How to Talk About Money Without Fighting (SB1802)

What’s more romantic than roses and chocolate? How about not fighting about money.

Joe Saul-Sehy and OG welcome Douglas and Heather Boneparth, the financial planning power couple who literally wrote the book on navigating money in relationships. Broadcasting from the basement (where love is patient and spreadsheets are kind), the crew dives into how people can build financial trust, avoid money secrets, and actually enjoy talking about dollars without it turning into a heavyweight title fight.

Whether you’re navigating finances with a romantic partner, a roommate splitting rent, an accountability partner keeping you honest, or a family member you’re in business with, these principles apply. Because let’s face it: our Stacker avatar isn’t trying to impress Wall Street. You’re trying to build a great life with the people who matter, without money becoming the thing that creates tension.

Douglas and Heather break down what healthy financial communication really looks like, how to spot and prevent financial secrecy, and why shared goals matter more than perfectly matched spending styles. They also tackle the tricky stuff: different money upbringings, emotional baggage around finances, and how to reset when conversations go sideways.

And since this is the basement, you’ll also get practical reminders about key financial deadlines (because nothing kills momentum like IRS penalties), smart ways to teach kids about money, and Doug’s festive trivia to keep things light.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to talk about money without it escalating into a debate or argument
• The warning signs of financial secrecy and how to prevent it in any relationship
• Why shared goals matter more than identical personalities or spending styles
• Practical ways to align spending, saving, and investing with another person
• How your childhood money experiences shape your adult financial behavior
• Smart ways to teach kids patience, work reward connections, and intentional spending
• Important financial deadlines to keep on your radar
• Why communication, not math, is often the real key to financial success

This Episode Is For You If:

• You avoid money conversations because they always seem to go badly
• You’re navigating shared finances with a partner, roommate, or family member
• You want to align financial goals with someone without constant friction
• You’re single but have accountability partners or friends you talk money with
• You believe better communication is the key to better financial outcomes

Question for You:

What’s one money conversation that felt awkward at first but ultimately made a relationship (romantic, friendship, or otherwise) stronger? Drop your answer in the Spotify comments or the Stacking Benjamins Facebook group. You might just help another Stacker start a better conversation.

Because in the end, mastering money isn’t just about returns. It’s about building a life and relationships that work.

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

• Vanguard: 1 in 3 retirees faces an RMD tax penalty | Financial Planning (FinancialPlanning)

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Doug’s Trivia

• On today’s date in 1979, ABC aired a biopic seen by over 40 million viewers, starring Kurt Russell, about a Memphis raised crooner whose early TV appearances were filmed only from the waist up. Who was the pop star?

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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

• Personal Finance Guides to Help You Make Smarter Money Moves
• Join One of our BAD Meetup Groups! (Benjamins After Dark)
• 1% Better Conference Omaha February 21-22

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Join Us Friday!

Tune in on Friday when, in honor of Valentine’s Day, we thought we’d get all romantic with some financial ideas (or not). That’s why we’re asking our Friday panelists some concepts and asking, “Love it…or leave it?”

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Are You Investing or Just Placing Bets? SB1801

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] opener: The courtship is over. Oh, the a.
[00:00:21] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
[00:00:36] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and in honor of Valentine’s Day today, we celebrate relationships and your money with a couple who literally wrote the financial book on the topic. Douglas and Heather Bonaparte Plus in our headline segment know how we all wanna get hit with Cupid’s Zero. Well, one arrow you wanna miss is the one from the IRS that says you missed a deadline.
[00:00:59] Doug: One big deadline is missed by tons of taxpayers every year, and we’ll help you never miss it. And a few other important deadlines ever again. And don’t you worry. Because of course, I’ll come back at the halfway point of today’s show with some relationship themed trivia because if there’s one thing people tune into this show for Joe, it’s my views on relationships.
[00:01:22] Doug: And now two guys who probably should seek out therapy for their intimate relationship with these microphones. It’s Joe and oh,
[00:01:36] Joe: is there any other reason to tune in besides to hear Doug’s relationship advice? Hey everybody. Welcome to the Doug Relationship Podcast. I’m Joe Salsey. Hi, and uh, buckle up buttercup because man, we got a great show today. Doug and Heather. Bona par is coming back, og. I know that this week, especially for you and Mrs.
[00:01:56] Joe: Og, you guys getting all romantic, put a fire in the fireplace. Probably get the spreadsheet out, maybe fire up some monarch money, a little, uh, berry white. It’s gonna be good.
[00:02:09] OG: Uh, no. We prefer to hide our emotional money baggage.
[00:02:14] Joe: Just act like those 36 Amazon boxes never showed up.
[00:02:18] OG: Exactly.
[00:02:19] Joe: I don’t know if you know this, but that’s a key.
[00:02:21] Joe: Point the Douglas and Heather are gonna talk about today. Just ignore
[00:02:25] OG: it. You no evil. See no evil. Right. I did notice. So let me ask you guys this. You have Apple Pay on your phone, right? Have you adopted that? Is that like a 50% thing? Is that 0%? Like where are you at, Doug?
[00:02:37] Joe: Zero.
[00:02:38] OG: Doug’s all about the fraud.
[00:02:39] OG: He’s super, he’s like, please take my credit card information.
[00:02:42] Joe: Yeah, give me more fraud. You know, half of our family has adopted it. Cheryl
[00:02:46] OG: has. So a little bit. Okay, but not you, I mean, do you have a card on your
[00:02:50] Doug: Do
[00:02:50] Joe: not,
[00:02:51] OG: not a single one.
[00:02:52] Doug: Do not. Okay.
[00:02:53] OG: All right. This won’t, this won’t apply then, but, um,
[00:02:55] Doug: I’m, it’s actually on there.
[00:02:56] Doug: I, if I go into my wallet, my Apple wallet, it’s there, but I just don’t ever. You’re talking about? Do I use my phone at the, like the grocery store checkout counter? Yeah. To pay? No, never. That’s not occur
[00:03:06] OG: to me. That’s not the rhythm that you have. You, you reach in your pocket and grab the wallet? Some
[00:03:10] Doug: people, yeah.
[00:03:10] Doug: I mean, if I can, I pull out my paper checkbook and write a check. I make everybody wait in line behind me
[00:03:15] OG: that I believe
[00:03:16] Doug: that’s my preferred.
[00:03:16] OG: And who do you, is it okay if I make this out for $50 more and take some extra cash
[00:03:20] Doug: after he takes out the abacus to
[00:03:22] OG: figure it out? Behind the cash register is like, sir, you wrote the check for too much.
[00:03:26] OG: Like, I know
[00:03:27] Doug: MOD Lane seven, MOD, lane seven.
[00:03:30] OG: Yeah. Well, anyways, if you use a lot of digital payments, you can elect on your phone to have, you know, you get the little notification like you just used your MX card at such and such a place. Little pops up right? And tells you. Chevron gas station. There it is, $78 or something like that.
[00:03:48] OG: And so, uh, the other day I was in the living room and my wife’s iPad was there and I had already told her this, but then like when I saw it, I was like, oh boy. And so on her iPad, she has all the alerts on, I have none. I don’t have alerts on my phone or anything. I don’t like those interruptions. But she does, and she has the alerts.
[00:04:05] OG: I don’t know that she likes the interruptions, but, um, anyways, I bought a new iPhone. I saw that there was a thing that said Joshua. Apple card, $1,100. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like this does, uh, I don’t, I don’t know that I wanna, are all, are all my charges being displayed on my wife’s iPad? Go into her settings and make some adjustments.
[00:04:28] Doug: How does the Pink Pony Ranch appear?
[00:04:30] OG: So
[00:04:31] Doug: that’s a lot of Woodford.
[00:04:33] OG: Maybe Douglas and, uh, Heather can, uh, share with me, uh, maybe a strategy or two to be a little bit more open and. In in our, you know, honey, I wanna open up our relationship.
[00:04:46] Joe: You down for an open relationship, sweetie, with our money.
[00:04:49] OG: With our money.
[00:04:52] Joe: That’s where the pause in the right place is really important.
[00:04:55] OG: Let’s eat grandma,
[00:04:57] Joe: right,
[00:04:58] OG: comma, commas matter.
[00:04:59] Joe: Really, really, really important. I
[00:05:01] OG: wanna open up our relationship.
[00:05:04] Joe: Speaking of, uh,
[00:05:05] OG: maybe they can help with that. Help with my anxiety of, uh,
[00:05:08] Joe: speaking of keeping things in the vault, I’m loving the emails I’m getting from people who are using the vault, which we just started back in early January.
[00:05:19] Joe: We know how important it’s to protect your identity. Stay away from on, use subscriptions, get off text and email list. Uh, keep your privacy private. It’s, it’s incredible how much it’s changed for me personally. Head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash vault to see how it works. And finally, take control.
[00:05:34] Joe: Uh, this is, you know, in financial planning for me. You know how much I like talking about risk management. Let’s take control Stacking Benjamins dot com slash vault.
[00:05:41] Doug: Yeah, I need to jump in there, Joe. ’cause if I had a nickel for every time somebody told me, keep your privates private.
[00:05:46] Joe: It’s, it’s a little, might be referring to something a little different.
[00:05:50] Doug: Isn’t that what you just said? It’ll help me with
[00:05:52] Joe: slightly different.
[00:05:53] Doug: Oh.
[00:05:54] Joe: But yeah, no, that’s an and thing. Better do the go to the vault and keep your privates private. Do both. Oh boy. We gotta get off that topic. We’ve got Douglas and Heather Bonaparte coming down to the basement. Douglas of course, has, uh, just run this fantastic financial planning company.
[00:06:11] Joe: He is a big voice on social media when it comes to financial planning concepts. You just put in Douglas Bonaparte. You can tell who he is because his, uh, online identity is all about that big wavy hair of his. I get hair envy every time I see Doug Bonaparte. You’ve seen him all over the place, but you’re hearing him and Heather today talk about relationships.
[00:06:33] Joe: And you know what, this is not just relationships with your partner, although certainly we’ll be addressing that, but your relationship with your money, your relationship with your accountability partners. All the above. It’s relationship week here on the show with Valentine’s Day coming and what better people to talk about it than Douglas and Heather.
[00:06:50] Joe: We’re gonna hear from them next, but we got a couple sponsors who keep us, keep on keeping on because Doug, as I’ve said before, the Stacky Benjamin Show always free and worth every penny. So let’s hear from them. And then the Bonaparte join us to talk about your relationships and your money.
[00:07:16] Joe: And look who’s back at mom’s basement. I think they need like, uh, uh, frequent flyer miles because they’re here so often lately. Heather and Doug, how are you guys?
[00:07:25] Doug: Good. I’m trying to skate my wife, but I end up with her in the basement here. It’s great.
[00:07:29] Joe: It is a super day, super week to have you guys in the basement because it’s Valentine’s Day week.
[00:07:35] Joe: How do the bona parts. Get into Valentine’s? Is it? Uh, we made reservation three months ago. Are you those people or are you, we totally forgot about it. And it’s just Hallmark Holiday
[00:07:49] Heather: this year. We’re going away with the whole family. Yeah. ’cause it’s also President’s weekend, so I don’t know if we we’re gonna carve out a sliver of romance on our family vacation.
[00:07:57] Heather: I don’t
[00:07:58] Doug: know. We might get a couple’s massage while, right. I think that’s. At the very least,
[00:08:02] Heather: but historically we do have a thing that we do. Yeah. On Valentine’s Day we make lasagna.
[00:08:07] Doug: Oh,
[00:08:08] Heather: and we’d been doing it for years. Like way back in the day when money was really tight, we were living in the city. We started this thing where we would spend the
[00:08:15] Doug: love,
[00:08:16] Heather: the love las the love lasagna.
[00:08:17] Heather: One time a year we would go to like the fancy groceries where
[00:08:20] Doug: F ingredients
[00:08:21] Heather: all the good ingredients, and it would take hours. Ours.
[00:08:24] Doug: It’s a very expensive lasagna.
[00:08:25] Heather: It was an expensive lasagna, but it was still less expensive than like a prefixed dinner. But
[00:08:29] Doug: it was also like a group activity. We could build this thing together, cook it together, enjoy it together, have a glass of wine.
[00:08:34] Doug: So it was like a nice,
[00:08:35] Heather: have several bottles of wine by the time lasagna was done.
[00:08:38] Doug: Yeah, very
[00:08:39] Heather: fun. We’d be eating it at like 1130 at night because we didn’t start till 7:00 PM after work, you know, like
[00:08:43] Doug: hundred percent. And we,
[00:08:44] Heather: but it was tradition.
[00:08:45] Doug: Yeah. We had this tradition of baking a lasagna for Valentine.
[00:08:48] Doug: Side
[00:08:49] Joe: that does just, just the act of doing it together. Yeah. That is so romantic, but I think it’d be even more romantic. ’cause I love lasagna. If you had Cheryll and I over Yeah. As your taste testers, like that would be great. You’re
[00:08:59] Heather: welcome. Anytime
[00:09:00] Doug: your new name is Garfield.
[00:09:03] Joe: I want to, I wanna dive into this because I wanna talk today about relationships and, and as you guys know, every relationship you have with money is a relationship with your partner, with your kids, with your friends, and with.
[00:09:16] Joe: Yourself, but let’s really set the stakes. So you guys wrote, nearly 40% of married or cohabitating adults admit they’ve kept financial secrets. And when people hear that, they think, well, that’s normal, probably harmless. But what actually happens when those little money fibs start to pile up?
[00:09:35] Heather: Exactly that.
[00:09:36] Heather: They pile up a bunch of white lies become the big lie. It becomes a behavioral pattern. And so of course we all go to Target every once in a while and have like a Yolo moment in the bargain bins in the front. And you’re like, yeah, what’s it matter? It’s an extra $20. It doesn’t matter. Nobody’s see this?
[00:09:52] Heather: But when the behavior stacks up and this becomes something that actually has an impact on your financials month to month, it’s more than just a little white lie. And then we develop this behavior of lying to our partner, keeping things from them because, so I think we should back up like our definition of financial infidelity.
[00:10:10] Heather: And, and I like this and, and we didn’t come up with this, this was through researchers at, I believe, university of Indiana. Mm-hmm. A good definition for financial infidelity is doing something that your partner would disapprove of financially and then covering it up. So it’s the conscious act of not telling them that is kind of like the second cut when we talk about lies around our money.
[00:10:35] Joe: Yeah. I wanna start here because this is kind of the anti Valentine’s Day moment, right? When we’re coming home from that target run. But you’re saying, Heather, it’s not about the dollar, like it truly is not about the dollar, it’s, it sounds like it’s about the intent.
[00:10:47] Heather: It’s about the intent as well, because I mean, look, we, it’s not to say that every single time you go to the store, you need to be showing receipts.
[00:10:53] Heather: That’s not it. But when it becomes a practice in your life to say, every time I go shopping, I’m gonna run the bags upstairs. I don’t want my partner to see them, or I’m gonna use. This credit card that he doesn’t really have the visibility to, and, and maybe it’ll just slide under the radar when I pay it this month off here.
[00:11:12] Heather: Yeah. That, that’s not the kind of behavior we’re looking for. It doesn’t promote the teamwork. It doesn’t promote the communication that you really need to keep things above board and to be working towards shared goals as a family.
[00:11:22] Doug: Just remember compounding works both ways. We always talk about it in the context of good behaviors or investment returns.
[00:11:28] Doug: Over time, consistency and discipline will will work for you. But when we think about bad behaviors like this, it will work against you in profound ways. So that little thing turns into a medium thing, turns into a large thing, and people will then start pushing the boundaries. Of that lie of that amount of that behavior to the point of having something catastrophic or something you will obviously regret and have a tough time fixing.
[00:11:53] Joe: Is there times though, when it’s ever just about privacy? Not really about betrayal, but just, you know what, this is my thing. It’s not really our thing.
[00:12:01] Heather: There are better ways to go about achieving that. Level of personal independence than not telling your partner. But Joe, to your point, I think that’s how a lot of couples end up in this situation, right?
[00:12:12] Heather: They say, well, this isn’t, I’m not trying to lie to them. I just deserve a little bit of freedom to do what I wanna do. We would say to you, there are tons of ways to achieve that, right? Like keeping a separate bank account. With a set amount of money for you to do as you please. That’s one way to do it.
[00:12:27] Heather: Sure. But should your partner wish to have visibility into that? That’s not an unreasonable ask. I mean, you know, our way to do it is to say we have a check-in number. We have a number where anything below the number, we kind of know we can go about our business and handle. Whether that’s for the family, whether that’s for a personal expense for one of us.
[00:12:46] Heather: But when we hit that number, we know it’s something we have to at least touch base on and say, Hey. I’m about to go do this. You’re good with that?
[00:12:53] Doug: Yeah. It’s a good practice.
[00:12:54] Joe: I’m laughing because this sounds like the financial equivalent of the hall pass. Yeah. Like the couple has the hall pass, like Cheryl’s like, Hey, Brad Pitt comes along.
[00:13:04] Joe: Yeah. And he’s interested like, okay, so, so, so if it’s less than a hundred bucks, I get a hall pass. Like it is fine. Just go do it. If those
[00:13:12] Doug: boots are on sale, they’re 250 bucks and your number’s 500, someone’s gotten a new pair of boots that day without necessarily needing to check in and, and you really need to know your own financial situation a little bit here.
[00:13:23] Doug: Right?
[00:13:23] Heather: But I wanna mention too that it also goes, it’s not just for discretionary spending for fun stuff. This check-in number operates in a way that can really streamline like your family day-to-day affairs. I mean, I’ve. Spoken with so many women who have felt financially constrained when it comes to things.
[00:13:40] Heather: They don’t even want to be spending money on things for the kids, things for the house. You shouldn’t have to check in when it’s below a certain dollar amount. There’s things that one spouse takes care of for the family, and you wanna be able to streamline that as well.
[00:13:54] Doug: It’s a really good guardrail, right?
[00:13:55] Doug: This is not designed to where you’re constantly calling your spouse to find out, you know, if this is good. So your number will reflect some kind of equilibrium, some kind of point where, you know. Hey, this, this is something I gotta come to. It’s, it’s not gonna be an everyday thing. Right?
[00:14:07] Heather: And it’s, and it’s personal though.
[00:14:09] Heather: That number might be $50 for your family or it might be a thousand dollars. That’s, it’s not for us to decide. It’s for you.
[00:14:15] Joe: You write about a woman named Julia. She comes home, she grabs the mail. She opens up the mail, she gets this thing that says final notice. And she’s like, wait a minute, final notice. I haven’t seen notice.
[00:14:25] Joe: 1, 2, 3, whatever it is. Mm-hmm. Can you tell us this story? ’cause I think this kind of illustrates too, some of this infidelity and hiding that we’re talking about.
[00:14:34] Doug: Yeah, you don’t wanna get into it. I’ll get into it.
[00:14:36] Heather: You can get into it. I’ll chime in.
[00:14:38] Doug: Sure, sure. So this is an example of the worst part of lying and, and you know, we tell this story about Julia in the book to showcase how, how bad it can get and, and ultimately what was happening here is I.
[00:14:50] Doug: Her husband was hiding debt and making financial decisions that resulted in the accumulation of debt. Right. And these numbers
[00:14:56] Joe: are well above the number, Doug, that we’ve been talking about. Like
[00:14:58] Doug: these are, he’s making big decisions. Yeah. Theses of 10. Yeah, we’re talking tens and tens of thousands of dollars
[00:15:02] Heather: here.
[00:15:02] Heather: He was making business decisions. I believe he took out credit cards in her name. He was, or the debt was also in her name. There were business decisions that he was making that were going south that implicated her from a legal’s perspective as well. And I think. Maybe worst of all down the line, she found out that he was hiding business decisions that he was making as well.
[00:15:24] Heather: Like he was settling a dispute that was about to go to court.
[00:15:27] Doug: The partner had reached out to her saying, Hey, you know, this is what’s going on. Unbeknownst to her,
[00:15:32] Heather: the other business
partner,
[00:15:32] Doug: the other business partner who was trying to settle the score. With her husband, and again, you know, kind of just all unraveled, how do you get this back on track, right?
[00:15:42] Doug: And how do you recover from this? Clearly one of the most difficult things I think a couple can do is get back on track after cheating. And this is arguably worse for there to be financial adultery rather than actual adultery here.
[00:15:57] Heather: And it’s not to say. That it’s worse. We don’t know which is worse. Sure.
[00:16:01] Heather: It’s up for you to decide. Yeah. What’s worse. But I think you have to consider the fact that in some circumstances, financial infidelity is as bad as sexual intimate infidelity because you’re talking about, you’re talking about something that impacts your dual livelihood and yes, so can sexual infidelity as well, and relationship infidelity.
[00:16:24] Heather: But this is something that. Impact your ability to break free from a situation, it could impact your ability to move on from the situation even more than emotionally also financially.
[00:16:37] Doug: So yeah, I think, I think it’s more of a main line to stability and, and also what’s going on in the family here.
[00:16:42] Joe: Well, and I wanted to ask that question because the fact that, you know, we all start in imperfect places and I think this is a great time Valentine’s Day week for people to get the train back on the tracks.
[00:16:52] Joe: But you know, there’s all these ways of approaching. When we’ve been imperfect or our spouse has been imperfect, how do you even approach a partner if it’s not as bad as Julia’s husband, but you really want your partner to do things differently than they are now? Like I feel like if we just spent our time shaming them, you know, we’d all be wealthy, like everybody, if it worked, we’d all be wealthy.
[00:17:17] Heather: A relationship counselor that we spoke with had said something that really stuck with me. When we shame our partner, it will have an effect on them. It just not, it just might not be the effect we want it to have. Oh. If you are constantly berating this partner, you keep discovering, you know, it’s a pattern of behavior, pattern of lies.
[00:17:38] Heather: Like we, like we started out talking about patterns, right? Yeah. And you take that approach of I’m gonna shame you and I’m gonna berate you that might have the impact of causing them to lie more. I better hide this because I know every time he or she finds out about this. This is what results is. This massive fight.
[00:17:56] Heather: He’s yelling at me, you’re so bad with money. You never know what to do with our money, blah, blah, blah. Like you’re costing us all these problems in our life. That’s another reason to hide. It’s another reason to keep burying the lie and the lies get bigger. Again. The lies get bigger over time. I just don’t
[00:18:11] Joe: want to get yelled at.
[00:18:12] Heather: Right?
[00:18:13] Doug: One of the central. Points another professional had shared with us in terms of people getting back on the right track or fixing the problems that may be arising from these lies. There needed to be a willingness for both parties to, you know, they both have to want to improve and this became a litmus test for are you gonna get there?
[00:18:35] Doug: And this was also more for the extreme version of it. When one party is unwilling to change or put in the work that the other party is, you might get to an impasse. And that’s where, you know, relationships ultimately break down. Identifying that both people want to improve is almost the most critical first step to make.
[00:18:55] Doug: And then you can get into the goals that you want to share and the things that you want to do together, the common ground that you already have that you can build on. But if someone’s just checking out and doesn’t want to do it, bigger problems are ahead. In that situation,
[00:19:11] Joe: what does a healthy money conversation look like?
[00:19:14] Joe: Let’s start off with this. Is it scheduled? Yes.
[00:19:17] Heather: Oh yeah. Time and place matter. When you talk about money, which is, this is great that we’re talking about Valentine’s Day here today because. Maybe Valentine’s Day isn’t the right moment to bust out the spreadsheet.
[00:19:29] Doug: Yeah.
[00:19:30] Heather: Or or be talking about cash flow.
[00:19:32] Doug: We are fully aware of the irony here.
[00:19:33] Doug: This is a day of love and romance and that most people are probably not diving in for the financial
[00:19:38] Joe: Well, no, no, no, no, no. Though you guys are talking to a bunch of money nerds. Yeah. We all think, of course it is. So I think that’s a great cautionary tale to say, you know what guys, maybe reign it in a little bit.
[00:19:47] Doug: Correct.
[00:19:48] Joe: The people around you might not be as into this as you are. So I think that’s great.
[00:19:52] Heather: Money is also tethered to so many of the feelings we have as well, right? Like safety, security, trust, freedom, self-worth. So it doesn’t mean you can’t engage in a meaningful, deep conversation around your relationship that pertains to money on Valentine’s Day or around it, but maybe it’s not the right day to be getting into the budget and the numbers.
[00:20:13] Heather: You know, we talk about having really productive conversations about shared goals. And about individual goals and how you can help your partner achieve them. That’s a positive conversation. That’s a conversation that is infused in lovingness and, and sharing and, uh, shared responsibility towards reaching what each of you hope for in this life.
[00:20:34] Heather: There’s a lot of romance in that. There are ways to have conversations, but Oh yeah. Time and place matter. Like when we talk about money, one of the biggest mistakes we used to make is we would wait until. The peak. The peak chaos of our day, the day to do it. We call it family rush hour now, like the hours between three and 7:00 PM like when our kids were little and there’d be like homework that needs to be done.
[00:20:58] Heather: There’d be like noodles being thrown across the kitchen. There’s bath time, there’s someone crying. Yeah.
[00:21:04] Doug: You
[00:21:04] Heather: know, like that’s not a great time to bring up something that financially came up. In your brain,
[00:21:10] Doug: uh, that, that was, by the way, that was me, like emerging from the basement. Like, I gotta talk to you about all this stuff.
[00:21:15] Doug: And you know, looking back at it, totally unfair, obviously not the time and place to get into stuff that we really wanted to be able to put our heads around.
[00:21:23] Heather: And it’s not constructive. And what that does is then you associate in these important conversations with these stressful moments, and then when they bring them up at a.
[00:21:32] Heather: Calmer, more productive, more, uh, possible time that makes more sense to do it. You’re kind of like, ugh. You are already coming into it with that stress from the last time you guys tried to talk about it, when it all ended up in a fight. But it wasn’t the content that led you to the fight, it was the environment and the circumstance in which you tried to talk about it.
[00:21:51] Doug: So speaking of those environments. Find not only time and place, but if you can find activities and things that you enjoy doing together, whether it’s a walk, a cocktail, you know, going out for a bite associate, you know, things you want to do with the conversations that you need to have around money. And the only other tip, ’cause I know you have a question there.
[00:22:09] Doug: How you begin these conversations. You know, we were just joking around how money nerds have no problem diving into this. Guess what the money nerds are gonna have. You know, the spreadsheets and the numbers ready to go. First thing they’re gonna wanna talk about, let’s see how we did this month. And I can promise you the less involved spouse be like, let’s not, and what you really want to.
[00:22:27] Doug: Start with, here are the wins, the victories, the things that went well. I’ve yet to meet someone who didn’t like a compliment at the beginning of a serious conversation. Look how great we did here. Then get into the constructive stuff, then get into the numbers. Talk about the goals, the vacations, the aspirations.
[00:22:42] Doug: People generally get excited to talk about these things. What an amazing On-ramp into Yes. Analytics s Into the budget. Yes, into investment performance. We’re like, yeah, let’s talk about that. They might be like, alright. This is where I struggle a little bit, but I’m ready, willing, and able to talk about it now because I have a good foundation for this conversation.
[00:23:02] Joe: It’s so funny. I love the cautionary tale, especially with the money nerds. ’cause number one, Doug, you coming up from the basement, we gotta talk about this right now. You’re going to start a fight. Like it’s going to start a fight because Heather and the family have other priorities. And you’re on, and I’ve been there before.
[00:23:19] Joe: They’re in a different
[00:23:20] Doug: planet than I’m on right now. I’m going back to their planet. They’re not coming to mind. That’s I’m, I’m entering their world in that moment.
[00:23:28] Joe: And what, what I absolutely love is that if you’re walking up the stairs and you’re like, you know, we gotta talk about this now, you can put the circuit breaker and go, oh, wait a minute.
[00:23:35] Joe: We got a meeting in two days. That’s, and I know that’re gonna talk about this. And then, man, that, that little circuit breaker. Can help everything. And then the second thing is I love the idea of not making it a Camp David Summit, right? Because money nerds want it to be this, this week long thing and oh my God, this is Nirvana and I love you explaining to all of us that your spouse might not be in it.
[00:24:00] Joe: This is the reason why. Cheryl and I set a timer for 20 minutes and it’s once a week. And also to your point, it’s always over pancakes or wine, depending on what time of day it is. Pancakes
[00:24:11] Heather: and wine, I’m down. Why not both. Why not both? Why not both?
[00:24:14] Joe: That’s right. That’s why I like brunch, Heather. So we can do all the above.
[00:24:18] Joe: Pancakes and
[00:24:18] Doug: boo.
[00:24:19] Joe: But we set it for 20 minutes because my spouse, while she’s into it, she’s not into it for more than 20 minutes. Right. And what’s cool is, is if it goes longer than 20 minutes, it’s because we shared together. We both wanted to, if it doesn’t, at least we had that 20 minute talk and it was consistent.
[00:24:33] Joe: It was every week. And all we do, ’cause we have a very set agenda, we just go through our banking app and for us it’s Monarch money. We just go through how we spent money the week before and we chat about it. And then we talk about how we’re gonna spend money the next week, and then those investment conversations and all the bigger conversations happen when we’re out hiking.
[00:24:52] Joe: We’re on our walk, we’re whatever.
[00:24:54] Heather: That’s right.
[00:24:54] Joe: Those happen because we had the little talk.
[00:24:57] Heather: Joe, I, what I like about what you just said was that you know that your spouse. Does not like to usually do this for more than 20 minutes, so that’s where you cap the conversation. There isn’t a critical component of all this that’s about meeting your partner where they are.
[00:25:13] Doug: Love it
[00:25:13] Heather: just because it’s the way you like to do it. If you recognize that your partner, you can only get their attention for 20 minutes or that they like leading with this. Piece of this conversation lead with that piece of the conversation. You want their buy-in. This goes better when they’re bought in.
[00:25:31] Doug: Last quarter, Heather had me do the meeting using only heated rivalry references, and it was the best meeting we’ve ever had.
[00:25:37] Heather: Kill me, Hollander.
[00:25:38] Doug: I have no idea what she’s talking about, but um, yeah, stuff like that. No, no, no kidding. But it’s a gilded age of financial content. Like if you can find your partner or what, you know, we had a, uh, couple.
[00:25:49] Doug: Both had buy-in, they wanted to do this. Like they, they were very eager. He was the
[00:25:53] Heather: financial
[00:25:53] Doug: advisor. Yeah, he was a financial advisor. He was a professional and, and you know, his wife was like, yeah, I wanna do it. And after several meetings, like it wasn’t clicking, it wasn’t getting there. It was a lot of frustration until one day he brought out a whiteboard and started drawing some of the concepts and the things, and it just turned out.
[00:26:07] Doug: She was a visual learner.
[00:26:09] OG: Oh,
[00:26:09] Doug: cool. Everything he was doing in terms of he did it for his clients or how he would do it for himself, just did not work. So what he did is figured out how she liked to learn, met her where she was at, and it clicked. Unlock right there. Productive meetings ever since. Little things like that go a very long, long way.
[00:26:28] Joe: That’s super. More listening.
[00:26:30] OG: Yeah,
[00:26:30] Joe: less talking, more listening. We just talked about that in romantic context and romantic relationships, but I think all the advice you shared is suitable if you have just an accountability partner, a roommate. Mm-hmm. But let’s move toward what you referenced earlier, which was the chaos of kids enter the picture.
[00:26:47] Joe: Right. How do you have these money conversations with your kids and as a family? How do you start including the family in these discussions?
[00:26:58] Heather: Oh,
[00:26:59] Doug: you want
[00:26:59] Heather: this, it’s a hard topic.
[00:27:00] Doug: Yeah, it’s tough.
[00:27:01] Heather: I, you know, I, it’s so sensitive for so many reasons, because our kids are not native to like dollars the way that we are.
[00:27:09] Heather: They live in a frictionless world. And many of our kids, I mean, our kids are still, they’re 10 and almost seven. Our kids were born into a frictionless world. So the concept of money needs to be almost fabricated through learning opportunities where I create friction for them. Versus them seeing, oh, mommy goes out, she holds her phone up to up to a payment thing, and then we get what we need and we walk out.
[00:27:36] Heather: And I don’t, I know that sounds privileged, but that plays across the entire socioeconomic spectrum where we are all using things that are made to have spending money be easier.
[00:27:47] Joe: Yeah. Even if you just have a debit card. I mean, it doesn’t have to be the phone, just the debit card. It’s like, oh, you got that little magic plastic.
[00:27:53] Doug: Right. My, my mother, an angel, right, she was a learning disabilities teacher of 35 years, would always do inclusion in the classrooms, elementary school. And she told me this story once, that when they got to currency, it was second or third grade when they got to currency, a majority of the kids could not identify the coins that were being shown because they just never really seen them used in the wild, everyone.
[00:28:16] Heather: And
[00:28:17] Doug: that was years ago. Yeah. This is years ago. So this notion that, oh, that’s, that’s silly. Kids are not, no, they, they legitimately have not interacted. With currency, they see this mobile banking, the frictionless system that Heather’s talking about. On top of that, hey, an Amazon package comes in a day or two, it can be replaced.
[00:28:33] Doug: Heather’s, right? They, they need to be kind of, we need to reverse engineer.
[00:28:37] Heather: So in addition, in addition to creating moments of friction for our kids, which look like creating moments of patience for them, right? That’s that’s one example. Yeah. You know, you, you lose something. I’m not gonna just go on Amazon and reorder you a new one.
[00:28:51] Heather: Tomorrow we’re gonna talk about it. We might go. Get it in person on the weekend, or I might just honestly hold it for a little while and not give it to them. That’s one example of how you teach a young child about patients and about working against this idea of like unlimited abundance. Yeah. That things just show up that no things have value.
[00:29:10] Heather: They cost money and that’s why we take care of them. Another great example is teaching kids and creating moments to show them how our work translates into the things that we have. Right. Do you wanna,
[00:29:22] Doug: either you like
[00:29:22] Heather: this one.
[00:29:23] Doug: I like this one because what we’re doing is associating values. Money has a lot of nuance to it.
[00:29:29] Doug: Spare me, I taught my third grader how to invest in the stock market. There’s a lot of nuance there. I’ve done these things for our daughters, girl scout troops and some kids will pick it up ’cause they’re super smart. But when you’re doing values, for example, when our, when our oldest was very young and asked why we were constantly dropping mom off at the train to go to work into the city.
[00:29:49] Doug: I just told her, do you like what we get to do on the weekends? Do you like the fun that we have? She says, I love that. Yeah. I’m like, mommy goes to the city on this train so we can have fun and enjoy family time on the weekends. Work enjoyment, family time. The rewards that come from working hard, a kid can figure out those.
[00:30:08] Doug: Links that that connotation and that to me was what’s super important to give, especially young kids who will not get to the nuance of, of money currency compounding. There’s like some pretty rough math in a lot of this stuff that you’ll figure out much later in school. Some adults don’t even understand compounding, right?
[00:30:27] Heather: So there’s, so there’s ways early on to begin to give them foundation for things that develop into good financial habits down the road. But it doesn’t have to be an immediate like. How do we sit down and teach them these eight concepts of financial literacy? Yeah. Financial literacy begins with our values and our behaviors.
[00:30:43] Doug: Check this one out. Both girls are good at saving. Like they get their tooth fairy money, their holiday money. It goes in a jar in their piggy bank. They’re safe, but are they good at sending? Did you create a world in which they’re hoarding that money? ’cause they know mom and dad are just gonna get them what they want anyways.
[00:31:00] Doug: I’ll just wait till my next birthday or next holiday and I’ll just keep this money over here. At what point do you say, Hey, there are things that you want, there’s money that you have you either earned or are gifted, and now we need to think about how we deploy that money. And that might lead to a conversation around investing where it just might lead to a conversation about smart.
[00:31:18] Doug: Spending you get to the store, you can have these five things for the $10, or you can have this one big thing. Let’s talk about that. Now you’re having some real productive conversations. It’s not just around saving and spending, but how to budget wisely. How to make decisions around the money attachment that you might have to that item.
[00:31:35] Doug: Things like that go a really long way with kids.
[00:31:37] Joe: I had to have a lot of bravery around this part as a parent because we would trust our kids with a little more money than they maybe should have. We’d be in a Target or a Walmart or wherever, and my daughter would say, oh, I wanna buy this thing, and I know the thing is garbage.
[00:31:55] Joe: I know it’s gonna end up on the floor. The tail is always that. I know she’s gonna use it once or and, and it’s just gonna go away. It’s a total waste of money.
[00:32:02] Doug: Sure.
[00:32:03] Joe: But I had to be brave enough to let her buy it. Then I also had to be brave enough to put on my calendar two weeks later to circle back with the rest of the lesson going, remember, we were in Target and you spent your money on this thing.
[00:32:17] Joe: Where’s it at now? That’s right. Do you value
[00:32:20] Doug: it? That needs to be more of our job as parents, and I love that, Joe, because. Same thing happen. Younger daughter wanted a coloring drawing app on her thing. It was a subscription. I hate these, you know, subscription models for games and stuff like that. It’s usually a hard, hard, no.
[00:32:35] Doug: She was home with the flu and she got me right in the field, so like, oh, poor kid. And I told her like, if we don’t use this in three weeks, we’re not renewing it. And to your point, you have to sit on your, this is how they get you right. You don’t put that reminder on your calendar, you’re renewing. And she was good.
[00:32:52] Doug: She loved it. She stopped using it and like. Three days. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you know, that was it. You just cancel it right then and there. But that’s a really good point. But I took her aside and I said, Hey, are we still using that? Remember what we said we’re gonna do? And she says, yes, we’re gonna cancel it.
[00:33:07] Doug: I’m like, are you like, are you sure? Yes. Let’s cancel it. And there you go. That’s fabulous. You reinforce. Forced it. And that goes a long way. You gotta do it over and over again, by the way, not just that one time.
[00:33:16] Joe: It is though, Doug. It’s so much harder than just saying no, but it’s so much better than saying No,
[00:33:20] Heather: it really is.
[00:33:20] Heather: I mean, we tell, especially our older daughter who’s 10 and now like finds herself in stores with her little girlfriends and whatever. And if, if I’m there with them and she says, mom, can I have this? I. You sure. Can you have money at home? Would you like to spend your money on it? Yeah.
[00:33:35] Doug: She goes home, grabs the money and, and hands it to
[00:33:38] Heather: us.
[00:33:38] Heather: Or 90% of the time she thinks a little more critically about it and she goes. Nah, I guess not really. And maybe in her brain she’s like, someone will get this for my birthday and maybe we will. But that taught her I’m gonna take an extra beat and think about this now that I’ve got skin in the game on this purchase.
[00:33:55] Heather: She really does.
[00:33:56] Joe: It goes back to your original word, Heather, that I love at the beginning. Sometimes creating this friction is really good.
[00:34:02] Heather: Yes. Yeah,
[00:34:02] Joe: yeah. Yes. That’s super. You know, all of these conversations, and I love this with roommates, with romantic partners, with kids, they’re all important, but I think this is what you guys do a really, really good job of.
[00:34:16] Joe: You can’t really have these conversations unless you’ve examined your own money beliefs, right. I’m gonna link back to our original discussion on this last fall ’cause we really dove into this, but let’s just do a quick cheat sheet before we have these conversations. Where do we start to dive into our own money beliefs so that we can have a better conversation with somebody else?
[00:34:37] Heather: Well, so much of this is self work before it’s couples work. Understanding your own money stories, your own scripts that you carry from childhood, because it comes from many different places, right? Our beginning, our origin stories with money, they can begin with our family, with our socioeconomic background, they can begin with a traumatic.
[00:34:57] Heather: Childhood experience or just from our culture? Our culture itself tells us so many of the beliefs we carry into adulthood around money, but we have to really explore them to understand some of the behaviors, beliefs, and messages that we’re still living with today, because only then when we understand it, can we ask ourselves the harder question, which is.
[00:35:18] Heather: Is this serving me today? Are the circumstances that were present back then that made me feel this way still in my life? And if they’re not, maybe it’s time for me to evolve. Maybe it’s time for me to think about this differently or behave differently. And doing this critical self work is the first step to being able to do couple’s work because it’s really, really easy to point the finger at your partner and say, the reason we’re here is because of you.
[00:35:43] Heather: It takes tuna tango in almost every situation. And even if your partner is hung up and they’ve got their own money baggage, how are you communicating with them? I would stand to argue that you are contributing in one way or another. Like this brings us back to an earlier point in our conversation. If you are shaming your partner, shame will have an impact on the discussion.
[00:36:04] Heather: It just may not have the impact you want it to have.
[00:36:07] Joe: Your book on this topic is called Money Together. It has gotten all kinds of acclaim and it’s available everywhere. What a great Valentine’s Day gift to yourself.
[00:36:18] Heather: Perfect Valentine’s Day gift, and I’ll throw this out there too. If you don’t think your partner is receptive to reading money together with you or before you were after you.
[00:36:27] Heather: Buy the audio book and put it on your Google Home and just play it.
[00:36:31] Doug: Oh, guys,
[00:36:31] Joe: awesome. While you’re making lasagna,
[00:36:33] Doug: gentlemen, nothing. Spices up your night like giving your wife a copy of money together. Listen, it’s not pg, but you’re good. You’re good here, gent. Don’t even need to wrap it.
[00:36:46] Joe: I need some Barry White Music under that.
[00:36:48] Doug: Oh yes. Be bear,
[00:36:51] Joe: Heather, Doug, happy Valentine’s Day.
[00:36:54] Heather: Happy Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day, Joe.
[00:37:01] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and talking about love. During the 1950s and sixties, the USA had a love affair with the hips attached to one crooner who moved so salacious that when he first appeared on television, camera operators were instructed only to show him from the waist up.
[00:37:20] Doug: But it wasn’t until 1979 that the first biopic about this Memphis raised star was made back on today’s date that year, a young Kurt Russell starred as the Hit Making Superstar, and Shelly Winters and other popular actors also appeared. But who was this Benjamin Stacking pop star that 40 million people watched a drama about back in 1979?
[00:37:43] Doug: I’ll be back after I start the next chapter of my own memoir. It’s a, uh, it’s a word for. Overwhelmingly good. Looking at a shortened sentence. Mm.
[00:38:06] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m handsome, gorgeous, and stunning announcer for this show. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, gotta say, writing a memoir’s hard, especially for a guy as humble and loquacious as me, but I’m up to the challenge. Probably because I’m so patient, calm under fire. But enough about me today is about a guy who could have been my twin.
[00:38:27] Doug: They made a TV movie on today’s date back in 1979 that over 40 million people watched on A, B, C. Who was this Memphis based Croner who has us all shook up? Of course, it’s none other than Elvis Presley. And now back to the mic. Two guys who are a hunk. A hunka burning money mavens. That’s just disgusting.
[00:38:50] Doug: It’s Joe and og. Get me outta here.
[00:38:55] Joe: Was that
[00:38:56] Doug: hunk of hunk of burning money? Mavens?
[00:38:58] Joe: I don’t know who came up with that.
[00:39:00] Doug: Gotta hire some writers.
[00:39:01] Joe: Big thanks to Douglas and Heather. And it’s funny because, uh, OG people focus on the spreadsheets, but it truly is about the communication, always about the communication much more than the spreadsheet.
[00:39:12] OG: It’s always about the. Notifications on your wife’s iPad and you better have hoped that you communicated that before that thing pops up because, let me give you a little secret. There’s no delay. When that swipe goes through, it goes binging like yeah. In your face.
[00:39:29] Joe: And it is pretty amazing how, if you don’t, and OG knows this firsthand.
[00:39:33] Joe: If you don’t communicate with her, she will communicate with you.
[00:39:37] OG: Yes. Yes. If you want communication to be a two-way street,
[00:39:42] Joe: just go ahead and spend a bunch of buddy,
[00:39:44] Doug: and everybody was like, yeah, don’t put, don’t just give it to me straight. I want the truth. Nope. You want velvet on that hammer. You do want vet on that communication comes back to you.
[00:39:52] Joe: Yeah, please. Hey, let’s get into our headline, guys.
[00:39:56] headlines: Hello Doling, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines.
[00:40:02] Joe: Our headline today comes to us from financial planning.com. There is some news OG out of Vanguard that Elijah Nicholson Messmer, who wrote this piece, was the first person to let me know that this problem was this big.
[00:40:18] Joe: I often think that there’s an issue that maybe people miss deadlines. From the IRS, it turns out we truly need some help with this one deadline. Vanguard research shows that one in three required minimum distribution age clients either missed their distribution or withdrew too little. One in three og. I didn’t think it was that big.
[00:40:42] Joe: That’s a big number of people that are like going, oops, I forgot my required minimum distribution from my IRA.
[00:40:50] OG: Well, I mean, the IRS didn’t do anybody any favors by changing a whole bunch of it recently and making it so that, you know, during this period of time you don’t have to do it ’cause of COVID. But now you do have to, and oh, by the way, if you inherited money, you don’t have, well actually you do.
[00:41:03] OG: Well, no, I mean, sort of You’re supposed to, you should catch Well, you don’t have to catch it. Well, you can catch up it, but you, you’d absolutely have to have it caught up. But you don’t have to do anything right now. But you could maybe, if you wanted. For sure, but it’s okay. I mean, it’s not, but just, yeah.
[00:41:20] Joe: Oh boy.
[00:41:21] OG: That is the official IRS guidance on required minimum distributions as of 2026.
[00:41:26] Joe: The exact wording on that,
[00:41:27] OG: by the way, it’s a hundred percent verbatim from the publication. There’s a penalty, but maybe there’s not a penalty. There should be a penalty. But if you ask nicely about the penalty not being there, then they’ll probably not.
[00:41:38] OG: And it’s also on you to do all of this. It just reminds me so much of the, of that skit. You know, hey, I’m like 22 years old. I got my first job like call, you know, like this skit. There’s those stupid YouTubes. Thank God they don’t exist anymore very much. Where it’s like the same person talking to each other, both sides wearing a different hat or something.
[00:41:57] OG: Sides. Oh yeah, yeah. It’s so dumb. Where it’s like, you know, how do I know how much to pay? It’s like, well, you just fill your forms. Well, what if I get it wrong? Don’t worry. We know how much you made and we know much taxes are. It’s like, awesome. Can you just tell me, no, you have to do all this paperwork first.
[00:42:10] OG: It’s like, what happens if I get it wrong? Oh, you big penalty. It’s like, well, why don’t you just tell me how much I owe then? Well, ’cause we want you to do it first.
[00:42:17] Joe: You tell us. No, we know, but you gotta tell us.
[00:42:19] OG: But the way around this, by the way, if you’re somebody who’s concerned about this RMD thing, I mean it, it’s a big deal.
[00:42:25] OG: It used to be a. Pretty powerful penalty. Whoa, that’s alliteration.
[00:42:30] Joe: Pretty powerful penalty.
[00:42:32] OG: Yeah. And now it’s not as bad. It’s still 25% of what you should have taken out. So it’s still, it’s still not zero, it’s
[00:42:37] Joe: still a big number.
[00:42:38] OG: You can, with your IRA at your custodian, check a box that says, y’all just send me the money, just do it.
[00:42:45] OG: Now, if it’s an inherited IRA, they’re not gonna do it because it involves a different calculation that only you can do. So as my friend, Kaus. Aberdeen said, may the odds be ever in your favor, and uh, hopefully you get it right.
[00:43:00] Doug: I don’t think that was Kaus.
[00:43:02] OG: She didn’t say that. Oh,
[00:43:03] Joe: she didn’t say it, but it’s from that book.
[00:43:05] Doug: Yeah.
[00:43:07] OG: There was a book
[00:43:11] Joe: moving along. This is one big deal, and obviously for people that are of a certain age in the Stacking Benjamins universe, but we got a bunch of people OG that this does not apply to that are hearing this, and they’re like, what does that do with me?
[00:43:24] OG: Nothing.
[00:43:25] Joe: This is not the only deadline people miss.
[00:43:28] Joe: There are some deadlines in the past where I’ve gone, oh my God, why did I not do that? Why did I, and every year, how many years do you hear from somebody like the day after you could put money in your Roth? IRA. Somebody one day late is like, Hey, uh, can I put money in my Roth IRA? What are some of those big deadlines that should probably go on our calendars?
[00:43:50] OG: December 31st is a real big one. Generally everything needs to be done by December 31.
[00:43:55] Joe: Just get it all done by December 31.
[00:43:57] OG: It’s probably not on your calendar. It’s not highlighted in any way, in any way, shape or form of being a finality of anything. Like it’s just, it seems such a random date for them to use to tie everything up.
[00:44:10] OG: But really what you wanna do is, you know, you get the, I don’t know if you guys have this, it’s like 12 pages or so, and each, each page has like a bunch of different boxes on it, with numbers in it. They all have different names. Like one says January, the next page says February. Anyways, this is clever.
[00:44:24] OG: Every year it’s different. They slightly change it just to keep you on your toes. You can’t reuse it, but every year you get a new one. You hang it on your wall, and you flip to the last page, and there’s one box at the very end that says 31. That’s the day that all your needs to be done by.
[00:44:40] Joe: Circle it, highlight it.
[00:44:41] OG: Yes, highlight it.
[00:44:42] Joe: That’s the one.
[00:44:44] OG: I mean, there’s some other stuff, but just be done by the end of the year.
[00:44:46] Joe: I was trying to think of some of these. Obviously, tax day, everybody makes big deal outta that. Oh, so that’s not one. Oh yes.
[00:44:50] OG: Yeah, tax.
[00:44:51] Joe: But tax day is different for some business owners. I mean, March is important for some business owners.
[00:44:56] Joe: There are tax forms due in March for them. But I was thinking for the average stacker, you know, if I’m doing tax loss harvesting, OG, and I’ve got. Mutual funds that might have some capital gains distributions. Maybe I wanna put a mark at the beginning of November to look at that because they will generally, you know, start declaring what date they’re gonna make those distributions.
[00:45:17] Joe: So I wanna be on top of that. That might be one
[00:45:21] opener: Yeah.
[00:45:22] Joe: For a few people.
[00:45:23] OG: Yeah. Enough to get outta bed for
[00:45:27] Joe: different deadlines on setting up your retirement accounts if you’re gonna
[00:45:30] OG: be, I mean, look, if if there’s, there’s a million deadlines, right? I mean, depending on, I’m just trying to think of
[00:45:36] Joe: the big ones.
[00:45:37] OG: If you’re a business owner, you gotta, every month you gotta pay taxes. The 30th, 1st of December. Of January, you gotta get your W twos out.
[00:45:44] Joe: Yeah.
[00:45:44] OG: 10 90 nines gotta be distributed by the middle of February. You have to have K ones out by the middle of August. You have to fsa, do your. You know, dependent care spending account or flexible spending account, you got until the end of January, but it’s really based on the end of December.
[00:45:58] OG: That’s why I said be done by the end of December. If you’re setting up a retirement plan, depends on what kind you’re gonna set up. You have certain deadlines for when you gotta set it up and when you have to fund it by. It never ends.
[00:46:07] Doug: Yeah. You’re just creating stress for me. Why did you
[00:46:10] OG: do that? I know that’s the point.
[00:46:13] OG: You’ll never get this right.
[00:46:16] Joe: I sometimes think he is the IRS Doug, God. I had lunch with my friends at the IRS and we just cackle together the entire time.
[00:46:24] Doug: He can’t understand why he doesn’t get invited to parties.
[00:46:26] Joe: It’s crazy. Yeah. You don’t wanna be one of these. One in three people facing a text penalty.
I
[00:46:32] OG: find that number to be highly suspect,
[00:46:34] Joe: very high, but it’s from Vanguard. That’s what blows me away. Oh,
[00:46:37] OG: well in that case, might as well be from Yahweh himself.
[00:46:42] Doug: Wow.
[00:46:43] OG: Came down from the mountain, put it on stone tablets.
[00:46:46] Joe: That’s a hot take. I’m not saying they’re the end all, be all. I’m just saying that they’re not putting irresponsible stuff out into the universe on a frequent basis.
[00:46:55] Joe: You’re, you’re, you’re not seeing vanguard just, uh, going crazy with, uh, oh, you know what? After a few pints down at the local watering hole, let’s go right up a press release about how many people are
[00:47:06] OG: hold up. So if you have an IRA of Vanguard and you have an IRA Fidelity. And you decide to take your RMD from your Fidelity, IRA, the Vanguard people will be like, oh my God, he didn’t take one out.
[00:47:16] OG: But you can take it out. You know, it doesn’t have to be outta each account, it’s each type of account.
[00:47:21] Joe: You don’t think they would’ve thought about that before they put this
[00:47:23] OG: out, but how would they audit it? How would they know if they’re like 30% didn’t, did they call those 30%? Be like, Hey bro, check it. Did you end up doing this or not?
[00:47:32] Joe: Yeah.
[00:47:33] OG: I don’t know.
[00:47:34] Joe: Yeah. Who knows how they check that. If you work at Vanguard, let us know. Write me Joe at Stacking Benjamins dot com.
[00:47:39] OG: I’m gonna source document, source code it. Primary research. That’s what that’s called in the, uh, research world.
[00:47:48] Joe: I’ll lead to this piece on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com,
[00:47:51] OG: TLDR.
[00:47:52] OG: Don’t jack up your taxes.
[00:47:54] Joe: Well, T-L-D-R-I think is, have the deadlines that are important to you down on that thing. What’s it called? A calendar. Calendar
[00:48:02] OG: Memorized
[00:48:03] Joe: have, get a tattoo with all of those dates so you don’t end up with a big tax penalty.
[00:48:09] OG: No, but you know what I would do? I honestly use this technology.
[00:48:12] OG: I have recurring to-dos. That pop up, you know, for the things that are like every year, every two years, every three years. You can just put it as a recurring thing. I do too. It will pop up and. You don’t have to use the space up here to memorize that my whatever is due on this, this, this time.
[00:48:32] Joe: A hundred percent.
[00:48:33] Joe: Take out that calendar app on your phone and just make it annually. December 31st, and I would even do it December 31st. I would do it December 31st. Is the knockdown down, drag out? But maybe, well,
[00:48:43] OG: it can’t be December through. I mean, I Listen, here’s the
[00:48:45] Joe: thing. December 15th, I might have you. Make sure you’re working on this stuff.
[00:48:49] OG: I mean, all the custodians say if you want something done before the end of the year, it’s gotta be in by the second week of December. You know, all that sort of stuff. Same thing with your Roth contributions and you know you got until tax deadline, but if you try to call Schwab on the 15th at four o’clock in the afternoon going, how do I set up my account and wire this money?
[00:49:06] OG: They’re gonna laugh at you. So it needs to be done before then use the technology to, to set reminders for yourself to get this stuff done.
[00:49:15] Joe: Douglas, let’s wander out onto the back porch. We’ve got, uh, just a little bit here today.
[00:49:21] Doug: I think it’s probably time to just remind everybody about the guides.
[00:49:25] Doug: They’ve been updated, right? Yeah.
[00:49:26] Joe: Super exciting. I’ve got four pieces of news on the guides. Number one is, wait,
[00:49:30] Doug: you just had those like in your pocket waiting for me to queue you up.
[00:49:34] Joe: Wow.
[00:49:35] Doug: Please ask me. Please ask me. I got four.
[00:49:37] Joe: The guides are just so fun because we do, we update them every month. If you’re not familiar with our guides.
[00:49:42] Joe: You purchase them once. We update it every single month. So it always stays up to date. And, uh, big significant changes inside the text guide. Speaking of text time, we also have some cool new usability tools in the in. College planning guide that makes it just easier to use some of the charts that we have put in the guide.
[00:50:04] Joe: And then third in the HR guide, we’ve really rounded out some of the benefits so that you get a better, for people that are just diving into like how these different benefits work. We’ve given you more resources so that you can, uh, can dive in deeper. So we’ve done a little bit different work on all three of those guides, but the big news is.
[00:50:23] Joe: Our financial dashboard guide how to set up your dashboard so that you can see. All your goals and your progress all in one very easy dashboard. How do you set all that up? That guide is, uh, gonna be out in the next two or three weeks, so I’m super excited to say that out loud. It’s being laid out right now as they say.
[00:50:43] Joe: So, uh, super excited that we’ll have that available and more coming up in just a couple weeks.
[00:50:48] Doug: Also, real quickly, Joe, in the basement, our Facebook group on, on the Facebook. Kendra asked a, I thought a pretty interesting question a little while ago, just a few days ago. Kendra wanted to know, for those of you who take advantage of bank cash offers, what’s your minimum free money amount?
[00:51:05] Doug: Like, you know, the, a bank is offering you 50 bucks or whatever it is if you switch to go to them. And, uh, yeah, I just thought that was a, like, I haven’t thought about that in years. I haven’t actually even seen those offers. I didn’t know that was a thing. Uh, Jason replied that he’s, he’s made about $3,000 last year from earning bank signup bonuses.
[00:51:24] Doug: Yeah.
[00:51:24] Joe: Whoa.
[00:51:25] Doug: It’s crazy. He says the effort’s usually minimal enough that he’ll go for anything offering $300 or more. Like, I have not seen these, they’re not offering me that. Maybe they know that I need more than you
[00:51:35] OG: have to have money.
[00:51:36] Doug: Oh. Uh, but then other people, Annette says, I’ve yet to be offered a high enough amount of money to switch banks.
[00:51:45] Doug: So I mean, there’s. People who are, I don’t know. That, to me it doesn’t feel right. Something doesn’t feel right about just willy-nilly moving your money to different banks for a quick signing bonus. It’s, I don’t know why. Do you
[00:51:58] Joe: remember how we talked to, uh, stacker Allen, who lives in Wisconsin about this a couple of years ago?
[00:52:04] Joe: You know, for him, because he does it so much, almost like Jason does. He keeps a spreadsheet to make sure, because as you know,
[00:52:14] Doug: you have to
[00:52:15] Joe: Yeah. If you, if you don’t have a spreadsheet, you’re gonna mess this up. You’re gonna take the money out and move it someplace else. And then, you know, you about get the, you only get the bonus if you stay there for X amount of time.
[00:52:25] Doug: Yeah.
[00:52:25] Joe: Much like with the credit card offers. So he keeps a record of the credit cards that he’s, uh, using and all that he’s churning and also the churning he’s doing with bank accounts. And similarly, he reported, uh, I don’t remember the number, but, but I do remember it was a. Big, big, big number that he, uh, he was doing per year.
[00:52:44] Doug: Yeah, so it’s just a, I mean by now, stackers know I love it when they use the basement for that purpose to ask those kinds of questions to the hive mind, Hey, I’ve got kids. I want, you know, should, would you do this with a 5 29 or this with a, not my. I just think that’s such a great use of our community.
[00:53:00] Doug: So keep it up, folks. Ask the really important questions out there.
[00:53:04] Joe: I’ve got two more quick things, which is. Next week in nine days on, uh, February 20th, we’re having to meet up with stackers in Omaha, Nebraska, because I’ll be there. I’ll be there for the 1% better conference, which will be Saturday the 21st and Sunday the 22nd.
[00:53:20] Joe: So join us at the conference on the 21st and 22nd. We’ll link to it in our show notes, but if you can’t make it, at the very least, stop and say hi. On the 20th, we’ll have details of where I’m going to be. David, uh, Gillis, the founder and I working on, uh, getting that set up for the 20th. We still don’t have the home, but we will have one.
[00:53:37] Joe: It’s gonna happen. Uh, 6:30 PM stacky Benjamins dot com slash meetup and you can sign. Come find out where we’re gonna be and say hi to me and David and a bunch of other stackers that’ll be there. So excited to go to
[00:53:50] Doug: Omaha. Just go to Omaha and just look for the, the line of cars that are all going in the same direction, and you’ll find
[00:53:56] Joe: there it is, everybody coming to see us at Omaha.
[00:53:58] Joe: Of course. Thank you so much for lending us your ears. What an action pack show. And Doug, you’re gonna kind of, uh, march down what the three big things are that we should have as our takeaways today
[00:54:09] Doug: bringing this ship into the harbor. Well, Joe first take some advice from Douglas and Heather Bpar. Great.
[00:54:15] Doug: Budgeting’s fine, but great communication, even better. Let your accountability buddies, your partner and your spreadsheets know what you’re doing and you’ll find your money working for you instead of against you. Second, those IRS due dates, pop those into a calendar, this thing that’s got all the months and pages, and pause it now and just go do it.
[00:54:39] Doug: OG gave you the whole description, but the big lesson. Don’t mention relationships to Joe’s mom. She’ll tell you how you should reaffirm your relationship with Windex and those basement windows. Not romantic, ma, not romantic. Thanks to Douglas and Heather Bona Harth for joining us today. You’ll find their book Money Together wherever books are sold.
[00:55:01] Doug: We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com.
[00:55:06] Joe: This show is the Property of SP podcast. LLC, copyright
[00:55:09] Doug: 2026 and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. 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.
[00:55:23] Doug: Come say hello and oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
[00:56:33] OG: Uh, sit down with your significant other, and you totally rework your budget. You totally rework your spending and you drive that into the ground and you’re not gonna have any more fun ever again. Is that called the Valentine’s Day massacre?
[00:56:49] Doug: I love that. You know, it’s a good hard look in the mirror
[00:56:52] Heather: waiting. You chime in with a little something else on the end.
[00:56:54] Doug: It’s just a good hard look in the mirror. You know, I think most people just cracking up. Most people, you know, the easiest part of this process. Is that, so
[00:57:03] Heather: we have this thing about how like if I give like a great folsome answer, Doug, I’ll time it.
[00:57:08] Heather: Doug’s like Salt Bay, you know the guy, the steakhouse chef who comes in and he feels like he’s gotta like throw a little extra on top. But I kind of feel like we were good where we were, you know?
[00:57:19] Joe: See, I like, no comment. I like watching this relationship. No
[00:57:21] Doug: comment.
[00:57:23] Joe: This is, this is the relationship I like watching right there.
[00:57:28] Heather: It’s hard. We go on podcast together, Joe. It’s hard. This is real life.
[00:57:32] Doug: Not my fault. It could use a little salt Hun.
[00:57:36] Joe: Should we just do the mic drop there? Should we have the mic drop on Heather? Yeah, you can just
[00:57:39] Doug: cut all that out. It’s all good.
[00:57:41] Joe: We’ll do or leave
[00:57:42] Heather: it.
[00:57:42] Doug: Don’t care. Whatever gets higher ratings there, Joe.
[00:57:45] Joe: I think what I might do is include this in the after show, uh, just to show that all of us as couples, we’re
[00:57:50] Doug: human,
[00:57:51] Joe: like we are,
[00:57:51] Doug: we’re human. It was good as is. What an amazing answer, honey. What else you got for us, Joe?
[00:57:57] Joe: Bam.