Ever dreamt of quitting your job early and sipping piña coladas on a beach? Before you tell your boss what to do with that job and start booking your one-way ticket to paradise, today’s roundtable might make you think twice. Join Jesse Cramer from The Best Interest, Paula Pant from Afford Anything, and our own OG as they break down the case against early retirement. The gang’s here to challenge the “quit work, retire early” dream and explore whether it’s really as awesome as it sounds—or if there are a few catches you haven’t considered.
The conversation gets into the nitty-gritty of why early retirement might not be the smooth ride some people think it is. From the psychological toll of too much free time to the unexpected financial hurdles, our panelists share the real stories behind the headlines. What’s the balance between financial freedom and a fulfilling life? Can you really retire early without regret, or does the cost of quitting work too soon outweigh the benefits?
And don’t forget about Doug’s wicked trivia challenge!
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 case against early retirement
The Case Against Early Retirement (Wall Street Journal)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Here’s the list in concise bullet points:
- Early retirement isn’t for everyone.
- FIRE movement: The dream vs. reality.
- Boredom and lack of purpose can hit hard after retirement.
- Too much free time can be a real struggle.
- Financial instability is a risk post-retirement.
- Health insurance is a major post-retirement challenge.
- The definition of “retirement” has changed.
- Claiming Social Security early? Think twice.
- Early retirement can feel rushed without a plan.
- Relationships.
- Having a plan for retirement time is crucial.
- Money isn’t the only retirement factor.
- Early retirement affects social connections.
- Life events can derail early retirement plans.
- The “golden years” may not be as golden as you think.
- Health risks of retiring too soon.
- Early retirement can lead to regret if expectations don’t match reality.
- Having purpose post-retirement matters.
- Is early retirement a privilege rather than a goal?
- Financial independence vs. time freedom: what’s the difference?
- Changing social norms influence our retirement dreams.
- Adjusting to a post-work routine is hard.
- Personal finances determine whether early retirement is viable.
- Retire later, with security, and fewer regrets.
- Today’s chat shows the other side of early retirement.
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Jesse Cramer

Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, The Best Interest at The Best Interest – Complex Personal Finance Made Easy Podcast Series – Apple Podcasts.
Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.
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
- In the song, The Wizard and I, how many of the song’s opening notes, while in a different tempo, are the same opening notes from the classic song Over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz?
Mentioned in today’s show
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we’re joined by our mentor, certified financial planner Benjamin Brandt, to discuss setting our sights on a more fulfilling and exciting retirement vision.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Unpacking a Rare Vanguard Target Fund Problem (SB1637)
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] open: And now we’re pleased to bring you our presentation [00:00:16] Doug: live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s. The Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:00:31] I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And are there drawbacks when you retire early? One popular publication says you should think twice before retirement because reasons we’ll dive in with the woman who says you can afford any retirement, just not all the retirement. Paul a pant, and the guy who says It’s in your best interest to plan a great retirement. [00:00:53] Jesse’s Girl Kramer. That’s the real name on the birth certificate. What do you do it? And also the guy who’s all about squeezing the most out of that retirement dream og. Not only will they share their thoughts on retirement planning, but they’ll also lock horns. In our epic yearlong trivia battle and now a guy who’s helping you battle better with your money, it’s Joe Salt. [00:01:24] Joe: Hey everybody, happy Friday. We’re gonna call it Wing It Friday. Is Doug just making it up? Way off script on the open today, but today hopefully is way off script because I was inspired. I was inspired by this piece. That that I read. And actually I was inspired because I’m gonna be speaking at retirement in Seattle next week. [00:01:46] As I was researching and diving into my presentation, it brought me back to this a case against early retirement. Why would somebody want early retirement? Well, we’re glad these people haven’t retired yet because we have them here to comment today and talk about the case against early retirement. Oh, geez, here. [00:02:05] How are you man? [00:02:07] OG: I’m just, uh, living the dream. Three espressos at a time. Oh, [00:02:11] Joe: he’s, he sounds like he hasn’t started on the espresso train yet, though. It’s weird how a guy could have three of ’em and still living the dream. Three in, hold [00:02:20] OG: on, let me read my script. I am living the dream three espressos at a time, [00:02:26] Joe: and you’re very large mug. [00:02:27] You’re incredibly large mug. Speaking of large mug Jesse Kramer’s here. [00:02:32] Jesse: Joe, do you say you’re speaking at Retire Meet next week? [00:02:34] Joe: I am, [00:02:35] Jesse: yes. Is that MEET? Retire Meet, MEAT. [00:02:42] Joe: Retiring [00:02:43] Doug: with all the meat, not a singles bar for retired people. [00:02:48] Jesse: It is MEET in Seattle. I’m, I’m living till 95 because I go to retire, meet every night after work. [00:02:57] Joe: I, I had that way about 10 to four so that when they open at four o’clock, I’m there. [00:03:03] Jesse: Mm-hmm. [00:03:03] Joe: All the other old people. Good seeing you too, Jesse. [00:03:06] Jesse: Good to see you. I’m excited for today. [00:03:08] Joe: I am excited too, and I can’t wait to get your take as I can’t wait to get this woman’s steak Paula pants here. How are you? [00:03:15] I [00:03:15] Paula: actually love the concept of retire meat, like you think about the carnivore community, the keto community, the Lion Diet, by Michaela Peterson, I mean, you’ve got all of these very meat centric diets and you’ve also got the retirement planning community, and these are like just why not have that crossover? [00:03:33] Joe: The lion diet. [00:03:35] Paula: Oh yeah. Yeah. The lion diets like you. Only I eat lion. [00:03:38] Joe: Is that where? Is that where you just fib all day long? [00:03:41] Paula: No. Well, it might be, but you also only eat ruminant meat. Meat from ruminant animals. [00:03:48] OG: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Use a, use a, use a shorter word. [00:03:53] Paula: Uh, animals with like, uh, bigger animals with multiple stomachs. [00:03:57] Joe: Right. Okay. Smaller. You used the word ruminant in a sentence, so that would be cows. More specific. Only from cows. Yeah. Like you eat cows [00:04:04] Paula: pretty much. You eat cows, goats, oh, goats. Basically you eat cow. Don’t goats have multiple stomachs? That’s the technical definition of ruminant. Actually. Ruminant animals, a ruminant digestive system. [00:04:14] Cattle all domesticated in wild bovine goat sheep giraffes. They, oh, of course. Dear Gazelle and antelopes, oh, [00:04:22] OG: giraffe is the delicacy that most people have never had. [00:04:25] Paula: Oh, they belong to the Suborder ruminant and they’re able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally. [00:04:35] Through microbial action. [00:04:36] Doug: That noise, Joe, our listeners running for the door. I was gonna say, Doug, I hate to [00:04:41] Joe: break up this rumination. The ruminant. Yeah, I’m on fire. We got a great show. We’re gonna talk about the case against early retirement today. We’ve got Jesse here, Paula’s here. Oh, G’s here. Doug’s here. [00:04:56] And at halfway point we’ve got our trivia question. It’s week two of the new trivia challenge for 2025. Who’s going to come out on top today? We’re gonna find out that, but the first thing we’re gonna find out. Is who the sponsors are who make this free so you don’t have to pay for it. Let’s say hello to them and then we’re on to talking early retirement. [00:05:23] All right. Today’s piece was inspired, actually, originally it was inspired by Wes Moss’s book, uh, what the Happiest Retirees Know, and in the intro, as I was leafing through the book, creating my presentation for Retire Meet. All the retirement. See, I can’t get outta my head now. I was reading the introduction again and Wes was talking about how this particular piece in 2019 really upset him. [00:05:47] Like he was not happy with this piece. So I went back and I realized I had read this before. I dunno, OG had you read this piece before? What? The, uh, the, the case against early retirement. [00:05:58] OG: I hadn’t read it. No. And if I did, I didn’t. I didn’t know Paula hadn’t, hadn’t read it. Nope. Mm-hmm. [00:06:02] Joe: No. First time. Let’s dive into this. [00:06:04] Now, obviously all three of you have audiences that are people that either A, have retired, are hoping to retire, are hoping to retire, are hoping to retire at someday. Jesse, you’re in a financial planning firm working with people chasing that. Uh, oh gee. You’ve worked with people trying to get there. This idea of, of the case of early retirement, the first thing it goes over Paula. [00:06:28] Mm-hmm. The first thing it goes over is health. Right. It’s like, no early retirement’s bad for your health. You shouldn’t do it. Right. [00:06:35] Paula: And you know, they point out you can’t actually, the ability to study this is a little bit limited in that you can’t just randomly assign certain people to retire and certain people to not. [00:06:45] But there have been unintentional. Pseudo social experiments in which, for example, a government of a given country might temporarily incentivize people to retire later. And in doing so, create a cultural shift in which people retire later for a limited period of time. And then a. The government removes the incentive and behavior changes again. [00:07:07] And so you kind of have these social experiments where you do sort of get a, something like a control group in a variable group. And what they saw is that by virtue of retiring later, you tend to live longer. And so a lot of that’s attributed to your socializing more. You’re keeping your brain sharper. [00:07:24] Apparently work is good for your health. [00:07:26] Joe: Jesse, do you buy that? If you work longer, you’re going to probably live longer. I [00:07:32] Jesse: don’t know if I know enough, but I can tell you, I, I was reminded a lot of the holiday heart attack syndrome, if you guys are familiar with that or like, ’cause I was doing some research on the side too, and, and maybe I’m mixing up my phrasing, but there’s one thing out there called Holiday Heart, which is simply that when you drink a lot, your heart has more arrhythmias. [00:07:49] And you kinda have some palpitations or some tremors or something like that. But then also there is also this idea that some people who are right on the cusp of a cardiac event and then they go on holiday where they eat a little bit worse and they start drinking a little bit more and they’re maybe just not taking care of themselves over this seven day stretch. [00:08:08] That seven day stretch is the straw that breaks the camel’s back where the camel is their heart and they actually have a cardiac event as a function of going on vacation. This article, or the health portion reminded me of that, where it’s this idea where you take a step back from normal life, which was work, and you enter this phase where you’re just doing more r and r. [00:08:28] Maybe you’re not taking care of yourself as much, maybe you’re lying around a little bit more. When you multiply that over tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, kinda like Paula was saying, when you look at a really, really big amount of people, that tends to have a slightly negative effect. [00:08:41] And for some people it’ll be just enough to really lead to some bad health outcomes for them. [00:08:45] Joe: Yeah. We hear this story over and over, OG to Jesse’s point, somebody that retires at 62, you know, they’re fine for 3, 4, 5, 6 months, and then they’re not with us anymore, like. Jesse, I don’t have the date on this, but I have plenty of stories of people that, yeah. [00:09:01] That are this person. [00:09:02] OG: Well, is that a function of retiring too early? Is that a function of not prioritizing health and wellbeing for the 30 years leading up to that early retirement, like I’m so focused on early retirement that I couldn’t be bothered to go to the doctor and get my cholesterol checked. [00:09:20] There is obviously, you know, the, the sad truth of the fact that, you know, men in America in particular are very adverse to doctor’s offices and you know, like, ah, it’s macho to not have to worry about that, rub some dirt in it, you know, that sort of thing. I don’t know that you could say that the retirement did ’em in, although certainly there’s the anecdotal stories of. [00:09:42] Of it happening, but, um, whether it’s a function of just taking less care of themselves or being more sedentary or just not having any purpose, I think Doc G would probably point to the fact that, you know, when there’s nothing else on the calendar, there’s nothing else to live for. You know, George Burns was famously talked about this and they asked him why he is living so long. [00:10:06] He’s like, I’m booked through my hundredth birthday, you know, I got stuff to do. I got stuff on the calendar. I think that also explains why you see that rash of people who are unhealthy or maybe terminal, and then right after the holidays are pass away, right? It’s like, okay, made it through the holiday season. [00:10:23] The family saw it one more time. I got through one more Christmas, now I can die. You know, it’s like there’s nothing else on the calendar and that happens if not only anecdotally. So I think it more revolves around purpose than it does timing of financial independence. [00:10:38] Joe: Well, so that is the question, Paula, because we did a story a few years ago on Stacking Benjamins, Dr. [00:10:43] Anna Corwin at uh, UCLA had done some work talking about why Catholic nuns. Hmm. Live longer than most of the population in the United States. And the reason that she came up with, the only reason they could figure out was because these nuns had a mission until they died. [00:10:59] open: Hmm. They [00:10:59] Joe: had a mission the entire time. [00:11:00] There was no such thing as retirement. I had a population to serve and she even cited a study where in a nursing home, half of the nursing home people that lived there were given a plant that they were told they had to keep alive at all costs. And the other half the control group were just allowed to do whatever they wanted to do. [00:11:18] You already know which group live longer. Is it more about purpose and less about work? Are we just planning wrong for retirement? [00:11:26] Paula: Oh, well, I think there are a few factors at play. I certainly think purpose is a major component of it, but as the article talks about work naturally creates social interactions. [00:11:36] I mean, a little bit less so these days, but now that we’re in an era of remote work for many people. Work has inherent social interaction that’s involved with it. And that face-to-face to social interaction I think is a, a major part of overall wellness. On top of that, just staying mentally engaged is a big part of keeping like cognitively sharp. [00:11:58] So I think purpose is a component of it. Socialization is a component of it. Exercising your brain on a day-to-day basis just as you would exercise your body. That is a com component of it. And I think all of these components work synergistically. [00:12:11] Joe: Let’s go into one of the things, Jesse, that Paula talked about, which is this idea of socialization, right? [00:12:16] There’s this other thing that people do when they retire, which is. They’ve worked this their entire life based on these goals. I wanna move to X place. Let’s say that I live in, uh, Michigan and I wanna move to Texarkana, which is where everybody wants to go. Yeah. Hashtag goals. That’s right. But I don’t know anybody in Texarkana. [00:12:36] We see this all the time. I’m gonna move to Sunny Place, I’m gonna move to Hawaii. I’m gonna move to some beach somewhere. I don’t know anybody there. Now I don’t have these social connections I used to have. How intertwined have you found that, uh, social connection is with a successful retirement? [00:12:53] Jesse: What you just described there, Joe, is especially important where if, if the data I’m recalling is correct, it’s that women do tend to have a, a somewhat easier time building new social connections, especially later in life than men. [00:13:05] Again, this is anecdotally what I’m about to say, but I, I can think of some individuals who. It’s almost like they were born to be hermits and they don’t mind the lack of social connection. In fact, they get plenty of purpose in life without it. Go on. Tell me more. Right. May tell me more. Maybe they need a triple espresso just to get the idea of talking to other people. [00:13:25] Um, but I think the vast majority of people, even if it’s not, you know, it doesn’t have to be, what’s that one number out there that says like, the average human can maintain 150 social connections or whatever that might be. Uh, like it doesn’t have to. Even someone where you say, yeah, I, I could pick up the phone and there are 10 people I could reach out to for a cup of coffee or to go on a walk or just to see what they’re up to this weekend. [00:13:48] If you don’t have those kind of connections or just that level of, you know, relatively small connection, I could totally see it just being lonely and harsh and that’s something where I’m aware of the data of. Loneliness to morbidity. There’s such a strong connection there, [00:14:03] Joe: but we make it worse. Jesse, I feel like because we set these goals without thinking about the power of connection, right. [00:14:10] Um, uh, west Moss talks about how the average person who’s a successful retiree has a strong group of relationships. Like in all the work that his team did, they’ve had strong relationships. They volunteer with three different groups and they officially belong to some nonprofit group, like a, I don’t know if it’s the Elks Club or some Kiwanis Club, whatever it is. [00:14:31] They belong to some group also. And these things along with these, uh, more than hobbies, these super activities that they do, and they have at least three of them that this really fulfills what they’re talking about with sense of purpose. So I think getting back to the relationship piece. I kind of think that when we’re setting our goals, sometimes our goal setting for retirement sets us up for failure. [00:14:53] Like if I say I’m gonna retire and I’m gonna move to some way where half across the country where I have no social network, I know nobody, I know nothing about the place, I’m setting myself up to lose. I. [00:15:04] Jesse: I totally agree. I, I hear what you’re saying and I think part of what you’re driving at Joe is that the average person pre-retirement isn’t considering social connections as one of their primary goals at all. [00:15:15] To some extent, right? To some extent. Maybe they just take it for granted. Well, of course I have friends, right? I coach, I. Youth soccer and I’ve got my work buddies and I, I know some people from outside of work and we’ll grab a beer on a Friday night of, of course I’ve got my friends not thinking of, yeah, when they move to Texarkana, are they gonna hang out in your basement? [00:15:31] Like, no. Like you don’t want any more people in the basement. So I. I see what you’re saying there and um, I mean, how do we alleviate that? I suppose it’s just doing the kind of things we’re talking about here. Like, you, you have to become aware of it pre-retirement. Yeah. And make it one of your priorities. [00:15:46] Joe: Yeah. I think this isn’t a retirement problem, this is a pre-retirement, but where would you ask for kind of thing? Oh gee, you know, you were joking earlier when Jesse was talking, like, bring it on when you talk about being a hermit, but I know you. I’ve been to your house and you’ve got this strong social network where you live, you have people around you, but when you first moved to Texas, you didn’t have that originally. [00:16:06] Did that affect your love of the area when you first moved there? [00:16:12] OG: That’s a really good question. Um, I don’t know that it affected how we liked the area or not, but it affected a lot of what we did. I, I remember because we moved from a big, giant house, or what was giant to us anyway, you know, in a community with a golf club and all that sort of stuff, and we moved into a. [00:16:27] Three bedroom apartment, you know, in north Dallas with a bunch of 20 year olds. And we had kids and you know, that sort of thing. Like we didn’t connect with anyone in the apartment community. That was just, those definitely weren’t our people. We started a little bit of relationship building with the parents from school. [00:16:47] I think that’s probably the easiest network. ’cause you, you know, your kids are all friends and, or you know, at least they know each other in the classroom. So that’s probably where we started. And I don’t think that until we bought our house, house, you know, which was, I dunno, probably 15 months after we moved to Dallas that we really kicked it off. [00:17:05] In fact, the day that we bought our house and we moved in, we, we had the moving trucks that day. After that day was over and all the stuff was piled up, I sat on the front porch with a, a bottle of, uh, pre-made margarita mix. And um, that’s a good way to make friends because, uh, my, my neighbor came out and he’s like, Hey, are you the new neighbors? [00:17:26] And I said, come on over. Look what I got. And he’s like, oh yeah, buddy. And all we had was plastic cups, you know, we didn’t have our stuff out yet. That’s great. The fridge was making ice and we were drinking Margie on the porch. But it wasn’t until we were planted. I. If we would’ve been down in that apartment for another year, I’m not sure that we would’ve connected with any of those people. [00:17:45] Even then, that wasn’t really our social group in terms of who our friends were gonna be. [00:17:50] Joe: There is, uh, one more piece of this that I’d like to talk about before the break, which is the piece talks about financial fitness and what it comes down to, Paula, is that with pension systems going away. We’re really kind of bad at math, and so we do this early retirement thing thinking I’m going to retire, you know, very, very young, which is something everybody thinks that they want to do until they read studies like this one, and then, you know, we reach 75, 80 years old, we start running outta money. [00:18:19] Paula: That’s why these shows are so important. That’s why podcasts and. I say that it’s a little bit of fun, but it’s also quite a lot of sincerity. Like financial literacy is unfortunately not taught in schools. I believe it should be, but it’s not, and that’s the world we live in. And so it is unfortunately up to the individual to read books, to listen to podcasts, to watch YouTube videos, to get the education that nobody is going to give them. [00:18:47] There’s unfortunately no other solution that I’m, that I’m aware of that could do that. Other than like just that dedication to lifelong learning and self-education. [00:18:56] Joe: How, [00:18:56] Paula: how afraid [00:18:57] Joe: of it should I be though, Jesse? You know, should I, if I’m, if I’m in my, let’s say I’m 50 years old, I’m thinking I’m gonna retire early, which is funny because I know some people in the fire like 50. [00:19:07] How cute. I wanna go at 40, right? Or I wanna go at 35. But let’s say that you’re 50. Should we be concerned that we don’t have the math right? [00:19:15] Jesse: Um, yes, you should. In my opinion. I mean, concerned is the, is the operative word there, because it’s like, well, what, what do you mean concerned? How concerned should you be? [00:19:24] Should it be something that you’re checking twice? Especially at age 50? I would say yes, because at least in my mind, or the way I approach it is the longer that retirement timeline is, the higher the probability that if you have an error in your math, it is going to come to the surface. Yeah, I, I think that makes sense, or at least I, I hope I explained it well. [00:19:45] And as you’re kind of posing the question, I thought about someone who I, I know their story. It’s a couple that’s been retired for about 10 years. Granted, they’re a little bit older. They’ve retired at maybe a more traditional, like age 60, and they’ve basically been living on the 10% rule. For the last decade and their portfolio is exactly where it was 10 years ago. [00:20:03] Easy to do at the last decade. Exactly. And when they showed me some of their numbers, my immediate thought was, oh my God, they are, it, it’s, it’s almost like I, I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. ’cause on the one hand, they’ve had the, they’ve gotten to live this pretty amazing lifestyle over the last 10 years because the market has cooperated with them. [00:20:23] But I’m worried that that has set their mindset in a place where. The next 10 years where who knows what’s gonna happen are, are they gonna be able to adjust when they need to? I’m a little worried about that, but, um, getting back to your question, Joe. Yeah, if, if someone wants to retire at 50, 45, 40, I definitely think they need to pay extra attention to whatever mathematical assumptions they’re making, ’cause they’ve got a long time ahead of them for something to potentially go wrong, [00:20:52] Joe: man. [00:20:52] I mean, I think about, I, I’ve been watching, I talked about this on Wednesday show, but I saw this, uh, woman’s video on YouTube. What caught my attention was A, the title, which I’ll get to in a second, but B, was the fact that half a million people watch this video and there were so many positive comments about finally somebody telling us the truth. [00:21:11] She’s retiring in her early to mid fifties with $500,000. I thought based on this piece, when you look at a, the math of retirement b, the, the strain, you know, I mean we, this piece goes so much into, into fitness and health and about how our health gets worse. Imagine what role does stress play like when you’re trying to navigate a $500,000 retirement OG for 40 years, like stress? [00:21:42] That is a stressful place to be. I don’t know that I would wish that on anybody. [00:21:47] OG: And to be clear, you’re not saying that $500,000 isn’t a lot of money. You’re saying $500,000 doesn’t turn into a lot of income. Correct. Over that long period of time, half a million dollars is a great savings. [00:21:57] Joe: And when you’re trying to stretch it out by bragging to everybody that you did it early, right? [00:22:02] Yeah. And it truly smacks a bragging that you did it early, you somehow pick the lock on how to do this. Mm-hmm. And then I watched the entire video. She hasn’t picked anything except, yeah. Picked a date to retire and said, I’m going today, and I crossed my fingers. Hope it continues. [00:22:15] OG: Right, and that’s the frustrating thing obviously that the five of us know here is, is we can kind of see the future. [00:22:24] That’s one of, I, I feel like that’s one of my superpowers is, you know, we’ve been on this journey so many times with so many people that I don’t know that I have the best way to do it, but I know the path that’s the most well worn and I can foresee what struggles might happen, you know, and Jesse, like you’re talking about with the, the family that’s living on all of their growth, which is. [00:22:44] Is an easy thing to fall into and you go, well, that’s great. What, why? Why would that be bad? And I have the exact same story. Only I have the story of what happens on the back end of that. [00:22:56] open: Mm. [00:22:56] OG: Because that was me starting my career in 1999 and inheriting, or starting to work with a couple who. For 1999, money had insane amounts over a million dollars and lived every year on, on 120 K. [00:23:13] And they were living the high life, you know, in 1999 on $10,000 a month because why not? Market’s up 10% every year. This is easy. Duh. This is easy to do. And then it took one year, a K, a 2001 for that to kind of come tumbling down. Well, it’s only one year. Well actually it was 2002 also. It was only two years. [00:23:33] It was most of 2003 also. And so we see that as, you know, from Paula’s perspective of, or what she said about education and literacy. It’s like most people look at the dollars and say, oh my gosh, $500,000 is a lot of money and it is half a million dollars is a lot of money. What all of us know is like if you would just, if you would just keep your foot on the gas one more cycle, that 500 turns into a million and you’re good. [00:23:59] Or the million turns into two and you’re good. [00:24:03] Joe: That’s all she needs. Literally, like another one more turn of that screw. Can [00:24:07] OG: I, can I get you to hang out? You’re 52 and it’s different. And it would be different if you were 71 with 500,000. Right? That’s a different match. Mm-hmm. [00:24:15] open: A hundred percent. Mm-hmm. [00:24:15] OG: 51, 52. [00:24:17] With 500,000, you’re going, I get it. You know? Guess what? You don’t get to retire early because you, you didn’t do this stuff from 22 to 52. That, that’s okay. It doesn’t make you a bad person. Just that’s not, that’s not what’s gonna happen [00:24:30] Joe: here. You’re gonna work seven more years. So I’m gonna, I’m going to, in the second half of this discussion, I wanna address the premise of this piece. [00:24:37] Is this truly the case against early retirement? Do you go, yeah, probably shouldn’t retire early, probably should, uh, keep working longer. Or if you think that we should retire early, how do we get that financial plan right? What are the pieces that we need to add in? We’re not gonna solve all those questions in 25 minutes, but what we will do is, and now, gee, I love your point. [00:24:58] We’ve all helped a lot of people achieve a lot of goals. Over the years. And so we’re gonna dive into that knowledge base and we’re gonna pick out some of the things we see a lot of people miss. But before we get there, at the halfway point of every Friday show, we have this amazing, should say, amazingly ridiculous year long trivia competition between our three frequent contributors, og, Paula and Jesse. [00:25:21] And, uh, we are one week in, and guess what OG you weren’t here last week. Doc G sat in from you for, for you Rather from the Earn and Invest podcast. We thought for sure Doug, that with Doc G as the ringer who never wins a trivia question. Like we could count on Jesse and Paula to get this right. Yeah, [00:25:40] Doug: yeah. [00:25:41] Thanks guys. Wait to totally just skin your forehead on the pavement last [00:25:47] open: week. [00:25:49] Joe: Doc G wins, uh, for OG in week one. So it is OG one. A familiar position. And Paula. And Jesse with zero. That means based on last year, Paula gets to guess last. Yeah. Paula, you wanna guess someplace else other than last? ’cause that doesn’t seem to be working. [00:26:04] Paula: No, no. I’ll stick with last. I’ll stick with guessing last. [00:26:07] Joe: All right. Paula’s guessing last. Jesse’s in the middle. OGs going first. What’s on the docket today, Doug? [00:26:17] Doug: Well, hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today is the day we say goodbye to the most wicked month of the year, January. Cold, gray, slightly depressing. I mean, what’s not the love. But hey, February is here to save the day with more cold and more gray. Wicked, wicked, indeed. Speaking of Wicked, that movie was a box office smash last year, raking in over $700 million so far. [00:26:45] That’s roughly, now, let me count, lemme count, uh, just under 700 million more than I’m being paid to hang out with you guys right now. I gotta get a raise, but as Joe’s mom always says, money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy better installation for the basement. Now get back to work, shall we. Says that. [00:27:04] Let’s ask a question about the music of Wicked Shall we? In the musical, Steven Schwartz references plays with and mimics the classic song Over the Rainbow throughout the play. In fact, in the song, the Wizard and I, how many of the song’s opening notes while in a different tempo are the same opening notes from the Older classic song from The Wizard of Oz. [00:27:27] I’ll be back with the answer right after I see what a flight from Topeka to Oz costs. There must have been a better way than a tornado. Geez. [00:27:34] Joe: You do think that’s probably the worst way to get anywhere, isn’t it? Via tornado. Via tornado, yes. It’s [00:27:39] Doug: an adventure, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s, it’s bad. One whole different thing. [00:27:45] Joe: Og the music of Wicked in this song, the Wizard and I, how many of the first notes of the exact same first notes from Over the Rainbow? [00:27:58] OG: Hmm. I just gotta pick a number. Um, I’m gonna say that, uh, seven. Seven. And that’s just random. I mean, it’s as good of a guess as I can muster. So one, one might argue quite random, Jesse, [00:28:16] Jesse: if I play out the first, uh, I’m gonna call it the first stanza of Over the Rainbow in my head, I think there’s 23 notes in it. [00:28:24] So I’m gonna say 23. [00:28:26] Joe: 23. And not random. Actually, it gives us a reason why. Oh gee. He, he has the method behind the madness. Paula, Paula was like counting on her fingers earlier. [00:28:38] Paula: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I know every lyric to the Wizard and Eyes. No, it’s one of my favorite songs, but I never realized that it had any kind of mirroring with Over the Rainbow. [00:28:49] OG: Nor, nor did I. Yeah, wicked is my favorite story, but I I didn’t know that. [00:28:53] Paula: Yeah. Can I throw in some trivia about Wicked? [00:28:56] Joe: Oh, let’s, yes. Give us some wicked trivia, [00:28:58] Paula: some wicked trivia. So the name Alphabet comes from L Frank Baum, who is the author of The Wizard of Oz. [00:29:08] Doug: That’s pretty cool. [00:29:09] Paula: Yeah, [00:29:10] Joe: that is really cool. [00:29:11] Paula: It was written by Gregory McGuire. Zero points though. Zero Points. I know. I love that song so much. Never realized it had any kind of mirroring over the rainbow. I’m just gonna take the over and guess 24. [00:29:24] Joe: 24. So we have 7, 23 and 24 notes. Who’s right? We’re gonna find out in just a minute. Oh gee. You opened up this shindig by saying seven notes. [00:29:40] Jesse and Paula both think maybe it was, uh, a few more than that. What do you think? [00:29:45] OG: I mean, I, I basically have whatever, 23 minus seven is, uh, and, uh, all the downside. So 16 to. It, it depends on the definition of like opening notes. I mean, that’s, I don’t, I don’t know what that meant. I was literally opening notes beginning of the song. [00:29:59] Like, but where does the opening end and the non-op beginning? I dunno. I mean, I, I counted, uh, somewhere over the rainbow having 10 opening notes, like the first line, so, you know, and not the whole verse, maybe it’s just the first. Like when they do that? I don’t know. [00:30:19] Joe: Well, Jesse, you said, uh, 23. Are you whistling right now, Jesse? [00:30:23] Jesse: Yeah, a little bit. [00:30:27] Joe: Yeah. You feeling good with 23 now that Paula took the over? [00:30:31] Jesse: I feel good that there are 23 notes in the first stanza. I have no idea if the wizard, what’s the song? The Wizard and I. Mm-hmm. Yes. I should know the musical better, but I don’t. So I have no idea if my numbers, I don’t feel good to answer your question, Joe. [00:30:43] Joe: Paula, [00:30:43] Jesse: you’re looking pretty confident. [00:30:45] Paula: No, I’m, I’m not because I, I, I echo what they both said. I don’t totally know what opening notes means. What, what is an opening note? I’m not versed in, I. Music theory. [00:30:56] Joe: I think general, any music theory book will tell you it’s the first notes. [00:31:03] OG: Where is the first [00:31:03] Joe: N and the non first begin? Well, it’s just the divergence. The, the song then goes on its own, but for a while it’s the same exact notes. Then it goes off and does something different. So the first note that’s not the same would be the one we don’t want, so. [00:31:21] open: Mm-hmm. [00:31:21] Joe: All right. Well, we’ve, we’ve ruminated on this, by the way, ruminated a different question. [00:31:26] The one that we’ve, that we’ve, my callbacks ninja Paula, the question that we thought about doing, but that we thought might be way too much in OGs wheelhouse, because he’s such a fan of Wicked. How many books were there in the original series? Did you know that one? OG. [00:31:43] OG: It’s an odd number. [00:31:45] Joe: We should have done that one, Doug. [00:31:48] No, we should have gone with that [00:31:49] OG: one. Is it three or is it nine? There was four. There were four. So three. Okay. So it’s not a number. It’s like literally an [00:31:56] Joe: even number. Okay, what is the answer? Who’s winning this thing? Doug? [00:32:05] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m wickedly underappreciated, and the guy who’s still waiting for my Flying Monkey delivery from Amazon Prime. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, let’s get to the good stuff. How many books are in the Wicked Series by Gregory McGuire? Well, first, a little backstory. McGuire’s first book, wicked. [00:32:25] The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West came out in 1995 and became an instant classic. It made us rethink everything about Oz, like maybe G Glendo wasn’t so good after all, and maybe that flying house was less of a miracle and more of a zoning violation. The book was so popular, it got turned into a Broadway show that’s grossed over 1.4 ba ba ba, billion dollars to date. [00:32:51] That’d be enough to buy me a lifetime supply of flying monkeys that I could use to fly the heck towards some winning trivia answers. Yeah, let’s do a answer. Fun fact, those flying monkeys, they totally unionized. So how many notes did Steven Schwartz use in the Wickeds, the Wizard and I that matched the original over the rainbow? [00:33:16] Well, I can tell you this. It was 17 notes less than what Paul had guessed. 16 notes less than what Jesse guessed. No way. And exactly. Freaking zero less than what OG guessed. Because the answer is seven. Unbelievable making OG our stupid winner. Congratulations, [00:33:36] Joe: jerk. Wow. Jesse, do you wanna talk to him about getting it right on? [00:33:40] Would you like to ask him about getting the number? [00:33:42] Jesse: Have some more espresso there. [00:33:44] OG: What’s the intro for Wizard and I? Is it the opening, uh, it’s alphabet, uh, acapella, that little bit. Yes. Or maybe not. [00:33:55] Joe: Yes. I couldn’t remember. And it is, by the way, somewhere over the, somewhere over the rainbow. Seven [00:34:04] Jesse: mm, so seven. [00:34:05] Yeah. Is there [00:34:06] Joe: seven? [00:34:06] Doug: Each syllable is a unique note. [00:34:08] OG: Yeah. So I got that part, but then I figured the, the next part of that was also included. Mm-hmm. And I got to 10 and then I. Figured it wasn’t exactly all 10. [00:34:17] Joe: When he said seven, Doug, I was like, oh my [00:34:19] OG: God. [00:34:20] Doug: Yeah. Yeah. You even said that was just a random guess. [00:34:24] Well just ’cause he wasn’t giving us any information [00:34:27] OG: about it. Next time, just go like, forget it, we’re done Next. [00:34:33] Joe: Jesse, Paula, we don’t need to guess. Probably could have done that. Well, you know what? That would’ve given us more time for the second half of this discussion. Where we’re gonna talk about the J, just just this premise. [00:34:44] Paula, in this piece, the authors at the Wall Street Journal make a case against early retirement. Would you make that same case given all this data? [00:34:53] Paula: Well, so the first thing I would say, and we should probably establish the definition of the word retirement, because if we’re defining the word retirement as the permanent and irrevocable cessation of income. [00:35:07] Whoa. That is a pretty high bar. [00:35:10] Doug: That’s a lot of words. Wow. Are we in Russia? We’re not Russia are we? [00:35:16] Paula: But if we’re defining retirement as leaving your primary career and or your primary occupation and transitioning to maybe you sabbatical for a while, I. And then maybe take on a little bit of part-time work, a little freelance, you kind of gig work, but in only in things that seem fun and interesting, or you do some nonprofit stuff, a little volunteering. [00:35:39] You know, like if we’re essentially talking about a wealth funded career shift in which you move to more flexible and maybe part-time or flexible time work. All right. That’s a very different story because then you are still collecting an income at least. Sporadically not as much of one, you know, not as consistent of one, but it’s a very different story. [00:36:02] Jesse: Jesse, do you agree? Do I agree with Paula or do I agree with the, the article such? [00:36:07] Joe: Do you agree with, do you agree with Paula’s assessment? [00:36:08] Jesse: Yeah, I agree with Paula’s assessment for sure. And like, I mean, when you originally posed the question, Joe, I, I thought to myself like, I need a comparison here. I need a, a way to explain the logic of the article. [00:36:19] And my comparison is, and maybe this wasn’t true for you, but if you go to college. Your alcohol consumption will increase and that’s bad for your health and it leads some bad health outcomes, so you might not wanna go to college. And it’s like, well, hold on a second. Even if that were a true statement, like completely logical, I. [00:36:38] I’m now armed with the idea that maybe I need to go to college and maybe I need to be careful not to drink too much alcohol to avoid the outcome that the average person tends to suffer. ’cause that’s really what the article is saying. The average person who retires early based on this particular dataset seems to have some adverse outcomes. [00:36:55] Okay? Now that I’m armed with that knowledge, I’ll do exactly what we’ve been talking about in this episode. Try to make sure I don’t suffer any of those adverse outcomes. And it’s, at least for me, it, it’s not gonna change. My mind as to whether I or the people who I communicate with should be retiring early. [00:37:12] I, I, I don’t see the connection there. [00:37:15] Joe: Do you think that og that, uh, early retirement just says like a big caution sign in front of it based on today’s discussion even where, which you ask for, I. [00:37:24] OG: I do think so, and it really revolves around a couple of different things. It’s obviously the money aspect of it, it’s, it’s making sure that you have an incredible margin of safety because it’s very difficult no matter what people think, to go back into the workforce with a big gap in your work history. [00:37:41] Not because of the gap, but because of the fact that you lose those connections, you lose that network, generally speaking, and you know, your skills suffer if you, you know, if you don’t use those tools a lot, you’re gonna get left behind. That’s really not a great fallback option that, that you can have. So I think you have to front load that. [00:37:59] Either you front load it with margin of safety with dollars, or you just say, I’m gonna have to work a couple extra years. You know, 53 is also early, you know, 55 is also early compared to the averages, so to speak. Sure. I think the other piece of it is, is that you have to have something to do if you picture financial independence time or retirement time as. [00:38:20] I’m gonna sit by the pool and sit margaritas and you know I’m not gonna do anything. Then a lot of those negative effects are going to manifest themselves, whether it’s health issues, societal issues, your friendship group. Nobody wants to hang around with somebody who doesn’t do anything. That’s not a fun way to spend your, you’re week with your friend or whatever. [00:38:41] You know, you wanna do things, you wanna go hiking or golfing or cycling or you like, whatever, right? Do your thing. It doesn’t have to cost money. I think, like you said, uh, in your observation or West Moss’s observation, be a part of a community. You know, be a part of something that, that gives you a purpose or something to look forward to on a daily or weekly basis to give you a reason to get outta bed. [00:39:03] My bet is ultra comfortable and I love it, but, uh, seeing you guys is a great reason to get up every day. [00:39:09] Joe: Well, well, thank you. We’ll take that as a nice compliment. I wanna dive into that a little more because in Christine Ben’s new book, Paula, in the very first chapter, she talks to a guy who’s an annuity expert and not about annuities. [00:39:23] She talks to him about what a successful retirement’s all about, and he starts talking about how you need to, to OGs point. You need to treat retirement the same way you treated your job. You get outta bed at a set time, you have a mission. Just the mission has changed. Mm-hmm. I feel like based on this conversation and based on this piece, and I love Jesse, I love your analogy on this front about you may not wanna go to college, man, maybe we’re just doing retirement planning all wrong. [00:39:50] Like maybe we really need a deeper dive into what makes a successful retirement. How do I. Set up that before I go. [00:39:57] Paula: Yeah. What I absolutely love about Christine Ben’s book is the focus on intentionality. If I take a week off of work, I don’t necessarily have to be intentional about that week because heck, it’s a week and sometimes it’s nice to just. [00:40:11] Be Garfield the cat for a week. But when we’re talking about something that becomes a permanent lifestyle that’s ingrained with habits, we have to be intentional and oftentimes throughout our lives, school is an external structure that forces that kind of intentionality work, particularly if you have to, if you’re not a remote worker, if you have to actually put on pants and leave the house. [00:40:35] And show up at a specific time. Like work is an external structure that really forces us to be deliberate with how we spend our schedule. And so for many people, retirement is their first experience managing their own schedule for any prolonged period of time. So it doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people are not that good at it ’cause they’ve just never done it before. [00:40:56] You know, it’s, it’s not that they’re not skilled, it’s just, it’s it’s new. It’s absolutely new. But also [00:41:01] Joe: there some, but, but you’re also giving some caution there. Like, stop treating it like it’s gonna be just a vacation. [00:41:05] Paula: Right. Exactly. So that’s the risk. The stakes of wasting a vacation are quite low. [00:41:12] Joe: What do we need to add, Jesse, then, into our financial plan if we’re considering this, if we’re not there yet, that maybe we’re, we’re not doing right now in our financial plan, I. [00:41:21] Jesse: That’s an interesting question. I mean, I guess, I don’t know if this exactly answers it, but a lot of people think of their financial plan as purely numbers and it’s very objective. There’s not much subjectivity to it. I think it would behoove anybody to think of some subjective aspects of their financial plan. [00:41:38] ’cause really it’s, think of it more as a life plan. It’s a retirement plan, and the finances are a really big important part of that. But there’s other parts of it too. So some of it’s just the reframing maybe from a financial plan. To a retirement plan or a life plan. But even then, uh, if you do only wanna think about the financial side of a financial plan, the, the, the numbers, the objective side of it, I think it can help to bake in some. [00:42:04] Some wiggle room when you realize some of the stuff that Paula and OG have been saying, that like, oh, maybe this isn’t exactly what I want. And maybe for me to actually feel fulfilled, to have some purpose to wanna put on the pants every day. It’s, I, I’m gonna have to go out and do something and that doing something is gonna cost me a little bit more than anticipated. [00:42:22] And to be pretty nice to have that, that wiggle room already baked into the plan I put together. [00:42:27] Joe: Question for OG and Jesse, I’d love to get your take on this in your financial planning firm. Do we need to, in the financial planning industry, OG then if somebody’s putting together a financial plan and it has some of these cautions not built into it, like, I’m gonna move into a part of the world where I don’t have any support network, or I haven’t really given enough thought to how granular I should think about my days, or I am treating it like a vacation. [00:42:57] Should financial planners be calling that out? Going, yeah. In the past I haven’t, I haven’t seen this work the way that I would hope. [00:43:03] OG: Well, the way that I’ve experienced it is probably a good word, is when I hear people say things that are really silly, like, I’m gonna play golf every day, you know, and that’s kind of a common, I can’t wait to retire and play golf every day. [00:43:18] I immediately jump on that and I’m like, go do that and report back. Just tell me if that’s really what you’re gonna do because it’s, it’s hard to play golf. I don’t know, I’m, that’s not that good. But, you know, the professional golfers talk about how hard it is on their bodies and their, you know, it’s not an easy thing to do and okay, so you go do it. [00:43:40] So what did you do from noon until seven every day then, you know, if you played golf from eight until noon, okay, I can accept that. I mean, it’s a stretch that you’re gonna play every day, but you know, what are you gonna do from noon till seven? Sit by the pool and drink margaritas. You know, it’s like, and you’ll do that for a while. [00:43:54] That’s totally great. But again, I think that it has to involve more than, you know, leisure activities. You know, you have to have time for health and wellness. You have to have a time for spirituality, whatever that means to you. You have to have time for growth and development. You have to have time for your family, whatever that looks like, extended or immediate. [00:44:14] If you have all of those things, you’re likely to have a fulfilled retirement. Whether that fulfillment is gonna be six months or six years, or you know, 16 years or 36 years. And that’s really the thing. At the end of the day, none of us know how many days we’ve got left. And if you live every day with a sense of like, okay, I’m gonna live today, well on purpose, to borrow a phrase from Doc G, nobody can be upset about that. [00:44:42] Joe: It seems to me there’s so many other things that I noticed, uh, just getting ready for this talk. Like people move where their kids are. Oh yeah. Again, they don’t have any support network there, but they move where their kids are. Turns out that that is often a mistake. Let’s say that the kids have kids. [00:45:00] The kids have a life, they have things that they do. They might wanna hang out with you sometime, but they don’t wanna hang out with you all the time. Maybe they do, but generally they have other things that they wanna do. Another surprising one was people are too quick to downsize their house. When they retire, they quickly downsize their house, and then it makes it more difficult for the family to come and visit them if they decide to stay. [00:45:22] Stay where they are and they’re on top of each other all of a sudden, assuming that you’re living with another person. Or even if you’re not, you just, you don’t have the room that you had and now it’s a, it’s a less happy retirement. Do, do you think Paula, the financial planning industry, like needs to do a better job of pointing out, Hey, these, these are some things that are beyond the numbers that maybe we should get better? [00:45:43] Paula: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that financial planning that encompasses. That goes beyond the numbers that encompasses like, uh, planning a good life. That’s really the point of what we’re, we’re all trying to achieve here. So the more that that can be taken into account, the better. [00:46:00] Joe: And here’s the question though. [00:46:02] And this one j Jesse, I guess I’ll give this to you, which is in your experience though, well people pay more for that because I hear what Paul is saying and I think that would be phenomenal financial planning. My experience in the business is people aren’t gonna pay you more money for that. They’re gonna Oh, that’s cute. [00:46:19] That’s so cute. But yeah, that sounds like fluff. [00:46:21] Jesse: I, I wouldn’t be surprised if most people fall in line with your thoughts there, Joe. But I will say there are some ancillary, whether it’s services or questions you can ask, there’s ancillary value that a financial planner can provide to their clients that while maybe they don’t charge for it, it certainly makes the relationship stronger, stickier, it increases the differentiation. [00:46:43] Totally, totally. It increases the reputation of whether it’s the individual planner or the firm or whatever it may be, and I think it’s kind of good that there’s competition in this industry and that that competition is pushing people to think creatively about how, how can I add more value to my clients’ lives? [00:47:00] I was thinking about the question that you, you pos to OG and Paula. It’s, I find it hard, it’s just a delicate balancing act where I never wanna dictate lifestyle choices to a client or I certainly don’t wanna try to like paste my own personal preferences. I. On top of what a client wants to do. Like, oh, you wanna spend $10,000 a year on horseback riding? [00:47:21] I would never spend that much money on horseback riding. Well, guess what? It’s not my money, but my job is to let them know some of the mathematical, you can still tell ’em it’s stupid. That, [00:47:31] OG: that’d be, I’m kidding. Tell all the people riding horses out there. [00:47:35] Joe: That’d be, that’d be a fantastic, uh, yeah, that’s dumb. [00:47:38] Why do you wanna do that? Whatever the goal is. [00:47:40] Jesse: No courses are they ruminant. My job is to provide them some of the answers of the outcomes of those decisions for sure. And then at times going back to the whole gist of the day’s conversation when it’s applicable and when I feel like I know what I’m talking about to, to cite either anecdotal data or actual study-based data that says, oh, that’s kind of interesting. [00:48:02] I actually know some stories or I know some data about someone who uprooted their life, moved across the country to chase their kids and had to build a new community in retirement. [00:48:11] Joe: Exactly. [00:48:12] Jesse: Here’s some things to think about and, and that’s some pretty powerful value add right there. Just [00:48:16] Joe: giving people the opportunity to know that historically this is gonna require a lot more planning. [00:48:22] Yeah. People have stumbled over this. Amanda don’t want you to, you wanna move halfway across the country where you don’t know anybody. Great goal, fantastic goal. Hopefully you’re not riding horses on that goal. I didn’t know. Prob probably not. Now the horse lover’s gonna come from me too. I think that’s gonna do it for today. [00:48:38] That’s a, it’s interesting ’cause OG just over the, the last 30 years, just seeing where financial planning has, how much it has changed and how much we get more and more into the behavior of this. And like Josh Brown from CNBC said when he was on the show, just how young this industry still is. You know, we’re still gathering data. [00:48:58] It’s only maybe 50 years, the last 50 years that people have had. This new exciting financial plan. And Paula, are you thinking about horse stomachs? [00:49:08] Paula: I, I, I am thinking about Jesse’s joke of, are they ruminant? [00:49:15] Joe: I could just tell. I’m like, this is not that funny, Paula. This is not, [00:49:19] Paula: I’m still laughing at that one. [00:49:22] Joe: Well, let’s laugh at what’s going on at Afford Anything. Then why don’t we transition into that? Ooh. Ooh. [00:49:28] Paula: Well, on the Afford Anything podcast, let me, um. Let, let me pull up what’s coming up. Look, you’re catching me unawares. [00:49:34] Let’s see. Well, hold on [00:49:35] Joe: while you’re doing that. Let’s go to og. First, first weekend in February coming up. Og. How did they celebrate at the OG household? February. February fe. Oh, brew. [00:49:48] OG: No, not as any. Doesn’t have you had to say that, but there’s an R there. Not, yes. Fe. February. What are we doing this weekend if we haven’t found out yet? [00:49:55] Today is the day we find out. Uh, two college decisions for my son. There’s some rumor we’re recording this a little early, so there’s some rumor that maybe the information will be released a week ago, so we might already know. But, uh, definitely today, and this will be an interesting discussion this week, this, this will be the discussion this weekend of, okay, here’s all the answers. [00:50:15] Where, what are we thinking? What do we gotta do? What’s the plan? [00:50:18] Joe: To that point, og, while we’re recording this, in the last two days, my niece. Saffron. She has had two letters in the last two days being accepted to two great colleges and getting these fantastic financial aid packages, which are great. Sweet. [00:50:32] Yeah. And better. Paula, what’s happened? Do the Afford Anything Show [00:50:35] Paula: on the Afford Anything podcast First Friday of every month. We do our first Friday economic update episode, so we’ve got that for the month of February. We also have an interview with Dr. Margie Warrell. She writes about research based tips and information. [00:50:51] I. To overcome fear whenever it’s, uh, you basically, how do you develop courage? How do you overcome your fears and your anxieties in anything that you wanna do? So that could be as an investor, it could be in your career. So we talked to her about some of the science around being more courageous is, so all of that, it’s on the Afford Anything podcast, along with of course, every other episode with you, Joe. [00:51:15] Joe: But with, those are the brilliant episodes. Yeah, the fantastic, actually, we do have a ton of fun answering lots of questions from the community that are all over the place. It’s like a big popery. We never know what’s coming up next on those, those episodes. But I wanna get back to fear. I mean, fear is, I. [00:51:32] Back when I was a financial planner, that was the big thing. I mean, fear stopped people from doing so many nothing objective, just absolute fear. Right. That just stopped us, I think, from living our life so much. So Sounds like a fantastic interview, Jesse. What’s happening at the Best Interest podcast my friend? [00:51:50] Jesse: A couple days ago we released episode 99, which was another ask Me Anything episode, which I think are, it’s interesting. They’re becoming both my favorite to record and also I think the fan favorites to listen to. So that that’s a, it’s a good thing. Right? That’s a good combination to have just more Jesse all the time. [00:52:05] Is that what it is? It’s, it’s a little too much Jesse, but yeah, it’s a lot of Jesse in one episode. But that means that in like a week and a half, we are releasing episode 100, which. I will tell you guys and tell the stackers here it’s coming with a brand change. It may or may not become the Better Interest podcast. [00:52:22] No, it won’t. [00:52:23] Doug: It won’t. [00:52:25] Jesse: Uh, slim Chance. Oh. But yeah, we are rebranding the podcast. We are rebranding. So that’s a little nerve wracking, but mostly exciting. [00:52:33] Joe: It’s just gonna be the Jesse Kramer show. Is that it? With the raised eyebrow. [00:52:37] Jesse: I can’t, I can’t. He’s just gonna call it [00:52:39] OG: Kramer. [00:52:40] Jesse: Neither confirmed, nor did I. [00:52:41] Oh, the, the Kramer Investing podcast. [00:52:46] OG: Back to the drawing board. [00:52:49] Joe: Oh, wait a minute. Somebody’s already got that. Oh man. That’s at the Best Interest podcast. Where? Finer Podcast, 99 episodes. Episode 100 right around the corner. All right. That’s gonna do it for today. Thank you to all of you for hanging out with us. [00:53:04] Thanks to everybody who hung out with us on YouTube today watching us make this show. We had a great time and, uh, I think we’re gonna have Doug take it from here, man. Doug, what should we have learned on today’s show? [00:53:14] Doug: Well, Joe, first take some advice from OG before you retire. Make sure you’ve identified a purpose that will keep you pointed in the right direction when one day starts to blend in with another. [00:53:26] That, or just sit in the front porch with a bottle of margaritas. That’s, that was my favorite lesson. I think. Second, remember that little pearl of wisdom that Jesse gave us about the, you know, the stuff we need to change in our financial plan before we retire. Uh, well, Jesse, why don’t you just go ahead and put a bow on that one for us. [00:53:50] Jesse: Think about the subjective things, not just the objective numbers. [00:53:55] Joe: Wasn’t it ruminate about the subjective things? Okay. [00:53:59] Jesse: Uh, ferment on some subjective things first, and then move the fermented cud onto the second stomach. [00:54:07] Doug: Okay. Can I get back to work here? [00:54:11] Joe: Oh, sorry. [00:54:12] Doug: But the big lesson, don’t ask Joe’s mom if she’s related to the witch of the West. [00:54:19] No matter how many times she’s watched Wicked, she’ll still take it the wrong way. Ugh. Thanks to Jesse Kramer for joining us today. Listen to the best Interest podcast wherever you are listening to us today. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks. Wow. I told you I have to say it differently ’cause it’s just getting old. [00:54:47] Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fabulous podcast. Afford Anything. Wherever you listen to Finer podcast, I think it’s afford anything. I just have to pick different words to emphasize. Thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning. Help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. [00:55:13] This show is the Property of SP podcasts, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [00:55:34] Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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