Our Top 5 Ways to Cut Expenses Fast (SB 1425)

Has the return to the office had a bigger impact on your Benjamins stack than you remember? In our headlines segment, we see how many American workers are coping with the surprising cost of returning to the office. Today’s special top 5 episode features Joe & OG’s top 5 ways to cut expenses fast.

Check out our TikTok Minute that may have you questioning the wisdom of having kids.

And stick around for Doug’s crime boss-related trivia that will have you double-checking your tax returns to make sure the IRS stays off your back.

FULL SHOW NOTES: https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/top-5-expense-cuts-1425

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

Enjoy!

Our Headlines

• Returning to the office is ‘wildly more expensive’ today than in 2019—here’s how much people are spending (CNBC)

Our TikTok Minute

Joe & OG

Learn how OG and his team can help you reach your financial goals by scheduling an appointment at stackingbenjamins.com/og.

Doug’s Trivia

• What was crime boss Scarface’s real name?

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Join Us Wednesday!

Be sure to tune in on Wednesday when we’ll learn how being honest with yourself will help you grow your business with founder and former CEO of Panera Bread, Ron Shaich.

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Miss our last show? Listen here: Can You Balance Time and Financial Freedom? ep 1424.

Episode transcript

 It’s Monday morning in America, and you know what that means, OG. It means two things. It means time for coffee, and it also means it is time to salute the troops. So, gentlemen, early

morning in America. It is early Monday. This is early for OG. Yes,

let’s raise our glasses, everyone. Baltimore Public Library.

Yes. Yeah. Baltimore Public Library. We had a great event there. We had, and we had a lot of people for our book tour last year. It was super.

I got a, I got a bro mug. What does it say? Bruh. Losers make money. Winners make excuses. Losers make excuses. Winners make money. One of the two. Might need to rethink.

Not sure which. All those work together. See? It’s early, and it’s a dumb coffee mug. But.

And Doug, you’ve got? Just a green one. Nothing exciting here. Just a green one. Just a green mug. Just a green one. I think green means you’re horny though, right?

Oh boy. On behalf of all the green ones. And the people making, uh, Podcast of Mom’s Basement, and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union.

Big salute to our troops. Let’s go stack some Benjamins together, shall we? Is this your place? No. No, no, no,

no, no. No, I live with my mom. Oh.

Yeah. You hungry? Hey, Ma! Can we get some meatloaf?

Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And have you ever felt like you’re spinning your wheels, never getting any money saved? Today, we’ll share our top five ways to cut expenses now so you can stuff more savings into your plan. And that’s not all. In our headlines, we’ll share the cost of going to the office, which will show you exactly how much you need to cut.

And in our TikTok minute, we’ll talk about how one woman’s idea of cutting expenses means cutting family members. Maybe. We don’t let Joe’s mom see this one. And I’ll share some absolutely amazing trivia. And now two guys who are up early and ready to help you start your week. It’s Joe. O and O, J J J J G.

Happy Monday,

stackers in America and around the world. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. Your must. Listen. Podcast. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We’re kicking the week off here with our, one of my favorite types of episodes, a top five. And also kicking off the week with, uh, two of my favorite people.

Start off with the guy across the card table from me, Mr. OG. How are you, my friend? Pretty

awesome. Thank you for asking.

Well, you know, OG, we had a big weekend this weekend, because we spent the entire time celebrating Doug’s birthday. Which is a festival of treats and fun. Doug, did you have the

best birthday ever?

Pretty solid birthday. Got the dock out of the water. Got some fishing in. Went out to dinner with friends. You had your doctor in the water? I did, I did, but I figured it was time to, yeah, let them up. It’s getting a little chilly out there.

That is fabulous. I did find something, Doug, that, uh, explains a lot of the issues that people have in America and OG, I think you’ll find this interesting.

This is not our Tik TOK minute, but I, but I found this on Tik TOK. Listen to this.

He’s the

type of guy you get halfway home from the theme park before you’re like, Oh,

where’s Doug? Oh, no, we have to go back.

My wallet’s in his fanny pack.

So.

Oh, do not feel bad for Doug. He’s terrible. Every time he tells a story somewhere, a

child loses a balloon.

That’s the kind of weekend Doug had. I had my wallet in my, I had my wallet in his fanny pack the entire weekend. Oh, gee. Handy I left to

the theme park. So. It should be all right, honestly. I was thinking about that the other day. Cause the kids, you know, we went to a Cedar point. And the kids were like, dude, dad, we got to go again.

We got to go. And I’m like, it’s 48 and raining sideways in Cleveland. Like what? It’ll still be okay. Like going 70 miles an hour when it’s 48 and raining. What? No. Think through the,

think through the physics of that. And your wallet’s in Doug’s, in Doug’s fan bag. My wallet’s in

Doug’s fan bag. Therefore we can’t go.

We’re talking cutting expenses, maybe the expense of going to Cedar Point during a driving rainstorm, and that might make the list. Doubt it, but it might make the list. But first we got a big headline. But first, Doug, we got to talk about some of that awkward stuff that happened during your, during your birthday celebration.

I’m not sure any of that is suitable for. And then

after that, OG, Doug ripped off his shirt and did this, and that’s how we got kicked out of the neighborhood association

party. No more HOA potlucks for Doug. Which is kind

of better, Doug, thanks. By

the way, because we didn’t want to be there anyway. Got you out of the evil overlords party.

It was

so much better. All right, now we’re ready to get the party started. So let’s go. Now we’re ready to get the show started. So let’s go.

Hello, darlings.

And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking Benjamins

headlines. Our headline, by the way. It was also found by Doug. Welcome to the show.

That’s all about Doug today, apparently. This one written by Jennifer Liu. Returning to the office is quote, wildly more expensive today than in 2019. Here’s how much people are spending. Remember how right I was sure we were, OG, when we talked about returning to the office might be a great thing.

I just remember how adamant Doug was about not returning to the office.

Well,

apparently Doug wanted to save 51 pucks. 51. 14 a day more than it used to cost a decent amount. Well, no, not more meaningful This is how much workers are spending per day when they go to the office 16 on lunch 16 maybe they need to listen to Len Penso talk about the brown bag lunch. That’s quite a lunch 14 on commuting Uh, on average, that

is a gas and tolls.

And is that all that stuff kind of added up insurance costs and stuff? Yeah, sure.

13 on breakfast and coffee. We call that the Starbucks effect.

It’s going to say you got to start out the day with some energy.

Yeah. And then 8 on parking.

Well, that’s not that’s not part of.

Transportation. Workers with pets also spend an average of 20 per day on pet care.

That means full time office workers spending roughly 1, 020 every month to report to the workplace. Hybrid workers spend an average 408 per month on attendance. There’s no question, says Frank Weissbaut, CEO of Owl Labs, working from the office is, quote, wildly more expensive today than it was pre pandemic.

So you’re saying it’s 50 more, it’s 500 bucks.

It’s actually 50 total, I was wrong when I said more. 50. 500,

600 more per month to work in the office. Some change in your pocket that is not going

jingling a ling. I think a lot of people listening to this will say, I’m not spending that much on breakfast or I’m not spending that much on commuting or parking.

I don’t have to pay for parking. I mean, I’m sure if the respondents to this were working in New York or Chicago or, you know, in a large urban area where, yeah, there’s, you’re gonna have to pay for parking, but others don’t, but I think the point is, even if it’s not 51 a day for you, maybe it’s 30. That’s meaningful, right?

A day? That adds up. That’s significant. And, as I proved unequivocally, irrefutably, in previous episodes, it’s not necessary to be

there. Well, it’s necessary for the guy that owns a commercial building.

That’s right.

Cutting that guy out. For the

economy.

One might argue it’s unnecessary.

Right. So you should feel like your 51 is just doing your good deed for the day to support the overall economy of your metro area.

Keep the structure, keep the wheels moving. Well, this

is a big thing though that people don’t think about when they get ready to retire is what cost are work associated. I know we were having this discussion this weekend with some house guests that I have here about just when they stopped working, the amount of the amount less money they spent.

They were so surprised by the huge change to their budget that they didn’t realize that they

had. Well, it’s not only just the, the, those costs, it’s also the costs of. You know, your personal upkeep, right? Like making sure that you have a wardrobe that’s reasonably business suitable and contemporary and fresh and, and all the stuff that goes into working outside of the office, you know, we got to go to dinner with the boss or go to, you know, just the time aspect of it alone is going to be some savings, not just the financial.

impacts. So we should all retire, work from home and then retire basically is the moral of the story. I think an

interesting thing is if you’re, if you’re somebody working from home now, but you think you might be going into the office, you think, Oh gee, it makes sense to try to save, you know, 50 bucks a day, try to stuff 50 bucks a day into your, into your savings account.

So that, uh, if you do go back to the office, it doesn’t feel That much more expensive.

Seems like this would be a great selling point to your superiors when they do bring up coming back to the office, right? Like if you thought about these things in advance and said, well, I can come back to the office, but like in Dallas, we, all of our highways are tollways, basically.

It’s like, but it’s going to be this amount of money for tolls and this amount of money for parking. And, you know, and, and I don’t know that you can get away with charging your boss lunch, but, but you get the idea. You can say, you know, there’s, there’s some added costs here associated with me doing this that I’m not incurring right now.

And, you know, can I, if I go back to the office, would you entertain a You know, 3 percent pay raise just to kind of help assuage some of those issues. I think if you, you know, back to our discussions that we’ve had about pay increases in the past, if you come with facts, it’s a lot easier to. to make your case, then I just feel like I need more money because you’re making me come back to the office.

It’s like, well, nebulous

more. Yeah. And now all you got to do is go to our show notes at StackingBenjamins. com and click on that link, send it to your boss and bam, we just got you a pay raise. You’re welcome

America. There you go.

You’re welcome

America. Time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we dive into a TikTok creator who is either creating brilliance or air quote brilliance on the internet.

Oh, O. G. ‘s got an opinion. Brilliant, or air quotes brilliant?

Isn’t that crazy that I have an opinion? Uh, air quote brilliance, obviously. It’s on TikTok. Doug?

Uh, well, I already know. I mean, I said it in the open, and if people were listening, they already know. This is, uh, Nobel Prize worthy geniusness. This talks about getting rid of family members, but we’ve all got one or two of those we want to get rid of, so…

Doug, we played one earlier that a stacker sent about girl math, uh, which is this, uh, this thing going on on the internet that they talk about, quote, girl math. This is now the extension of that that was sent to us by our friend, Kate, Kate sent this one in.

So now that we all know what girl math is, if you don’t have children.

Let me introduce you to child free math. I was, I’m getting a massage later today and I was like, that’s 200. That’s really expensive. You shouldn’t do that. And then I thought you would have spent that on registration fees for soccer camp. Are you kidding me? Gymnastics, all the ice cream you would have had to buy this year, trips to Disney, Disney alone.

That’s like three vacations in child free math. 3. Horseback riding camp? I’m not having kids so I can spend my money on me, so there you go. Child free math if you get to

use

it. If you just get rid of the kids OG, you don’t have to take them to Cedar Point. I

call them my little Ferraris. That’s what I do.

My three little Ferraris.

Kids are so expensive, but I think I agree with Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway said that, you know, you look at statistics and people today in their twenties, not having kids, delaying having kids. And he said, it’s not because they’re anti family, it’s because they’re smart. Kids cost a ton of money.

And yet, Galloway says, he’s like, but I would encourage everyone to have children. He goes, they will mess up your life, but I will happily take the mess up that is the mess up I’ve had with my kids all day.

Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. I’d have a thousand of them if Mrs. OG would let that happen.

She will not.

Just imagine, Doug, that many little mini me OGs running around. That’d be a bad day for that

neighborhood. Can we not imagine that?

Coming up next, our top five ways to cut expenses now, now that we know that going into the office is 50 a day, and we also proved again, kids are expensive. So whether you have children or not, or if you go into the office, work from home, we’re always looking ways to shove more money into savings.

What are some things you can cut now? The key to this top five is cut quickly. Got those? Well, O. G. and I have them, and, uh, we have them right after Doug’s gonna take us down memory lane this day in history.

Hey there, stackers! I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s date, there were a lot of Benjamins changing hands. That’s because outlaw Johnny Dillinger, back in 1933, robbed the Central National Bank in Greencastle, Indiana, stealing 75, 000 bucks. Proving again, there must be better ways to earn a living.

After Dillinger robbed two dozen banks and two police stat wait a minute. Police stations? Didn’t Johnny know that’s where the cops hang out? Federal agents finally caught up to him the following year in 1934, killing the outlaw. But hold on! He was in the police stations and they didn’t catch him then, they had to catch up with him years later.

Anyway, federal agents also were after another outlaw during the same time period. In 1931, one crime boss nicknamed Scarface went to jail for tax evasion. What was his real name? I’ll be back right after I figure out how to escape when Joe’s mom asked me to wash the windows. What a prison job that is!

Hey there stackers, I’m Neighborhood Mob Boss and the guy proving that crime doesn’t pay, Joe’s mom’s neighbor Doug. Hell, this job doesn’t even pay. On this day in history, back in 1933, John Dillinger robbed 75k from a bank in Indiana. He was probably making a down payment on his student loans, am I right?

But it was another mobster, nicknamed Scarface, who’s the subject of today’s trivia. This guy was convicted of tax evasion in 1931, ending his reign of terror. What was his name? Well, I’m not going to tell you just yet, but I’ll tell you more about him. Born in New York City in 1899, he moved to Chicago at age 21, as that’s just what you’re supposed to do in the Midwest when you’re 21, rising through the ranks to become the biggest mobster in the city.

He was none other than Al Capone. Capone hired a legal team to appeal his tax evasion sentence, which ultimately even got him a session with the Supreme Court. But his appeal still failed. I hope it isn’t the same with me when it comes to washing windows. I gotta appeal to a higher court! Or maybe even a higher power!

Please, don’t make me wash the windows, Ma! And now while I’m cutting out of here, let’s swing things over to Joe and OG and their top five ways to cut expenses.

Well, with all the discussion about inflation out there, time for us to talk about how do we maybe, uh, get some money in and OG. We’re talking about cutting expenses. A lot of people get this halfway, right? They cut expenses, but they forget if I cut expenses, I got to capture the money by raising my automatic savings.

Like get that money into a savings account. You cut out a subscription, you cut out Unless you’re negative to begin with. Well, right. Absolutely. Then we got to make sure we just get the ship righted. But this is something I think that a lot of people, um, sometimes overthink. I’d look at my list and five Fairly straightforward places where, frankly, there’s three of these where I probably could cut more today right

now.

Yeah. It’s astounding the amount of lifestyle creep that has happened for us over the last, I don’t know, 10 years. I mean, it’s just, it’s comical. When you look back and go 10 years ago, here’s where we were and what we were doing and now where we are and what we’re doing. You’re going, what, what, what the heck?

Yeah. How did, how

did it get so bad? And we’ve talked about this before. Obviously if you can afford it and if your financial plan is working for you, Well, that’s fine. Spend money on stuff you enjoy. I think a lot of us though, spend money mindlessly on stuff and we’re like, why did I just blow a bunch of cash on that?

We talked about the Starbucks trip. That’s the one that drives me crazy. I went to, I don’t know, we were just, we were just out last weekend and we got this new coffee place in town. And I just went, Oh, let’s go try it out. And to this piece’s point that, that Doug gave us earlier about the 50 a day, 14 on coffee and a muffin top.

Not even the whole muffin, by the way, they just sell the muffin top. It’s the best part. Yeah, it is my favorite part. But, uh, seven brew coffee, I think it was called. And, um, yeah, 14 later, I’m pulling out of there. Didn’t even need to stop. Just, Oh, let’s go try out the new place.

Yep, that’ll get ya. Alright.

Caffeine addiction.

You got

five

of these, OG? I’ve got 4. 6 of them.

All right, here we go. Let’s kick this off, Steve. Give us the number five guy. Number five. All right, who’s starting first today?

Oh, I’ll kick it off this time if that’s fine with you. Easy, easy, easy. Lemon squeezy. Clearly subscriptions are number number five slash number one first thing here.

If you are like every other person in the entire United States and frankly the world, you probably have a bajillion ways that money is coming out of your account every single month. And a lot of those ways. are through the same amount of from the same companies every single month. And so it’s super easy to figure out.

There’s apps that do it. If you don’t want to buy an app to figure it out, you can just look at your credit card statement for the last couple of months and tag all the things that are the same sort. Download your statement from Amex into Excel file and sort by company, and it will show Spotify, Spotify, Spotify, Hulu, Hulu, Hulu, Netflix, Netflix, Netflix, you get the point, it will be like, well those are my subscriptions, gym membership, gym membership, gym membership, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about this, like, There’s ways on each one of these apps, and they were talking specifically about television and, you know, the streaming apps where you can go in and see how much time you’ve spent streaming per account, basically, right?

You can say, well, I’ve got mine and the kids or whatever, and you can see how many hours of streaming time. And most people are paying eight or ten dollars an hour of streaming. That’s the average. Because you go, Oh, I’ve got my Netflix subscription. I don’t use it except for when there’s the cool movie that comes out, but I don’t want to, you know, da da da.

Listen, you can cancel it. They’re going to keep all your stuff on file and then you can go and re subscribe for a month and binge watch The Crown when it comes out, the final season, like everybody’s going to do, and then

cancel it again. I like my cousin Randy’s answer to this. He just realized he’s only got one set of eyes.

Like, we could all realize that immediately. Not rocket science. But about once every four months he calls me and goes, Hey, what are you watching on Netflix? Four months later, what are you watching on Disney Plus? Four months later, what are you watching on Apple TV? And so he asked him finally, I don’t know if it was the second or third time I go, I go, you know, you keep asking me about these different services.

He goes, well, what I do realizing I only have one set of eyes, I get one. I ask everybody what the best stuff is on that platform. And I binge all those and so I only have Netflix for this four month period then I cancel it and then I get Disney Plus I watch that for four months and then I cancel it and I watch Apple TV.

What a great way to do

that I thought you were gonna say your cousin Randy was like the rest of America And they say, Hey, mom and dad, what’s your Netflix password? I mean, this is, I don’t think most people, there’s only 27 people in America that have subscriptions to this. Everybody else is just using their password.

Subsidizing the rest of us. That’s right. That’s actually

my number two on my list.

Get OG’s

Netflix password. That’s right. It actually, uh, to take away from that joke, it actually just happened to us. I don’t know, like a week ago, we started up Netflix and got a message on the screen that said, is this your primary TV?

Yeah. And I said, yeah. And then I, as soon as I clicked, yeah, I realized you’re like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You just cut the kids off. I did. And I had to call up. about 90 people and say, uh,

a post on Facebook, Doug’s Netflix Facebook group, your private Facebook group of Netflix. One of the biggest

communities on Facebook.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. That is, uh, maybe further down my, further down my list, more fun than having your own boat, having a friend with a boat, more fun than having HBO Max, having a friend with HBO Max. My number five OG is only a number five because of the fact that it’s not quick. I know I said that quick ways to save money are it, but this one is huge.

It’s not quick. Everybody says it’s the number one way to save money. And I just want to pay a little homage to this. And that is change where you live. Look at the cost of your housing. And that certainly is not fast. It’s not a fast way to change. to get some money at all. But if you really, really, really need more money, stop clipping coupons.

Don’t worry about the subscription so much. Find cheaper housing and you can cut hundreds or in some cases, maybe thousands of dollars.

What about the issue right now though, that most people are in homes that have mortgages that are, you know, very 4%.

And if you did want to move, right? So if you’re like, I live in Metro Dallas and I do want to find a cheaper location and I can move to wherever, but to do that is going to be a much higher interest rate on that house. The affordability might be similar, right? Yeah. I mean, in terms of payments, it’s not the easy

move that used to be now

when interest rates were, but there’s other costs, right?

Smaller home means smaller could mean smaller utility bills. smaller tax bill, smaller insurance payments. There’s some other effects, I guess, maybe than just beyond the actual cost of the, of the

mortgage. The swing on that still could be substantial. I mean, up or down, right? When you change houses, it’s a big change.

When you decide that I’m going to spend a little bit more on groceries, it maybe goes up by 30, 40 bucks. You can do a lot more damage or a lot more, uh, for good when it comes to evaluating where you live. So that was, that was my number five. Not, not, not easy, but I wanted to make sure that people knew we were thinking about that.

Number four. My number four is to even out the utility bills. That one OG by itself will not save you a dime, but what it does, the key to being able to save money is to get all your expenses on the same number as much as possible. The more that you know that you are going to spend, the more predictable your spending is, the easier it’s going to be to raise that automatic savings.

It may save you money during some months, like as an example, in the summer here in Texas. You’ll find that your utility bills may be a little lower than if you got those huge air conditioning bills, but it evens out a little bit in, in the winter. The big thing with evening out your utility bills is to save money everywhere else.

So if you want to get more money saved, if that’s the goal. You want to cut expenses. I think even out the utility bills, you know, a great way to an offshoot of this, which probably should be my number four is a lot of utility companies now have a program where they’ll come to your house and they’ll do an audit and they’ll show you where money’s going out the, you know, going out the front door, going out the windows, literally out the window.

Yeah. Going out all these places. So that’s a great way. Check with your utility company to see if they’ll do an energy audit for you. That’s my number four.

the flat payments on, on utilities for forever. Mostly because you get 1, 000 electric bill in the summertime and you’re like, okay, no, hard pass. Okay.

No, I’ll take 500 every month. Thank you. Please

hit me with the smaller stick every month.

Unsubscribed, unsubscribed from air conditioning. Uh, my number four is interest payments as interest rates have gone up. I don’t think that most people have recognized the impact of this. to their revolving consumer debt or line of credit debt.

Maybe the payment has remained approximately the same. Maybe if, if inflation has kind of gotten you a little bit and you, you know, those credit card balances have kind of leaked up a little bit over the last two years, uh, which statistically they have across the country, you know, that payment number has increased a little bit.

Go look and see how much of that payment is going toward principal versus how much is going to interest. And you’ll find that for the vast majority of people, a solid one fourth of your payment. If not more of that every year goes to interest and the way that the credit card companies put this together is your payment is all of the interest accrued for last month and then 1 percent or maybe 1.

5 percent of your outstanding balance. So if you’ve got a credit card balance of 10, 000 and an interest rate of 25%, that means you’re paying 2, 500 a year of interest, right? So roughly 200 a month, 1 percent of the balance. is a hundred bucks. So your minimum payment is probably 300 and you go, I can swing 300 bucks, but 200 of that 300 is freaking interest.

So you’re going to be on this train for such a long time. So go renew, renegotiate your interest payments. You can call credit card companies directly and say, this interest is too high. It needs to be a different number and they will work with you or they won’t. And you can find. an opportunity to refinance it.

Go find a 0 percent card for the next two years or whatever it is. Take a look at refinancing the line of credit on your house if it’s too high and lock it in at a lower rate. There’s a lot of different ways to deal with this interest issue. And the byproduct of it is, is that if you have lower interest, your payment will be lower.

So this is not necessarily pay off my debt faster strategy. This is how do I get extra cash in my pocket is faster. Get my lips above water, renegotiate your interest payments because Most people don’t recognize how insidious that number really is.

One mistake that I see people make often when they lower their interest payments is they use that OG as an opportunity to let off the gas on their debt repayment.

And I would say that’s the time to think about how do I press harder on that gas pedal to get rid of it? But I know

it depends on the outcome that you’re looking at for right? I mean this works if you’re saying well, I’ve got too much debt. I want to pay it off faster then get lower interest Make the same payment, pay it off faster.

But if you’re in the boat of like, I’m underwater and I need to get above water, lowering your interest payments will also lower your minimum payment. It won’t pay the debt off faster. It’s still going to suck for 40 years. But, you know, you don’t go further into debt. Number three. My number three and number two are closely related, so I’m going to put them together and I’ll find something else for number two.

Number three, I’m going to say is convenience purchases. This is your ubiquitous Amazon and DoorDash, and listen, I’ve, I’ve tried 15 ways to Sunday to figure out a strategy around this. Here’s the only strategy I found that works. Stop buying s from Amazon. And I mean it for like, just take it like a break, you know what I mean?

Do the shopping cart trick for yourself. Amazon is brilliant in that you can put stuff in your cart. You don’t have to buy it right away. They’ll send you a thousand emails about like, Hey, don’t forget, don’t forget. This might go up in price. Don’t forget. But if you have that desire to shop on Amazon, shop, just don’t buy.

Right? Like, remember we used to do that. Do you remember like going to the mall and you’d walk through the mall, trying all the clothes? Well, maybe you guys didn’t, but you know, you kind of shop, right? You didn’t necessarily go buy. You just went shopping. You walked around the mall and you got a pretzel.

And then you walked out and you didn’t have anything in your hands. For some reason that’s turned to like, I must purchase. It’s

that, you don’t have to. It’s that dopamine hit just gets bigger. Yeah. Like instead of a pretzel, now I got a, yeah. So I have two

other Amazon add ons maybe to, to yours, OG, but rather than putting it in your cart and leaving it there, I created a shopping list.

You can create any number of shopping lists that you want, whether it’s just, you know, Doug’s shopping list or specific ones for Christmas for other people or whatever. And then, if I see something I like, and I realize, oh, I may not find this later, I’m not sure if I want it yet, I put it in the shopping list, still get the dopamine hit that Joe’s talking about, but I don’t buy it immediately, and then I think, oh, if I still really want that three weeks later, it’s there, and I don’t have to go searching for it again, did I find the right one, the same one that I was looking for?

category. Right. It’s a save for later thing. Um, or if it’s a birthday gift idea for somebody. So I like the shopping list rather than putting it in the cart. Cause yeah, you will get hounded if you put it in your cart and leave it there. That’s a great idea. I

mean, as you said, in addition to, to what we were talking about here, It’s like put it in there and then also schedule a time in which you’ll go purchase it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like schedule a review time. You could almost say, okay, I’m going to still get the giggles of hitting the, you know, buy now, except it’s not buy now. It’s add to, add to later, add to shopping cart. Right. Or add to my shopping list. And then just say every month on the first of the month, I’m going to go in and figure out what I, what I really need out of this.

Sure.

I don’t schedule it, but yeah, that’s a good add on hack. Add

on to the add on. I was going to say the same thing for DoorDash. Listen, food, Instacart, like, it’s so convenient. It’s so easy to sit at home on Sunday afternoon. I’m guilty of this. And you go, what’s for dinner? Oh, we don’t know. Hey, let’s grill some food.

Oh, we don’t have any stuff. Oh, no problem. Beep, boop, bop, bop, bop. Oh, look, they’re going to deliver food in 20 minutes. And then you get your credit card bill, and it’s like, you know, I got 24 wings for 106. It’s like, but they were good, and they were fast. It showed up at my house, I didn’t have to put pants on.

Just stop doing that. Just for a period of time. Reset the meter. That’s my number

three. And OG, I know you moved past Amazon, but I had one other thought that I’ve noticed, um, that’s helped a lot on our budget is there are certain staples That I was buying every week at, or, you know, whenever I went to the grocery store that I now have delivered from Amazon and they are significantly cheaper.

The example that comes to mind is coffee and I’m getting the coffee that I drink every day. I’m getting like the bag is twice as big as the one I can get at the grocery store and it’s only like a third more. So I’m buying half as much coffee as I used to. And it’s doubly

caffeinated.

How else do you think I’d last on this show when we’re recording at like 4 a. m.? That’s exactly right. But there are times when their subscribe and save really will save you money. I wouldn’t suggest doing that in things that you only kinda maybe do once in a while, eat once in a while, whatever. But for those things that are staples for you, whether it’s paper towels, or coffee, or some of those, um…

Daily or weekly use items consider the subscribe and save thing that can lower your bill at the grocery store.

I like it. I remember on the other side of that argument, OG, as well on the DoorDash piece, our friend Grant Sabatier, when he came through Detroit with his book tour a few years ago and did an event, talked about the number one thing people buy in New York City on DoorDash at that time was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and how little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cost.

You were there, Doug, that night, weren’t you? When he brought that up. I was.

Absolutely. I couldn’t

believe it. Yeah. It was, it was horrible. And the amount of money people paid for a thing that’s very easy to make yourself. And I didn’t think that was real until I was at a family member’s house and their daughter did not like what they were having for dinner.

And just after that, a Burger King bag showed up and I was like, well, what’s the Burger King bag. And this family member said, Oh, well she didn’t like dinner. So we got her fast food. And by the way, the kid didn’t eat the fast food either. So not only did they,

did they buy something other than what was

being served, there was this huge expense to DoorDash.

Later on in the evening, same relative, who always is struggling with money, by the way, same relative had stuff show up from CVS that is four blocks away, that they had DoorDash and paid the additional DoorDash fee versus. Even walking over to CVS for the aspirin or whatever it was. Anyway, some people, the mindless spending, OG, to your point, that we spend now on these convenience fees, sometimes blows me, blows me away.

My number three is in a similar vein and that is rethink your entertainment budget in general. Where are you spending your money on entertainment stuff? That’s your subscription thing. Oh, gee, when it comes to having all these different TV subscriptions, I kind of like Doug’s plan better. Use somebody else’s until they’re on to you.

But regardless, I think the entertainment budget piece, uh, can knock off, knock off a lot of money. Where are you spending time for fun? You know, our house guests this weekend, We went out and played disc golf and had a blast for a couple hours down in the beautiful city park we have here in Texarkana.

And it was a lot of fun. The end cost was zero for that time. You know, there’s lots of times when I spend a lot more money than that having a lot less fun.

Did you factor in all the alcohol you had to drink to make it fun? We, we, we, we were talking about that,

the, the, the person who I was with that was pretty funny said, well, we, we got to start smoking pot because that’s the number one activity.

I

was going to say that. And I thought, Oh no, that’s not going to be good for, I’ll get edited out if I say weed. So I changed it to booze. No, it’s all right. It was, we’ve got a, well,

I should say who our guests are here. Cause we recorded an interview. We’ll play later. The fine ears are here. Uh, Corey and Jess spending the weekend with us and it was a super fun.

They

sound like a folk group from the sixties. The Pioneers. Playing a little basement gig in the Greenwich Village. Right. Smoking weed playing Ultimate Freeze. Harmonized well together. That’s right.

We had a great, great weekend, but spent no money doing that and had a lot of laughs. So that’s my number three.

Rethink your entertainment budget. You will find lots of dollars there, OG. Number two. Number two is also two things, eat at home and meal plan, which go hand in hand. Because eating at home, we had Frankie Chalenza on a couple times. And of course, Frankie talks a lot about food waste. We waste a ton of money.

The way to waste less food is to make sure that you’ve got a pretty solid meal plan so that if you can cut the food waste and shop at a grocery store, you will end up healthier, you’ll end up happier, and your wallet will be a lot happier than if you spend a lot of time at restaurants, and I find eating at home, especially on a day when I’ve had a pretty hectic day, to be really fun.

Like working on a recipe gets you in the moment, you get out of whatever is in your head space. If I’m chopping stuff, I got to think about the chopping. I put on some music and just get into cooking. It’s such a fun thing to do. I know a lot of people don’t cook. Be, be, be okay with messing it up. Have some fun in the kitchen is my number two.

Eat at home and meal plan.

Okay, I agree with that wholeheartedly. We have lots of family dinners. Well,

you get the whole family involved, OG. I know. Well, yeah, to

some degree, but I was thinking about like, um, you know, when I was a kid, almost every meal was at home, you know, we never, never went out. And if we went out, it was to get pizza, you know, and we’d get pizza once a month ish or something, you know what I mean?

It was very, very, very infrequent, but every day was at home. And Lissa cooks at home every day, or we cook at home just about every day, but we’re a little bit looser with that. You know, if there’s sports something or whatever, you know, we’ll grab sandwiches. But most of the time, you know, we cook at home.

Eighty percent. But then we were talking to some other friends from, from school and they were mentioning something about, you know, going out to eat and da, da, da, da. We’re like, Oh yeah, you know, go out to eat, whatever. But then it was basically like intimating. Like they go out every day to eat. Like, Oh, you know, Alice doesn’t cook.

It’s like, what do you mean you don’t cook? It’s not a, you don’t have to be a full time job. It’s like put two chicken breasts in a pan until they’re brown. Like you don’t even have to like, you’re like, then add salt and pepper. Like it’s not, you know what I mean? We’re like, what? What do you mean don’t cook?

I don’t understand. I’ve got

a friend who works at the bank. Oh, gee, you know this guy or you’ve met this guy before, works at our local bank, family of five. They eat every, every meal at a restaurant. Every single meal. Yeah, that would

be boring. I think. Yeah.

Well actually something you just said about when you mentioned Joe that OG’s family You know, he gets the whole family involved in in cooking and it made me think back to some great family memories Actually when we were doing some of the meal kit services, you know now Tucker loves cooking because he helped out with some of the prep from the meal services And then that you know My mind just started going to all of those great family memories and occurred to me you the story you just told about your Family member, whom you wisely did not name, uh, who was buying Burger King for their, for their kid because they didn’t like what they cooked.

And I thought to all of the times we’ve had people on, guests on, or call ins asking about, how do I teach my kids about money? You are teaching your kids about money every day, and whether you like it or not, when you call DoorDash, Whether it’s for the whole family meal, or it’s for the one kid who didn’t like, you just taught them, here’s a good way to spend money.

Here’s how you can manage your finance. But you don’t want to teach them that, right? So the fact that we’re cooking at home, you’re setting an example of, we spend time together as a family, and this is how we spend our money, is on… And this is the way we eat our food and you’re gonna set those examples and actually a friend of one of my son said my god your family spends so much time together and that actually was a negative point to that friend, but it’s actually a huge, I mean I took so much

pride.

Your kids are like tell

me about it. I know, and they’re like, God, you guys finish eating dinner together, and then you walk over and sit down and watch a show together on TV. What are you, monsters? What a nightmare. Go spend, go, go to your separate corners and go spend time alone, but I took that as the hugest compliment, because that’s just normal.

behavior. It’s what families do to my kids and us. It just seems totally normal. So I didn’t unwittingly, I didn’t realize we were essentially kind of teaching them how to save money because we were cooking at home and we build great relationships with each other. And sorry, I’m going to go over here and cry for a minute cause I just have the warms and buzzes right now.

But, but there’s so many great examples

coming from that. Just to add on one more thing, Doug, to what you’re saying about like the meal preparation and that sort of thing. That is the solution. I’m convinced too. I don’t want to eat that. is like if your kid helps you make exactly if they’re like if they’re looking at it like in a pile of fried rice and they go oh I don’t want to eat that Okay.

Versus going, hey, I need the carrots. Oh, like chop, chop, chop. And then you grab one and eat it and go, Hey, you want, oh yeah, I’ll have a bite. You know what I mean? Like it’s just carrots and rice and onions and it’s like all the things. And then they see it all mixed together. Oh, okay. I know what that is.

And then you’re, you know, we had dinner yesterday and our daughter was like, I don’t, I don’t know what this, and it was just a bolognese sauce. It’s like, it’s spaghetti and meatballs just crushed up. Eat it. Oh, okay. No, you know, like they just, I mean, it’s

just a pile of stuff. And I, you know, and I, I love the idea OG, but it didn’t work with the fin turn.

Really? No, no, no. You love pizza. Dough, right? It’s a starch, and it’s got tomato sauce on it, and it’s got cheese. That, those exact three ingredients, in the form of pasta? Nope. Was never, and I would tell them, help me make it! And he’d be like, never gonna happen, I’m not eating that. I’m like, what the hell?

You like these three things! Yeah, it looks different. I don’t like it mixed together. Huh.

Our daughter growing up, uh, said she didn’t like fish, which was horrible because it’s so healthy and we love fish. And so I decided because she was six years old that we would just stop calling it fish and we’d see if she really knew the difference.

Right. So she gets home. She and her brother get home from school. And she’s like, dad, what are you making for dinner? And I said, I’m making chicken. And so it’s like, oh yeah, great. Goes into a room later on, call him out for dinner, sit down at the table. And I served them the salmon, that’s chicken. And, uh, my daughter takes two, my daughter takes two bites and goes, dad, there’s something wrong with this chicken.

It tastes like fish.

She thought there was a

huge problem. And then we realized the fish thing was not going to go. Then she moved to Japan as an adult where it’s all fish all the time. And she had to actually learn. And now she’s like, like shellfish. She’s like, okay. Yeah. At

what point after she said, dad, the chicken tastes like fish.

Did you say, Hey, Cheryl, she’s not as dumb as we thought she was. Turns out our kid’s intelligent.

All right, my number two. We’re on to number two. My number two is insurance costs. Insurance costs have gone astronomically through the roof on everything. Car, house, boat, pleasure craft, vacation homes, airplanes, like all of these things.

God, that made me so uncomfortable. Pleasure craft. That’s what it’s called. That phrase. Oh God. That’s

what they’re called. Jet ski? I don’t No, you can’t call it jet ski insurance. You can’t buy that at Progressive.

I but there’s so many other things that could be Pleasurecraft.

Hey, I’m just telling you what it says on the on the Progressive app.

It says Pleasurecraft. Deal with it. Oh

geez, Pleasurecraft

goes blehlelelelele. Oh god.

No it doesn’t, it goes hwa. Hwa. You

motorboating fool.

So on the insurance front, back to the insurance front, you dirty old men. Um, if you haven’t noticed that the premiums have gone up lately, go take a look at your policies. I mean, this is a very real thing and a very tough situation for a lot of people in a lot of parts of the country where there’s been lots of big catastrophic losses out West with wildfires down South with hurricanes and, you know, floods and freezes and all that sort of stuff.

If you haven’t shopped it, And this is the big thing, I’m not saying go get lesser coverage, because you actually probably need more coverage, because the replacement costs that you have on your property, uh, this was a big eye opener for me, you know, the, the insurance agent, this, this renewal cycle said, Hey, how much do you think your house is worth?

And I said, okay, I think it’s this. And they went, okay. And how much do you think it would cost to replace your house? Well, that number is higher, right? Because you got to tear down the old one and build a new one and labor and all that other sort of stuff. Right. So that’s the amount you should have your insurance for.

But nevertheless, I don’t think you should go get less. I think you should shop what you have to make sure that you’re getting the best deal. A lot of carriers have significantly reduced or tried to price out people in markets that they don’t want to do business in. Great example of this is A couple of years ago in the state of Washington, they passed a law that you had to participate in this, uh, kind of statewide long term care program.

So a different type of insurance, but you know, you had to participate unless you could prove that you had your own. And what happened was all of the, uh, people that could afford their own said, I’d rather have my own than a policy managed by the state. So they’re going to go apply for their own policy.

That caused too much of a waiting. of all the insurance carriers in that one general area, state of Washington. So most carriers said, well, we’re not going to write for that anymore. And the way that we’re going to. Offset our potential risk is we’re just if you do really want it. We’re gonna raise the premiums astronomically So different carriers have different specialties if you’re shopping a generic company Let’s you know, like your state farms and farmers and that sort of thing.

You can do that on an app You know If you have some more sophisticated needs you need to have a broker that’s gonna go through all this and make sure that you’re getting the Best coverage at the best price My guess is, is that you have an opportunity to save some pretty substantial and significant money and you don’t have to wait for your renewal.

But you go, my renewal’s not until January, what do I do? Cancel the old one once the new one’s in place, put the new one in place tomorrow, cancel the old one the day after. Off we go. Have a new

renewal. That should have been my number five. Yes, I know. Because I think that, yeah, insurance cost is a big one.

See, hold on. I’m going to pause right there. I didn’t hear anything OG said that entire time because he was saying the word wrong. Joe, you just said it right. I couldn’t focus on anything because the whole time OG’s saying insurance. It’s insurance. And Joe just said it right. Insurance. Can we redo that whole segment and have you say the word, right?

I don’t think I said what you think I said, but okay. This is a guy with a

very, this is a guy with a very natural Wisconsin accent. I

know.

Shut up, Michigan. There’s nobody in Wisconsin who thinks that you mispronounce, uh, words in their lingo. Number one. My number one is looking at all your transportation costs.

One way that we saved a lot of money, OG, in our family. was, uh, uh, Cheryl works about three miles away. And on days when it’s not 110 degrees and 90 percent humidity, she rides, she started riding her bike to work. So October 11th, that day. Yeah. Two days a year. She rides a bike to work and it’s fantastic.

No, it really saved a lot of money. She absolutely enjoys riding her bike to work. It’s a great way to start your day. Nice way to finish your day. On the way home. And that was great. You know, one of the cars in our driveway has 270, 000 miles and, um, has been paid for for the past bajillion years. I think the past seven years that car has been completely paid for.

Well, I take that back. I even bought it with cash. So that car has never had a loan attached to it. And did you buy it used? I did.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the real major hit or cost savings, I should say, in around transportation. Yeah. Wouldn’t you think you’re going to save more dollars there than you are riding your bike to work?

There

are some times, you’re right, there are some times that, um, though, new cars A few times, like during the pandemic, a new car was way cheaper than a used car was. The used car market went through the frickin roof for a while, and uh, we actually saw the crossover point according to the Wall Street Journal and other major publications.

Those times are few and far between. Usually a great rule of thumb is go for the used car over the new one. For this particular car, it made a ton of sense to A, buy used and not have a car payment. I mean, we’ve saved a ton of money on that vehicle. Oh, gee, that’s my number one. Look at your transportation, guys.

So

my number one is, uh, don’t have your kid break a collarbone. And it’s kind of a little tongue in cheek as we’re getting ready to go to the hospital, but I want to tell a story about this. And this has nothing to do with saving money fast, but I just think it’s an interesting lesson. But it’s my number one anyway.

It’s my number one anyway. So that’s what I said at 4. 6. I don’t know if this is just going around or if this is the new way of doing things, but, um, but we are, are headed to surgery for Alex’s collarbone here later this morning. And the doctor called last week or their office called on Friday and said, okay, so we just, we’re just ready for, uh, for payment then.

We’re like, what, what are you talking about? And they said, uh, yeah, we’re just, uh, just, just ready for the card number. for the doctor payment, the doctor fee. Oh, we have to, no, it’s going through insurance. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve already talked to your insurance. This is how much you’re going to owe.

So we’re going to get that right now. And you know, it was about two grand. So not the end of the world, but a big check to write on a Friday, you know, at two in the afternoon when you’re not expecting it. So we took care of that. And then they said, Oh, and then there’s the facility fee. Excuse me, the what?

That’s the, we just paid two grand. No, that’s the doctor’s fee. This is the facility fee. This is to rent the operating room. Oh, okay. And how much is that? well after factoring in your Insurance and you know deductible and your co insurance amount did it that’ll be six thousand dollars I go. Whoa, hold on a second timeout timeout timeout.

I thought we have it, you know, we’ve got insurance I go. Yeah, but your co insurance payment is 30 percent Well, how much is the bill? 17, 000 to rent the OR for 47 minutes, or however long it’s going to be to fix this collarbone. Of which we have to pay a third, 6, 000. So now we’re, now we’ve written 8, 000 worth of checks.

Okay, so now I can at least kind of appreciate that they’ve priced it in advance, they know exactly how much it is, we’ve paid it, right? Like, okay, it’s done and done. Oh, well, by the way, the anesthesiologist and surgical assistant, they’ll bill you separately, but you’ll get two more bills. Okay, so we’re getting better, right?

The old way of dealing with this was you walk in, you get some service, and then you have no idea how much any of that costs. So at least this is in advance. But here’s my, my really eyeopening thing here. This is not really an elective surgery. I mean, it kind of is cosmetically a little bit, but the dude’s collarbone is snapped like a twig, and it’s not, it’s not laying back on itself.

It’s pointed straight up to, you know, to his, through his, it’s not through his skin. There’s

nothing elective about fixing that.

One wouldn’t imagine it is. But it would heal as it is, if we left it. But that’s an awful idea. Yeah, my point is is that you know, it’s already been two weeks, right? We have a reasonably healthy cash reserve We have a profoundly awesome health insurance policy, even though it’s a high deductible plan We know what we get with that I have a fully funded HSA and still I’m stroking a check for 10 grand on a Friday afternoon At 2 o’clock the day before surgery, you know, and I’m thinking to myself What if, what if, what do other people do?

You know what I mean? Like what? And so we asked, we asked the people, I said, well, what’s the, what do you do here if you, you know, just don’t have 10 grand lying around? And, uh, here’s the MX card, have at it. And she said, well, you can go to this website and apply. There’s a, some like credit thing that you can do.

And I’m like, holy crapola, man. I think we’re, you know, this is, There’s been a couple of these instances in my life over the last couple of years where these big, you know, health expenses have happened. I think, I think we’re super fortunate to be able to kind of roll with the punches there. But the reality is, is that if you’re not from a planning standpoint, Thinking about those big numbers.

I think you’re doing yourself a disservice and it’s not about like how to save money immediately, but, but you need to be able to, you know, think of the worst thing possible. Like go through your health insurance. We were talking about insurance before and figure out like, what is the biggest number I might have to write this year?

You know, we talk about how great it is to have this high deductible plan cause you can do an HSA and all that other cool stuff in the future, which is totally true. But I think it’s also important to know like what’s my maximum exposure here. And we don’t play that side of the game, right? We just play the one side.

So, you know, don’t have your kid break his collarbone. That would be step one. But if he does have pre planned that a little bit so that, you know, if you’re hit with these things, at least you’ve got the plan on the shelf of like, here’s where we’ll go to, you know, my, my, my wish for this organization would have been, it’s been two weeks.

You knew that this was coming. Like why did you wait until the day before? Like what if I didn’t have a credit card with a 10, 000 limit or, checking account with 10, 000 in it. Like, would we have to cancel it? Like I didn’t, you know, it’s just a weird timing, but I think there’s that other half of it, which is to save money in the future.

You have to plan for those worst things now so that you don’t have to, uh, and you don’t have to charge it. You don’t have to do those things. So anyways, it was just kind of a personal story there that I thought it was important to share.

I’m glad you did because the, the healthcare minefield is so big.

And fraught with so many gotchas and man, I should have done that differently. We have an episode that we can point to on our YouTube channel where we talked to Scott Heiser about this, an insurance expert who really, one of my favorite episodes of all time, O. G., because of the fact that he talked about even by Going not, you know, we hear about people going to Mexico for coverage or going overseas to get surgeries done.

You can go across town and get remotely different pricing than you got at the same place. And also talking about asking the question about what the procedures are going to cost. He walks through the upside of just asking what your coverage is going to cost, even if you have insurance to cover it. What does, what does that cost?

We’re all responsible for that, and we’ll link to, uh. Scott and I discussing that on our YouTube channel at our show notes page at stackingbenjamins. com That’s our top five list lots of ways to cut expenses Remember when you do that if you’re not upside down right now to capture that though if you find some savings added to your automatic Savings so that it goes into your savings account your 401k into your Roth IRA wherever you want that to be for your plan so that you actually capture that money.

Right now is the time when we normally do the Haven Lifeline. However, looking at the time. Oh, gee, I think we’re going to go ahead and skip that segment for today. Uh, episodes running a little long and stubble move right to the community calendar. Doug, uh, what do we got coming up on the community calendar, man?

Joe, you know, what’s really big happening, uh, later this week is Katie Kermitsos is joining us on Instagram live. So that’s going to be fun. That’s going to be a good one. It’s going to

be super good. You’ve heard us talk about Katie’s amazing podcast and meditation. She leads the women’s meditation network, but she’s going to, uh, teach people how to maybe get calmer about their money.

OG, how to relax. That’s what like stress out like me. Maybe you need to go to that one yourself. What do you mean?

I am calm. That’s it. Never in the history of calm down. That’s saying calm down. That’s going to be

at a different time than normal. We have had some people go, you know what? I can’t make the usual time.

Well, this could be good news for you. It’s going to be 1 p. m. Eastern, uh, noon central, 10 a. m. Pacific. That means Mountain, you’re at 11 a. m. If my math is correct. So, uh, that’s Thursday. Look at you showing off. Damn! Thursday, uh, 1 p. m. Eastern. Katie Kermintzos joining us for an Instagram live on some relaxation techniques when it comes to money.

Gonna be good stuff there. We also, coming up on Wednesday, have the founder of Panera Bread joining us. Ron Schaik is going to be on the show talking about lessons learned from creating Panera Bread. Alright, that’s going to do it for today. If you’re not here because you

want a bread bowl, or you’re not here

to calm down about your money, well, maybe you want to calm down about your money because you need to make better decisions with your money.

OG and his team are taking clients to stackyourbenjamins. com slash OG. For

more, you know, Joe, this is normally the place where I would say, let’s go out on the back porch and have a cocktail, but we just got a great story, personal story from OG about not breaking collarbones. So what do you say we just wrap it

up?

I think we did. Let’s do it. What should we have learned today, Doug? Well, first, take

some advice from Joe and OG. Don’t just cut expenses. Find a way to get that money socked away today. Second, dig advice from our headline. If you’re going into work, you may need to cut expenses right now. But the big lesson?

If you’re appealing to Joe’s mom to get out of washing dishes, it’s a good idea to bring a bribe. Four. That judge is as corrupt as it gets. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast, with help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn Invest podcast.

Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called The 201. You’ll find the 411 on all things money at The 201. Just visit stackingbenjamins. com slash 201. Wonder how beautiful we all are? Of course you’ll never know if you don’t check out our YouTube version of this show, engineered by Tina Ikenberg.

Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want to chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Yunkin are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.

Say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the basement fun with other stackers, type stackingbenjamins. com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.

I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time, back here at the Stacking Benjamins show.