It’s easy to feel cynical. The news blares bad news about “them” (defined squarely as whatever group you happen to disagree with). Social media shows you the most awful people, events, and situations. Everything that happens seems to reflect that the world is becoming more distrustful, and it’s eating away at many of us. Stanford professor Dr. Jamil Zaki joins us today to give hope to cynics everywhere, by sharing data showing that we’re actually far more trustworthy as a group than you may think. He also shares the cost of cynicism, and what to do if you’re feeling particularly down about your fellow human beings. Especially with all of the negativity around the election, you’ll find today’s show is a bright spot to kick off your week!
In our headline segment, we set out to share tips on buying used cars, but instead end up in a MONSTER discussion about the efficacy of buying used at all. We talk leasing, buying new, and the many ways you can buy used cars. We review the positives and drawbacks of each approach so that you can make a more informed car-buying decision.
Of course, we also leave time for Doug’s trivia, and much more!
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Our Headlines
- How to Get a Great Deal on a Used Car – Consumer Reports (Consumer Reports)
Jamil Zaki
Big thanks to Jamil Zaki for joining us today. To learn more about Jamil Zaki, visit Jamil Zaki. Grab yourself a copy of the book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness
Doug’s Trivia
- What’s a devastating event called that happens in the financial markets which is very rare and it’s nearly impossible to see coming?
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Written by: Kevin Bailey
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Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: All right, guys, this morning just bringing the water. No caffeine. Good for you, Joe. Me too. [00:00:05] Doug: I’m bringing the water. We’re getting all water up because I’ve already had my half a pot of caffeine. [00:00:09] Joe: Oh, but your, your water has a cost associated with it. Mine is refreshing. Yours come out of a river Tap water. [00:00:15] OG: Yours [00:00:16] Joe: has [00:00:16] OG: a [00:00:16] Joe: cost. [00:00:18] OG: They don’t ship it to you for free collecting rainwater [00:00:20] Joe: these days, Joe. Well, it’s a package deal. It comes with my, with my whole tax bill. [00:00:25] OG: You know you guys don’t have water. You don’t have a water bill in Texarkana. We have a water bill. Separate water bill. It’s not part it has anything to do. [00:00:31] Taxes. [00:00:32] Joe: Okay. [00:00:33] Doug: Anyway, how you, [00:00:34] Joe: how you doing? [00:00:34] OG: Do you know anything [00:00:35] Doug: about how money works, Joe? How, what happens with money? Mine’s [00:00:38] OG: full of vodka. [00:00:40] Joe: That’s what this actually is. That’s why I disguise it in the Mickey Mouse thing. Ultra [00:00:44] OG: purified water. [00:00:45] Joe: Yeah. Look at how much vodka, OG, and I both have. It’s a bunch [00:00:47] OG: of potato juice. [00:00:49] Ferment Or potato. Yeah. Potatoes. Right? Fermented potato juice. Fermented potato juice. [00:00:54] Joe: It is Monday and we’re super happy to be here. And you know what? We’re super happy that we have members of our military that protect us on weekends, on weekdays, indiscriminately. Pick a day they’re there. So on behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union and the Men and Women Making Podcast in mom’s basement, big thanks to our troops. [00:01:12] Let’s go stack some Benjamins, shall we? Thanks everybody. Good morning, [00:01:17] bit: Christopher [00:01:17] Joe: Robin. [00:01:18] bit: Oh, good morning. Winnie the Pooh [00:01:25] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:01:39] I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and do you wanna make more money at your job? Of course you do. Well, our expert today says, stop being so cynical here to give hope to cynics and more money from your job. We welcome Stanford psychologist. Dr. Jamil Zaki Plus in our headline, feeling Cynical about the Deal, you might score on a new to you car. [00:02:02] We’ll help you navigate a better purchase with tips from a major publication plus our own. And of course, we’ll give you a second opinion on some advice found on social media. And now two guys who make Monday mornings feel so much better. It’s Joe and Oh, [00:02:28] Joe: hey there. Stackers at a happy top of the morning to you, uh, or afternoon or top of the evening whenever you’re listening to this, the day. I am Joe Sulci. Hi, average Joe Money on Twitter, and the guy across the card table all stretched out and ready to go. Mr. OG is here with us. How are you man? I, I was just about to [00:02:44] put [00:02:45] OG: my feet up. [00:02:45] How did you know? Because it is, uh, standard operating procedure because I’ve got the look. He’s the, uh, [00:02:51] Joe: ah, [00:02:52] OG: here [00:02:52] Joe: we go. Rested, relaxed, ready to bring it. You know, Doug, he just throws off phenomenal financial tips. Like it’s nothing, you know, like one of those great wide receivers in the NFL who stretch out for the pass and make it look like it’s nothing. [00:03:07] Doug: You just mixed metaphors somehow inside of football. Got no idea. Uh, how, how’d I do that? Because you’re saying he’s throwing out, but then Oh yeah. He switched immediately to receivers and he’s stretching out to catch. He’s so [00:03:19] OG: great. He can throw and catch at the same time. [00:03:22] Doug: Yeah. [00:03:23] Joe: Well, I didn’t know if you know this, but OGs a catcher a uh, [00:03:26] OG: yep. [00:03:26] You can’t even say it. You can’t even get it out. I tried. [00:03:32] Joe: Oh, it’s a great show. Dr. Jamil Zaki joining us, and if you’re cynical about what this show is all about, well, you know what? He’s gonna help you cure that. Uh, he’s our mentor. He’s gonna be here at the top of the show, so we got him waiting in the wings later on a headline, man, it’s gonna be an action packed hour, but before that, we have sponsors that make the show go so that you don’t have to pay for it. [00:03:55] It’s free because of them. They’re awesome. And here’s a couple now. Dr. Jamil Zaki is not only a Stanford professor, he is one of the top TED Talks. You have heard this guy, uh, speak about the power of optimism, of empathy. He runs the Stanford Lab on why, why do we get so cynical about stuff? He’s on his way down to the card table. [00:04:19] Now, let’s say hello to Dr. Jamil Zaki, [00:04:30] and I’m super happy. Here he is. Taking a seat at the card table. Dr. Jamil Zaki is here. How are you? I’m well thrilled to be here. Well, I’m super happy that you’re here with us. And it was also a little reassuring that the guy who studies hope, the guy who studies having more empathy, [00:04:47] Jamil: you struggle with this yourself. [00:04:49] I’ve struggled with it my entire life, and I think that there’s this stereotype that psychologists who study something or talk about something are always good at it. And that’s just not true. I know it’s not true for me. Uh, I’ve studied, as you said, empathy and kindness for 20 years, and that’s made me sort of an unofficial ambassador for humanity’s positive qualities. [00:05:10] People bring me in to talk or write for them so they can feel good about each other and about our species. But this entire time I privately struggle with cynicism. It’s sometimes hard for me to trust people or to believe in them. And I thought, wow, this is really ironic. I might as well explore why and see what we can do about it. [00:05:31] Joe: But it, it feels like, you know, a time when it’s easy though. Uh, Jamil to be cynical. I mean, you turn on the news, you turn on social media, you go out. I mean, cynicism seems to be, seems to be the smart thing. I think a lot of people think. [00:05:46] Jamil: Yeah. Well, uh, there’s two things in what you’re saying that I wanna respond to first. [00:05:50] You’re right, it’s a time of great cynicism right now. So in 1972, about half of Americans believed that most people can be trusted by 2018 that had fallen to a third of Americans, a drop as big as the stock market took during the financial collapse of 2008. So it’s a major trust deficit that we’re living through. [00:06:12] But a second point that you’re making is that it seems smart, doesn’t it? And, and it turns out that we do have this stereotype, it’s called the cynical genius illusion. That is if you describe to people, a cynic and a non cynic, and you say, tell me which one of these folks you think will be smarter. 70% of people think a cynic is smarter than a non cynic. [00:06:35] 85% of people think that cynics will be socially smart, like better able to tell who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. But the reason that we call it the cynical genius illusion. Is because most people are wrong. The, the data show clearly that actually cynics do less well on cognitive tests, for instance, and they’re worse at spotting liars than non cynics. [00:06:57] And if you think about it, that makes sense. If a person walks around with a blanket assumption that everybody is on the take only out for themselves, they’ll stop paying attention to clues that can actually show them who is trustworthy and who isn’t. And when we stop paying attention to the evidence, we stop learning from the world around us and from the people around us as well. [00:07:20] Joe: You have three statements early in this work that you make and, and I’d like our stackers to ponder these with us. And then I want to chat about these three statements. You say these three statements can help us test how cynical we kind of come to the table. The first one is, no one cares much about what happens to you. [00:07:38] The second most people dislike helping others. The third, most people are honest, chiefly through fear of getting caught. And it’s funny, as I go through the three of those, I think about me when I was younger and I think about me now and I feel like I’m becoming more cynical because early in my life I would have been, probably wouldn’t have believed any of the three of these. [00:08:01] And now I think, yeah, nobody really cares that much about what happens to me and uh, people like helping others. But it, you know, I’m kind of in the middle on there. And then, uh, people honest chiefly through fear of getting caught. I don’t believe that. I think people generally are honest, but that’s more cynical than I used to be. [00:08:17] Is that the usual? Do we get more cynical as we [00:08:19] Jamil: age? Actually it’s not, uh, typically cynicism tends to be relatively steady across our adult lives at least. But, you know, I’m actually curious from your perspective ’cause I also feel like I’ve grown a little bit more cynical over time and I think I. [00:08:35] Although it doesn’t necessarily change as we age. I think that our world is becoming more cynical and that includes a lot of us growing that way. Right. So I think it’s more a, a global trend than something that is, that occurs just because we get older. So one question that I have for you is what experiences do you think when you find your answers to these questions changing what happened? [00:08:55] You know, are there things that you draw on, sort of things that happened where you feel like, wow, that actually made it harder for me to think that most people like to help each other. For instance? [00:09:04] Joe: You know, it’s funny, I thought about this as I was reading your work and, and I think for me social media actually has a lot to do with it, and it seems like that was the case for you as well. [00:09:13] Jamil: Oh, a hundred percent. And there’s a bunch of evidence for this. So, you know, why are we growing more cynical? It’s the million dollar question, maybe the billion dollar question. Um, yeah, and there’s lots of reasons. One is that we have. It already in our mind to focus on bad things over good things. This is what psychologists call negativity bias. [00:09:37] We pay lots of attention to threats. We remember negative events in our lives much more than we pay attention to great things. And you can see why that would make sense almost from a survival perspective, right? It’s safe to ignore a sunset but not a tsunami, right? So we are tuned in this way. What has happened over the last couple hundred years is that that kind of instinct to focus on negative information has been combined with a massive media ecosystem that feeds us guess what? [00:10:09] Negative information because it’s trying to keep us hooked, trying to keep us, uh, paying attention to whatever it’s serving up. And what this produces is, is something that scientists call mean world syndrome. I. That is, the more that you watch the news, the more that you spend time on social media, the worse you think people are. [00:10:29] And you might say, well, yeah, that’s because you’re informed. And being informed is the same as realizing how terrible everything is. Right? Right. You’re no longer Pollyanna. Yeah. Yeah. But it turns out that that’s actually the opposite of the truth sometimes. One example is that people who watch lots of. [00:10:46] News and especially cable news, think that crime is on the rise. Violent crime especially, they feel like they’re in danger because if it bleeds, it leads. But if you look at FBI statistics, violent crime has been decreasing over the last 30 years or more. So here are people who are safer than we have been in past decades who feel like they’re in more danger. [00:11:10] In other words, watching lots of the, the news is actually making people systematically incorrect, less informed as opposed to more informed. [00:11:19] Joe: Wow. You draw a line between cynicism and skepticism. And when I first read this, I thought, well, that sounds like the same thing and, and you, you make this huge argument that these are not the same thing at all. [00:11:33] Being skeptical is good. Being a cynic maybe not so much. Can you explain the difference between these two? [00:11:39] Jamil: Yeah. Thanks for the chance to do that. I think this is a really important distinction. People. Lots of people like you think of cynicism and skepticism as the same. They’re actually really different. [00:11:49] Here’s how I think about it. A cynic has in their mind already a conclusion about people. People are selfish, greedy, and dishonest, and they look for evidence to support that conclusion. If somebody acts terribly, they say, aha, I wanna pay a lot of attention to that. If somebody acts kindly, they say, ah, they probably have some ulterior motive. [00:12:09] They explain it away In that way, I think a cynic is acting like a lawyer trying to defend a position. A skeptic, by contrast, acts like a scientist. They don’t start out with a blanket assumption about what people are like. They say, well, let me wait for the evidence, let me see what people are showing me. [00:12:28] And because of that, skeptics, but not cynics are able to learn much more quickly and adapt to new situations. Right. A skeptic is not a Pollyanna, as you said, they’re not somebody with rose colored glasses on. You put a skeptic at a poker table and they’re gonna look for bluffs. They’re going to compete, but they’re ready to learn and adapt. [00:12:50] And in that way, I think they’re much wiser than, uh, cynics. You know, I think that they’re not wearing rose colored glasses, but I think cynics are actually wearing mud colored glasses a lot of the time. Mm-hmm. Right. They think that they’re seeing the world as it is, but actually they’re quite biased and in a way kind of naive. [00:13:09] They’re not naively trusting people, but they’re naively distrusting people. [00:13:13] Joe: That’s interesting. I think of the, the old phrase, how the science behind what you’re talking about kind of proves this old phrase, trust but verify. Right. I hear great managers say trust but verify. That’s healthy [00:13:24] Jamil: skepticism, I suppose. [00:13:26] Absolutely. Earnest Hemingway once wrote, the best way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them, right? And, and I think this is also gets to that idea of trust, but verify. If you want to learn about the world and if you wanna learn about people, you need to take chances on them. A lot of us are nervous and re reluctant to do that because we worry about being betrayed and that makes sense. [00:13:51] Betrayal stings. It hurts. It’s awful. But oftentimes one of the problems is that we learn when we have trusted and shouldn’t have, but we never learn. When we didn’t trust and should have. Betrayal is really obvious. Missed opportunities for friendship, collaboration, love are invisible to us. So we kind of learn in this uneven way about the world and as a result, probably actually trust people too little. [00:14:19] So trusting and then using those acts of trust as opportunities to learn about people is I think a really wise strategy. In other words, to trust but verify as well. [00:14:30] Joe: You talked about how this built even on a global scale during the Cold War and the US deciding to back down nuclear weapons and you know, the hawks told, uh, the president that he was crazy. [00:14:43] And yet, because one person backed down, the other one did. I mean, talk about the ultimate act of, act [00:14:48] Jamil: of trusting people. I, I, that was an existential trust, but verify, right? I mean, this is just after the Cuban Missile Crisis, you know, kind of World War III looming kids in school being taught drills to hide under their desk if a nuclear strike occurs. [00:15:06] I mean, this was, these were bleak times. I think that these days we think about how terrible everything is and how dangerous everything feels, and forget how dangerous, literally, all of human history has been. That’s a little bit of an aside. But here in that moment, JFK makes this choice to try and deescalate, and he gives this speech at American University where he says, well, first of all, we’ve given up on peace. [00:15:30] We feel like it’s impossible, and in giving up hope, we’re actually making things worse. Can we instead lead with hope? And so he offered to deescalate this conflict. And like you said, people in his cabinet thought you are nuts. I mean, this is very dangerous behavior. But instead, Khrushchev, his counterpart in the USSR decided to play JFK’s speech around the country. [00:15:54] And mind you, at that time it was illegal to play any US radio in the USSR. And it started this active hope and trust on a global scale started this deescalation process that might have saved the world at least many, many lives. [00:16:12] Joe: Right? At first you think that’s hyperbole? No, that’s not hyperbole. But it could have, it could have saved the world. [00:16:16] Let’s bring this a lot closer to home. You’ve got this cool investing game, and of course, being a a money podcast, we need to talk about investing. You’ve got this person, let’s say it’s us and they send money to a person that we don’t know. Can you walk us through this game and how this experiment kind of worked out? [00:16:33] Jamil: Yeah. You mind if we play around a bit right now? Um, I can, let’s, let’s do it. And I can tell you exactly what I thought as I was, uh, going through it myself. Great. Okay, so this is a game played between strangers on the internet, so we’re gonna pretend like we don’t know each other and obviously like each other, right? [00:16:49] So you’re gonna pretend that you don’t know me. You start out with $10 and you’re the investor. You can choose to send those $10 over to me, in which case it will be tripled. I’m the trustee, it will be tripled in my hands to $30, and then I can make the choice of whether I want to send 15 back to you, in which case we both profit or keep it all myself, in which case you turn out to be a chump. [00:17:14] And I walk away with tons of money. By the way, we will never meet, we’ll never talk with each other. And this game is played only once. So first question to you, assuming that I’m a stranger on the internet, do you send the money or not? [00:17:28] Joe: When I was working through this, my first thought was, of course, being a former recovering financial planner, how bad do I need this money? [00:17:34] Do I right? And, and then I assumed that, okay, for this, I probably don’t need the money. And then I thought, okay, if I send you all the money, I never had any money in the first place. So I, if I send it all to you, well then that’s great. But then I thought, well, okay, I’ve got this $10 that I don’t need. You know what I’m gonna do? [00:17:51] I’m gonna meet you halfway. Mm. I’m gonna keep five. So I keep the bird in the hand and I’m gonna trust you with the other half. And at least I know I have the insurance that I didn’t trust a stranger with everything. ’cause that may seem, may be in my head a little Pollyanna. [00:18:05] Jamil: Yeah, no. And that’s what most people do. [00:18:07] Most people send about half of the money. [00:18:10] Joe: What I read that I started laughing. Most people [00:18:12] Jamil: send half. I’m like, oh, okay. Well, okay. There you go. A, a chunk of people send nothing and some people send 10. Now I wanna ask a follow up question of you. So let’s say that you sent 10, let’s say that everybody sent 10. [00:18:26] What percentage of strangers on the internet do you think would make the trustworthy choice of sending 15 back? And what percent do you think would run away with the money? [00:18:36] Joe: That was interesting because as I work through this, I thought, okay, that 10 turns into 30. And then I thought, how would I split that? [00:18:45] I would actually think that if you sent me 10, I would feel really good about that trust, so I would send more back to you because of the fact that you trusted me so much. That was my thought. It turns out that that’s actually a lot of people [00:19:00] Jamil: too. That’s true also. Yeah. So a couple of things here. One, if you ask people what percentage of trustees will be trustworthy and what percentage will cheat basically, or, or take the money, people imagine it’s about half and half. [00:19:15] If you actually send a bunch of trustees, $10, have it tripled and say, do you want to send back half or nothing? 80% of people make the trustworthy decision. So first of all, we underestimate the average person. That’s not to say that there aren’t cheaters out there. Of course there are, but most people are not like that more than we realize. [00:19:35] But second, and I think you make an excellent point here, it’s not just that we learn about people when we trust them. We also change people when we trust them, because trust, being trusted feels great, and it doesn’t just feel good. It establishes a relationship. It makes me think, wow, this person is on my side. [00:19:54] I kinda wanna be on their side too. I wanna reciprocate, and this is what economists call earned trust, that in this game, the more that you send to another person, the more they send back to you. Not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of percentage. So in other words, the return on investment. Of added trust is massive and it, it, the, the more that you trust, the more that you get ba it pays dividends in essence to trust others. [00:20:22] So two messages here. One, we’re probably not trusting enough in a lot of our interactions. And two, the more that we trust, the better that those decisions become. [00:20:32] Joe: So how do we start to work outta this trap of becoming more and more cynical? You said earlier the world’s becoming more cynical. I feel more cynical, as I mentioned earlier. [00:20:40] How do we start to work our way out? [00:20:43] Jamil: When I work on my own cynicism, I found that a few different things work super well. The first is to challenge my own cynical thinking. I call this being skeptical of cynicism, right? I mean, oftentimes I find myself mistrusting somebody who I barely have met, and I think to myself, wait a minute, Zaki, where is this coming from? [00:21:05] Yeah, it might be a instinct to protect myself, and that’s fine, that’s a natural instinct, but that doesn’t mean I have to believe it. So I challenge myself. Let’s say if you were defending this prediction that this person is untrustworthy as a scientist, what evidence would you have? And oftentimes the answer is you’d have none. [00:21:22] I have no evidence for this. I’m just, I’m just acting on instinct. And if that’s true, I say, well, why don’t you collect some more data? So I go from thinking differently to acting differently. I call this taking leaps of faith on people. And again, I’m not saying that you have to put yourself in danger or give your bank information to a prince who’s gonna wire you $14 million or anything like that, right? [00:21:44] It’s more taking, calculated small risks that can grow over time. These are ways to learn about people, but they’re also ways of putting a brick in the wall of your, in the structure of a growing relationship, right? Contributing to a connection between you and another person. And when people. Act in trustworthy ways. [00:22:04] In response to my leaps of faith, I try to really pay attention to that. I say, here’s some new evidence. Make sure that you internalize that, that you’re learning from this experience. And then the last thing that I try to do that maybe might be helpful to your listeners is to share differently. I think oftentimes it’s not just that our thoughts are cynical, it’s that our words are cynical. [00:22:26] We tend to go around giving one star Yelp reviews to life and everybody around us, right? We talk more about cheaters than we do about cooperators. We talk more about people who harm than those who help. First of all, that makes other people cynical. So we might wanna stop doing it anyways. But second, when we try to engage in what I call positive gossip, sharing the good things that we see other people doing, it also makes us notice those good things a little bit more often and a little bit more powerfully. [00:22:54] So a habit of speech can become a habit of mind. [00:22:58] Joe: I actually had a experience just this last week that brings this home. Of course, for what I do, I spend way too much time on social media because it’s part of, of my, my work here and locally here in Texarkana, Texas. Uh, Dr. Zaki, we’ve got, we’ve got this, uh, Texarkana cheers and cheer where people jump onto this forum and they either cheer some entity in town or somebody in town, or they cheer that person in town. [00:23:24] And there’s a brand new ice cream place called Andy’s that opened up. I am a little ashamed to say I go there way more often than I should. Uh, it is delightful ice cream, but, uh, not very helpful for my staying in shape. Goals. Somebody had a jeers to Andy’s last week and said, I go there all the time. [00:23:44] I’ve gone over and over and over on this one particular day. I got this horrible service. I. Another person. There were a lot of people that were, you know, jumping on and as social media does, and, and I thought, wow, Andy is really messing up. And this one person, this wonderful person, some guy, I still remember his name, his name was Ben. [00:24:03] Ben comes on and says, wait a minute. What you said was that Andy’s over and over and over has delighted you. Yep. Over and over and over and over. And this one time. They didn’t delight you, like, why focus on this one time versus focus on this whole other thing? It feels like that’s kind of what you’re talking about, [00:24:22] Jamil: and this is what our media system does as well. [00:24:25] Horrible murder occurs is a headline story. Murder rate down over a three decades span is not a story. Plane crashes is a, is a story. 60,000 planes land without crashing is not a story. Right? And, and, and wouldn’t that be a great [00:24:41] Joe: Tuesday news, by the way? Yes. Hey, [00:24:42] Jamil: in news today, 60,000 planes landed. Nobody died. [00:24:45] I, I mean, that would be a great story. It would be highly, and it would be great in that it feels good, but it would also be great in that it’s very informative and this is what I guess I’m getting at, right? It’s not just that being hopeful feels nice or makes us happy. It does. And feeling cynical is terrible for our mental health, but it’s also that it’s more accurate, right? [00:25:04] Our biases are negative. So to overcome those biases to be. More accurate to pay closer attention is to discover how much positive stuff there is out there. And exactly to your point, Andy’s has apparently served hundreds of people, thousands of times, very well. I think that we should be more open and ready to talk about those experiences and not just let them slide into our collective, uh, cognitive, uh, landfill, right? [00:25:31] We should hold onto these memories and share them that, Hey, this person was kind to me. This company is doing great. They’re serving people really well. The more that we can try to balance out what we share, the more that we can have a balanced, accurate, and more hopeful public conversation. [00:25:47] Joe: God, I love that phrase, cognitive landfill. [00:25:51] That is just, that is word poetry. That’s, that’s a great descriptor. You mentioned before we hit record, that being a cynic can cost you dearly at work. It can cost your paycheck, can cost your a relationship with people at work. Talk to me about cynicism and the workplace. [00:26:07] Jamil: Yeah. This is a huge topic and oftentimes people tell me, they say, yeah, you know, it’s not fun being a cynic, but I have to because I have to compete. [00:26:17] I gotta win out there. You know, I gotta take people down. And what they’re often referring to is professional success. And it turns out that they are not just wrong. They’re the exact opposite of right. Research on thousands and thousands of people over a 10 year span found that people who are cynical tend to have less growth in their income over a 10 year period than people who are more trusting and open. [00:26:43] So researchers ask, well, why would that be? It turns out that cynical people expect. That workplaces are kind of hyper Darwinian battle royals, where everybody has to fight and claw against everybody else to succeed, right? That you get to the top by climbing over or stepping on your colleagues. And so cynical people, as a result, try to basically win at work by being dominant, by beating other people, by outperforming people. [00:27:13] Well, it turns out that’s actually not a very good recipe for success because work far more often than being about dominating and defeating our colleagues is about being good colleagues with them, right? About cooperating and, and collaborating and sharing knowledge and perspective, and doing things together that you can’t do alone. [00:27:31] So cynics by thinking that they have to beat everybody to win, end up isolating themselves and not being part of projects and collaborations that actually allow people to rise through the ranks. [00:27:46] Joe: I think about the art of war while you’re speaking and, and how, you know, a lot of people have taken this ancient tome and they’re like, oh, that shows that the business place is like war. [00:27:55] But the most recognized line from that book is the best battles, the one you never fight. Which is, which is to, yes, to your point, if we don’t fight the battle at all, like we’re gonna, we’re gonna win. And yet we all go out there and we, we go in fighting every day to climb the court. Right? Climb the ladder, I think is this analogy about climbing over other [00:28:15] Jamil: humans? [00:28:16] Absolutely. And people are miserable in those types of settings. They don’t want to live that way, but they think they have to because they think that’s some magical recipe for success. So I hope that providing this data, this information, that actually, you know, we don’t have to live like this and we don’t have to work like this. [00:28:34] And in fact, even the goals that we have around being healthy, having good relationships, even earning more money, those goals are best served in many cases by being more collaborative, by being more trusting by building relationships instead of trying to kick people down. So I think that that’s ultimately a really hopeful message if people can take it on. [00:28:58] Joe: It’s interesting when I look at companies in the tech world, I’m thinking specifically, uh, Dr. Zaki about Microsoft. When I was a financial planner, I worked with a lot of people that worked at Microsoft. That culture that you talked about was very prevalent, at least for the people that I worked with. [00:29:12] ’cause many of them described this alpha, having to be the alpha male, alpha female, and climb over people. And I had to make, you know, my results were compared with other people’s results. And it’s funny that the stock price didn’t do much. Yep. Uh, back during those early 2000 years when it was person, eat person inside Microsoft. [00:29:29] And I look at that lately and I look at the leadership and I certainly don’t work at Microsoft and I’m, I don’t know what’s going on there, but all of the corporate speak is how we work together and how we’re unifying things. And you look at the stock price of Microsoft now, and it’s a whole different, whole different ball game. [00:29:45] Jamil: Oh yeah. I profile Microsoft in a lot of detail in the book and under the bomber era. Right. During that time. Yeah. As you said, there were things like stack ranking where each team, the manager had to choose high and low performers and reward some people and maybe lay off others. And that creates this zero sum environment. [00:30:04] And of course, it’s less fun and less mentally healthy to work in places like that. I. But it’s also true that places like that really kind of crater in terms of productivity and creativity. Because if you have to compete with the person next to you, why would you take a creative risk if you fall down? [00:30:22] If you, if you don’t succeed, well, they’re gonna be trying to get you out, right? They’re gonna be, yeah. Ever. Yeah. So you don’t wanna be creative in a situation like that. You would never want to help somebody else accomplish something because you’re helping your enemy. So things like creativity and collaboration, and of course collaboration is where a lot of creativity and new ideas come from, goes away in those settings. [00:30:43] So I think this is really important information, not just for people who work in companies, but people who lead teams and lead organizations. If you’re choosing to lead a place that is zero sum, not only are people probably gonna be unhappy and maybe leave, yeah, leave your workplace, sure. But you’re gonna lose out on all the advantages that come with good collaboration and Microsoft under na. [00:31:07] Really focused on collaboration and then reaped major rewards in terms of lots of creative new outputs. The investment in ai, of course, being central among them these days. [00:31:18] Joe: This whole topic is not only right up my alley. I love the fact that, um, well, I love being hopeful. Um, and I’m the person when I was younger, uh, Jamil, that got called Pollyanna because I, ’cause I was so positive all the time. [00:31:34] Well, you were called like what? Dr. mc Smile or Smiley Mc Smile or Yeah. Guy Smiley. Yeah. Guy Smiley. Yeah. Right. The book is called A Hope for Cynics. The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. It comes out next Tuesday and people can pre-order it now. [00:31:49] Jamil: That’s right. Everywhere books this old. [00:31:52] Joe: That’s awesome. [00:31:52] Well, thank you for being our mentor today and mentoring us on Hope over Cynicism. I super appreciate it. [00:31:58] Jamil: This has been delightful. Thanks so much for having me. [00:32:05] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and since Dr. Zaki brought up hope, I gotta say, I got lots of hope that hoping for good from people actually works. I mean, look at these neighborhood kids on the surface. Sketchy characters, right? I’m sure they got something going on in effect. I just saw ’em riding bikes outside and I’m fairly certain that’s because they think there’s gonna be a gasoline shortage soon, probably coming. [00:32:31] Anyway, let’s get to today’s trivia question. Lemme just, lemme hold on. Lemme just read this for a second. In, uh, 1895, the first electric power was generated by what? Niagara Falls. Are you kidding me? Power from water. How does that even happen? Everyone knows power comes from those ferrets on their little wheels and their underground tunnels. [00:32:52] Have you read Jules, Vern? What’s next? Power from the wind or uh, power from nuclear sources. Gimme a break. Here’s a question. Speaking of weird stuff, you can barely believe if you’re smart like me anyways. What’s a devastating event called that happens in the financial markets, which is very rare and nearly impossible to see coming? [00:33:15] I’ll be back with the answer right after I go set out more food for the aliens. It’s weird how much aliens love cat food. There gotta be a ton of them out there. [00:33:35] Hey there, stackers. I’m Texarkana based, truth figure outer and guy who’s not buying what you are selling. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug hydropower from Niagara Falls. Gimme a break. Riddle me this science nerds. If I can make electricity from water, why do they warn you not to take a bath with a toaster? Huh? [00:33:54] Huh? Although Joe’s mom told me I should go ahead and check out that theory Anyw, who? Here’s the answer to today’s trivia question, which was this. What’s a disastrous event in the financial markets called that is so rare, it’s nearly impossible to see coming and it probably won’t happen again. They call that a black swan event. [00:34:15] And now let’s give some hope for more financial tips. And I don’t know, I’m watching you guys closely. Here’s Joe and og. [00:34:26] Joe: Big thanks to Jamil Zaki and um, uh, Doug. You might wanna dig into the Encyclopedia Britannica mom has upstairs for some tips. Old school [00:34:36] Doug: from 1974. [00:34:38] Joe: Oh yeah. [00:34:39] Doug: None of those things are accurate anymore. [00:34:42] It’s, [00:34:42] Joe: and they weigh 7,000 pounds. Like does any, does any living room still have those besides mom? Should I answer that? [00:34:51] Doug: I thought I was talking to you. What the, I was just sort of waiting for Josh to chime in. I was like, [00:34:57] OG: you guys are having a conversation. I’m texting, so I, there’s this long silence. I’m like, I’m replaying it back of my head going, I didn’t hear an OG part in there. [00:35:07] Doug: I dunno. Uh, I was also thinking, Joe, that as we were cleaning out some stuff in Birmingham, we have this bookshelf, the bottom two shelves are those National Geographic holders where when you got an, uh, monthly. You know, copy, and you put it right in the holder, you put it in, and then the back of it looks like a beautiful leather bound. [00:35:26] Yeah. It’s like National Geographic, January through June of 96. Yeah. I’ve got like four or five years of those. But, uh, closest thing I’ve got to a National Geographic, you know why it’s better than Encyclopedia Britannica. Nude Pygmies. That’s [00:35:44] Joe: big thanks to Dr. Jami Zaki. I love the idea of, uh, trust but verify, uh, skepticism. [00:35:52] OG wins every day. Yes. Going new. It is that right? But cynicism, oh. Where you compare yourself to others and you just cynical about stuff. It’s, it’s amazing how often those people fall for every conspiracy theory and end up doing no homework. And they’re the ones with the truth. And the more that you tell them that they’re from outer space and they’re like, Nope, I know the truth, and nobody else does. [00:36:16] bit: Hmm. [00:36:16] Joe: Gets super, super scary. Good stuff from Jimmy Ozaki. On that note, let’s do Doug, what you said and give people some hope about their financial future. Our headline today comes to us Opium from Consumer Reports. How long has it been since we’ve done a Consumer Reports headline, but I like this. They know they were still in [00:36:33] Doug: business. [00:36:33] I was gonna say, [00:36:34] Joe: yeah. Uh, get a great deal on a pre-owned car. We even talked about buying cars lately on here. So I thought it was the perfect time to kind of dust off this topic because a lot of people out there in the market for a new to me car, this is written by Benjamin Preston. Benjamin writes, now’s the time to buy used auto, but where to go and which cars to look for. [00:36:53] Find out here. He makes a great point that, um, as used car prices now are coming back down after, if you guys remember during the supply chain chaos that happened around the pandemic, used car prices went through the roof. Well now we’re starting to see them come back to real life numbers. But if you wanna get a great deal, they make a great point OG in this piece, which is, you know, so should I buy from a dealer? [00:37:20] Should I buy from like a third party non-certified dealer, just like one of these used car lots or a Carvana type thing, or should I buy from an individual? This piece goes over all three of those, but I think we all kind of have a bias of where we prefer to buy our car. Where do you prefer to buy yours? [00:37:39] From people from, uh, [00:37:41] OG: are you talking to me? Yeah. Uh, where do I prefer to buy my cars from? Usually I have a nice little chat with the, uh, sales person, pull out the catalog. I go, I want this interior with this, uh, paint scheme, these options. [00:37:55] Doug: Unbelievable. [00:37:56] OG: And, uh, just ship it from Germany sometime in the next six months and I’ll pay full price. [00:37:59] ’cause I don’t really give a shit. You buy your used car from a factory, [00:38:03] Joe: it’s got like one mile on it. It gets [00:38:04] OG: so dirty. They have to clean it before they deliver it. I make them drive it in reverse before they give it to me. Put plastic on the seats, get that [00:38:10] Joe: mile off me. [00:38:11] OG: Uh, the last car that I bought was, uh, actually I bought two, but the two most recent cars, one was a private sale actually, from my brother. [00:38:19] So that was a pretty easy transaction. And then after my son wrecked that one a few months into the deal, we got him another one. And that was off the lot, you know, kind of the used car place. We searched for it online and, and, and kind of found what we wanted. But what’s really interesting with that is after you account for the out-of-pocket cost to pay cash. [00:38:37] And all of the costs associated with taking it into the shop and going, all right, this is a used car. I recognize that I’m okay with the fact that it’s used. So now we need to make some tuneups, right? It has to get an oil change. It has to, oh look, the bearings are screwed up, or you know, whatever. It would’ve been easier for me just to lease him a brand new Honda Civic for two 50 a month for the next three years or four years, like I would be out of pocket, way less money. [00:39:02] I mean, this was just six, eight months ago, and we bought a used, I mean, the car was 9,000 bucks, and then obviously taxes, and then all the stuff on top of it. So, I don’t know. I feel like maybe in the long run this even’s out, but I don’t know. Doug, you and I have talked about this before. We both had the same car. [00:39:20] Not the same car, but Right, right. The same model of car [00:39:22] Doug: experience. [00:39:23] OG: And we both had similar experiences. It ran great for a while and then when it went bad, it went bad to the tune of five grand every few months. Every time it’s five grand. And it’s like, I get the whole idea of buying used. You save money, but how many times do you stroke a check for five grand before you go? [00:39:37] Well, damn it, I could have just, I mean, if my, if my repair budget’s 5,000 bucks a year on my car. Can’t I just get a freaking car payment for $400 a month and I Right. Probably don’t have to have a repair bill. It’s brand new unless I wreck it. [00:39:50] Joe: I think like anything, like in your financial plan, it, it definitely depends on your usage, right? [00:39:55] Like, you know, people start with product, am I going to lease? ’cause I think it’s best. Am I gonna, well, how, how the hell are you gonna use this thing? Yeah. Because based on how you use it, like for me to lease a car that sits all day. [00:40:08] Doug: Yeah. [00:40:08] Joe: And I drive it, you know, 15 miles a month would be stupid. [00:40:13] Doug: Which, which your community is thankful for, by the way. [00:40:15] Joe: It’d be absolutely ridiculous. But if my job is in real estate and I’m hauling around people that need, you know, that wanna get this great experience, me not leasing a car is stupid because yeah, I’m gonna need a new car all the time. It’s part of my job. I’m taking people from point A to point B, they judge me on my car. [00:40:33] I mean, study after study shows that leasing is by far, by far the least economical way to purchase your vehicle. By a long stretch. I mean that’s, yeah. Unless, [00:40:42] OG: unless it’s not right. Yeah. It’s like in those once and for the right people, to your point about what the tool is, I, again, I’ve got a friend who is a professional and kind of the same deal. [00:40:54] And I, and I remember asking him one time, I said, why do you always drive Cadillacs and not, why don’t you, I mean you get the money. Why don’t you get a BMW? Why don’t you? He says, no, nope. I’ll drive the nicest Cadillac that they make. You know, within reason I’m not gonna get the, whatever, the souped up 200,001, but a nice Cadillac because the community that I’m in, that is the model of success, you know, working class. [00:41:15] And he’s a professional, he is a professional service business and is like, I need to have that elevated status. But if I show up in a Mercedes that’s like, oh, here comes the big guy in the Mercedes. Versus like, oh, I know that he’s successful ’cause he’s driving the nice Cadillac. Yeah. And uh, he drives like crazy and every 30 months he gets a brand new car and he’s got the relationship with the dealer. [00:41:38] That they call ’em and go, Hey, we know it’s been 27 months. You’re probably getting really close. What you know, what mile are you at? Come on in and we’ll, we’ll sell you one. Yeah. [00:41:46] Doug: Joe, I want to, I want to challenge you a little bit when you said our study after study shows that leasing is is not the way to go. [00:41:54] It’s challenge you and then rewind a little further back to when OG said that we had a similar experience. There is a point in a used car ownership where you start hitting those three to $5,000 repairs, whether it’s you need new head gaskets or transmission issues, you know, some of the big stuff you think to yourself, I’m driving this thing till I, you know, till I drive it into the ground. [00:42:17] You never really know where that point is ’cause you think the first time that four or $5,000 repair happens, you think that’s, it’s an anomaly. It’s a black swan event and there’s not gonna be another one of those. And yet within. Six to 12 months, you’re probably gonna have another one of those, and you have to start thinking to yourself and doing the math. [00:42:37] You may have another but [00:42:38] Joe: one of those. You may have another one. I’ve had it happen at two vehicles. I’ve had this of mine sitting here forever. I haven’t had those. It depends on how much you drive it. A hundred percent. Depends on how much you drive. If you’re driving a car all the time, long distances, you’re using it to drive long distances. [00:42:54] I don’t do that, but the chance of me having two of those $5,000 repair bills [00:42:58] Doug: in one year. Not happening happen, but even if it happens once a year or once every 18 months, because we had, it wasn’t super regular, but leasing is better, then what happened? Here’s where I’m going. You just have to do the math and look at what’s the total cost of ownership in a given year or in a given time period and in a, in a time period of a three year lease. [00:43:17] And you do that math, how much is, is my downstroke to get into it and what’s my monthly, and if you need a basic ish transportation for your teenage kid or even for yourself, and you can get a lease payment for a couple hundred bucks a, a month and you, or maybe 3, 3 50 and you multiply that times 36 versus how many repairs to this 2005 Chevy Traverse can I do? [00:43:40] They didn’t make ’em in oh five. Okay. Oh nine pedantic listeners out there. Uh, how many repairs can I do for that same amount of money made? But, but it’s not that difficult to do the math to realize I might be better off doing the lease. [00:43:56] OG: And the problem is, it’s twofold. One, you can’t predict the future. [00:43:59] So yeah, you do write that 5,000 check and there’s no guarantee to Joe’s point that you’re gonna be on the hook for any amount in the future of any substance. Right? That could have solved the problem and you’re good for another seven years. Or to your point, Doug, it can happen three weeks later. It’s like, oh yeah, the such and such a thing broke and you need a new blinker fluid. [00:44:18] And then the other piece of this is the difference in the insurance cost between, okay, you said it, brand new just is what it is, man, embrace it. Insurance, insurance costs between brand new and used and who’s driving the vehicle, you know, relative to their, their experience and that sort of thing. And we’re seeing across the country, Texas is one of those states where car insurance prices is, I mean, it’s flipping crazy. [00:44:41] Yeah. And the only thing that gives me a little solace in the second car purchase decision is the fact that I know that the car insurance would be profoundly more to ensure a brand new lots of tech in it. A vehicle where the primary driver is a 17-year-old boy, you know, it’s, that’s gonna cost a lot more. [00:45:01] You know, the other thing that’s really interesting, so I saw two things about this relative to transportation in the last couple of days. The first one was a real estate pro. It was on YouTube, one of those YouTube shorts. Uh, Joe, to kinda your point about, you know, if you’re a YouTube guy or if you’re a real estate guy, I mean, and he said that he figured out how much he would save by hiring a driver and buying a, you know, a luxury SUV. [00:45:23] ’cause he had to drive people around New York City and hiring a professional driver. And he was like, while that guy’s driving, I can be making sales calls and can I sell this many more condos or this many more houses to afford? He said, the year that I did it, I knew I needed to sell three more houses. [00:45:41] You know, my average price. I need to sell three more to afford the car. And the driver, he goes, that year I sold 30 more. He goes, and I attribute it directly to the fact that I was not stuck in traffic. Doing nothing in New York City. Now that’s different for different people. So, you know, that’s an interesting thought on, uh, on transportation also. [00:45:58] But [00:45:58] Joe: that’s also a hundred percent why you start off with your usage. Yeah, it’s a hundred percent why you start off with your usage. How are you gonna use this car? Yeah. I wonder [00:46:04] OG: like Uber, like my kids have to go to school, right? And we were talking about my son and driving my son back and forth, or he’s driving himself. [00:46:11] I wonder how much the Uber costs would be to like literally have Uber Black show up, you know, pro driver in a nice SUV, pick up my kids at seven 30 every morning, drop ’em off, pick ’em up at three 15, drop ’em off every single day. Would that be less expensive? I know Doug’s going, look at the pompous ass of this guy. [00:46:30] Yeah. Only OG would would that be than, than $10,000 plus a whole bunch of maintenance and gas and insurance. Insurance cost. Sorry. Thank you. How much does it cost to have insurance for my kid and gas and you know what I mean? Like that’s a lot of Uber. All the cost of the vehicle. Yeah. [00:46:46] Doug: That’s a discussion. [00:46:47] I would entertain over a couple of cocktails. I was totally out when you first brought that up, but then when you started adding in those other extraneous costs, like damn, he might be Right. [00:46:57] Joe: Well, this is the thing. That’s a great point because Uber drivers, we’ve said this before and I’ve had people write me because they’re angry. [00:47:03] Dr. Juliet Shore, on the show, it talks about most Uber drivers, Doug talks about the math and how easy it is. They do flawed math. They don’t do enough math to understand what the true cost of that vehicle is. The wear and tear on the vehicle, the fuel costs. All of the costs associated with the vehicle that go into it, they just go, oh, I’m getting a check from Uber because I’m taking these people on a ride. [00:47:24] I get X percentage of the MM-Hmm, of the rides that I get, and I compare that to my gas price. Bam. That’s not all you compare it to. You definitely have to do more comparison when it comes to a lease, you know? The only math a ton of people do when it comes to a lease is I was gonna pay 500 a month if I was gonna buy this thing. [00:47:42] And instead I’m paying $300 a month because I lease it. And so that’s much better. Well, there’s no equity in the car. Equity in the car may not be a ton if you’re gonna quote driving in the ground like Doug says. But there is equity in the car if you plan to sell it later, number one. Number two is the restrictions on mileage that you have that come with any lease that are gonna tie you to either park it in the garage for a portion of that lease to make sure that they can resell it because they’re looking to get resale on their end. [00:48:09] I mean, the reason companies lease cars is because the math is stacked in their favor for them to lease a car to you. There’s even more reasons why a lease doesn’t make sense for a ton of people beyond mileage restrictions and and equity. If your situation changes partway through and now you weren’t going to drive. [00:48:28] I mean, the average person we talked about a couple weeks ago changes jobs every 4.2 years. Their usage is going to change the contract clauses restrictions that are on it. I don’t know. I think you gotta be much more careful about the math before going, you know what? Lease is right for me, [00:48:44] OG: I’ve done both the car that I own now. [00:48:47] I bought outright and paying it on payments and nice low interest rate of 0.9 way back when. So. I’m happy with that. The car that I had before I leased and about six months into it I was like, I’m so glad I’m leasing this car. ’cause I freaking hate it and I cannot wait to get rid of it. It was 30 months lease. [00:49:07] That’s the, [00:49:07] Joe: I mean, truly the upside is you are gonna have a new car every three years. [00:49:10] OG: Yes. And I mean, that’s the upside. I cannot wait to get rid of this thing. It was just not what I, what I wanted it to be. So I was just so thankful that I did at that time. [00:49:18] Joe: Yeah. Working in Detroit where there’s a lot of car people that love a new car. [00:49:23] I mean, they are car people. [00:49:24] OG: Yeah. [00:49:25] Joe: And they understand that. You know what, it’s not a financial move, it’s a lifestyle move. It’s what I wanna do. Yeah. I want a new car every three years. I’m in the car industry. I’m in Detroit, Michigan. Yeah. I love my car. Yeah. Okay. Well then it’s a cost of doing the thing that you love. [00:49:42] Doug: By the way, I just did the math og. Uh, 8,400 bucks a year minimum for you to shuttle from your house to kids school and back. [00:49:52] OG: Did you price that out on Uber? How did you get that? I did. I priced it out on Uber. How do you know where I live and what, where my kids go to school creep. [00:50:00] Doug: I have, [00:50:01] OG: I have ways I have mos. [00:50:02] Okay. Weirdo. Just a cool hun to get that done. Is that your panel van? But you know what? Freaking car insurance is 12,000 bucks for our three cars. I dunno how much of that is attributed to Alex, but yeah, I bet it’s pretty close. I bet it, especially this year where we had a lot of out-of-pocket costs associated with the thing, with the uh, with the [00:50:21] Joe: car. [00:50:22] Let’s quickly go through used cars because that’s what we promised people at the top of this segment. We haven’t done that. Im gonna ask you guys, I’m gonna ask you guys pros and cons for these three ways to buy your used car. And we, and we will go through this ’cause people wanted this and we promise this at the beginning, buying from a person, what do you think the pro is of buying a used car from, from just an individual. [00:50:42] Doug: I’ll say you’re not paying [00:50:43] Joe: any dealer overhead. A hundred percent Doug. Even better than that, probably they haven’t priced out the market either. You’re more likely to find the lowest price if you go through individual. Some individuals are gonna love their car and think that it’s the best thing, but if you do enough homework, you are going to probably score the lowest price vehicle, especially if it’s an older, high mileage vehicle. [00:51:04] So what you’re talking about, you know, car for your son? Mm-Hmm. And you’re buying a high mileage vehicle. Probably be the cons. Limited financing options. I think OG you were talking about, uh, you know, just the different cost associated with a used car versus a new one. Uh, very limited when you’re buying it from a person. [00:51:19] And to Doug’s point, more potential for mechanical problems, particularly if it’s older than 10 years and has more than a hundred thousand miles on it. The, um, buying from an independent dealer like a CarMax, Carvana or your local used car lot, the pro, what do you think the upside is? [00:51:37] OG: Hmm. I think the pro might be, you’re more likely to get a good deal because they want high volume turnover. [00:51:46] If that’s their business, especially if it’s a, uh, now that it wouldn’t be branded, that would be, that would be more of a big dealership type thing. [00:51:53] Joe: But that is a pro, they list your og, which is, I was gonna [00:51:56] OG: say low margins, high turnover. Yeah. So they wanna flip stuff over pretty quick. [00:51:59] Joe: Yeah. You’re gonna have lower prices than the manufacturer’s dealership. [00:52:03] A hundred percent. It says here, and that’s the pro versus the dealership, which is what we’ll go to next. The pro against the individual is you do have a money back return, like if you buy Yeah. There’s some [00:52:15] OG: sort of, some sort of warranty short term. Yeah. [00:52:17] Joe: There’s a lot of times there’s a hundred day or a, or a 4,000 mile warranty. [00:52:21] Right. One of these warranties that you’re, we’re gonna stand behind the car. A little bit, but the con there again, is they lack the manufacturer backing. So if you purchase a problem car in-house financing could be super expensive. And then buying the certified car at the brand dealership certified pre-owned vehicles [00:52:42] OG: upside. [00:52:42] Yeah. I mean that’s the biggest upside, right? Is that somebody somewhere has signed off on the fact that this meets some standard according to someone somewhere. [00:52:52] Joe: Yeah, tons and tons of checks. Lots and lots of warranty protection on the certified pre-owned. The cons are paying extra for the CPO might not be worth it. [00:53:01] And to your point, it even says in this piece, guys buying the car new might be a better option than the certified pre-owned. When you take out the, how much closer it is to needing maintenance, it might be a better deal. So you definitely to Doug’s point, have to do the math when you’re looking at that certified pre-owned warranty. [00:53:18] I like using TrueCar when I make purchases. That TrueCar service is pretty damn cool. That’s to compare new cars. Mm-Hmm. That’ll be a different segment. [00:53:24] OG: Kelly Blue book for used cars. Free site still. [00:53:27] Joe: Yeah. There’s a lot. There’s a a lot out there by the way. Great cars to buy used if you’re buying a luxury compact. [00:53:32] SUV Doug io. You’re in the market for one of those 2021 Lexus nx it says is their favorite consumer reports. If you’re buying a sports car used their favorite’s. The 2021 Mazda EX five Miata. [00:53:46] OG: The no one’s buying a Miata. Come on. [00:53:49] Doug: I thought you said sports car. I know. [00:53:50] OG: Yeah. [00:53:50] bit: Sports Car, chick Magnet Mazda Miata. [00:53:54] Um, my name is Greg and uh, I’m an alcoholic. [00:53:58] Jamil: Hi [00:53:58] bit: Greg. One fateful night I, uh, got behind the wheel of my brand new sports car. Blind drunk. I was responsible for the death of an innocent 8-year-old girl. What kind, what, what kind of car? You said he had a sports car. That’s cool. But what kind? It was a Miata. [00:54:15] Oh, come on. That’s not a sports car. How, how does that even kill a kid? Why’d, what’d you hit her over the head with it? That’s a legitimate sports car. Nope. Next, [00:54:27] did you, [00:54:31] OG: how did she even kill her? [00:54:34] Joe: Their favorite mid-size car. 2021 Toyota Camry. And then, uh, if you’re going to get it certified, pre-owned and their favorite mid-size car is. They don’t have one. [00:54:45] Doug: It’s all luxury. Uh, their favorite certified. ’cause that market, mid-size car is dead. There’s nothing there left anymore. [00:54:51] OG: That’s right. Their favorite [00:54:52] Doug: certified pre-owned Malibu [00:54:53] OG: from 2012. Luxury [00:54:55] Joe: Compact. SUV is the 2021 Porsche. Porsche McCan. McCan McCann. Macon McCann, I think. [00:55:03] Doug: Yeah, [00:55:03] Joe: I don’t know. Or Mercedes Benz class. Yeah. When I’m going certified pre-owned, I’m going with the Mercedes E class. [00:55:09] Doug: That’s one of the other, we didn’t dive into it too much, but a little bit. [00:55:12] But that is one of the benefits of going to a manufacturer’s dealership is that to get a CPO, you know that car’s been gone over many times by, by people who know those parts and know, oh, those bushings are starting to wear, we better repair those. So that’s, uh, you’re gonna pay more for a CPO, but that is an upside. [00:55:29] Joe: What I love about this segment, guys, is that while you’ll see in online forums all the time that you know what buy used all the time, and that’s clearly the winner. You guys definitely brought it today with, eh, maybe, maybe not. Nope. Maybe, maybe not. It is time for us to dig into some of the fantastic stuff that we have seen on the internet, which always has phenomenal financial advice. [00:55:51] I was at a site and I’m not going to, uh, tell you what it is to protect the guilty, and I’m in a internet forum and someone named Dana asks, what are your thoughts on getting a revocable trust? We had Tim Ro on last week talked about this topic, so I’m like, oh, this is cool. We just addressed this and the person asked. [00:56:13] Pros and cons. Ann writes, for goodness sake, please do not make a family member of the trustee a point to professional, licensed fiduciary to do the job. My mom appointed my brother as her trustee in three and a half years after death. I’m still fighting him in court, trying to make him do his job As a trustee, I’ve spent more money on attorney fees than my parents spent to send me to college. [00:56:32] So please, please, please do not appoint a family member as a trustee. I see many posts here about family members battling other family members in court over trust. I thought, guys, this would be a great, great post to give Dana [00:56:48] bit: a second opinion. [00:56:52] Joe: og, do you like that? og? Why don’t you give her a [00:56:58] bit: second opinion? [00:57:00] OG: Oh, that’s so corny, so great. By corny you mean great. Yeah, those words are synonymous. Um, for sure. Second, opinion about a revocable trust, but not leaving a, a kid. Why don’t you just make sure your revocable trust has language in it that says if you argue with the trustee, you don’t get anything. How about that problem? [00:57:19] Well, wait a minute, but the trustee is not following the trust and this woman’s problem. Well, according to Anne, yeah. But maybe, maybe Anne just doesn’t like what mom and dad wrote down in the trust. That’s the problem. There’s always gonna be some unhappy campers anytime there’s money involved. I remember when my grandparents died, both sets of them on both sides of the family. [00:57:40] There were literally two things that I thought, like somebody asked, Hey, is there anything from grandma, grandma, you know that? And I said, oh, you know, I’d like that. Like if I’m getting asked, right? I’m a grandkid. There’s a lot of them. I’ll take this if it’s available. Oh no, aunt, so who’s took all those? [00:57:57] I’m like, okay. I mean, it’s like all this stuff. Like I’ve never seen a situation that’s gone smoothly. Have you, have you seen any sort of situation where someone passed away and all the money got distributed the way it was supposed to? Nobody belly ached about anything. All the property and everything was just like, do, do, do, do. [00:58:15] All was all was well. I’d say seven times outta 10 there. Somebody’s complaining somebody’s mad about something. I mean, how many stories do we have about Aretha Franklin going, well, no, this is my latest. I mean, there’s always somebody that’s got a different angle for whatever reason. And, and when it comes to money, especially any sizable amounts of it, it changes how you think about stuff. [00:58:36] Joe: This is what frustrated me, uh, OG about Anne’s point. The number of times I’ve seen a whole family have to go to court against a third party trustee is even fricking worse. Like it is, it is worse. Like I’ve seen these, there was a independent third party trustees just, [00:58:52] OG: ugh. Yeah, there was a huge story in Dallas and I think it was the widow of like an American airline, CEOA long time ago or something. [00:59:01] It was some sort of very, very, very large estate. That basically I, and I don’t remember all the details, but the article was so well written. It was in Texas monthly some years ago. But basically the story was the trustees were Chase Bank and they had three trustees, and this is a hundreds of millions of dollars of an estate. [00:59:22] They basically conspired the three trustees at, you know, corporate trustees at, at chase conspired to make sure that mom and the kids always fought. That was their, they basically were like, if we can keep these guys fighting, we get to keep the money and collect our fees on this money. ’cause as soon as they stop fighting and we distribute it all, there’s no guarantee that money stays here. [00:59:45] And so it lasted for like 15 years until finally one of the kids was like, wait a second, what, what’s going on here? And pieced it all together and then got all the correspondence and filed a lawsuit. They all, all the family basically teamed up and said, we’re not dealing with this anymore. We’re going to. [01:00:01] Take our own third party to kind of go after Chase on this and they uncovered this whole conspiracy. Finally got it [01:00:05] Joe: together as a family. [01:00:07] OG: Yeah. I mean it was awful. Yeah. The downside of the personal trustee being a family member is basically, like she said, there’s no guarantee that person has any experience with money. [01:00:16] No guarantee that person has any interest in doing the job, that they’ll do it. Well, there’s a lot of, a lot of opportunities there. A different solution there would be to make it a team of three, so you only need two votes so that that could work. The downside of a corporate trustee is that everything is gonna be followed letter of the law, and if there is no solution to letter of the, you know, in the trust, then they have to go to court to figure it out. [01:00:45] Guess who pays the, the bill when the trustees have to go to court to get clarification, the trust does, they don’t pay the bill. They don’t care, you know. And it doesn’t, it’s not free to have a corporate trustee. There’s pretty healthy fees associated with corporate trusts. Uh, corporate trustees, way more even when gets fee fee, people talking, good Lord. [01:01:04] Go find out how much it costs to have your corporate trust or a corporate trustee of your trust. Uh, you think you’re, you think Vanguard hosted you on going from 0.03 to 0.04? Wait until you find out that, uh, you know, Chase’s corporate trust department charges two and a half. [01:01:19] Joe: Yeah. I thought this is very much, you know, across the board it was very much a case of aware what you wish for here, because this woman is saying that it’s, Ann is saying it’s better, you know, the grass is greener the grass, it’s different grass. [01:01:30] But man, these, uh, these professional organizations will drag their feet to keep those fees coming in. I mean, they exist to keep the fee coming in. That’s why they exist. [01:01:38] OG: Yeah, a hundred percent. And there’s, there’s no right way. What we have in our trust, we have two members of our family, plus I. [01:01:47] Independent third party trustee. That’s the law firm that wrote the trust. Yeah. So it doesn’t have to be a person. You can make it, in this case, the law firm. So the law firm’s not in charge. The law firm is meant to break ties and they’re not gonna break ties based on, eh, I kind of side with Bill on this one, or I kind of side with Ann on this one. [01:02:06] No, no, no. They’re there to interpret what the document says and say, here’s our legal opinion of what should happen next, and therefore we’re with Bill on this because they’re on the hook. Right. Love that. Yeah. If they don’t do it, then Anne does have a legal case to come back and go, Hey, this is what the document says. [01:02:24] So it can’t just be one person who who holds it up in, in our case. And I think that’s the best of the. Of the worst situation, so to speak. And if the law firm has to get involved, guess what happens? They bill the trust and guess who doesn’t like it? They trust getting billed the people who are the trustees, because guess what that means? [01:02:42] They have less money in the trust. Yeah. The beneficiaries don’t like it either. Yeah. Well, and a lot of times the beneficiaries of the trust are sometimes also trustees. Sure. But you get the idea, right? There’s a built-in incentive structure of we’ve got two of us to agree. We just have to read the document. [01:02:57] And we might not, we might not agree with what mom and dad decided to do here, but it’s what they decided and we just have to do what the document says. It’s a different thing. In her case, if her brother’s not doing anything, that’s frustrating. [01:03:10] Joe: Yeah. I think this goes back to the, also the discussion that we had with Tim. [01:03:13] You gotta find the right person. Yeah, you have to find the right person because in the two cases in my family where this happened, it was pure it. It was just not the right person. There were people that wanted to try to make everybody happy versus do what it says in the document. All you have to do is do what it says. [01:03:28] You have one job, do what it says in the document instead. Yeah. Listen to, too many people took on way too much stuff. One of the two family drama people just knew nothing about finance at all, and so she was just struggling with basic constructs of, what’s my job? Mm-Hmm. If she would’ve had the law firm to help her, that would’ve been better for everybody. [01:03:45] Would’ve saved everybody time and energy and been been much better. [01:03:49] OG: You know, where I see a lot of problems happen over my career, it’s where the distribution schedule is not the way that the beneficiary wants it to be, and they blame that on the trustee and there’s quite often a very good reason why mom and dad. [01:04:05] You know, our grandma and grandpa made the distribution schedule the way that they did. They didn’t say, Hey, here’s all the money. What’s funny is that the beneficiary is like, well, I, I need this. And then the trustee is the one who decides whether or not that’s legit. It’s like, well, no, there’s no provision for Lamborghini in your, and you know, mom and dad didn’t give you money for that. [01:04:24] They gave you money for healthcare expenses and to go to college. Like what? New stereo equipment. And then they get mad. They’re like, well, no, mom wanted me to have this money. She said, you know, or whatever. And they get mad at the trustee. It, to your point, the trustees pretty agno should be pretty agnostic, right? [01:04:40] It’s like it says right here, sub chapter six, health, education, maintenance, and support. Those are the options. Where do I put Lamborghini in those categories? I’m not going to jail because you bought a Lamborghini with mom and dad money. We played a clip last Wednesday. People need to go [01:04:57] Joe: back if you’re interested in this topic. [01:04:59] Go back and listen to the entire episode with Tim Ro. But, but we played a clip from Always Sunny in Philadelphia and they’re all yelling at the attorney, and the attorney keeps saying, I’m reading somebody else’s words. Don’t get mad are me. [01:05:11] OG: Don’t get mad at me. Yeah, I’m just happy that there’s an estate plan there because the alternative is taxes or penalties or the court getting involved may not be the way that she wants it to happen, but there’s remedies for that as well. [01:05:26] Joe: If you’ve got a question better place than going to an online forum and, uh, getting 81 answers to your questions, all of which make you more confused, just Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail. Get one [01:05:38] OG: right one by coming here [01:05:40] Joe: and we will give you a [01:05:42] OG: second opinion. It’s awesome. [01:05:46] Doug: Doug. Very quick back porch. [01:05:48] We got anything today other than me cracking a beer? I think probably, uh, time to say last call for Minnesota, right? Yeah. For your, uh, gig at the standup comedy club in Minnesota. Well, not standup comedy [01:05:58] Joe: club. You could hang out and have a beer with me though, and maybe we’ll crack a few jokes. But in three days, I will be in Minneapolis, in a, uh, town called Stillwater, just south of Minneapolis at Red Siren. [01:06:11] Come join me, my son, Nick, a bunch of, uh, stackers and people that are interested in the fire movement because we’re headed to Camp five the next day. So lots of us getting together in Minneapolis. If you’re gonna be in the area, stacky Benjamins dot com slash uh, meetup stacky Benjamins dot com slash meet. [01:06:28] Yeah, [01:06:28] Doug: give us a date and time real quick in case people aren’t listening on the day this gets put out. It’s be [01:06:32] Joe: Thursday, August 29th, 1994. No, 2002, oh crap. 2024 and, uh, six 30 River Siren in Stillwater Min, Minnesota, Minnesota. Come join us. I think, uh, that’s it. Doug. Looking at the time, we probably gotta get us some credits. [01:06:50] What is, uh. What’s cooking? What should we have learned on today’s episode? [01:06:55] Doug: Time to wrap it up first, take some advice from Dr. Zaki rather than compare yourself to others and become cynical. Chart your own path and trusted that people generally wanna be the best with some healthy skepticism. Of course. [01:07:10] Second, buying a used car. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of who you’re buying from so you make the best purchase possible. While individual buyers may save you some Benjamins up front, buying certified pre-owned cars may mean less maintenance down the road. The big lesson turns out that back in American history, pioneers used water to turn the wheels at mills all over water, even powered boats. [01:07:38] Hey, this, doing some research thing before I post about it on the internet might be a better strategy after all. Thanks to Dr. Jamil Zaki for joining us today. You’ll find his book, hope for Cynics, wherever books are sold. We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul Sea High. [01:08:07] 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. 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. [01:08:28] 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. [01:08:52] What are you still doing here? The show is over. Go home.
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