What to Do When Money Gets Tight SB1756

Nobody plans for their finances to get tight. But here you are, staring at your bank account, wondering if you should panic now or wait until next Tuesday.

Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Neighbor Doug are here to talk you off the ledge—and give you an actual plan for when money gets squeezed. Whether you’re facing a layoff, dealing with reduced hours, bracing through a government shutdown, or just trying to make your paycheck last until payday, this episode is your financial storm shelter.

The good news? You don’t need to have everything figured out perfectly to make it through. You just need to know what to do first, what can wait, and how to keep your head (and your budget) together when everything feels uncertain. From building an emergency fund that actually works for your life to eating well on a ramen budget (spoiler: it’s possible), this crew breaks down the practical moves that keep you afloat.

Plus: Doug delivers trivia, the gang tackles the Voices for Good Charity Challenge (because even in tough times, small acts of giving matter), and they dissect a TikTok money tip that’s… well, let’s just say not all financial advice should be followed.

What You’ll Walk Away With:

• The first three moves to make when money gets tight—before the panic spiral starts

• How much emergency fund you actually need (hint: it’s probably less than you think to get started)

• Budget-friendly tactics for groceries, utilities, and keeping yourself fed without living on instant noodles

• What to do about insurance and loans when cash flow slows down (and which mistakes cost you later)

• Why small acts of generosity matter even when you’re struggling—and how they help you too

• A reminder that financial storms are temporary, but the skills you build weathering them last forever

This Episode Is For You If:

• Money feels tighter than it used to and you’re not sure what to do about it

• You want to build a safety net but don’t know where to start (or how much is “enough”)

• The economy feels shaky and you want to feel prepared instead of panicked

• You’re tired of generic advice like “just save more” and want actual tactics

• You need a pep talk wrapped in practical wisdom—because optimism without a plan isn’t helpful

FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/the-importance-of-emergency-funds-1756

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

Enjoy!

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Our Headline

• Amazon’s 14,000 Layoffs Underscore AI’s Uncertain Impact on Jobs (Newsweek)
• Federal and non-federal employees feel the effects of the government shutdown (MSN)
• I’m a Government Employee and Need to Get By Until the Shutdown Ends. What Can I Do? (Kiplinger)
• Government Shutdown: Resources & Financial Assistance Overview (News Channel 6)
• FEEA Provides Nearly 3000 Shutdown Grants of $150 to Federal Workers Across 49 States (Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund)

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Doug’s Trivia

• What was the last name of Clarence, the first purveyor of frozen peas?

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Better call Saul…Sehy & OG

• Stacker Dennis has a question. He’s heard people say that having a financial planner isn’t a good mix if you want to focus on real estate. He owns a lot of real estate and wants Jour take, and whether there’s a CFP who specializes in working with people heavily invested in real estate.

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

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

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Other Mentions

• https://stackingbenjamins.com/StackingHope
• FEEA.org (Federal Employee Education & Assistance Fund)
• Credit Union Emergency Loan Programs:
  • United States Senate Federal Credit Union — up to $5,000
  • Congressional Federal Credit Union — up to $10,000
  • Navy Federal Credit Union — up to $6,000
  • USAA — $500 to $6,000 emergency relief loans

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Join Us Wednesday

Tune in on Wednesday when we dive into how to lock down the basics of your money with a woman who’s teaching young people how to make better financial choices…from Giving Sense, Karen Holland.

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Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Real Money Horror Stories (And How Not to Star in Your Own) SB1755

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Joe: Happy Monday Stackers. You know what, I’ve got my apple guys. Look at my honey crisp apple. It’s a big old apple, and I also have my mug ready. This is the best Monday of the year. This is the best Monday of the year. First Monday in November, 

[00:00:14] OG: the first Monday after the time change. 

[00:00:17] Doug: Yeah, 

[00:00:17] OG: everybody’s got an extra hour of sleep.

[00:00:20] OG: You’re feeling fresh. Can’t 

[00:00:21] Doug: wait to get into work today. 

[00:00:23] OG: You get up in the morning and it’s light out again for at least the next three or four days. Four days, or the sun catches up with it and it’s dark again in the morning when you wake up, it’s great. It’s like mini summer without the heat, 

[00:00:35] Joe: unless you’re Doug who always uses the extra hour to party.

[00:00:39] OG: Yeah, Doug has his own time zone. He’s like Northern Arizona. Doug time just does what he wants. 

[00:00:46] Doug: You can’t cage me in. Like I can’t 

[00:00:47] OG: go out. It’s 10 o’clock at night. Doug’s like it’s four in the afternoon around here. What are you talking about martini time. What 

[00:00:53] Doug: time is it? Dt. You are always talking time. Dt, CT pt.

[00:00:57] OG: Yeah. 

[00:00:57] Doug: I need to like move up above the Arctic circle so you could just, there’s no rules up there. You can just do whatever you want. ’cause it’s always daylight, right? You move 20 feet 

[00:01:07] Joe: west and you’re in a different time zone. Right. Yeah, dunk time. You know what time it is though. It’s time to salute our troops, guys, like we do every Monday here on the show.

[00:01:15] Joe: On behalf of the Men and Women making podcast to Mom’s Basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, who serve our veterans and our active duty military and their families, thanks for keeping us safe all weekend while we slept in, 

[00:01:27] OG: well, we slept in, 

[00:01:29] Joe: you had an extra hour of duty. Thank you.

[00:01:32] Joe: Thank you so much. Let’s go stacks of Ments together now. 

[00:01:36] opener: We are back. We are back. We are getting Doug back, and we’re the three best friends that anybody could have. We are the three best friends that anyone could have. We are the three best friends that anyone could have, and we’ll never, ever, ever, ever, ever leave each other.

[00:01:55] opener: We’re the.

[00:02:03] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:02:17] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And the government shutdown prompted us to ask, how do you squeeze more money out of your savings when no cash is coming in the front door today, whether you’re. Facing unemployment, a government shutdown or worse, we’ve got your back. And you know that’s not all we’re gonna tackle to add variety to this year variety show.

[00:02:37] Doug: We’ll also share a TikTok minute with some horrible investing mistakes. I’ll give you one-to-one odds. This guy’s gonna talk about horrible investing mistakes. And then of course. We’ll steer this ship into Harbor with some of my incredibly well researched trivia. And now two guys who researched investing in penny stocks to find that there’s no gold in them.

[00:02:58] Doug: NAR Hills, it’s Joe o and OG.

[00:03:08] Joe: Hey there, stackers, and happy Monday to you. Welcome back to another episode of the Stacky Benjamin Show. I’m Joe Saul-Sehy. I am super happy that I’m sitting with these two. Gentlemen, first of all, let’s look right across the table at me into the eyes of og 

[00:03:25] OG: right across the table at 

[00:03:26] Joe: me, eh? Yeah. You’re sitting right across the table from me.

[00:03:31] OG: Hmm. That’s not what I heard. 

[00:03:32] Joe: Oh, and then let’s look down to the end of the table and say hello to mom’s neighbor, Doug. Good morning. Can’t believe I get to be in the same room today. It’s awesome. Just pinch me, pinch us all. Well, you know what? We have a, not only a fantastic show, but we’re also part of a challenge.

[00:03:48] Joe: We’re gonna challenge all of our stackers This month. We’re part of a challenge called The Voices for Good Charity Challenge. And to get in on this, goodness, it’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash Stacking hope. In this week, we’re gonna talk about the financial literacy group that we are helping. This wonderful woman, Karen Holland, who’ll be here with us on Wednesday, helps kids learn.

[00:04:11] Joe: About making better money decisions. It is called gifting sense. And if you go to stacky Benjamins dot com slash Stacking, hope you can help us raise money for financial literacy this giving month, and we’re part of a challenge. Now, the cool thing is not only can you help us help kids with financial literacy, you know what else you can.

[00:04:30] Joe: You can help us beat the How to Money Show, which they’re raising money as well. And, uh, you know, we’ve done this in the past. We beat list of Money Matters. A few years ago we beat Uch Tara’s Wow podcast. So money and now how to money has to go down because our stackers are so badass, helping with financial literacy.

[00:04:51] Joe: So if you wanna help us take down Joel and Matt. Losers Stacking Benjamins dot com shots fired. Wow. Wow. Stacking Benjamins dot com slash Stacking ho. He just rolled up his sleeves and gave him a quick little pop in the nose. Hey, Joel, we’re coming for you. I actually, I love those guys and we’re gonna have some fun at their expense over the next month while our stackers prove they’re far more giving than, uh, the how to money crowd.

[00:05:20] Joe: Anyway, more on that later today, whether you’re a part of any of the layoffs that have happened the last few weeks, or if you’re part of the government shutdown. Hopefully by the time this comes out, the government shutdown has has disappeared. But we’re recording this just a couple days before you hear it, so no news on that front yet.

[00:05:40] OG: Is there any chance we could just have Congress. Like the executive branch shut down and just everybody else works. Let’s just do that because how do we get that to happen? Yeah. 

[00:05:51] Doug: Then I think maybe we’ll see a little more sweat. 

[00:05:53] OG: Yeah. 

[00:05:54] Doug: I love the idea if you see people throw it out there online all the time, how about they don’t get paid?

[00:05:58] OG: I’m sure they’re not, but, um, you know, they have coffers of, well wishers, I’m sure. Mm. You know, my favorite thing from Warren Buffett about Congress was he said he has a very simple way to balance the budget, make sure everything’s even. Is if you don’t have a balanced budget, you are ineligible for reelection next year.

[00:06:16] Doug: Oh right. Even better. 

[00:06:18] OG: Wow. Wow. Talk about self preservation, right? Like guess what will work? Everything. Mm-hmm. They’ll have to work on it. 

[00:06:25] Joe: You heard it here first. You’re not gonna hear that on the Hu of Money show. Yes. You don’t hear anything close to that logic. No. We we’re going to help hopefully, uh, hopefully we don’t have a lot of stackers in need, but we wanna make sure that.

[00:06:39] Joe: Whether this has happened to you or not, it may happen at some point. There’s gonna have become a dark time, and so we’re gonna help all of you through that today. So grab whatever, uh, whether it’s your iPad or some paper, but we’re gonna give you some resources. We’re gonna tell you how to think through making smart money choices when times are tight.

[00:07:01] Joe: Before that though, we have a couple of sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on and you don’t pay a dime for any of this. Goodness. So we’re gonna hear from them. And then OG Doug and I, we’re gonna tackle helping you make it through some dark times. 

[00:07:16] headliens: Hello, doling, and now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines.

[00:07:24] Joe: All right, lots of headlines today. Let’s go through two of them though. The first one comes to us from Newsweek. This is written by Amman Kidwai, Amazon’s 14,000 person layoffs underscore AI’s uncertain impact on jobs. Last Tuesday, Amazon laid off 14,000 employees in effort to improve operations by removing layers of bureaucracy.

[00:07:44] Joe: According to a company announcement posted by Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology, Beth Galletti. I thought it was funny, by the way, vice President of People experience 14,000 people not having a great people experience. 

[00:07:56] OG: Yeah. I wanna know how many layers of management there were.

[00:07:58] OG: If you gotta get rid of 14,000 of ’em. My goodness. 

[00:08:01] Joe: Yeah, that is, that is a bunch, but 14,000 more people at that one company. And obviously there have been several other companies, but let’s couple that with, 

[00:08:10] OG: yeah, there was just an article in the Wall Street Journal about all the, uh, all the layoffs. It’s in the hundreds of thousands of tech employees at this point.

[00:08:17] Joe: Yeah. Let’s couple that with the obvious story that we referenced at the start of this podcast. This is from. Green Bay Appleton, WBAY tv. Their website, federal and non-federal employees feel the effect of the government shutdown. And I like this headline, by the way, because it says federal and non-federal employees because we forget all the people that serve these employees.

[00:08:41] Joe: They’re also feeling the hurt too. This is from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. At the time this was written, which was last. Thursday it said, we’re now 29 days into this government shutdown, the second longest in American history. Over last weekend, the US Department of Agriculture announced that SNAP Food Assistance benefits will not be issued on November 1st, so federal and non-federal employees feeling the brunt as we get closer to well.

[00:09:06] Joe: And now it has been a full month of the government shutdown, assuming that it’s still going on. We record this, hopefully not, but even so. If it is not, we’re gonna dive into really what you do first. Oh gee, let’s talk about this Tough times for a lot of people. How do we think through this as a family, as a consumer, a person that needs to eat?

[00:09:30] Joe: Where do we begin the cuts? 

[00:09:32] OG: Well, I think firstly, if you don’t think that this affects you, it affects somebody. You know, probably statistically, at least in the state of Texas. I saw this stat just not too long ago, something like 12% of every single person in Texas, there’s about 35 million people in Texas, 30 million somewhere in there.

[00:09:51] OG: Three and a half million people receive some sort of food assistance in the state of Texas. So one out of 10 people. So there’s a pretty good chance that that’s somebody that you know. Receive some sort of food assistance and you’re thinking, oh, well that’s the government shutdown. Well, now it’s starting to trickle down to people who don’t work for the government, right.

[00:10:07] OG: Receive, you know, rely on some assistance. It’s trickling down 

[00:10:10] Joe: to your neighborhood at the very 

[00:10:12] OG: least. Yeah. And the other thing that happens with this is think about the domino that falls of, well, where’s that money gets spent, it gets spent at the grocery store with food and produce and, you know, whatever.

[00:10:25] OG: Well, if now, if the grocery store isn’t selling as much food. Now that affects the producer of those things, you know what I mean? Like this is gonna start very quickly dominoing through the, the whole chain, through the, uh, the whole chain of people. So this is a big deal. The first thing that I would do as you think about what to do if this is you, is recognize that this might have happened in the past.

[00:10:47] OG: If you’ve had the opportunity to unfortunate opportunity to have, having to have gone through this before and you’re now here, that means you made it through before so you can, the first thing that I would do is reflect back on what were the things that we did to get us through the last time of this.

[00:11:03] OG: It’s never fun to go through these scary times, but when you take a second and go, okay, this has happened before. Something like this has happened before and I’m standing today, which means I must have gotten through it. What were the things that we did successfully? And then also what were the things that we did that we wouldn’t choose to do again, you know, given the opportunity.

[00:11:23] OG: So taking stock I think is probably the first step of like, just take a breath. Go, all right. Unfortunately, we may have had to have done this before. What did we do that was successful that that got us through it? And what were the things that we did that were like, oh geez. We don’t wanna do that next time.

[00:11:42] Joe: Well, I love the idea of taking stock because Cheryl and I once did the eat everything in your refrigerator, in your freezer challenge before we go buy more stuff. 

[00:11:51] OG: Oh, not all at one time. 

[00:11:52] Joe: Not whole. I dare. Double dog. Dare you. I thought we’d be through food in a week. 

[00:11:59] aftershow: Yeah. 

[00:12:00] Joe: And, and, and we’re not food hoarders.

[00:12:01] Joe: We don’t have a huge freezer. I don’t have a deep freeze outside like some of my neighbors have. And oh gee, it still took us about three weeks mm-hmm. To go through all the different foods that we had. And we had to supplement a couple times with some stuff from the grocery store, but we cleaned it all out.

[00:12:19] Joe: And so I like the idea of taking stock, what do I have on, on hand so that. Lockdown wise, I know that I can eat for X amount of time. It might be two and a half weeks worth of food. It might be four days worth of food, but check out what you got. You know, that really, 

[00:12:32] OG: um, reminds me of another tool that now exists that probably didn’t exist the last time that this happened, which is AI or chat, GPT or perplexity or whatever your, your tool of choice is.

[00:12:44] OG: And the reason I bring this up is several weeks ago I wanted to experiment with it. I said, I’ve got two pounds of, of burger. I have various vegetables frozen. I really wanna make like a stroganoff, like a beef stroganoff. What’s the poor man’s version of beef? You know, I don’t wanna go out to the grocery store.

[00:13:02] OG: I don’t wanna make, you know, a bunch of sauces and whatever. Like, I just want this to be simple. And it’s like, cool. Do you have this? Do you have this? Do you have this? Bang? This is how you’re gonna make it. Very similar. It’s not gonna be, you know, gourmet, but this reminds me of maybe the first thing to do on the food side of things is literally take an inventory of everything that you have.

[00:13:22] OG: Feed that into chat GPT and say, I’ve got a family of four. We need to eat as you know, we need to eat. Stretch this out. Yeah. What can I do with all of this stuff to make the most number of meals out of this might be a good, uh, an an interesting exercise. I mean, heck, even, even for people that aren’t having issues right now, get rid of all the excess, right?

[00:13:42] OG: Like, just go, okay, I got all this stuff. I need to kind of reset for the beginning part of the year. That might be a good, uh, I’m, I’m, now, I’m, now I’m thinking I’m gonna do this. Because we have fat. We have the canned green beans from 2014 that are still sitting in the back, that are still good. You know, you can still eat ’em.

[00:13:58] OG: They’re canned. 

[00:13:58] Doug: It’s, yeah, there’s a few apps that are out there that’ll let you do that. That’ll let you just say, here’s what I have on hand. That’s a great, yeah. Great place to start. Yeah. Undoubtedly, 

[00:14:07] Joe: if people ask specific apps they use and you’re in the basement, Facebook. Or if you’re on Spotify where you can leave comments, leave those in the comments for other stackers and, uh, love to share which apps you’re using and how you like ’em.

[00:14:20] Joe: One thing I’m not gonna spend a lot of time on this is for people that aren’t going through this right now. This is the reason why you have an emergency fund, because next I want to go through where you get money from and emergency fund. If it’s not happening to you, I think this is a great shot across your bow.

[00:14:35] Joe: Like start working on that because having this. Money that is available for emergencies like this. Super important, but that largely is for another day because I know there are stackers that don’t need to hear that. Now they need to hear, what do I do regardless, community and state assistance programs are all over the place.

[00:14:56] Joe: I also like the fact that I referenced this one in Wisconsin because they’re talking about Wisconsin specific. Aid programs and sometimes city and community specific aid programs. So because we’re in 47 different countries, I’m not gonna spend the next four hours going over your city in your state, but definitely check into those.

[00:15:19] Joe: In fact, there’s another resource that I have here from a station in Oklahoma, and they’re going over Oklahoma and Texas based aid. And there is a, there is a long, long list of places. In communities and in states, counties that provide aid. 

[00:15:38] OG: Yeah. I mean obviously your local community organizations, both governmental and private, know what’s going on.

[00:15:45] OG: Right. And and the other side of this too, by the way, is if you’re not one of those people, and we’re talking about giving, and this is kind of the giving month of November. And you’re going, I don’t know what’s important to me right now. Maybe this is how you, this is where you think about your donation for the year, is, in my local community, can I drop a check off for the food bank?

[00:16:05] OG: You know, because extra people are gonna be, you know, needing that this time of the year. So there’s a lot of community and state, local organizations like this that are designed specifically for this purpose. So if you’re in a situation where you need assistance, you shouldn’t feel reluctant in reaching out and getting the assistance that you need, because that’s what this, that’s what these groups are for.

[00:16:25] OG: And if you’re on the other side of it, or if it’s just temporary, you know. You just pay it back later. You know, you pay it forward later, so to speak. Right? You just go, Hey, this is when I need it. Right? And when life is good, then I’ll circle back and I’ll be the grantor side of it. That’s, um, that’s what these organizations exist for.

[00:16:40] Doug: It’s, it’s funny how many people feel apprehensive of taking it, availing themselves of some of those programs. You guys both know, my wife needs a hearing aid and back when we had no money. She was at her doctor and hearing aids are incredibly expensive, and the doctor told her about a program to take advantage of some help to pay for the hearing aids.

[00:16:59] Doug: And she said, I don’t think that’s right. Like, I don’t know if we’re that destitute that we need. Yeah, that’s for old poor people. Well, it’s not just that. That’s a whole separate thing. And the doctor said. You’d be shocked how many people taking advantage of, of those services are driving Mercedes and Cadillacs.

[00:17:16] Doug: Like this is like, don’t, don’t feel guilty about this. It’s what It’s there for. What it’s for. And she, yeah, so she did. 

[00:17:24] Joe: I’m just imagining Doug being around you, like does she ever go, I’m sorry, my hearing aids off. Oh, it’s off. It’s off. I mean off. She barely has to 

[00:17:31] Doug: buy batteries because she’s just off. I’m sorry.

[00:17:34] Doug: It just becomes an airplane. We can’t talk right now, but you read lips. Yeah. Yours are hard. Yours are difficult. It’s so are moving so fast. I’m sorry. 

[00:17:43] Joe: I’m sorry. It just, yeah, no wonder she seems so calm and happy all the time, Doug. Let’s talk about Amazon. Let’s talk about my cousin who was just laid off from a cabinet manufacturer.

[00:17:59] Joe: Let’s talk about a lot of the layoffs going on. Obviously, you want to apply for unemployment as soon as possible. You also want to check out your health insurance options as soon as possible, og, because I think if you haven’t shopped for health insurance in a long time on your own, you’re gonna be in for a little bit of a surprise.

[00:18:18] Joe: Going without health insurance. There’s some things that I’ve seen people say, like as an example, if you’re looking at an extended layoff, maybe taking your auto coverage down to the minimums, it’s not gonna save you a lot of money, but it might save you a little money. Obviously this is gonna be something that could bite you in the ass, but I feel like going without health insurance really bites you in the ass.

[00:18:40] OG: And again, I, I just don’t know that that’s a thing that you have to, is that a day one task? You know, you’re laid off and I gotta go start researching health insurance options. I don’t know. I think 

[00:18:48] Joe: the sooner you look at your health insurance options, the better. I mean, it’s 

[00:18:51] OG: not day one, day 10, maybe like day 15, day four.

[00:18:55] OG: In all likelihood, if you’re, you know, and I guess this is gonna be situation dependent, right? It’s like if you get laid off and it’s a small company and they’re like, look, everything stops today. So then, yeah, then you need to look at that stuff tomorrow and and, and have it in force. 

[00:19:11] Joe: Well, that’s a hundred percent why I said it.

[00:19:13] Joe: My cousin shared online, he made it public information. The note that he got from his employer, which was, it is October 28th. Your employment ends effectively today. And oh, by the way, November 1st, you’re on your own when it comes to your health insurance. Yeah. So for him, it is a day one thing. Well, the good news 

[00:19:33] OG: again.

[00:19:34] OG: Talking about programs that exist, this is why a CA exists is so that there’s a health insurance option for everybody. It’s not gonna be maybe the exact best option that you would pick given all the resources in the universe to pick and design options for you. But it is an option and it’s based on your income.

[00:19:54] OG: So you can put it in force and basically have a low premium cost. Uh, if your forecasted income is gonna be pretty low. You’re eligible for it immediately. So if you have a change of circumstances, qualifying life event is what they call that. Certainly getting laid off is one of those life events. Then you can put that in force right away.

[00:20:15] OG: Is it gonna be the option that you’re gonna stick with into January? Probably not, but this is like, you know, this is putting a bandaid on it right now. 

[00:20:23] Joe: A lot of the sites that I have gone to talking about assistance, and when you pull this up on any search engine, the first thing that comes around, the first thing OG, that they show you are, Hey, low interest loans.

[00:20:36] Joe: Yeah, get a low interest loan. That is thing 32. I would not not go looking for quote help by getting yourself into a bunch of debt. We’ll talk about where to look and where not to look after the break, but I truly think that kind of help maybe waits for, talk about something that’s a day 10 decision.

[00:20:58] Joe: Yeah, more like day 20. Day 30 decision. 

[00:21:00] OG: Day 350. Yeah. 

[00:21:03] Joe: Hopefully as long as possible. We’re gonna dive deeper into benefits specifically for people when it comes to the government shutdown. We’ll also look at ways to evaluate debt and what loans to take, what loans not to take. How to think about what if you gotta borrow money, where do you borrow money from, and where do you avoid?

[00:21:23] Joe: That’s coming up in just a minute, but Doug, at the halfway point of the show, you know what that means. You’re center stage, man. Let’s do it. Best part of the 

[00:21:31] Doug: show. Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And look, when I’m trying to save money, there’s nothing more economical than peas. Hear me out.

[00:21:39] Doug: Peas, definitely a top three green vegetable. I can’t understand why Joe and OG didn’t include buy more peas in their solution list. Do I have to do all the heavy lifting around here? Want a get a little spicy? Here’s a Martha Stewart tip from Old Doug. Peas are awesome when you mix ’em with rice, and even better as a frozen treat on a hot summer day.

[00:22:00] Doug: But Joe’s mom is telling me to mine my peas and Qs. Where do I find Qs? I like O Cheese’s look frozen. Wait, what? You’re thinking about it? I’ve never even seen cues in the grocery store, but on today’s date, back in 1952, a guy named Clarence. It is just, it’s a funny name, whose last name you see all over the grocery store.

[00:22:23] Doug: Built his stack of Benjamins by sharing the miracle of frozen bees with the world. Here’s a question. You’ve seen Clarence’s, you’ve seen Clarence’s last name before. You can’t not laugh saying the name Clarence. Why does Clarence crack you up? I don’t know. It’s a funny name. It’s objectively, scientifically funny.

[00:22:40] Doug: It’s a great name. You’ve seen Clarence’s last name before. It’s the name of his company. What is the last name of Clarence? The first purveyor of frozen peas, but not frozen cues. He missed a business opportunity there. I’ll be back right after I go see if Clarence. Was also the first one to freeze Lima beans.

[00:23:01] Doug: Hot take Lima Beans are a form of torture that should have been banned by the Geneva Convention. I’m gonna die on this hill.

[00:23:20] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Lima Bean hater and guy who’s dropping vegetable truths. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Imagine building your stack of Benjamins by creating something as simple as the frozen pea. Actually, while it sounds easy, it’s harder than it looks. A guy named cooking. A guy named Clarence. I don’t get it.

[00:23:40] Doug: I mean hand to God. His real name was Clarence. A guy named Clarence with a last name you’ve seen before, figured out how to keep the taste and flavor even after peas were frozen. Now, if he could have added some taste to Lima Beans, the only bad taste you’d ever have in your mouth is after sampling some of that How to Money Podcast.

[00:24:00] Doug: See what I did there? Just took a shot. Took a shot. Ba bam. Our stackers are way more giving than how to money fans. I got your back stackers, but today’s question was this. What was Clarence’s last name? You’ve seen it all over the frozen food aisle. It was none other than it. Clarence Bird’s Eye who developed frozen.

[00:24:22] Doug: On today’s date back in 1952, and now let’s get back to two guys who are far more attractive than Joel and Matt. Not hard to do, Joe and og. This is gonna be the 

[00:24:35] Joe: funnest month. We’re just, we’re, we’re just beating the hell out of ’em and they’re like, we’re just over here doing nothing. By the way, taking to two of the nicest guys for people who have no idea about how the money they’re jerk faces, two of the nicest guys, and we’re just going to keep laying it on.

[00:24:53] Joe: I can’t wait till Joel writes me going, wait, what? What the hell 

[00:24:56] Doug: dude? Just standing here. I just got done saving orphans and you’re on your show, feeding the heck out of us. 

[00:25:03] Joe: But once I found out that, uh, it was us against Joel and Matt. In this competition, I was like, this is gonna be a great time. Stack your Benjamins dot com slash Stacking.

[00:25:12] Joe: Hope is how you give. Speaking of give, let’s give some more help to people that are in need. You know, for the government shutdown specifically. A resource that has been there every time that the government has shut down is F-A-F-E-E-A. It’s fee a.org. That’s a federal employee education and assistance fund, and it’s not a ton of money, but it’s a grant, meaning there’s no payback.

[00:25:40] Joe: This is your money. $150 to federal workers. Head to fia.org, and that is a place to start is for workers making. $59,999 or less. The shutdown grant application for direct hire civilian federal employees who are furloughed or working in accepted status and making less than $59,999 that is available.

[00:26:06] Joe: Before the break, we talked about the idea of taking out loans and I think, oh gee, this is, this is the one place where. Before I do that, I look at my mortgage because banks often have programs that will help you with your mortgage. So I look at deferring before I look at loans. Utility companies also have deferral programs, so I think I look into both of those first before I start borrowing money from anywhere.

[00:26:39] Joe: Would you agree? 

[00:26:40] OG: The first thing that you have to do as you’re, you know, if you’re working through cash flow, right? You’re going, Hey, I’m not getting paid. I’m through my emergency fund, you know, and now I’m on month two of this and rent’s due. The first thing is food, right? We talked about that at the beginning.

[00:26:56] OG: You have to make sure that everybody in your circle is taken care of from. Sustenance standpoint. Do we need to have filets and finger link potatoes every night? Probably not. And there’s what we talked about before, trying to stretch what what you have and all that sort of stuff. But food is a line item on your budget that you need to work through.

[00:27:13] OG: Then I would think about your shelter and if you own your own house when you’re paying mortgage payment, like you said, you can reach out to the bank. Banks are gonna be very open to working with you, especially if you’re one of these affected government shutdown folks. Frankly, even if that’s not you, if you’re just laid off or you just have some other issues, they don’t want your house, they want to figure out a way for you to keep it because they want the money.

[00:27:37] OG: You know, they would rather you just pay higher interest later and make it up on the backend. But the key is communication here. You know, you can’t wait until you’re 90 days behind or 180 days behind and then go away. By the way, I’ve been laid off for six months. Reach out at the beginning, and the same thing is true with any other loan payments that you have.

[00:27:55] OG: Credit cards, car loans, student loans, private loans, anything that requires a payment. Reaching out and saying, Hey, here’s where we are. Here’s what’s going on. Can we defer this? Can we have some sort of forbearance on this program? All the major banks, all the major lending institutions, we’ll do this because they want your business.

[00:28:16] OG: They don’t wanna destroy your credit. 

[00:28:17] Doug: Oh gee. Any guidance, and I’m sure there’s no hard and fast answer here, but any guidance on timing of that? Because you get laid off and you’re like, I’m gonna find something. It’s been three weeks or it’s been five weeks, I’ll find it’s like I’m interviewing or whatever and I’m about to, so when do you make that call?

[00:28:35] Doug: ’cause you don’t wanna do that too soon. And maybe if the answer is higher interest rate, you don’t wanna invoke that sooner than you need to. Any thoughts there? If 

[00:28:43] OG: I don’t think that they charge you a higher interest rate, I think they just defer the payment into onto the backend and then you just get caught up when you can get caught up.

[00:28:50] OG: I don’t know that I would wait too long, but I dunno, A month out maybe. 

[00:28:54] Doug: Making phone calls, like if you’ve missed a month of payments, it’s probably time. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This before you miss a payment. This is before 

[00:28:59] OG: you miss payments. No, no, no. Yeah, you can’t miss payments. And then go, my bad, I’m sorry.

[00:29:03] OG: Can I get, get you some love? So that’s the, yeah. No, no, no, no. 

[00:29:05] Doug: I’m, I can’t pay this water bill. I better call now. Don’t wait. Yeah, for the second bill you’re gonna miss. 

[00:29:11] OG: Yeah, because I mean, think it from a credit reporting standpoint, not utilities, but from a credit reporting standpoint, you are in default on the day you don’t make the payment.

[00:29:20] OG: Right. They don’t report it until you’re 30 days behind. That 30 day late that’s on your credit report stays on for two years and will crater your credit score by 75 points immediately. So as we were talking about like, well, when do you go borrow money? Hopefully never, but if you had to, you better have pretty good credit.

[00:29:41] OG: Otherwise you’re not gonna be able to borrow money. So if you’re just saying, well I can’t pay my mortgage and you know, I’ll just wait for them to catch up with me. It’s just automated. They just, at 30 days, bing, it hits your credit report and goes, you’re 30 days late and now your credit score was seven 50 and now it’s six 50 and you’ve lost all the negotiating power of.

[00:30:01] OG: Trying to stay on everybody’s good side, you know? So, no, a hundred percent I would go after this. I, I might actually do this in the first, you know, I mean, we’re a month into it now, but within that first month, you know, you need to rework your budget and find out what’s, what is movable and what’s not. You mentioned utilities.

[00:30:19] OG: Utilities will work with you on a flat payment plan. They’ll say, Hey, you know, we know that the gas bill in the winter is really high. The electric bill in the summer is really high, and that vice versa, they’re lower. We’ll just make this 150 bucks a month. They have assistance programs to lower that from a utility standpoint, you can’t wait until they’re about to shut off the water and then go, well, hold on a second.

[00:30:38] OG: They’re shut off. Wait. Yeah. I haven’t been working for a while. Mm-hmm. The other thing too is you do have some rights from the fair credit reporting. People, you know, in terms of different communities will have different protections for different age groups. So for example, if you’re older and that older means different things to different people in different places.

[00:30:56] OG: Some people it’s 55, some people it’s 65. But you know, there was, um, I think it was in Michigan actually, there was a story about, uh, somebody who had their power turned off because, you know, they were 90 years old, just didn’t know that they didn’t pay the bill and they shut the power off and then found the guy frozen to death because wow, the power went off.

[00:31:15] OG: I think this was in Michigan. And so they passed a law that said, you know, they just can’t turn the power off on people over 65. It’s just, they just can’t do it. So you wanna make sure that they know that you’re that person. You know, I’m like, you know, I’m 64 and three quarters, so, so Joe, apparently that’s 

[00:31:32] Doug: the age when dementia starts to set in.

[00:31:34] Doug: So just you make a note to yourself. ’cause it’s coming early 

[00:31:37] OG: onset for Joe, it’s coming fast. Is uh, 57 sitting right here. Sitting right here. But they may have other protections for, you know, folks that are laid off and that sort of thing. Again, at the end of the day, everybody wants to work with you because they don’t want your stuff.

[00:31:51] OG: The bank doesn’t want your house. The water company doesn’t wanna turn off the water. You know, you see those? I’ve had this happen, right? You don’t may pay the water bill, and then they send you notice and go, Hey, if you don’t pay this by Tuesday, it’s gonna be a hundred dollars to reset it back up again.

[00:32:04] OG: And then you gotta give us another thousand bucks as a deposit on future things that will draw from, because you’re a near do well. All that stuff starts to cascade in terms of how hard it is to get out of. It’s like when you have overdraft in your checking account. And it overdrafts, and they charge you $39.

[00:32:22] OG: And so now you have 39 less dollars than you thought you did. And so then you go to the store and then they go, well, hey, you know, we know that OGs good for it, so we’re gonna let him pay this, you know? And now they charge you another $39. You know what I mean? Like all of a sudden you’re like $400 in the hole because eight transactions hit at the same time and you’re like, I gotta take an entire week’s paycheck just to get back to zero.

[00:32:44] OG: Just turn off overdraft. Just take the shame of like swiping the debit card and have it not work at the grocery. There’s this not working, sir, like, ah, bank screwed up. All right, see you later. Yeah. You know, you get the weird look from the one person, like, who cares? You’re never gonna see that person again.

[00:32:57] OG: You’re never gonna see 

[00:32:58] Joe: again. Right. Talking to people at the grocery store too, they see that all the time. People get really ashamed and the person at the grocery store is like, I don’t know what the issue is. It could be your bank, it could be you. I don’t know. Nobody knows. Yeah. 

[00:33:09] OG: Don’t care. You’re one of 7,000 people I’m gonna see today.

[00:33:12] OG: I have, I, you know, they don’t look at you in the face, they judge your purchases. You know, 

[00:33:17] Doug: you’re probably 

[00:33:18] OG: that, especially Doug, like 

[00:33:20] Doug: single serving frozen dinner and a case of case of beer, even more frozen 

[00:33:25] Joe: peas. I just wanna pause for a second because I think we sidetracked Doug on ne do well because he, 

[00:33:33] aftershow: yes.

[00:33:33] Joe: He heard it so much. He thought it was a positive thing until today. What if I’m a S Scally wag? Doug was, I 

[00:33:39] OG: do want to, uh, this many years 

[00:33:41] Joe: old when he found out that Neir do well might not be great. How often do I do? Well, na sounds like a lot. Could be a lot. I do 

[00:33:49] OG: wanna talk about the simple go-to money place where I think it’s a little bit of a trap for just a quick second.

[00:33:56] OG: You know, the old 401k or the 401k that’s at your job and you go, I’ll just take a loan for my 401k if you are being laid off from your job. You think you can go get a 401k loan, and remember that as soon as that process happens with the back office and they find out that you’re not an employee anymore, many times that loan becomes callable right then.

[00:34:17] OG: So if you say, well, I’ll just go take a, you know, 10,000, $20,000 loan outta my 401k, that’ll skate me through months and months, and then if I, you know, I’ll pay it back. The reality is, as soon as you’re not employed anymore, in most cases, that loan becomes due. Of course you’re not gonna have the money to pay it back because you’re consuming the money looking for a new job.

[00:34:37] OG: And if you don’t pay it back, then the loan becomes taxable. And of course, if you’re under 59 and a half, then it’s a penalty. So that $20,000 distribution that you thought, well, it’s just a loan, I’m gonna pay myself back turns into a $20,000 taxable event, plus another $2,000 tax bill for being pre 59 and a half.

[00:34:54] OG: So be careful on that one. That would fall into the category of like last place to take money from if I need to, could eat up over a third of the money. Uh, it was gonna be an excess of that. And then the other side of it is, is if it turns into a distribution because you left now, you don’t even have the ability to pay it back.

[00:35:12] OG: So even if you do go get a job in a month and a half and you’re like, okay, cool, I now I got this extra cash I can pay, there’s no place to pay it back to because you’re not employed at that company anymore, it’s gone. So be careful. 

[00:35:25] Joe: When it comes to loans, you know, the number one place to get money from is also the hardest place to get money from.

[00:35:32] Joe: And I can tell why a lot of people wouldn’t wanna do this. OG fr Yeah. Friends and family. I, you can say that. I was say that not, not podcast host, but friends and family because the terms are gonna be the most flexible. People are gonna understand. Things keep coming up and you can’t repay. However, I a hundred percent get it.

[00:35:54] Joe: Why you would not want to do that? Because Thanksgiving becomes very difficult. 

[00:35:59] aftershow: Yeah. 

[00:35:59] Joe: When you owe Uncle Clarence money. By the way, my great-grandfather’s name was Clarence Doug, so for all the Clarence’s out there. Yeah, good 

[00:36:06] Doug: job, Doug. 

[00:36:07] Joe: Right to Doug, not to me. 

[00:36:09] Doug: I hope he’s not offended. Your great grandfather.

[00:36:12] OG: Yeah, it’s really tough to ask for money. It’s tough to lend it, 

[00:36:15] Joe: you know, uncle Clarence would be saying if he were alive right now, Doug. Lemme outta this coffin. But anyway, 

[00:36:23] Doug: back to you, og. Like you, I could just see the joke was bubbling. You’re like, I gotta say it. I can’t, I gotta say it. OGs making a great point.

[00:36:32] Doug: You’re like, no, it’s, this is the time. I gotta say that. It’s far more important. 

[00:36:35] Joe: Far, far more 

[00:36:35] Doug: important. 

[00:36:37] OG: I was so distracted by your terrible joke that I don’t even remember what I was gonna talk about. Oh. About lending money and borrowing money from friends and 

[00:36:45] Joe: family, 

[00:36:45] OG: from Uncle Clarence. I mean, if you wanna offer it, offer it, but don’t expect to get anything back.

[00:36:51] OG: I think that’s the biggest thing. If you give money to your family, just give it to ’em. Just give it to ’em. If they pay you back the payback, 

[00:37:00] Doug: don’t. Don’t worry about it. Do you get to make the cool speech though? Nope. No speeches. Someday I’ll come asking you for a favor. Yeah, that kind of speech, or this is it.

[00:37:10] Doug: I’m giving you this $7 and 50 cents and you are never able to come back to me again. 

[00:37:15] OG: I like Joe’s approach of every Thanksgiving he asks family for money. Yes. So that they never ask him 

[00:37:20] Doug: just to make sure. Sure. We gathered you all here today. 

[00:37:22] OG: Yes. I’m just wondering, you just pull everybody aside individually, you’re like, hey, so I dunno if you heard things are really tough and you know with the kid’s gone, they can’t work and make money for the family anymore, so we gotta put that big extension on the house and now we’re to our eyeballs in debt.

[00:37:39] OG: We’re just looking for a little bit. Is there anything 

[00:37:40] Joe: we need to change the name of the podcast from Stacking Benjamins to Stacking debt? 

[00:37:45] OG: Yes. It’s getting so bad. It’s getting so bad. Is there any chance 

[00:37:49] Joe: when it comes to loans, there are several credit unions that are providing zero interest loans to federal employees.

[00:37:57] Joe: But again, last place to look is to borrow money. To try not to borrow money. Go over all the steps that OG talked about before. For example, the United States Senate Federal Credit Union offers loans of up to $5,000 for 90 days. That’s open to federal employees through various associations. The Congressional Federal Credit Union provides furlough relief loans up to $10,000.

[00:38:21] Joe: Navy Federal Credit Union sponsor VAR show up to $6,000. USAA no interest loans ranging from 500 to 6,000 for government workers facing financial difficulty. So 

[00:38:30] OG: right up to 27 K with all those that ought get. You 

[00:38:34] Joe: don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t don don’t put in your 

[00:38:36] OG: brokerage account. Yeah. Margin it.

[00:38:38] OG: Nvidia options. 

[00:38:40] Joe: Would you rather take an interest free loan or take a margin loan against your own stuff? Talk about borrowing from your 4 0 1 KOG. 

[00:38:48] OG: An interest, a 0% interest loan. Yeah, or margin versus borrowing. You can sell stuff. I would just like, yeah, sell. Don’t take a margin loan. Just sell your stuff.

[00:38:55] OG: Sell if you need to. If you need the cash. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:38:58] Joe: We will link to all of these resources at stacky Benjamins dot com and of course, we talk about topics, important topics like this in our newsletter. The 2 0 1, if you’d like to get the 2 0 1 hot and fresh every week, delivered right to your email box.

[00:39:14] Joe: Hot and fresh. Doug, that sounds 

[00:39:16] Doug: gross. I mean, yeah, that sounds gross. You has 

[00:39:19] Joe: bakeries 

[00:39:19] Doug: and 

[00:39:19] Joe: you’re 

[00:39:19] Doug: like, no, 

[00:39:20] Joe: thanks. 

[00:39:21] Doug: Well, I don’t know. You said that and I felt like, you know, steaming pile of newsletter. Oh, well, no. Hot and fresh, like, like a 

[00:39:28] Joe: bakery. The, the wonderful. 

[00:39:30] Doug: Okay. 

[00:39:31] Joe: Romans, I mean, I’ll retract my nose.

[00:39:32] Joe: Gross. You’ve seen Kevin’s work. It is amazing. Stack of Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1 gets you there. It’s always free and delivered right to your email. Time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we pivot to something far more important than helping people deal with difficult times.

[00:39:50] Joe: We look at some of the ridiculousness on the, uh, internet, on the inner webs, and we ask OG the question, are we about to see some TikTok creator, brilliance, or air quotes? Brilliance, no. 

[00:40:03] OG: Asked and answered. 

[00:40:05] Joe: I to keep putting the mic down there, this was said to us by stacker, Julia. She said, these are a couple good, uh, tips from TikTok or Mike man, EY, who has some advice on, uh, well, what not to do with your money.

[00:40:20] Joe: Let’s listen in. 

[00:40:22] TikTok: You’re the two worst financial mistakes I ever made, and this is coming from a normal person. I’m not super financially successful, but I’m also not a disconnected, rich person who’s gonna tell you well. After I sold my sixth property, then I didn’t quite get the return on the seventh property.

[00:40:36] TikTok: No, it’s nothing like that for people that are closer to my situation. You know, you have starting to have some money that you’re looking to save up or invest or whatever. These are two of the worst mistakes I ever made. Number one, sports gambling. Don’t, don’t do it. 

[00:40:48] Joe: I, I had, by the way, three to 

[00:40:50] Doug: one odds that he was gonna say Sports gamble.

[00:40:51] Doug: Didn’t he just say, don’t, don’t do it. Don’t, don’t. I think said is there is, don’t, don’t do it. 

[00:40:58] OG: Don’t, don’t do it. But if you’re gonna the six way Monday night, parlay. Okay. Don’t gamble. Okay. How not to invest. Step one, don’t gamble. 

[00:41:11] Joe: Okay. You can’t do DraftKings in Texas, which is, Nope, wild. When I went to Michigan for the Super Bowl last year, 

[00:41:20] OG: is that, is that why you run across the border three times daily from your house?

[00:41:24] OG: Like go up with your phone? Chauncey, 

[00:41:26] Doug: bill 

[00:41:26] OG: Chase, Texas. I eat breakfast 800 yards from DraftKings. Opportunities every day. 

[00:41:33] Joe: When the lions are playing at noon and 1155 mom’s like, where are you going? Out the front door? Like I gotta go half a mile east, 

[00:41:40] OG: like of, hold on a second. Hutchinson plus two and a half sacks.

[00:41:44] OG: I gotta get my bed in. 

[00:41:45] Doug: It seems like Texarkana would just be a magnet for like people migrating to Texarkana Texans. At least every Friday night, if not just permanently. So they could go gamble in our Kansas. Well, Friday night, if you can’t bet on high school football, what are you gonna 

[00:42:00] Joe: bet on? What’s the point?

[00:42:02] Joe: Come on. But all my relatives at the Super Bowl all with their phone in their hand. I’m like, what’s going on? And then they all bet on the coin flip. Yeah, they bet. On the national anthem. Yeah. They’re betting on like all, all the fanfare around the game, and it’s just, I’m watching ’em lose, lose, lose. And then who’s gonna be winning at the end of the first quarter?

[00:42:26] Joe: The commercials, like everything. Holy, holy. There’s, there’s a bunch. But, uh, back to Mike here in sports Gambling. 

[00:42:33] TikTok: The only way I can tell you it’s okay to sports gamble is if you have a healthy relationship with gambling and that is that. 

[00:42:39] Joe: Have you met this person? I have a healthy relationship. I do it a lot.

[00:42:44] Joe: Doesn’t it? Does? Doesn’t a healthy relationship need? Love and care? Yeah. 

[00:42:50] OG: Is 

[00:42:50] Joe: this 

[00:42:50] OG: post, uh, brought to us by FanDuel? 

[00:42:53] Joe: Yeah. 

[00:42:54] OG: Yeah. 

[00:42:54] Joe: Uh, so there is a second way he mentioned. I’m gonna fast forward here, and this is Mike talking about the second bad thing he did. 

[00:43:03] TikTok: The second thing is another form of gambling the.

[00:43:06] TikTok: The stock market, and I’m not telling people not to invest in the stock market. You should absolutely, if you are able to put money into the stock market, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re gonna become a day trader. That is a mistake that I made like a lot of people in 2020. I thought, oh, I’m gonna become a day trader.

[00:43:19] TikTok: I know. I know a lot about stocks, blah, blah, blah. I, I know nothing. There are people that dedicate their entire lives to studying financials, studying stocks that are still wrong all the time. If you are one of those people that is your job is to study financial reports and understand companies, then that is when like actual day trading makes sense.

[00:43:37] Joe: Nope, it still doesn’t make sense. And most people study stocks all day will tell you it still doesn’t make sense. Don’t be a day trader and don’t sports gamble. He’s just sucking the joy out of life. I know 

[00:43:50] OG: what, what else is there to do? God, 

[00:43:53] Joe: especially when I, when I’ve lost my job to the government shutdown.

[00:43:57] Joe: I was going to take a 401k loan and go on FanDuel 

[00:44:01] OG: and do the $5 slots at the Choctaw. What do you, you never know. 

[00:44:05] Joe: Yeah. By the way, thank you so much for sending that in. If you’ve got a TikTok minute for us, Stacking Benjamins, uh, Joe at Stacking Benjamins dot com, email it to me. If you know somebody who’s been affected by a layoff.

[00:44:18] Joe: Send ’em this episode. Hopefully we’re able to help them make some great money decisions because this is the time og. When you see people during a government shutdown, during a layoff, make some decisions that are gonna be life changing, either gonna be able to duct tape it together, or they’re gonna borrow money at the wrong time, they’re going to, um, not take it seriously.

[00:44:41] Joe: They’re gonna make some big mistakes and we don’t want that to happen. 

[00:44:44] OG: No sports gambling 

[00:44:45] Joe: and no sports and no sports gambling. At this point, we hand the reins over to Doug as we wisely, mostly out on the back porch. I do have a question that came up from, uh, Dennis. Dennis says, Hey Joe, this is gonna sound stupid, which by the way, Dennis OG and I have heard lots.

[00:45:02] Joe: We agree and lots of stories. We agree. This is really dumb. Sorry. You were right, Dennis. We’ve heard there is so many people preface their questions with, this is gonna sound like a dumb, it. It, this is not a dumb question that Dennis asks. Said, I’ve heard a lot of friends tell me having a financial planner is not a good mix.

[00:45:20] Joe: When you wanna focus on real estate, that just doesn’t sit well with me. Dennis owns a lot of real estate, by the way. He shared some of that with me. He said, I’d like to get your tape on it. Is there a CFP recommend for someone that’s in the stock market and wants to, or is heavily invested in real estate?

[00:45:38] Joe: Respectfully, Dennis. I think financial planner, the right financial planner and owning a lot of real estate, still goes hand in hand. Oog. 

[00:45:46] OG: I mean, there’s a lot of ways to be successful. I think you know what a good advisor does is helps you. On the path that you’re on, but then also helps to make sure that you don’t go down a path that you don’t want to go down.

[00:45:58] OG: There’s plenty of people that have been wildly successful with real estate. There’s plenty of people that have lost their, you know, whats to real estate, just like investing in the market and people that are, you know, day traders. I mean, there’s a thousand ways to be successful that doesn’t make any one way, right, and another way wrong.

[00:46:15] OG: I mean, a very clear example in our little circle is Paula versus. Me and Joe and Doug. It’s like none of us have any real estate. I know. I don’t think, Doug, have you ever had any real estate rental, real estate? 

[00:46:26] Doug: Not, not income real estate, no. 

[00:46:28] OG: Yeah, I mean, Joe and I both have, we both went, this is awful. I don’t ever wanna do this again against my advice.

[00:46:34] OG: Thank God I got, I got out, you know, even money. Right. And you know, I made a little bit, Joe, I think you made it a little bit, but if you said that to Paul, she’d be like, what are you talking about? My life is great. I got these properties, we’re making all this cash flow. It’s, you know, even inside my own 

[00:46:46] Joe: family, my son with all his 

[00:46:47] Doug: properties.

[00:46:48] Doug: Yeah, yeah, 

[00:46:49] OG: yeah, exactly. But 

[00:46:50] Doug: so, but here, here’s what I think might have happened to Dennis is I wonder if the person who said or where he heard, CFP isn’t somebody. To go to or rely on if you are heavily into real estate is assuming that CFPs are brokers like are, are largely focused on stocks and being a brokerage, which is weird to me because financial planning is this really broad term about how do you manage all regardless of income stream.

[00:47:17] Doug: It’s just how do you manage what you’ve got and, and plan for the future. Whether you’re getting it from, you know, you’ve got a one of those ride around bicycle bars around town, or you’re doing it through stocks, or why did I pick an alcohol based income stream? I don’t know, but mm-hmm. I mean, sounds good.

[00:47:34] Doug: It doesn’t matter what your income stream is. A CFP is any financial planner is really. Broadly looking at your insurances and your retirement planning and, and expenses and all kinds of stuff. So that’s just weird to me. 

[00:47:50] OG: Did I just drop the mic? Well, some people would say rudely interrupted, but yeah.

[00:47:54] OG: Okay. Sure. Um. Yeah. 

[00:47:57] Joe: Tomato, 

[00:47:57] Doug: tomato. 

[00:47:59] OG: However, however it sits with you. 

[00:48:01] Doug: Well, Joe got to interrupt with his stupid coffin joke. I interrupt with a great point, and I’m taking grief for this. I object, 

[00:48:08] Joe: not stupid. 

[00:48:09] OG: I think that our job as advisors is not to say this is the only way, but rather to say, this is the way that is good for you, and then also to challenge your thinking on what you think is.

[00:48:21] OG: The only way, right? And so if a client only invested in their 401k and brokerage account comes in and says, Hey, I think I wanna own a, you know, a three story office complex I saw online, this is gonna be really awesome. Here’s all the numbers. I don’t know that our job is to say, well, the numbers look great, go for it.

[00:48:38] OG: It’s to say, the numbers look fine. Tell me about your experience with owning commercial real estate. Tell me about how, you know, like how are you gonna structure this? Like, what do you know about this that I don’t know that you know. Um, that doesn’t mean it’s not gonna work. I just wanna make sure that you are getting all of the facts and it’s just not a numbers thing.

[00:48:56] OG: You, it’s just what good advisors 

[00:48:57] Joe: do, whether it’s this or weight management or whatever, they just, yeah. Tax 

[00:49:02] OG: advisor, anybody is just gonna go, they just challenge you, you know, Hey, I saw this online, this tax, these are my favorite ones, right? Yeah. Oh, I saw this thing online that I can just do this tax thing and I save all this money.

[00:49:12] OG: Okay. I mean, it’s kind of true. They’re missing some really key points in this, you know, scenario. But how does this, how do you think this affects you and, um, and what are we trying to accomplish here? So, um, yeah, I mean, there’s definitely a lot of CFPs. I think the right answer is, is that a good advisor will tell you if that’s not an area that can help you with, right?

[00:49:33] OG: And say, Hey, I’m not, I’m not a specialist in this, or I don’t provide any expertise here. You probably wanna find somebody who. Who has some, uh, who has some abilities here? Um, much like a much like a physician. You know, when you go to your doctor, you’re looking for specialists sometimes. I 

[00:49:48] Joe: think, I think that’s the key.

[00:49:49] Joe: Ask immediately. I own a lot of real estate. I, um, real estate is, is the center of my empire. Do you work with people like that? Yeah. And they will tell you. Especially if there’s somebody in Dennis. I a hundred percent agree with Doug. I think what the person that gave you that description, uh, was looking at were people that have specific products that they’re selling, not specifically people looking at an overall financial plan.

[00:50:15] Joe: Thanks for that question. Uh, that community wise was all we have today on the back porch. Of course, the big thing in our community. Is giving, helping out your neighbor, sharing this podcast and helping kids learn more about money to be part of the Voices for Good Charity Challenge, where we take down Joel, Matt, uh, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash Stacking hope, and we’re gonna focus more on that on Wednesday.

[00:50:38] Joe: Taking down when Karen Holland is gonna help you and your family, uh, help, help, uh, the kids in your family and in your neighborhood make better money decisions. And by the way. Her methods don’t just work with kids. She’s gonna explain, these are methods that work with all of us. It’s called the people 

[00:50:54] OG: that act like kids.

[00:50:55] Joe: It’s good. Yeah. It’s called the DIM score. She’s gonna teach us how that works. So Doug, the people who are dim y? Yes. Perfect. For Doug, which is for me the DIM score. Perfect. For Doug. Uh, Doug, what are our three takeaways? What’s on our to-do list today? Well, 

[00:51:12] Doug: I’ll see if I can figure it out, Joe. Nope. First, take some advice from today’s topic, whether it’s the government shutdown or any other struggle.

[00:51:22] Doug: Maintaining a great emergency fund is the same as a. Town building a water tower. You need to hoard just a little in case of bad times later because they’re coming. We just don’t know when. Well wait. That’s not how water tower works, Doug. That’s not what those things are up there for. Huh? I didn’t know that, Joe, because I’m Tim.

[00:51:44] Doug: Second, take some advice from our TikTok minute sports gambling. Don’t do it, I guess. I don’t know. Is that a shock? Shouldn’t do that. But the big lesson, man, how great would it have been to be Clarence Bird’s Eye? I bet he was a hit at parties. Yeah. You think you’re cool? First, this guy’s last name is Bird’s Eye and he froze vegetables for a living.

[00:52:12] Doug: What’d you do for fun today, Mr. Accountant? This show is the property of S SP podcast, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.

[00:52:38] Doug: Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:53:50] aftershow: I wanna look behind, 

[00:53:53] Joe: behind the scenes 

[00:53:54] Doug: for a moment. 

[00:53:56] Joe: Because it was awfully fun to call out Doug on the water tower. 

[00:53:59] Doug: Yeah. Despite the fact that during the writing meeting I called you out on it. But somehow I look like the dim one when we’re doing the recording. ’cause I’m reading what you wrote. Joe writes the water tower thing.

[00:54:13] Doug: I’m like, Joe, that’s not, that’s not what water towers are for. I’m like, why are they so big? 

[00:54:19] Joe: Really? Why they, our water tower’s huge. They gotta store a bunch of water. 

[00:54:24] Doug: Yeah. So if they run outta water, that tank up there is gonna supply all of Texarkana with all of their needs during a drought. 

[00:54:33] Joe: Who knew og?

[00:54:34] Joe: Who knew? 

[00:54:35] OG: What is it for? 

[00:54:36] Doug: Really, it’s, that’s what creates the water. We too. Unbelievable. 

[00:54:42] Joe: Unbelievable. That’s why it was so fun. Be, be breaking in going, Doug. That’s not how Water Tower works. It, it was so hard for me to let that happen. You taught me that an hour 

[00:54:53] Doug: ago. Water towers are what create your water pressure in the town system.

[00:55:00] Doug: That’s the only reason water towers there is they, they raise the, a certain amount of water up high to create a debt, basically to create a downforce. That’s what makes the pressure in your faucet is the tower. 

[00:55:12] Joe: Can you see a water tower now and not think about Jeff Foxworthy? Yes, the comedian. Do you know where I’m going?

[00:55:19] Joe: I mean, it’s 

[00:55:19] OG: not, hold on. You’ve heard this one. Water towers are also for surplus supply. I mean, yeah, little bit. The water blows 

[00:55:27] Doug: through there. And yeah, if you were absolutely, IGI guarantee you the mayor and the town council is getting to that water before you do. They’re not just like trickling it out to people, people.

[00:55:37] Doug: It 

[00:55:37] OG: says typical towns. Tower holds 500 to a million gallons. Enough to supply the community for several hours. See you. You go Doug, for several 

[00:55:44] Doug: hours. Turns out I was right. Okay, Joe, we’ll give you that. Unbelievable. Yet I gotta sit there and read it. Like a do is like, I have no idea.

[00:55:58] OG: I mean, I didn’t for once think that it was, it was enough to supply everybody with anything. I think it’s, I mean, I get the water pressure idea, but it’s just, just an idea. Really stupid. Just 

[00:56:08] Doug: a theory I have. 

[00:56:09] OG: No, no, I’m just saying it seems like a stupid place to store water. Like let’s store it way high in the sky, way up there instead of, instead of, you know, in the ground where it came from.

[00:56:19] OG: It’s trickled down 

[00:56:20] Joe: economics. That’s, 

[00:56:21] Doug: that’s how it works. It flows down. That was better than your Clarence joke. 

[00:56:26] Joe: Yeah. Jeff Foxworthy. The Jeff Foxworthy joke. No, you guys, no idea. You might be a redneck. That whole thing, Jeff Foxworthy had this huge, you might be a redneck if, if you’ve ever climbed a water tower in your hometown with a can of paint to defend your sister’s honor, you might be a redneck.