Turning Goals Into Adventures: Transforming Your Financial Journey (SB1574)

In this episode of The Stacking Benjamin Show, host Joe (alongside guests Jesse Cramer from the Best Interest Podcast, Paula Pant from Afford Anything, and our own OG) delves into transforming financial goals into ongoing quests. They discuss the importance of falling in love with the process and how systematic approaches and habits can aid in personal growth and goal achievement. The episode wraps up with a trivia challenge, financial wisdom, and maybe some slightly humorous banter, emphasizing the importance of seeking real financial advisors. Links to the guest podcasts and additional resources are available at StackingBenjamins.com.

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

Enjoy!

Watch On YouTube:

Our Topic:

Do Quests, Not Goals (Raptitude)

During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:

Better goal setting.
What are the elements that make up a successful goal?
The journey of pursuing goals and how that opens other doors.
The consequences of procrastination.
Finding mentors.
Changing your mindset from goal pursuit to it’s who you are.
Why visualizing yourself in the future can help you get started working on your goals today.
Putting pressure on yourself by imagining your future self.
The pursuit of goals never ends.
How failing to achieve goals can have an impact on your self-esteem.
Reframe goal setting to think of it as a way of living.
Why there is never a “perfect” moment to start working on a goal.
The power of getting started and staying consistent.
Future you is very real.
Setting up systems to reach your goals.
Automation.
Tackling one small step before taking on the next.
Focusing on process not the end result.
Become the person who lives what you aspire your life to be.
Looking for growth opportunities in your life.
Overcoming procrastination.

Our Contributors

A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.

Jesse Cramer

Another thanks to Jesse Cramer for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Jesse on his show, The Best Interest Podcast at The Best Interest – Complex Personal Finance Made Easy Podcast Series – Apple Podcasts.

Learn how you can work with Jesse by visiting The Best Interest – Invest in Knowledge.

Paula Pant

Check Out Paula’s site and amazing podcast: AffordAnything.com

Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything

OG

For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.

Doug’s Game Show Trivia

During the host of CNBC’s Mad Money, Jim Cramer’s, tenure from 1988 to 1996, the S&P 500 averaged 15 percent per year. What was the average return of Cramer’s fund?

DepositAccounts

Thanks to DepositAccounts.com for sponsoring Stacking Benjamins. DepositsAccounts.com is the #1 place to go when you’re looking to see if your rate is the BEST rate on savings, CDs, money markets, and even checking accounts! Check out ALL of the rates ranked from best to worst (and see the national averages) at DepositAccounts.com.

Mentioned in today’s show

Join Us on Monday!

Tune in on Monday when we’ll make your retirement plan a heck of a lot better with Morningstar’s Director of Personal Finance and Retirement Planning, Christine Benz.

Miss our last show? Check it out here: Three Dads Share Tips and Stories on Teaching Good Money Habits (Jon Acuff & John Lanza).

Written by: Kevin Bailey

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] bit: Spider pig. Spider pig does whatever a spider pig does. Can he swing from a web? No, we can’t. He’s a pig. Look out. He is a spider pig.

[00:00:15] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. I don’t even think they know we’re down here. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[00:00:33] I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor,, Doug, and we are more than halfway through the year. So how are this year’s goals coming along to help you get your ass in gear? We welcome the host of the Best Interest podcast, Jesse Kramer, and a woman who’s number one goal is probably to hang out with us from afford anything, pull a pant.

[00:00:54] And finally, the guy whose goal is to teach his kids not to park the car in the living room. It’s og. And speaking of goals, I’ve set a mark right now to stop this podcast halfway through and demand that we play my trivia challenge. And now a guy whose goals probably include not telling old guy stories.

[00:01:15] It’s Joe So Sea,

[00:01:22] Joe: I’m trying to stop for the next hour, but then it’s game on again. Doug the second that that, that we’re done. Isn’t it bad when you, isn’t it bad when you find yourself becoming more like the characters in those progressive commercials? Like, don’t become your parent could be very much. You were the model for those scary, like saying hi to everybody in the elevator.

[00:01:41] You ever heard somebody do that, by the way? It is, it is creepy. It’s like, Hey, no, no, no. I’m gonna stare at the wall for a little bit. Hey everybody, welcome to the uh, creepy old guy stuff podcast. I’m Joe Sal Sea. Hi, and we have some fun to start your weekend. We’re gonna talk about goal setting and the guy across the cart table, he’s goal setter, extraordinaire.

[00:02:02] Mr. OGs here. How are you? Man?

[00:02:03] OG: I think my favorite one of all of those is when they have to throw the stuff out, they’re by the dumpster and they’ve got like all their, all their stuff. And the one guy shows up with like all the floor mats and he’s like, ah. He’s like, do you still have the car? He’s like, no.

[00:02:16] He’s like, it goes. He’s like, what? He’s like, no. It goes,

[00:02:22] Joe: my favorite one is how they’re talking about you never know when

[00:02:24] OG: you’re gonna need, yeah. You’re never gonna need it. Like he just like cuts him off.

[00:02:28] Joe: My favorite is the one where they’re parking before the big game. They’re parking way out in the back 40 so they can get out early.

[00:02:33] I have done that so many times.

[00:02:35] OG: It’s, it’s like, no, this is a great exit. It’s like, but we have to walk a hundred miles to the stadium. It’s like, but this, we’ll get out first. It’s like, no, we won’t.

[00:02:43] Doug: I compliment the produce manager to the overall grocery store manager. Absolutely do that. Well done on Stacking.

[00:02:51] He’s doing a great job. Stacking lettuce. He’s doing a great job. Hey, Tim, over in Produce. That guy’s awesome.

[00:02:55] Joe: Yes. The woman, by the way, who is the lettuce stacker on this podcast? Paula Pants here. I have no idea what that means, Paula, but it sounds good.

[00:03:02] Paula: Yeah. You know, Stacking, Benjamins, Stacking lettuce. I can, I can stack whatever needs to be stacked.

[00:03:07] Joe: Stacking lettuce. Sounds like you’re Stacking. Money doesn’t. It is. I mean, it could be euphemism.

[00:03:11] Paula: Yeah. Oh, like, because it’s kind Stacking. Well, there’s a lot of food metaphor with money. Like there’s cheddar, you know?

[00:03:17] Joe: Yes. Yeah. Isn’t

[00:03:17] Paula: cabbage like a financial institution with a cabbage? With a K.

[00:03:22] Joe: With a K.

[00:03:23] Paula: Cabbage. With a K. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:03:24] Joe: But isn’t isn’t Stacking cabbage? I mean, that’s a euphemism for Stacking money. I, oh, I hadn’t

[00:03:28] Paula: heard that.

[00:03:29] Joe: Yeah. Yeah. Lots of cabbage in that deal.

[00:03:31] Paula: I was thinking, there’s cheddar, there’s uh, let’s see what other food is there? There’s milk, avocados.

[00:03:38] Joe: Hmm. Stacking avocados. I don’t, I don’t know.

[00:03:41] That’s a lot of avocados.

[00:03:42] OG: No, no idea guacamole obviously.

[00:03:45] Joe: The guy wondered, he’s the gold digger on this podcast. J Jesse Kamer from the Best Interest Podcast. I’m just reading his YouTube phrasing down there. Yeah. It’s

[00:03:53] Jesse: important. We, we need to say that a little bit slower for though, that it’s Goal digger.

[00:03:58] Two separate words. I’m digging the goals,

[00:04:00] Joe: just to be clear. Not gold Digger. Your spouse didn’t think you were the gold digger in that relationship.

[00:04:06] Jesse: I don’t know. Uh, that’s actually funny. She might have, um. But either way. I mean, she’s stuck now, right? There’s no turning back.

[00:04:12] Joe: Yeah. I’ve never met her, but she’s gotta be your better half by far.

[00:04:14] Jesse, I’ve known you for a while, so Correct, correct. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:17] Jesse: It’s, it’s like, it’s not really 50 50. Better half. It’s like 98 2. Kinda one of those.

[00:04:22] Joe: For the three people that haven’t heard your appearances on the Stacky Benjamin Show, tell them about the Best Interest podcast. The podcast I always call The Better Interest Podcast.

[00:04:31] Jesse: Yeah, the Best Interest Podcast. There’s also a blog and a little weekly newsletter. I like to just dig into fun little financial planning and investing topics. Explain them in hopefully easy and sometimes funny ways. And, uh, just spread some, some cool education around the, uh, the financial nerd community

[00:04:48] Joe: spreading education like a virus.

[00:04:50] The Best Interest podcast.

[00:04:52] Jesse: I love that tagline. I love that you thought Covid was bad. Subscribe here. Too soon.

[00:04:59] Joe: Wait, I can’t figure out why nobody’s signing up. Right? Get infected. Uh, you know who likes to get people infected with better small business tools, Jesse?

[00:05:11] Jesse: I don’t, I don’t, I love that segue though.

[00:05:14] Paula: State Farm loves, but they’re gonna hate that. Paula, they’re, they’re, so we’re gonna get an email from corporate. We, we totally

[00:05:24] Joe: are. State Farm, is there episodes brought to you by State Farm? If you’re a small business owner, it isn’t just your business, it’s your life. Whatever your business might be, you want somebody who understands.

[00:05:37] That’s where small business insurance from State Farm comes in. State Farm agents or small business owners too, they know what it takes to help you personalize your policies. I. For your small business needs like a good neighbor, state Farm is there? Talk to your local agent today. Well, today what we are talking about is this idea of goal setting.

[00:05:54] ’cause Doug, as you insinuated in the open, it is now mid-September guys, and how many people are going, wait, it’s September and I’ve even started on my goals. So we’re gonna talk better goal setting today. Maybe we can get some stuff done as the fourth quarter approaches. But before that, state Farm’s not the only sponsor on this show.

[00:06:14] We got a couple more that make this show free for you to listen to. So let’s hear from these awesome companies and we’ll be right back. Jesse Kramer’s here, Paula Pant, og, neighbor, Doug, and me. So let’s get this party started, shall we?

[00:06:33] Our headline today, our topic actually today, we used to say in headline from our Monday, Wednesday shows our topic comes to us as it does on most Fridays from a popular blog in the personal finance space. This one’s actually from the human development, the, uh, self-help area, aptitude.com. I’ve never seen this one.

[00:06:52] Uh, uh, Jesse Poll. Have you guys seen this one before? aptitude.com.

[00:06:55] Paula: The name sounds familiar, but the, the layout of the website doesn’t look familiar, so I, I feel like maybe I’ve heard about it, but I don’t think I’ve actually read it.

[00:07:05] Joe: Jesse, you’re nodding your head yes.

[00:07:06] Jesse: Yeah, I, I definitely, I’m, I’m kind of similar.

[00:07:09] I know for sure I’ve read at least one post here before and the name is definitely familiar.

[00:07:14] Joe: Well, and I wanted to kind of highlight it because as I read, not just this piece, but a lot of pieces, man, there’s a lot of good stuff here to dive into. But today, while we’re talking goal setting, his headline is Do quests, not goals.

[00:07:27] And we’ll get back to the idea of Quest in a minute. But there’s been a lot of this, you know, as I mentioned, people going September already. If you’re thinking that, I think your goal setting function might be off, uh, Paula, where are you at with your 2024 goals? Feeling good or feeling behind? Because I’m, I’m certainly one of those people feeling behind.

[00:07:46] Paula: It depends on the specific goal. There are certain goals where I feel ahead, certain where I feel behind, and then certain that, uh, I feel not exactly a lateral move, but I feel like I’ve made progress. And in the making of said progress, I have discovered that the. Result I envisioned is not, is not going to, you know, basically I’ve discovered that there’s more like complexity to executing the goal than I had originally anticipated, which causes me to then iterate not the goal itself, but iterate the process.

[00:08:22] Um, and so I love that though. Yeah. So, and then with enough iteration, it ends up kind of deviating from the original vision enough such that by the time we hit September, it’s almost a totally different vision. Entirely.

[00:08:35] Joe: But it’s funny, I think that part of the reason people don’t get goals and we’ll broach this topic even deeper later on, Paula, is just the fact that we feel like internally, if I start walking down this road, this closes all those other doors.

[00:08:47] And what you’re really saying is by walking down toward this goal, yeah, maybe it closes some doors down here, but it certainly opens up five new doors that you didn’t know existed.

[00:08:55] Paula: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I.

[00:08:57] Joe: Yeah. Jesse, how are you doing on your goals 2024?

[00:09:00] Jesse: The goal that comes to mind is a health goal. I mean, that was probably my biggest goal for the year and, uh, not doing great on it.

[00:09:07] Gotta be honest with you guys. A little bit of yo-yoing, a little bit of two steps forward, two steps back, that kind of thing. Yeah. You don’t

[00:09:13] Joe: really get much, uh, exercise yo-yoing.

[00:09:15] Jesse: Correct?

[00:09:16] Joe: Very. You usually gotta

[00:09:17] Jesse: run or lift weights, correct? My, my Fitbit just tells me, I mean. Tell you what, here’s the problem.

[00:09:23] If you get caught in the wrong circumstances of vigorously yo-yoing, it’s not a good look. People don’t

[00:09:28] Joe: recognize it’s yo-yo on the end of that head going up and down.

[00:09:32] Jesse: They don’t, they don’t. So I should

[00:09:33] Joe: have painted that picture. That was maybe a bridge too far. Stay farm’s not gonna be the only one reporting this.

[00:09:39] Jesse: I tell you what, I, I really enjoyed the article and I know we, we’ll get into it later. And I just kind of went down a bit of a rabbit hole this afternoon, reading more about, you know, goal setting tactics and the things to think about when you’re setting goals and, and all that kind of stuff. And I, I, it helped me.

[00:09:53] Think that maybe I’m not approaching this goal the right way to begin with, but yeah, it’s always been hard for me. I’ve, I’ve always kind of had a bit of a health and fitness goal in the back of my mind, and I think it’s slowly slipped away from me. Over time, I’ve, I’ve slipped down the slippery health slope that maybe many listeners can, can relate to, but uh, yeah, so it’s, it’s not going great.

[00:10:10] Joe, to answer your original question,

[00:10:12] Joe: my feeling about fitness goals, especially Jesse, is procrastination is your friend for two reasons. Number one, you always have something to do tomorrow and then second, you’re not that busy today. Like, it’s great. It frees up time all around by just not doing it. So, og how about you?

[00:10:26] How are your 2024 goals coming along?

[00:10:29] OG: Well, I, I work on a different schedule, so I’m just about to start 20, 24 goals ’cause I work on a different fiscal calendar, fiscal calendar than everybody. So I’m doing really great ’cause I haven’t started yet. You know, Joe, you and I are in Strategic Coach and one of the great comments in strategic coaches is, you know, it’s not that you have bad goals, it’s just that you have bad timeframes.

[00:10:49] And you know, if you, you just need to give yourself a little bit more time to accomplish those things. We’ve all heard the saying of, uh, you know, most people overestimate what they can get done in a year and underestimate what they can get done in 10 years or 25 years or something like that. And that’s really true.

[00:11:03] And, you know, on the health related thing or just about any goal for that matter, it really, I think, has to be a focus on progress and the experience. And I know that’s kind of what we’re gonna talk about here in a little bit, but if you think that there’s a beginning and you think that there’s an end, Jesse, to your health goals, just wait till you’re 10 years older.

[00:11:24] Yeah, it’s true. And that’s a whole different ball of wax, brother. Like, it’s just like, you know, it’s just, there is no, there is no point at which you go, okay, I’m healthy enough right now. I’m good. I never have to do this ever again. Unlike maybe some financial goals, which frankly I would disagree with, that those are ever done either for that matter.

[00:11:42] But some people feel like, if I can get to. You know, if I get to 170 pounds, I’ll be lean and then I’ll be done. It’s like, well, no you won’t. Now you have to maintain 170 pounds. Now you have to build a whole system around that.

[00:11:53] Joe: Yeah.

[00:11:54] OG: It’s gotta

[00:11:54] Joe: be not just the goal, it’s gotta be a lifestyle. It’s gotta be a change.

[00:11:57] OG: It’s, yeah, it’s just who you are. It’s just who you are. Wayne Dyer, uh, years and years and years ago, I, I, I know you were kind of a, were you a little bit of a fan of Wayne, er, Joe? I love Wayne Dyer. Yeah. Yeah. Loved Wayne. He’s passed away many years ago, but, uh, he was like one of the very few people that I could get hooked on PBS, like whatever those things.

[00:12:16] What were those things called? Where they would like, uh, like yeah, the PBS money Drive, fund, drive, the little seminar and that, it’d be like, it’d cut and it’d be like, if you donate $1 a day, right? You can get all of Wayne Dyer CDs, uh, you know, whatever. And they would, you know, have ’em as a, like, I would stop on a Saturday afternoon and be like, oh my gosh, Wayne Dyer’s on.

[00:12:33] But one of the things he had, a story that I remember, and I still use it a lot, is if you have an orange and you squeeze it really hard, what comes out of it? Juice. Orange juice, right? Well, what happens if you’re inside of a dark closet and you squeeze really hard? What comes out of it? Orange juice. What happens if it’s the middle of the day and you’re out in the sun?

[00:12:50] You squeeze really hard. It’s orange juice. It’s always gonna be orange juice. Everything is, whatever’s inside is always gonna be expressed when there’s pressure applied. And so whatever’s inside you is always gonna be expressed when there’s any sort of pressure, regardless of the external, whether it’s good or not so good.

[00:13:06] And so when it comes to like health or financial goals and that sort of thing, it’s like whatever, whatever your soul is, is what’s, what’s gonna come out when there’s pressure applied. If you love eating chocolate cake every day for breakfast, listen, you’re gonna eat chocolate cake, man. You just need to work around it.

[00:13:22] Like embrace the process, can

[00:13:24] Doug: embrace it. Can we have a big group hug so I can find out what’s gonna come outta me?

[00:13:29] OG: You know what comes outta me, ROL and whiskey.

[00:13:33] Joe: Welcome to the Wayne Dyer Cover Band podcast. He could start a Wayne Dyer cover band. Roger

[00:13:37] OG: Whitney. Our friend Roger Whitney knows what happens if he gives me a hug.

[00:13:41] Joe: Oh no. Oh no. I don’t. I don’t wanna know. You should

[00:13:44] OG: ask him one day. What happens when you try to hug og? It’s uh,

[00:13:47] Joe: what does happen? Unpleasant for everyone involved. You gotta tell everybody ’cause nobody’s gonna know except me. So what is it?

[00:13:52] OG: Oh, I was having a very bad day. Golfing and Roger’s A to he Rogers.

[00:13:55] Well, that never

[00:13:56] Joe: happens.

[00:13:56] OG: Doug. That never happens. Oji. No. Why shout a 77 last week. So I did have a good day last week.

[00:14:01] Doug: What goal story has ever started positively that all the rest of them are. So

[00:14:05] OG: there I was three birdies in a row. No, I was having a bad day. And Roger’s a touchy feely guy. He likes to. Put his hands on things and people.

[00:14:13] And so he’s like, I’m gonna give OG a big giant hug right now.

[00:14:17] Joe: Why? Say that? The worst possible way?

[00:14:19] OG: Yeah. Well, if you’re into that, it’s cool. If you’re like me and you don’t wanna be hugged right now from Roger in Mexico and you’re sweaty and hot and he wants to give you a big, big giant teddy bear hug, it, it, uh, it was, there was some, there was an anxiety, there was some claustrophobia that went on.

[00:14:36] Maybe some words work exchanged didn’t work out. Well, get your hands off of me or I might kill you. What might have been, wow. Somebody might have said that, I don’t know. But, uh, anyways, I love you, Roger. I thought maybe

[00:14:44] Doug: you squeezed too hard and you farted.

[00:14:48] Paula: I thought the story was gonna involve a yo-yo, are we talking about goal setting?

[00:14:51] Does anybody wanna talk about goal setting? But there I

[00:14:52] OG: was. Roger, Roger was playing with his yo-Yo again, how

[00:14:57] Joe: do we get to plug Roger Whitney in the middle of this? I love it. The interesting thing though, about your Wayne Dyer story and about pressure being applied is that you gotta apply pressure to yourself.

[00:15:09] I remember. Paula, your best friend, Susie Orman. Yes. Or Susie and Paula get along really well. Besties. Susie said one thing I really liked. She’s like, oh yeah, don’t think you can save any money now, or Don’t think you can work toward that goal now. She’s like, imagine yourself 70 years old and you’ve done nothing.

[00:15:24] Yeah, and it’s funny ’cause I did that for a second and I thought to myself, Paula, I’m like, wow, I need to think about future. Me and Jesse, maybe to your point, you know? Mm-Hmm. You think you could end up like Doug later, like scare the hell outta yourself and you’ll go for a run immediately? Paula?

[00:15:41] Paula: No, I, no.

[00:15:41] To be clear, I love Suzy Orman. I really do. I think she’s sharp. She’s brilliant, she’s very successful and she’s built that success on helping millions of people with their money, helping millions of people get out of debt and build their net worth and save for retirement. I have enormous respect for her.

[00:15:58] She also helped you

[00:15:58] Joe: acquire some fame.

[00:16:00] Paula: She spoke with enthusiasm about. Her feelings around the fire movement, uh, that ended up going quite viral.

[00:16:10] OG: Yeah.

[00:16:10] Paula: But a lot of that was around kind of a semantic, the, you know, the semantic discussion around, what is the word retirement, which is like, we’re not gonna, we don’t need to go down that road.

[00:16:20] ’cause we’ve already talked about that a thousand times. Um, what was your original question?

[00:16:26] Joe: It was, it was putting pressure on yourself by looking at your future self and going, you know, what if I don’t do anything, how is this gonna look?

[00:16:31] Paula: Right. Exactly. And you know, there have been studies done in which if you take a, those face aging accelerator apps, you know, like there, there are these apps where you can take a picture of your face and then you can see what your face looks like when it’s aged.

[00:16:47] There are actually studies done that show that if you do that and you can visualize yourself in your sixties, your seventies, your eighties, you are actually more likely to. Do the habits that are in service of your future self, both with regard to your health and with regard to your, uh, money.

[00:17:04] Joe: There’s a great thing that, uh, OG you and I did in Strategic Coach that was just transformative for me, which is imagine yourself a year before you die, and how do you want people to think about you?

[00:17:14] And you write all those things down and then they ask you, okay, if you do all those things, how much longer would you live?

[00:17:21] OG: Yeah. I was like, do you still wanna die in a year?

[00:17:25] Joe: I, I wanna be a great husband, good dad. I wanna be resource for my community. I want to be, I wanna be healthy. I wanna not worry about money.

[00:17:32] I didn’t say I wanna be rich, that I don’t wanna worry about money. They said, okay, if you’re all those things a year before you die, like if you’re doing all this stuff, how much longer do you buy yourself? And I wrote like nine years. I by myself if I do that. And then they said, well, why are you waiting on all those things for later?

[00:17:48] Like, why are you thinking about this when you’re in your eighties? Why aren’t you working on those? Those things now, like this whole idea of future, future you. But Jesse, I want to go to you because this, uh, blogger David makes a couple of assertions about goals. He says number one, just the name goal. You know, you hear about corporate goals and what’s our fourth quarter?

[00:18:08] Like, where are we going with goals? And goals just seems so whitewashed. It’s not inspiring. Plus he says, A goal sounds like something you expect to not be working on now. It’s something that I can do later. Like, Hey, if I set my goal on January 1st, I can think about it in September. What’d you think about that?

[00:18:25] Jesse: It helped me. I mean, again, I, I kind of read this article and, and looked through the lens or framed it selfishly as maybe we’re all want to do and, and, and kind of put myself into the article and said, okay, how does this apply to me? But yeah, it made sense to me the idea that it can be helpful to, rather than frame goals as OG alluded to as having these finite beginnings and, and endings.

[00:18:46] To instead think of ’em as as journeys as ongoing quests. Right? He used the word quest in the article, I think, and the idea that sure, along your quest you might have mile markers, you might have milestones. You wanna stop by this place first and that place second. But, but it, it never really ends. It’s not really about the ending to begin with.

[00:19:04] It’s about how you learn and grow and change along the way. ’cause it can be hard. I, I find it. Pretty hard when I, uh, don’t meet a goal, if I put myself in the old framing and I don’t meet a goal, it’s a bit of a self-esteem, bummer. You know, am I a failure? Do I not have the discipline? Do I not have the ability to overcome my, my habits, all, all that kind of stuff.

[00:19:25] Uh, whereas if I think of it as a quest and it’s ongoing, and I know that there will be struggles, there’ll be hills to climb, there’ll be pitfalls along the way. Well, now that’s just part of a quest. That’s just part of an adventure. And, and it’s more about can you bounce back? Do you keep going? That kind of thing.

[00:19:40] So if this sounds a little bit like the hobbit, it should, I mean, that’s how I thought of it, you know? Yeah. It’s, it’s life. Life’s a big adventure and you don’t know where you’re gonna go and you step outside your door. But I thought it was a, a pretty interesting way of reframing the whole goal setting paradigm.

[00:19:54] Joe: What I like about what you said is that when we think about the fact that we didn’t achieve our goals, I. Like, I don’t know about you guys, but I spent a lot of time that I should be moving instead, looking in the rear view mirror with self-loathing going, God, I wasted all that time. And then you waste more time thinking about how I wasted time versus I always feel better when I just, you know, put one foot in front of the other.

[00:20:17] Oh gee, I wanna read you something from this piece. David says, still, the tendency is to wait for a better, less cluttered stretch of time to appear before you work on your goals. I’m gonna work on my goal. As soon as life gets less cluttered, you’ll execute your great plans as soon as life becomes a little easier and more spacious than it is now.

[00:20:36] I don’t know about for you, but that line really resonated for me that, hey, I’m just gonna wait till life gets, gets easier. Then I’ll work on my goals.

[00:20:44] OG: Yeah. When things get easier, uhhuh. Sure. Right. It’s like listening to my kids talk about how hard school is, and I’m going, listen guys, this is as easy as it gets.

[00:20:54] This is the easiest day you’re gonna have the rest of your life. I don’t wanna, fifth

[00:20:57] Joe: grade will not, will not be easier than third grade.

[00:21:00] OG: I get it. Calculus is hard. I understand this, but it’s not easier than this. Like when your biggest stress is like, I got problem number six. Wrong. Like, that’s, that’s a pretty low stress day in the, in the history of your life.

[00:21:13] I mean, Tony Robbins, big goal, fulfillment, coaching person, whatever he calls himself, I don’t know. One of the things he said, I think years ago, which really resonated with me was, don’t ever leave the site of a goal without doing the next logical first step. I think a lot of times we think of, you know, okay, I’m gonna do this health thing.

[00:21:36] I’m gonna pick on you, Jesse. ’cause we’re, I think we’re all, everything. Everybody here is working on something. We go, all right, I want to, well, maybe not Doug, he’s already a physical specimen. We already know, but um, you know, I wanna lose this weight or I want to go to the gym, or I’m gonna exercise you so like whatever it is, I’m gonna eat healthier.

[00:21:54] And it’s like, what’s the easiest first thing that you can do in pursuit of that? The minute that you decide that that’s the thing that you’re gonna do, you know, it doesn’t have to be something complicated like, well I need all new cycling clothes ’cause I wanna learn how to cycle. I. I mean, that’s a big thing, but you can say like, I’m gonna download the app, or I’m gonna go in my refrigerator and throw out all my junk food.

[00:22:13] Or I’m gonna make a list of my grocery shopping for the next week. Or, you know, or I’m gonna call the gyms to see what the pricing is. Yeah.

[00:22:20] Doug: Or you can send a video of yourself and your golf swing to a good friend of yours who’s a really good golfer, and get his thoughts on your golf swing. Only to have him say, it doesn’t matter what your swing tempo is, if you’re gonna blade that six iron, you still suck.

[00:22:36] OG: Maybe he says that, you know, he’s just, Jesse.

[00:22:40] Joe: That sounds very, very precise,

[00:22:42] OG: very

[00:22:42] Joe: specific.

[00:22:43] Doug: I mean, I’m just making up, for example, you know,

[00:22:46] Jesse: that’s what my health coach said to me too.

[00:22:48] OG: Yeah. You’ll always be fat if you keep on

[00:22:50] Jesse: eating like that.

[00:22:51] Joe: If you’re gonna blame that six iron, Jesse, you’re like, what are you referring to?

[00:22:54] OG: Right. Well, my point is, is that when it comes to the opportune time, the opportune time is right now, look, it sounds so silly. It sounds so obnoxious. Especially with things like money or health. It’s like. I was watching a YouTube about this guy who does like health challenge, like workout challenges, whatever.

[00:23:11] And so he runs these things. He gives away promotion and, you know, money to the winners and stuff, and he is talking to the winner of this 12 week, 12 weeks, like not, you know, a 12 year challenge, a 12 week challenge, which by the way, 12 weeks ago, it’s like the middle of July, right? It’s like, it’s still recent enough that we all kind of remember when it was, or the middle of June.

[00:23:30] And so anyways, he’s talking to the guy, he is like, well, what did you do every day for, for cardio? And he is like, oh, you know, I just, like, I walked, I mean, I walked a lot 20, I did 25,000 steps a day. I was like, oh, geez, that’s thought you like, what did you, what did you do for eating? He’s like, well, I ate the same thing every day.

[00:23:47] I ate chicken and rice and broccoli and for breakfast, I a protein. You know, he laid it out Well. What did you do for strength training? Oh, I worked out every day for an hour. Different body parts. Six days a week, took Sundays off, you know, and it’s like, okay, yeah, it must be nice to have all that time. But the dude dropped like 35 pounds in 12 weeks and went from being like a disgusting fat body to jacked and tan and it’s like, holy crap.

[00:24:09] Like 12 weeks is nothing. It’s nothing. In 12 weeks from now, it’ll still be pumpkin spice latte season. We won’t even have transitioned to peppermint, you know, lattes yet. Like it’ll still be that time. And yet we go like, I’ll start later, I’ll start later. Like, dude, if you got a money goal, freaking open a brokerage account.

[00:24:29] Put $50 in it. Just see what happens, right? Like do the next logical thing. I thought that I was always super powerful and just enough to kinda, not always, but sometimes get me off my, uh. Keys turning. Go

[00:24:43] Jesse: get

[00:24:43] OG: going.

[00:24:43] Jesse: Isn’t it amazing how 12 weeks in retrospect is the snap of a fingers? Yeah. Oh, but 12 weeks looking forward seems like this.

[00:24:49] Looking forward it’s like

[00:24:50] OG: like a 12 week challenge. What do you mean I can, I can’t eat ice cream for 12 weeks. Are you kidding me?

[00:24:56] Joe: This house is a prison. It is funny, the difference. It’s the same amount of time, Jesse, and it feels completely different.

[00:25:01] Jesse: Yeah. And and the important thing is to remember that the version of you 12 weeks from now, which you, you, I think maybe it was you, Joe, you kind of alluded to this before, like future you is super duper real, maybe not a hundred percent real.

[00:25:14] That airplane could land on the highway this afternoon and take me out like we talked about. We talked about it before here on the show, but it’s a very slim chance. It’s a very slim chance and 12 week version of me from now is super real and I owe it to that version of me. To do something, to take that first step, to go for that walk and start my journey here in the next 12 weeks.

[00:25:35] Anyway, I’ll, I’ll leave it there. At that, the, the listeners understand.

[00:25:38] Joe: Some people do callbacks to, like the beginning of the show, Jesse calls back six weeks. We were talking about airplanes landing on him in the middle of a field, uh, if I remember correctly. Yeah.

[00:25:49] Jesse: On

[00:25:49] Paula: the highway. I remember that. I remember that all remembers because it’s a super specific fear that you would be in your car and then an airplane lands on you.

[00:25:57] OG: Oh, it’s a fear of yours. It’s not actually happened. Cor, it has not happened. I don’t think it was a part of this conversation. No, no, no, no. I wanna explore this more.

[00:26:04] Joe: I think we’ll let it go maybe later. Thank you. Uh, let’s just talk, talk about leasing versus buying a car again. So I can stick the, stick the pencil all the way into my eye.

[00:26:15] Paula, I wanna end the first half of this discussion with another great point that he makes. Then he says that this tendency to wait right until your life is less cluttered is exactly backward. He says, forming and achieving aspirations is how life actually gets easier and more spacious. Mm-Hmm. I, I don’t know about you.

[00:26:32] I found that to be true every time in my life. Like if I actually achieve a goal, my life gets way more spacious. Yeah.

[00:26:39] Paula: Yeah. It, it reminds me of the, if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Mm-Hmm. So, if there is something in your life that is a, a priority, you find the time for it. You make the space for it.

[00:26:49] You, you move. If something’s truly a priority, you move mountains to make it happen. And you take whatever sacrifice is necessary in order to make that thing happen. And so oftentimes what happens is if you decide that something is a priority, whatever that thing may be, naturally, the things that it, that are in your life that are a little bit ancillary or superfluous will just start to fall away.

[00:27:12] Yeah. Not even

[00:27:13] Joe: intentionally.

[00:27:13] Paula: Yeah, exactly. It’ll be, it’ll be subconscious. Like maybe, maybe instead of taking, and it, a lot of times it’s the aggregation of a lot of small things. Instead of taking 15 minute showers, you’re suddenly taking five minute showers. Right. And you’ve now you have an extra 10 minutes in your day, which you can spend.

[00:27:30] I put towards stretching, not showering. Yeah.

[00:27:34] OG: Being stinky.

[00:27:37] Paula: I was gonna say stretching. ’cause you’re lifting weights all the time, but sure, that too. Also, all you’re stinky, all yo-yoing you’re doing. Yeah.

[00:27:47] Joe: I love our ability to ruin a great analogy. We’re so good at it. I think we’ll stop on that note in the second half. I wanna talk about Jesse, what you alluded to. He then talks about going on a quest. Sounds a little nerdy, sounds a little weird, but, um, but I don’t know. I kinda like it. We’ll talk about maybe is a quest, what we should be after here for the last three and a half months of 2024 and beyond, but at the halfway point, we stop the show for just a moment.

[00:28:14] While we have this year long competition between our three frequent contributors on the show, Paula Pant, og, and mom and, uh, Mr. Kramer, you’re playing for mom today, which brings up some good news and bad news. You want the good news first or the bad news?

[00:28:28] Jesse: I’ll take the bad news first this time.

[00:28:30] Joe: Well, the bad news is you’re not winning.

[00:28:32] You’re in second place. And even more bad news, OG pulled further ahead last week, so he’s got 12. Mom has nine, and Paula almost tied you. Last week had she just moved, I think just a couple dollars in the opposite direction, but she didn’t, which is apropos for Paula. Story of

[00:28:49] Paula: my life.

[00:28:51] Joe: And so Paula has eight, so Jesse slash mom with nine OGs got 12, Paula has eight.

[00:28:57] Are Jesse slash mom. Paula gonna make a run outta this thing. We’re starting to run outta time. We only got what, about 10, 11 weeks left. Well, we need a quiz question to find out. Doug, what’s our question this week?

[00:29:12] Doug: Hey, there’s DERs. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today we welcome Jesse Kramer back to the show. Let’s be honest though, who really wants to hear Jesse Kramer on a Money podcast? What people probably would prefer, no offense, Jesse, you can include me in on. This is Jesse, slightly better known cousin Jim Kramer.

[00:29:31] Now, that would be a show. Jim Kramer has done everything. He started the street.com, he says so really loud, and he ran a hedge fund called Kramer, Berkowitz and Company. While Kramer’s results coming up with stock recommendations on the spot is sketchy at best. When he ran his fund, he solidly beat the s and p 500 nearly every year.

[00:29:54] So here’s a question. During Kramer’s tenure from 1988 to 1996, the s and p 500 averaged 15% per year. What was the average return of Kramer’s Fund? I’ll be back right after I go get more stock recommendations from Joe’s mom. I’m pretty sure she is the next Jim Kramer. The way she yells at me to quiet down during Squawk Box.

[00:30:18] Joe: She’s a yeller when you’re disturbing her CNBC fixed. Doug og. We’ve got 15% average annual returns for the s and p 500 during Kramer’s Reign. What’s the average annual return for Kramer’s Hedge Fund during that time?

[00:30:33] OG: Well, Doug helped us by saying it was better. Isn’t that what you said? That part of the info that it was better, but I, um, I.

[00:30:41] I don’t think it was much better. That’s a big number during that time. Yeah. 15 per year. Fifteen’s a big number. So, uh, I’m gonna keep it pretty close and I’m gonna say, you said 15.8 was his number, I think was the, uh, is that what I heard correctly? 15.8 somebody? Did we just say 15? I thought so. Think we just said 15.

[00:30:59] Yeah. Oh, okay. There it was. Uh, Doug, stuttered again. My bad. Uh, so 15. Um, I will, uh, I’ll go slightly above that and say 17.3. 17.3.

[00:31:12] Joe: Jesse, whatcha gonna do with that?

[00:31:14] Jesse: No idea. Uh, he’s my uncle. Doug for its worth. Uncle. Uh, but it’s still, I don’t blame you. I know there’s a writer behind the scenes, so Come on.

[00:31:26] Does he yell, sell,

[00:31:26] Joe: sell, sell, like at Thanksgiving?

[00:31:29] Jesse: It’s, it’s pretty bad. My mom brings out the pecan pie, you know. Bye bye. It’s like it’s pie. It’s not bye. But it’s all good. Uh, my lucky number is 22, so I’m gonna go with 22%,

[00:31:42] Joe: 22%. And Paula,

[00:31:45] Paula: oh boy.

[00:31:50] I think 22 is too high. My first thought when I heard the question is I don’t think he beat it by that much. I mean, we, we know that he beat it, but I think it was. My, the first number that entered my head when I first heard the question was 17%. So the question then, og, your guess was, what was it? 17.3 you said?

[00:32:10] OG: Indeed.

[00:32:12] Paula: Oh, so the question is do I go 17.2 or do I go 17.4?

[00:32:18] Doug: No. Or 23 for 22.1 to take all the upside

[00:32:23] OG: or 18 point whatever and get halfway in between.

[00:32:26] Paula: og, your guess was 17.3

[00:32:29] OG: 17 and a third?

[00:32:30] Paula: Yes. 17.3. Okay. I’m going 17.31.

[00:32:41] Joe: Why don’t you say 0.3 1, 1, 1, 1, 1.

[00:32:44] Paula: Well, I mean, his guess was technically 17.3 0 0 0 0 0. So I guess mine could be 17.30. 0 0 0 1. There

[00:32:53] Joe: we go. So we got a 17.3 17 point. 3 0, 0, 0, 0 1. And we’ve got 22. Who’s right? We will find out in just a moment. We’ll be right back. Oh gee, you opened up in what, what, what I think was pretty good faith

[00:33:17] with the number. What, what was it? Doug? 18.3. 17.3. 17.3. 17.3. How are you feeling now that, uh, Paula gave you a haircut?

[00:33:27] OG: Yeah, I don’t think it was very much. I don’t think, uh, I, I don’t, I don’t think he did. You know, I think I’m, I think I’m, I’m feeling pretty good.

[00:33:35] Joe: S 17.3 0 0 0 0 1. Paula, you feeling better this week because you took the wrong side last week?

[00:33:42] I know, and maybe a hundred times before that? Yeah,

[00:33:45] Paula: no, I’m, I’m worried because I, I honestly, I think I could have gone either 17.29 or 17.31 and I, I think I’d have a good shot with either of those. So I, I really, I’m feeling 50 50 about what I picked.

[00:33:59] Joe: And Jesse, these guys are much closer to 15. What made you go way out in lemon?

[00:34:02] Say 22?

[00:34:04] Jesse: Um, I was born on March 22nd, so that’s for starters. That was the first part of my guess. And, uh, are you truly born

[00:34:11] Joe: on March 22nd? You just making crap up?

[00:34:12] Jesse: No. No. I, yeah, I am. March 22nd. I’m an Aries, so it’s like, you know. Okay. His, his average was 15, I think somewhere in the Doug said he was solidly beat the s and p 500.

[00:34:22] Ooh. So, I don’t know, pick up that, I didn’t pick up the adjective. I was like, okay. He, he might’ve beat it by a few. That’s not a few

[00:34:27] Joe: though. That’s almost 50% higher. I mean, if you think about it. Yeah,

[00:34:31] Jesse: I, I mean, I get it. I get it. But it was only an eight year stretch. Right. 88 to 96, 9 year stretch, something like that.

[00:34:37] And he’s famous now, so he must have got famous somehow, although I will say all the attention that you guys are paying to this whole 17.3 versus 17.30, it does have me worried. He only

[00:34:47] Doug: does that to make it hard for me to do the math to figure out that is when he does all this decimal crap, it’s an attack on me.

[00:34:56] That’s the only reason he’s not talking about

[00:34:57] Joe: you, Jesse. He’s talking about og. Yeah, because doing the math. Yeah. That’s where, that’s where the 0.3 came from. Well, let’s uh, hear who our winner is this week. Doug. What do you got?

[00:35:11] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m market maker and small caps everywhere, except, you know where Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Oh, look at the glow on Jesse Kramer’s face. It’s that same youthful exuberance that I remember having when I first started the show. You know, before I figured out I wasn’t getting paid, and I’d have to listen to OG and Paula Wax poetic about tax lost harvesting and capital gains treatments, uh, to be young and naive.

[00:35:41] Again, like Jesse Kramer, but not like his uncle slash cousin Jim Kramer, who’s the subject of today’s trivia question. We asked what Return Kramer had from 88 to 96 in his hedge fund when the s and p 500 was averaging 15% per year. How much did Kramer’s fund average over that timeframe? Well. I can tell you it was 4.7% more than OG guest and 4.6899999999999995% more than Paula guest making the correct answer.

[00:36:15] A suspiciously exact 22%. Making mom and Jesse the winner today. Very weird.

[00:36:24] Joe: Well, Doug, that’s not, it’s twice in a row. I was gonna say that’s not the weirdest part. We’ve had one person nail it exactly twice in a row. Mm-Hmm. We launched a formal investigation. Yeah. ’cause we were sure she was cheating.

[00:36:35] Mm-Hmm. We were so sure she was cheating. Now we have our second

[00:36:37] Doug: cheater,

[00:36:38] Joe: Jesse Kramer on twice

[00:36:40] Doug: in a row gets it. Doesn’t win hold. Gets in. Exactly right. And the other nice thing is he gave us his birthday, so now we know how to unlock his iPhone because now we know the four digits of his birthday. That’s right.

[00:36:52] We know.

[00:36:53] Joe: Can

[00:36:53] Doug: you

[00:36:53] Joe: guys

[00:36:53] Doug: see that

[00:36:54] Joe: he’s

[00:36:54] Doug: showing us his

[00:36:54] Joe: ID Three?

[00:36:55] OG: Yeah, his ID 3 22. You know, this is on the internet. Right. I

[00:36:59] Jesse: covered, I covered all the important numbers. I covered all the important numbers. Jesse, what elementary school did you attend? Oh, what’s

[00:37:06] Paula: your mother’s maiden name? What’s your favorite?

[00:37:08] Jesse: What’s your

[00:37:08] OG: grandmother’s first name? I was about to answer

[00:37:10] Jesse: that. What are the

[00:37:11] Doug: last four of your social, your first dog’s name, right?

[00:37:14] Jesse: Can’t give it away. Just too old. Yeah. Wait, wait till the next time you have me on and I’ll include my social in the answer for that question.

[00:37:22] OG: Pick

[00:37:22] Jesse: your, pick your favorite color

[00:37:23] OG: out of these colors.

[00:37:24] What was your first make and model of your car? I love it. I love that, that Facebook, the Russian bots will do that on Facebook to all the boomers. Yeah. Post a picture of your first car. It’s like, everybody’s like posting pictures. Mom, don’t No. No. Mom, no, no. Please stop. Please stop.

[00:37:40] Jesse: I will say I’m, I’m a little nervous though, Joe, about no matter what rationale I have for my next wild pick.

[00:37:48] I’m concerned about getting it right.

[00:37:50] Doug: You

[00:37:50] Joe: better

[00:37:50] Jesse: be wrong. I’m genuinely worried about getting it right. I’m too,

[00:37:53] Joe: yeah, after twice in a row, I, I hope that I know the answer

[00:37:55] Jesse: next time so that I just a, avoid the right answer.

[00:37:58] Joe: Don’t get me wrong. Doug and I are always thrilled when, uh, because Paula has this inability to catch up with og, so we’re glad somebody’s doing it so that that part’s good.

[00:38:08] Maybe if you have to cheat, uh, okay. Well, maybe. No, I’m kidding. We, we don’t want that either.

[00:38:13] Jesse: No, no. And

[00:38:14] Joe: actually Doug, the two that we gave Jesse were not that broad. They were small numbers like this. I think the last person, um, who shall remain nameless, we asked like what Oh, yeah, what the, what the length of the Dead Sea was.

[00:38:28] And she got it to the number.

[00:38:30] Doug: Yeah. She was like, what’s the total volume of water? Right. On Tuesday, April 17th in the Dead Sea. And she said something like, oh, I homeschooled my kids,

[00:38:40] Joe: and we were just talking about this. No, you weren’t. There’s no way you were talking about that. Well, we’re talking about goal setting, and the second half of our discussion is brought to you by deposit accounts.com.

[00:38:51] Jesse, you know what happens when you go to deposit accounts.com? Something

[00:38:55] Jesse: good?

[00:38:55] Joe: Well, these guys aren’t cheating when it comes to showing you where the best interest rates are on savings accounts, CDs, checking accounts, or money markets. They compare more than 275,000 deposit rates from over 11,000 banks of credit unions, and they do it for free.

[00:39:09] If you’re at one of those major banks, they’re pointing 0.0 like a Paula Pant. Number zero, what was it? 0.00001, exactly. National average is 0.5. So even if you left those banks to go to the national average, you get a big win. But listen to this. If you’re in the top 1%, which is hundreds of banks, and they’re all listed@depositaccounts.com, 4.92 is what a savings account’s paying for the top 1%.

[00:39:35] It’s easy to compare deposit accounts.com. Big thanks to them for helping us with the second half of our Friday shows now for years and years. The second half of this discussion, we were talking about this idea that maybe it is, it is a quest, and he starts off this idea, Jesse, that goal setting should be systematic.

[00:39:55] How do you set goal-based systems to, to make your goal setting better?

[00:40:01] Jesse: Yeah. It, it can be hard financially. I know. Uh, I mean the go-to that worked really well for me and that I recommend is the whole, anything that you can automate is almost always gonna be better, right? Behavioral economics, what is it, Richard Thaler, that whole thing is if you can set it and forget it, if you can take an action once, that then automatically repeats itself over time, whatever.

[00:40:20] It’s, you know, direct contributions into a Roth, IRA, that kind of thing. That’s the kind of system that is going to work in your advantage over long periods of time. One of the hard things, again, depending on the goal itself, is like, how can we set it and forget it and automate these things? And earlier, OG was talking about, right, the one smallest thing that you can do.

[00:40:39] And it made me think of the whole atomic habits point. You know, can you atomize your habit? Literally get down to the, the smallest part, the smallest component, and think of these small components, one after the other, after the other, and create a system that that kind of leads you down this path. And so I think that’s maybe a, a good tip that I should implement more myself.

[00:41:00] But this idea of if I do have, say, a health goal, ’cause that’s the thing we’ve been talking about today. You know, can I get that membership? Can, can I set up my clothes the night before so that when I wake up at 6:00 AM my clothes are ready and I don’t have to worry about that thing impeding me from hitting my goal.

[00:41:15] It, it’s that kind of stuff that I. I’ve heard, haven’t always put it into practice, but I’ve heard can, can be really effective.

[00:41:21] Joe: That’s a great system. That works really well for me, by the way, set out the clothes the night before and I get up and I don’t even think, I just put the clothes on and I’m already out the door and I’m finally going, oh, this sucks, but I’m already out the door, which is sure it’s easy when your mom does it for you, Joe.

[00:41:35] Oh, oh gee, said this before. That’s the hardest part. It’s getting mom to do it. Paula, he talks about this as a quest. Mm, don’t, don’t think about goals. Think about Quest. And he says that a quest is an adventure and you should expect your life to be one. Are you down with that analogy?

[00:41:53] Paula: Yeah. You know what I love about that is that a goal is all about the end result, whereas a quest is about the process, the adventure, the process, the journey.

[00:42:03] Um, so it’s not about the end result at all. It’s about the getting there. That’s the book, that’s the movie, that’s the adventure. That’s um, you know, and that’s where the focus should be because those actions are completely inside of your direct control. They’re within your circle of influence. Whereas the end result is technically outside of your circle of influence.

[00:42:25] By repeating specific actions, you increase or decrease the likelihood of certain end results, but ultimately the end result is outside of your direct control. Whereas the actions that you take on a day-to-day basis are within it.

[00:42:39] Joe: You’re saying fall in love with the activity, not with the end result.

[00:42:43] Paula: Yeah, exactly.

[00:42:44] Joe: Yeah, because the activity then is the adventure. Oh gee, I wanna read the next piece to you. He says, A quest changes you, not just your situation goals or practical attempts to change your circumstances. A quest is personally transformative. The endeavor itself shapes who you are and what you’re capable of.

[00:43:03] That also sounds powerful. You down with this idea.

[00:43:06] OG: Sounds a little over the top, a little flowery in terms of the language. This, this weight loss journey will change who you are. I mean, yes, it will change how much you are well, but

[00:43:16] Joe: if you get used to being the person who’s on your bicycle all the time, you start referring to yourself as a cyclist, as an example.

[00:43:23] OG: Well, yes, but I don’t know. I think all of this boils down to being okay with, somebody said something earlier about habits, right? Like, oh, I have to change my habits, whatever. No, like you already have habits. You already have the habit of going to bed at late and sleeping in, or you already have the habit of eating crappy food for breakfast or whatever.

[00:43:45] You, you, you have to replace those things with different habits. It’s not like we, we, we put a lot of stank on making all these changes and back to our timeframe, you know, discussion, whether it’s 12 weeks or a few months or whatever, it’s like we put a lot of energy and emphasis on, on, oh my gosh, how hard this is gonna be and how challenging it is and, you know, all these sorts of things.

[00:44:06] It’s like literally, it’s like 12 weeks. It’s not that big of a deal. Just do it. It’s it’s a hundred dollars and you’re Roth. Yeah,

[00:44:13] Joe: but I think, oh gee, what he’s saying here is, is is different, which is if you do something for 12 weeks and to your point you get ripped and things are great, but you go back to donuts and sleeping in.

[00:44:25] It didn’t change you, it wasn’t transformative at all. It was 12 weeks of doing something because, and then after that you’re back to, you know what I mean? It’s not ’cause you working

[00:44:33] OG: on a, because you were working on, and I agree with this in terms of the concept of having a goal versus, versus having to be the, the journey.

[00:44:43] If you’re saying, Hey, I’m getting married in 12 weeks and I need to fit in my dress, or I need to fit in my tux, and whew, I made it. I know somebody who did that, like literally leaned out, like everything was, you’re going, oh man, you look great. Like everything was, and 12 weeks later was like, boom, boom.

[00:45:01] You know, literal, it was like, like the sound happened. Say, I

[00:45:05] Joe: need that sound effect in my life.

[00:45:08] OG: It was just like, it was like b like all at one time. So yeah, that’s, that’s the impact of having a goal versus being like, I am the person who. Works out three days a week. I’m the person who takes care of my health.

[00:45:24] I’m the person who makes sure that my financial life is in order. I’m the person who pays cash for cars. You know what I mean? Like when you say that your, your brain does not know the difference between imagination and reality. Can’t tell the difference. And we’ve talked about this before.

[00:45:42] Joe: Yeah. We’ve talked to, uh, Darius Faru on the show recently.

[00:45:45] Paul, I know you’ve talked to Ryan Holiday before. Mm-Hmm. Well, like, I think Paul, about this idea of Seneca talking about, forget about the future, about this goal thing. The, the present is all you have. So enjoy. Where, like, do your best work right now. I feel like that’s kind of what this guy’s saying.

[00:46:00] Paula: Yeah.

[00:46:00] Goals are a future orientation, whereas the adventure is a present orientation. And so by reframing from Goal to Quest, you reframe from future to present. And present is all there is.

[00:46:15] Joe: Jesse, sad and Nadella, the, uh, CEO of Microsoft has said that his favorite book is, uh, what’s the book by Carol Dewet called about having a growth.

[00:46:23] Is it called Growth Mindset or is it uh

[00:46:26] Paula: oh, uh, it’s about fixed in growth mindset.

[00:46:29] Joe: It is, it’s about the growth mindset. You familiar, Jesse with one? I’m talking about,

[00:46:32] Jesse: uh, I’m not familiar with the book. No. Yeah. But the concept of having a growth mindset. Sure.

[00:46:37] Joe: It basically is about this idea that you might be wrong.

[00:46:40] Mm-Hmm. And that your experience might not be optimal so that you know, instead of spending all your time defending ridiculous positions and saying, Nope, I’m perfect, now you go out saying, how am I wrong? How can I grow? What can I do? I also feel like changing this from a goal to a quest, and I’m on this quest.

[00:46:57] You’re literally doing that. You’re looking at like, how could my life be better? Like you’re looking for these growth opportunities. Oh, the name of the book is Mindset. Mindset, yeah. I had Growth Mindset. Yeah. I went with the wrong word. I. 50% chance that I, Paula Panted it.

[00:47:15] Jesse: Sorry, Jesse. No, you’re good. You’re good, Joe. No, I, I like it. And, and I’ll tell you what a, a quick little aside, and, uh, I won’t go into any sort of terrible self-promotion, but my personal journey of creating my own little blog, my own little podcast, my own little corner of the internet, and proving to myself that I could grow it to something bigger, changed my personal mindset when I, a look at people like you guys who have done something like that, but a hundred times bigger, a thousand times bigger, and I’m amazed at what you’ve done.

[00:47:42] But it’s also just changed my mindset toward the idea that an individual person can persevere for a few years, can go on one of these so-called quests and actually achieve something pretty cool. So when it comes to growth mindset, I mean, the way I perceive that is the fact that opportunities out there, if only you would go out and grab it.

[00:48:02] Uh, sometimes it takes I, I don’t know, 10 years ago, I’m not sure I would’ve thought that way. And it took me actually having to go, go through it myself and, and see some minor semblance of success to say, oh, if, if you, if you do it, maybe there is a little pot of gold at the end of that particular rainbow.

[00:48:19] So, I don’t know. I, I’d be interested, like I said, you guys have been doing this kind of thing for longer with, with much more success. And before you started your personal journey here, I mean, did you expect that you had it within you to, to end up in this spot right now

[00:48:34] Joe: to end up talking about yo-yo jokes with weird sexual connotations attached?

[00:48:39] Exactly.

[00:48:41] Jesse: You always had it in you, Joe.

[00:48:42] Joe: I was, I was fairly certain talking about, oh geez. Anger management issues on the golf course. Yeah, maybe. No, no. But you know what’s funny is for me personally, I don’t wanna speak for you guys, but I never really thought about that. It was more the adventure in the moment.

[00:48:55] Mm-Hmm. The fun conversation that we were having and the wonderful people you’re talking to. So. My goal was always to show up and try to do your best work, but yeah. Yeah, it is interesting. You go down the road to your point on the quest and, and serendipity happens. Oh gee. I wanna end with this last point that he makes here.

[00:49:13] He says, and I’m coming to you specifically because I feel like this is a riff on stuff that you seem to say all the time on the show. He says, A quest, if you think about this as a quest, always has a dragon de slay, right? But then his parenthetical after that is it’s inside you. Like there isn’t this quest for the outside stuff.

[00:49:33] It’s actually fighting this stupidity going on between your ears.

[00:49:37] OG: Well, I read the article and then I read some of the comments, and the first comment that was there was about the really awesome book by Stephen Pressfield called War of Art. Mm-Hmm. And if you haven’t read that, it’s a part of a trilogy of three books that he wrote.

[00:49:50] But one of the books that I reread, I. At least once a year. You know, there’s kind of a cycle of the ones that, you know, that I kind of go through and, uh, war of Art is probably one of the best mindset books that are out there. And it’s really all about the concept of procrastination and having the persistence and the discipline to kind of overcome that.

[00:50:09] He calls it in his book Resistance. We talk about, when we say something about a dragon, we’re talking about the, the phrase that I use is sling the wrong dragon as it relates to market investments or whatever. But all of this stuff is really about what’s going on in between your ears, you know, back to whether it’s timeframe, whether it’s discipline, whether it’s grit, accountability, whatever it is, everybody has the same amount of time.

[00:50:36] Everyone has the same 24 hours a day. You just have to decide to do it. And one of the things that I remember learning about some years ago was the etymology of the word decide. The side part of it is, you know, like to cut off from, right? It’s like a, you know, if you think about all the words that have side on it, right?

[00:50:55] Like whatever, like homicide, genocide, whatever. Anyway, everybody can think of a couple words that end the word side, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what does it mean? It means like to cut off from, and so like literally when you decide something, you’ve cut off from all other choices. And when we internalize that and go like, look, I’ve decided that I’m not gonna accept this in my life, or whatever.

[00:51:16] All of that is internal ’cause all the other stuff, whether it’s you’re gonna work out or you’re gonna save money or whatever it ends up being, that’s an outcome. If you focus on the outcome, worse experience, it’s who you are. And when you tell yourself, I am the person who. Gets up at the crack at eight 15 every day and walks to the coffee shop to get a cup of coffee.

[00:51:38] Like, that’s good, right? Know yourself. I’m not the person who’s gonna get up at six in the morning and laying out my clothes in the morning. I will, I will sleep right through that alarm at 6:00 AM but I am the person who gets up at the crack at eight 15. And I can design, I have the flexibility to do this.

[00:51:53] I have the flexibility to design that into my morning, right? So I can go do my walk from eight to nine to go, you know, walk down and get coffee. If I try to do that at six, that ain’t happening. But I’ve decided that I’m the person who gets up in the morning and goes for a walk. That’s what it’s gonna be.

[00:52:08] Cut off all, all other paths.

[00:52:11] Joe: Paula, how do you fight that, uh, dragon on a daily basis?

[00:52:16] Paula: I think by getting incredibly clear about what I’m not going to do, by knowing what I’m not doing on a daily basis, it really brings into focus what I am doing. I.

[00:52:27] Joe: What does that mean? What are you not going to do? What’s an example of that?

[00:52:30] So mine’s like a double negative poll. It’s like, I’m not not gonna have a donut.

[00:52:35] Paula: Yeah. I mean, it could be that, you know, it could be, all right, I’ve decided I’m, rather than deciding what you are going to eat, you decide that there are certain things that you’re not going to eat. Like, all right, I’m not going to have processed sugar.

[00:52:44] That would be an example. Within business, there are certain things that are mission critical, like absolutely core, and then there are other things that are ancillary. They fit what Cal Newport refers to as the any benefit hypothesis. These are the things that could have some conceivable benefit, but they’re not mission critical for me, if I’m working towards a goal, deciding that I’m going to filter everything through the lens of, you know, is this mission critical or is it ancillary?

[00:53:16] Sure it may have a benefit, but does it have the maximum benefit for the investment of time? I. Is the delta and outputs worth the delta and inputs.

[00:53:25] Joe: Gotcha. Jesse, how do you fight the dragon?

[00:53:28] Jesse: Well, oh boy. How do I fight the dragon? I’m not sure I have a great answer there, but I will say, when I read that quote that a quest has a dragons display and the dragons inside you, it made me think of, uh, the hero’s journey.

[00:53:41] Was that Joseph? Mm-Hmm. Uh, Joseph. Can’t think of his last name.

[00:53:45] Paula: Joseph Campbell.

[00:53:45] Jesse: Thank you. Paula. Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s journey, this famous like archetypal story that just all humans for some reason bond to, and, you know, at some point we’re, we’re at our worst. And some would say that’s, you know, whatever the pits of hell or we’re slaying the dragon, or whatever it is.

[00:54:00] But for many of us, like there is no real dragon. It’s, we have to overcome our own, whether it’s bad habits or our own predilections, whatever it may be. And yeah, I, I can certainly relate to the idea that oftentimes I’m the one who gets in, in my own way. The most Warren Buffet’s quote, the chains of habit are too light to be felt.

[00:54:20] Until they’re too heavy to be broken. That’s a great quote too, right? And, and so essentially the, the dragon for me is probably just like bad habits that I need to break. So I don’t know, but I’m, I’m gonna re-listen to this. ’cause I, I need to think about your guys’ wisdom again, and maybe I’ll have a better answer the next time I’m on.

[00:54:36] Joe: I wonder if, if, if all Warren Buffett does this, sits at home and comes up with pithy quotes, like, I’m like, how is this guy such a quote machine? How many times have we quoted like, different things that Warren Buffett has said? It’s, it’s just so amazing. It just blows me away. I think it’s a great place for us to leave it.

[00:54:50] I hope people are better fortified to go meet their goals, uh, for not just 20, 24, but, but, but into the future. I do like this idea of, uh, fall in love with the action, not the outcome. I think that’s a, a big piece of the heart of what he’s talking about. Of course, we’ll link to it on our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com.

[00:55:10] Let’s find out what’s going on, where all of you are creating brilliance, og we kind of brilliance at creating this fine September weekend.

[00:55:18] OG: I don’t know what September weekend it is, so I can’t tell you.

[00:55:22] Joe: It’s some weekend in the present. 14th and 15th. It’s going to be tomorrow. 14th, 15th. Oh yes.

[00:55:28] OG: Well, uh, if everything goes according to plan, we are, um, we are, uh, recording this a little in advance and I’m trying to get reservations to, uh, to a fantastically hot new restaurant in Dallas.

[00:55:40] And, uh, I will report back if we happen to get ’em. I get the emails that are like, there’s a table available and I click in and go, sorry, it’s already taken. So did they

[00:55:47] Doug: finally open a Culver’s?

[00:55:49] OG: We have Culver’s. They have Okay. Ice cream. It’s not that great.

[00:55:53] Paula: Not, not.

[00:55:55] Joe: We’re going back there.

[00:55:56] OG: You,

[00:55:56] Paula: you know, there’s a secondary market for selling restaurant reservations.

[00:55:59] OG: Yeah, I know. ’cause it’s all bought by bots.

[00:56:02] Paula: Mm. It’s

[00:56:02] OG: like, it’s like the, all the story about the city bikes in, in Manhattan, gangs of kids are manipulating the supply demand market of, of, oh, I didn’t,

[00:56:12] Doug: I’ve heard it’s bots, Paula and the restaurant people working in the restaurant. Mm-Hmm. As soon as they know something became available, they go who buy it immediately or reserve it immediately and resell it.

[00:56:22] Wow.

[00:56:22] Jesse: Insider trading right there.

[00:56:23] Joe: We were going to Napa. A couple years ago, Cheryl really wanted to go, ’cause it was around her birthday to the French Laundry, the famous restaurant

[00:56:30] OG: who doesn’t

[00:56:31] Joe: Yeah. Good luck. And so they, they open up, uh, 60 days ahead of time. They open up reservation, I think it’s 65, 60, might have been 45.

[00:56:38] But anyway, certain number of days. And at midnight. So she wakes up till midnight and literally on the stroke of midnight, tries to make a reservation. Reservation’s all gone for the entire day. I mean, like, think about for an entire day at this top restaurant, how many reservations that is. And at 12 o’clock and three seconds they were all gone.

[00:56:59] OG: Mm-Hmm.

[00:57:00] Joe: Couldn’t get in. So instead we spent 16 buckets of money at his other restaurant, which isn’t as famous, so per se, uh, Bouchon, I think it was called. Oh, you went to Bouchon. Okay. Paula, what’s going on at. Afford anything

[00:57:13] Paula: on the Afford Anything podcast. We have an interview with Leslie Zane. She is a Harvard educated expert at marketing and branding, and she talks about how the principles of marketing and branding can be applied to anytime you need to convince anyone of anything.

[00:57:29] So if you want to talk to a spouse about getting on board with financial independence, if you wanna talk to your boss about giving you a raise, a lot of these principles, the principles of marketing can be translated into any domain. So we have that interview on the Afford Anything podcast.

[00:57:45] Joe: I love this idea.

[00:57:46] I remember, uh, management guru Tom Peters in the late nineties talking about. Brand you. Mm-Hmm. And about how no matter who you are, Paula, you have to be brand you and whether you work for somebody else, you’re in a big corporate environment, you’re in a small company. It’s not just entrepreneurs that need the brand.

[00:58:02] We all need the brand. Right. So that sounds really cool.

[00:58:04] Paula: Exactly. And she said the same thing as well. That was one of our establishing questions. I was like, just to be clear, when you say that each person is a brand, you’re not referring to influencers. You mean a person who may not even have a social media, any social media accounts is still a brand?

[00:58:19] Joe: It’s funny because like I’ll have conversations with people just, I remember when, when my kids were in school, you’d have conversations with. People on staff at the school, and you’re like, wow, this is what you’re presenting as your brand. Mm-Hmm. Like this is, this is really, you’re putting your worst foot forward.

[00:58:33] Like, wow. Hmm. Maybe would’ve done that differently. Jesse, thanks so much for joining us again, my friend. Super fun as usual. Thank you guys. Had a blast. Had a blast as always. What’s happening at the Better Interest? What’s happening at the Best Interest podcast?

[00:58:48] Jesse: Let’s see when this episode airs, I believe a new episode of The Best Interest Podcast will be out with, uh, Katie Gotti Tossin.

[00:58:55] Do you guys know Katie from, uh, the Money with Katie Show?

[00:58:57] Paula: Yes. Oh, yes. Katie, I’m talking to her in about an hour.

[00:59:01] Jesse: Awesome.

[00:59:01] Paula: Tell, it’s so weird that we were talking about Katie today.

[00:59:04] Jesse: Tell her I said, Hey, well, Katie’s episode Will Air, and if you don’t know Katie, she, she does a really cool job. She kind of zooms out on, I, I’d say she focuses on like these socioeconomic topics that, of course have ramifications when it comes to personal finance, but she kind of looks at these topics and says like, why I.

[00:59:19] Is it the way that that is, the way it is? You know, why does the medical system and the insurance work the way it is? And then she, she’s very funny and, and very, uh, uh, verbose isn’t the right word ’cause that means you talk too much. She doesn’t talk too much. She just has, she has a great command of the English language and I just love listening to her and reading her writing.

[00:59:36] Loquacious, loquacious. Probably the word you were looking for. It totally was the word. I was looking, I didn’t even know that was a word. Score. Word. Trust you. I trust you on that one. So, uh, I also

[00:59:43] Joe: appreciate Jesse, how blunt she is. I mean, she’s, yeah. She’s not gonna pull any punches.

[00:59:47] Jesse: Totally, totally. So I’m excited for that, uh, episode with Katie to be in everybody’s ears when this episode comes out.

[00:59:53] Joe: That’s fabulous. You definitely wanna listen to that. Katie is incredible. We actually, just a couple weeks ago, stackers, you may remember the discussion, if you heard this Friday show. We talked about a piece from Katie’s blog about, uh, being part of society and about is DoorDash, Uber, all these, uh, Instacart or these ruining society.

[01:00:12] And us taking care of each other was a, yeah,

[01:00:14] Paula: it was the piece about renting everything.

[01:00:16] OG: Mm-Hmm.

[01:00:17] Paula: Nope, that’s different one. No, that’s a different one. Oops.

[01:00:19] Joe: Yeah. Sorry. That is a different, but, but their answer, they’re almost the same though, Paula, in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it’s funny, we came down differently.

[01:00:25] We Mm-Hmm. I think we largely came down on, yeah. DoorDash might not be the best thing all the time, but renting everything could be. Sounds great.

[01:00:34] Paula: Yeah. Yeah. It’s,

[01:00:35] Joe: well how we came down,

[01:00:37] Paula: the DoorDash one was the one about asking people for favors. That’s right.

[01:00:40] Joe: Yes. Absolutely. So that is on the Best Interest podcast.

[01:00:44] We’re finer podcast. I. Are found and we’ll link to that. And, uh, also, uh, the Forward Anything show in our show notes at stacky Benjamins dot com. That’s gonna do it for today. Thank you so much everybody that hung out with us live on Twitter slash x. Everybody that hung out with us live on YouTube. Glad you guys hung out and watched the sausage being made as it were.

[01:01:06] It’s time to figure out though what should be on. Speaking of goals, what should be on our to-do list

[01:01:11] Doug: Doug? Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list for today. First, take some advice from that cheater. Jesse Kramer. He said that, you know, that one thing about the stuff, it was mind blowing. Hey, uh, Jesse, can you, uh, summarize it for us?

[01:01:28] Well,

[01:01:29] Jesse: I suppose when it goes on quests, what not all those who wander are lost. How’s that one Doug? Wow. Did you quote that? Right now I. That’s from the Lord of the Rings.

[01:01:38] Joe: Oh, I thought you made that up right now. I was gonna say that was great.

[01:01:41] Doug: Second Paula really knocked it out of the park when she said that thing.

[01:01:45] That’s definitely not superfluous or ancillary. Um, but very loquacious. Was that one Very loquacious. What was So laquish was that one again, Paula.

[01:01:54] Paula: Oh, the, the thing that I said was that, uh, you know, you’ve gotta a look out for insecticide. Uh, let’s see. There’s herbicide, there is fungicide

[01:02:06] Doug: ide, but the big lesson word to the wife, Jesse.

[01:02:14] If mom asks you if you want a Hertz donut, don’t ask her what it is. Just say yes. If mom’s happy, then we’re all happy for another week and we get to keep podcasting down here for free. So just roll with it. Thanks to Jesse Kramer for joining us today. And in the future, you’ll find Jesse’s own podcast, the best interest podcast wherever you’re listening to us now.

[01:02:39] We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us. You’ll find her fabulous podcast, afford anything wherever you listen to finer podcasts. And finally, thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning, help head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar.

[01:03:01] This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLL C, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots.

[01:03:21] Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time Back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[01:03:47] bit: Oh, what’s wrong with you? Oh. It’s either this show or indigestion. I hope it’s indigestion, why? It’ll get better in a little while.

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