillion dollars into annuities.
Tens of thousands of dollars in twenty twenty four. No.
Oh, geez, trying to re-look back in once he realizes he may have been low.
I don’t know if he’s low or not. Paul, you think he’s low.
I hail Mary from the 10 over the goalpost, over the stadium, into the parking lot.
So far I feel pretty good.
He went two zeros higher. We’ll see.
Wow. You know, when I heard the question, my thought was, well, it’s going to be more than a billion, but less than a trillion.
And I actually thought that I was like more than a billion, less than a trillion.
Those were the parameters inside my head. I was not expecting anyone to actually go over a trillion.
Hmm. Oh, gee, what was your guess? It was thirty seven point eight.
Thirty seven point eight billion billion woefully shorter than one point five trillion.
I think you’re closer. So I’m going to go thirty seven point nine.
Thirty seven. It’s a classy way to run the game. Nine billion dollars.
So you also think, Paula, that the number is bigger than thirty seven point eight billion.
I mean, I got to take a bet on one side or the other and I’m following my intuition.
God. What’s the saying?
Those who don’t learn from history are destined to.
I don’t know. Our destined to flunk history class.
Let’s see if Paula flunks history class.
Oh, gee, at thirty seven point eight, Paula thirty seven point nine, Jesse at one point five trillion.
Those first two were in billions. We’ll be right back to see who wins this thing.
Oh, gee, you at thirty seven point eight billion.
Jesse thought you were not nearly high enough.
And I guess Paula decided that as well. How are you feeling?
I mean, pretty crappy. All things considered.
Is that from the day quill or is that from the kind of everything?
I don’t have a sense of the annuity market. So Jesse one point five trillion.
I’m pretty good about a David Copperfield answer, though.
I was like, oh, this one’s in my wheelhouse. I’ve seen this dude a couple of times.
And then we pulled our own magic trick. Apparently, Doug, one point five trillion.
You’re the only one whose answer starts with a T. You feeling good?
I think so. I’m pretty sure I know what I think I remember seeing what the U.S. market was recently.
I think it was around half a trillion. And so I don’t know. Does the U.S. a third of the global annuities?
That’s what I kind of went with. Maybe I should have said it was half. But either way, I think if the U.S. is about half a trillion, then I’m feeling OK about one point five.
I’m in the wrong business. Paula, thirty seven point nine. How are you feeling?
You know, I’m mixed because I mean, the question is also new net inflows in one singular calendar year. So I don’t quite know how to assess the size of the market versus how much new money is flowing in in a single year. But got to choose something.
They really thought about this. They truly did think about it. All right, Doug, give us the answer. Who’s going to win this thing?
Hey, there stackers. I’m new owner of a giant box of Band-Aids and also guy waiting for a self-inflicted annuity fueled shocker. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug.
Magic. Today’s question in honor of David Blaine’s birthday is about how the insurance industry is able to convince more and more people to believe annuities are the answer to their life’s problems.
How much money magically went out of our wallets into annuities in twenty twenty four? Well, I’ll say this. The answer is twelve percent higher than last year. This is incredible. How’s this happening?
I’ll also say this. It was one point zero six eight trillion less than what Jesse gets because he guessed all of the available liquid cash on the planet.
It was three hundred and ninety four point two billion more than what OG guessed three hundred ninety four point one more than what Paula guessed, meaning the correct answer is four hundred and thirty two billion dollars.
And more importantly, Paula moves into a tie for second place. Oh, I knew it. I knew this would be the day. And there is there is a problem. No, Paul. What? There is a problem.
Jesse pointed out the problem. It’s OK. It’s OK. I think that’s the U.S. number. That is the U.S. number. That is that is the U.S.
All still wins. I’m the judge. I’m ruling Paula wins. Just move along. Nothing to see here. I was like, Jesse’s like, I think I know the U.S. number. It’s about half a billion dollars.
Really? That’s the U.S. number? No, it’s not. That’s a worldwide number. Went back up, looked at it again. Fudge. Only I didn’t say fudge. And Jesse saw the right number.
Jesse should have it. Jesse should have it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s OK. I genuinely I don’t first off take it, Paula. The second off, I don’t even know what the do they sell annuities in other countries.
Sure they do that. Absolutely. They do. What is the worldwide number? I don’t know. The judges will look it up and we’ll let everybody know next week.
But I think that will make Jesse the winner. I’m fairly certain it’ll make Jesse the winner if we’ve got half a billion dollars just in the United States. I’ve already ruled on this.
I wrote it down already. We so want Paula to win. Either way, OG is not getting the victory. So there’s at least a little bit of David and Goliath here. Some solace.
What’s the score currently? I stopped paying attention. I think Jesse now assuming that Jesse’s going to get the point, which we will let everybody know next week, that gives Jesse three. Paula has one. OG has five.
Do you want to split it? Can we do a half point each? We can do a half point. We have done that in the past. All right, let’s do that. Let’s split it. All right. We’re not going to look it up. We’re not going to look it up and see who’s right. Who won?
Just out of sheer curiosity, I am. I would like to know what the worldwide number is. But yeah, I will say Paula, if your gut is saying to split it, I don’t think you should.
I thought you were saying if her gut says to split it, you should take it all is what you’re saying, Jesse.
Oh, man, that is funny. And Jesse, I think you saw my face because I looked at your face. No, no, I didn’t see your face. No, no, because I saw you start looking at it.
No, because I saw you start laughing. I thought it was in response to my oh, God, because I thought I clearly anyway. All right.
Just for the record, limra says that collectively annuity sales will reach one point one trillion from twenty twenty two to twenty four. That’s a three year period.
Yeah, that’s probably US three years of three or four hundred billion in the US would get us there. Who knows? Who knows? Maybe the audience can find it for us.
Doug knows awarded half a point to each of you. So many more competent could do it than us. That would be great. All right. Let’s get back to the place where we are competent, which is creating chaos with these financial statements. Are you in or out?
Let’s go back to you. You ready for this one? Paula panther, you in or out? You should talk openly about money with your friends and family. Are you in or are you out?
I am in. I am in. I think a society that has financial transparency is a healthier society. And if we as collectively can just and each person has to lead by example, if we can start being more open, sharing numbers.
I mean, there are numbers that everybody has their own set of assumptions in their head. And there are numbers that one person might not think is possible. And another person might not realize is as good as it is. And when you can start making like putting the numbers in your life into a wider context, it’s not about comparison. It’s just about understanding what is possible and what is achievable and what is out there.
All right, Jesse Kramer, you should talk openly about money with friends and family. Are you in or are you out?
I am in. I do think it’s hard. And I do wonder if the five of us or four and a half of us, however we want to count points. I do wonder if we’re all a little bit biased because we’re all money people. Because my thought is like, if I knew or if one of my friends was coming to me, they want to talk openly about money.
And they’re taking like three times more than me and they had three times more than me or any multiple. I’m pretty comfortable with people all over the money spectrum and like it doesn’t bother me.
But does everybody feel that way? And that’s where I just get a little bit worried about, you know, if I start talking openly about money and someone suddenly feels pretty self. What’s the word I’m looking for?
Self-conscious. Yeah, yeah. A little self-conscious because that’s where I mean, if I had to guess that that tried and true, you know, hokey wisdom of you don’t talk about religion and politics and money, it might be related to that idea.
So I’m not glass half full optimist. I am in. But I could understand the downsides.
The interesting thing is Capital One actually put this into practice because they saw Jesse to your points, people with fantastic credit who use the credit card very well, generally people that don’t carry a balance.
And I always send those people specifically to people because they want to talk to individuals, people who run balances and who have a history of being late don’t want to talk to anybody.
And maybe it’s that they feel they’re going to be judged. Maybe it’s they feel uncomfortable with the fact that they’re late on their payments, whatever it might be.
So Capital One has made it a consumer practice like a like a customer service practice just based on what you’re saying. So I think there’s a lot of evidence.
I don’t know if talking openly, I mean, do you think if if people like I’m just thinking about when I was young, if I would have talked openly about money when I was young and people were talking openly about money with me, would I have gone through the valley of death like I did with my money?
Or would that have even happened if if it would have been more in my face? I don’t know. Let’s get O.G.’s take on this. O.G. in or out. You should talk openly about money with friends and family.
Yeah, I think you should not just only things like compensation and that sort of thing. How many stories do you hear about somebody who has been working at the same company for 25 years and Jesse. Jesse’s getting hosed on his pay.
Twenty five years old, Jesse, what are you talking about? My engineering job. Yeah, I know. Keep going. No, that doesn’t mean that you should be paid the same. I’m not suggesting that at all. But if part of the reason that we advocate shopping for jobs so frequently and frankly, part of the reason that people do it.
And my wife did it when she was in consulting was because you get hired and then you get your pay raises and you’re like, OK, I got my three percent four percent pay raise, not knowing that the new grads out of college are getting paid here.
And you’re like, the company’s not going to not going to volunteer that information. Why would they like, you know, why would they want to tell you, hey, by the way, that twenty two year old we just hired, we hired a minute at seventy five.
You’re at fifty two right now because we’ve been giving you three percent pay raises isn’t life grand. You know, and just having that conversation would raise that person’s comp plan.
And then you’re like, oh, I’m not going to do that until you change jobs where you go like, wait a second, five year veterans make 100 grand. Who knew like like that shouldn’t be the case. Why do you have to go change jobs?
Maybe you like your job, but at least give you the info. Same thing is interesting. You talked about this, Joe, not sure if you know if you had had discussions when you were growing up.
You talked about that all the money stuff that was in my face when I was a kid was everything sucks about money. The man is always out to get you. There’s no choice but being in debt up to your eyeballs.
Like barely you can make credit card. Like everything was a struggle all the time. When I left home and I started working, that was kind of my life, too. Everything was a struggle.
Everything was, you know, like it wasn’t up to me. It’s funny being an entrepreneur. You’re like, you can do anything you want to do. But I didn’t have that mentality until later, until I dropped all the stuff that I remember from being a kid.
There was no saving or investing or, you know, let’s save money for the vacation or, you know, any of that sort of positive thing. It was all, it was all negative money talks. So I also wonder, you know, would that have been a different path for me?
And then I think there’s another obligation is a tough word. But I think there’s another another piece of this, which is if you have some stuff figured out, then you’re probably more likely to want to talk about it.
Like if I was really going to go hell bent and Paula has talked to me about this before, when we started doing some real estate investing, she was the person I talked to. I was like, I don’t know the first damn thing about this.
I was like, what, what are the things I’m going to screw up? And she texted me a long list of all the stuff I was going to screw up. And I did all the things just like she said, you’re going to screw up all these things. I was like, oh, good. I did them all. I screwed up all those things.
But, you know, she’s great at it. Why would I want her to not want to tell me if you want to build financial plans, you better talk to me and Jesse. That’s what we’re super great at. Like really great world class. I would even argue.
She settled down. You’d have best in the universe. Best in the universe, actually. OK, champ. Maybe just me. But Jesse’s probably in the stratosphere also. But you know what I mean? Like, why would you want me to not want to tell you that?
It’s a stretch. And I get that. But this is the analogy I think about. It’s like we’ve got a cure for this disease. Why would we want to just keep it a secret?
It just makes absolutely no sense to me that the five of us here have largely figured out money, not perfectly probably, but largely figured it out. And this is our platform. Like, why would we want to not tell people? And God forbid you you have the secret or the answer to a problem that one of your closest friends or family members are dealing with.
You’re like, I better not talk to Graham about that. She might get offended. Meanwhile, she’s struggling with this issue that you could solve like that. Like, why would you do that?
It is said, though, I have a family member who treats it like an A-M-Y meeting like every time the topic of mine.
That’s not on you, though. That’s not on them. It is on the receiver. Yes, that’s on the receiver. You can’t fix people who don’t want to be fixed or you can’t help people that don’t want to be so frustrating.
You can’t feel frustrated about that. We all have people like that in our lives. But by the same token, how worse would you feel if you didn’t make an effort?
So, yeah, I think you should I think you should normalize a lot of things because to Paul’s point, a million dollars may seem unachievable to somebody. And then all of a sudden they see that Paul is making a million bucks a year. And they’re like, wait a second. Maybe I could do that. You know, like talk about motivation.
My goodness. No downside. Maybe Paula can eat half an avocado. I can eat half an avocado, too. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s like a delicacy.
Jesse, for people who haven’t heard your engineering job story because you referenced it a few minutes ago. But what happened in your engineering job?
I actually don’t talk about it a ton, but the essence is it’s similar to what O.G. Was talking about. I think at the time I was probably like twenty seven. I had five years of experience and good reviews. I had a master’s degree in mechanical engineering.
Scoreboard. So I was making one number. I can share it on here. We’re numbers people. I was basically making eighty grand. We just talked about sharing numbers openly, for God’s sake.
I was making about eighty grand, which at least here in Rochester seemed reasonable. Like we’re not San Francisco or not New York City. But then there were new hires. Twenty two years old. No work experience. Bachelors degrees were getting hired at six figures.
Wow. Here I am with my experience a little better degree. Like the things that supposedly matter and great reviews making twenty plus grand less than new hires. Wow. Right. Without open communication without again. It wasn’t super open. It was more like water cooler talk, but it ended up being true.
But if I had known about that, I wouldn’t have done anything about it. And I did do something about it. And I got like a fifty or sixty percent raise because I did something about it. So it’s worth especially what O.G. said, especially when it comes to salary stuff. You can help one another out with open communication.
And by do something about it, you mean you blackmailed your boss. That’s what you do next. I think I blackmailed HR. There’s definitely an ultimatum that involved me going to a competitor.
And there’s also like all the other stuff you’re talking about comp like think about all the different types of compensation that are benefits, restricted shares, incentive programs, all that other sort of stuff. And that can get complicated. And if you know how to handle it or you know the taxation of it or you know how to think about it, like why would you not want to share that?
Usually our YouTube family is also in on this. Kevin says in on talking about money, it can be uncomfortable, but by doing so, we can really help out others by letting them know what they don’t know. Margaret says I’m in on talking about money with friends and family with some guardrails.
I’d love to know what those guardrails are. Interesting. Some interesting points. All right. One more, guys. This one is a big one. We’re going to do this one for somebody starting from zero.
Starting from zero. Let’s have OG go first. This one’s perfect for OG to go first. Somebody starting from zero. OG financial independence chasing fire before age 35 for somebody starting from zero isn’t worth that sacrifice to go from zero to fully financial independent by 35.
If it just there’s too much pain, let’s get on the slow five train as they say you enter you out.
OK, there’s a lot of double negatives in there, so it isn’t worth it. Doing it is not worth it. It isn’t worth the sacrifice for you to chase fire by 35 if you’re starting from zero right out of high school or college.
I mean, chasing it is one thing. I don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t think anything fire related is worth it, honestly, which means which means you’re in on that statement.
OK, thank you for the clarification because I couldn’t keep track of which way we were going on this because I think that I don’t know. Dana, who is on our show a couple weeks ago, has a great comment about this, which is what’s so wrong with a life well worked.
I think for a moment that you have to subject yourself to crappy work environments and work for the man your whole life just to prove a point.
But if you have the opportunity to save money and you have the opportunity to choose your own adventure, and I know that the definition of financial dependence will vary depending on who you’re talking to.
So yeah, you can work and be financially independent. I think a financial dependence is out. I’m done. I’ve got five million in the bank. I spend my 4%. I just do my thing.
But there’s plenty of stories out there of people who have done that and then circle back to going like I’m bored out of my mind.
I think the right answer, especially in today’s day, is somewhat of a combination of those things. You want to build flexibility while you have the opportunity to build flexibility.
You know, when you’re 45 and you have three kids in school and one in daycare and, you know, and sports and like all the stuff that like peak spending years.
Like that’s not the time to be also going. And now is the time we need to be saving 5000 a month because we’re behind in our.
We need to save 62% of our income.
It’s really hard to do. And now if you’re making half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year, yeah, that’s it’s it’s a lot more reasonable to save buckets of money.
But by the same token, you need to have piles of money if you’re making a million bucks a year and spending that kind of money.
So when you’re in your 20s and you’re in your 30s and you’re single or you’re married or you have a partnership or you’re not elbow deep in kids and daycare and all that sort of stuff.
Just be smart about your spending and saving at that time because it buys you the flexibility in the future to do the two year sabbatical, which I think is totally awesome to do the hammer.
I’m going to change jobs and do something that’s a little bit less stressful now because, you know, I want to, you know, I want the nine to five.
I want to be home with the kids in the afternoon or the evening.
You know, I don’t want to be the on call ER doctor from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m. every day, you know, that sort of thing.
I think what happens with fire is we get so focused on the retirement part that we just forget about the enjoyment of life along the way.
And if you can do both of those things and build in the flexibility while you have the opportunity to build in the flexibility, you can be rewarded in your 40s and 50s because honestly, the other side of it is this.
When you get to be 50 and you’re financially independent, you have all the money in the world, most people don’t take it.
And the reason they don’t is because they’re like, wait a second, the kids are kind of grown, you know, houses paid off, the college is funded and those idiots are paying me half a million dollars a year to work.
And my engineering job, maybe I’ll stick around a year.
There is you go to conferences like economy that I was just added.
There’s one more year syndrome doesn’t make people suffer from.
There’s also the fact that I’ve been frugal my entire life.
And now I have to turn on the spending gene and it just isn’t there.
Yeah, that’s true.
I think you want to measure for flexibility.
And, you know, if I could go back in time and what I’m just hoping my kids learn out of all of this is that from the time that they get done with school and they’re making big boy money and big girl money, it’s like you don’t have to spend it all day one.
Like build the flexibility so that when you want to have it because you don’t know what flexibility looks like when you’re 25 or 27, you don’t know what you want.
You don’t know what you need.
Wait till you’re 45 and you got three kids and you’re like, now I know what flexibility is.
I want to be able to like drop everything because the coach just called and said, oh, by the way, that game starts at four 30 today, not six 30. My bad because that happens all the freaking time.
Doug, you know what I’m talking about. Joe, you know what I’m talking like. Hey, all that swim meet. Yeah, I know we said it was at seven. Turns out it’s at four.
You’re like, what the heck, man?
That one doesn’t bother me that much because stuff happens to the school. This is the one that bothers me.
But I want to go to it. That’s my point is like I want the flexibility.
Let me give you the variation of your story that bothers me more is that it’s nine 30 at night and my kid comes out there already supposed to be in bed and they’re like, yeah, I forgot. I got this huge project that’s due tomorrow morning. First thing.
And we don’t have anything for it. So we get to go to Target or Walmart or wherever and begin working on it at 10 30 at night.
Yeah, but that doesn’t involve flexibility for your job or your money. I want to stay up half the night making sure that we make sure your diorama of of Saturn is perfect.
Exactly. Yeah.
Nick, please tell your dad that his Saturn diorama looks really nice. Thanks. I will. Do I get an A? It’s so good. All right. Build flexibility. That’s the TLDR on the deal. So you are then in on that statement. Jesse, how about you? Financial dependence, somebody starting from zero fire, not financial dependence, but fire.
The key difference there isn’t worth the sacrifice before age 35. I am out. I think I understand the question, right? Which I think I do at this point. We’ve talked about enough. It does remind me of what the ticket master fee was for Joe Louis’s fight. It does remind me of that a little bit.
Deep cut there. Oh, gee, he agrees with the statement. You don’t agree with that statement, which means you think it can be worth the sacrifice. Correct. Because the word seeking.
If you’re going to seek fire by 35, you have to do a lot of things right in your financial life to do those things right from such an early age is worth it. You can always change your mind later and say, like, you know what? I maybe I regret. Maybe I’ve been squeezing too hard. And now I want to let up. Now I want to live life a little bit. Go ahead. You’ve already paved such a great road for yourself. You’ve got your compound snowball growing so quickly from such a young age that you’ve unlocked flexibility.
Unlocked flexibility for yourself. So that’s why I think that I am out because seeking fire is worth it.
Paul hanging out with us, I think also was confused by the inner out thing because the statement is it’s not worth it. Paul says he’s out, but then he says a career’s rewarding. If you live a life of deprivation, you’ll miss out on too many life experiences, which means, Paul, you’re actually in.
Psych.
But Jesse, I get you. You definitely are out with that take. All right, Paula, you’ve got the final word. We got one in E and one out E.
I’m still confused about this double negative. All right. So the statement is seeking fire isn’t isn’t worth it. Seeking fire by age 35 and all the sacrifice it takes that sacrifice is not worth it is not worth it. So if the answer were to be out, then I’m out on the idea that it is not worth it, meaning I do believe that it is.
That’s correct.
You think it is worth it. I do think it is worth it. However, we’ll put some caveats here. First of all, if you’re 22 and you’re I know a lot of people who like their dream is some type of a like a fat tail distribution, make it big type of a career, right? So they want to be a professional comedian. They want to be a professional actor or model.
They are committed to me or maybe it doesn’t even have to be in the arts. Maybe they want to start a business, but that means they’re going to have to live really, really lean for a while and rather than prioritize putting money into public equities.
They’re going to prioritize building that business or taking comedy classes or taking acting classes and living in and, you know, working as as few server or bartender jobs as they can.
You know, while spending the rest of their time at auditions, right? Like I think that’s a perfectly wonderful way to spend your 20s and 30s if that’s what you choose to do. And I so for that cohort of people, I don’t think that they should beat themselves up about the fact that they’re not seeking fire.
So kind of like Jesse, I want to make a distinction here that I’m referring only to the people who are in a life circumstance in which they have decided that they are specifically seeking fire.
Maybe they’re a software engineer, they’re a mechanical engineer with a master’s degree making $80,000 a year. They’ve decided that they’re specifically seeking fire.
And it is for that cohort of people, it is worth it because, and I want to, this might also come down to the semantic difference of how do you define fire.
I define fire as work optional. And that doesn’t mean that somebody is going to drag you kicking and screaming out of the workplace if you don’t actually want to leave, right?
You’re going to be a part of the internet retirement police that’s going to forcibly remove you from your desk. So fire to me is simply the point at which you have flexibility, you have options. You can choose to work, you can choose to not work.
Most people do choose to work ultimately in some form or fashion. But I don’t believe that retirement is the cessation of all in the permanent and irrevocable cessation of all income producing activity, which is how many people treat it.
Did you get that language right out of the Declaration of Independence?
We the people.
It sounds like a war treaty. Some armistice treaty, the cessation of all workplace activity forever and ever.
It was in our signal chat.
We’re just sharing it with everybody. That is interesting because I think it’s the RE piece, right? That’s the sticking point for people chasing RE before 35.
I’m going to agree with, oh, gee, that my feelings on that have changed so much and I might not be old enough to know, you know, but chasing it to Jesse’s point, chasing it.
Okay. You’re going to put some cool systems in place if you’re truly going to want to get there. It’s interesting stuff. So let me go over some of them. Stackers, if you want to do this at home with your friends that we didn’t get. No, you know, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to save them for next time. We’re going to do this again. I like this topic. I’m going to bottle those up. We’re going to do it again later.
Thanks, Joe. If just one suggestion for when we do this next time, maybe don’t make the wording so clear.
Don’t be so straightforward. Yeah, just beat around a few more bushes.
Yes. I’m going to put double negatives into every question just to see where you go with it. Big thanks to everybody hanging out with us today on YouTube. What a fantastic chat we had today.
Thanks to all of our contributors. Doug’s going to thank everybody. But before we do that, of course, we got to find out what you guys are doing. Jesse, I just noticed that in Gertrude’s
show and tell on the refrigerator today in the basement, you had a cool blog post about where your assets are located. Oh, thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gertrude show and tell. Is that a real thing? What should I know what that is? You posted.
Oh, I think you do know what it is. Yes. Sorry. I didn’t know it by that name. You posted under thread. Yes. Yes. Now I know which Gertrude. I thought like is that a reference to your mom’s fridge? Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you.
I thought that was an interesting article. The topic of asset location where should you place tax inefficient investments, maybe like a bond and make sure they’re in a qualified account where the taxes are not deferred.
And then should you place efficient investments, maybe like a stock into your taxable account? And is that a great way of going about your financial plan and how much money does it save you and are there drawbacks? And the answer is, well, it definitely can save you some money, but there definitely are some drawbacks.
Yeah, I love the drawbacks part because you made a big point and go out if you’re, you know, you could just be spending your wheels. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think we need to think about it a little bit. But what’s going on in the podcast, my friend?
Last week we released a really nice conversation with Christine Benz, who’s just terrific for Morningstar, director of personal finance and retirement. And then next week, I’m pretty sure we’re dropping one of our AMA episodes, which are always a hit. Christine Benz, one of the nicest people on earth. I think she is. Totally. She’s awesome. She’s awesome.
She’s a hundred percent is Paula Pant speaking of nice people on earth. What’s going on? And before anything.
Well, before we get there, I have a proposal. I have a suggestion, but it’s a bit of a question. All right. So Jesse, what do you think of this? I’m thinking about the, that trivia points, the question mark trivia points. What if we form the coalition to beat OG?
And look at OGs face. For those of you not on YouTube right now, you need to, you need to be here live. Bring it. The coalition to be OG. And it becomes a floating point that either one of us can claim at the end of the year. If we need that. Yeah. You don’t get to take over this trivia. You can’t wait a minute. Absolutely not. We’re just going to look at the point reserve until somebody needs it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Strategic reserve.
Now, if you two want to go off stage and somehow collude in a way that makes his chances lower of winning, I would never know about that. Right? Like if you want to somehow pay somebody to get a question in advance, I like who’s going to stop you. But who are you to say no? I’m not. Who are you to say no? I mean, I don’t even know who you would bribe about that.
Doug, what’s your Venmo? I’m not going to just let you trade points, Willie Nellie. Ah, no, the floating strategic reserve. I think we have national interests in a strategic reserve of maintaining a point for OG beating purposes.
Paula, let’s do whatever you want to do. I think Doug’s right. Let’s take this to signal. Let’s.
Somebody’s could accidentally invite OG. Yeah. Whose initials are OG? Whatever. As long as we’re bombing somebody, I don’t care. Got no idea who that might be. All right. What’s going on at Afford Anything, Paula? On the Afford Anything podcast. So we’ve had nomadic Matt on the show talking about how you can travel the world for $75 per day. He has a new edition of his book out. Exactly. I actually just went to his book launch at the Strand in New York City.
We also have on that same topic an interview with Jillian John Strud, who is a mom of six who takes frequent mini retirements and sabbaticals with her kids. So she talks all about long term travel with kids. And then I myself will be middle of April in Panama. And I’m going to be hosting an episode from the Panama Canal. From the Panama Canal. From the Panama Canal. Exactly. All the ambient Panama Canal noise around me. She’s doing the backstroke.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is so funny every time Paula and I are in a room together, I’m always reminded first thing of my goodness, you are short. And Jillian John Strud, whenever I meet her, which I did last week, she turns the corner and I’m like, my goodness, you are tall. She is very, very, very tall. Very tall. Yes. And both brilliant people. I think that every time.
How come I get reminded of that by my mom all the time? Why can’t I be as brilliant as Julian or Paula? Jesse, what do you laugh at?
Well, I just thought it was funny that it was the second thing that you thought of. Like first thing first, like, geez, look at the height. She is short. But also there’s more to your person than just your height. I just like how that’s your thought process, Joe.
It just I’m sure they say it when they see me. People are always like, my goodness, Joe, you were bald. And, oh, gee, what do you got going on this weekend, my friend? Oh, well, funny. You should ask public service announcement for everybody out there age 45 or older. Today is my colonoscopy. So if you have not done one, you should do it. Pictures or it didn’t happen. Enjoy every second of it because that’s what I’m doing right now.
I’m just enjoying it. I think what everybody needs to do is follow. I don’t even know what’s happening.
Doug’s advice on how to prep for a colonoscopy. Eat a big giant pizza right before you go. It’s like it’s like eating a box of Oreos right before you go to the dentist. Doug, what time were you supposed to stop eating? Allegedly at lunchtime. At lunchtime. What time did you finish eating?
I finished eating my entire pizza and full order of crazy bread at 7 30 p.m. And as you can imagine, that went really well. That delayed the exit of things quite a bit. By about eight hours. By about eight hours. Such that it was still occurring when I was in preop.
I will be following all the rules to a T. And as I mentioned, public service announcement, you should get it done. I put a little delayed it for a couple of years and I didn’t mean to. But it’s super treatable if something bad happens. So just go do it. You know, it’s probably not that big of a deal. I’ll let you all know on Monday if I’m walking funny.
He will talk openly about health and wellness as well in the grossest way possible. Doug, take it from here, man. Get us out of this. What should we have learned on today’s show? Well, Joe first take some advice from Paula and her take on immoral debt. When is it good and bad again, Paula? And how do morals factor into this?
Oh, you well, so debt is good if you are either very short or very tall, but it’s bad if you’re an average height nailed it. Second, don’t forget what oh, she said about achieving fire or not achieving. I don’t know by 35. What was that again? Oh, gee. Yeah, that’s a really big giant waste of time. And you should just Yolo.
Don’t try and show Joe’s mom your magic trick. Trust me, her magic trick where she uses hurtful language and mean faces to send you to the store for another case of extra large depends works way better than your trick. No matter what it is. No. Thanks to the Jesse Kramer for hanging out with us today. You’ll find his fabulous podcast, personal finance for long term investors. Wherever you listen to find her podcast.
Thanks to Paula Pan for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast. Apparently everybody’s podcast is fabulous. But ours Joe, you’ll find afford anything wherever you listen to find her podcast. And thanks also to OG for joining us today. You’ll find his fabulous podcast. No, you probably won’t. But you can go to stacking benjamins.com/og for his calendar.
This show is the property of SP podcasts, LLC copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Salcihi. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at stacking benjamins.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds don’t take advice from people.
You don’t know this show is for entertainment purposes only before making any financial decisions. Speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Doug and we’ll see you next time back here at the stacking Benjamin show.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Comment here from Mike. Mike says when I met Joe in a parking lot, true story, I thought, my, what an average height Joe is.
That’s what you meant by average Joe money. That was exactly my goodness. He’s such average height.
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