Stackers in the wild are amazing creatures. We’re quitting the job we don’t care about and spend more time in our community because we’ve built emergency funds (Mike and Melissa share this story). We’re becoming enrolled agents, a job that many can use as a side hustle to pay down debt, retire early, or build a better life (Jordan shares his tale passing these three tests). We’re retiring early because we did the work and created surround sound to bounce ideas off of other people (Chris shares how he left his job at age 50). There are so many cool people all around you doing awesome things and today we share just THREE stories from YOU.
But first we have a pair of disturbing headlines. One says the market is poised to continue upward, while the other cautions that we’re nearly 100% certainly headed for a downturn. The problem? These two pieces were both found on the SAME reputable website, one right under the other! Huh?!? So, which is correct? We talk about both predictions and what we think YOU should do when you read either of these prognostications.
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/stacker-community-episode-taxes-fire-flexibility-1489
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- Are U.S. stocks in a bubble? History says no. (MarketWatch)
- The stock market is overvalued from any perspective (MarketWatch)
The Stacker Community: Melissa & Mike, Jordan Barnard, and Chris Lugar
Big thanks to Stackers Melissa & Mike for joining us today.
Big thanks to Stacker Jordan Barnard for joining us today. Learn more about the CPA firm that Jordan works for in the Atlanta-area by visiting https://levycpafirm.com/. Shout out to Levy Tax and Consulting for sponsoring Jordan’s Enrolled Agent Certification!
Big thanks to Stacker Chris Lugar for joining us today. Check out his blog, Heavy Metal Money – Extreme Personal Finance.
Have a question for the show?
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Other Mentions
- From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
- OG & his team are taking clients. Learn how he can help you reach your financial goals and get on his calendar for a consultation by visiting https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/og.
- Make Goal Setting WAY Easier in 2024 (with Jon Acuff) – SB 1459
Join Us Friday!
Tune in on Friday for a special roundtable episode where you’ll learn what the most overrated things in personal finance are.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Security, Hackers, and Your Money (Threats and Solutions w/ Kurt Long) SB1488
Episode transcript
Hi, Milton. What’s happening? I, I didn’t receive my paycheck this week. Um, you’re gonna have to talk to payroll about that. I did. And, and they said, Mel, we’re gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs, so if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, but no, that would be terrific.
I, I, I was doing okay. I could stay. Excuse me. I believe you have my stapler.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And today get ready stacker, because today we are focused on you. We’ll share not one, not two, but three interviews with stackers doing impressive things with their lives and their money from retiring at age 50 to pivoting when the workplace doesn’t go your way to passing the enrolled agent exam.
You’re all accomplishing big feats. And we are here to brag about you. But first in our headline is the stock market in a bubble market Watch. Can’t figure it out. But can you, and now two guys who are waiting patiently just to tell their friends they know you wait. They don’t have friends. It is Joe and oh,
we went over that last time. Doug, we found out OG has at least two friends, so that that puts a yes on the end. Hey everybody, welcome to, uh, party in Mom’s basement Wednesday. I am Joe Saul-Sehy high average Joe Money on Twitter, watching my co-host as he puts balloons on his screen. How is he
doing this?
He, he’s not even making hand gestures. How are these
happening? Lights it up with, it’s like you’re in a rave. og. I’m using the force. Yeah. And people on the audio podcast winner. What the hell we’re doing as, uh, OG plays with technology, it’s like he’s three, three years old. Uh, we got a great show today as, uh, Doug Yu so eloquently said, you are doing some awesome stuff and we’re going to shine a light on that.
By the way, this is not the only light we wanna shine on this. We are coming up on episode. Wait for it. 1500
- 500 and we are going to celebrate all the stuff that you’re doing. So if you changed anything, if there’s any, anything you’d love to brag about that you’ve done, we’d love to help you. Tell us, just brag with you what you changed as a result.
Listening to at least one of the last 1500 of the Stacking Benjamins episode, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. If you do me a favor, just say 1500 before you start, uh, talking about whatever the thing is. And we will then edit that out. We need all those by next Tuesday. If you can get those to us by next Tuesday, we, we are good.
That gives you six days to do it stackers. But boy, we got three stackers doing great things today. But before that, og, you did something great this morning. You wanna tell everybody about it? Brag a little bit. Well,
I don’t do it every morning, but today I got this, uh, it’s like a stick with a brush on it and you put this, uh, paste, I guess.
Anyway, you put it in your mouth. It is amazing.
There’s like flavor to it.
Yeah. Yeah. I just usually use gum, but apparently you’re supposed to do this frequently. Do
this. Yeah. Yeah. A couple times a day. Day Wait, what? Dentist, make sure you call OG a Stacking Benjamins to write this. Get on his calendar. Og a Stacking Benjamins dot com.
OG does need a dentist. Actually, I got a filling falling out and it sucks. I’m just dragging my feet. I’m fixing it. We got, I’m sure it’ll get better on its own. It’ll heal
if you just don’t look at it, it’ll heal fried, it’ll
teeth problems usually do just
heal themselves. Just, you know, I’m drinking lots of milk, so I don’t know.
Perfect. What could go wrong? Oh, density.
Something. I’m not sure. We’re gonna dive into your success stories, but, uh, first we got a big headline. Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. Actually, I take that back guys. We got a pair of headlines, both of them from MarketWatch, and I saw these on the same exact day.
One. Story right above the other one. So let’s start with the first story that I saw. This one comes to us, like I said, from Market Watch, written by Joseph Lan Offie. Joseph writes, are US stocks in a bubble? Question mark. History says, no. That seems to be good news. Let’s see what Joseph’s talking about. As the B five hundred’s torrid and top heavy advance over the past years, convinced some bearish investors that US stocks are in a bubble.
But history says otherwise. Since 1974, the s and p 500 has risen a hundred percent or more during the three years that proceeded every bubble peak. According to an analysis from a team of analysts at Data Trek, he walks into basically the data that we talked about OG that, uh, no, we’re, we’re, we’re not in a bubble.
So, uh, man, is this a story that keeps on giving? I feel like speaking of 1500 episodes, we may have had a good hundred of them, which is some headline. Talking about is a bubble coming? Do you need to worry about a
bubble? It’s the bubble here. What if the bubble pops Is a bubble a good thing? Bubbles are great in bubble
baths.
So should we care that it’s probably not a bubble? How
about no, who cares?
But wait a minute, we’ve got new stackers here. They don’t know this. Why should you not ca? I don’t want my stuff to go down. I can’t just
say
move on.
Just know, and that’s it. Because I said, so.
You always talk about how succinct OG is.
He’s trying to
be succinct and driving it outta him. I’m trying succinct. The answer is no. Mic drop. And that’s the end of the show. Doug, what should we have learned today? Doug goes, uh,
no. The answer is no. Here’s why. It doesn’t matter. Because if your money is aligned correctly with the timeframes associated with the goals that you have, what happens in the short run?
With that position does not matter because if you’re talking about the stock market, if you’re talking about investing for the next 30 years of retirement and your money is invested for 30 years, what happens in the next 30 months or 30 days or, or three years has has no bearing on the next 30. The only time you can get in trouble with this is if you have money that’s not aligned with your goals.
If you’re going, I am a little behind, I need to buy a house and I am gonna put my money in the stock market and hopefully it’s gonna grow enough that I can take the money out in the next year, that is something you would wanna be worried about then. ’cause the timeframe IE investing in companies, investing in the biggest and best companies in the entire world, that’s what you’re doing by investing in the s and p or investing in the nasdaq, or investing in any diversified ETF portfolio.
Right? You’re saying I wanna own a little bit of everything. Own a little bit of all these great companies. They’re not always gonna be profitable over the next month or always be profitable over the next year. The economy grows over a 10, 20, 30 year period. For sure. And if your money is timed out with that, then that’s perfectly fine.
If you have short-term goals, you need short-term money. If you have long-term goals need long-term money. And where we get in trouble is when those things cross, or we take this information here and go like, oh my gosh, this is short-term information, but the person is, you know, applying it to long-term money and then you think you have to do something.
And of course that backfires too.
But wait a minute, og, if I avoid the downturns and I just get the upturns when it looks like the market’s gonna go up, then I avoid all of that problem. That’s exactly right. Just
don’t, what do you, what are you playing at Joe?
I’m, I’m just thinking like the questions I had the 16 years I was an advisor, Joe, if we just minimize the downside, maximize the upside
you.
Yes, that is correct.
Yeah, you figured it out.
Yes. Good job. Demonstrate that. Show me how. Because any product that has that is gonna take return off the table. You can’t have unlimited upside with no downside. That doesn’t exist in real life. No matter what the marketing pitches of all the index annuity people say.
And you can’t do it consistently over time on your own or else you would know about that person. You know how everybody knows who Warren Buffet is? Everyone. If you say Warren Buffett, they go the singer, you know That’s Jimmy Buffett? Yeah. Oh, the other guy. The other other guy. Ah, the other Buffett. Like the thing I can eat a whole bunch.
Like where there’s unlimited eating. Not that the other thing, the other, ah, yes. The third one, the Omaha guy. Everybody knows him because he’s been producing results over a long period of time. Imagine if there was somebody who could literally give you all the upside and none of the downside what would happen.
Everybody would know who that person is. The reality is, is nobody knows who that person is because that person doesn’t exist in real life. It’s a figment of your imagination. But on paper, it’s, you’re right. If, if you say, well, if I only take the, if I get rid of all the downsides, or I get rid of lots of downside, how am I gonna get the upsides?
The problem is you just don’t know when those happen. Can’t be right all the time. Nobody
is. On Monday, during our headline, we talked about timeshare scams and about how it was very interesting to me that, uh, people so badly wanted to get outta their timeshares. That they would be scammed to the tune of $1.6 million.
And, uh, just hoping I have 47,000 transaction, hoping that there’s a way to get out of this incredible investment as they will have you believe, right? This amazing investment, this beachfront property’s gonna be great. That’s the same thing, same reason I chose this og, because, you know, there’s a lot of people, well, you know, if I just go to MarketWatch, people at MarketWatch will tell me when the market’s turning around, they’re watching the market.
Sure. This says specifically, we are not in a bubble. Literally the very next piece, right under it, on the main page, the very next headline comes to us. So not in a bubble. What’s next say, comes to us from Market Watch, written by columnist, uh, mark Halbert, who we love. Mark’s headline, the stock market’s overvalued from any perspective.
So headline number one, our US stocks in a bubble. History says no. Headline Number two, the stock market’s overvalued. Uh, which way you want it? Market watch. I don’t know. Mark Halbert writes, might there be a way to wiggle out from underneath the bearish message of the stock market’s overvaluation, tantalizing is possibility.
Might be. It does seem remote. Take the cyclically adjusted price earnings. The Cape ratio, for example, which is made famous by Yale University Finance professor and Noble laureate Robert Schiller. It is one of the best historical track records when forecasting the stock market. Subsequent 10 year real total return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And he goes through and tells us, tell us more. Screwed right now. We are screwed right now. So it’s frustrating me, og, that if we’re going to read the stuff to try to stay on top of the short term things, we’ll get one group of experts saying, oh no, we’re good. We get a whole nother group of experts, which sound equally as good, telling us 180 degrees differently.
And that should tell you everything you need to know about market commentary. Right. Which is to say nobody knows consistently and you can make it a a really good case for anything at any time. I think it
also, it’ll drive you crazy.
It’s driving me crazy right now trying to explain how crazy it’s driving me.
It’ll just drive. It’ll drive you. Absolutely. Like very rarely do I have one on top of another like that is some editor somewhere needs to get fired. Oh,
sorry. It’s a way different thing. Yeah.
What do you need to do once you get a million dollars? Oh, you mean two indexes at once? Hello? Yeah. Maybe a much different thing.
One of my favorite lines from office space. We will link to these both in our show notes. It’s stack Benjamins dot com. If somebody wants to dive into the incredibly unnerving and frustrating world that is day by day headlines and following the stock market, but oh gee, I like your take. I don’t think we need to worry about the short run.
We need to worry about, make sure our money’s good for the long run and maybe ignore this. Uh, where do we think it’s going over the short term? Coming up next, we’re gonna dive into your stories. We’re gonna start with one. Let’s just kick this thing off right now, guys, let’s just kick it off right now. We got three stories, which are your stories that you shared with us in our Facebook group.
The basement mom has a show and tell post each week, and people talk about some of the awesome things they’re doing. So we called some of our favorites. I wanna start with this one. You know, we talk about the difference. OG getting your house in order today can make. And our friends, Melissa and Mike had been through a lot during their life and we’re going to, uh, we’re gonna talk to them right now and hear about Mike just lately had a job that he didn’t love and he made a decision and they got to make what I think most of us agree with the right decision.
And I’m super happy that we’ve got these next stackers on that I feel like are my old friends, my old Detroit friends, Melissa and Michael are here. How are you guys? Good. We miss you Doing good. Connect to Detroit. I miss you too. I feel like we catch up for like a quick photo at economy and that’s pretty much it.
Yeah, that’s like all the Melissa, Mike that I get. But you guys are on. Um, and thanks for telling this story by the way, because you know, uh, a lot of people go through what you guys just went through. There’ve been a lot of layoffs around the country last year. We’ve been reporting on. More layoffs expected to come.
And, uh, Mike, you got some news, uh, just, uh, recently. Tell me about how that happened.
So I was having some issues at work and so we parted ways here two weeks ago. But because of our planning, you know, I’m now able to take some time, find out what I wanna do when I grow up and go forward job I really like and be able to do that because of the planning we’ve done.
So that’s really helpful for me. It takes a lot less stress not having to, you know, just jump at the first job offer that comes back to
us. It is so exciting and powerful because we’ve all worked for bad bosses before. We’ve all been in situations that we don’t like. And just to have the ability to say, you know what, I’m done with this.
It’s pretty damn cool. But you said that’s because of planning, like what planning did you and Melissa do to make it so you could say, you know what, I’m
done. Back in 2005, we bought our house in 2007. My company got bought that I was working at for the last 20 years. It was a joint venture. It got bought out halfway and we really didn’t meet the, you know, corporate model.
At the same time, Melissa was at Ford and they started doing their first rounds of layoffs In a while, we realized we just bought a house, you know, what do we do? So we actually put together a plan and what the, what if is, what if one of us didn’t have a job next week and we talked through it. The big thing we figured out was if we could live off one income and use the other income to pay off all of our debts, do all of those other things that we wanted to do, if we could live off one income, even if one of us got laid off, we were ready to go and we were okay and be able to, you know, go and figure that
out.
And you had this discussion back in 2005, you said? I.
Thousand seven, the economy
itself back then, right? Oh, yeah. Well, especially for us in, in, in Detroit. Right. Melissa? I mean, I mean, because you’re at Ford, uh, you were with the one company that didn’t declare bankruptcy while Chrysler and GM did. But still, there was a lot of heartache going on at Ford at that time.
Well, and so fast forward a few years, right? Glad we made this decision because I’d been through six rounds of layoffs at Ford. Honestly, it it wears on you. It’s almost like you have layoff PTSD, right? Is it my day? Sure. 2019 happens and yep, it was my day. I got walked out the door, I called Mike, I said, Hey, you know, good thing we’re, we’re financially secure.
Like we have to rearrange some things, but we’ll
make this happen. Doug talked about this when it happened to him on two different occasions as well, that, um, you know, it doesn’t come as a surprise, Melissa, but it’s, at some point it’s always a surprise. You know what I mean? Like, am I gonna make it? And when that day comes, you’re like, okay, I’m ready for it, but I’m not ready for it.
I gotta believe that Melissa, like emotionally, when you went through it, it had to be a difficult, difficult day, just emotionally.
Well, I mean, it’s, I don’t think I left my bed for a week, I’m not gonna lie, because I, I had to deal with all the benefit packages and figure out how that worked. Uh, you know, if there was compensation and, um, what am I gonna tell my family?
What am I gonna tell the kids? Uh, I mean, obviously Mike knew, but, you know, just regrouping is you gotta rearrange. And after you’ve had a career, uh, whether it’s long or short, do you have your
resume in order? Mike, your situation though here sounds a little different. It sounds like you were able to kind of pull the trigger yourself and go, you know what?
It is not like Melissa, where she’s, she’s on her way out. It sounds like yours. Yours not, not quite the same story.
It was a little bit, I was ready to leave. I took a little in pulse from, you know, my boss and you know, to decide when, and it was a little bit of a shock. I was trying to clean up stuff to help out the people I actually like at the workplace.
Then it was like, Nope, we’re done. And I was like, okay. So we were able to deal with that. I’ve been, you know, starting to work on things, but you know, it’s still a little bit of a shock because things were going better, but sometimes decisions are made not at the site where you’re at and they’ll get to pick up the pieces later.
Well, and can we talk about this, even without both of you leaving your companies at different times, being able to live on one income at different times, being able to have that flexibility’s great. But even when both of you are working, Mike, I gotta believe. That, just not having that debt hanging over your head, being able to live on one salary.
Talk about just on a daily basis how you feel differently than you did in the past.
Once we really got that secure, paid off all of our debts, we were putting all of that extra money mostly into our investments. It really allowed us to focus on the thoughts of what’s gonna come next. And it makes it a lot easier to deal with, you know, a credit boss.
I’ve had multiple cruddy bosses over time and just realizing, you know what, if it gets too bad, I can be done. Melissa had the same thing. We had the discussion most time we kept with it because, you know, the benefits were good, we were able to deal with it. We’re working with a lot of people we liked, but it allowed you to step back and say, you know what, if we didn’t have to deal with this.
I don’t. So great. And so it allowed
a lot of flexibility. Yeah. That’s fab. Well, and the other thing that I love about the two of you guys, and the reason I think that we’re friends is that Melissa, I also feel like you guys aren’t defined by your roles at your jobs. I’ve never once felt that since I’ve known you, but I, I just look at some of the badass stuff that you do.
Melissa, I know when I first reached out to you about this that you weren’t ready to talk about it, but, but can I brag about you a little bit?
Sure. Have at it. Like knows
where this is going. You swam, I think from Mackinac City to Mackinac Island.
So I swam around Mackinac Island this summer. You swam around Mackin Island.
Yeah, this summer I wanna swim from Mackinac City to St. Iness, which is across the
Mackinac Bridge. Oh my goodness. And for people that don’t know, this is not a short swim. This is, this is a long, long way. But these are the things I see you focus a lot of energy on doing the cool stuff, doing this fun stuff, this challenging stuff.
Can we talk about that for a second? Melissa? If you still had debt, would you be able to focus on some of these personal challenges that you work with now?
No, but I’ll tell you where this all came from is, you know, I was sitting there one day thinking about, okay, well if I’m gonna retire, what do I wanna do?
And um, there’s some exercises where you can kind of draw out, like, I wanna learn to speak foreign language. I wanna do archeology, I wanna do this skill, that skill. And then I asked myself, well, wait a minute. What is stopping me right this minute from going to do those things that I wanna do when I retire?
Whenever that is. So can I do it today? When I first did this exercise, it was after we’d adopted our kids, but our kids had graduated high school. You know, I had all this free time. I didn’t have to go to sports anymore or any of that stuff. So at the time, like I joined the city’s historic commission. I was a volunteer at the museum, you know, I just started doing other things.
We went on these archeology trips. So it’s about keeping life exciting. I can do big things. I, I became a clown too. Like, you know, Mike’s gone off and pursued his passions as well with, um, volunteering. So why wait? Like, I don’t need to wait till later as long as I have enough vacation days, which is a challenge with a new job that I have.
You know, this has also afforded us that early last year my job wasn’t working out and I quit. I, I literally, it was a toxic environment and I left. So as long as you’re taking baby steps, you know, right? Like one step at a time, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. Just don’t let people
tell you no.
I love how the challenge is is having enough vacation days to do the cool things you wanna do. Like that’s pretty awesome. Mike, I wanna get to the stuff that you’re doing that you focus on too, ’cause you’re also doing cool stuff. But I just gotta ask, when Melissa tells you that she’s gonna swim around this island, this big ass island in the middle of Lake Michigan, what was your first thought?
Is my wife gone off the deep end. Literally.
Yeah, I did think that. Did she take a long walk off? A short pier of her mind. But I also know that swimming has always been part of both of our lives. Both of us are swimmers. And so when she said that, I was like, okay, so what do you need to do to do that? And she already had a plan in her head.
’cause that’s what Melissa does. She makes plans. As soon as she sets her minds on something, there’s a plan and everything is set out well, that sounds like fun. Okay, I’ll go. And it was so, what am I supposed to do while you’re swimming? And she’s like, oh, you’re gonna be walking around the island watching me swim.
And so now I’m a Sherpa for the team, uh, of three people carrying their stuff around the island, getting my eight and a half miles of walking, dragging a cart behind me.
It’s a beautiful walk though. Thank God. It’s a beautiful walk around that island. It is.
You’re up early, there’s no one around it. It is a great time.
And it’s like, I actually enjoy that part of it. So I’m looking forward to, you know, helping out still every once in a while it’s like. Okay, but how am I going to help support it? And I ask questions, do you think you’re going to be ready? How long, you know, with all that, you know, I asked some of the practical questions, but if she wants to do it, it’s, well, we’re supporting it.
We learned to make it enjoyable for both of us. We did the same thing back in 2007 when Melissa decided she was gonna walk the breast cancer three day for the first time in Detroit. She called me during, you know, the closing ceremony. She’s like, you’re volunteering next year. And I was like, okay, I guess I can volunteer for a weekend.
And she’s like, if you never wanna do it again, you don’t ever have to do it again. Turns around. So the next year I volunteer, I get in with a really good group of people in, in the camp. Now it’s 18 years later and we’re still involved with it, uh, because it’s, you know, it was something meaningful. But when she says these things, it’s like, okay, it takes a few moments and then realize what we can do with it and make it enjoyable and.
It’s always fun.
This is why surrounding yourself with the right people I think is so important. Don’t get me wrong, stackers. You don’t have to get married to them. I mean, in your case it’s, it’s very people close to you, but I think that’s awesome. Mike, what are the things that light you up away from work then that you, that you really focus on outside of the toxic job that you just left?
Yeah,
so a lot of it was working with our college fraternity. We’re part of a service college fraternity. It’s co-ed, so both Melissa and I are brothers and so we were working heavily with that at all the levels. So a group here at Eastern Michigan University all the way up to the national level helping with designs of programs and those type of things that really helps us keep attached, keep us serving and doing those type of things.
Those are big things for me and Melissa. She was on the national board, I was on the operating council. We’ve been involved with that a lot. It keeps us going. That really is how we surround ourselves with the people that have those similar mentality. We have friends now, you know, in college when we joined, we’re like, oh, we have this really cool group up here at Michigan Tech.
We’ve graduate and now we talk to the people from Michigan Tech. But I’m talking to people from Illinois, Minnesota, California, Texas, and they’re now become the people that we want to go to these little bit more expensive events. But you know what? We’re going to hang out with our friends and we go out to dinner, we find out everything’s going on in our lives, and it’s really surrounding ourselves with those same people that have that passion makes it a lot more enjoyable
for all of us.
I love this. It’s not about a later retirement. It’s about doing those things. Melissa, I love what you said about, I could do those things later, but why don’t I, why don’t I do those now? Well, I just think you guys are so inspiring. Congratulations on taking this one in stride, that it’s just, it’s so amazing and what a great, uh, what a great lesson I think for our stacker community.
Thanks for joining us and great to see you guys again. I miss you. Miss you too guys.
Miss you too. And we’ll miss you at Economy this
year. I just love that story, just being able to tell them, Hey, Y yeah, you know what? I’m good. I’m okay. I’m okay leaving because they got their debt in order, og, but I, what, what I really liked was, um, what was your take when Melissa’s, uh, talking about maybe swimming from Mackinac City to St.
Ness? Sounds like something you wanna do.
I can’t understand the logic in this. I mean, I. The amount of reward to the amount of risk does not seem appropriate.
Anybody who has never been to Michigan has no idea what Melissa is talking about attempting. It’s
five and a half miles roughly. I actually don’t know if Saint GNAs
may
be a little further more than that because Yeah, you know, the shoreline and whatnot, but, right, and this isn’t like going for a swim in the Caymans, where it’s like 85 degrees on the best day.
What’s the water temperature? 60. No. On the warmest day, no.
Yes,
absolutely not. Middle of the summer, the Lake Michigan water will get up into the high sixties to low seventies.
It’s refreshing
the Lake Michigan water that you swim in like next to the shore. Yes. The stuff that’s 900 feet deep under
the bridge and it’s five and a half miles.
I mean people, I guarantee you we have listeners right now where we’re going haw. It was nothing. Now, if she were swimming across Lake Michigan or across Lake Superior, ah, we’re talking about a different thing. But hell, I had to swim two miles in Boy Scout camp.
Oh, look
at that Flex. I was the only one they made do it.
I don’t exactly know why
it wasn’t, I didn’t think it was a thing, but they told me I had to, no, you’re merit.
You’re going for the Super Merit badge.
Hey, good on her for giving it a whirl. It is. Hopefully there’s the support boat and a liferaft nearby. Yes. Of some, some epic proportion. Like what happens when you’re swimming and then that Sher’s ferry comes whizzing by.
Right. That thing puts out some pretty good waves, man. Yeah. Whoa,
whoa. You know, probably
has a shark cage though, so she’s good there.
What about, what about just the ability to be able to do what the hell you want because of the fact that they made that decision that one time and what I love that Melissa said og.
Was that I put down this list of things I wanted to do later when I retired, and I thought, what’s stopping me from doing these now? Yeah. And I think that’s a, I think too many of us are thinking about later and Melissa’s thinking about today. I, I don’t
have that problem. It’s a, I see some people
who do.
It’s a good thing. Well now for people that are, that are wondering about how to pay off that debt, a lot of people thinking about side hustles and especially in our stacker money nerd community, a thing I’ve gotten a lot of questions on is how do I take this love of math, this love of, of uh, knowing how the system works, of helping people itemize.
Like how do I give back and do that? And a lot of people talking about. Being an enrolled agent, and for people that don’t know what an enrolled agent is, this is where you take a series of three exams through the IRS and you become somebody that can speak to the IRS on behalf of clients and and prepare taxes.
And this is a a for a lot of people in this community, especially, maybe a way to help get that debt paid down. We talked about starting a business versus driving for Uber. This may be a great opportunity. Well, guess what? We have a stacker who did that very specific thing and just passed his last test.
His name is Jordan. We’re gonna talk to Jordan right after this. I am super happy he’s joining us at Mom’s Spaceman. Jordan Bernard is here. How are you man? I’m doing great, Joe. How are you? Well, I’m fantastic, especially after I read your post in our basement Facebook group that you went through the, well, I don’t know if it was a ring of fire or not, but you went through everything it took to become an enrolled agent.
Congratulations.
Yeah, thank you so much, Joe. It was really, uh, quite a road to get there. Took a little less than a year, but really proud of the accomplishment. So, Le
let’s start here because, you know, I would say that our, our nerdy money geeks really know what an enrolled agent is. That was what made me excited to talk to you is ’cause I know what it is.
For people that don’t know what an enrolled agent is, can you tell them?
Absolutely. So I work in tax accounting and the way that I like to introduce it to people who have no clue at all is that it’s similar to, uh, CPA, but CPA’s a bit broader of their expertise. And this gets more into just focusing on taxation.
And so as this is in my career right now, it’s a certification that really allows me to assist the taxpayers that I represent to a higher level, uh, in front of the IRS. It’s a certification that it’s passing exams that the IRS sets for us and, you know, allows us to, to represent taxpayers in front of them.
There are so many possible things you can do as enrolled agent, which is why I really wanted to talk to you. I think for some people they may be able to do it as a side hustle, as a side thing, to a different job. Other people, this is definitely their career. Why did you decide to go after it in the first
place?
Right, so I got into tax accounting a couple years ago. I have a bit of a, I didn’t take a traditional road to get here, but as I started to work through it, you know, I’ve gained a lot of knowledge in the last couple years and one of my managers after tax season ended last year told me that this is something that I should really pursue, that it’s gonna really up my.
My level that I can do things at the firm. And then also it is very, uh, side hustle worthy. If you were to kind of look for your own clients and do things, you’re gonna be able to really take care of them at a, at a higher level and increase your knowledge as well. What type of a firm
are you at?
It’s a, uh, CPA firm here in, uh, Dunwoody, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta.
And so we do individual and corporate tax
returns. It’s cool that your boss recommended doing this in your case then. Did the, did the company pay for it?
They did, yes. They, they reimbursed me, um, you know, after I finished passing all my exams and everything, which is really exciting. So yeah, it’s definitely fantastic to have an employer that’s.
That’s really looking out for your growth and, and encouraging it. You know, they brought it up to me. They, they told me that they would support me through the process and encourage me the whole way, which is just amazing.
Well dude, we gotta give them a little love then. Who
are they? Yeah, so I work for Levy Tax and Consulting here in Dunwoody, Georgia.
But you know, they take clients all over the country if you reach out for ’em. But they’re fantastic. I
always love giving a shout out to an enlightened boss. That’s fantastic. If somebody wanted to do this on their own, right, if they wanted to jump into the tax preparation game, represent people in front of the IRS, what is the downstroke?
How much would it have cost you if it was outta your pocket?
I ended up between paying for the exams themselves, which each have a fee. And the online study course that I did, it cost me just over a thousand dollars. You can make it work and you know, that’s spread out over a couple months as well. You know, you pay for each test as you schedule them, so extremely doable.
And it sounds like too, for people that are interested in maybe getting into this, that you can do that at, at your own pace then?
Yes. So, uh, you know, you self schedule the exams. I started studying in May. I took a test in August, a test in November, and then one at the very, very end of January. My goal was to finish it before tax season kicked off this year, you know, since I won’t have any time to study in the next couple weeks.
Yeah, right. So you can definitely set your own pace. Had I not finished it, I believe you have two years to pass all three exams.
Yeah. When you were doing this, about how much time did you have to set aside for studying? There
were about 30 hours of videos for each test. It seemed, you know, I’d work all day, close the work laptop, open the personal laptop, and start studying, you know, for each test.
It was a little bit different how much I needed to study for. Okay. But. You know, it took me about two months for each, each one studying, you know, an hour or two most days. There were days that I didn’t study that,
and when I took the series seven, the series 63, back a long time ago to get my, my licenses, you know, even, even to get my insurance licenses, all the different things that I had to do to become a financial advisor.
Those different tests, some are really hard, some are really easy. Where would you put these on a scale of one to 10, these three tests on a difficulty scale?
Right. So the first one was on individual tax, which is like kind of my bread and butter with work. That one I would put like a, a six or a seven. It would still make it tough, you know, it’s the IRS, they’re not gonna let you slide too easily.
With the second one, it was about business tax and corporation. That one, that was an eight or a nine. I, I think that’d be brutal. It was tough. And you know all about the different types of entities and everything like that. So I had to put in a lot of work for that. And that’s when people discuss it, they’ll tell you that’s the hardest one and definitely takes a lot of work.
And then the third one is about, you know, representation of the taxpayer ethics and laws and stuff. So that was the easiest, I’d say, as long as you’re kind of good at like more of a memorization mindset, like if that’s kind of how you think. And so that one, you know, maybe, maybe five or a six.
I thought for some of that stuff around representation, when I was doing the SEC stuff on that, it was like I.
If your heart’s in the right place, it becomes easier anyway. Right. I go trying to rip people off. It’s difficult. Oh wait a minute. I can’t defraud my client in front of the IRS. Like, what’s that all
about? Right. What are your intentions here?
Let’s say that you didn’t work for your firm. What are the possibilities then to go out and use enrolled agent?
Do you know anything about that? Like if somebody did wanna do this as a side hustle, tell me about what types of opportunities might be available for some of our stackers that might want this side income? Right.
So if you were to earn this certification, you’d get a paid preparer, like ID a P 10, um, with the IRS, and that allows you to prepare tax returns for.
For anyone. And then the enrolled agent certification’s definitely gonna prove that you have that level of knowledge. And if the IRS wants to communicate with the client on the tax return that you prepared, you’ll be able to represent them, uh, respond to tax notice and things like that. And so it would really give you everything you need to be able to get some sort of professional tax software and, and find your own clients and prepare returns
for them.
There is what I think of as a, um, I wanna say misnomer. It’s a mis. I guess a misrepresentation of in the public eye of what these different tax professionals mean and what they cover. We see three things really. We see enrolled agents, we see CPAs, and then we also see a tax attorneys. Mm-Hmm. And I think that a lot of people see those and, and, and nothing could be further from the truth than what I’m about to say, but I think a lot of people see the tax attorney is kind of up here and then CPA is the next level and the enrolled agent kind of is as the bottom.
And truly, I think that does everybody a disservice because if you’re asking a tax attorney to do your 10 40 work for you, I think Jordan, you made a huge error. Absolutely. That is a monster error. Like, I don’t know if you guys have any tax attorneys in your firm, but, but that’s not at all what they do.
Right. We don’t have any tax attorneys at our firm, but Absolutely. You know, it’s all about specialization. You know, there’s. Overlapping knowledge in all of these areas, but they’re definitely apples to oranges in that. Um, well, with the tax attorney, at least CPA, there’s definitely a lot more overlap. I work with a lot of CPAs at my firm, but it’s a mix of, of CPAs and some enrolled agents.
Well, and that was actually what I was gonna say next was, and correct me because you know a lot more about this than I do, but with CPAs, I feel like you have to ask a lot more questions. Just because somebody’s a CPA does not mean that they do 10 40 work all day. They might work in, in tax accounting at a business level that’s completely different than what you’re doing with your 10 40.
I think for a CPA there’s gotta be a ton more questions I gotta ask before I hire that person.
Absolutely. You know, uh, CPA has a lot of things to do with like audit and, uh, you know, it can get into more of the financials as well, just just accounting and everything. And not always are those people gonna be someone who, who really does a lot of 10 forties or even smaller businesses and things like that.
Yeah.
I think to the average person, they don’t know how wide a designation CPA really is.
Mm-Hmm, absolutely. Definitely a lot more wide reaching. And so the EA was one that worked for me because I really am wanting to specialize just in, in taxation. And
that is specifically for me because I think that’s a great question to ask if somebody’s an enrolled agent.
I mean, 10 40 work, tell me if I’m wrong, Jordan, but 10 40 work is what they do.
Absolutely. Yeah. That’s one of the three tests is just about this individual tax returns that 10 40 and C or EA can absolutely be doing partnerships and, and corporations, s corporations. Just depends. Like me personally, I’m right now just doing 10 forties, like that’s all, that’s all my game right now.
Yeah. Do you see
yourself doing that long term?
Absolutely. You know, I’ve got into the field in 2021. Really enjoyed it so far. It, it works very well for how I think, you know, just organization and detail and, and everything like that. And, you know, I was extremely lucky, like I said before, to find myself at a really incredible firm that’s really supported me
along the way.
Well, and that, that, that is, I got two questions left. I will go negative first and then positive. If there was a mistake along the way in your career that you can help one of our younger stackers with that you wish you’d done maybe differently, what would you have done differently to speed up to get to where you are now?
I can answer that in a couple of ways because I originally went to school and studied biology, so I kind of took a very long way to end up here. So I don’t have an accounting degree, I have the biology degree. I went back to school, got a business degree and so that kind of made it where the EA was the option for me because you actually don’t need a college degree at all.
But with the CPA, there’s tons of accounting credits, um, and things that are required for that. So if you are wanting to do the CPA, then you’d want to study accounting in school for the EA being ready to start it even sooner. You know, I think I could have done this last year, even the year before at least gotten like one or two tests like out of the way, like as I go and use it as a way to really speed up how I progressed at the firm because I’d be studying on my own
more.
That was why I was so excited to talk to you when you wrote that you passed. I was like, this is so cool. And, and, and I didn’t know anybody we could interview that did that. So I was like, we gotta talk to Jordan. Uh, the last one to be much more positive. And by the way, I’m an English major who does a financial show, so same thing, brother.
I could have been a barista or I could, I could have changed careers. Absolutely. One of the two, or been the next best American author. The last thing though is what do you think you really got right here? What during your career do you think is some advice you could give to somebody younger that will help them get where you are?
Hmm. I started at this firm as an internship. I think just. The internship route and being able to use that to experiment in different things. I had no intention of getting into tax. You know, like I said, when I went back to school, I got a business degree. I was just applying to different things and so I just kind of jumped into something that sounded like it might be interesting and that I thought I could do well at.
And even that was like, I wasn’t positive. I would do well at that. So being willing to try some different things and maybe, you know, definitely for the younger listeners, like internship opportunities where you can test something out for a few months and see if it, if it works well for you. If you like the environment and the type of workload and the things that you’re doing and you can see yourself doing it for a while, you know, it can absolutely be a really great way to test that out.
I love that. Say yes to new opportunities. Jordan, great to meet you. Congratulations on the success and uh, good luck in the future,
man. All right. Thanks so much, Joe. I really appreciate it.
Thanks to Jordan for telling that story. Oh gee, I think you’d back this. There’s lots of, if you go get your enrolled agent, there’s lots of part-time opportunities out
there.
Part-time, full-time, anytime all time. 365, 24 hours a daytime. You could, you could do taxes for your entire life. There is
a need. There
truly is a need. Well, there really is. I mean, we’re seeing it just in the pricing of having tax returns prepared. Clients are talking about how it’s gone up over the years from just a few hundred dollars to now several hundred dollars for the quote.
Easy stuff. But remember, you’re not necessarily paying for the person to put the numbers on the correct line, although that’s a thing. You’re also paying for all of the expertise that goes with it, and the backup should something go wrong along the way. If the IRS questions something, you’ve got somebody in your.
Corner who can hang out with you and kinda guide you through how to deal with all of that, but for whatever reason, it’s not the sexy thing like it used to be and so yeah, there’s, I think there’s a big need, big opportunity for sure.
I also love this side discussion that Jordan and I had about CPAs about how just because somebody has the letter CPA after their name does not mean that they are going to be somebody that does 10 forties.
I think the average person out there doesn’t realize that that CPA is a pretty wide thing. Yeah. Great, great. Three letters to have after your name, but doesn’t mean you do 10 forties. Could be
audit because they could specialize in audit. That could be a controller. You know, there’s the CPA exam is different than enrolled agents, right?
Enrolled agents is is really around, I mean, it’s solely around tax. Very specific CPAs have a component of tax, but components of other things as well. Public accounting.
Right. Well, congratulations to Jordan on getting that done. Again, just love the story from Mike and Melissa and then from Jordan. And now we’re gonna pivot one last time.
And this is to our friend Chris. Uh, Chris runs a site on his own called Heavy Metal Money. He’s also one of the four people who have helped us set up our meetup in Minneapolis. See, this time I got it right. I got Myis, right? It is Minneapolis, it’s not Indianapolis. And I said Minneapolis, Indianapolis.
Yeah. Got that. Or in the Indianapolis. Got that wrong on Monday. But, uh, Chris. Just did something that a lot of people in this community aspire to. Let’s find out.
The Man Behind Heavy Metal Money joins us. Chris Lugers here. How are you man? Hi, Joe. I’m good. Thanks for having me. I should have also said in one of our, uh, inaugural creators of the first ever Stacking Benjamins monthly meetup group in the Twin Cities. Nice job there too, man. Thank you so much. Thank
you.
I couldn’t have done it with, uh, uh, all the others that helped and obviously with you supporting it, it’s gonna be a fun time.
You, Dan and Veronica have done a great job. Mike’s support, he’s juggling a lot with his family, but with his support too. And man, we had a great turnout for our first event, but that’s what we’re here for today.
How old are you?
Uh, I’m 50. I.
At age 50. Yeah. You did something this year that a lot of people only dream about. Tell everybody what you just did.
I use the word retire loosely, but I, I left my nine to five job. I left my W2 employment.
And you had a job from the outside looking in, Chris, that I think a lot of people be envious of.
Maybe, I mean, I will tell you this, I mean, it was my dream job. I had wanted to work, I, I worked in, in Hightech You had to work
for a fruit company. Yeah. As Forest Gump put it in
enterprise technology. Yeah. I wanted to work for Apple for a long time. I worked there for the last six years or so as an enterprise systems engineer.
When
did you get the idea first that, you know what I might want to. I might wanna do things a little differently. The Chris Luger’s, um, you know, life grid was not gonna be like the average person’s gr Well, I’ve known you forever. That’s, that’s probably the wrong question. Your, your grid has never been like everybody else’s grid, but when did you go, you know what?
50 might be a good time for me to go.
Yeah. I really got serious or kind of discovered the personal finance community and, and focusing on, you know, the fire movement to reach financial independence and then retire early. I discovered that probably around 20 15, 20 16. I always knew I wanted to do other things.
Like I wasn’t like in a hurry to leave my job because I was miserable. But I, I have all these other things I wanted to do, but it really changed probably about a year ago. I read this book by Arthur C. Brooks called From Strength to Strength, and it’s all about finding happiness and purpose in the second half of life.
And that really sparked. All of these feelings and emotions and I, I wanna say the book changed my life. That’s powerful.
What was it specifically that, uh, was in that book that made you go, it’s time to time to pivot?
Yeah, it kind of talked about how, you know, we work really hard the first half of our life and we build this expertise.
We work really, really hard. But the one thing that you talked about was the fact that eventually at some point, no matter what field you’re in, you will have this professional decline. And I felt as though I was in this spot where I was just working really, really hard and just
working hard. I. Just working harder
wasn’t really gonna bring me the happiness that that I was craving or looking for.
And then you talked about how then if you can make the jump to this second growth curve in the second half of life where you now use everything that you’ve learned, this wisdom that you’ve gained over the first half of your career to do other things. Maybe it’s writing a book, maybe it’s writing more blog posts, maybe it’s educating, teaching, using all of the wisdom and stuff that you’ve gained.
And that really excited me to do these things.
Isn’t it funny how we don’t see that? I think we think about sunk costs, right? Like I spent my entire time until I’m 40, 45 years old growing this profession. Like why would I leave now when I’m just getting to the summit of it? And yet we discount that all of these.
The skills that we learned probably hella transferable to some other thing that I wanna do. Yeah, exactly
Joe. And don’t get me wrong, I explored many other things within this big tech company. I talked to the sustainability team, I talked to the music team. I talked to consulting, engineering groups I’ve talked to, like trying to find where I fit, that I can work, play to my strengths and start that next growth curve.
It’s different, it’s interesting. But it all started with that book and following reading that book, it was then just the amazing conversations I had with so many people in the community. Not only you, but others at Economy, camp Phi, all these other groups in these communities that I’ve had discussions with.
That was the thing is I was so afraid to take the leap. I was so afraid to take the next step and talking with so many great people that supported me and like, you know what you’ve built. A life that you have the opportunity to take the risk and to have the confidence to take the next step, whatever that is.
And so again, I couldn’t have done it without the community that surrounds me as well. Does it feel
like a risk though?
A little bit At first, I mean, again, I was super nervous and anxious for a few months, you know, am I making the right decision? But because I have done some strategic things over the past six, seven years, I’ve purchased rental properties, I have rental income, I’ve stacked my investment accounts.
I never have to touch ’em again, and it’ll be fine. So worst case scenario, I sell a property every year for the next 10 years, and that’s enough for me to sustain until I get social security. You know, it is risky, but you know what? I am 50. So if something catastrophic happens, I just go find
another job.
There are two questions on everybody’s mind. Number one, I. Did you just do a simple 4% rule based on the amount of money I have? Okay, I can live on 4% of this and I’m good. It
started that way. Like most people in our community, we look at this 4% rule. I also just looked at my expenses over the past few years.
I lived pretty modestly. I know that I don’t need a lot to sustain all of my bills. Again, in a personal finance perspective, I don’t have any debt. My house is paid off. I don’t have any car payments. There’s no credit card bills, and, and I’m a single guy, so my bills are relatively low. Even my dining and food budget relatively low.
I started with the 4% rule, but then I realized, I’m like, well, I don’t wanna limit myself, but also I don’t need, I mean, I, I don’t even think, I mean, I could use a 3% and still be fine too, so.
And is that where you got to? Did you do like a minimum viable product kind of thing? Chris, you’re like, I did okay.
I’m just over the number, so I’m gonna go ahead and go kind
of, but then also I like, you know, I looked at one, not only just the rental income I get from my properties, knowing that I could start to draw on that. Like I’ve never done that before in the last seven years. I’ve never actually, any sort of positive cashflow that came in, went to paying off the debt or doing improvements and, you know, maintenance and repairs and that type of thing.
Well, now I’m gonna take a small piece of that to live on. But then also I have other hustles, man, like I just, I, you can’t take it outta me. Like I have an Amazon selling business, I have a newsletter business, I have all these other things. So I will find a way, I guess is the, is the thing is that if I need more, I find
a way you, you’ve heard us a lot lately on the show, talk about West Moss and the happiest retirees having these four pursuits that are outside of their job.
Yeah, it sounds like. Sounds like that’s totally you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I
think the biggest pursuit really is focusing a lot of my time on a nonprofit. I started, you know, I started this back in 2020. It’s been like a part-time passion for me. Now I really have the time to be mentally focused and to truly make a bigger impact.
Make the connections I need to make. I mean, again, I, there’s a lot I need to learn, right? I’ve never done that before. I mean, I started this college course on like nonprofit management and governance and like learning the industry, joining the local council for nonprofits to learn and meet others that are doing this.
It, it’s a continual, uh, process just to, to learn. But again, that’s one of the pursuits that I wanna focus on. So, like you said, having those other things that get you amped up and excited to tackle your day.
That’s really cool. Dude, we’re together on nonprofits. ’cause when I sold my business when I was 40 and went into doing this, like.
I can’t believe what an accidental nonprofit doing a podcast is like. It’s like, it’s just
absolute huge,
don’t get me wrong, it’s a for-profit company.
That’s right. That’s right. But
clearly it’s not the way you go if you’re interested in, uh, in huge profits. Uh, obviously the big thing stopping a lot of people from making the move that you made brother is healthcare.
Yeah. Like how’d you deal with the healthcare issue?
Yeah. That, that is the number one question. So I talked with a lot of others that have done it, right. So at Camp Fight Economy, I’ve talked to other people, but then doing a lot of research and then also other meetup groups and going to, uh, choose Fi meetup group, talking with others that have recently retired.
How did they go about it? It’s more daunting than it actually is, and the process, at least for me, is actually a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be. Like, you know, you’re kind of, you go into it like. Anxious and scared like, how am I, how are we gonna make this happen? But yeah, basically I used our local healthcare marketplace here in Minnesota.
You enroll, put in all your in info. It actually pulls what your previous income was, but you can edit that and say what’s your estimated income going to be? So obviously my income dramatically dropped now going into this year. So I put in what I estimated my income would be. It then gives you what your estimated tax credit will be for a monthly healthcare premium.
And so then you go into the marketplace, choose the plan. I want, I could choose a plan that allowed me to go to the same doctor I’ve been going to for 20, almost 22 years, the same clinic. So really it’s the balancing act too. ’cause you basically look at all these different plans and options, basically determining monthly premium.
With what the maximum out of pocket is, what the actual deductible is. Do you still want a high deductible plan so you can contribute to a health savings account? I mean, some people continue to use that as an investment vehicle. So, you know, you balance all those type of questions. And, uh, it actually, to be honest, way easier than I made it out to be.
I think everybody, I think that’s the truth for all of this. I think the demons right between our ears. Yeah. It’s great to see you making the switch, by the way. Speaking of meetup groups. Yeah. We’ve got our next meeting for our meetup group coming up. We are what, uh, March 20th at the Hennepin County Library, 8,500 West Broadway Avenue in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
And, uh, we’re gonna be at the library. We, we, okay, so here’s the problem. The microbrew. For our first meetup told us, Chris, apparently that we had to get out. Like they kicked us out. Yeah. Because we were closing the place. What tells the library gonna do? Yeah, I think what
we may, and we, we got, we were talking about this last night.
I think those that want to stick around, we will find another place to go to after the library closes. I think that’s gonna
be the plan, which may be, uh, fewer books and maybe more of those polls. That’s right. That happened. Chris, congratulations on uh, making the move at 50. That’s awesome.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
I appreciate it. And like I said, thank you and all the rest of, uh, the crew and cast and the broader community that helped me in my journey.
Age 50
ship has sailed for some of us in the room.
Of all the things that he could have commented on, how amazing that accomplishment is, how great his outlook is. Nope. Brings it right back. I’m right here in the basement,
sitting right here, slinging mud. Just it’s not mud when it’s factual. What a jerk face. He’s got so many things he wants to do for whatever reason.
Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. There’s nothing I’d rather do than hang out with you two a-holes. So maybe that’s it. I don’t have that other thing I’m looking forward to.
You don’t have the options. That
guy does. Apparently not. I gotta go back and listen to Melissa and Mike again. What do I gotta do to, to tell this uh, person I work with that I really don’t wanna be here anymore?
Great on Chris, and it isn’t lost on me either, og, that, you know, Chris talks all the time about what a great job he had mean he’s working for a fruit company in Cupertino Unlimited. It’s pretty amazing that he has that job that a lot of people go, wow, if I had that job, if I had that job, I’d never retire.
And he got to leave
still. It’s still a JOB.
It it and it shows you how Everybody’s course is different too, doesn’t it? Yeah. I mean, we all got the only, the only thing we wanna do. I’m like, why don’t you quit working for Apple? We all, we all got our thing. Great stories. Thank you for telling your stories, Chris and Jordan, and Mike and Melissa.
I love the story arc of what all three of you are doing, and again, we’re setting up for episode 1500. If you wanna take a minute and send us a voicemail about something that you’ve changed as a result of being part of this, uh, fabulous community that includes these four wonderful people we talk to today, stacky Benjamins dot com slash voicemail.
If you’re somebody that wonders, how do I put all this together and puts it together much better than I can on my own by surrounding myself with great people, well, OG and his team are taking clients, so head to stacky Benjamins dot com slash og. That’s the first step to seeing how his team can interface with you to make better financial decisions in the future.
Maybe get that boat running. You know, why do something later when you can do it today. I love that line from Melissa. Just fantastic. That is just about it for today, sadly. But we always end on a high note talking about stuff going on in the community. Speaking of Doug, what do we got? Well,
don’t we have to do our joke off,
Joe?
Duh. Time to joke off in front of everybody. Oh my God.
Oh my God. When you, when you tell jokes, you always have an audience, right? Yeah, I know you do. In front of people. So we tell two jokes in front of everybody. Yeah. So, I dunno what you’re getting all,
okay. I dunno. I must have misheard you, I suppose.
Upset about, yeah, but we had one going in the basement last week.
We had a little bit of a snafu and um, we had one going though the last few days in the basement, and we have a clear winner, I think between our number four and number 12 seed. Right,
right. So, do you wanna read the, the four seed? Yeah. Yep. Because,
yeah. Okay. Our number four, which was from stacker Susie.
This is a pretty hard time for me financially. Last month I was unable to pay the bills to my exorcist, and as a consequence, I’ve been repossessed.
That’s good. And, and that joke was up against this powerhouse from John, from John, the 12 seed. I’m trying to buy a house with interest rates this high. I’m thankful they only need an arm and not a leg, an an arm and not a leg.
So what were the results of that mean battle? Well, I can tell you that 29% of the people preferred the mortgage joke, but a whopping 71% Oh wow. Of the respondents on Facebook liked the evil
exorcist joke. Big win for the number four seed, which is gonna go up against the number nine seed. Who defeated the number one seed?
So, uh, it’s the upstart, the winner of that round is gonna head to the finals. Who are we going to talk about this week? So Joe,
now we gotta move on to our next matchup, right? Yeah. We’ve got a an 11 seed versus a 15 seed. Two jokes that shouldn’t even be here right now based on the high level analytics that were done to put the original seedings together.
These jokes are way.
Out their depth. I did think the number two and number six that lost were, were jokes that I liked as much as these two,
but, and you sat on the seating committee too.
I might have been the sole member of it. My sense of humor might be a little, little
different. So I will as usual assume my place ’cause I know my place in the hierarchy here in the basement.
So I’m gonna read, I’m gonna read the lowest seed, the bottom. The, just the dregs of joke dom. Here, I’m gonna read the 15
seed. Welcome to our, oh. Oh gee. I don’t know if you’ve met our martyr on the show, Doug. Have you met him before? Guy’s? Always taken one for the team. Uh, number 11, this comes to us from stacker, Melvin Melvin, who lives in Valdosta, Georgia, where I almost moved, by the way, they have great onions there, don’t they?
That’s, that’s vidalia onions, isn’t it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Not Valdosta onions. Home of Valdosta College. Valdosta University. Mm-Hmm. Um, number 11 from Melvin College is the opposite of kidnapping. They demand a hundred thousand from you, or they’ll send your kid back. Which, oh geez. In the middle of debating which college they’re giving a hundred thousand dollars to The first year.
The first year. Right. And then, uh, that’s just for the meal plan against the number 15 seed, which
was from Nikki. Maybe Haley, maybe not. We don’t know. I put my root beer in a square glass and now it’s just
beer. Hey. Oh, see, now that’s a math joke, right there. It is. That’s a hundred percent math.
These others squeaked by ’cause there was a number in them somewhere.
That is true. Must be math.
That’s good. All right. Uh, go vote on that. That’s in our basement Facebook group. Uh, stacky Benjamins dot com slash basement. Get you there. Yeah. Have some fun with this. Thanks to everybody who participated and the winner’s taken home. Some more books from a recent guest on the show.
I still got a little pile of books, uh, to give away, but unfortunately Joe, I think you.
You’re about to say we’re out of time. You teed me up. You got me all excited to talk about all the shows and movies I’ve been watching. We got so many. I know what you’re gonna do. I’ve a
bunch o You got a bunch? No, two outta three ain’t bad.
That’s ’cause you’re busy touring college campuses and going to Yes. Baseball games and stuff.
We have four baseball games this week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. That seems a little
excessive. That’s awesome. It’s exactly what we were talking about on Monday. God, that sounds fantastic. Your whole existence around Yeah.
What the kids are doing. So
jealous. Yeah. That doesn’t include soccer and track, which soccer’s Saturday and Thursday and track is Friday. So.
It’s great. I do. There’s a big piece of me that misses those days though. I miss ’em. Yeah. But then it get better you than me. There’s
a big piece of you that got lost by doing all those.
A piece of me, I’ll never get back.
Right. I lost a big piece of me going to, uh, swim Meets in
Indianapolis. Indianapolis. Well, you know what, Doug, we’re gonna tee that up for next week. We got a lot of TV recommendations coming for today though. What should be on our to-do list? So
what’s stacked up on our to-do list today.
First, take some advice from our stackers. Focus on what you want to do, whether it’s retire early, become an enrolled agent or something else. That’s your guiding light. What lights you up? Make a list now. Need help. Go back and listen to episode 1459 with John aov. We’ll show you how to get started. Second, which way is the stock market headed?
That’s easy. Ah, if the economy’s going to continue, the stock market will reflect it. What’s it going to do next week? Stop looking at it. Go back to cat videos and people dancing on TikTok. Put the big lesson. How do I get on one of these episodes of stackers doing cool things? I changed my own oil once. I mean, that’s gotta count, right?
Joe’s mom only helped a a little. I mean, you know, that oil’s kind of icky. I needed help. Have a story about something cool you’re doing, share it on Gertrude Show and tell Post each week in our Facebook group, and maybe you too can find yourself in the spotlight. Head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement.
The show is the Property of SP podcasts, llc, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Sulci High. Our producer is Karen Reine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast. With help from me, Joe Kate Yakin, Karen, Reine and 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 do, but you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of the show Engineered by Tina Eichenberg. 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. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude, Stacey Doe, and Julia Gar. Are our social media coordinators and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
So say hello. When you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. For more interactive fun, join us on Instagram every Tuesday and Thursday for our Instagram lives. Kate Yakin and Joe host those weekly. 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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