Financial Literacy for Kids + Are Annuities Actually Safe? SB1757

Here’s a question: If everyone’s buying annuities right now, does that mean you should too?

Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug tackle that exact question in this week’s episode—but first, they’re starting with the basics. Because before you can figure out complex financial products, you need to nail the fundamentals. And who better to teach them than Karen Holland, founder of Gifting Sense, who’s made it her mission to help kids (and their parents) understand money in ways that actually stick.

Karen breaks down how to teach the next generation about “need vs. want,” why middle schoolers need to understand the real cost of “cool,” and how financial literacy can be empowering instead of intimidating. Whether you’ve got kids or just want a refresher on the money basics you wish someone had taught you, this conversation is the reset button you didn’t know you needed.

Then things get timely: annuity sales are booming, and everyone’s suddenly got an opinion. But are annuities the safe harbor they’re marketed as, or just another way to lock up your money with fees you don’t understand? Joe and OG cut through the sales pitch to help you figure out when annuities make sense—and when you’re better off walking away.

Plus: Doug delivers “life-changing” trivia (his words), there’s an iHeart Music Festival giveaway tied to financial literacy, and you’ll get your weekly dose of basement wisdom served with laughs.

What You’ll Walk Away With:

• Karen Holland’s framework for teaching kids financial literacy that actually changes behavior (not just lectures that go in one ear and out the other)

• Why annuity sales are exploding right now—and the questions you MUST ask before signing anything

• The difference between annuities that solve real problems and annuities that just create expensive ones

• Financial habits that work at any age—whether you’re teaching a 12-year-old or retraining yourself

• How supporting financial education can score you iHeart Music Festival tickets (because doing good shouldn’t be boring)

This Episode Is For You If:

• You want to teach kids about money but don’t know where to start (or worry you’ll mess it up)

• Someone’s pitched you an annuity and you’re not sure if it’s brilliant or a trap

• You’ve heard annuities are “safe” but want to understand what you’re actually giving up

• You believe financial literacy is a gift worth giving—to your kids, your community, or yourself

• You want money advice that doesn’t talk down to you or assume you already know everything

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

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Our Headline

• Annuity sales hit new high as Americans seek income security amid inflation (InvestmentNews)

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Doug’s Trivia

• What was the name of Lorde’s 2013 debut song with a name that also could be about the aristocracy?

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

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

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Other Mentions

• NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch and wife Samantha say they lost over $8 million in life insurance scheme
• https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/stackinghope

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Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when our roundtable tackles what are the FIVE things that would make you regret your retirement plan?

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: What to Do When Money Gets Tight SB1756

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] opener: My God, Dukes are going to corner the entire frozen orange juice market

[00:00:10] Doug: live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:25] Doug: I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and this month we’re raising money for a great cause financial literacy. On today’s show, we’ll dive into how to lock down the basics of your money with a woman who’s teaching young people how to make better financial choices from giving sense. Karen Holland, in our headline segment one, investment product sales are skyrocketing.

[00:00:46] Doug: Should you get into, we’ll share the product and why you just might want. To stay away. And don’t you worry, because I’m also gonna swoop in with some of my life changing trivia. I’m swooping, I’m changing lives. And now two guys whose lives changed the moment they met me. It’s Joe and oh, ju ju g,

[00:01:16] Joe: how much did your life change when you met Doug 

[00:01:17] OG: Koji? Uh, some people say for the better. Um, others, uh, more educated, say, um, so much for the better. 

[00:01:26] Joe: Hey everybody. Welcome to the Mixed Reactions podcast. I am Joe Saul-Sehy. Hi. It is Wednesday and it is such a great day here in Mom’s basement because we’re going to help the Utes of America.

[00:01:40] Joe: As mom says, the Utes get better straight Utes get better at making great money choices. Karen Hollands here. She’s a person we’re helping raise money for. She is on a crusade to help children do better with money. She’s gonna talk about the DIM score, which, uh, Doug is really into and how she goes about this.

[00:02:02] Joe: Karen’s an economist by training and she’s gonna dive into helping. So if you either have children, neighbors, and heck, you know what? For people who act like kids, you’ll find this actually works for them. I was actually thinking about the DIM score the other day, og, when I was buying, uh, the latest board game.

[00:02:23] Joe: I was like, DIMS and she’ll explain what that means. And I went, no, but I’m still buying it. And so I don’t know. Some people might be on help, I don’t know. But that said, it’s Wednesday. We’re in the basement. How are you og? 

[00:02:41] OG: I’m sorry, I’m not listening. What’s the question? I’m being very dim. Oh, 

[00:02:45] Joe: it’s gonna be such a great Wednesday.

[00:02:47] Joe: With that attitude, young man, you will go far on this podcast. We got a great show. Karen Holland here. And by the way, if you want to help with financial literacy, Karen’s 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit is called Gifting Sense. You can be a part of this challenge that we are in all month long. Listen to this. We talked about.

[00:03:09] Joe: Giving. Well first go to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash gifting hope, which is the name our stackers picked for this month’s challenge. ’cause we are gifting hope to parents that their kids will make maybe better decisions than they made. But every time you give, you can also win. Because we’re doing this in partnership with Daffy, which is a donor advised fund company.

[00:03:34] Joe: They are partnered with iHeartRadio. And listen to this every time you give, not only are you helping kids learn financial literacy, you’re also. Put into a competition to get tickets to the iHeart Music Festival and all expects paid trip to see your favorite bands. You can gift as many times as you want and every time you’ll get a new entry.

[00:03:56] Joe: But if you go to stacky Benjamins dot com slash gifting hope you’ll find out how to help and how to help us beat Joel and Matt in the How to Money podcast. There’s a bunch of other podcasts that are taking part in this, who cares about them? We gotta just beat Joel and Matt. Let’s be clear. So we’re gonna hear all about financial literacy and kids with Karen Holland here in just a moment.

[00:04:16] Joe: She’s upstairs talking to mom, and while she comes down to the basement, we’re gonna hear from a couple of our sponsors that help us keep on keeping on. And you don’t pay any money for any of this goodness. So we’re gonna hear from them. And then Karen Hulen joins me at the card table to talk about kids and teaching them to make better money decisions.

[00:04:43] Joe: And I am super happy she’s here with us. Finally in mom’s basement. Karen, Helen joins us. How are you? I’m great, Joe. How are 

[00:04:50] Karen: you? 

[00:04:51] Joe: I am fantastic. As you know, we are so thrilled that we’re partnering with you this month, and I am thrilled that we’re gonna have you for the next half hour mentoring our stackers on helping kids learn better money habits.

[00:05:04] Joe: But let me start here. Let’s talk financial literacy and kids. How big a mission is this, Karen? I mean, what’s the scope of the issue? 

[00:05:11] Karen: Uh, well, I, I don’t wanna be self-aggrandizing, but it’s worldwide. It’s worldwide. I mean, we develop our money, habits, beliefs, our feelings about money. Very young there.

[00:05:28] Karen: There’s lots of studies behind this. The most famous one is out is Oxford, and yet we make our most consequential personal financial decisions and we acquire most of our financial knowledge and skills later in life. Sort of, you know, the earliest maybe 18, 19, that gap, I call it a timing mismatch, creates a lifetime of completely avoidable stress for people around the world.

[00:05:55] Karen: And we think we have an elegant, scalable, upstream solution. 

[00:06:01] Joe: And it’s funny, back when I was a kid, I think about the resources we had available. Of course, we had a few. In our community. I remember the people at my bank sitting down with me and talking to me about saving some money. That was cool and they came to school.

[00:06:14] Joe: But now with these online resources, there’s so much more cool stuff available. There’s so many more. Somewhere in 

[00:06:21] Karen: the history of the planet have we had more books, apps, programs. We’ve never had more information and it’s never been more democratically accessible. Right? Like, let’s be clear, like Mo, most kids have on their wrist.

[00:06:35] Karen: The power that NASA had when it sent somebody to the moon. I mean, hidden Figures is my, one of my favorite movies. So the issue is not a lack of information. The issue, you know, in my humble view is that we’re not partaking of this knowledge. And why is that? And again, it’s, it’s my view, but I’ve been doing this a long time.

[00:06:54] Karen: I mean, I can honestly tell you I go to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it. ’cause I think we’re really close. I really believe financial illiteracy is a solvable problem. And who doesn’t wanna work on one of those in this day and age, right? We’re awash in problems really. What can individuals do?

[00:07:09] Karen: Anything to help personally resolve? When we help children acquire not all the skills they need, but the basics during the time in their life when their habits and beliefs are being developed, we have vastly simplified the task of creating financially literate human beings. Because once you discover that you can get and use financial information to help shape your future, well, why would you ever stop?

[00:07:34] Karen: And by the way, subject mastery is how children acquire the appetite and confidence to wanna know more about any subject. So I just baffles me why we treat personal finance differently. We do not start any other subject in the middle. 

[00:07:50] Joe: It’s so funny, I remember we were talking to Bonnie Hammer, the vice chairperson of NBC Universal.

[00:07:56] Joe: About this idea of follow your passion. And her point is very similar about careers, that yours is about money. How can people be passionate about stuff if they haven’t been exposed to it? Exactly. Like she, she thought she loved photography. Turned out she loved television. She didn’t have the opportunity at 15 to work in television.

[00:08:12] Joe: It was later on. And had she just quote followed her passion, she would’ve ended up in the wrong, wrong spot. And we could do the same thing. Karen, with money. 

[00:08:20] Karen: We have this thing in economics. I know economics is the dismal science, but you know, I kind of love it. I’m, I’m just gonna lean into my interests.

[00:08:27] Karen: We have this thing in economics called a positive externality. And a positive externality occurs when the benefit of a purchase accrues to more than the purchaser. And the textbook example also now, a lightning rod never used to be is immunization, right? So you immunize a child and they don’t get sick, but neither do their siblings, classmates, cousins, neighborhood friends, whatever.

[00:08:47] Karen: The positive externality of early financial education in, in particular, if you ask me middle school mindful spending lessons is so massive. It defies description. Think about it, if you enter high school feeling that you have agency, that you have the ability to get and use enough financial knowledge knowhow to shape your future, all that does is wet your appetite for more financial knowledge.

[00:09:14] Karen: Right? So, you know, right now we have this, you know, those big three questions, the big three questions that they use all the time to assess if somebody’s financially literate. Well, if you are a middle schooler who’s been in a mindful spending workshop, no problem. If you don’t know the answers to those questions before you answer them, you’re gonna go to your magic box or somewhere else and you’re gonna say, okay, let me think about this.

[00:09:35] Karen: If the interest rate is 2% and I have a hundred dollars after five years, then they’re gonna, they’re not gonna feel any pressure. To answer a multiple choice question, ’cause somebody put three in front of them, they’re going to have confidence in their ability to get and use the information they need to answer that question appropriately.

[00:09:54] Karen: This is what we want for today’s school aged children. Financially literate people do not possess all the data points required to make good decisions from here to the end of your life. In their heads, what they possess is confidence in their ability to acquire the information they need. 

[00:10:11] Joe: Confidence is so much of the battle in this game.

[00:10:14] Joe: It is. It is not even a game, I guess I use the wrong word, but it is so much a, a big part of the battle. You’ve done a lot of research on this though, Karen, and you are very, very honed in on one age group in particular, you and I share a passion for this group of people. My spouse, Cheryl and I met as middle school track coaches.

[00:10:37] Joe: These were such are such formative years. They were horrible years for me, which is why I know it’s a big time growing season for children. Why did you decide that honing in on middle school was really where? This needs to happen most. 

[00:10:53] Karen: Well, I mean, to be perfectly honest, the gifting sense project is a way for me to pay forward the lessons that I was taught as a young person.

[00:11:01] Karen: And in all sincerity middle school is when my mother taught my sisters and I how to be wise spenders, or excuse me, to think before we buy. I use mindful spending and thinking before buying interchangeably. However, um, I mean unfortunately my mother died very young. But, uh, she was a teacher, so I never had the opportunity to have this conversation with her, but I’m convinced she was aware of how much a developmental sweet spot middle school is for the exercise of pausing, gathering information and reflecting before making a decision.

[00:11:33] Karen: And there’s a ton of brain science to support this. We actually just released a blog [email protected] because people ask us that question all the time. I mean, I, I’m not a brain scientist. So with that caveat in place, I’ll just try to explain that We make all these synaptic connections when we’re born and early adolescence, roughly between the ages of 10 and 14 is when the brain starts to prune the connections that aren’t used.

[00:11:57] Karen: So think of it as editing, right? When you cut, cut away the stuff that’s an excess, then the clear ideas really come through, so it improves your processing power. It’s when the frontal cortex is under construction, so that’s about impulses, impulse control, executive function, middle schoolers have these massive dopamine receptors.

[00:12:16] Karen: They’re really wired to experience rewards, and they’re very socially aware. So all of this creates such fertile ground for all of these life skills, and, and that’s what thinking before buying is, right? It’s just. Asking questions, simple questions about typical purchases before you spend your money or anyone else’s, but that’s a life skill.

[00:12:38] Karen: Pausing, gathering information and reflecting before you make a decision. It’s not just a life skill for being good with money, it’s a, you know, massively transferrable life skill. So middle school is a sweet spot. Having said that, it is like the adage for planting a tree. I mean, if you have somebody who’s just outside of middle school, do not panic, right?

[00:12:58] Karen: There is time. But if a fairy godmother landed on my shoulder, I mean, I would have a mindful spending thinking before buying workshop in every middle school around the globe. 

[00:13:08] Joe: Well, and as you were upstairs talking to mom earlier, OG and I were talking about how. Even though we’re gonna talk about the DIM score next, uh, this, this works with 57-year-old men like me.

[00:13:21] Joe: This is, this isn’t just for middle schoolers, this is for all of us. I think just this little speed bump before we go and make the next, uh, board game purchase, we 

[00:13:30] Karen: do, you know, we’re, we’re permissionless, so we have no login, no registration, no paywall. So we have no idea who is using the DIMS score calculator.

[00:13:38] Karen: We do, however, see every completed calculation on the back end of the site, and we know adults use it all the time. Also, I mean, adults are forever coming up to us and saying, you know, I really wanted those shoes, but the DIMS score was low. And I’m like, I’m not the shoe police. Okay. Like you, but it’s interesting.

[00:13:55] Karen: We hear that quite often that it’s helpful for everybody. I mean, I think FinTech of course is not in and of itself a bad thing. It’s, it’s hugely efficient and beneficial in many instances, but it has sped up. Consumerism, right? Sure. So, you know, we all benefit from just taking a beat. 

[00:14:18] Joe: Klarna, I’m thinking of uh, makes it really easy.

[00:14:22] Joe: Affirm makes it really easy. You’re right, the friction is friction’s going away. 

[00:14:27] Karen: Yeah. That, I mean, to me that’s a real, that’s a problem. I know they think they’re solving a problem. My personal feeling is they’re creating a problem. I mean, I use a lot of humor in workshops ’cause this is what resonates with kids.

[00:14:39] Karen: And I’m like, you know, a million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the planet and I was in middle school, I’m 59, this, this is how you went shopping. So I had a job at the Dairy Queen. I had to get my paper paycheck, I had to take it to the bank, stand in line at the bank, cash my check. I had to wait for the check to clear.

[00:14:55] Karen: ’cause if you didn’t have enough money in your account to cover the check, which, you know, dairy queen workers often didn’t. You had to wait for the check to clear, go back to the bank, get your cash money. Okay? So now you actually have something you can spend. Then you have to go to a store. When it’s open, when you’re not in school, which for me was like Saturday.

[00:15:13] Karen: You had to figure out how to get there. And then the store had to have what you wanted, right size, right color, white model, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And then you had to have every dime on your person to execute that transaction, right? So retail scientists would call all of those friction points. I call them opportunities.

[00:15:32] Karen: They were all a chance for me to say, do I really want this? Is there a better option? What do I have to give up to get it? And those three questions, I mean, if I was gonna leave people with one idea, and I, and I know you share this, it’s that personal finance is not an overly technical subject. This is not multi-variable calculus.

[00:15:52] Karen: We are not doing liver transplants. It’s about behavior and making choices. So those three questions, do I want this? Is there a better option? What do I have to give up to get it? They are the seeds of becoming good with money. And of course, the earlier you plant them, the stronger they will grow. 

[00:16:08] Joe: I think it’s a fantastic aha for all of us, Karen, that sometimes with money friction is your friend, like the, this whole idea that creating friction.

[00:16:18] Joe: I know back when I was a financial planner, and it’s been a long time, I found out for myself with my money because I’m a spender at heart and I also, this worked very well with clients was that as that banking system you described for the Dairy Queen on became more and more frictionless and bam, bam, you could get your money right away and now.

[00:16:38] Joe: There’s these companies that are hoping to be able to pay you every day as you work every day. So get your money even quicker so you can spend it quicker. I remember for me, I had to set up a bank account across town, and I had to make sure that I had no online access, that the debit card was cut up, that I had no access.

[00:16:56] Joe: The only way for me to get this money, I would use the frictionless way in. I would use direct deposit into that account, but then a ton of friction on me to have to go get the money. And it was funny because you think about if something’s a real emergency, 25 minutes, who cares? You know, a 25 minute drive.

[00:17:15] Joe: If it’s a real emergency, something happen to do with one of my kids, of course I’m gonna go get the money. But if it’s the next board game. I’ll think, you know what, 25 minute drive, I don’t wanna do that. Like waste an hour round trip to go get my cash. It works so well and I still use that today where I try to set up these accounts in places.

[00:17:36] Joe: And now, you know, different than having cash in my wallet, I, Cheryl and I have this discussion every week, more friction where I have every dollars accountable. My wife is not my boss, she’s not the Joe Police, but having to tell her that I went to Andy’s ice cream three times last week is not something I wanna do.

[00:17:54] Joe: So instead I put everything on the card so that it is part of the money conversation. I love that. It, it’s funny because we’re talking about friction and I’m wondering. Everybody has these pain points, right? They have these struggle points for middle schoolers. As you’re helping them make better decision, where do you see that their struggle points really are when it comes to these early spending habits they’re developing?

[00:18:20] Joe: Oh, well, 

[00:18:20] Karen: I mean, it’s, it’s fear of missing out, right? I mean, again, like, you know, social media in and of itself is not, but the, the problem is like, so what’s the technical definition of fear of missing out? It’s this feeling that others are living a better life than you or have access to more information than you do, which is categorically untrue.

[00:18:39] Karen: But of course, what does social media do It. Promotes highlight reels. A question I ask kids in every workshop is, if you had a really frustrating day, if you failed a math test or didn’t do well in a math test and spilled, you know, hot sauce or a milkshake and a brand new pair of Jordan’s, would you put that picture on Instagram?

[00:18:56] Karen: And they’re like, no. And I’m like, aha. No one else does either. Right? So of course when you see everybody else’s highlight reels, it invites an unfavorable comparison to your very real, naturally messy life. You know, my father’s 86, he has a great line. He says, if you think somebody has no issues, you know what that means?

[00:19:14] Karen: It means you’re not friends. Because if you were friends, you’d know what their issues are. They tell you, yeah, right. So they’re struggling. They’re thinking like, oh, everybody else is doing this. You know, everybody else gets, you know, whatever they want on demand, there’s no conversation or whatever. So we start every workshop we pull the kids, sometimes we do it anonymously.

[00:19:35] Karen: Sometimes it’s just hands up and we ask them, has anybody here ever received a holiday or a birthday gift? And it 

[00:19:41] trailer: wasn’t quite 

[00:19:42] Karen: what you were hoping for. What do you think the answer is? 

[00:19:47] Joe: Heck yeah. 

[00:19:47] Karen: Yeah. 93% of kids. Yeah. Yep. 93% of kids, and I think it’s closer to a hundred. Sometimes we do parent-child workshops, and the younger learners are a little reticent.

[00:19:57] Karen: They don’t wanna appear ungrateful. You know, that ship is sailed by the time you’re in high school. No problem. So then we explain, okay, well here’s the bad news, right? Even buying underappreciated gifts costs time and money. So you are disappointed, but trust me, so are your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, because they put effort into executing that purchase and they worked hard for the money to spend.

[00:20:23] Karen: So what if there was a way that you could avoid disappointment, help your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles stop wasting time and money buying you things you won’t use or appreciate, which improves family harmony. Oh, and by the way, there’s a side dish of like protecting the planet because when you only buy what you use and appreciate, by default you’re lowering your carbon footprint and the number of items you put in the landfill.

[00:20:45] Karen: What if you could do all of that at once for free? And they’re like, what? And I’m like, Ah-huh. There’s a way. It’s called the dim square calculator. Let’s go. And then, well guess what? You can hear a pin drop in class when they’re calculating the doesn’t make sense Score And, and what the teachers are telling us is.

[00:21:02] Karen: You know, this is so engaging because when does a young person get to work on a problem that matters to them in real time in school? Not very often, right? So they’re working on the question, should I buy this item or experience? And they’re getting to experience in real time how applying a small amount of consistent thinking is so hugely beneficial.

[00:21:26] Joe: Just a little speed bump, just this little speed bump. Again, we 

[00:21:30] Karen: use driving in sports metaphors like we’re like, when you’re in the family car and it goes over a speed bump, does it stop you from getting where you were going? And they’re like, no. We’re like, yeah. It just helps you get there safely. Same thing.

[00:21:42] Karen: We also compare it to driver’s ed. We’re like, okay, who’s got a brother or a sister who’s in driver’s ed? Why are they having in-class instruction on driving before they take the family car out on the road? And it’s because we want them to have these foundational skills and awareness, right? We want them to know, okay, this is what a yield sign looks like.

[00:22:00] Karen: This is how you put your blinker on. This is how you respond in this situation. So thinking before, buying, mindful spending, using the doesn’t make sense Score calculator. It’s spending it. 

[00:22:09] Joe: Walk us through the, does it make sense? Score calculator. How does this contraption this amazing, amazing gift to humanity?

[00:22:17] Joe: How does it work? 

[00:22:18] Karen: It is so straightforward. You type gifting sense, G-I-F-T-I-N-G, and it’s S-E-N-S-E. So it’s a word play brain sense instead of CNTS into any browser. On any device with access to the internet, it is an online tool. But you know, we’re device agnostic. Sure. And you just answer the questions on the screen in front of you.

[00:22:38] Karen: So the first question is, are you thinking, are you interested in buying an item or an experience? And then you click on item or experience and then you see secondary silo. So is it toys, sports equipment, electronics, clothes? Is it a trip? Is it an event? Would you like to bring home a pet? Pet is a. Hugely popular.

[00:22:56] Karen: Doesn’t make sense for calculation. Is it really, really? Oh, massive. And in fact, it was not one of the first ones we developed, but this is the beauty of digital, right? Like people should not be afraid of digital. It’s how we keep it free. It’s how we keep it a free public good. Because we mine the other category and we were like, okay, kids are MacGyvering other all the time.

[00:23:16] Karen: To calculate the DIM score for a pet, we need a pet’s dim score calculator. And in fact, that’s one of the more consequential choices we help kids with because of course when they see a puppy in a pet store window, that’s, you know, maybe it’s $600, they have no feel for the fact that really they’re asking for $26,000 because that’s what they are.

[00:23:37] Joe: All the food upkeep, the all stuff, all, you know, how long is it gonna 

[00:23:39] Karen: live? It needs vaccinations. You have to clip its nails, you have to groom it, it needs a bed, it needs raids, feeder, you need flea, tick, heartworm medicine. All of these things, they have no feel for that. So one of two things happens.

[00:23:52] Karen: Either they discover everything that’s involved because what the DIM score calculator really does is it just reveals the phantom costs associated with very typical purchases, right? You wanna go to a concert, okay? The ticket price is just the beginning. What about safe transportation, snacks and souvenirs, right?

[00:24:09] Karen: And on average it can be like four to one. The total cost of going to something like, you know, world Cup is coming to North America. It is a huge topic of conversation amongst middle schoolers. And we are like, okay, so let’s really sit back and think about what this involves. You’ve got, I think now we still we’re 30 weeks out, so you’ve got time to put a plan in place, right?

[00:24:31] Karen: Is so epiphanous for them. They’re like, right? And so again, two things happen. Either they’re like, wow, this is a thousands of dollars proposition. ’cause I don’t live in a town close to a stadium or whatever, and I’m not interested in dedicating that purchasing power towards that purchase. Or Wow, this is a thousands of dollars proposition, but it means so much to me.

[00:24:53] Karen: Here are all the ways I’m gonna support our family being able to do that. Here’s what I’m gonna give up. Here’s the purchases I’m gonna forego. Here’s how I’m gonna do things so that we don’t have to pay somebody else to do them either way. If they decide they don’t wanna do it, if they decide they do wanna do it, it’s great information.

[00:25:10] Karen: And that’s what the DIMS score calculator does. It gets everybody singing from the same song sheet so that by the time you sit down to have a conversation with your parents or caregivers about moving a purchase that you are asked about from wishlist to reality, you have done your homework and you’ve got all the information you need so that when they ask you all the questions like set your watch, they’re coming like Christmas and taxes.

[00:25:32] Karen: Are you willing to spend some of your own money? How often are you really gonna use this? Can somebody else in our family use it? When you’re done with it, you’ve got answers. 

[00:25:39] Joe: It’s so funny. It just, I mean, think about stackers. If you are a parent or you’re an aunt or an uncle, or you’re somebody who has neighbors or friends with kids and they sit down with you and your middle schooler has a business plan versus I want new shoes, you know, they say, I want new shoes.

[00:26:01] Joe: There’s eye roll. Here’s my plan for getting it, and here’s all the, oh my goodness. I can just, we tell them 

[00:26:07] Karen: it’s their PowerPoint. This is your PowerPoint. I could just imagine parents do not worry, like this is not an espionage tool, right? Because they can generate a shareable summary of all the math and thinking they’ve completed when they calculate the DIM score, including they can upload an image and we’re like, do not ask your grandparents for Air Jordans without putting a picture of the exact pair you want in there.

[00:26:27] Karen: You are mandating them to failure, right? Like they have no chance. Right? What happens is. Oftentimes they do decide that they don’t wanna proceed. So that’s great. So families are reporting that they’re getting fewer, better quality requests to spend because the kids go through this process and they’re like, ah, you know what?

[00:26:43] Karen: Orange line and bell bottom pants, how often can I really wear those? I’m gonna hold off. It’s siphoning 

[00:26:48] Joe: out all the bad ideas. 

[00:26:49] Karen: Totally. Actually, we just wrote a piece. We were asked for a piece about the holidays and we’re like the ultimate parenting flex for the winter holiday gift giving season is to get your kids to ask for better quality gifts.

[00:27:03] Karen: Sure. Because when they’re asking for something that you have no problem getting behind all the problems, go away. 

[00:27:10] Joe: That’s fantastic. You know, how often it strikes me is something like, uh, gifting sense use to upgrade gifts on behalf of the middle schooler, because I’m remembering, you know, there’s these, there’s these horrible bathroom books and one of them was advice from eight year olds, Karen, and I remember one of the best piece of advice I’ve ever seen came from this.

[00:27:35] Joe: Book, and it was from Melissa, age eight who said, if you want a kitty, start off by asking for a horse like that is. 

[00:27:44] Karen: Oh, interesting. You know, I’m thinking about that. I mean, in all sincerity, I think that, uh, I mean this is a common concern, right? A lot of principles, if they’re trying to decide if they wanna have us come to their school, they’re like, listen, we don’t wanna put pressure on any of our.

[00:28:00] Karen: Parents. Yeah. For buying things that the family can’t afford. 

[00:28:03] Joe: Right. And that was my next question. 

[00:28:05] Karen: Okay. So we’re already there. I can tell you with a full and open heart, ’cause I’ve been doing this for, you know, we’re coming up on, we launched 10 years ago, but of course it takes like 18 months to get a site going.

[00:28:14] Karen: So I’ve been doing this for a very long time. Mm-hmm. Children are so aware of their family’s financial situation and they don’t wanna put pressure on their parents either. And getting the context for these decisions is so helpful. This is why they’re stopping themselves. They’re like, you know, like every January.

[00:28:33] Karen: They’re calculating the DIM score for Super Bowl tickets. Again, they really have no feel for what’s involved here. And as soon as they do, they wanna abandon ship. Like if you’ve calculated the DIM score, I hope you have. So you see the first half is sort of the numbers, right? Like how much money is actually required and then the second half is what’s required to execute the transaction.

[00:28:51] Karen: How much can I use and appreciate it? They wanna abandon ship when they see the big number and we’re like, no, no, no, just keep going. ’cause this is a construct for thinking and it’s gonna help you with all sorts of purchases, right? It ages up and down and across economic realities because you are selecting the purchase you are assessing.

[00:29:08] Karen: They really don’t do it. They really don’t. And for people who think that kids aren’t aware of their family situation or the world at large, you know, one of my favorite examples is we had an eighth grade boy calculate the doesn’t make sense score for the purchase of Greenland. Wait what? Right. Because you know Donald Trump’s talking about buying Greenland.

[00:29:26] Karen: Yeah, 

[00:29:27] Joe: yeah. 

[00:29:27] Karen: And so, you know, we are telling them this is a tool to help you understand if buying something makes sense. So, you know, we don’t, we don’t put any parameters around it. The kids get to calculate. But I thought that, I mean, when that happened, I, wow, wow. I was actually so happy that the teacher was a little miffed.

[00:29:45] Karen: He was like, you’re not taking it seriously. And I was like, no, no. First of all, this is a geopolitically aware kid, but I’m like, you know what? If it helps you make sense of the world at large, double win. 

[00:29:56] Joe: How about that? Well, and that’s what I was thinking, Karen, is that, and this is what I like about the DIM score as well, is that this is not financial use only.

[00:30:04] Joe: You can see how you would use this in your everyday life as you grow up. And the number of times that I’ve either made purchases or made investments. Or, uh, make career decisions where I didn’t take that little moment to calculate, does this make sense in a really meaningful way? Instead just over, over feeling my emotion.

[00:30:26] Joe: And as you mentioned, you know, a lot of that stems from middle school where that dopamine hit is huge. I want it and I want it now, so let’s go get it. There’s big piece of me that still exists, but knowing how to, knowing how to have that circuit breaker is important. But I think even equally, maybe not equally, but also very important is this idea of building your case.

[00:30:50] Joe: I mean, you’re gonna have to build your case with your boss. You’re gonna have to build your case with people on the PTEA committee with you. You’re gonna have to build your case with interested, you know, people in whatever community organization you’re in. Like this idea of building a business plan around the thing that you want, and also considering everybody else’s.

[00:31:11] Joe: Feelings in this and, and what they get. You know what? I love the idea of going to the Super Bowl. I want to go to the Super Bowl. Oh, that’s how much it costs. My parents can’t afford that. There is no way when I look at their side of the argument that it’s gonna help them. Why would they do? There’s no way I can’t do this.

[00:31:25] Joe: This 

[00:31:25] Karen: is what we’re telling parents and school administrators context transforms conversations. It turns impulse into insight and collected insights become confidence. Right. You know, we feel like, you know, we don’t have the time. We don’t wanna go through the whole rigmarole with our kids. So they ask us for something and we just say no.

[00:31:47] Karen: Even a yes without context is a missed opportunity. But when you give them context, which is just the information required to more fully understand the situation and why you’re making a decision, it is such a gift because I’m telling you. The kids like I see it every week. They’re like, right. You know, we developed a tool this past summer.

[00:32:08] Karen: We launched it during summer camps. We call it the Worth the Weight Goal Tracker. Okay? So it’s a visual goal tracker. It looks like a thermometer. So you decide that there’s a purchase you’re jonesing for. And then we, we say to parents all the time, the quickest way to move a conversation from can I have it to, is it worth it?

[00:32:23] Karen: Is to offer to split the cost with your young person, right? Because kids spend their own money very differently than how they spend ours. So let’s use the example of a FIFA ticket, a World Cup ticket. They’re very expensive, they’re eye wateringly, expensive, but you’ve got time. So like not a knockout game in not a perfect seat.

[00:32:40] Karen: $400. So let’s say your parents are like, fine, if that’s really what you wanna do, we’ll split it with you. So you need $200 and you’ve got whatever. Do you know, maybe you have nothing saved. So $200 divided by 10, that’s $20. So you put this goal tracker up in the fridge and every time you save $20, you get to color you Ray up until you’ve met your.

[00:32:59] Karen: We like it on the fridge because you know, there it sits a lot of, a lot of money conversations happen at the kitchen table. But here’s what a mother shared with us. Her son brought this home from camp and he’s in the eighth grade and he wants a new laptop for high school. So they filled it out, it’s gotta save a lot of money for that laptop.

[00:33:17] Karen: Four days later he wanted pizza for dinner and the mother said, that’s $35 we don’t have for that laptop. And she said, no eye rolls, ophthalmic, calisthenics, none of that. No attitude, nothing. He was like, right. She called it a mic drop. And we actually used that image in a social media post. She was like, this thing, this piece of paper on my fridge has changed the family dynamic because now he understands why I’m saying we’re not gonna have pizza for dinner.

[00:33:44] Karen: Instead of just thinking like, I’m no fun, or I don’t wanna spend the money, or you know, he’s like, right, right. I right $35 towards the thing I really want. No problem. Game changer. 

[00:33:56] Joe: I’m hoping stackers that you are hearing the same thing that I saw and heard when Karen’s and my mutual friend Ted Denter Smith, uh uh, said, you gotta talk to Karen.

[00:34:07] Joe: Because I told him about exactly, specifically what we wanted to help. And as I got to know Karen’s mission, I was even more excited. But Karen, if anybody’s going to put their money where their mouth is, they wanna know about you and your organization. Right? So let’s talk about this mission. If people help us raise a bunch of money to help kids get more financially literate, how do you deploy that effectively?

[00:34:32] Karen: Well, we’re free public goods, so all of our tools are online, but we do deliver workshops in person. Right now, it’s just in the greater New York City area and Toronto, but we run educator webinars. We go to a lot of conferences. We’re preparing. It’s my favorite fall weekend of the year, the Jumpstart National Educator Conference.

[00:34:49] Karen: It’s November 7th, eighth and ninth in Boston, and I really cannot wait to get there. What donating to Gifting Sense does is it lets us keep this dream alive of permissionless, truly permissionless. And scalable early financial education. It keeps the dream alive and makes it scalable. So we would like to be able to have, I mean, right now I’m sort of the conduit through which everybody must pass.

[00:35:13] Karen: So we would be able to train people to deliver these educator webinars. We’d also be able to build other silos. I mean, we have a lot of demand. People want a DIMS score calculator for first car, first apartment, post-secondary choices. The reason people respond to the tool is we put tremendous, tremendous, tremendous thought into it.

[00:35:32] Karen: And it takes a lot of testing and development to build something that does what it all of what it’s supposed to do, and none of what it shouldn’t. Right? So we don’t want anybody to feel bad, we just want them to think a little more. We wanna give people helpful benchmarks. Like if you’ll notice, we do give kids parameters as to what most families will think is a lot or a little bit of money, but that ultimate decision is given to parents.

[00:35:56] Karen: That’s where it should lie, right? That’s their decision. But we help them understand, okay, well here’s really how much money you’re looking at. So we are able to keep developing those tools, meet the demand. It’s just, you know, get it into every school. It’s, we’ve had a lot of success. We’re growing. There’s no reason why this can’t be in every school.

[00:36:16] Karen: We’re a free public good. We’re a mission-driven organization. We do this one thing, but we do it well and we wanna do more of it, and we wanna do it in more places. 

[00:36:24] Joe: And that is my goal stackers, is to help Karen extend that megaphone to more communities. ’cause it’s so important. And clearly, as we said in the introduction, it’s been time tested.

[00:36:35] Joe: Karen’s idea is, is not new. She’s been doing this for a long time, uh, which is important to me that it’s been tested. And then also, uh, we’ve talked to Michael Gilmore before the founder of the MAIA awards, which is Excellence in Personal Finance. And Karen being a, a multiple year recipient of these awards that we’ve profiled so many of these wonderful people on, like, just having that also shows me that it’s not just me.

[00:37:03] Joe: There’s so many people, Karen, that appreciate so much what you do. It’s gotta be exciting though still every time you just get that, uh, pizza or world cup or pizza or laptop moment, you know what 

[00:37:15] Karen: I’m telling you, I love my work. You cannot beat the feeling of knowing that. You’ve really helped a kid or their family and it just keeps coming, right?

[00:37:25] Karen: Like you think about what it is we’re doing. We’re teaching kids about money in a way that’s immediately helpful. We are doing it when there are default money, habits and beliefs are being established, right? I mean it’s, we reduce family arguments. We are preventing waste. It really is the easiest way to be a planet protector.

[00:37:43] Karen: And it goes all the way. Like people need two things really to create personal financial peace of mind. They need a social security number and an investible surplus, right? The investible surplus doesn’t have to be big, but it has to exist. So when an investible surplus comes from spending less than you make, now everybody knows this, right?

[00:38:02] Karen: Everybody knows they’re supposed to spend less than they make. It’s like, we know broccoli’s good for us. Go to a birthday party. Do you see i’s gonna the same thing? 

[00:38:08] Joe: It’s the same thing with weight, right? I know exactly that. If I consume fewer calories than I expend, then bam. Right? 

[00:38:13] Karen: Wait a minute. Yeah. Oh, how does that work?

[00:38:14] Karen: Okay. We know that what the issue is, how do I live the life I want? Spend less than I make. That is the crux of the problem, right? So how do I have the shoes I want? How do I have the house I want, the car I want? How do I send my kids to the school I want and still create that investible surplus? And honestly, honestly, thinking before buying is a really easy way to do it because two thirds of us buy things on the regular that we do not use or appreciate.

[00:38:42] Karen: And if we can do nothing other than stop that, we are on the way to creating that investible surplus.

[00:38:52] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And don’t you just love Karen Holland. That woman’s ability to make money easy for kids really cuts through the noise. Speaking of noise, today we celebrate the birthday of a New Zealand singer songwriter who’s turned 29. Lordie. Lord celebrates her big day today.

[00:39:11] Doug: Lord Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. I know she’s a huge fan of Stacking benjamin’s and you’re most, you’re clearly a huge fan of hers too. Call it her Lordie. That’s what her friends, I mean, that’s her name, right? She’s a giant fan of the show, is the point. And more importantly, she does not like, she specifically told me she does not like the How to Money Podcast.

[00:39:31] Doug: Born Ella Marja, LA Lanny, YLI O’Connor. That’s how you pronounce that too. She changed her professional name to Lordie because of her obsession with the aristocracy. That might also explain the name of her debut single that in 2013, topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts, making her the youngest singer since 1987 to accomplish that feat.

[00:39:56] Doug: Here’s today’s question. What was the name of Lorde’s 2013 debut song with a name that also could be about the aristocracy. I’ll be back ready after I go make Lordie a birthday cake. I’m sure if she’s a fan of aristocrat, she’ll want to eat cake. Let him eat cake.

[00:40:22] Doug: Hey there stackers. I’m frosting lover Joe. I had to put that in there. You read this stuff, you know you love frosting so much. I hate the frosting part. It’s just too much. I leave the end of the cake. You don’t like all that cream all over your face. I want a nice balance. I don’t want, I’m not a frosting lover, but I am a guy who’s lighting a candle for birthday.

[00:40:44] Doug: Girl, Lord. Wow. Yeah. I was told there’s a little correction that happened and a threat in the break there. Joe’s, Bob’s neighbor, Doug, you know, fan of the show. Lord is celebrating her birthday today and I gotta give it to her. That woman became famous. In a hurry. She was 17 years old if my math is correct.

[00:41:04] Doug: When she released her debut, Benjamin Stacking single, our question was, what was the name? Lord known for her obsession with the aristocracy? Fittingly went big with the chart topping song Royals, did you get it right? Hope so. If so, make yourself some cake and we’ll all celebrate Lord’s birthday together.

[00:41:25] Doug: Just don’t put too much frosting on the cake. And now, here come two guys who are far bigger fans of cool singers like Lord than Joel or Matt. It’s Joe 

[00:41:34] opener: and og. Hey, it’s Matt from Gainesville, Georgia. And when I’m not delivering on this consumerism in a big brown packaged car, then I’m Stacking Benjamins.

[00:41:44] opener: You like that song, OG Royals? 

[00:41:48] Joe: Uh, yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. I mean, who doesn’t, it’s a song. I’m too old to. Put my hands in the air, like I just don’t care. That’s my favorite line in that song. She’s 17 when she writes this. I think I’m too old to put my hands in the air. Like I just don’t care 

[00:42:03] Doug: really? You’re 17 ’cause your bursitis is keeping you from raising your hands above your shoulders.

[00:42:08] Joe: But that is what Lord and I have in common. I’m like, no, I’m not putting my hands in the air. No. Sorry. Thanks again to Karen for joining us and we can definitely help America’s Utes do better when it comes to learning money, skills and man, some of those early money skills that we learned as kids. Just super, super important.

[00:42:29] Joe: Like we talked about when I bought my 12 speed bike, I could have done a better job there. Do you guys remember Early Money Lessons? Og? Uh, you were an entrepreneur at a young age, but what was the first time that you went, oh, maybe I could do better with Money 

[00:42:46] OG: Boy. Um. I really never had any rets as it relates to money early because I, you know, as an 11 and 12-year-old, I had so much of it from the paper route, like relative to anyone else that I knew.

[00:42:59] OG: I mean, when I was 11 I was making $200 a month. Wow. For 

[00:43:03] Joe: an 11-year-old. 

[00:43:04] OG: Yeah. I remember one time I bought all the Laffy Taffies at the convenience store, every single one. ’cause they were a nickel a piece. And I was like, I have. A nearly unlimited amount of Nichols in this 200. Okay. Here’s what I 

[00:43:15] Doug: find interesting about that story, not how much money you had, but Joe specifically asked you, did you learn any lessons there?

[00:43:21] Doug: You just got done telling us you bought every Laffy Taffy, but didn’t glean any morsel of lesson out of that. 

[00:43:28] Joe: No. Listen, in the world of 11 year olds laughy Taffy is power. If you own all the laughy taffy, it’s like corner. It’s like the Dukes in, uh, trading places cornering the orange juice market. 

[00:43:41] OG: I mean, I kind of did.

[00:43:42] OG: I kind of had, you know, people to come to me like, Hey man, what’s up? I know you got a little of that stuff. And I was like, yeah, you want to taste, you 

[00:43:48] Doug: want some of my quote sugar looking to move? Any of that? Yeah, 

[00:43:51] OG: kidding. I mean, how much weight are we talking about?

[00:43:57] OG: I did have a little, a little empire, but I would say the initial money lesson. That kind of smacked me on the face was when I turned 18. I had very bad money mentors early. My parents were not and bad teeth from 

[00:44:09] Joe: all the Laffy Taffy, but, 

[00:44:11] OG: but no, no, I just sold it man. I just, I, yeah, I, I never consumed my own product.

[00:44:15] OG: I, I had it, I had it in the house, had it around, just I was a distributor. But when I turned 18, the first thing I did was I got a credit card because that’s what I was told to do. You gotta get, you gotta get your credit. And so I got a Clark gas station credit card and the limit was 200 bucks. And every time I went to the gas station for the first month, I would tell my friends, I wanna put it on my credit card.

[00:44:35] OG: You just gimme the cash. And then that bill came and it was $200. ’cause I’d maxed the thing out and I had none of the cash. And I was like, oh crap, Ola. Now I owe $200 and I don’t have the money to pay it. So that was probably my initial bad money lesson. Uh, I made a killing on. Affy Taffy futures that year also.

[00:44:58] OG: But I’m 

[00:44:59] Doug: still laughing about just picturing this little like 9-year-old kid going, how much weight are we talking about? 

[00:45:04] OG: Yeah, I was 11, but yeah, so 

[00:45:06] Doug: great. 

[00:45:07] OG: So great. Yeah. And I, I hear you’re a guy that can get some stuff like, yeah, man, I got some stuff. What do you need? What are you looking for? Looking for banana.

[00:45:14] OG: Oh, banana. 

[00:45:15] Doug: That’s gonna cost you, that was a good flavor. That was a good flavor. I’ll take strawberry 

[00:45:18] OG: too. Um, and I, if I can get a little bit of that strawberry and banana together, 

[00:45:23] Joe: and I’m also thinking at 11, whatever they asked for, you learned right away to go, oh, that’s gonna hurt you. Yeah, that’s gonna, 

[00:45:30] OG: I mean, we’re talking seven and a half, 8 cents per Yeah, at this point.

[00:45:33] OG: I mean, come on. How much you got? Yeah, 

[00:45:36] Joe: it’s, that’s funny. It’s tough. So, made a bunch of money on Laffy Taffy wasted it at the Clark station. That’s the, that’s the 

[00:45:43] OG: lesson, the story of my life. 

[00:45:45] Joe: But again, the DIM score would’ve come in great. There. As you heard earlier, does it make sense taking people through the four, four parts?

[00:45:55] Joe: Hey, let’s do a headline. 

[00:45:57] headlines: Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. 

[00:46:03] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from investment news, the trusted resource according to them, for independent minded advisors. This is a, a rag for industry insiders, but I often like to go here for headlines to see what they’re talking about.

[00:46:19] Joe: And man, they’re talking about a product. OG Leo Zoro wrote this one. Product sales hit new high as Americans seek income security amid inflation. Hmm. I wonder, PE people aren’t reactionary, are they at all or succumb to the feeling that maybe. Maybe I need to, uh, be safer, quote, safer with my money. Total US annuity sales.

[00:46:51] Joe: Annuity sales, huh? How about that? I would’ve never expected this reached 119.3 billion with a B dollars in the third quarter of 2025. According to new data from Lira marking the eighth straight quarter, that sales have surpassed a hundred billion dollars. Latest preliminary read of the annuity space represents a 4% increase from the same period last year and set a new quarterly record.

[00:47:16] Joe: Year. To date annuity sales have climbed to $345 billion, the highest nine month total ever recorded by the industry group. I have seen so many people on social media OG talking about, Hey, you know what you gotta do? You’re seeing these layoffs happen like we talked about on Monday. You just need to be in safe places and no place safer than an equity indexed annuity.

[00:47:40] OG: No safer place for me to earn a big commission than the annuity that I’m selling you. Absolutely. 

[00:47:46] Joe: It’s horrible. And for people that are new here, why is this annuity sales pitch so, so, so unlike by you and I, 

[00:47:58] OG: well, okay, so I mean we kind of dog on it. We dog on this. We dog on whole life insurance or permanent life.

[00:48:04] OG: These are all arrows in the quiver. Right. And when all you have is this one particular tool, then everything fits. Everything fits and, and I think if you go to a more comprehensive approach, you maybe will come to a different conclusion. A lot of the times, and that’s not to say that an annuity doesn’t work for some people, but a lot of times it’s oversold and overused.

[00:48:28] OG: And the benefit of an equity index annuity is that it’s generally tied to something that you’re somewhat familiar with. The s and p, let’s say, or the nasda. And the insurance company will say, or the annuity company will say, okay, or the sales pitch sounds a lot like this. You’ll get all the return of the s and p up to a certain amount.

[00:48:47] OG: Let’s say the max is 6% a year. Uh, everything above six, we get everything up to six. You get, and you get none of the negatives. So if the s and p is down 22%, you get a zero. You know, so if you have a hundred thousand dollars that you put in the s and p goes down 20%, you’re gonna get zero return that year instead of losing 20%, which is all true, right?

[00:49:09] OG: Instead of your 120 days. It’s all true 

[00:49:11] Joe: and it sounds, all of that’s a hundred percent wonderful. 

[00:49:13] OG: Sounds wonderful. If the stock market goes up 12%, you get six. And there’s variations on this, on how this all works depending on the company. So you’re trading away some of the upside in exchange for never having any downside.

[00:49:29] OG: Think about it from the insurance perspective. Are they benevolent institutions, you know, just in it to help the common man and not make any money on their own? Of course not. They figured out that they are gonna make money by taking all of that upside. Even the fact that they have to have some of the downside they think, you know, this works out for us in the long run.

[00:49:49] OG: An annuity I think is best used not for wealth preservation, but for income generation. If you’re looking at a fixed expense and you say, Hey, this thing absolutely needs to get paid every single month no matter what, and I don’t wanna have to risk or I don’t wanna have to think about how to create this cash flow.

[00:50:07] OG: An annuity is best used for income planning, not used for asset protection. Here’s something to consider. Let’s say for example, you have your long-term care premium. That’s gonna cover you in case you have assisted care needs later in life. And that premium payment for you and your spouse is $5,000 a year.

[00:50:26] OG: It’s contractually guaranteed to be that number. Now we all know that they can change it in the future, but, but at least the program that you have right now even is 5,000 a year. You say, well, I can take 5,000 a year outta my accounts, or I can set up an annuity. I can put 50 K into this annuity. That annuity is gonna pay out $5,000 a year for the rest of my life.

[00:50:46] OG: And if I live 30 years, my 50 K is still gonna produce 5,000 a year. If I live five years, it is closed. But so is my insurance policy. So that’s my trade. Like it’s more of an income play than it is an asset protection play because ultimately the annuity companies are not gonna lose money. If you’re looking at it going, Hey, I don’t get any of the downside, the downside of the stock market is what gets you the upside.

[00:51:12] OG: The risk of the downside is why you get the, all the return of the upside. It’s just how it works. If you wanna get rid of some of that, you know, you have to choose a different investment. The other piece that people don’t like is a lot of times there’s a lot of fees here. And when you start factoring that into the calculation, you’re not getting all the return of the market.

[00:51:30] OG: You know, you’re not getting the downside, but you’re not getting all the upside. And now there’s also some fees on top of it that are, you know, pretty substantial. One and a half two, two and a half, three starts to look less attractive. 

[00:51:42] Joe: And sometimes, and those fees often are buried in the fine print. Yeah, they’re not well explained.

[00:51:47] Joe: Even though insurance commissioners make the agents have people sign a bunch of disclosure documents. If you’ve ever been to a house closing, you know how quickly the people go through these quote disclosure documents. Just sign here, sign here, sign here, sign here, sign here. What am I signing? The worst.

[00:52:04] Joe: Yeah, it’s very similar when you sign all of these quote disclosures and insurance is so hard to understand. Listen, if you don’t think that you understand how these insurance products work and it may take a PhD. Listen to our second headline here. This comes to us from Yahoo Sports. How often have I said Yahoo Sports?

[00:52:24] Joe: And with a financial headline. This piece written by Nick Bromberg, senior writer at Yahoo NASCAR Cup series Champion Kyle Busch and his wife Samantha, say they lost over $8 million in a life insurance scheme. Life insurance, of course, is the cousin of annuities offered by insurance companies. NASCAR Cup series Champion Kyle Busch, his wife Samantha, said last Tuesday they’d lost over $8 million in a life insurance scheme.

[00:52:53] Joe: The Bush has released a video to social media. Saying they wanted others to avoid making the same mistake as they did. RP Legal, the firm representing the Bushes, said in a statement, the Bush’s legal complaint quote accuses Pacific Life, and it’s a poignant agent of designing and promoting a series of complex indexed, universal life policies as quote, tax-free retirement plans that were misrepresented as safe self-funding investment vehicles.

[00:53:21] Joe: They allegedly paid more than 10.4 million insurance premiums and lost over $8.58 million. Og. 

[00:53:28] OG: Yeah. Again, it, this is a symptom of trying to solve a problem by focusing on the product versus focusing on the problem that you have. Now, the Bushes Is this who? You said it was The Bushes NASCAR people. Yeah.

[00:53:43] OG: Kyle Bus, Kyle Busch. Yeah. I mean, does he need to have $10 million of life insurance? I mean, yeah, probably. I mean he probably needs 50 million. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about his net worth and estate planning type of thing. But you look up his income 

[00:53:55] Joe: streams and his estate planning, it would stand to reasons.

[00:53:58] Joe: This would be a, yeah, I 

[00:53:58] OG: mean, $10 million life insurance, not totally outta bounds. Right. So, but this was 

[00:54:03] Joe: just premiums 

[00:54:04] OG: he put in. But this was, yeah, so this was, he put 

[00:54:06] Joe: $10 million in premiums 

[00:54:07] OG: and this was pitched as a product, not as a solution to an issue. Like you said, I, it was sold as a tax free retirement vehicle or something.

[00:54:19] OG: It’s, you know, it’s not, it’s life insurance. It’s 

[00:54:22] Joe: a, well, and this is funny, OG because knowing a little bit about these policies and how they work, I can see this. The rep says, put $10 million into this policy so that the insurance costs a lot less over a number of years. That’s gonna pay huge dividends.

[00:54:40] Joe: Mm-hmm. But the bushes not understanding the policy. See 8.58 million of their 10 million go buy, buy in your number one. Which by the way, is what happens, right? When you put this money in. I mean, 

[00:54:52] OG: it shouldn’t have 

[00:54:53] Joe: What, how? 

[00:54:55] OG: Well, yeah. I mean, okay. It gets so complex. Yeah. It, it, I mean, here’s the thing.

[00:55:01] OG: There’s basically only one way to price this. All insurance costs the same, whether you’re buying term insurance, whole life insurance, universal life fixed index, universal life variable, universal life, variable life, like all insurance for a 45-year-old male who doesn’t smoke, and high blood pressure, everybody uses the same tables.

[00:55:23] OG: Like there’s, you know, slight variations by pennies, right? It’s, everything is about the same. It’s all state regulated. I mean, largely. Yeah. So, and there’s different companies that specialize in different things, but, but if you’re just a normal person, you go, I need a million dollars of life insurance. I’m 45.

[00:55:39] OG: I need, I need a million dollars of life insurance today. How much does it cost? It will cost markedly the same no matter where you shop. Where it changes premiums is gonna be, do you have a 10 year policy or 20 year policy, or a 30 year policy, or a 15 or a five or a one? Because if you buy a 20 year policy, they say, well, 45, it costs this at 46, it costs this at 47, it costs this at 48.

[00:56:02] OG: It costs this. They add all that up and divide by 20 and go, your premium’s 1200 a year. What do you think? You go, oh, okay. Because if you, if they said it went up every year, you go, I don’t wanna do that because at 65 it costs a crap load more to ensure a 65-year-old than it does a 45-year-old because you’re that much closer to, you know, getting hit by a bus.

[00:56:21] OG: Don’t wanna point out the obvious for the two of you guys, but what a lot more yesterday’s than tomorrow’s for some of us on the call. Wow. So people would cancel it. And when do you need the life insurance? If you’re 45, do you need it when you’re 45 or do you need might, you might need it closer to 65 statistically, right?

[00:56:39] OG: So that’s how they price it. So if you have a permanent life insurance policy and they say, Hey, you know, here’s your permanent policy. They price it all the way to 110 or 120, depending on the company or a hundred. And how much does it cost to insure a hundred year old, a $1 million policy for one year?

[00:56:58] OG: Like what do you think the premium would be? What’s the likelihood of a hundred year old dying? What’s the percentage chance, do you think? Well, at that point is it’s 80, 85%. I mean, it’s 90 insanely high, right? It’s not one in two, it’s one in one point something, right? Like, it’s like very high likelihood that a 99-year-old doesn’t see a hundred or a hundred year old doesn’t see 1 0 1 very, very, very high.

[00:57:22] OG: And so if you’re buying a million dollars a life insurance. How much money do you think you need to collect in premiums to offset the risk that you’re gonna write this million dollar check? It’s gotta be really high. It’s gotta be $800,000, 850, 900,000. It’s a big number. And so you take all those numbers and you add ’em up, and then you divide it out.

[00:57:42] OG: Now you say this is your premium for the rest of your life. When you add this to a permanent policy, the way that that premium is structured so that it’s a relatively flat premium your whole life is that you’re putting money in today in this account that combined with your premium at 99 and the account forecasted growth should be enough to offset the fact that the frigging premium’s $850,000.

[00:58:08] Joe: It’s like you’re self-insuring by throwing more money more quickly at it. So 

[00:58:12] OG: you put a bunch of money in early, it grows. Over that 50 year process so that when you’re taking the money out or so that when the premiums come due, or the cost of insurance is a better way to say it. When the cost of insurance is due, there’s money there to do it, and it, and, and, and the insurance company doesn’t come to you at 99 and go, okay, this year’s premium’s 850,000.

[00:58:31] OG: You know, because nobody would take that, right? It doesn’t make any sense. So the only way that these work is to put a crap load of money in, if you don’t put a crap load of money in, then what happens is that bucket that you’re supposed to have nice and full starts getting eaten up pretty quick because it doesn’t cost a thousand dollars to have life insurance on a 75-year-old for a million bucks.

[00:58:52] OG: Or in Kyle Busch’s case 10 million or 20 million or 50 million. It’s an insane amount of money. So you gotta put a bunch in. But here’s the catch, the more you put in, the closer you get to the actual contract value, say that, that’s a million dollar policy and you put 800,000 in it, you go well. That’s really good, right?

[00:59:15] OG: You’ve really funded that policy with a bunch of money. The commission on that is way less than if you say, why don’t we have a $5 million policy? You put 800 K in it, because the cost of insurance for the 5 million is much, much, much, much higher, right? Five times probably than the million. So I’m gonna minimally fund the big policy so that I get a big giant payday, and I bet if we unraveled this whole thing, that problem is what happened to the bushes.

[00:59:45] OG: Because at the end of the day, this works magically if you use it for estate planning. If you’re like, Hey, you have a net worth of $50 million. Your estate plan tax bill is gonna be 20 million bucks. Let’s buy a life insurance policy. Instead of paying the government 20 million, we have a life insurance policy for 20 million.

[01:00:01] OG: The cost of that’s five, you know, or 10, you know, you’re saving $10 million. You know this is, if it’s structured that way, it works great. What they probably did was say, Hey, put $10 million in this thing. By the way, we’re gonna probably need two or $3 million a year of premiums and we’re gonna sell you a $50 million policy so that my commission’s eight frigging million dollars, which is what you ch Ching are talking about, instead of it being 800,000, which is a crapload of money too.

[01:00:26] OG: That’s my guess. I have no evidence to support any of this. Sure. This is just my, 

[01:00:29] Joe: yeah, this is all conjecture, but looking at these numbers, losing $8.58 million of a $10.4 million premium, I think, um, just knowing a little bit about that industry, and by the way, I’m so glad that you so complicated. 

[01:00:41] OG: I’m trying to make this as simple as possible and I can’t do it.

[01:00:44] Joe: That was my point. I was about to say that. I was so happy that you explained that because if you ended that stacker confused by OGs explanation, which was probably the simplest way to put all this mumbo jumbo, you know how the bushes feel, and these are people with. Deep pockets, smart people. I mean, the number of engineers on these NASCAR teams are huge.

[01:01:11] Joe: And, uh, just surrounded by a bunch of smart people, the bushes, and yet they lose a bunch of money to this. Mostly because I’m sure they also didn’t understand it enough to be able to ask the right questions. So good stuff there. We’ll link to these in our show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com so that you can dive in deeper on those if you want to.

[01:01:32] Joe: And we have a newsletter called the 2 0 1, where we also dive into topics like these. Kevin Bailey from our team who worked formerly at TIAA and also at Vanguard writes our 2 0 1 newsletter and he finds and curates the best on the internet on these topics. So if you want a lot of the best sources to learn more about the topics we talk about, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1, Douglass go out on the back porch before we say goodbye, because we’ve got some stuff happening.

[01:02:00] Doug: A couple of things I want to talk about, Joe. One is some important updates are available. 

[01:02:06] Joe: Yeah. For those of you who get the Stacky Benjamins guides, either our HR guide, our tax guide, our college planning guide. Coming soon. By the way, our financial dashboard guide just about ready to go live, but all those guides, every single month we update them.

[01:02:21] Joe: You pay one price for these. We update them every month to keep up with whatever’s going on in the economy, whatever’s going on with the rules. If you change jobs, whatever it is, the guide keeps up so that you don’t have to continually fork out money for the latest stuff, but we have updated all three of those guides with the latest, so check your email box.

[01:02:42] Joe: Sometimes these go to spam and you can download then the latest, the November version of the guides. So big on those fronts, and I’m excited for people to open up that email and see what, what cool additions we’ve made to all three of them. Always a fun time for stackers to get our guides. By the way, if you want to check out any of those guides, I know that we’re ending open enrollment season, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash guides to take a look at them and grab yours.

[01:03:11] Doug: Definitely make sure you, you capitalize on that. And then we’re doing some great, great charity work, right? I mean, mostly me, but you guys are helping a little bit, right? I think it’s important that everybody understand what’s going on this month as we completely trounce the other podcast. 

[01:03:26] Joe: Yeah. We wanna trounce two things.

[01:03:28] Joe: How to money. That’s the biggest thing. And then financial literacy for kids. Probably just below that. Yeah. Let’s make sure that we help kids understand money. You heard Karen Holland earlier, OG and I seeded this initially with a $500 donation, so beat that stackers. Wow. Beat that. And looking by the way, some of you have been great already.

[01:03:51] Joe: We’re, we’re, we’re doing very well in this competition, so we’re beating the snot out of, uh, Joel and Matt. But once they start hearing how we are going after them, every podcast episode, I’ve known Joel and Matt a long time. This is gonna be a battle people. So help improve financial literacy. There’s not happening apparently.

[01:04:13] Joe: So it’s, it’s real. It is. And also because this is, we’re teaming up with Daffy, who’s teamed up with iHeart. iHeart has a big music festival, a lot of great recording artists. Every time you give, you also get a ticket into the giveaway jar. They’ve got a lot of cool stuff, but at the heart of it is that you can win tickets to the iHeart Music Festival as well.

[01:04:37] Joe: So not only are you helping, uh, America’s Utes, Utes learn about money, you’re also going to maybe go to see your favorite artist in concert, 

[01:04:46] Doug: Lordy. 

[01:04:48] Joe: She might be playing there. Yeah, you’re a huge fan. You can tell you’re a huge fan. As 

[01:04:51] Doug: is she of us. 

[01:04:53] Joe: Alright, thank you so much for lending us your ears for this last hour.

[01:04:58] Joe: Doug, take it from here, man. What should be on our to-do list after today’s episode? 

[01:05:02] Doug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from Karen Holland. Wanna make better money decisions? Ask yourself the dims question. Does it make sense? If it works for middle schoolers, it’ll work for you. Second, buying an annuity because you’re worried about the financial markets.

[01:05:20] Doug: Remember, insurance companies are great at math and also are great at knowing that you may not be great at math. They’re good at knowing that you know that you don’t know that you fell asleep in anyway. While there might be reasons to buy an annuity, controlling your fear of volatility isn’t a great one, but the big lesson.

[01:05:44] Doug: I would strongly recommend becoming friends with Karen Holland. That woman is so charming. Joe’s mom is now trying to impress her by making chocolate chip cookies for all of us. For all of us, ma. Thanks to Karen Holland from Gifting Sense for joining us today. Head to gifting sense.com to learn more or to sign up children, you know, better yet, help Karen reach more people by joining our drive to raise money for her mission.

[01:06:13] Doug: Head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash Stacking. Hope to give and win a chance at some cool prices. This show is the property of S SP podcast LLC, copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.

[01:06:44] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[01:08:01] opener: Had the opportunity to, uh, 

[01:08:02] OG: be on a plane the last couple weeks, several plane rides. So I got caught up on a whole bunch of stuff on Netflix and uh, I watched two, I watched a movie and I watched a show. And I know we talked about Diplomat, but I don’t wanna talk about that. Uh, I think Doug, you and I both thumbs up real quick on diplomat.

[01:08:18] OG: Thumbs 

[01:08:18] Doug: up. Yep. Across thumbs board for 

[01:08:20] OG: sure. So if you haven’t got to Diplomat three seasons, you can do it. All right. The first movie that I saw, uh, number one in movies on Netflix right now. Called the House of Dynamite. 

[01:08:34] trailer: Approximately three minutes ago, we detected an ICBM over the Pacific. Current flight trajectory is consistent with impact somewhere in the continental United States 

[01:08:46] headlines: have we seen Death Con, 

[01:08:49] OG: is this real?

[01:08:53] Doug: Stratcom is asking for launch instructions right now. I’m gonna need 

[01:08:58] opener: you. To breathe. 

[01:09:01] OG: We are talking about hitting a bullet with a bullet. So is it going to ask? 

[01:09:05] headlines: That’s what 50 billion advisor get in the car and just start driving. 

[01:09:12] trailer: If we do not take steps to neutralize our enemies, now we will lose our window to do so.

[01:09:22] trailer: If we get this wrong, none of us are gonna be alive tomorrow. There is no plan being, 

[01:09:29] opener: we didn’t everything right. Right. 

[01:09:32] Joe: Whenever they say nobody’s gonna start a nuclear war, so this is about somebody starting a nuclear world. You know exactly that. Somebody’s about to do 

[01:09:39] OG: that. So it starts out with everybody just going to work like normal situation room in DC and they’re just doing the handoff like, Hey, what’s going on today?

[01:09:47] OG: Da, da, da, da da. All of a sudden somebody goes, just, they got the screen up and it goes, Nope. They go, wait, what’s that? And somehow we. Us missed the launch of this, uh, missile. And so this missile’s up and going and they’re like, 

[01:10:04] opener: huh. 

[01:10:06] OG: Test fight. Like, what’s, is this a satellite launch? We’re just waiting on Elon Musk to say, oh, sorry, forgot to, forgot to mention that we’re putting this, you know, whatever.

[01:10:16] OG: And then they realize that it is not, and it’s 20 minutes of them trying to figure out what is going on as this thing is like entering the orbit of the earth and then coming back down. I caught wind of this when I was in Chicago because they said that the impact is Chicago. So that’s where the, the missile is headed.

[01:10:37] OG: And so there’s a new story about like, if you’re sensitive to this sort of stuff and you live in Chicago, you probably don’t wanna watch this movie. Don’t watch it. Chicago potentially, uh. I am going to give this a gigantic thumbs down, like double, triple thumbs down. And yet it’s number one, it’s number one.

[01:10:55] OG: I, I don’t want to give away any reasons why, but the structure of the movie is garbage. So I’m happy to tell you guys if it, should I say what it is? Maybe just do like a three second thing, like come back in 30 

[01:11:12] Joe: seconds. Let’s do that. If you wanna watch it to see why it’s a thumbs down, we’ll give you three seconds to stop listening.

[01:11:18] Joe: ’cause I’m not gonna watch it. 

[01:11:20] OG: Okay. If, if you’re still listening, you’ve been warned, I’m not gonna give away what happens in the movie, but as this movie progresses, there’s this countdown, right? The missile’s going and you’re watching the countdown and there’s, you know, everybody’s calling this frantic, it’s a hugely suspenseful thing.

[01:11:36] OG: And then it gets down to like five seconds, four seconds, three, two, and then fade to black. Now the movie starts over from a different person’s perspective. So now, instead of being in the situation room, you know, you’re in the Air Force base and these guys are just chucking it up, having a good time, and then they get the alert.

[01:12:00] OG: And so now it’s them going, oh, sh Nike’s, we’ve got 20 minutes to get the, you know, and you see the bombs being loaded on the plane and they launch and they’re freaking out. And then it fades to black and now it goes to the president and he’s in a motorcade, going to do this thing. It’s like all these different perspectives and there’s no ending to the movie.

[01:12:20] OG: Oh, the movie just stops telling you stories. 

[01:12:23] Doug: You have no idea what if it was real or not. 

[01:12:26] OG: No idea. No idea who did it. No idea what we did about it. No, you don’t think 

[01:12:31] Joe: some people are gonna think that’s clever and they’re gonna like that. That’s horse pucky. 

[01:12:35] OG: It is absolute garbage. So I was like, I was like on a plane.

[01:12:40] OG: I wanted to throw my, I wanted to open the emergency exit and throw my phone out the window from 30,000 feet. That would be a rational response. Yeah. I was like, like, this is so dumb. What a waste of an hour and 45 minutes. 

[01:12:51] Doug: When you started this and you were saying, we don’t know if it’s real or not, it reminded me of the real life situation like this that happened in Russia.

[01:13:00] Doug: Have you guys heard this story? No. I’m not setting up a joke. So 1983 there was a, there was a loop. You talking about 

[01:13:08] OG: the movie, the war game. 

[01:13:10] Doug: Nope. 

[01:13:11] Joe: No, he’s talking about something that really happened. 

[01:13:13] Doug: Yeah, this is a real thing. So, and, and this is one of those cases where we don’t realize how close we were to the, the world ending until long after it happened, but there was a Russian lieutenant, so way down the chain, you know, like not top dog at all.

[01:13:26] Doug: He was working in their air defense center and this was a, a few weeks after the Russian shot down a Korean commercial airliner that made, you know, huge news. Everybody knew about that. You didn’t OG because this was like years before you were born. Probably in 1983. Nope, I was in kindergarten. So they had, in this defense Missile Defense center, they were getting alarms that a missile had been launched from the United States.

[01:13:53] Doug: Shortly after that, three more showed up and he didn’t believe it and he disobeyed protocol and his superiors and did not. Fire counter attack and save the world by going against Russian military command and protocol. Guy’s name was Stanislau. Petrov. 

[01:14:13] OG: Yeah. That’s what’s going on in this movie is everybody’s on the phone with everybody going, Russia’s like, that wasn’t us, man.

[01:14:19] OG: And it’s like, well, that’s what people who would do, it’s would say. And it’s like, no, it’s not. It’s like, well, we know your subs in the Atlantic, surface your submarine right now, and to prove to us that, you know, you’re not on an offensive. And it’s like, but if I do that, you blow us out of the water. I promise not to blow you outta the water.

[01:14:35] OG: How do I know? You know, it’s like you talked to the Chinese, the Chinese said they didn’t do it, but I think this might be, this is, you know, how did we, you know, it’s just all this chaos and for the first 20 minutes of the movie, you’re like, holy crap, what are we gonna do? And then when it starts over, you’re like, wait, what is happening?

[01:14:51] OG: And then you go, oh, we’re starting over from. 

[01:14:54] Joe: A different 

[01:14:54] OG: perspective, 

[01:14:55] Doug: stupid and all of which I’ve seen some movies like that and you think, okay, this could be cool, but if they don’t give you any resolution, there’s no end. Now I’m pissed. 

[01:15:02] OG: Yeah. Now I will say that I did watch another show, if we got time for one more called Zero Day, and I watched the first episode of this.

[01:15:10] OG: Took it off the table. ’cause I was like, I’m not sure. And then went back to it and it got better. This is like fine wine. It gets better every episode. Here’s the series. It’s a six episode series called Zero Day 

[01:15:24] trailer2: 1,402 people died on zero day plane crashes, train derailments. Total chaos.

[01:15:36] trailer2: Whoever’s responsible for this attack, they’re dangerous. And they said they’re gonna do it again. 

[01:15:41] trailer: Congress is authorizing a special investigatory commission and endowing it with powers of surveillance search and seizure. I’m just gonna grab people off the streets without warrants. 

[01:15:54] headlines: Actually, 

[01:15:55] trailer: you are.

[01:16:06] trailer: People believe what they need to believe. The truth is the truth, but it’s not always the most important thing.

[01:16:17] Joe: Wow. Sounds like you’re like an uplifting stuff, man. Yeah. Apocalypse 

[01:16:21] OG: much. And is that De Niro? Yeah. Zero Day is the name of this show. Um, Robert De Niro. Jesse Clemens. Lizzie Kaplan. Wow. Connie Britton, Joan Allen, Angela Bassett. Matthew Modine. Pretty big jam packed with people. So this is a, uh, I mean, it’s a terrorist attack that happens.

[01:16:43] OG: It basically takes out the grid. It’s the grid, it’s all the, like, everything shuts down for a minute and then comes back and, uh, the former president is, um, tasked with being the. Special prosecutor on this commission to figure out who did it. And he starts pulling the thread of who did it. Now the thing that’s interesting is at the beginning of the movie when he’s sitting there, uh, he is pretty much going crazy.

[01:17:09] OG: Oh, he’s seeing things, he’s hearing things. Um, you get to, uh, kind of unravel his past of why he’s not president anymore. He stepped down in the middle of a term or didn’t seek reelection, some family events that happened and that comes up. So there’s all that. While he’s trying to unravel this and also battle these demons of like, am I, you know, is this like early onset dementia?

[01:17:33] OG: Like that’s going on? Is there something else afoot? Is this just, you know, psychosis of some kind? So he starts kind of pulling the thread. Now the difference between this show and the other movie is that this does have a finality to it. As he unravel what happens. Has a very tough decision to make at the end of like the who done it part and uh, is very good.

[01:17:57] OG: So this sounds like a big thumb up. This I would give a big thumb up too. Very dark, lot of, you know, not great themes going on. Espionage and surveillance and you know, very much the dark side of all of this stuff. Like if you think about, um, what was it? The Patriot Act, right? The Patriot Act after nine 11.

[01:18:16] OG: Like, everybody’s like, yeah, that’s great. And now we see the other side of that, which is, you know, it’s 20 years later. Do we still need 700 layers of security at airports? Probably. Does it need, you know, should we up our tech. At this point, we probably don’t need to have our shoes off. Like they have a pretty good sense of what’s going on.

[01:18:31] OG: I had had a full body search the other day at the airport. Sounds fun. Oh, loved every minute of that, didn’t you? I was trying to make jokes. The guy was not having it. None. But what I did do was, as his hands were down my pants and people were looking at me like, what is this guy doing? I would make like extended eye contact with them and I would just smile.

[01:18:49] OG: Don’t break it as they walked through the airport, don’t 

[01:18:51] Doug: break it. 

[01:18:51] OG: As they’re like looking at me going, what is going on with him? I, I just look at him and smile until they broke eye contact. So yeah, it was, uh, it was good for everybody. I had a good time. And what 

[01:19:03] Doug: was the name of the hot piece of garbage?

[01:19:05] Doug: We should avoid the first one again. 

[01:19:07] OG: The house of dynamite, triple thumbs down. I’m using your thumbs to also thumb it down even though you haven’t seen it. And then zero day thumbs up.