Wealth historian Megan Gorman stops by the basement and drops intriguing nuggets on how U.S. presidents like FDR and Ulysses S. Grant navigated their finances. There are many lessons you can learn from these iconic figures. Later, our headline conversation meanders through ERISA’s 50-year legacy and political party impacts on investments, as preparations unfold for an RV trip to Oregon. The adventure continues with exotic travel stories, packing tips, and reflections on Dave Barry’s life lessons. Listener engagement and very-important debates, including daylight savings time, ensure there’s never a dull moment! Join the lively trio of Joe, OG, and Doug as they blend retirement strategies with a dash of humor, exploring everything from coffee mugs to memes.
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Our Headlines
Megan Gorman
Big thanks to Megan Gorman for joining us today. To learn more about Megan and her firm, visit Home | Chequers Financial Management. Grab yourself a copy of the book All the Presidents’ Money: How the Men Who Governed America Governed Their Money
Doug’s Trivia
- What Travolta-led movie, which also had won the Cannes film festival earlier in the year, was mopping up Benjamins while Shawshank Redemption was flopping?
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Doug: You don’t have a coffee mug? I do. I’m saying it’s rare. I I’m not just going water. Water. You do have a coffee mug? Yeah. [00:00:06] Joe: Oh, no. Just laying off the caffeine. You, why, why would you lay off caffeine? No idea what you’re talking about. Doug. One of us isn’t [00:00:17] Doug: a quitter. That’s the thing. I have a natural caffeine system in my body. [00:00:23] OG: Doc. We needed a blood sample, not a coffee sample. [00:00:27] Joe: Right? You’ve seen that meme, right? The one that I have this issue, my body doesn’t produce wine, so I have to inject it into my system every 24 hours. [00:00:36] Doug: No, look at, look at, look at OG and I shaking our heads like, no, dude. Sorry. We’re not, I haven’t heard that one [00:00:42] OG: community must be from the Joe Saul-Sehy section of the podcast. [00:00:46] That’s okay. [00:00:47] Joe: Welcome to the one of us knows what’s funny podcast everybody. Can you [00:00:49] Doug: find a bourbon meme for me or a [00:00:52] Joe: scotch meme? Oh, should we do that? Yeah. My body doesn’t make bourbon. Would that have made it funny? Would that have been it? Oh, I would love [00:00:57] Doug: that. Yeah, that’s [00:00:58] Joe: what I’m thinking. Oh, guess what guys? [00:01:00] I saw this meme. My buddy doesn’t naturally make bourbon, so I have to drink it. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a medical procedure. [00:01:06] OG: I don’t get it. [00:01:07] Joe: Oh my goodness. On behalf of the men and women in mom’s basement making podcast and the one slow dude mom’s basement and the, and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, here’s to our troops. [00:01:23] Let’s go stack some Benjamins together now, shall we? Thanks everybody. [00:01:27] bit: Did you just double dip that chip? Excuse me? You double dipped the chip. Double dipped. What? What? What are you talking about? You dipped the chip. You took a bite and you dipped again. [00:01:43] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:58] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. You ever wonder how those fearless leaders at the helm of this great nation manage their own money? No. We’re not getting political. Don’t worry. We’re headed back into the history books with a woman who studied how our presidents made investments and managed their finances. [00:02:14] Megan Gorman in our headline segment, we’re lighting a candle because ERISA is 50 years old. What is ERISA and what does it do? We’ll dive in. Plus speaking of presidents, we’ll also share the results of our recent poll where we asked you about investing under the leadership of Democrats and Republicans, who’s the winner? [00:02:36] And speaking of winning, you know what else we’ll do? I’ll help you win by sharing some timely trivia. You’ll be the most interesting person in your life after today. It’s finally happening. Congratulations. And now two guys who are ready for pumpkin spice season ’cause they’ve already got their S on. [00:02:57] It’s Joe. And oh, [00:03:05] Joe: I officially saw a pumpkin spice advertisement this last week, and what’s bad is we are recording slightly ahead of when you’re going to hear this. Because, oh, they’ve been out slightly ahead, Joe. [00:03:18] Doug: It’s it’s 2023. That’s right. Yeah. [00:03:21] OG: I walked down to a Starbucks for coffee most mornings and they had, it was written on the window how many days left till PSL season. [00:03:29] PSL in like giant lettering. Yes. [00:03:31] Joe: You know, he used to call it a PSL season and not to stop talking about pumpkin spice latte. ’cause God knows, this is what we want to talk about is pumpkin spice latte today. But have you ever had one? Were you thinking the same thing though when, uh, when Doug said, uh, today we’re lighting candle? [00:03:45] I’m like, you didn’t, again, it’s a small basement. Exactly. [00:03:48] OG: It’s a match. [00:03:48] Joe: Like, like why? And then I’m like, oh, it’s a birthday. ERISA turning 50, OG 50 50. Yeah. Years old for Eissa. We’re gonna talk about what that means for your money. [00:04:00] OG: Isn’t that crazy that you guys are older than Eissa? [00:04:01] Doug: I, I was just gonna say, all you did was open the door for OG to make another age joke. [00:04:07] How old [00:04:07] OG: were you when ERISA came out? It’s like negative seven. Uh, I was 11. Like, oh, what was life before Eissa? Like, be before erisa. I wanna know that. Tell me [00:04:17] Joe: grandpa. I’m sure there are children across America going, tell me grandpa, what was life like before erisa? Were things different? Was it all just everybody, unicorns and rainbows and pensions all the time? [00:04:28] Is that what it was for everybody? Golden watches. We all [00:04:30] OG: died three years after we retired. Perfect. [00:04:34] Joe: Uh, we got a great show, Megan Gorman, talking about how our presidents have handled their money in history. I love our historical episodes. Gonna do one of those today. But before all that, we’ve got some sponsors who make this show free so that you don’t have to pay for it. [00:04:47] They do the heavy lifting. So let’s thank them with our time here for just a couple minutes. We’ll be right back. Megan Gorman coming up next, Megan is is called a wealth historian. She’s the founding partner of Checkers financial management fee only planning firm, specializing in high net worth and ultra high net worth families. [00:05:07] In San Francisco. She’s in the top 12% of all wealth managers, but today she’s talking about our presidents and how they actually made money, or in some cases lost money. I loved our last history lesson back on June 10th. It’s episode 1529 when Polo Zoni was here. He normally known for his work with Goldman Sachs and Prada, but he went through the history of banking and that was an amazing look at how the things we think are current today. [00:05:38] Things like the FinTech disasters that we’ve seen lately, those things happening back in the 15 hundreds. It turns out also, turns out that many of us and some of us in high positions also can be bad with money. Megan Gorman could explain that next. So let’s say hello to Megan Gorman. [00:06:04] I’m super happy she’s here with us. Megan Gorman’s here. How are you? [00:06:07] Megan: I’m good, Joe. I’m so excited to be on Stacking. Benjamins. Like I’ve listened to you guys for a long time and I can’t believe I’m here. [00:06:16] Joe: Well stop. Keep going. Stop, keep going. Okay. [00:06:19] Megan: I don’t know. I haven’t heard a question yet, so if they get to be really difficult, we might not wanna like give any compliments right now. [00:06:24] I’m so [00:06:25] Joe: happy talking to you because you know, in this contentious election season, everybody’s talking about presidential candidates and who’s gonna be the next president. I’m like, oh man, I don’t wanna talk about that. And this is like, so. So much fun to talk about how these are people like us. So let’s begin kind of where you begin though, Megan. [00:06:41] Sure. Because you start off this project with Lobster, right? And there’s a guy, and he is peering over the books, looking at lobster, and I’m like, okay, president’s Lobster. This has to be like JFK, but it’s not. No, not at all. Tell me about which president and what’s going on with lobster [00:06:57] Megan: in 1921, right before he gets polio, Franklin Delano Roosevelt gets this idea, he wants to invest in a company. [00:07:06] Now, FDR is a lot like wealthy people today, right? They love startups, they love investing, they love doing, you know, let’s see if this idea really gets traction. And so he invests in this idea of lobsters, of having lobsters be sent all around the country so that every American could have lobster Now. [00:07:26] Obviously if we were doing due diligence, I would’ve asked him. I would’ve said, Hey, FDR, how many Americans can actually afford lobster in 1921? Right? But again, you know, it sounded like a great idea. He invests in it and it starts to go pear shaped really, really quickly. And as we all know, he’s fighting polio. [00:07:44] He’s in the struggle for his life. And so when going through the records, what you realize is like a lot of wealthy people, FDR had people who managed his stuff, right? Who wrote the letters, who did the due diligence, who did the negotiating? I was able to find at the FDR library, all these letters, usually between Louis Howe, who was one of his political gurus, and the lobster people trying to work through the fact that the investment was going south because they hadn’t thought through. [00:08:15] All the different pieces of what it would take to bring lobsters all around the country. It’s really interesting to see here, because like a lot of us, when we invest in something, he’s trying to make decisions of, does he cut bait or does he keep going? And it’s such a humanizing thing because I don’t know about you, Joe, but when you think of FDR, you know, he’s so distant to us. [00:08:38] Sure. He’s almost the coolest character in history, very hard to connect with, even though there’s something about him that’s very, uh, Americans connected with him greatly. And what I loved about this is it made him incredibly human and a lot like us in making financial [00:08:53] Joe: decisions. Well, and I thought not even wealthy people, like what’s the number one thing people do, Megan? [00:08:59] They go start a restaurant, right? Correct. Yes. And these aren’t wealthy people, but I like to cook, so I need to start a restaurant. You’re like, whoa, whoa. Hold, hold. Pump the brakes a little bit. This is a crazy idea. Investing in lobsters in these startups, they always sound so sexy. And yet, what is it? It’s not the sexy stuff that often wins. [00:09:15] Megan: Exactly. It isn’t. We’ve gotten used to people using financial advisors, tax people, attorneys, and so on, and navigating their money. But what I learned a lot in looking at the ps, a lot of them didn’t have the best sounding boards to talk to. Right. They didn’t have podcasts to listen to. They didn’t have articles to read. [00:09:33] They were trying to figure it out on their own. And one thing that they have in common with we all have today, which is the wealthier you are, the more you can’t talk about it. Mm. I mean, FDR wasn’t gonna be able to ask just anybody for financial help. He had to look like he knew what he was doing because he was wealthy. [00:09:49] And he’s an interesting person because also what most people don’t realize is he didn’t actually run his money. His money was held in trust. Trust from both the Roosevelt side and the uh, Delano side. And his mother was his trustee. [00:10:02] Joe: Wow. Yeah, he had to get permission then to do the lobster thing from her. [00:10:07] Megan: He did. It’s interesting when you read their letters, right? And the letters are a great place to understand how people are thinking about money. Probably the same with our emails today or our texts. Yeah. But he would be writing his mother or Eleanor about what was going on, and then you would see in there like a couple sentences like, Hey, I need money for this, or This is what’s going on. [00:10:24] Can you send a check for that? And so it’s sort of embedded into their conversations just like it is for us today. But he often was asking for money, asking for help. And for him it was his sense of normal because again, there isn’t one right way to run money. And for him, this is what felt like the right way to do it. [00:10:42] Joe: I gotta ask this question because some of my favorite mentors we’ve had on the show, Megan, are history professors and we can learn so much from the history of the Wild West to, you know, you talk about John Adams, we had a professor on, uh, who we called the episode Abigail Adams Financial Badass. ’cause she, you know, we’re John and you talk about this in, in your book, John, very conservative. [00:11:06] Close the bone. Abigail’s out doing these kind of reckless loans to fund the revolution with their money when she’s not even allowed to own property. Right. Being a woman, right, they’re in the revolution. She can’t do it. So I have these historians, they’re professors. Why Meghan Gorman and the history of Presidents. [00:11:24] I think we need to start there because. That was my first question. [00:11:28] Megan: Yeah, yeah. No, it’s funny. I have been into the president since I was six years old. Right. I’m from a very small town, it’s called Cape May, New Jersey. It’s gotten bigger over the years, but when I was growing up, it was a small town. And in reading a lot of the president’s stories, what always sort of resonated with me was, it’s not uncommon to hear of a poor boy. [00:11:45] And so he is a boy, unfortunately, but you know, maybe we’ll get there. Who knows? Yeah. And they go off in, you know, it’s the typical hero’s journey. They go off in search of the American dream, and along the way they make money. And if you look at the stories of our presidents, you know, Martin Van Buren, Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, it is a common theme in the story. [00:12:05] So the president’s always resonated with me, and I love the idea. When I’d be reading history books, they’d say, oh, so-and-so bought a house. But that was all be written in the book, right? It would just be a sentence and they moved on. And I know from working with clients, buying a house is incredibly stressful and there’s a lot that goes into it. [00:12:22] And a lot of your, not just the money part, but your financial values go into it. What was really interesting for me, Joe, in going through this was, and it was never easy, but as I read about how much easier it was or, you know, people could climb like that, it became really clear to me that where we are today is very different than where we were 50, a hundred, 150 years ago. [00:12:46] It’s harder for more Americans to achieve the American dream, but [00:12:50] Joe: what’s, what’s so interesting is the huge number of lessons to your point, that we can learn from these people. Like as an example, some of the presidents that you profile. You know, money’s kind of figures secondarily into their being. It’s a happenstance, and for some of them it’s because they had it. [00:13:08] For others they didn’t have it. It just, it just didn’t seem to matter as much. And for others. Then let’s take to just go to today. At one point we had Joe Biden against Donald Trump. Yep. And both of these two, ostensibly at the time, candidates that were gonna be running for president. Their net worth. And specifically real estate is a big part of who they are. [00:13:30] Like it’s how they Donald Trump real estate. Uh, Joe Biden, I didn’t even know this till I read your book, Meghan, Joe Biden, real estate figures very much into who he sees himself as [00:13:40] Megan: well. If you think about it, Joe, right? First of all, the American dream owning your own home. Even today when they survey Americans, it’s something most people will still say. [00:13:48] It’s part of the American dream. Now, you and I know today we have an inventory issue, right? Mm-Hmm. And for, you know, I, my book is nonpolitical, but I would tell anyone listening that one of the things that they should look at with both presidential platforms, with Harrison Trump is both of them are talking about housing. [00:14:04] Both of them know this is a crisis. But when we look at Trump and Biden, and I’m, again, this is nonpolitical, both of them bring up interesting aspects of personal finance. So for Biden, he was group of poor boy grant, and he’s middle class Joe. He loves that image, but he also knew getting a house. Would propel him forward. [00:14:26] Now we all know what happened to him in the seventies. His first wife and his daughter are killed in a horrible car accident right by Christmas, and his two sons survive. And when you work with people who have gone through trauma, one of the things you have to focus on is to slow them. Down because when your brain has gone through that, there sometimes can be a bit of frenetic decision making. [00:14:49] And you know, while I don’t work with Joe Biden, I would tell you that as you watch him go through house transactions, there’s a freneticness to it. Right. A not thinking through to the, the end, all of the different aspects of buying a home. And we see this in a home he buys in Delaware. And remember Delaware, if you’ve ever been to Wilmington, Delaware, if you ever think there’s Blue buds in US history, I will tell you, go to Wilmington, Delaware. [00:15:13] It’s gorgeous. And it’ll prove [00:15:14] Joe: it. [00:15:15] Megan: It’ll prove it. Yeah. So he buys this huge house, but he can’t really afford the maintenance on it. It’s [00:15:20] Joe: like this old, you write that it’s this old, uh, DuPont estate that they were going to tear down. Like this thing was ready for the wrecking ball. And he’s gonna do the Great American thing and save the property. [00:15:31] Mm-Hmm. And make it all beautiful. And it’s his chance to get the beautiful mansion. And it turns into, uh, who was it? Shelly Long? This is an old movie, uh, guy reference. Uh oh yeah. The [00:15:40] Megan: money Pit. [00:15:41] Joe: Yeah. Shelly Long and Tom Hanks, right? [00:15:43] Megan: The money Pit. Yes. His struggles with the House are very much in line with what a lot of us deal with, with buying a house. [00:15:48] But it’s a bit amplified, right? Because he just overspends, he’s frenetic. You know, you take that Right. And even you take some of the things you see him do today, like when you look at his personal finances, you can find over time he borrowed against his life insurance policies. He’s always sort of borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and he really doesn’t make money at the level that we would. [00:16:09] Think a president could make until after he leaves the vice presidency, when he gets the book deals right? And what does he do when he gets the book deals? He and Jill buy a house in Rehoboth Beach, which I can tell you as a girl from the Jersey Shore, is the ultimate house goal. And so you see him struggle over the years now. [00:16:25] When you look at Trump, and obviously it’s not Trump Biden anymore in this election, Trump’s an interesting guy, right? You know, there’s a lot going on with him and a lot that I would tell you if you and I had his tax return out, most people wouldn’t be able to understand it. You know, I’m in the tax world, so I would understand it, but there’s a lot that he’s doing. [00:16:44] But what Donald Trump does that I think a lot of Americans should take to heart is Donald Trump is very good at doing due diligence. If you think about it. If you look at the beginning of The Apprentice, I think it’s a very good example. He’s all show, you know, he’s wealthy, you know, he’s good at it or so who he claims. [00:17:04] But he also at times, wait a minute, Donald [00:17:05] Joe: Trump in show. Did we say that in the same sentence? He’s a show. I didn’t know that. Yes, [00:17:09] Megan: yes. And look, a lot of our presidents are incredibly charismatic, right? He’s in a long line of them. I think the thing that he does is he’s not afraid to ask questions and he does it on the show. [00:17:20] He, you know, in the beginning he has like Carolyn with him, then he is got his kids. And then what I always found interesting is you read the book, the Art of the Deal. One of the things that you sort of see him do all the time is he’s constantly working the phones. What’s going on? What do you, and I have clients that are like Trump, like this, right? [00:17:35] They’re always calling around what’s going on? You know, trying to understand by gathering data. And I think that’s really interesting because it helps with his financial decision making. Now we don’t know if the decision making’s good or bad ’cause we can’t see the records. But data is important. And that is one thing when you contrast him with someone like Bill Clinton. [00:17:55] Bill Clinton wants you to fall in love with him. That’s the Clinton charm. Anyone who’s ever met Clinton in person, whether they’re for him or against him, talks about this charisma. He just pulls you in, [00:18:07] Joe: just exudes it. I met him. He came to, uh, Texarkana, believe it or not, it was part of a governor campaign several years ago, and he came. [00:18:14] And obviously somebody that big comes to your hometown doesn’t happen often in a little town like ours. This dude gets up on stage and it’s funny, he’s there with two other politicians, state politicians, and. He was so much more, I mean, degrees, charismatic, more exponentially, more charismatic than the other two gentlemen on that stage. [00:18:33] It was, it was blew me away. It’s [00:18:34] Megan: a magic. The thing is, in that magic, I think at times it’s put ’em at risk, right? We look at whitewater. Mm-hmm Whitewater. If they put the deal in front of you and me, we’d be kicking the can around, right? What is this? Why is this work? Why are we gonna buy land for retirement homes if there’s no infrastructure? [00:18:49] These are like common sense questions, but again, when you’re in a charisma world and you work on relationships. A lot of times you are trying to use the relationship to do your due diligence. I trust the person, so I’m gonna go along with it. And that’s what burns Clinton with the Whitewater deal. And by the way, relationships in building wealth are very, very important. [00:19:10] I mean, you look at presidents like Ronald Reagan, you know, Ronald Reagan grew up poor in Illinois. Alcoholic father, I mean, he literally learned budgeting from his mother because he had to, they were struggling to survive. But if you look over the course of Reagan’s career, he was very good at making relationships, long-term relationships that propelled him forward. [00:19:31] And one in particular was with Lou Wasserstein, who was a big agent and producer in Los Angeles in the forties and fifties. And it was due to that relationship that helped him get the SAG presidency role. And then later propelled him when he was struggling financially to get the GE Theater job. Now, today, people are like the GE Theater, what is that? [00:19:51] But back in the fifties, they came up with this idea that they were gonna use state-of-the-art, you know, top-notch actors to put on plays and shows once a week. And they needed an announcer, and they hired Reagan to do it. It’d be like Ronald Reagan being the lead in to the morning show today, or the Bear. [00:20:08] He would show up, talk to you about the show, and then turn it over to the show. And this got him to then work for GE touring the country, giving speeches and making money. And in the fifties, he was making about 150,000 a year. Wow. Which is unbelievable. [00:20:23] bit: Yeah. But he [00:20:24] Megan: did that through relationships. Now he took his relationships and his ability and propelled it forward. [00:20:28] But it was an interesting way to build wealth. [00:20:32] Joe: That’s so interesting. I wanna go back to this idea though, of financial anxiety. Mm-Hmm. You know, you talk about presidents being anxious and not being able to talk to anybody. You do this interesting deep dive into, uh, Calvin Coolidge. Mm-Hmm. And I found this Coolidge part of the book interesting because I went and visited the Coolidge homestead while I was in Vermont. [00:20:53] It’s so beautiful. It is. It’s so unbelievably beautiful. But what an interesting character. And here’s a guy who the whole time he’s in office, he’s got some incredible backing, but he never buys a house. Mm-Hmm. Why did Kelvin Coolidge wait so long to buy a house? [00:21:11] Megan: So he’s an interesting character, right? [00:21:13] Like the word thrifty he uses constantly and he is the shortest presidential memoir on record. You know, Truman is volumes. You know, Clinton has another book coming out. They all have books. And then his is like, how about [00:21:24] Joe: Grant? Who will get to here in a minute? Monsters. I know. Well, his [00:21:27] Megan: was his necessity. [00:21:28] Right? Right, right. So, which we’ll get into, but. Coolidge came from a family that was almost like a missionary family and he always knew he was gonna be supported by them. So he made some financial value decisions where he decided he wasn’t gonna spend a lot and he didn’t wanna have conflict of interest. [00:21:46] Coolidge did live through some of the early panics of the 19 hundreds, so that probably also colored it ’cause he worked for the banks. But he always felt that if he had a mortgage, he would be beholden to that bank almost to special interest. I mean, I can’t imagine how he’d feel about politics today. [00:22:02] He’d probably fall over. Yeah. Oh my goodness. But he and his wife, they never, ever buy a house. And this is when if you drive in certain parts of America today, you’ll see certain houses. They all sort of look alike. It was back when like Sears was selling houses by a catalog. Right. People were building houses. [00:22:18] It was part of the dream. But they rented and they even rented when he became vice president and lived in Washington in a rented home. But they didn’t buy a house until after. He left the White House and they did it for a weird reason. They did it because the rental house they had for years was actually a duplex, and there were crowds coming to the house too much, so they realized they needed privacy. [00:22:42] But here’s what’s interesting about him. You know, he leaves office right before the Great Depression. He’s friends with Charles Merrill, who wants him first to join the board of Merrill Lynch. He was gonna pay him like a hundred thousand dollars a year and, and cool. Just like, no, I don’t really know enough to help you. [00:22:58] That [00:22:58] Joe: blew me away, by the way. I would’ve been like, I didn’t know anything, but I’m in. I’m [00:23:01] Megan: in. Right? And you have to remember at this time, Charles Merrill’s going around telling everybody things are gonna crash. So not only he know Charles Merrill turned down the board, here’s this prophecy of a big market crash. [00:23:11] Coolidge hires a different investment firm to run his money. This investment firm at the beginning, you know, the, the crash happens in October of 29. Herbert Hoover’s, president and Coolidge in the early 1930. His firm that he’s working with says, listen, don’t worry, this is all over, pretty much over. It’s okay to put your money in the market. [00:23:30] So he starts buying stocks in early 1930, and of course the markets continue to crash and you know, he gets burned by that. But he does sell some of those holdings to buy a house. You know, he lives in it for a few years before he passes away. But again, very, very fearful of conflict of interest. And I believe he probably had some financial anxiety because if you also look in his life story, he lost his mother and his sister when he was very young. [00:23:57] And those type of traumas like we see with Biden can sometimes really impact behavior. So, you know, my point in this is if you feel like you’ve had some really big trauma, it probably often helps to work with a professional in running your finances to make sure you’re making the right decisions. [00:24:15] Joe: It was one of my favorite, uh, parts of this project, Megan, when you said that because, and I love the rationale, but because often, you know, in online forums and sometimes I just wanna poke my eyes out in these online forums I have to go into as part of, part of my role here. [00:24:31] ’cause you see these straw man arguments, which is no, you don’t need to work with a professional ’cause you’re smart enough. And certainly for 90% of our stackers listening. Yeah. Well, no, for all of them, you’re smart enough. Mm-Hmm. But also keeping it simple is the name of the game. And you can keep it simple. [00:24:46] Yes. Okay, that’s great. But you don’t make any of those points. It’s not that you’re not smart enough, it’s that your professional’s not emotionally attached. It’s another person who knows what the hell’s going on and, and is very smart that can battle with you. And they don’t have the emotions that Calvin Coolidge has about the whole situation. [00:25:05] Megan: Right, exactly. And that’s the thing, I mean, it doesn’t have to be a professional, it could be you’re in an investment club or you have a buddy or a friend that you always are talking to, but you want someone who you, who is not emotionally engaged. And I think what makes the stories of the president so interesting and nonpolitical is it actually humanizes them. [00:25:24] Because they all had a lot of the same stresses that we have today. Now I know in modern presidencies, people finish and now they make a ton of money. I’m sure we’ll see another Biden book deal regardless of who wins or loses. I’m sure the vice presidential candidate who doesn’t win and the presidential candidate doesn’t win, they’re both gonna get booked deals. [00:25:43] Joe: You’ll see them all get book deals. [00:25:44] Megan: Everybody gets the book deal, [00:25:45] Joe: right? [00:25:46] Megan: What we’re not realizing is the stress of everything and, and I’ll use for example, the two Vice presidential candidates today. I think they’re interesting ’cause they’re so diametrically opposed to each other. You know, you have Tim Walls and you look and people keep going, well, where’s the money? [00:26:00] You know, this is a guy like. You see with people at Coolidge who lost his father at a very young age, probably put into some precarious financial situations. And you know, people look at teachers and I know they don’t get paid a lot, and we can probably spend a whole hour on why they should get paid more. [00:26:15] Yeah, God help like them. But he also went down a route where he got pensions. And pensions today are so hard to find and they are a pillar of stability. But you look at the same way. JD Vance, again, growing up poor, really challenged, right? But when he got to Yale Law and he was able to propel himself through, you know, college education, the military, and getting to Yale law, he made relationships that allowed him to do something that Tim Wa can’t do, which is embrace risk. [00:26:44] So if you and I were to sit in front of JD, uh, Vance and look at his portfolio, what I find fascinating with him is he’s gotten more comfortable with things like leverage or going into asset classes that might have inherently more risk because he knows his opportunities. That has changed ’cause he has gone to Yale Law, he’s made relationships. [00:27:03] He can weather the storm better than a Tim Walls can by being a teacher. And so very different opportunity sets. And I think probably both of them wake up at two in the morning worried about money. [00:27:14] Joe: Sure. Well, and what’s interesting is how much relationships factor into all of these presidents. I mean, you know, you talked about relationships with Reagan, you talked about relationships with Bill Clinton. [00:27:25] Let’s go back in history again. Let’s talk about Ulysses Grant. ’cause we talked about this earlier. Ulysses Grant, you bring up this idea of luck. Can people talk about, hey, you know, they got lucky with investments. And you kind of question that and go, is it luck? Or do we kind of make, or I guess in the case of Ulysses Grant dis make, is that a word? [00:27:43] Megan: Yeah. Or Or, yeah. Or behave in a way to undo it. Right? Yeah. Well it’s interesting ’cause I work in the high net worth world, and when I meet with clients for the first time, like a lot of people, you ask their story and people will be like, well, I got this opportunity. I worked hard. I went to this school. I was good at budgeting. [00:27:58] Oh, and I had luck. And I’m always like, wait. They all mention luck. And it’s a weird thing. So when you actually study luck, there’s a lot more to it than just like a little leprechaun giving you a shamrock. Some of it is. Behaving consistently and taking lessons from what you’re learning. So with Ulysses Grant, you know, he was an interesting person, a fascinating civil war hero, fascinating life story. [00:28:23] But he spent a lot of his life without money at all, grew up with not a lot of money, gets into West Point and joins the military. And he sort of an odd dude, like if you were in the army with him, he learned how to work supply chain. That was his job. But he was much more a horse whisperer. He was better with animals and with people, and I think because he connected with animals. [00:28:42] So he was in a way very, very trusting. And so over the course of his life, from his time in Zachary Taylor’s army to when he’s out west, even during his time when he was working for his family store, we hear him being incredibly. Trusting of people, and that trust often burns him. And so at the end of his life, he’s involved with an investment firm. [00:29:05] You know, his partner basically gets him into a Ponzi scheme and he loses all their money and he then finds out he’s dying. And he has a great love for his wife, Julia Dent. It’s a great love story of presidential marriages. You know, he had met her when he was at West Point. She was the sister of one of his peers. [00:29:26] He was always doing everything for Julia, and he first did some short stories and realized he was a good writer. And then he got a book contract. He was helped by Mark Twain, and he literally wrote up until, I believe, three days before he died. And the book was a great success and it gave his family money. [00:29:43] Joe: That always blows me away. By the way, just to stop you j just right there. I mean, yeah, I, I’m getting help from my buddy Mark. Mark Twain. Right, right. Help helping me write my thing. But there’s relationships, [00:29:53] Megan: right? Again. Yeah. And you gotta wonder if we went back to the earlier part of his career in the 1850s when he is out west and he tries all these get rich quick schemes, he’s gonna ship ice from Vancouver down to San Francisco, right? [00:30:06] With a bunch of buddies. But then it takes too long and all the ice melts. He decides he’s gonna invest in a social club in San Francisco and the person they invest with runs off with all the money. The one thing that he does that actually makes him money is this book at the end. And it’s not lost on me that the value of the relationship with Mark Twain probably also helped because Twain probably protected him from trusting too much. [00:30:30] So that was a really good thing for him and it helped his family. But over the course of his life, you know, you’d look at him and be like, God, this guy doesn’t have any luck. And it wasn’t that he didn’t have, it was more that he was too trusting and that trusting this undid any potential opportunity set that he had. [00:30:47] And he had good opportunity sets. [00:30:49] Joe: Well, and you talk about this a couple things. Number one is he never got it in writing. Like never got stuff in writing. It was often Meghan, a handshake deal. And as an attorney, that’s gotta drive you crazy. [00:30:59] Megan: Totally. But then, you know, you think back to the Civil War and you think about the generals who worked with him and who adored him. [00:31:05] I mean, his people in in, in the Army loved him. So what worked, you know, people behave in the same way and what works for them 80% of the time, they stick with probably for him being in the military, it worked. This idea of trust, it’s how the military operates. And so he was having success there and it was probably pretty confounding that the rules of engagement on that side didn’t apply to real life. [00:31:26] And in 1850s, you know, west Coast, which was technically the wild west, you know, the gold rush. I mean, San Francisco grew by 150,000 people I think in less than two years. He just got caught up with people. He liked their ideas, but he didn’t follow through with all the elements that we would’ve wanted him to do. [00:31:46] He didn’t do his due diligence and secure himself with things in writing, and that’s what undid him [00:31:52] Joe: there. Also, it isn’t lost on me too, just this idea of shortcuts, right? Mm-Hmm. I felt like FDR wasn’t looking for a shortcut as much as he liked the sexy stuff. Oh, totally. He thought that this, the, you know, the sexy investment, and I get caught up in that and I’ve been doing this for a long time, and man, if you tell me a great story, I’m like, oh, I’m not, that’s gonna make money. [00:32:10] Right, right. It just, it just seems crazy when the boring stuff is often a better approach. But this idea of a shortcut, I felt like Grant. He’s so frustrated with his inability to make money. He’s like this feeling that I gotta catch up. You know, versus Calvin Coolidge where his dad teaches him, you write that his dad teaches him early on, just put money in the bank and that’s security. [00:32:32] Megan: Yeah. One of the things I think people get caught up in is this idea of getting rich quick. And we see it in the presence. We saw it in Grant, we see it in Harry Truman. And I think what most people don’t realize, and I’ve seen this over the years in working with the wealthy, is it’s very slow, very slow, very slow, and then all of a sudden it happens really fast. [00:32:50] You know, that power of compounding, the thing of doing the repeatable action again and again and again, and the best stuff. Is boring. You know, we all wanna be the guy that invested in Facebook, right? We all wanted to be the guy who did, or gal who did these great crazy risk-taking things. But the truth of the matter, that type of investing is really for people who have money. [00:33:12] Most of us really need to be slow and steady and keep our eye on the ball. And so when you think about what looks sexy for FDR, he was known in the White House for having wonderful cocktail hours. Even during the war, everything stopped and he mixed cocktails. And by all accounts, he was a horrible mixologist, but he was the president. [00:33:32] You had to drink it. I think, I think I’ve read that, that Churchill only drank champagne during cocktail hour because he didn’t want FDR mixing his cocktails. But FDR could afford to take that risk, could afford to chase sexy because you know what? He had trust funds. Yeah. I mean one of my favorite stories about FDR is he was assistant secretary of the Navy during the, the Wilson administration. [00:33:52] And when they asked him, where do you want your paycheck to go? He’s like, ah, just give it to me in cash. He didn’t realize you should put it in a bank or take it home. And it took a few months and finally Eleanor’s like, look, I gotta pay for stuff around here. Where’s your paycheck? And he really just, I mean, he had, oh no self-awareness of like how weird it was that he was just taking a bunch of cash and not dealing with it. [00:34:13] And by the way, another thing I found, it’s not in the book, but one time he forgot to file his tax returns and he literally, oh man, writes the irs and he is like, yeah, I lost the records somewhere between Warm Springs in New York. I don’t know. I’ll get to it. Like very nonchalant. And so you think about that, my right, my bet. [00:34:28] So his stories are more the exception, but he can afford to do that for the average person, right? For like you and me. Slow, steady predictability, you know, those are the way to go. And then when there is a potential for taking on risk, being very strategic about it. [00:34:44] Joe: But it’s so wild that he’s from a wealthy family and JFK also from a wealthy family, but JFK, and we won’t get into this today, but JFK really minded his pennies and, and was very much, uh, not at all Pollyanna about hey, any of this stuff. [00:34:59] Like he much is, it felt much more savvy. But I wanna end on this question. Sure. Going through all the presidents. Was it Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson may be the worst of all the presidents with his money. If you had to categorically say who sucked the most with cash? [00:35:16] Megan: Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to label just one, right? [00:35:19] I think I would tell you that the, the Troy of Jefferson, Madison on Monroe, they were not the people you wanted to follow financially. But yes, I think Jefferson, because it’s such a strong contrast to his image, right? He was brilliant. I mean, God, to even just be able to write and think like that, but he also was unable to really do the right type of thinking in terms of money. [00:35:43] You know, we sit with people and we say, Hey, what did you envision Retirement? Where are you gonna be in 20, 30 years? Jefferson lived very much in the moment, didn’t plan for that, partly because of the fact that he owned a lot of land, and so he had illiquidity, and then at the same time he just, I think he had a lot of loss in his life. [00:36:01] So you just don’t connect with who you are. So I would tell you, don’t be a Jefferson and you can check it out in the book, but be a Washington. Be a Washington. Well caveat to both, both were slave holders, so that’s obviously reprehensible. But yes, be a Washington, George Washington was amazing. [00:36:14] Joe: Maybe even be a, a Lincoln, I mean, the stuff you go into about Lincoln, just powerful. [00:36:20] I felt like Lincoln. See now I’m, I’m, I’m still going. And I keep saying we’re gonna stop, but I, I, I can’t help it. Lincoln, you know, no education, but created his own curriculum, which was really cool. I felt like he kind of created his own university curriculum. [00:36:33] Megan: Yeah, but he failed a lot. And to be very direct, the first. [00:36:37] 25 years of his life, he was constantly failing, barring from people being chased down for debt. He did something that a lot of presidents did to move themself up wealth wise. He married up and Mary Todd was obviously from a wealthy family. Her father was able to help them out and Lincoln had learned lessons and so he did get a little more conservative over the course of his life because when during the Civil War, he does save and he saves constantly into treasury notes and bonds, but they were paying like six to 7% so good on him. [00:37:05] Right? He did sort of figure it out, but he was a learning being, and I would tell this to anyone, the lesson to take from Lincoln’s money is anyone can learn how to work with money, how to manage their money, and don’t take failure as a reason not to keep learning because those, those sort of. Failures teach you more than sometimes the, the big successes can. [00:37:25] And I know Joe enough about your story and you know, you, you probably agree with that. I know in college I got into trouble with credit cards. Like those things teach you everything and so, you know, have faith that you can learn from the pivot. [00:37:36] Joe: Man, I think we’ll stop on that mic drop right there. [00:37:38] Megan: Exactly. [00:37:39] The book is [00:37:39] Joe: called All the President’s Money and it is available everywhere. [00:37:43] Megan: Yep, Joe, it is. And please check it out and I’ll be visiting some of the presidential libraries, so come on down. [00:37:49] Joe: Oh, that’s fabulous. Fantastic. What’s your, have you visited many, uh, so far? I. [00:37:54] Megan: I have visited a bunch. I will tell you, I’ve also worked with a lot online because it’s a lot of it’s online. [00:37:59] bit: Sure. [00:38:00] Megan: You know what? They’re all different and unique and they all reflect their personalities. I would tell you that I sort of get a kick outta LBJs. His is really an interesting place because it is. Yeah. Lady Bird is also a very defining character in who he is as president and, and you know, they saved everything. [00:38:17] So you can go through the archives and there’s a lot of great stuff there. [00:38:20] Joe: We have four nearest, I haven’t been been to either one of the Bush libraries and I need to do that next Timem in College Station or in Dallas. Heck. And I’m in Dallas fairly often. I should get to that one. But LBJ was really cool. [00:38:30] The Clinton Library. Really cool. Like those, those libraries close to us. I’d tell anybody go visit any of them to get to your point. So, so much history and so cool. The one by [00:38:39] Megan: me is Reagan and they’ve Air Force one in it. Oh, [00:38:41] Joe: fabulous. [00:38:42] Megan: Go check it out. Yeah, they’re great resources for anyone. And remember, these libraries aren’t political in the sense when you’re going to the exhibits. [00:38:49] This is a celebration of American history and the American dream. [00:38:52] Joe: Well, speaking of that, thanks for being such a mentor to our stackers today, Megan helping us. You know, it’s a divisive time every four years. Right. And to unify among, you know what? These people are really more like us than we think. [00:39:02] There’s a lot of lessons we can learn. I super appreciate it. [00:39:05] Megan: Exactly. Thanks for having me on, Joe. [00:39:11] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor Dug, and today’s the anniversary of the release of one of the best movies of all time, Shawshank Redemption opened in theaters on today’s date way back in 1994. And is a movie about a guy who’s imprisoned in Ohio. What a nightmare that would be, wouldn’t it? [00:39:30] Woo. God, all of that scarlet and gray running around. I mean, terrifying, right? I’ve wondered that for some time. How do they keep people in Ohio today? Is it like fenced off or something and is there like a warning label when you’re about to go into Ohio? Like, caution friend, you’re trying to enter Ohio. [00:39:48] Don’t you wanna go back to Michigan? AKA God’s country? [00:39:51] OG: I just go around it. I know. [00:39:55] Doug: I think that’s a good plan, just all the way or get to a much better place like West Virginia. Well, in this chilling tale, the starring character played by Tim Robbins was initially slated to be played by none other than Tom Cruise, but when the Director Cruise was hoping to work with, wasn’t assigned to the project cruise, uh, well Cruise, but with Tim Robbins playing the title character and Morgan Freeman as his mentor. [00:40:21] The film still had star power, but it initially failed to make money. By the time it left the box office in November, Shawshank had only earned 18 million of its estimated 25 to $28 million budget. And the number one reason it failed to make money. John Travolta. God if I hit a nickel every time he, anyway, what Travolta led movie. [00:40:45] Here’s today’s question. What Travolta led movie, which also had won the Khan Film Festival earlier in the year, was mopping up Benjamin’s while Shawshank Redemption was flopping. I’ll be back right after I go see if I can get Joe’s mom to cook me a cheeseburger. [00:41:12] Hey there, stackers. I’m Royal with Cheese Lover and Guy who can dance with Uma Thurman better than you. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug Joe’s mom just clarified something for me. Tim Robbins wasn’t imprisoned in Ohio. They only filmed the movie in Mansfield, Ohio at a prison where you can still take ghost tours on autumn evenings. [00:41:33] I think the, I think the whole state of Ohio would be a great home for a horror story tour, but yeah, what, what, what I know today’s trivia question is what John Travolta led film beat the pants off Shawshank Redemption way back in 1994. The answer, of course, it was Quentin Tarantino’s Sophomore Effort, pulp Fiction. [00:41:54] And now back to Joe OG and some woman named Eissa. [00:42:01] Joe: Huge thanks to to Megan Gorman. Oh gee. Ulysses S. Grant sounds a lot like Doug. Maybe a Ponzi scheme or two. What? [00:42:09] OG: Just he’s gonna go out smoking cigars and drinking bourbon. [00:42:13] Joe: It is interesting though. I’ll tell you what was really interesting to me is that for Ulysses Grant, you know, the way s grant, he worked, Ulysses S Grant, the way that he worked, and the reason people loved him so much when he was a general was that he, he was Mr. [00:42:31] Handshake deal. He was like, Hey, let’s get this done. He was a man of action. And what’s funny is, is that investing is definitely a place where being quote, a person of action it, it’s literally maybe the only place where not taking action is often the better option than, Hey, let’s go get this done. [00:42:49] OG: I mean, once your money’s invested, yes. [00:42:52] If you’re sitting at a pile of cash and you’re like, I can’t make a decision, that’s also equally bad. But I. Far more people get in trouble by trying to do stuff. You know, the, the proverbial how should I react to this person being elected, or this policy being enacted, or this tax rate being changed or whatever. [00:43:10] It’s like probably nothing. And probably the best thing is to just, just keep investing. [00:43:19] Joe: Also, uh, FDRs love of sexy investments. We see that one all the time too. Right. Ooh, hey, this sounds great. This sounds like a great story. Like if, if somebody can tell you a great story Hmm. How many people have been trapped in that [00:43:34] OG: we were just having this discussion, as a matter of fact, in my household as it relates to college application essays. [00:43:40] And I’m curious as, uh, you gentlemen have had a number of people. Proceed through college, obviously two successful gentlemen here who have, uh, helped shepherd, uh, a couple of kiddos through college. So in the college application essay, do you guys think that the essay is primarily there to demonstrate writing skills or storytelling skills? [00:44:02] Doug: Interesting. I think it’s the latter. I think it’s storytelling skills. [00:44:06] Joe: Interesting. Okay. Everything that I’ve heard from college admissions officers says, uh, Doug’s right? It is, it is more, uh, maturity and the way you [00:44:14] Doug: view the world. Yeah. University of Chicago has a famous essay question, uh, famous because it’s different every year and it’s usually very unusual compared to wouldn’t that make it other college infa if it’s different every year? [00:44:30] Well. Infamous is usually like the bad, kind of famous, like evil people are infamous. Anyway, [00:44:36] OG: infamous, [00:44:36] Doug: but okay. The year my oldest son applied, uh, the question was super wide open, uh, which was just, there’s two kinds of people in this world. What are they? And they’re looking for very, you know, off [00:44:49] OG: creative, kind of off [00:44:50] Doug: to the side creative. [00:44:52] And so he went with, there’s two people, kinds of people in this world, those who go to Chipotle and those who go to Qdoba. And he actually did the whole thing on an economic decision on people who want their guac included in the price or they want it separated and, and will choose to pay for it separately. [00:45:10] And what that tells them, what that tells the world about their economic viewpoint. [00:45:15] OG: Well, how, what this means with the presidential money decisions. I have no idea. No, uh, why did you bring it up? Just having this conversation with a, uh, planter buddy of mine who, uh, was interviewing a new client and the new client was, uh, pretty sure that he was, uh, getting 17% a year and hadn’t had a bad year, a negative year in 15 years. [00:45:38] And, uh, I was like, that sounds like you’re getting told a pretty good story. I think you might wanna, sounds like a great intern project of, all right. Well that sounds awesome. Send me your statement and we will do an analysis of how great your return has been over the last 15 years. It’s, if you found the guy, and then just on the heels of that, Doug sent me a link to a podcast, the most successful hedge fund in history. [00:45:58] So, you know, I guess it is doable, but a lot of times it’s a, it’s, a lot of times it’s just a big story. [00:46:05] Joe: Was that, uh, Renaissance Capital? Yeah. Yeah. Good [00:46:09] Doug: stuff. [00:46:10] Joe: And by the way, if people are wondering about how I get that, uh, you can’t get in, [00:46:13] Doug: right. I was gonna say, I guarantee you your buddy’s not in Renaissance Capital. [00:46:16] I. [00:46:16] OG: Yes, you are not allowed to get in. No, this was a, a potential client situation, but yeah, he definitely is not. It’s a very [00:46:23] Joe: good story on the acquired podcast. Uh, indeed. I listened to that one the second that Doug sent it to me. How about that? I actually, what, what is, what’s going on [00:46:29] OG: here? Second, like, you literally hit play as soon as he texted. [00:46:32] I. Uh, the [00:46:33] Doug: next morning? [00:46:33] Joe: Yeah. [00:46:34] OG: Out of my run. Oh, so not the second, but like the next [00:46:36] Doug: day. Okay. And then you took off half a day to listen to their four hour podcast on Renaissance Technologies. Well, alright. I didn’t listen to the full thing right away [00:46:43] Joe: and I didn’t do it right then. Welcome to Semantics the podcast. [00:46:47] OG: I’m guessing you probably all, well also listen to it on two x speed. So in, did you actually listen to the whole thing? Yeah. Did you, did you basically, Joe’s a liar. So tell me you, I just asked chat GBT for some reason. That’s all I do. Did [00:46:59] Joe: you really LOL or did you just write that? The LOLI really LOL. Our headline today that we’re actually gonna get to comes to us from Forbes. [00:47:08] It’s Big Day OG because Erisa, well it’s not specifically today, but this year Issa Issa Arissa. Turns 50 reflecting on 50 years and looking into the future. Dan Dunan writes this. Uh, Dan writes, major milestones are a good opportunity. Pause, reflect and think about where we are heading. This year is a major milestone for the retirement industry as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 reaches its 50th anniversary. [00:47:38] The actual date happened, uh, back early in September, but Risso was really the thing that changed it for the way that we think about retirement. Really, you know, for better or worse, has put you and me in the driver’s seat. [00:47:52] OG: I mean, it kind of ushered in the changes around be changing from a defined benefit plan of work here for 30 years. [00:47:59] And, you know, that’s how you retire to, uh, define contribution plans of like, let’s do 4 0 1 Ks and that sort of thing. And if you think of it, I think it also probably helped with. Innovation and creativity, and at some level, job security too, because as an employee, you could move your retirement. That wasn’t a thing, right? [00:48:19] And so if you had skills or you were, you wanted to work on the latest and greatest project, or you could take your skills and be rewarded financially elsewhere, that opened up that as a bigger opportunity because you could take your retirement with you, you can, you know, obviously do 401k rollovers, right? [00:48:36] So it’s like it was a thing that really didn’t exist as much, or certainly probably hampered innovation and movement and that sort of thing within different industries. So, uh, lots of secondary byproducts for sure. Eh, probably some things we could do without, but [00:48:50] Joe: some things that I didn’t realize were that it really standardized the way that pensions, uh, paid out money at the time, of course, that, uh, ERISA was enacted. [00:48:59] Pensions were the primary type of retirement plan, to your point. Mm-Hmm. Uh, since then, they paid out roughly $8.7 trillion to America’s seniors. Well, no. Whoa, whoa. That’s just since 2009. According to this piece, according to the Investment Company Institute, another $12 trillion still held by pensions that invest and manage these funds for the benefit of still 25 million retirees and millions of workers. [00:49:23] Another success they say is the, uh, PBGC, which of course, when your pension goes up, we’ve seen this a few times, OJI, when somebody works for a company and they go bankrupt. General. Yeah. Pension benefit guarantee steps up. There’s just a couple. You, you could keep. S Teamsters. Yeah. Over and over and over and over and over. [00:49:44] OG: Basically all the industries that my parents were involved in, uh, truck driver, general Motors, and move to Delphi because Delphi is the new thing. It’s gonna be amazing. I’m gonna take that new job and, uh, uh, thankfully, thankfully. PBGC stepped in and, and helped a little bit. They certainly don’t recover all your pension, but they at least give you something to, to build a base on. [00:50:05] So [00:50:05] Joe: I, I was thinking if you’re an older person living in a rust belt state, you know the, the letters PBGC, you’re, you’re very familiar. Yeah. Pension benefit [00:50:13] OG: guarantee corp. Basically, you know, if people are like, what is this thing, right? It’s basically an insurance policy on your pension. So if your pension goes bankrupt, the government steps in and says, we’re gonna, we’re not guaranteeing the full thing, right? [00:50:26] We’re not guaranteeing, Hey, you had a 5,000 a month pension, here’s five grand a month to make you whole. They have their own calculation of how they would do it, but they give you something, you know, it might only be 1500 a month instead of 5,000, but, you know, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s, it’s a little bit, so it’s helped a lot of people, you know, [00:50:46] Joe: they do say that despite the success of erisa, there still are some challenges according to A-A-R-P-I. [00:50:52] Nearly 57 million people or 48% of American private sector employees, age 18 to 64 work for an employer that does not either offer traditional pension or any retirement savings plan. Let’s talk about that for a second, but let’s say you’re in the other 52%. Let’s talk to the majority first, og, if you’ve got 401k, 4 57, 4 0 3 B, you’ve got a retirement plan available. [00:51:16] Let’s talk about making that thing work. What do you think the number one thing to do if you have one of these plans to be successful would be, [00:51:26] OG: Hmm? I’d say the number one thing is to make sure that you’re taking advantage of all of the free money. If your company is giving you a 3% match or a 50% match on the first six, or you know, whatever the match is you need to take advantage of. [00:51:42] The second thing very closely related to that is, under no circumstances can you touch it. If I look back at the mistakes, the common mistakes that are made between 20 and 40 year olds, it’s basically somewhere along the lines, something happens, life changes, and it turns into, I’ve got a little bit of money in my 401k. [00:52:01] Maybe I’ll just use that to buy the house or to help me get outta debt, or, you know, whatever. Roth IRAs are a great example of this, right? You get the option to use some of the gains for a house purchase or, you know, we can take the proceeds out at any time. And you know, these different things like, oh, that’s tons of flexibility. [00:52:19] You’re really shooting yourself in the foot when you interrupt that compounding unnecessarily. That’s a, that’s a Charlie Munger line, right? Just, just let, don’t interrupt compounding unnecessarily. It’s happening. Even though you’re 10 or 15 or $50,000, account doesn’t feel it. You know, you’re just like, eh, that’s really, now’s the time. [00:52:37] If I’m gonna take some money, I should take it now. No, you shouldn’t. Now’s the time to let it sit there. Take the money out. When you have 2 million and you need a few bucks, okay, fine. Not when you have 50,000 and you need, you know, 40 grand between taking advantage of the full match and you have to figure out a different way. [00:52:53] Just never touch it. Do those two things and, and you’re 80% of the way there. [00:52:59] Joe: I think when you’re first starting out, forego the, the worry about, uh, hey, I need to be super diversified and I need to use one of these target date funds. ’cause I don’t know what I’m doing. Forget all that. Find a good, solid, large company index and go to town. [00:53:17] Yeah, [00:53:17] OG: keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be, you don’t have to make it complicated for yourself. When your money starts making as much money as you’re putting in, then you can start thinking about like adding some diversification. [00:53:28] Joe: Just stick with a, an index like the s and p 500 or the total stock market index if you have it available. [00:53:34] The other thing I like, og, when somebody’s just starting out with one of these plans, if you can afford to do it, use the Roth option versus the pre-tax option. That’ll, that’ll set you up nicely from, I mean, [00:53:43] OG: early on you don’t know the difference. You havet experience the difference cash flow wise. It’s very hard when you’re 40 to say, I’m gonna switch, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m moving toward peak earning years and now I’m gonna switch out my traditional to Roth 401k. [00:53:57] You’re gonna have a four, five, $8,000 tax bill difference at the end of the year. That’s pretty noticeable. You still have the same tax bill difference, by the way, if you do it when you’re 25, you just haven’t got used to that money yet. So, you know, just, just play the trick on yourself. Just, you know, uh, I think most people, as I talk to people across the country, I think most people under 40 are using Roth 4 0 1 Ks when available. [00:54:20] It seems to be the case. [00:54:22] Joe: That’s good. Roth, of course, is the gonna be the tax free option if you use it correctly. Yeah, it’ll grow tax free and you tax free is exactly what you want. Let’s talk to the other half of the universe, OG this 48% of people, if you don’t have a plane available, people listening to us going, Hey, this Arista thing is great but doesn’t affect me. [00:54:41] What do those people do? [00:54:42] OG: Well, the firstly, I think that you can, you can ask your employer to put something in place. There’s so many options. Inexpensive 401k plans. If you have a company that has enough employees to kind of justify a 401k, relatively low cost plans. Now 4 0 1 Ks used to be very expensive, cumbersome to set up. [00:54:59] There’s a lot of technology around that these days. So reevaluating that. A simple IRA is. As simple as you can get a retirement plan, very easy, very low cost, uh, to set up. But if there’s not the cash flow or the business isn’t big enough, if you’re self-employed, you can do a solo 401k, so you and your spouse can do a solo 401k. [00:55:18] So there’s a couple of options there. If those don’t work, then you have to take advantage of IRAs or Roth IRAs on your own. So you can contribute $7,000 if you’re under the age of 50 into either an IRA or a Roth IRA. We’ve kind of already established that the Roth is probably the best place. There’s some income limits there, so if you’re really, really, really highly paid, you have to be aware of those. [00:55:39] And there’s ways around that, but that’s 7,000. If you have a spouse or a partner, there’s another 7,000 and look, that’s 14 grand a year, you’re not getting a company match on top of it. But 14,000 a year is a pretty gosh darn good start for an investor. And if you have extra and you’ve got HSAs or you know, regular brokerage accounts, there’s lots of places to put your money if you have extra. [00:55:59] But um, if your company doesn’t have anything, then you’re the one that has to. Does devise your own retirement plan on your own. And you don’t get to say at 65, oh crap, my company didn’t have anything. I guess I don’t have any retirement money. Like that’s, that’s on you. [00:56:13] Joe: Yeah, I think it’s a gimme and a gotcha. [00:56:15] Right? On the gotcha side, it’s, it’s, Hey, I don’t have all these things. Perks that somebody that worked for somebody else has. But on the other side, og, you now are your own company. You could do whatever the hell you want, which means you set up your automatic, uh, savings into the IRA or into the brokerage account, whatever, you know, the HSA, like you were talking about, you set that all up yourself and you’re a hundred percent in control, a hundred percent in control, which is pretty great. [00:56:40] You don’t have a list of funds to choose from. You get to choose anything. And again, I would still keep it simple. Use the total stock market index or s and p 500, uh, whichever one’s easiest, and, uh, get it going. We will link to this piece in our show notes page at stacky Benjamins dot com. And you know what? [00:56:59] We’re gonna dive even more into the world of 4 0 1 Ks and retirement plans and the 2 0 1, our newsletter that we’re super excited about comes out the day after we talk about a topic, and this’ll be a fun one. If you’re interested in how to use your 401k better. Kevin Bailey, who curates these links, always has interesting discussions in the 2 0 1 about these topics. [00:57:25] Let’s talk about a contest that we ran. Not really a contest. More of a question OG that you had. We did have some winners that we chose at random from the people that just put it out there. And we had a number of stackers. Thanks for playing the game. And I’m sure those people kind of leaning forward seeing what they thought. [00:57:44] But even if you didn’t play the game, let’s have you play it now, everybody, because in celebration of Meghan Gorman being here, and you know, people always seem to have a view of, Hey, I think only this group can run the country. og you looked at what do I [00:57:59] OG: do if this person, [00:58:00] Joe: yes. So OG for people new to this who are gonna just kind of play along, what was the scenario? [00:58:08] OG: A lot of people ask the question of, uh, does it matter if I invest or should I invest differently if this person’s in office or this person’s in office? Obviously we’ve got, you know, what, six weeks or so before the election. A lot of anxiety around who might win or not win. So we have this research done, and I have the answers right here. [00:58:29] So the scenario was back to 1961. So it’s been 50 some odd years since 1961. You started with $10,000 and you could invest either only when Republicans were president or what Democrats were President. Republicans in office. Your money’s invested. Republican’s not in office. Your money’s sitting in cash. [00:58:50] Fair enough. Or the other way around. Okay. And so the question then is, how much money do you have? You started with $10,000. How much money do you have if you were invested only when Republicans were president? [00:59:02] Joe: You wanna hear a few of the, uh, guesses we had? Yeah, let’s hear some guesses. We had a lot of people play the game. [00:59:07] Thanks for playing. What was [00:59:08] OG: the median answer? Did we graph this out? Do we have chat? GPT Average it out for us. [00:59:12] Joe: A lot of people saying between 100 and $200,000. A lot of people, the low was, somebody thought that it would grow from 10 to $35,000. So not a lot of faith. Yeah. And on the north end, we had somebody that said, uh, two point, uh, $2 million was the high. [00:59:31] OG: So the Republican number is if you started with 10,000, 1961 to present, only invested when republicans were president, you’d have a little over a hundred thousand, a hundred, 2000 some change. Wow. [00:59:41] Joe: Not far off stackers. Nice job. [00:59:43] OG: Yeah. 10 x return follow up question. You can only invest when Democrats are president. [00:59:50] How much money do you have? [00:59:52] Joe: And the responses for Democrats, we had a lot of people, same number, around 150, 150, 200,000. A hundred thousand. Uh, low on this end was 38,000. We had a few people up around 2 million. Again, very, very similar. People thought it was very similar, OG. [01:00:12] OG: Yeah. And so when the Democrats are in office, obviously they’re benefiting from all the Republican policies. [01:00:17] So, so if you were to invested during a, during a Democrat, no politics on this show, see what you did, your 10,000 would’ve turned into 500,000. 500,000 [01:00:27] Joe: when Democrats [01:00:27] OG: are in office. 500 K. [01:00:29] Joe: Five [01:00:29] OG: x. Yeah. So [01:00:30] Joe: Democrats are in office and all because of the Republicans. [01:00:32] OG: Well, the policies and then they followed it up and then the, yeah, Republicans have to deal with the fix. [01:00:36] Gotcha. You see how you can see the cycle working? I do. Right? You can understand. Okay. So here’s the real question though. So obviously you put 10,000 in, you got a hundred K, that’s a great return. 10 x return in 50 years, you put 10,000 in, you have 500 K. So it’s a 50 x return. It’s an amazing return. What if you would’ve just put 10,000 in on January of 1961 and been completely agnostic as to who was in office? [01:01:02] You just left it letter ride. So know how much money did you have? The average letter ride, average, average, average [01:01:06] Joe: person, OG says around $3 million. Uh, the high was $5,445,000. A couple people said lower, uh, uh, we had a couple at 500,000. Um mm-Hmm. I don’t say anything lower than 500,000. [01:01:22] OG: Yeah. So a hundred thousand for Republicans, 500,000 for Democrats. [01:01:27] If you would’ve just left the money invested for 50 years, you have a 500 x return, $5.1 million on 10,050 years ago. So this is obviously expanding. [01:01:40] Joe: This is, this is so funny by the way, because we told people there was going to be no, there was going to be no prize for getting it’s right. It’s somebody got it. [01:01:48] Exactly right. So where somebody that heard us say that and goes, I think you’re wrong. I think I’m gonna go look it up anyway. There’s no way in hell somebody, [01:01:56] OG: somebody who literally wrote 5 1 1 9 5 2. Oh yeah. 5.12. They wrote, oh geez. Cheaters. Yes, cheaters. You’re definitely not winning Pumpkin eaters. [01:02:07] Nice try. But that just goes to show the impact of investing. How it’s completely, doesn’t matter who’s in office, you know, you can look back over the 50 years, there’s been lots of great times in the economy. There’s been lots of not so great times, wars, inflation, chaos, terrorism, pandemics. There’s been all sorts of stuff that’s happened. [01:02:27] Recessions, and it’s happened when both parties were in office, right? There’s, there’s not any clear line of, well, this is way better than that. Although, on this chart, investing when Democrats are better than investing with Republicans, I can see that. But you’re taking away a 10 x return on top of that by trying to play that game. [01:02:49] So if you’re looking at the election and you’re looking at who’s leading or who might win or who does win, and you think. This is awesome or this is crappy, or whatever your personal proclivities are at the end of the day, from an investing standpoint, your investments don’t care. They’re run by the smartest people in the world who have one sole outcome in mind. [01:03:09] Make money, make money for shareholders. And if you’re an investor in those companies, you’re gonna, you’re, you’re gonna be okay regardless of the policies and the politics and whoever’s in charge. So I found this to be really interesting. I thought it was really apropos because of the, uh, the timing of where we are. [01:03:29] A good wrap up to the whole presidential thing. [01:03:32] Joe: Well, I think that definitely is, uh, great advice. I know that if you’re very worried about this, not only take, uh, what Oji just said to heart, but also go back and listen to our episode that we ran exactly 51 weeks before the election. We had contributors Tim Murray from T Row Price, he’s capital market strategist there. [01:03:54] We had Ryan Victorian from, uh, fidelity. She is a vice president, financial consulting. And then, uh, behavioral economist, Dr. Bragg Klon. And I gotta tell you, OG, as we get close to the election, I was just listening to this episode, it’s. Sounds like we were just, it’s the same thing talking about it today. [01:04:14] What should you do? What shouldn’t you do in an election year? And you feel like these people can call the future and they’re saying the same thing that you’re saying. If you wanna know the cliff notes of it, uh, don’t is pretty much. But it’s episode 1435 is the episode to go back to. [01:04:29] Doug: I’m just amazed that people get this wrong. [01:04:31] ’cause what all of the smartest people in the world and OG are telling you is to be lazy, do nothing. Everybody in your whole life, you’re just waiting for people to say, nah, just sit there, don’t worry. Relax, take a load off and what’s what we’re telling you. And yet you gotta tinker with it. You gotta just know I gotta touch it. [01:04:51] Gotta do something. No, [01:04:53] Joe: take your hands off it. You know, this’s gonna blow up people’s financial picture. It’s gonna do it no matter what we say every, every time. Uh, Doug, let’s mosey outta the back porch before we say goodbye. But even before that. If you’re someone who’s not just here because you’re nervous about the election, or you’re here because the history of the president’s, man, we did a lot today, you’re here because you really need a better plan. [01:05:15] OG and his team are taking clients, so head to stacky Benjamins dot com slash og. That’s the link to him and his team’s calendar, and a great way to get started making better money decisions. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash og. Doug, uh, I know we’ve got a full slate today to talk about before we [01:05:33] Doug: say goodbye to everybody. [01:05:34] We do. I mean, we can run through it super fast. We’ve got a first of all, talk about Stacking Adventures Woo hoo, brand new podcast in the Stacking Empire. And, uh, it’s a great, great new podcast that you’ve created about traveling. And I know you’ve got, uh, we’re recording this a little bit in advance. The first episode is out. [01:05:56] Uh, but you’ve got a, a. Pretty, I mean, you know, a little bit of an exotic trip, uh, coming up. Uh, I mean, it’s, you know, some people like, I thought you were gonna talk [01:06:04] Joe: about episode one, episode one with that brilliant guest talking about his trip to Scotland. Oh, [01:06:10] Doug: I mean, I was, I was trying to be humble as I typically am, but if you want me to talk about how the first episode’s probably the best episode you’re ever gonna have on Stacking Adventures, you can learn all about my trip to Scotland. [01:06:23] But I’m sure at some point you’re gonna talk about, uh, this little, uh, shindig you’re doing down in Peru or Purdue, as I like to say. Just, just got back from Purdue, I mean. Central Indiana, Peru, they’re pretty much the same place. Um, I’m going on a very exotic trip to Oregon, renting an RV and going to Oregon. [01:06:45] I mean, I’m gonna have language barriers. I say alpaca, you say corn, right? Same thing. I think alpaca a type of corn. Yes. I’m gonna have language differences. They say really weird things in Oregon, like, uh, I dunno, like muck, amuck and salt. Chuck and si wash and tae. I mean, you can’t even understand people in Oregon. [01:07:03] Pump your gas, basically. [01:07:04] bit: I’ll pump. Yeah. [01:07:07] Doug: But you know, tomato, tomato, uh, so they’ve got a couple of those things going on and, um. Uh, I’m sure we hear about a lot of those adventures and other listener adventures in the Stacking Adventures podcast. [01:07:19] Joe: Yeah. Stacking Adventures. Uh, we had Lee Hoffman on talking about travel hacks. [01:07:23] We had an episode about packing about our, our best packing tips, and we talk about not to over flooding the suitcase. And then we also talked about Crystal’s adventure to Japan so far. Wow. But you know what, this is going to be very, very much a listener and adventure podcast, so we’re going to be profiling a lot of you and your adventure. [01:07:43] So if you hear an episode at the end of every episode, we tell you. To chime in and then a month later we’re gonna play your adventures about this. So if you’ve been to Scotland, you wanna chat about Scotland, just go to Stacking adventures.com/voicemail and we’re gonna talk about that. You’ve been to Japan, you got some packing tips for people. [01:08:01] It’s gonna be very much a community. It started off, by the way, this started off as a project by Cheryl and I. We we’re writing blog posts about our adventures and uh, it’s been really fun teaming up with Cheryl to make this site and to work on it. It’s been a great time. Doug, you’ve been, uh, tell me, we’re not gonna talk about below Tech Mediterranean. [01:08:20] Doug: I’ll just say season seven a little bit underwhelming. Natalia, she’s a pot stir. Natasha is not great at her job. Kyle gets a little bit friendly with some of the guests, uh, inappropriately. Oh, that’s horrible. Um, but uh, can you believe Kyle’s not at his job, og? No, no. Natasha’s not great at her job. Kyle’s good. [01:08:41] Oh, Natasha. But he just doesn’t know where the line is. You just can’t fraternize with the guests the way that Kyle did in season seven. So horrible. But I will say, when I was traveling recently, I just had a huge road trip from Chicago to Richmond and on the flight I wanted to download some stuff and couldn’t download Below deck ’cause I don’t have the premium Peacock subscription. [01:09:00] So I downloaded Bad Monkey on Apple and uh, that’s a Vince Vaughn. Vehicle for his, you know, witty, glib banter that he has his quick silver tongue banter, which I love. I’m a huge fan of, people have said, I remind them of Vince Vaughn daily, but I would not recommend what the head shaking is aggressive. [01:09:23] Yeah, sorry. But I would not recommend Ben. I would not, it’s a series, not a good movie. I’m, you know, I watched it ’cause I was trapped on a plane and, uh, not a good show. It’s fine, but it’s not, it’s not even good. Vince Vaughn, let alone a good show. It’s just kind of, by the way, let’s get, [01:09:37] Joe: it’s a guy that just launched a adventure podcast. [01:09:40] If you’re gonna say road trip and then you get on a plane, that’s not a road trip. [01:09:44] Doug: I flew, I actually flew to then have a road trip, which I’m actually gonna do again to the, uh, Oregon coast. But, uh, yeah, I flew to Chicago and then drove 12 and a half hours to Richmond. That was the road trip part. And then I flew home from Mitchell. [01:10:00] Makes sense to you, og. That’s that’s [01:10:02] Joe: what you do every time, isn’t it? You fly the wrong way. Sounds exactly [01:10:04] OG: perfect. [01:10:05] Joe: Yes. Spoken like somebody who’s never looked at a map before. Like, let’s, let’s go ahead and go to Chicago first. You know what? On a flight. ‘ [01:10:13] Doug: cause, ’cause Joe, nobody has ever said, I’d like to spend 12 hours in a car with og. [01:10:17] Hey, can you come help me move? That’s why he gets, he gets out of all of those kinds of trips because nobody wants him in the car for [01:10:24] Joe: 12 and a half hours. Hard pass. I do have one more thing. This is, uh, attributed to Dave Barry. I saw my cousin, uh, sent this to me. Dave Barry apparently talked about 15 things. [01:10:36] It took him 50 years to learn like these things. And I thought, you guys, you know, og, you’re, you’re getting up there. So it’s probably time for you to know these lessons. [01:10:46] Doug: 46 brother. Not even close, but go ahead. Which means he’s learned almost none of this. [01:10:49] Joe: Number one, never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. [01:10:57] That could end, could end a little badly. [01:10:59] OG: Never, never needed to take either. [01:11:01] Joe: Does that one take you 50 years to learn? By the way, that one, although we did talk to her, remember when we talked to Betty Ske from Betty in the sky with a suitcase and she talked about people that take Ambien and drink on a plane and then they do Ambien, zombie weird stuff on a plane. [01:11:17] Number two, if you had to identify in one word the reason why the human race is not achieved and never will achieve its full potential, the word would be meetings. Totally. A hundred percent agree with that. I have a sister-in-Law who is planning stuff with Cheryl and their other sister who insisted on having Zoom meetings to plan this ridiculousness instead of just chatting about it. [01:11:43] And then when they had the meeting, nothing got done. And uh, the sister-in-Law who planned the meeting didn’t end up doing any of the stuff she said she was gonna do in the meeting, which is great. Number three, there’s a very fine line between hobby and mental illness. [01:11:58] OG: Yep. [01:11:59] Joe: Some people have said that about my board game addiction lately. [01:12:02] I was in our local newspaper about board games, by the way, [01:12:05] OG: which local crazy man que says Craziness. [01:12:10] Joe: I love how Lay in our Facebook group, when I was bragging about the Facebook group, she’s like, oh, uh, something about like, um, old dad vibes or something. Yeah. I was like, oh, [01:12:20] Doug: great. When the, when the newspaper photographer had to go back into his camera bag to get the super wide angle lens to make sure he captured all of your board games in the shot, Joe, that should have been a clue to you that maybe. [01:12:33] You could pair it down. [01:12:35] Joe: Number four, people who wanna share their religious views with you, almost never want you to share yours with them. [01:12:45] How often was that true? Number five, and this is a good one. When I was at Camp five, we talked a lot about this, when you should not confuse your career with your life. That’s a big one. How many people, especially men, historically, have fallen, uh, have fallen for that one? Number six, nobody cares if you can’t dance, well just get up and dance. [01:13:04] I’d say that’s true, but you guys, uh, make fun of us every time we record a Friday show and you get to see me dance in that, that video that’s up on YouTube, it happened one time. I do agree with that though. Just go dance. Just go have fun. Number seven. Have you ever seen anybody do this? By the way, number seven is never lick a steak knife. [01:13:22] OG: I lick steak knives. Why wouldn’t you do that? Oh yeah. [01:13:24] Joe: What you lick your steak knife all the time? Of course [01:13:28] OG: your mom calls it [01:13:30] Joe: not funny. Og not, not funny. Uh, number eight, the most destructive force in the universe is gossip Number nine. You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time. [01:13:46] Have you ever found anybody who could logically tell you why we have daylight savings time? I [01:13:52] OG: know exactly why we do it. Why is that? OG Go live in Seattle or New York and tell me that you want it to get dark at two 30 in the afternoon in winter and stay light until midnight in the summer. No one wants that. [01:14:05] I think. I think you’re wrong. I think you’re, you’re way wrong. You, you think people want it to be dark at two 30 at night or three o’clock? It’s could be dark at two 30 at night. [01:14:13] Doug: No, that’s a little early. But I did live, I, when I lived in London in the winter, it was nearly pitch dark at like 5, 5 30 [01:14:21] OG: ish. [01:14:21] Hey, Siri, what time is sunset on December 21st in Detroit, Michigan? Siri, can’t check the weather that far out. Google can. I bet. [01:14:33] Joe: While he is doing that, here’s another one for guys. Doug, you’ll like this. You should never, ever say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests you think she’s pregnant unless you can actually see a baby emerging from her at that moment. [01:14:50] When’s the [01:14:51] Doug: baby dude? [01:14:53] OG: A wonderful Brian Regan piece. Sunset in Seattle on 1221. Is four 20 in the afternoon? Yeah. What if it was three 20 kids would be going home from school in the dark on the bus? [01:15:06] Joe: Oh, I forgot. Uh, it says, uh, the only person who can explain deli savings time is OG is what it says right here. [01:15:12] There you go. [01:15:13] Doug: Dave Barry Never met OG. [01:15:14] Joe: Number 11. There comes a time we have a birthday coming up, og. We have a birthday coming up. One member of the team’s birthday is, uh, coming up in just a couple weeks. And there comes a time Doug when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. [01:15:32] You know what that age is? According to day Barry 11. [01:15:36] bit: Ah, [01:15:37] OG: my birthday [01:15:38] Doug: month’s in a couple months too. That’s neat. My birthday month. Did you see how he slipped that in there? Yes. My birthday month. It’s so [01:15:45] Joe: awesome that he’s three months away. He’s three months away and he’s making a big deal. His birthday [01:15:50] Doug: month, [01:15:51] OG: birthday month, [01:15:51] Doug: the whole month. [01:15:52] We have to all celebrate the whole month as OGs month. It’s fair [01:15:55] OG: based on when it actually is. Uhhuh Doug. Have you ever gotten a birthday and Halloween gift at the same time? I got you. This, it doubles as both your Halloween costume and birthday gift. No, you have not. Thank you very much. [01:16:09] Joe: It’s a Freddy [01:16:10] OG: Kruger outfit. [01:16:10] Happy birthday. Hey, Joe, have you ever been like, well, we were gonna go out to dinner for your birthday, but since it’s Valentine’s Day, we’ll do that instead. No, you have not. It’s a twofer. Thank you very much. I love you very much. I rest my case. [01:16:22] Joe: Happy Valentine’s. We got you these crappy little, uh, heart, uh, candies. [01:16:26] Yeah. Happy birthday [01:16:27] OG: leftovers. [01:16:28] Joe: CBS [01:16:29] OG: had [01:16:29] Joe: this on sale. The one thing that unites all human beings regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that deep, deep down inside, we all believe we’re above average drivers. Okay, next, you, you don’t believe you’re an above ev. You totally believe [01:16:48] OG: you’re an above average driver. [01:16:50] I don’t, it’s it’s not a belief system. It’s a knowing. There’s, there’s data to prove it. Absolutely. [01:17:00] Joe: And the data is in my brain. Number 13. This, by the way, is so true. This one is not even funny. It’s just true. A person who’s nice to you, but rude to the wait waiter’s not a nice person. I found that I, it’s, it’s always amazing. [01:17:14] You go out to lunch with people and then you see how they are to the waiter and you’re immediately, you know a lot about that person. They say that the truth is out on the golf course. [01:17:22] OG: It’s one of the, in it’s one, it’s an interview. It’s an interview tip, right? You go, uh, take somebody out to dinner. But the gimmick is they get the wrong food. [01:17:30] And so then you watch how they react when they get the wrong food. Oh, that’s a great idea. [01:17:35] Doug: If you’re the interviewer, you gotta orchestrate that right ahead of time. Yeah. Hundred percent. Tell ’em, Hey, bring this other guy the wrong food. Yep. Yeah. [01:17:42] OG: Overcook the steak. See what happens. [01:17:45] Joe: 14. Your friends will love you anyway at number 15. [01:17:48] Like this one is a place to leave this for today. Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the arc. Large group of professionals built the Titanic apparently according to day Barry, via my cousin John. Thanks John. Nice list. Alright, Doug on that note, besides the fact that OG should still celebrate his birthday month. [01:18:13] What should we have learned today? [01:18:14] Doug: Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today. First, take some advice from Megan Gorman. While our country’s had some brilliant leaders, even the best of us, Ulysses Grant, FDR me, Calvin Coolidge, among others, have made mistakes with investments. It shows that you shouldn’t let fear stand in your way. [01:18:33] Get started. Second, happy birthday Eissa. Let’s celebrate by adding another percentage or two into the 401k. Everyone who’s with me, but the big lesson, okay, I realize now my mistake and Ohio is not an actual That said, got still tunnel out in the middle of the night to West Virginia. [01:18:58] Thanks to Megan Gorman for joining us today. You’ll find her new book, all the President’s Money, wherever books are sold, will also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul Sea High. Joe gets some help from a few of our neighborhood friends. [01:19:19] You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. 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. [01:19:38] This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Moms Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:19:57] Megan: Hi everybody. Goodnight Mama [01:20:00] bit: Night Ben. Goodnight everyone. [01:20:02] Megan: Goodnight mama. Goodnight Daddy. [01:20:04] bit: Goodnight children. Goodnight Daddy. Goodnight Elizabeth. [01:20:07] Doug: Goodnight Jim, boy. Goodnight, Jim. Bob. [01:20:09] bit: Goodnight, Jim. Bob. Good night, Jim. Bob.
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