Is retirement, as we know it, dead? Should the idea of retirement itself be retired, and should we all aspire to be like Betty White? Will all those decades of toiling away for The Man (and dutifully contributing to your personal retirement savings accounts, as well as you and your employer throwing in 6.2% each of your salary to the payroll tax, a.k.a. Social Security) pay off in the end when you reach the end of your working career? Is it worth postponing “happiness” during your working years in the hopes of living a life of leisure when you’re older? Joining us for this special conversation, from The Personal Finance Podcast, we welcome Andrew Giancarlo; Betty White wannabe, Afford Anything’s Paula Pant; and our resident Betty White fanboy, OG.
The concept of reaching an arbitrary age and stopping work cold turkey may be an illusion for many aspiring retirees, as many recent retirees find their lives lacking purpose, meaning, and (in some cases) sufficient Benjamins. The FIRE movement isn’t necessarily about ceasing all productive activities, but rather achieving financial independence so that you are in control of how, where, and with whom you spend your time. We also dive deeper into how you can make up for any potential retirement savings shortfall and examine the pros and cons of Barista FIRE that can be used to supplement income needs after retiring. We’ll also discuss how altering your lifestyle can affect the amount you’ll need to save for retirement.
In the second half of our discussion, sponsored by DepositAccounts.com, we jump into the solutions to solve the big retirement savings gap problem. What actions can you take to improve your retirement savings and quality of life, even if you’re approaching retirement age? What actions can you take today that your future retired self will thank you?
Finally, be sure to stick around for the next thrilling installment of our year-long trivia competition. Will Andrew help Len seal the deal for this year’s W, will OG stay alive, or will Paula throw a monkey wrench in the plans?
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch On Our YouTube Channel:
Our Topic: The Evolving Definition of “Retirement”
The End of Retirement (The Walrus)
Can You Guess How Many Americans Successfully Retire With $1 Million Saved? The Percentage May Shock You (Yahoo! Finance)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Misconceptions of retirement
- Traditional vs. hybrid retirement
- The emotional and mental impact of full retirement
- How the FIRE movement has revolutionized the concept of retirement
- Value of taking periodic breaks/sabbaticals throughout your working career
- Pensions, Social Security, and personal savings
- Financial independence
- Safe withdrawal rate
- How much you need to retire
- Making a career change
- How you can creatively bridge the gap between retirement savings and your expenses
- Is it realistic to plan to never retire?
- Longevity risk
- Importance of retirement planning throughout your career, not just at the end
- Calculating “Your Number”
- Evolving retirement savings expectations
- What to do if you started saving for retirement late
- How much time you actually still have to save and plan for retirement
- The impact that even a little savings can have over a long enough period of time
- Actually making contributions rather than overanalyzing and not taking action
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Andrew Giancarlo
Another thanks to Andrew Giancarlo for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Andrew on his show, The Personal Finance Podcast, at The Personal Finance Podcast.
Learn more about Andrew and how he could help you achieve more in your personal finances by visiting his website, Master Money – Save, Invest and Grow your Money.
Paula Pant
Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- How much did it cost to house a prisoner for a year back when Johnny Cash wrote Fulsom Prison Blues back in 1955?
DepositAccounts
Thanks to DepositAccounts.com for sponsoring Stacking Benjamins. DepositsAccounts.com is the #1 place to go when you’re looking to see if your rate is the BEST rate on savings, CDs, money markets, and even checking accounts! Check out ALL of the rates ranked from best to worst (and see the national averages) at DepositAccounts.com.
Mentioned in today’s show
- Average Net Worth by Age – Survey of Consumer Finances (Federal Reserve)
- Should Chris Pay Off All His Debt? (with Dana Anspach) » The Stacking Benjamins Show
Join Us Monday!
Be sure to tune in on Monday for a very special Scrooge-inspired show with a Christmas theme.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: How Wealthy People Think Differently About Money (SB1448).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
Stacking Benjamins is not for everyone. Side effects may include euphoria, increased ability to meet your goals, and aggression from people wondering what the hell your secret is. Stacking. Benjamins may be habit forming, especially if you stick around for the entire episode. Wink, wink. Please check with your doctor to see if Stacking Benjamins is right for you.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. Today we’ll ask the question is the idea of retirement dying. We’ll chat about whether we should gear up to work forever with the host of the Personal finance podcast, Andrew Gian Cola. Plus, we’ll be joined by our favorite hustler who may never retire, mostly because she loves what she does, Paula pant.
And finally, our resident third panelist. Oh gee, wow. But that’s as worked up as I could get about that, but that’s not all. Halfway through the show, I’ll share my captive trivia question. And now a guy who’d lock himself inside to work on bringing you the best personal finance advice. It’s Joe O Sea Hi.
Nights and weekend stackers, and I’d love every minute of it. This is so fun. And we’re about to bring the fun today because, well, we have an interesting topic. We have phenomenal panelists this week, and we have a trivia competition that’s coming down to the end. I am Joe, Saul-Sehy, average Joe money on Twitter, X, whatever the hell you call it today.
And uh, we’re gonna have some fun talking about is retirement. Do we have the death rattle in retirement? We’ll introduce our guest of honor last, but let’s start off with the gentleman across the card table from me, Mr. O’s here. How are you?
Dude, I’ve got the death rattle in my chest. You had that on
Wednesday
too?
Yes. It’s odd. It’s like I’m trapped in this one day of sickness over and over, but just progressively is getting worse as the day is going on. It’s like Groundhog Day feels like
sickness. Well, I hope you can hang in there. Tell people, figure out this retirement conundrum. So, is it true? Is Doug Wright, Paula, pant it, afford anything?
Are you never gonna retire? I, I
hope to never retire. My dream is to be like Betty White, who is 99 years old and still working and totally loving it. You could tell Betty White at 99 having a great time. That’s who I hope to be. You know my feeling
about this, Paula, you’ve heard me tell other people that if I’m podcasting when I’m 99 with like an oxygen like Don Imus had, you know?
Mm-Hmm. And how great would it be for ratings if I died right in the middle of a show? Like, Aw, that would just be, did you hear the podcast where the dude like kicked it halfway through the, like that would be huge. That would be, no, no.
No, no, no. P and people would say it was a deep fake. Anyway, that’s that.
That is true.
Who? Who would die on the show? And the guy wondering what the hell he’s spending his life doing with us. The guy behind the Personal Finance podcast. Finally here, orgy and Cola joins us. How are you, buddy? I
am so excited to be here, and I didn’t know Mom’s basement was BYOB, but here we are.
Yes it is. I’m sorry. I apologize. We, uh, yeah. Well, you know, when you, when you hang out with Doug, uh, you can’t keep the freezer full or the refrigerator, even the,
the beer fridge. Exactly. Well, I brought mine, so don’t worry about it.
Fanta, just, just to keep it away from Doug and I think you’re good. For the three people that don’t know what the best name show in our business is, the personal ha.
Paula, I wonder what it’s about. The Personal Finance podcast. I think it’s a little subtle. Andrew, what goes on at the Personal Finance podcast? Essentially
what we do is we talk about personal finance. That’s the main thing that we talked about all over the place. Oh,
I just imagine the day, Andrew, we were like, you gotta be kidding me.
That name’s still available. I, and it, we
started in 2020 and I could not believe it was available. So we are colliding the most boring name in the world with the coolest name in the world. So that’s, that’s
perfect. That’s Fanta. I don’t know if it’s boring, but you have a ton of fun on your show. It’s great.
Your YouTube page, also a bunch of fun. We’ll link to all those in our show notes. Along with what Paul is doing and afford anything. And uh, yeah, it’s gonna be a great time. And the piece we’re gonna talk about today, there is a piece in Canada that this was written by a Canadian author about the death of retirement.
We’ll dive into that in just a second. But before that, Andrew, are you familiar with the rules, the things that you have to go through before you retire?
I am familiar with some of them.
Oh, well, let me go through the list and we’ll see if we get them all. How about that ninth one? That’s the best one overall.
Wait till you hear number 12. Hold on. Right. Am I right? That’s completely right. It is incredible. We got Andrew here, we got Paula, we got OG Neighbor Doug in the driver’s seat. So let’s go.
This piece comes to us from a publication called The Walrus, and it’s the end of retirement, by the way. As I mentioned, we’ll link to it in the show notes, but you really don’t have to follow it. To follow along with today’s discussion. Uh, but it might be fun reading later. The writer of this piece, Katherine Bradbury writes, I’m standing on my back stoop, looking out at the 80 or so people jammed in the backyard for my retirement party.
They’re here to celebrate my 40 years in journalism. I. There’s the game from Domino Fashion Magazine where I got my start and the can’t spend enough cocaine stoked. Eighties, the Globe and Mail crew from the ambitious middle of my career hang out with the colleagues from McLean’s, the Toronto Star of Metro.
I moved around a lot. The CBC news crowd are huddled to my left protecting themself and their fat budgets from the circling sharks of underfunded journalism. My final job was with them just beyond the guest and beyond the horn beam trees where I’ve strung fairy lights to the party. I think I can see my future.
The grind to work is finally over. My retirement dream queued up April in Paris, reading by the sea, Spanish lessons in Antigua, so I can better speak to my grandson. I’ll be playing with him too in the open-ended days my children rarely knew with me. I’m not saying I deserve a life of ease, but I worked hard to earn my retirement, dropping chunks of my salary, giant chunks into the company and government pension plans throughout those 40 years.
It’s time for the famous social contract to hold up its end of the bargain and take care of me the way it did my father before me to deliver on the idea that retirement is my right after a life of work and the promise I’ll never have the time and means to enjoy it. Sounds good so far, right everybody.
But then she writes. Except none of that happened. The year since my retirement party has not been a dreamy passage to a welcome future, but a nerve shattering trip into the unknown. Then she goes into talking about how her debt swelling, her hard won savings, might or might not get sucked into the vortex of an international market collapse.
Can she keep her house? Who knows? She writes the macro economies messing with my micro economy. Andrew, this coming year is, uh, the start of an election year. People always feel uncertain, but definitely this year the hyperbole, I think is gonna be not even 11. It’s gonna be at a 12 or 13. This uncertainty is gonna feel more real than ever.
Do you think she’s got a good point here that you know what this certain quote, retirement might not be so
certain? I think she definitely has a great point here. And I have, my parents are around this age where they’re all their friends and them are in the the retirement age, the traditional retirement age of, you know, 59, 60, 61, 62 within that range.
And all of them that I have talked to are all uncertain about their retirement because they’re worried about things like inflation, for example. And so they all don’t know if they have enough money. And I think this concept of enough is a huge factor for a lot of people figuring out what that enough number is and then figuring out is that goalpost needing to move based on some of these inflation rates.
So I think this is definitely something that a lot of people are worried about right now.
Paulo, we’ve got the fire movement on one end, trying to retire it soon as we can. We got this piece on the whole other end going, Hey, I’m retired. It sucks. Like it, it’s a lot of uncertainty. Like what do we do if we’re in the fire movement?
I’m not even retired yet and I’m listening to this retired writer go me.
Well, you know, the thing is retirement the way it’s traditionally done, first of all, it’s completely binary. You’re either working full-time, or you are fully retired. There is no tapering off typically for the average person. Or at least in the way that retirement, traditional retirement has been, uh, historically defined.
Right? Second of all, you have, there’s this big thing that you’re major, major life event. You have never done a test drive of it. You’ve never taken an unpaid sabbatical from work for one year to see how you will fare emotionally, mentally, with the absence of a paycheck living on accumulated savings, right?
If some, if behavior like that was normalized and people took mini retirements, let’s say once a decade, right? When you turn 30, when you turn 40, when you turn 50, when you, you’d at least have a couple of test runs so that you know, Hey, five months into not earning a paycheck, this is messing with me psychologically, and going from a accumulation to spend is not something that I’m really equipped to do, right?
What’s great about the fire movement is that in the fire movement, retirement is not the cessation of income producing activity. Retirement is for many people a momentary cessation. That’s maybe three months, six months, maybe a year. Heck, maybe two years. And then after that, heck, let’s go three. Come on.
Sure, sure. Why not three? But then after that, it is typically really a midlife career change. And because it is a very, very well-funded midlife career change, often with a prolonged break in the middle, it allows people to test, drive what retirement can feel like.
I wanna get to that. Well-funded here in a second because I’ve got some statistics that Doug you found before we get there.
og. Looking at retirement, we’ve had higher than normal inflation lately. She’s talking about in this piece about pensions. Somebody retiring 20 years ago, a pension maybe, maybe not, but more than 50% of people probably had a pension back then. Social security reform, we heard, uh, lots of big news last week about one of the candidates in the United States talking about some pretty serious social security reform.
Are we better off if we just say, you know what, I’m not gonna plan to retire, and if I do, that’s great, but my plan is to never do it.
I think that when it comes to the word, retirement itself is an inaccurate description of what most people wanna do. I think what everybody is searching for is financial independence and that enables you to do whatever the heck it is that you wanna do, whether or not you make a boatload of money for it or not a lot of money, or you spend 40 hours a week doing it, or four hours a week doing it.
You know, at the end of the day, how you get there is not so much about. Which one of these tools are gonna get me there? Nor is it about like, I can’t wait to be done, but rather I can’t wait to get to the point where I can do something different. Recently, you know, we saw like Charlie Munger and Paula mentioned Betty White from some months ago.
So the interesting thing for both of those people is that they were still doing what they wanted to do. I’m certain that Betty White was financially independent. I know Charlie Munger was
for roughly 90 of his 99 years. I suspect
if there’s a theme, if there’s a common recipe card for success, when it comes to financial independence, it’s not that I can’t wait to be done and then I just sit on my butt and don’t do anything.
That’s not, that’s not what we, that we don’t see that as like the recipe for success. We see people who continue to do the things that provide energy and provide for other people in some way,
shape, or form.
But if that thing you wanna do doesn’t involve making money though, OG.
That’s fine. Absolutely. I mean, because financial independence is the point at which you get to decide what you wanna spend your time on, and it’s not necessarily about
money.
Initially when I was preparing, I had a couple other questions, but you guys are forcing my hand. What I love about our Friday round tables is I. I have no idea which way we’re gonna, I kind of know a little bit about where we’re gonna go, but we’re gonna go here way sooner. ’cause this is the way you guys are pulling me, both Paula and OG Yahoo Finances.
This piece that Doug found, uh, written by Janine Mancini. Can you guess how many Americans successfully retire with 1 million saved? The percentage may shock you. Now, a lot of our stackers are money nerds and they go a million dollars. That’s not a lot. We’ve talked about that here before, right? Million dollars.
That’s a $40,000 a year lifestyle. You need 2 million. Well, when you take a look at the numbers, Janine says, saving for retirement is an essential goal for many Americans, but achieving the ideal savings target remains elusive for many. In 2023, the average American retiree had about 170,726. About, I love the word, about about 170,000, 726 and 36 cents.
No, I just added the 36 cents in in retirement savings. A decrease though. Listen to this. A decrease from 191,000, this 10% reduction significantly lower than the recommended. Who the hell recommended this number than the recommended 555,000? I’ve never heard anybody recommend 555,000 Only. Only 12% of retirees have achieved or exceeded this recommended savings amount.
So Andrew, to you, Paul is talking about financial independence and a midlife career change That’s well financed. OGs talking about, that’s what we’re searching for. We got very few people actually with any savings at all.
I think that is a, a major factor. Now you can see all the numbers that even came out within the last year from the government side where they were talking about, you know, the average net worth by age.
And they went through all of these different numbers and they were extremely low for folks who should be around retirement age. And so for a lot of people, if they have this low amount when they get to retirement age, there’s a lot of different things that they may have to rely on. Most people are trying to rely on social security and most people are trying to rely on some of these visual things.
But I think there are some creative ways that you can come up with where you can find things that you are interested in and utilize that to make money in retirement in a way that isn’t like a nine to five job, for example. So I think there are some creative things that we can talk through, but this is something where I definitely think it’s a major issue for a lot of folks.
Well, let me stick with you for a second then. So same question I, I asked og, which is. Would it be better then for the average person based on those numbers I just gave you to say, you know what, I’m not gonna ever retire. Maybe I’ll put a few dollars aside, but I’ll just plan on working the rest of my life.
And hey, if I can use this for a few well-funded days, or months or years off, that’s a better plan.
So I think that this is a really, really interesting topic because I think for a lot of people, they don’t understand the flexibility that they have. So say for example, I kind of compare this to something like Barista Fire, but you can do this later on in your life as well, where if you don’t know what Barista Fire is, it was kind of developed by the fire movement and early on it’s where you kind of supplement your income with a side job.
Now it was called Barista Fire originally because people would say, for example, they needed a million dollars just to make the numbers work. I don’t do public math. So say for example, they needed a million dollars and they had $750,000 saved up, well they needed to make an additional $250,000 to supplement their lifestyle throughout that timeframe.
So this is something where they need an additional $10,000 if you utilize the 4% rule every single year in order to supplement that. So when the, when you do that, you can say, Hey, can I work a side job or a side gig that supplements that? Well, that is something where you can kind of do this math in retirement as well.
But I like the idea of doing this in a flexible way, in a way that is surrounding your interest. So say for example, you’re really interested in. Fishing, for example, you can go out and become a fishing captain. Can you make up that amount by fishing once a week or twice a week and teaching people how to fish?
Or if you’re really interested in yoga, can you become a yoga instructor once a week or twice a week? This is, I think, one way that you can supplement this income and still be enjoying your retirement over that timeframe. So I do think it is, if you wanna retire and you don’t wanna work, I think that can be one definition.
But for a lot of people, staying busy also can increase longevity. It can do a lot of different things for your lifestyle, and I think it’s really, really important to kind of see that there is flexibility in
this. It’s funny you say that back to the original piece. Uh, the author writes, anyone retiring in Canada right now can expect to live until 80 women until 84, but those numbers are averaged out.
She says, when I began to discuss retirement with my financial planner in early 2022, he put my life expectancy at 94. Why thank you. I said I do try to keep fit. No, said Benjamin Klein, senior portfolio manager at Baskin Wealth Management. I thought Baskin was where I got ice cream, but apparently not.
Baskin Wealth Management ice cream, and. Mutual funds. Maybe that’s it. They’re
32 flavors. They’re the 32nd
flavor, 32 ETFs to choose from. Yeah. Uh, Benjamin says, life expectancy is not randomized. We factor in your gender genetics, access to good healthcare education, lifestyle. That’s, that’s how long you’d live.
Paula, we look at so few people with retirement savings in one piece, longevity on the other. I mean, this creates this huge gap. And maybe she’s not wrong for a lot of people about the death of retirement. Well, so first
of all, retirement and financial planning generally is the only area in which longevity is considered a risk anywhere else.
Longevity is considered my five
in your I love it. Love it.
You know, longevity is considered crap. I’m still.
Right in, in fitness, in health, in medicine, longevity is the optimal outcome. If for future thinking, starting in our twenties or our thirties, ideally we are optimizing for longevity into our nineties, hundreds, a hundred tens, but funding that Paula, right? You know, the typical, you retire at 60 and you have a 30 year retirement, you retire at 60 and you live to 90.
I think that that needs to be rethought particularly well, actually, you know what, really among everyone, because if you are currently young, then you have decades and decades of A, the ability to practice good fitness, good nutrition, good, good lifestyle choices. B, you also have all of the, the new. Medical and technological advances that are going to emerge in the next 50 years.
You have all of that at your disposal. So if you’re young, you’re in a great spot. But likewise, if you are already in your eighties, your, like, assuming that you’re in decent health, your likelihood of living to a hundred is quite great, right? Because you’re, you’ve already made it past the great filter, right?
You’ve already made it past, um, into your
eighties. It’s a great filter. Yeah. It’s a great garbage disposal in
the sky. My takeaway from Paula just gave me a big revelation. If you’re a little light on savings, break out the bacon in the cigarettes. I mean, you got, there’s no point. Have some fun because you don’t, you can outlive your money
because for you Doug.
Because for you it’s about quality, not quantity. That’s right. You don’t want quantity. You certainly want quality. Absolutely. Yeah. Uh, let’s talk about this though, OG. Is there a downside of planning on income forever? Andrew talks about barista fire. Paula talks about a well-funded second career. Is there a downside to going, you know what, I’m gonna plan to never retire.
Before I answer that, I, I want to go back to what the article said here where she said that she was meeting with her financial planner in 2022 to discuss her retirement plan. The way that I interpret that is this is the first time she’s had that discussion. Maybe that’s not the case, but I’m, I’m thinking about this, like, Hey, I’m ready to retire.
Let’s sit down and work on this. As opposed to thinking about it for the 10 or 15 or 20 years prior to where you can have that transition, that becomes a little bit more fulfilling along the way.
It’s like tax planning versus somebody filling in the boxes later. Yeah.
I mean, Hey, I retired. Can I do that?
It’s like, well, I hope so. You know, it’s like, now when’s the best time to start planning it like now, you know, it is. And I think a good counselor along the way will have some of those questions for you that, that maybe you’re not thinking about. Like, well, what the heck am I gonna do every day? You know, and how can I stress test some of these random events that seem to always pop up in the least opportune times, like market declines or inflation, or, you know, political instability or whatever.
Let’s, I. Let’s game plan that in 2023 for all your retirees for 2030. ’cause you got seven years to think about it versus like going, oh crap, I retired in January. Oh, what happens in presidential election years again? Should I be concerned about this? It’s like, well, yeah, last year you should have thought about it, but you already, you know, you already signed the papers.
Anyways, I guess that’s my plug for thinking about this early on. A little bit further in advance. Yeah.
Yeah. So back to my question to you then. If you decide, you know what I’m gonna plan, like I’m never gonna retire, is there a downside to that?
Uh, no, I don’t think so, because then you actually have to do it.
You, you know what I mean? I guess the downside, if there is a downside, the downside is you can’t be wrong. You just have to do that then for the rest of your life. I, I think that most people when it comes to savings and investing for retirement think that they’re running out of time when in reality they have tons and tons of time.
I think that most people have this idea of retirement being like, I wanna retire early at 55. And then when you start pushing the questions around like, well, what are you gonna do every day? And I’ve said this before, it’s like people say like, I wanna play golf. I’m gonna play golf every day. Like, all right, cool.
Have you done that? Have you literally played golf every day for a week? ’cause your back hurts. I mean, it just is tired. And let’s say
that you’re actually duck ego hurts when he does that several
days in a row. That’s true. And I hit too many balls in the water, so I’d be completely broke. Spending money on golf balls the entire time.
You,
we have to really plan on, you know, from a financial planning standpoint, it’s like, well, we’re gonna be downgrading to top flights from here on out. Exactly
rock. ’cause your golf, your
golf ball expense. But even if that’s the case, it’s like, all right, that’s a four hour adventure. Right? So you tee off at eight, you’re done at noon.
What are you gonna do the rest of the day? Every day for the rest of your life? You go, well, I’m gonna hang out with my friends. Oh, are you? Because all your friends, they’re still working. I mean. It doesn’t mean that you have to keep working, but you can think about that stuff in advance. So I don’t think it’s bad to think about a life worked.
Dana Obox said that, you know, a life well worked. That was such a great line that she said, uh, several years ago in the show. But if there is a downside to, you know, to, to not thinking about it, is that I guess it could lead you to being a little bit more Yolo e than you probably should be.
Andrew, any downsides you can think of to, uh, to planning on working the rest of your life?
I
don’t see a ton of downsides, especially if you’re in, you know, healthy condition and you have something that you really, really enjoy and love that you are working for a longer period of time. Like for me, for example, I plan on working for a, a very long period of time, even throughout retirement because I enjoy the work that I do.
And so I think if you enjoy what you’re doing, this is why I always bring in that barista fire example. If you enjoy what you’re doing, then it’s something where if you do it a couple of days a week, if you need to supplement your income and or if you even need to work longer periods of time, if it’s something that you enjoy doing, it’s not gonna be as bad as if it’s a job that you absolutely hate where you’re working in a cubicle or something along those
lines.
I think barista fire though, for me, is the best example because when I see. People that do that all day. Whenever I’m in a coffee shop, I think there’s nothing I’d rather not do right than that. Like God bless those people that love doing that and that do that. And I’m definitely not making fun of anybody that works in a coffee shop.
’cause I think you’re doing phenomenal work. And I love it when I get coffee there. But for me, that’s why I’m glad Andrew people are individuals. ’cause I’m like, I hear barista fire. I’m like, Nope.
And I, I almost wish they would rebrand it. I guess we could rebrand it to like flexible fire or something like that where it’s something that you have flex, the option Flex Fi.
Yeah, that sounds cool. Uh, where, where you have that option to be able to kind of just do the thing surrounding what you enjoy. And I can give you an example of this too, where we just did this recently where my, uh, my father retired or he got, he got laid off at 54 and he thought he was too old, um, to go back and find a job for.
So for the last couple of years, he was kind of waiting and trying to figure out what he wanted to do and he fell in love with the game of pickleball. And so if you guys have ever played pickleball before, it is like one of the fastest growing sports in the world. And so he started playing for, especially if you’re over 50.
Exactly, exactly. And so he started playing like all the time and, and people down here in where I am in Tampa, Florida, they play all over the place. And so he started to play all the time and then realized he really, really loves this sport. And then him and I found this indoor pickleball facility. We started to play at this facility together.
And it was a really like, really cool place. It had air conditioning. And in Tampa it’s so hot here, it’s miserable to play outside. And so just a couple months ago we bought this facility from the, the previous owner. Wow. And now he’s in there day to day and he’s loving it. He gets all these pros come in, he gets free paddles, like it’s all these different things.
And he’s there every single day. He’s there right now doing the operations. And then I do all the backend stuff. But it is one of those things where like it, it’s something that he absolutely loves and he fell in love with it and he found it over time. And so now he’s doing this day in and day out and couldn’t be
happier.
That’s a different podcast. Maybe next time you’re on, we’ll talk about that. Because as you know, there’s a difference between playing pickleball all the time and running a pickleball operation. Like, it just, you know, it’s a whole different set of stuff. I know one guy who’s one of the biggest board game reviewers on earth, a guy named Tom Vassel.
I talked to him about it and he’s like, I got into this ’cause I love games and I was gonna be around all the new games. He’s like, I have to play like 18 new games a week and make videos on all these games. He’s, there are days and weeks where this just sucks. And it’s like, but, but you know, beware what you wish for.
’cause it’s a different
thing. Absolutely. I completely agree with that too. So we could, we could definitely talk through that on another episode. But I think it is one of those things where if you could find that flexibility where it’s kind of the perfect amount of time, you make enough money to cover your expenses, I think there’s a dynamic there where you can really make it work.
Paul, I want to go to you to kind of kick off the last question before we go to our trivia challenge. Dan, in our community, who’s a friend of the show lives in Minneapolis, has has always said that, you know, sometimes as we money geeks, we throw around these big numbers. We throw like 555,000. And I said earlier in the show, I quote, I’m like, who suggests that number?
But you and I both know, there’s people out there that hear that number and they’re like, I’ll never get there. There’s no way I can get to 550 and, and, and then I said, well, two a million, no, 2 million maybe. Now I freaked out people even more. So how much is even just this topic quote, scaring the kids, as my mom used to say, we don’t wanna scare the kids.
Right.
Well, I think the risk with throwing out numbers is that you’re, when you’re in mass communication is that you are talking to an audience that makes, you know, some people make 30,000 or $40,000 a year, others make 300,000 or $400,000 a year, right? We’re talking to an audience where literally there’s an order of magnitude difference in income, and so to throw out any type of raw number doesn’t make sense.
In that context, I think it makes a lot more sense to speak in terms of percentages, and I’ll give you an example. When I was, I was in my mid twenties, I was making about $25,000 a year. I remember going on Twitter, this is like the early, early days of Twitter. It was back when tweet chats were really popular and I was in some retirement planning tweet chat.
’cause I was, that was what I did in my twenties and uh, you were so crazy, right? Just getting nuts. That’s how I spent my twenties.
Yeah. I have some gin and juice and jump on the old tweeter machine.
So I’m, I’m in this retirement planning tweet chat and I mentioned that I had saved $5,000 in the past year.
I had saved 5,000. Everyone immediately was like, well that’s not enough. That’s not, that’s nowhere close to enough. And for me, that was one fifth of my income. Right. So it was so disheartening to hear that a fully a fifth of my income was not enough, particularly at that. End of the income bracket 20% is, is more dear because more of it is used for necessities.
You know, 20% is, is far more dear to you than it is when yeah, you have a much wider discretionary birth. So I, I just remember everyone had that very knee-jerk reaction to the expression of a raw number. And that’s a lesson that I haven’t forgotten as I can. I talk to wide audiences as, as you, uh, as do all of us here, that that’s the risk of using these numbers.
We’re scaring the kids.
Yeah. And we definitely don’t wanna do that the second half for that very reason. We’re gonna start giving you solutions so that if you wanna get retirement moving, if you’re one of those people that hasn’t saved, don’t feel like you’ve saved enough. Or even if you have, you want it for motivation.
We’re gonna jump on those and the second half of this show. But between now and then, we have all year long this glorious competition for maybe the worst prize in all of sports, which, uh, for those of you watching our video of this is the, uh, trophy right over OG shoulder that we founded at a dollar store.
I think the base is uneven. I’m fairly certain that, uh, it isn’t, isn’t inscribed. I think we stuck something on there, Eugene. It might have come off. Uh, no, it’s a,
uh, it’s a dry erase.
It’s a Dr. Perfect. Well, that’s the question is are we going to dry erase it or not? Because Andrew, today you’re playing on team Len Penso.
Len OG and Paula have been doing this all year long. Well, uh, Paulette per hatch actually filled in for Paula while she finished this thing. She never talks about at Columbia, the thing she’s, she’s very quiet about that she did.
We less than you talk about
Bavaria, maybe slightly this year. Long competition.
Andrew, do you want the good news or the bad news about being on team? Len, let’s start with the bad news. Well, the bad news is, and I don’t like our guest to have to do this, but you have to guess first I. And the reason is, is that you are winning. You have 17 points after a big win last week. OG has 15, which means he’s gotta win this one and he’s gotta win next week to force a tie.
And by the way, we have a better tiebreaker idea than, uh, college football had. Where Andrew, your, uh, Florida State Seminoles man, did they get screwed? We’ve got a better tiebreaker system. We won’t share it until we get there. But, uh, yeah. How does it feel being a Florida State Seminole right now? It
is one of the worst feelings in the entire world, but at least we don’t have to play the game that we’ve gotta get.
We would’ve gotten killed in anyway.
I, I look at the bull
you
got that’s gonna, it’s, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get killed anyway. But it a tough road to hope one way or the other.
You’re right.
Yeah. I, I think you might wanna start drinking early. That one, Andrew.
That’s gonna be an all day event, that’s for sure.
I don’t know. It’ll be certainly fun to see, man, if they hang in there the entire game, how great that will be for college football. Just to go. What if they would’ve. Had a shot. That’d be, that’d be awesome. Anyway, uh, you’ve got 17 points. OG is 15. Let’s turn to Paula. Paula, you managed to be almost, I think at some point in first place and you’ve assumed you’re rightful place.
With 13,
the lead was mind to blow.
And week and week out, you find a way to get it done. You know
what? This is perfectly in character and on brand. Don’t let anyone say that I am inconsistent.
Paula, you and I were talking a few days ago without the Mike’s present about the fact you said, you know what, I’m gonna lobby that we have a better prize than the trophy.
And then me not realizing I looked at you like you’re from the moon, that you didn’t know that last year Eric Williams in Detroit was nice enough to donate a cake from Milk Bar to the winner. That’s
amazing. And Paula, you said milk bar. The best cakes on the Planet Milk Bar. I mean this, this is not an ad.
This is just a, I’ve never known that cake could be that good. OG
was cake that good? Was it that good last year? I remember it being pretty good. Yeah. Eric has been nice enough to donate the cake again. And I think, Paula, you said something like you might’ve tried harder if you knew.
Yes, absolutely. So next year, 2024, I am gunning for this milk bar cake.
’cause it’s just, wow. It’s what a cake. How’s
she gonna do it? It Joe, she’s gonna bring in somebody to sit in for her for three quarters of the year this time, because that’s been the proven way to keep Paula in
the, in the race. Right. Alright. Is Paula gonna be the spoiler? Is OG going to be able to, uh.
Notch notch. Uh, one win in two in a row that he needs. Could Andrew spoil it for everybody? He’s like, I don’t get any of the milk bar. Who cares? Doug, you’ve got the question, man. What are we doing?
Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. On this date in 1955, Johnny Cash released one of his biggest hits, Folsom Prison. Blues Cash himself never actually set foot in a prison until after the song’s release, when prisoners across the country started requesting him to perform. I wonder who books those?
I mean, I know some closeup magic tricks from when I was a kid. I could be a touring funny magician. I bet I’d be a hit with the inmates. Ironically, cash started his prison tour at Huntsville State Prison and didn’t perform at Folsom until 1968. According to country music legend, at least one of his shows was attended by none other than Merle Haggard who was in prison in San Quentin for second degree burglary.
I bet I’d
never heard that before. That’s so interesting.
There’s a thing called second degree burglary, or are you talking about the Merl Haggard part? Merle Admiral
Haggard.
Okay. Yes. It’s not like accidental burglary.
Yeah. I don’t want anybody to think about Joe Sulci in second
degree burglary, but anyway, let’s go.
I bet Merl could have snuck out with Johnny’s band if they planned ahead. I mean, how hard could it be? Merl could have just told the guards that he was like the band’s opening act or something. Musical acts of all genres have performed in prisons over the years from Bonnie Tyler to Frank Sinatra and the Count Basey Orchestra, while a small portion of a prison’s budget goes to entertainment, nearly half.
Is spent on security in California where Folsom Prison is located, it costs an average of $106,000 per year to house a single prisoner. I keep a close eye on a criminal in my house for half that. Today’s trivia question is, how much did it cost to house a prisoner for a year back when cash wrote Folsom Prison Blues back in 1955?
I’ll be back right after I find my trick deck of
cards. You gotta get practicing. Alright, Andrew, you’re kicking it off. 1955, cost over a hundred thousand dollars to house a prisoner day. What was that? 106,006. Now, what was it in 1955?
I’m gonna say $7,024.
Sounds like you did some math.
I’m trying to, but I don’t do mental math like I said earlier.
So, but we’ll see. We’ll see how it pans out.
One more time, Andrew. That was what? Round rough, approximate
number. $7,000. We’ll go. Rounded down to seven. Oh,
he changes the answer to 7,000. Oh gee. We
decided I’m second. This doesn’t seem right. You, you,
you are second. You’re in second place because you’re in second place.
Yeah.
Since when do we go? Which place we’re in? We go on. Who, who won right The
previous week. We’ve been doing it this way all
year long. You are hopped up on day Quil, dude.
Whoever’s in the lead goes first.
It fluctuates. Yep. And whoever’s in the last place goes last.
It’s
like 70 years ago, basically. So maybe three doubles say it’s a little bit more, although probably there’s, uh.
I’m gonna say it’s just a little bit more than 7,000. I’m gonna say the answer is, uh, 17,017, $319 and 11 cents.
Alright, Paula, you’ve got seven and 17. Well,
since I can’t win, the question is, what answer do I give that has the best chance of spoiling?
It just depends on who you wanna spoil. She says that,
well, when I first heard the question, the, the number that popped into my head was 22,000. So normally I would take the over, but I also want to knock Len out of his place.
Oh,
I like
this. Oh, so I think capping Len at the knees is the, the best. Uh,
she’s an angry elf today.
So Andrew, your guest was 7,000, 7,000. All right, I’m gonna go 7,001.
Okay. 7,001. All right. We got the numbers locked in. Ken OG forced it to go to the last week. Will Paula pull the spoiler? Is Len raising the trophy and Andrew today getting to raise a trophy on his behalf? We’ll let you know in just a minute.
Andrew, you kicked it off with $7,000. The good news is if it’s less than that, Paula gave you the under.
Absolutely. And I’m hoping it is less than that. But we’ll see what happens here.
og, you are way out there at 17,000 bucks. Feeling good. I don’t have
any idea. Sorry,
Paula. You took 7,001, giving you a lot of room between her and, and og.
I, I mean, I’ve got
nothing
to
leave her and him. Yeah. Yes. Sorry Andrew. I just, did you just gender him? I just, uh, change your pronouns. Exactly. I don’t know where that came from. All right. Well, we are locked in. Are we going to another week of trivia Doug? You got it, man. What’s our answer?
Hello, I’m Neighbor Doug.
That’s my best Johnny Cash. Hot closeup, magician. And man, and whatever color clothes are clean Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. During the break, I practiced my closeup magic trick for Joe’s mom, and she kept saying she doesn’t know how I’m still doing it at my age, but she did recommend I maybe visit a penitentiary or two.
I bet she did. I’m an even better magician than I was before. Today’s trivia question is how much did it cost to house a prisoner for a year in Folsom Prison in 1955? California is the home of Folsom State Prison, as well as 33 other facilities that currently costs over a hundred thousand dollars a year to house a prisoner in the Golden State.
And if you were to adjust the cost in 1955 for inflation, the bill to the state should have been about $3,300 way back then. But that’s way off the price tag that it actually cost to house a prisoner at Folsom for a year in 1955, which was. $6,705 less than what Paula guessed. 67.04 less than Andrew guessed.
17,000, $23 and 11 cents less than what? OG guessed. ’cause it was only 296 bucks in 1955. That means Andrew slash Len just sealed the deal.
Wow. I need a source
for that. We actually found an amazing source for it from like a state study in California where they specified
Folsom That is way lower than I thought it was gonna be.
Isn’t that crazy? 200? Yeah. I think they were just, they were literally living on dirt floors and getting like porridge.
That’s, that is it is. That’s
why we thought this would be, now they’ve got like Roomba classes and Peloton bikes and all of their cells. Did you say
Roomba classes like.
Like the vacuum cleaner.
Do you mean zoomba? Yeah. You like classes on how to clean the floor? Yeah. You stand on top of the Roomba and you balance. You ever see those people that clean a floor in a always changing direction? Yes. Yes. Congratulations, Andrew. Nice. Your first time on the show and you help Len win win this year’s trivia.
I am
so honored to win this today and I think I should, uh, get the credit for the entire year. He’s like,
he just wants, wants the cake. Exactly. Forget
everything else. Exactly. I want the cake. And Paul, I think it was another lesson where if your gut is to cap somebody, one side, go to the other one. Yes. I can’t seriously Doug.
Seriously, how many, how many times has Polygon? I think I’ll take the wrong one by $2. Right. Yeah,
she needs to watch that Seinfeld episode where Costanza realizes every choice I’ve made in my life has led me here. So now I’m gonna do the opposite, whatever. I think I’m doing the opposite. And he walks over into this beautiful woman in the cafe and he is like, my name’s George.
I live with my parents and I’m unemployed. And she’s like, do you want go out? And it worked. It worked. That’s it. So
Paula, trust your gut, but in a different way. Next year I think is good. Exactly. All right. Next week’s trivia then is going to be to see, uh, to determine the order at the beginning of the year for week number one.
We’ll do that order randomly. So whoever finishes first, second, third in our last week at trivia. We’ll we’ll do that one. All right. Second half of this, uh, podcast episode is brought to you by deposit accounts.com. Andrew, you know what happens when you go to deposit accounts.com.
No, I don’t, but I can’t wait to hear.
That’s
super. Uh, when you go to
deposit accounts.com, you’ll find that you can compare more than 275,000 deposit rates from over 11,000 banks of credit unions. Do it all for free as we record this, which is a little earlier than you’re hearing it, so you want to go to deposit accounts yourself. The national average in savings accounts is ticked up to an even half a percent, but if you’re in the top 1% of savings accounts, you’re getting 4.96.
Still a huge difference between that top. 1% and the national average and all you do, you go to deposit accounts.com, click on the different savings accounts, find out which run works for you in your area, and you’re off and running. So deposit accounts.com Isn’t that great Andrew?
That sounds amazing.
You see it’s gotta come back every week.
That’s super. Alright, let’s do this. This is obviously, when we talk about the death of retirement, that’s a problem. What is the thing when it comes to retirement and real stick with you when it comes to retirement for people that are maybe started late, what is the thing they’re all worried about that you would tell them maybe you don’t need to worry about it that much.
Let’s just relax and not be so worried about
blank. I think one of the, the biggest things that a lot of people are worried about is that they’re running out of time. And we kind of touched on this a little bit earlier before, but I think they have a ton of time once you start to approach retirement age.
And so, because you can think of it in another, you know, another age bracket essentially, there is so much more time. You have 30, 40, sometimes even 50 years. My grandmother just hit a hundred, a hundred years old. Wow. So you have so much time left, uh, that you can really do some amazing cool things, uh, with that timeframe.
So worrying about that you’re running out of time, I think is something that you really don’t need to do. And I think a lot of people when they get to their, you know, late fifties, sixties, seventies, they are worried about, Hey, am I too old to start doing some of these things? And I think it is absolutely not true.
I think a lot of people have a ton of amazing capabilities and that there’s a lot of really cool things that you can do in that range. So I think you have so much time that you can still continue to invest your dollars and do a, a bunch of different things where you still have time for this money to compound and grow over that timeframe.
Oh
gee, what’s another one?
Uh, maybe like, I don’t know. What to do, or I don’t have enough, I don’t have enough money to do anything right now, and it won’t make a difference. Like kind of throw your hands up in the air and say like Joe said $2 million, there’s zero chance I’ll be able to save $2 million, so I’m not even gonna try.
And the reality is, is that every little bit helps. And compounding works very magically in the sense that a hundred thousand dollars invested for the next 50 years, which is a long time, is $25 million. Like it’s just impossible to think about how much compounding will will affect you. And like Andrew said, from a timing standpoint, you know that it’s usually in that conjunction, right?
It’s like I’m 50 and I don’t have a lot of extra, so I might as well not do anything. And I would say that’s exactly the opposite attitude to have.
Paula, I think people get too caught up in what they should be investing in and, uh, fret about, you know, I don’t know how to invest. I don’t understand the jargon of investing.
What if my asset allocation is wrong? What the heck is asset allocation? Anyway? People get so caught up in wanting to be a great investor that they neglect to make contributions, right? Forgetting that or perhaps not Realizing that contributions are your single biggest determinant of investment success and everything else, picking the right invest, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
None of that matters if you’re not making contributions.
Yeah. To, uh, OG Chuck Wado on the show last week. I said, either, I did know you’re gonna quote this, Paula, so I’m gonna get this wrong, but it was either 83 or 87%. Do you know the number og? Uh, 83 or 87% of your success is based on what you do, right?
Mm-Hmm. The fact that you did it, and if you do it early, then compounding interest will help. Yeah. I
don’t know the number off the top of my head, but it’s a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That’s still big.
Either way that, that’s the 80 20 then, you know. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. You’re right. That’s the
80 20. Right on. Yeah.
Paula’s stick with you. Somebody stumbled on today’s episode. They’re just trying to get start. What should their first move then be now that we got them? Okay. Don’t worry about these things. Just do it. What should your first move be? Set up,
uh, retirement accounts. So any workplace retirement of a 401k or a 4 0 3 B if you’re eligible for one, amazing.
Whether or not you are, uh, set up either a, a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA, set those accounts up. If your health insurance account is HSA eligible, set up an HSA as well. But yet those tax advantaged accounts all set up and start making automatic contributions could be automated from every paycheck. It could be automatic monthly, but it needs to be automatic and at a recurring periodic interval so that you don’t have to get your hands dirty.
It just, it happens while you’re sleeping. Oh gee, what’s
another one of those First set it, forget it. Yeah. What’s another one of those first moves? og.
I like the idea of doing what Paula did and then telling your company to automatically increase your contribution at some interval, half a percent every six months, 1% on your birthday, you know, whatever those automatic escalating contribution options are.
Because you will never miss 1% of your paycheck this week, I promise you. You won’t even notice it. And in three or four years from now, you’ll be maxing out your
retirement savings. And the cool thing is if you do, which by the way, to your point, OG never happens. If you do, you can always change it. Yeah.
You just go change it. Go change it later. Yeah. It’s changeable. Yeah, absolutely. But I like that automatic escalation. Andrew, what’s another first move?
Another first move I think is, along with the retirement accounts, I think that’s the, the most important first move. And then along with that is looking for your employer match.
If you don’t know what employer matches, that’s one of the, the number one things you need to do when it comes to opening up your, you know, your 401k or anything like that, because it is a 100% rate of return on your money. So taking advantage of that is definitely a huge, huge factor. And then in addition, building up your cash position over that timeframe as well.
So I would take care of those retirement accounts first, so your money could start to compound, especially if you’re approaching the age that you wanna retire at. But then in addition, building up that cash position because cash allows you that flexibility over that timeframe for your emergency fund or anything else that’s going to happen to you.
It’s gonna protect you against life. And life is gonna happen. It’s not if something, it’s gonna happen to you, but when will something happen to you? So that is the biggest factor there as well. And so having that cash available is gonna protect you in the
long run. I love that emergency fund idea because you know, with Paula and OGs set it and forget it.
You can’t forget it if you, if you, the muffler’s dragging behind the car and you get nowhere else to go for money.
Exactly. And it could interrupt your wealth building process if something like that happens and you don’t have that cash available to you. You could even have situations arise where you have opportunities where you could take a better job across the country, for example, to make a lot more money.
And people who don’t have cash on hand cannot take advantage of some of these things. And so it’s really, really important to make sure that you have that cash position available to you. ’cause life’s gonna happen, like we said, but at the same time, you can also take advantage of opportunities.
Okay.
Paula said people don’t know stick with you, Andrew, Paula said people dunno where to invest. They freak out about that. Totally. A hundred percent agree. So let’s give people some guidance there. Obviously we don’t know you, we’re not your financial advisor, but what investment do you think would be a great, make a great first investment for somebody?
So I am of the camp of index funds, ETFs, those types of things. But if you’ve never invested before, something like a target date index fund is a really, really easy way to kind of set up your investments on a set it and forget it system where you’re just deploying money in a target date index fund. And all it is is a way to to, to buy into a diversified asset that actually has a target date of when you’re gonna retire.
Now the, the longer out that date is, the more aggressive that portfolio is, and then the shorter timeframe in there is the less aggressive that portfolio is. So there’ll be more bonds in that less aggressive portfolio. So that is one really easy way to just automate this process if you have never done this before.
But I love index funds and ETFs as well. Things like s and p 500 index funds, total stock market, all those different ones. Yeah.
Let’s talk about lifestyle wise. Oh gee. Is there anything we should do in our budget at the beginning? Anything we should do lifestyle wise when we start thinking about, I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to create some money for myself.
When you’re
looking at your spending plan, I hate the word budget ’cause it’s like the word diet and everybody hates dieting and everybody hates budgeting. But a spending plan sounds a little bit more action oriented. So when you’re looking at your spending plan, everything counts. I think some people will say, well, but I really like Netflix, so I don’t want that part to count.
It’s like, no, it counts. Just be okay with the fact that you’re building this up from scratch. You get to decide at every dollar what you wanna, what you’re marked that for. And there are no, there are no untouchable expenses like everything’s on the table. Lay it all out, build it up the way that you want to this time, because it’s this month.
It’s the month of January, for example, in 2024, and you can build your spending plan however you want. This month,
Paula, people are gonna fall off the wagon, so to speak. You fall off the wagon, you do this for a month or two, you screw something up. What? What would you tell those people?
Make it more automated and simpler, right?
People often fall off the wagon first. First of all, automation trumps everything, right? Automate first, and for the things that you can’t automate, you then want to build habits around. But first, automation, then habits. That’s the first step. Reassess where you can automate more. The second thing is for the things that you absolutely cannot automate, and you are building habits around those, find how to simplify it.
So, for example, when people have a, a budget or a spending plan, they will often create all of these very particular categories, right? Because they wanna know how much money they’re spending on restaurants and how much they’re spending on groceries and what they’re spending on clothing and what they’re spending on, right?
And tracking your money in all of these line itemized categories can be incredibly exhausting. Plus, it opens up these questions of, all right, what do I do? I spent $191 at Amazon, but those Amazon purchases were a combination of dish soap and socks and dog food, right? So it falls into three different categories.
It falls into what? House? Homewares and clothing and pets. So what do you, what do you do then? Do you break up the Amazon thing? Do you create it like, it creates all of this unnecessary confusion and so dial it back, simplify it. I, I tell people you wanna take it to the extreme. You can simplify it to spending and saving.
Those are your two categories, right? And then if you wanna get a little bit more granular, that spending can go to, it could, it could be fixed versus discretionary. It could be essentials versus options. I mean, there are a couple of different ways that you could do it, but the more that you can simplify, the more likely you are to stick with
it.
I’m glad you say that, Paula, because, and Andrew, you, Paula, IOG on, on all of our podcasts. We’ve interviewed great people in this space. And Andrew, it, it just seems to me that this is the surprise I think for people when they start out is this is all about establishing confidence and about getting more and more confident.
And to Paula’s point. If you make it too ornate, if you do try to do too much like that brings on fatigue, which can kill your confidence. Like it seems to me that this is all about confidence. It
100% is about confidence, especially early on and just having the confidence to take these actions. But in addition, having the confidence to forgive yourself.
Because what a lot of people do is say they have a spending plan, for example, and they mess up their spending plan. They say, oh, I can’t do this. They throw their hands in the air and they completely quit and then they go back to their old habits. Yeah, but understanding that I have never had a perfect month with a spending plan.
I have 15 Amazon boxes at my front door right now. I’m still, you know, bad with this stuff when it comes to some of this, this kind of thing. So overall, you really need to focus on forgiving yourself or like what they say and why now roll with the punches and then move on to the next month. We are never gonna have a perfect month.
You need to understand that, and you need to understand that, you know, most people never have that perfect month, and it is okay to make mistakes. You just move on to the next step. It’s a
fabulous place to leave it. Give yourself some grace. Let’s find out what’s happening, where each of you are. I love hearing about some of the amazing stuff you guys are creating.
Oh gee, I know you’re sick this weekend. You gonna still power ahead with a With a party holiday weekend?
Absolutely. I gotta spread my holiday cheer to
everyone.
This
time. It’s holiday cheer plus virus. Yes.
Who doesn’t like a cold at Christmas time? Come see OG Santa brunch this weekend if I feel better.
That’s what we’re gonna
do. Hopefully we’ll go to our guest of honor last, Paula, what’s happening at the Afford Anything podcast? On
the Afford Anything Podcast. So we have aired an interview with, uh, Dr. Mike Massimino, who is a NASA astronaut who was also on The Big Bang Theory. We’ve also interviewed Jamila Suran, the host of the podcast Journey to Launch, who has just come out with a new book.
Actually, as of the time that we’re recording this, I saw her last night at her book Launch Party. Oh, awesome. And it was an incredible, I mean, the turnout was Matt, like, wow. You know, it was like getting hot in the room. I was like, darn, I should have like, not m worn a sweater. Amazing turnout, great discussion, great food, just, yeah.
Fantastic. So, oh, and, and her book of course is, uh, the title is about financial freedom, but it’s also about buying the darn guacamole. Why it’s okay to spend the extra dollar when guac is extra.
Guac does not need to be part of your retirement plan, or does need to be part of your
retirement plan. It does.
It does. You should have your own chef making guac for you. Fresh
every day. Avocado’s only like 90 cents a piece, right? Can’t you just get an avocado and smush it up yourself? Wouldn’t that be a smarter latte factor? I’m gonna write a new book. It’s called The Avocado Factor.
There’s a restaurant in Texarkana where they will make the, they’ll make the guacamole in front of you. And I saw them do that once and I’m like, I totally just need to do that. ’cause it just looks like fun. It super looks like fun
making guacamole. Yes. No. Oh, I mean, it’s just taking avocados and smooshing ’em up.
Add a little bit of salt and pepper and, and onion, red onion and, uh, well,
and and tomato and onion and garlic, tomato. That’s
what I said. Yeah. Adding all that stuff. Oh my. Yeah. And lime juice. Are we hungry? I know how to make it like on here. Somebody’s hungry. No,
I do like guacamole though. That’s gross.
It’s fantastic. Doug’s a dork. He doesn’t like
guac. And all of those in the guac at Afford Anything where Finer podcast are. Andrew, it is about time, my friend. I’m so happy you joined us. Thank you so much. Thank you
so much for having me. This was so much fun and I’ve been listening to this show. Like I said, I told you off air earlier.
I’ve been listening to this show since I was working in my nine to five way back in the day in the middle of a cubicle. So I’m, I’m so excited to be here. It’s
awesome. This show’s so much better with you here. We gotta make sure that, uh, in 2024, we do this more often, but what’s happening at the Personal Finance
podcast?
So we had a, a bunch of great interviews recently. We just had Paul Merriman on and we were talking about, uh, small Cat. I love that man. Yep. He, he’s the man. And so we were going through uh, small cap stuff and kind of diving deep into that. And then we had friend of the show Doc G on just recently as well.
Oh yeah, that was a great interview. We were talking about how much is enough and how to figure out what that number is, which is a great conversation for what we were talking about today. Speaking
of, by the way, Andrew, older people doing what the hell they want. I don’t know how old Paul Merriman is.
That’s a guy who just loves what he does and he just keeps doing it and doing it and
doing it. He absolutely does. He said he was in, he’s in his mid eighties, I think now he’s getting, he’s getting to his mid eighties now, and he was as sharp as anybody ever is. So that’s a great example of longevity for sure.
Yes. Because I think it’s just, it’s just really, really cool. Yeah. So he was amazing on there. And then, um, we’re doing our 75 day challenge, which we do at the, the beginning of every single year, which is kind of 75 days of getting your money. Right. So if you’ve never done this stuff before and you wanna get your money right, that’s what we do is our 75 day challenge at the beginning of
every year.
That’s such a great idea. Maybe we need to modify our 75 days of getting it wrong. Challenge. There you go. Exactly. That’s, that’s, that’s where we went wrong, damnit, and now Andrew’s got it the right way. Yes. That’s a great challenge. So is it one thing a day? How does that work?
So we modeled it after, if you remember like if you’ve ever heard of 75 Hard, which is like a fitness and you know, challenge where you read and stuff like that.
We modeled it the same way. Yeah, I’ve prefer 75
Medium. But anyway, yes,
exactly. So we kind of did the, a similar thing where we kind of did a hybrid approach where you’re kind of getting your money, right? You’re reading 10 pages a day and then in addition, you know you’re doing one workout a day. So we kind of did health, wealth and fitness at the same
time.
That’s a fabulous challenge. And you know what, we’ll link to the Personal finance podcast and your website and awesome YouTube channel on our show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. Alright, lots of lessons to stack here, but uh, what are the top three Doug on our to-do list?
Joe, don’t get any big ideas.
Like for some like company team retreat 75 day, I can only do one thing 75 days in a row. Uh, so what’s
that? Is that trivia?
It’s brushing his teeth. Okay, we’ll we’ll go with that. Sure. First, take some advice from our mentor, Andrew Gian Cola, and realize that because of that pesky increase in life expectancy, you have more time than you think to save for retirement.
You can start investing now and your money will compound and grow to make your senior years more comfortable. Second, take it from Paula. Only in the context of retirement planning is longevity, a liability. So if you don’t feel like making contributions to your investments, put that money into daily butter burgers and custard from Culver’s.
But what’s on my to-do list? Get myself a touring agent to take my magic show on the road. That’s what all kinds of prisoners are gonna love watching me turn raw metal into license plates. Thanks to Andrew Giancarlo for joining us today. You can find his podcast, the Personal Finance Podcast, wherever you are listening to me right now.
We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, afford anything wherever you listen to finer podcasts. And thanks to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning. Help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar.
This show is the Property of SB Podcasts, llc, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on all things money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of this show Engineered by Tina Ichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. What a chat with friends about the show later. Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Kin are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
Say hello when you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.
I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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