Here’s a question nobody in the FIRE movement talks about: What if you reach financial independence… and don’t want to quit?
Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, Paula Pant (Afford Anything), and Doc G (Earn & Invest) tackle the idea of Reverse FIRE—people who’ve hit their number but choose to keep working anyway. And before you roll your eyes, hear them out.
Because it turns out that having enough money doesn’t automatically make you happy. And for a lot of people, walking away from work means walking away from purpose, identity, and the structure that kept them sane. The question isn’t just “can I afford to retire?”—it’s “what am I retiring to?”
This conversation gets real about the hidden costs of quitting too soon, why some financially independent people feel guilty for wanting to work, and how to think about retirement not as a finish line but as a design problem. Whether you’re sprinting toward early retirement or secretly wondering if you’d be bored out of your mind, this episode will make you rethink what freedom actually looks like.
Plus: Doug’s T-shirt trivia takes a weird turn (as always), and the crew proves that the best financial conversations happen when nobody’s trying to sell you a course.
What You’ll Walk Away With:
• Why “enough money” doesn’t equal “enough purpose”—and what to do about it
• How to think about work after financial independence (hint: it’s not all or nothing)
• The identity crisis nobody warns you about when you stop working—and how to avoid it
• What financially independent people actually do with their time (spoiler: many keep earning)
• Permission to want both: financial security and meaningful work
Before You Hit Play, Think About This:
If money wasn’t an issue tomorrow, would you keep doing what you’re doing? If the answer is “no”—why are you still doing it? And if the answer is “yes”—what does that tell you about retirement?
Drop your take in the comments. The basement wants to know: Are you racing toward FIRE, or are you building something you never want to leave?
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/what-is-reverse-fire-and-is-it-right-for-you-1752
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Our Topic:
What It’s Like Retiring After 75 in America (Wall Street Journal)
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Reverse FIRE concept
- Retirement after 75
- Wall Street Journal article
- Working longer by choice
- Purpose and autonomy in work
- Mastery and lifelong learning
- Changing view of FIRE movement
- Financial independence flexibility
- Intergenerational wealth building
- Extending careers past 70
- Paula’s animal shelter dream
- Finding purpose after 65
- Ageism in the workplace
- “The Intern” movie reference
- Downsides of working forever
- Fear of losing identity
- Balance of work and hobbies
- Inadequate saving risks
- OG’s 140-year life goal
- Paula’s curiosity and growth goals
- Doc G’s encore career
- Clark Howard’s advice on joy
- Legacy and mentorship at work
- Creating post-retirement roles
- Financial independence as freedom
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Doc G
Another thanks to Doc G for joining our contributors this week! Hear more from Doc G on his podcast, Earn & Invest, on Apple Podcasts.
Check out his latest book The Purpose Code: How to unlock meaning, maximize happiness, and leave a lasting legacy.
Paula Pant
Check out Paula’s site and amazing podcast at AffordAnything.com
Follow Paula on Twitter: @AffordAnything
OG
For more on OG and his firm’s page, click here.
Doug’s Game Show Trivia
- In what year did the U.S. Navy debut the T-shirt?
Mentioned in today’s show
- From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life
- The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life
- Tax Planning To and Through Early Retirement
Join Us on Monday!
Tune in on Monday when we hear this year’s version of the greatest Halloween game ever played with the one and only, Chuck Jaffe!
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Your Money Problems Aren’t Math Problems (They’re People Problems) SB1751.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] bit: Can you fly this plane and land it? Shirley, you can’t be serious. I am serious and don’t call me Shirley.[00:00:13] Doug: Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
[00:00:28] Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor. Duggan, you’ve heard of Financial Independence. Retire Early AKA, the fire movement, right? Well then there was Coast Fire where you save enough to get on track. Barista fire, where you take on small jobs. And even my personal favorite dumpster fire where you have absolutely no clue what you’re doing today, we are expanding that envelope.
[00:00:49] Doug: And asking our panel of financial enthusiasts about reverse fire. What is it? Well stick around to find out. And you know what else you’ll find out? Who’s gonna win today’s installment of our year long trivia competition. That’s what, and now a guy who learned reverse with his money before finding first gear.
[00:01:10] Doug: It’s Joe. Oh, saw Sea. Hi.
[00:01:16] Joe: Hey there stackers and happy, happy Friday. So happy that you’re here. Welcome to another edition of the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Sal Sea. Hi. And I can’t wait to talk about this because of course, Doug, everybody else talks about how important the fire movement is. Leave it to Stacky Benjamins that we’re like, what if we do this whole thing backwards?
[00:01:39] Joe: Wait a minute, we got a different thought. What if we look behind us and go the other way? It’s gonna be fun. So strap in, everybody get ready for a wild ride because we’re gonna introduce the team that helps us on Fridays with these discussions. Starting with the gentleman across the cart table from me.
[00:01:59] Joe: Oh, G’s here. How are you man?
[00:02:01] OG: Back away from the camera. Uh oh. Hey, am right here. Take a step back.
[00:02:07] Joe: Super happy that you’re here with us and he is getting it all together. And the woman in Manhattan High, above Manhattan, Paula Panta, is here from Afford Anything. How are you?
[00:02:17] Paula: I am so happy to be here. I can’t wait for today’s discussion.
[00:02:20] Paula: We got a good one. You
[00:02:21] Joe: just like Friday in reverse. Actually, it’s Friday. We wanna go forward to Saturday, don’t we?
[00:02:26] Paula: Yeah, yeah. You know, but if you love your work Friday, you just wanna be in the present
[00:02:31] Joe: forever. Yeah. And we’re gonna talk about how great that is to extend the Friday, and even because these are older people that we’re gonna be talking about too.
[00:02:40] Joe: Mm-hmm. Is that extending Friday, like extending the autumn of your life? Hmm.
[00:02:45] Paula: Au. Au. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I mean, autumn I think is, it’s my favorite season. It’s, it’s, in my opinion, the best season of the year. You know, sweater weather.
[00:02:54] Joe: It is sweater weather. You know what? And we had a great autumn the year we found out that we were having twins, which is why my daughter’s named Autumn.
[00:03:00] Joe: Aw. True story. And then because they’re twins, then my son goes, oh, that’s a great story, dad. How did I get my name? And we go. Yeah, we like the name Nick.
[00:03:12] Doug: I miss my finger on the corner of the cabinet and
[00:03:17] Joe: there was this beautiful, like every day it was beautiful. Things were going well for Cheryl and I and then we found out we were having twins.
[00:03:24] Joe: We’re like, this is so cool. Let’s remember this forever, autumn. Oh, that’s great. That’s fantastic. And me, eh, you know, it makes along for the ride. And a guy who’s never along for the ride, he brings it every time he’s on the show. From our brother. Show Earn an invest Doc g Jordan Grommets
[00:03:44] Doc G: here. How are you man?
[00:03:45] Doc G: I’m doing well, man. All this talk about going in reverse. I’m remembering my days of driving stick shift. Like I used to have a stick car and I really enjoyed it and it’s been years, been years, but would you
[00:03:56] Joe: like I had to drive a stick shift in Europe for the first time in a long time. And on this particular car, this Reno that we were renting, I could not find reverse to save my life.
[00:04:06] Joe: Like I kept putting it in reverse gear and it was, it was bad.
[00:04:10] Doc G: And maybe that is apropos of our conversation today about reverse
[00:04:13] Joe: fire. Maybe that is, we are live on YouTube. If you wanna hang out with us, like all the cool people hanging out with us right now, come join the conversation. We generally record on Monday afternoons.
[00:04:24] Joe: If you get the 2 0 1, we send you an email that tells you when we are going to be recording. And we’ve got, uh, a few people hanging out here with us. B Wayne is here. Uh, Ryland Fellner is here. Case Sands is here. Annette is here with us. And Annette says her friend just found out she’s having twins. That’s what happened to my hair, Annette.
[00:04:44] Joe: It’s long gone because of the twins, but I’m very happy. Jordan, you didn’t have twins, but you just went. I didn’t have, I have twins,
[00:04:51] Doc G: but my daughter for sure. My second kid. That’s when all the hair disappeared.
[00:04:55] Joe: Well, here’s what we’re gonna talk about is making sure your money doesn’t disappear, but also your life.
[00:04:59] Joe: You know, some people retire. On time from jobs that they think that they love and then they miss it later. Right? People say this is research according to retirement researcher Ken ald, that the average person spends 18 months in total bliss when they first retire, and then after 18 months, many people have the deepest, deepest depression of their entire life after that.
[00:05:26] Joe: Do you avoid that by just continuing to work? Is reverse fire a thing? Is it, there’s a lot of reasons why you might continue. Well, the New York Times talked about this, so we’re gonna dive in with them and with Paula og, doc G, and Doug. But before that we’ve got a couple of sponsors who make sure we can keep on keeping on.
[00:05:45] Joe: We’re gonna hear from them, and then let’s talk about retirement in reverse. Is it better to just keep on working?
[00:05:58] Joe: Well, thanks to OG during that break sharing with me that I got the publication wrong. This is from the Wall Street Journal, og. I tried to tell you that over and over.
[00:06:07] OG: Yeah, my bad. Yeah, apologies.
[00:06:10] Joe: And I should have known because it’s written by two fantastic authors, Andon and Veronica Dagger, who we quote hear a lot on the show.
[00:06:17] Joe: And the piece that we’re riffing on was called What it’s Like To Retire in America after Age 75, which frankly. Is what led me to believe about this idea of reverse fire. Ann and Veronica Wright lifespans are getting longer. So are many workers’ careers, almost 9% of Americans, 75 and older, 9% working or looking for work last year up from 6%, two decades earlier.
[00:06:40] Joe: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the share between 65 and 74, while that rose to 27% of people in 2024 versus 22% back in 2004, the government estimates these percentages will rise more along with the aging population. So this, this got me thinking in your financial plan, what if we decided just in our plan, that we wanted to work longer?
[00:07:07] Joe: I mean, Paula. People talk about the benefits of Retire early, right? Mm-hmm. What are the positive reasons to just say, forget it. I’m not retiring,
[00:07:17] Paula: but the studies research shows that autonomy, mastery, and purpose, if you have those three qualities in your work, you are likely to enjoy your work. You have a sense of purpose by definition, um, because that’s one of the three.
[00:07:31] Paula: You have autonomy and you have the ability to develop mastery in the thing that you’re doing. If you have that in the work that you’re doing, I, there’s no particular reason to leave. And I certainly understand that for many people it isn’t the type of work they’re doing, but rather the volume of work they’re doing, you know, it’s working.
[00:07:54] Paula: 60 hours a week or, or even 40 hours a week as opposed to maybe 20 or 10, or heck, even five. But perhaps there comes a time when you cut down on that volume so you can make space for other things in your life, but you hang onto the work itself because it provides you with, uh, mastery, autonomy, and purpose.
[00:08:14] Joe: One of those things, doc, uh, I, I know this guy who wrote a book a little bit about purpose. I mean, you see for some of these people, in fact, Veronica and Anne write this at the beginning, that maybe your work feels like it’s your purpose. Like it’s your reason you’re here. Why quit?
[00:08:29] Doc G: I think a lot of us who got caught up in the fire movement, especially early on, financial independence, retire early.
[00:08:36] Doc G: It was the solution to a problem, and the problem was we didn’t like our jobs and we felt a lack of some of that autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And the answer was to accrue enough money so that it could be invested wisely and it could support you. What we’re realizing is that maybe financial independence isn’t necessarily the goal, it’s just a really good tool, and so if you can find things you love doing, find things that feel purposeful and they happen to pay you money.
[00:09:08] Doc G: There’s no hard and fast rule that says you have to retire by a certain age or that you even have to get financially independent by a certain age. So it might be very reasonable for you to make the decision, make the trade off. That I’m gonna work a little bit less, or I’m gonna move to a job that feels purposeful and slow down my path to financial independence.
[00:09:26] Doc G: But then maybe I’ll continue working until I’m 75 or 80, especially if I can afford to do it less hours because I’m gonna extend my work longevity. And so I think we’re really changing how we think about these things. The goal is to live a great life. Uh, that may have to do with doing jobs in which you make money, or it may have to do with doing jobs in which you don’t make money.
[00:09:46] Doc G: But that’s the goal, not necessarily hitting some financial independence number.
[00:09:49] Joe: That is interesting that the financial independence number might be the, the piece that you’re not worried about. It’s much more about what you do with your life and yet, oh gee. I think if you can put together a plan where there’s an income stream coming in for a longer period of time, the financial benefits and your ability to maybe build intergenerational wealth becomes so much easier.
[00:10:09] OG: Well, when you think about this self-imposed retirement date, whether it’s 55, 60, 65, whatever, and I understand completely that there’s plenty of places that are, it’s not self-imposed, it’s contractual. You know, if you work for the government or you work in law enforcement, they have certain retirement dates, uh, but they come with different benefits too.
[00:10:30] OG: Generally speaking. Or if you’re, you know, an airline pilot, you have a certain, you know, I’ll say expiration date, that’s not the right phrase, but you have a certain date that you can no longer fly at commercial jets. But for the rest of us, assuming that you have some flexibility in that, just by having another five years of savings opportunity and five fewer years of drawing from your investment portfolio means that goal becomes so much easier to attain.
[00:10:54] OG: You know, Jordan talked about it for just a second ago. He said the whole idea is to have a good life and having a bunch of money when you’re 50. It could be a good life or it could mean that from 30 to 50 you didn’t do anything. And you know, life sucks really bad. So it’s a balance between those things.
[00:11:13] OG: I’ve very much, it’s somewhat a little tongue in cheek, but I still think that there’s a chance I could pull it off. Uh, I have said that my end date is 140 and the reason that I pick 140 is because I wanna see my kids turn a hundred. I just think that would be super cool. And then also like, have another year with them after that.
[00:11:30] OG: But it also, honestly, like when you think about it in those timeframes, you go, well, it’s okay that I’m just saving 10% in my 401k. I mean, my God, I’m only gonna be 48. I’ve got 90 years to go. You know, I have all this time to get there. And, uh, we all know people that have worked well into their seventies and eighties, and my grandfather worked until he was in his nineties.
[00:11:49] OG: I mean, he wasn’t. Laying brick in the hot sun work, you know, that’s different too. So I think if you look at it purely from a number standpoint, if you eliminate that self-imposed, well, I gotta retire when I’m 60, or I wanna retire when I’m 65. If you just change that number to 70, now you have that much less that you have to save every year, which frees up life today, and you have that fewer dollars going out for those five years from 65 to 70.
[00:12:13] OG: So now you don’t need as much in your bucket when you get to 70 to begin with. So it’s kind of a double-edged. Win. Good sword. I don’t know. Yeah. I dunno how to say that. You know, a double win. There we go. Double
[00:12:23] Joe: win. A double win. Yeah, a double-edged win.
[00:12:25] OG: I don’t know. A double.
[00:12:27] Joe: And I also think, you know, I kind of tongue in cheek thought about this idea of reverse fire, right?
[00:12:31] Joe: I’m just not gonna, I’m not gonna leave at all. And uh, but I think even fire advocates really over the Joe, we
[00:12:39] OG: do want you to leave someday. Please, please do not get the wrong idea here.
[00:12:44] Doug: Really. It’s okay.
[00:12:45] OG: It’s okay. In fact,
[00:12:46] Joe: Joe, at the end of this episode, we’d like to have a talk with you and an HR person’s gonna come.
[00:12:51] Joe: But financial, you know, over the past decade, fire movement advocates, I’ve kind of felt the movement change where instead of financial independence retire early. Really most of the heat is on financial independence, right? Get the financial independence earlier. And if we talk about reverse fire, og, I feel like it’s the other side where instead of the re it’s like financial independence.
[00:13:13] Joe: Whenever the hell you want, but remain engaged. You know, maybe change those two letters up.
[00:13:18] OG: Well, I don’t know. I have no desire to work when I’m 85, although I don’t know. To Paula’s point, maybe I just need to find something that I find really super inspiring. But by the same token, as long as you’re have the flexibility or designing your life as best as you can to do the stuff that you wanna do and eliminate the things you don’t wanna do, it’s really about just kind of that whole, the whole system.
[00:13:43] OG: You know what I mean? It’s like if, if I’m not missing out on kids’ games, right? Some people would say, well, I wanna, I wanna be done with this nonsense so I can go to my kids’ softball game. Okay, well that’s, you know, that’s aspirational. You should work toward that. Um, but if you already do all those things and you go on the trips that you want to go on and you support the people in places and, and things that you care about and you are doing things for other people and you’re, you know, stretching your brain and you’re being able to, you know, and all these things are great.
[00:14:10] OG: Like what? What else do you wanna do? Like, like you wanna take away those things and now, we’ll just what sit on the couch for the next 20 years. The whole idea is to do all the stuff that you wanna do. So if you’re doing all the stuff that you wanna do, and one of those things is, and I’m also gonna work, you know, then I think that’s perfectly fine.
[00:14:27] Joe: The key there I think is, is do right? There’s always things I wanna do. Well do, don’t, don’t just say, Paula, there’s a bunch of case studies in this piece and obviously our stackers don’t have it in front of them, but are there any of these stories that, uh, really light you up?
[00:14:44] Paula: But there was one that made me laugh, um, and it was a story of a photographer who technically is still working, but he works two hours a week.
[00:14:53] Paula: Oh hell, easy there. And when I read that I was like, Hmm, can, can he even be included in this article? Like, can you really say that you’re still working when you work two hours a week? But I, I don’t, maybe you can, you know. So, uh, that was sort of what I was alluding to earlier when I talked about how. If you enjoy your work, maybe you’re reducing from 40 hours down to 20 or 10 or five or in this guy’s case two.
[00:15:16] Paula: Two,
[00:15:17] Joe: right. But that’s interesting though, Paula, because, so he’s a photographer. He has the ability to still see beauty and snap those shots like two hours a week. Is that enough for remain engaged?
[00:15:29] Paula: The first thought that entered my mind is if you’re trying to get clients who will pay you. I mean, even if you were just doing the most.
[00:15:39] Paula: Passive inbound. I’ve got a website up and I’m only going to respond to inquiries. I’m not gonna actively solicit. It still seems like it would come in waves. Like I would imagine that there would probably be a few weeks of zero followed by a few weeks of four. Yeah,
[00:16:00] OG: well it’s wedding season or it’s not, right.
[00:16:02] OG: That’s kinda what you’re saying, Paul. It’s like, you know, it’s senior picture time or it’s mother’s day. It’s those sorts of things. If you’re a photographer, right, there’s going it’s holiday cards. Nobody sends out really. Halloween cards.
[00:16:14] Joe: Shane laying down some smack OG in the, in the in mom’s basement says, uh, two hours a week.
[00:16:19] Joe: He must be a podcaster in his mom’s
[00:16:21] OG: basement. Yeah, that’s what I said earlier when we were off camera.
[00:16:24] Joe: I
[00:16:24] OG: work at two hours a week. Not the amount of time Joe works every week.
[00:16:27] Joe: Crazy. You need to get me up for my nap. Just for this doc. You’ve studied purpose. A good amount, two hours a week, enough time to chase his purpose if it’s photography’s attached.
[00:16:39] Doc G: Yeah, I mean, there are no rules when it comes to purpose, right? You just gotta enjoy doing what you’re doing. So for some people that could be doing photography for two hours, where for someone else that might be doing it 40 hours a week, I think we make way too many rules. And maybe this goes for the whole concept of reverse fire too.
[00:16:54] Doc G: I think we love to have rules about how other people should live their lives and what should be work or not work for them. But the truth of the matter is what do you wanna do with your life? And we have a limited amount of time on this earth, and we also have a financial framework which we have to build and support.
[00:17:11] Doc G: And so we get to juggle those things like how much money do I need versus how much time freedom do I want? And there’s some people who are lucky enough that finds something that they both like doing even when they don’t have to do it anymore. That also makes them some money. And so I think if you’re one of these people who’s either found that perfect solution, a go for it, or you’re someone who says, well, I don’t mind work that much and it helps me economically to still make money, I can take that extra first class flight.
[00:17:40] Doc G: Or I could’ve, I stopped 10 years ago working full-time and I only worked part-time, but I can do that because I’m gonna continue working for the next five years. Whatever the trade off is. I think the hard and fast rules, whether it comes to purpose or whether it comes to work, they just don’t. We don’t need them.
[00:17:55] Doc G: I totally agree. Which is why.
[00:17:58] Joe: I was thinking, doc, while you’re talking about this question, is there value in then, you know, ’cause I’m thinking of somebody who’s walking the dog listening to us right now, and they’re going, there’s no way in hell I would do what I’m doing right now forever. Like, forget this, this, this does not resonate with me.
[00:18:15] Joe: This is a horrible idea. You’ve been reading my
[00:18:17] OG: diary again,
[00:18:21] Joe: and a lot of the people, you know, and there’s a lot of people out there who like their job, but, but certainly there’s an end date where they’re like, cool, but is this an idea that resonates enough where, talk about breaking the rules. You go, you know what? I’m gonna stop doing the thing that I’m doing now and I’m gonna start doing something else at age 65.
[00:18:42] Joe: I mean, I got 25 years to get good. If I go from 65 to 90, I got 25 years for a whole. Another career if I want. Paula, you’re nodding your head.
[00:18:51] Paula: Yeah. You actually have in my head a backup plan for, you know, if I decide that I’m done with all of this, I do have in my head what my retirement career would be and it’s running an animal shelter.
[00:19:02] Paula: I’ve always thought that it would be in a different life. I probably would’ve been a veterinarian. And so since I’m not, I always thought, uh, you know what, maybe I’ll do this until I’m 70 and then when I’m 70, I’ll, I’ll start a second career and I’ll use my money to create an endowment that funds a small animal shelter and I’ll open that animal shelter.
[00:19:23] Doc G: I don’t think this is an academic conversation. I mean, in a sense, in 2018, I started my encore career, right? So podcasting, writing, public speaking are all things I started doing once. I didn’t need to make money anymore once I was financially independent. So I mean, if I did that in my late forties, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t also do that in your fifties, sixties, or seventies.
[00:19:47] Doc G: Especially when you get to the point financially where you’re secure enough, you’re like, well, maybe I wanna make some income to support me economically, but I don’t need to make nearly what I was making in the midst of that career that I’d built all those years, you know, becoming proficient at and building up my salary.
[00:20:04] Doc G: You know, maybe now you can make a quarter of that, but try something new and do something you love.
[00:20:09] Joe: I think about this idea. Og, have you read, uh, strength to Strength? Uh, Arthur Brooks. No.
[00:20:15] Doc G: Yeah, maybe that’s a no. Haven’t gotten to that one yet. Doc, have you read it? I haven’t read it. I, I’m familiar with a lot of the concepts, but I haven’t, I haven’t read it.
[00:20:23] Doc G: Yeah. Paula?
[00:20:25] Paula: No. I read, uh, Arthur Brooks’ book on Happiness, and I interviewed him about fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence. I don’t know if that was what he wrote about in Strength. Strength scoreboard.
[00:20:37] Joe: I, I interviewed him over there
[00:20:40] Doug: and
[00:20:41] Joe: then I went to on vacation with him. But Arthur, in this book, strength to Strength talks about how there are some jobs which are better when you’re young and then you hang on because of the way that your brain works.
[00:20:55] Joe: And then as you get older, there are jobs where age is, is the win. In fact, the first piece that Anne and Veronica talk about is this guy Merle Manley, and he’s a psychologist. Psychiatrist, excuse me, and he, he retired at age 76, but he still thinks he’s going to continue to work because he sees in this job age is a strength.
[00:21:21] Joe: Mm-hmm. Being 76 years old, age being, he could tell people based on life experience, Paula, what he’s thinking.
[00:21:26] Paula: Yeah. And that kind of pairs perfectly with what Arthur Brooks has talked about with fluid intelligence versus crystallized intelligence. His thesis is essentially that when you’re young, mental activities that require like just sheer computational horsepower doing really, really difficult mathematical problem sets, those are the types of things that you’re really good at when you’re 28.
[00:21:51] Paula: Whereas when you’re older, you can synthesize between this wide interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary array. And that synthesis is often thought of as wisdom. And so anything that requires wisdom, which includes teaching, is something that really naturally fits with the older brain. You
[00:22:11] Joe: gotta think though, if you’re going out looking, I wanna, I wanna, we’re gonna talk about the negatives of this idea of reverse fire in a second, but I also have to think that going to try to find a new job at 65 or 70, there’s enough ages emoji in the, in the workplace that people might look at you strangely and go, I think you probably have to be prepared for that.
[00:22:32] Joe: People going. Yeah. I You’re, you’re how old? 82? I
[00:22:37] Doug: think it’s, yeah, I think it’s, I’m gonna interject here. Joe, I’m a little concerned that you asked the guy who repeatedly makes fun of how old you and I are about ageism.
[00:22:47] Joe: Well, that’s ’cause the lawsuits pending. The biggest
[00:22:49] Doug: perpetrator of age. The,
[00:22:51] Joe: let’s ask him.
[00:22:53] Joe: The lawsuit is pending, Doug, so I’m trying to get him on tape so we can,
[00:22:58] OG: when I was talking to Gertrude today about something, she asked me for my birthday ’cause we needed it for some paperwork. And I told her, and she goes, oh, you’re such a baby. I said, I know. That’s what I keep telling these guys. What was that movie with um, uh, golly, Anne Hathaway and, uh, Robert De Niro.
[00:23:15] Joe: Oh, that’s a great film.
[00:23:16] OG: Where he was the f fantastic film. He’s a new assistant. He was the, the senior citizen. Like going back to be an assistant, a good flick, you know, kind of a, a feel good story there. But I think, you know, like what Paulo was talking about, or Joe, what you were saying there around, you know, there’s different periods of your life where you know, you need like the brute force strength, right?
[00:23:36] OG: You gotta be able to power through stuff. And then there’s the period of time where your collective or total experience is really the valuable thing, the life story. It’s like the physician or the surgeon who’s had 10,000 surgeries of the same thing versus the person that had one or two, like the new doc has got tons of energy, can stand on his feet for 20 hours and do the surgery, but he’s only seen one thing.
[00:23:59] OG: You know, and the, the, some curve ball gets thrown at ’em or her, it’s like, this is a different, I don’t know what to do with it. The doc that’s done, 10,000 of them goes, oh, I remember this back in aught seven. You know, I had to do this with a pair of scissors. You know, we don’t even have no robots back then, you know, or whatever.
[00:24:15] OG: So with a pair
[00:24:16] Paula: of scissors,
[00:24:18] OG: like there I was minding my own business at the airport. I
[00:24:22] Joe: did this with a spatula
[00:24:23] Paula: and, and they were rusty too. Yeah,
[00:24:25] Paula: rusty pair of scissors.
[00:24:28] OG: And when they all died of dysentery. But, um, you know, you’re probably not gonna be the brick layer at 82, but you might be able to be the designer of the landscape plan in 82 because you have all the experience.
[00:24:39] OG: I certainly can’t speak to the ageism thing. I know it happens and I don’t have a solution around it either because human nature is human nature, right?
[00:24:46] Joe: Yeah. I just think you gotta be ready for that if you decide to take this on. Carrie got us the name of the movie. It’s a 2015 film called The Intern.
[00:24:56] OG: Oh, the intern, of
[00:24:56] Joe: course.
[00:24:56] Joe: Yeah. Yep. Very, very good movie. Pauly, you look like you’re trying to say something. Oh,
[00:25:00] Paula: no, no. I was still thinking about that Rusty pair of scissors and just how far we can take that. Well covered in fecal matter.
[00:25:08] Joe: Time to pivot Doug, what Away from that? Wow. Too soon. Maybe always too soon at the halfway point of every show.
[00:25:16] Joe: And by the way, before we get to that, the second half of this, as I mentioned, we’re gonna talk about unintended consequences, the downsides of planning on reverse fire. If you think that this sounds great for you, uh, we will jump into all of that. But at that point of every Friday show, we have this year long trivia competition between our usual suspects, which are Paula OG and Jesse Kramer, our resident fill in Doc G here today.
[00:25:43] Joe: You’re playing on team Jesse, which I know you’ve been. Way, way, way far away in Bali. So you haven’t listened to any of the show for a while? Mm-hmm. Guess what happened? Jesse Kramer is in the lead doc.
[00:25:58] Doc G: Yeah. Yeah. I must be hallucinating still from some parasite I got while I was involved. It’s a rusty
[00:26:04] OG: scissors.
[00:26:04] OG: Yeah.
[00:26:05] Doc G: I don’t, I don’t, I don’t quite
[00:26:06] Joe: believe that, that I, I don’t think I heard what I just heard. Yeah. Doug, what’s the score right now is we only have maybe, uh, what a good 10 weeks to go. Does this mean I have to go first? I always have to go first. It does. It does mean you have to go first
[00:26:19] Doc G: somehow. I
[00:26:19] Doug: always have to go first.
[00:26:21] Doug: Yeah. It comes down to you going first because you have hitched your wagon to Jesse’s rising Star. He is leading the pack with 12 and a half points. OG did close the gap last week and he is up to 12 points, just a half point shy of you and, uh, Paula. Well, she did not close the gap. She is still at eight and a half
[00:26:41] Joe: points.
[00:26:41] Joe: Wait a minute. Nine, half. 10, half 11. Doug, if she wins, like almost half of the things coming. Yes. She’s got this.
[00:26:48] Doc G: Hey, hey, Paula. Don’t let them make fun of you, Paula. Paula. Don’t let them make fun of you. If I was a regular, I’d be like two.
[00:26:54] Paula: Oh wait, I, I thought these were golf rules. Where the lowest score winner.
[00:27:00] Doug: Wait,
[00:27:00] Joe: what?
[00:27:01] Doug: After all these years. Isn’t this match play? Yeah.
[00:27:03] Joe: Well, uh, that’s the story. We need the actual story for this week, which is. Doug, what’s happening on today’s date in history?
[00:27:16] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and on today’s day in history, the Navy, the United States Navy introduced a white shirt to go under your uniform. These crewneck white shirts were called T-shirts, and soon it became common disease soldiers and then later field workers and factory employees sporting them at work.
[00:27:38] Doug: And in everyday weekend life, maybe with a tight fitting pair of jeans and some work boots, muscles rippling beneath the shirts and the sun. I, I mean, I digress. But anyway, here’s today’s question. What year did the US Navy debut the T-shirt? I’ll be back right after I go change into mine. Mm-hmm. Now that I planted that imagery in your head, oh boy.
[00:28:02] Doug: This trivia talking. It’s real work and I, I got rippling muscles that need to glisten in the sun. A simple white t-shirt. Can we go back to fecal covered
[00:28:12] Joe: Rusty, since you were talk? No. Alright. Jordan, you are first up, Navy debuted the T-shirt
[00:28:21] Doc G: in what year? I’m gonna take a leap, which, which I’m really good at doing and say that it also probably didn’t hurt.
[00:28:28] Doc G: Maybe it was right at during, kind of like the stock market crash, the 11
[00:28:31] OG: hundreds, I’m just gonna lose my mind.
[00:28:33] Doc G: And the depression and the stock market crash and maybe they didn’t have a lot of money and a t-shirt was less material, right? So I’m gonna say 1932. 1932.
[00:28:45] Joe: Yeah. It turns out og, the real date is uh, year of our Lord, 11 58 67.
[00:28:51] Joe: The US Navy ad
[00:28:54] Paula: ad
[00:28:55] Joe: ad, BC ad, let’s see, it was right after the Magna Carta.
[00:29:02] Joe: That’s what Oog knows that we might’ve come up with an alternate answer.
[00:29:08] OG: So I’m up. So I’m picturing all those old time, you know, world War II photos of all the service members, you know, in their dress uniforms or, or in their working uniforms when they’re on the ship or whatever. And I’m picturing no t-shirts in World War ii.
[00:29:25] OG: So I, I think Doc G’s a little early to the ball game here. I’m gonna say right around World War II ending and let’s go. Yeah, because it was, you know, before. Okay, so I’m gonna say 1947.
[00:29:39] Joe: 47. So we’ve got 1932 Happy
[00:29:43] OG: Birthday to the US Navy. Their birthday was, uh, just a week ago.
[00:29:46] Joe: Mm-hmm. Paula, you’ve got, uh, 32 from Doc G and 47 from og.
[00:29:52] Paula: Ooh. So I’m thinking about the television show, the Gilded Age. There was definitely nobody wearing a t-shirt on that.
[00:30:02] Doug: I. That you could see.
[00:30:10] Joe: And if you’re new to Stacky Benjamins, so many things that our contestants have said during trivia doesn’t help.
[00:30:17] Doug: Then I’m thinking about watching Star Wars and nobody in the future was wearing a tee-shirt either, and that doesn’t help.
[00:30:27] Paula: I’m feeling early 19 hundreds, so I’m gonna take the under and go with 1931.
[00:30:33] Joe: 1931. Oh, poor Doc G got cut off at the knees, but Doc still got halfway between 32 and 47, so not done yet. We’ll see. Is it before 1931? Between 32 and 47 or after 1947? Find out just a moment, doc, you start off the guessing by saying 1932.
[00:30:56] Joe: Now that all the guesses are in, what are you thinking?
[00:30:59] Doc G: I am thinking I can’t be last because Paula was kind enough to write, go below me. So I’m feeling pretty good about the fact that I won’t be last. You’re not even playing for first, you’re playing for second. Hey, it’s what’s what I like to call reverse trivia.
[00:31:12] Doc G: You’re
[00:31:13] Paula: it’s reverse
[00:31:15] OG: trivia. Well done, sir. Instead of going for first
[00:31:19] Joe: I go not to be last. I’m so proud, ma. Guess what, ma? I didn’t suck the worst. It’s
[00:31:28] Doc G: the baby
[00:31:29] Joe: steps. The baby steps. Oh gee. You’ve got everything north of 1947. So feeling
[00:31:34] OG: good. Yeah. I’m picturing, uh, I certainly, you know, you can picture the, the service members in Vietnam, right.
[00:31:41] OG: Wearing the drab green T-shirts, you know? Sure, yeah. Doing the thing. Korea to me seems it was too chilly. They were just all wearing like winter clothes. I picture World War II vets with their, you know, they got the, the, the shirt on has the Big V and they don’t have a T-shirt underneath that unless it’s like a, you know, like a sleeveless low cut t-shirt.
[00:32:01] OG: It’s not just a regular crew neck. So, uh, I feel pretty good. Seem
[00:32:06] Doug: to think a lot about service members in their
[00:32:08] OG: t-shirts. OGI do actually. Absolutely. So think about our service members and men and women every day.
[00:32:14] Joe: Okay, well, Paula and scissors. And scissors and scissors. Paula, you apparently think those low cut v-neck t-shirts were before 1931.
[00:32:25] Paula: Well, I’m imagining gold rush. I’m imagining, I don’t know. I’m imagining turn of the century. I’m imagining that big earthquake in San Francisco. I don’t know why I associate t-shirts with that, but like feels like you might have worn a t-shirt for the occasion.
[00:32:41] Joe: If there were ever a time Doug for people to have a
[00:32:43] Doug: t-shirt, it would’ve been during the San Francisco earthquake.
[00:32:47] Doug: But definitely after the Gilded Age, somewhere between the Gilded Age and the San Francisco earthquake, that’s when people started rocking those white tshirt. Who’s bringing this home? Doug. I am Joe. Hey there. Stackers. I’m t-shirt lover and guy who loves funny sayings, Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Over the years the simple white T-shirt has become a staple of everyday wear, eventually moving to many different colors.
[00:33:14] Doug: And after iron ons adding whatever ridiculous things you wanted to say, print it right on your chest. There’s an innovation for you. Here’s an example. I remember this one super innovative podcast. They actually put their name of the podcast right on a t-shirt. Whoa. How funny is, wait, we do. Did we do that?
[00:33:35] Doug: I don’t know if we’ve done that, but how brilliant would that be? There’s an innovation for you. Here’s today’s question. What year did the US Navy on today’s date debut the T-shirt? Well, here’s what I can tell you. It was 34 years before OGs guess of 1947. It was 19 years before Doc G’S guess of 1932. No way.
[00:33:56] Doug: Just 18 years before Paul. A guessed of 1931 because correct answer is 1913, making inexplicably
[00:34:05] Joe: Paula our winner. Woo. Can everybody explain to me what just happened? What just happened?
[00:34:10] Paula: Wow. Uh, I think, well, you know what? Watching TV pays off, I mentally anchored to the Gilded Age and then said, Nope. And then said it would’ve been sometime after that,
[00:34:24] Joe: which is why you went before everybody else.
[00:34:27] Joe: This is what’s going on with her brain when it comes to trivia, everybody.
[00:34:31] Paula: Wow. But
[00:34:32] Joe: congratulations.
[00:34:33] Paula: Well, thank you. Closing the Gap. Closing the gap.
[00:34:36] Joe: Yeah, and it’s funny, OG because I do remember t-shirts, but only in the, um, Pacific Theater. I remember seeing people when it was really hot in the Asian Theater war where had, when you, when you were there
[00:34:49] OG: personally.
[00:34:50] Joe: No, please. No, just watching, watching the, not the Gilded Age, but the Pacific
[00:34:57] OG: there. I was watching Band of Brothers thinking to myself, these guys are all wearing t-shirts. They’re all wearing,
[00:35:02] Joe: this will come in handy someday.
[00:35:04] OG: This will be, this will be, this is an important little piece of info.
[00:35:07] Doug: Nice bright white t-shirts on the front lines so they can blend in.
[00:35:11] OG: I don’t think they were bright. Oh, you said the Navy ones were white, right? They were white, yeah. Yeah. They started off as
[00:35:16] Joe: these white crew neck T-shirts. Yeah. Uh, going underneath the uniforms. Hey, let’s dive into the second half of this discussion because we talked about the positives and certainly there are some negatives, starting with the fact that, uh, and, and I wanna scroll up because someone said this in the comments, and I think it’s a great place to start, which is.
[00:35:39] Joe: From Ryland Felner hanging out with us, said and Doc, we’ll give this to you, Ryland. I’m gonna present this one in a maybe more funny way. I saw this as a video one time, an older guy, doc, saying, you know, forget about more time with my family. What I regret on my deathbed is that we didn’t hit enough KPIs in our marketing department.
[00:36:03] Joe: That’s what I regret.
[00:36:04] Doc G: Well, you know, you laugh and I’m gonna tell a story and I’m gonna use the person’s real name. I actually told this story in my first book Taking Stock, but he died long ago, and I know he would not mind. I had this great patient, Eddie and Eddie came to see me. He started seeing me I think in his late seventies.
[00:36:20] Doc G: He died in his early eighties, and this guy loved trucks. In fact, he loved trucks so much. He started selling them. He bought and sold them. He had this little store, literally right on the border of Wisconsin in Illinois. And as he got more and more sick and his business got worse and worse and worse, he kept going to work.
[00:36:42] Doc G: He would sit in his chair, his assistant would bring him things, and he would buy and sell and trade used trucks. I changed my practice actually to the point where I’d go see people in their homes, and I remember driving up to the border and there he’d be literally close to dying on hospice and still doing what he loved doing.
[00:37:03] Doc G: This guy loved these huge trucks. He’d buy ’em and sell them used, and, um, it was one of his greatest joys. And he died that way. So that’s positive. Yeah. Yeah. He, he died working in that. He wouldn’t have had it any other way,
[00:37:19] Joe: but just generally, do you think that, I mean, if you’re working because the marketing department needs you versus this idea of any type of purpose, I think you’re, you’re doing it wrong.
[00:37:30] Doc G: Yeah. I mean. We tend to remember, especially on our deathbeds, when we talk about, you know, the things that excited us and the things we regret. You know, the biggest question tends to be, was I a good version of myself? Which means did I connect with those people who were important in my life? Did I do those things that were deeply important to me?
[00:37:49] Doc G: Was I that kind of person I wanted to be? And the truth of the matter is usually that doesn’t hinge on how many hours I showed up to work or whether I worked nights and weekends. It’s much more about what was important to my sense of identity and purpose and, and did I have the courage to pursue it.
[00:38:03] Doug: There are those of us who are so selfless and we just like to be needed that that gives us joy. I mean, that’s why I’m here.
[00:38:15] Doc G: And Doug, your gifts to the podcast world are just so you know. I know,
[00:38:21] Doug: right? So
[00:38:22] Doc G: great. But
[00:38:25] Joe: it strikes me OG going, I can’t stop thinking about Jordan, the story that you told about.
[00:38:30] Joe: The guy selling trucks. And it strikes me, OG, that your grandfather lived for a long, long time and I think he worked late into his life as well and loved every minute of it, didn’t he?
[00:38:41] OG: Yeah. I mean, grandpa worked, he owned a printing business and um, he had a big sign on the door. That’s the chairman of the board.
[00:38:47] OG: You know, it was, I don’t know that there were many other board members. Maybe grandma was on the board too, but I remember him working a lot. But, but I have a lot of memories of going to the shop and walking behind cubicle where grandpa’s office was. And a lot of times he would just be there sleeping, you know, like with his feet up, like taking a nap.
[00:39:05] OG: Or he’d have a, you know, he’d have a magazine of printing equipment or something like that, you know, but it was a thing that he did. And I know he worked until his early nineties. Uh, I mean, he wasn’t, he wasn’t working a hundred hours a week, but he wasn’t working two either. And most of the stuff that he was doing at the time, I can only imagine.
[00:39:22] OG: I wasn’t involved in the business. Uh, had very little to do with the actual operation of printing. It was the customer relations stuff. It was the selling, it was the general positioning of the firm in the marketplace because he is pretty well known in the community. So I think it was a lot less to do with the actual work and a lot more to do with, um, legacy.
[00:39:44] OG: Maybe even at that point, to some degree
[00:39:46] Joe: marketing and relationships too. Keeping those relationships. Yeah, I was gonna say
[00:39:49] OG: he wasn’t too concerned with the legacy aspect of it, at least to my knowledge, but, but more around just. People would come in and they’d wanna talk to Augie. They didn’t care. Like, yeah, yeah, I know you guys are doing the work, but where’s, where’s the boss?
[00:40:00] OG: Let’s talk to him.
[00:40:01] Joe: Yeah. Let’s say hi, right? Let’s say hi, you know, OG sticking with you for a second. People that are fire advocates, not this idea of reverse fire. Often say, you know, the part we’re concerned about is the FI and the re. We’re not worried about, I think that in this case, it, it almost has to be the same.
[00:40:20] Joe: If your goal is to work forever, you still need to figure out the FI before 87 or 90
[00:40:27] OG: or whatever the contingency plan, right? 140. Somebody may not want you to be reverse firing. Somebody may want to have you fire, you know, at 65 like you’re supposed to, ’cause there’s other mouths to feed and so and so forth.
[00:40:41] OG: I think the biggest downside of all of this, thinking about extending it forever, is the opportunity that you have to be lazy about saving and investing. And I, that’s what I said before about my 140 year time horizon. You go, well, hell, I got 90 years to get there. I’m, I could save a dollar a month and still be fine.
[00:41:00] OG: But that kinda sends the wrong message too, right? It’s like a little bit too much. Like, I’ll wait for tomorrow. You know the, what was the, what was the hamburger thing from Popeye, right? I’d gladly pay you for two cheeseburgers tomorrow for one cheeseburger today. You know, it’s like, it rewards that behavior a little too much for my liking.
[00:41:18] OG: And just like when you’re about to go on vacation and you work really hard right before you gonna go on vacation, you get all that work done. You have that big to-do list, the big pile of stuff on your desk, and then you know that two weeks before vacation you, you just like slay everything. And you know you’re the most productive you are in your entire life.
[00:41:34] OG: Those 10 days before. It’s incredible before you go on vacation. If you give yourself a tight timeframe on financial goals, you’re more likely to be aggressive with them. And even if you don’t exactly hit it, you’re gonna still be in the ballpark of it. It’s one thing to be on one side of the equation and say, Hey, you know, when you’re 20 years old, if you just save $500 a month in a Roth, look, you’re gonna be totally fine for the rest of your life.
[00:41:55] OG: You have millions of dollars, it’ll be all tax free. Life is gonna be fantastic. But if you’re 40, you know, I don’t want you to, it’s two sides of this, right? One side is saying like, oh my gosh, I’m behind. I need to you. Like I’m never gonna make it. Why try? Like that’s the defeatist side, but the other side is going, Hey, I really need to put some pressure on myself here.
[00:42:12] OG: I need to get after it. I need to really pay attention to what I’m spending my money on so that I have extra. I need to ask my boss for a pay raise or additional responsibility, or work really hard to get that bonus because I need to start saving some frigging money. I need to get this stuff to start compounding because I don’t have the opportunity, or I shouldn’t be planning on working till I’m 90.
[00:42:29] OG: ’cause frankly, not all work is great. I think for, for a lot of people, work kind of sucks.
[00:42:35] Joe: Well, and even if you try to find good work, like we talked about before the break, if you try to find work that you like and you can’t, yeah, maybe you can’t find it or it takes you five years or 10 years to figure it out.
[00:42:45] OG: I don’t want you to use the, I’m gonna work until I’m 80. ’cause I love what I do as an opportunity to be lazy with savings.
[00:42:51] Joe: I don’t have to save, you know? Yeah.
[00:42:53] OG: Do both of those things so that you can have such a big I. It’s like the 15 year mortgage or 30 year mortgage. People go back and forth on that when it was COVID and interest rates really low.
[00:43:02] OG: They’re like, oh, you should take the 30 year, ’cause it’s 22% interest and it’s like super low and you can borrow money forever. It’s like, no, do the 15 year mortgage and the 2% rate. So you get that frigging thing paid for as soon as humanly possible, and the bank gets almost nothing out of you. Like I think our interest payment on our mortgage right now is like $200 or something.
[00:43:21] OG: It’s all principle. The bank doesn’t get anything out of us. They send us stuff every week going, Hey, you should refinance your mortgage. Look at all that equity you have. You probably want that to build a new barn or something. Right? It’s like do both. Use the opportunity to be aggressive for savings and also work a little bit longer if you like what you’re doing and now you’ve really compounded your family’s wealth and your family’s ability to move things forward.
[00:43:44] Joe: Paula, you know, OGs talking about this unintended consequence. You decide to live forever, so then you don’t save any money. And then surprise, surprise, any other unintended consequences of this reverse fire that you can think of?
[00:43:56] Paula: I, I think that what OG has described as probably the biggest concern, inadequately saving because you assume you’ll work forever.
[00:44:03] Paula: But I would say if, uh, a secondary level concern would be not adequately exploring interests, hobbies, passions, curiosities, outside of whatever would conventionally be thought of as work.
[00:44:17] Joe: Oh, that’s a great one.
[00:44:19] Paula: It might be that if your brain is just so attuned to being productive. You know, maybe it’s not the same job that you do, but if your brain is attuned to sitting on committees and being in meetings and sending emails, right.
[00:44:32] Paula: You might just find different ways of doing that for different organizations. Maybe, maybe even in different industries, but it’s, you’re still fundamentally on Zoom and, you know, sitting on Zoom meetings and sending emails.
[00:44:44] Paula: Yeah.
[00:44:44] Paula: As opposed to painting or taking improv classes or, yeah. Learning how to rollerblade.
[00:44:50] Paula: No,
[00:44:50] Joe: that is interesting because, uh, Jordan OG talked about it. It, it could be an excuse financially. Well, I don’t feel like saving, but it could also be fear of the unknown. If I stop doing the, it isn’t so much that I love this, that I’m afraid of, what the hell would I replace it with? It’s like stepping off into the abyss.
[00:45:11] Doc G: I mean, whenever we decide to do something different, we have to step into the unknown. And so it’s always easy to keep doing what you are doing. It’s always gonna be easier, at least emotionally, than to shake it up, do something different, and then get a different outcome. I think we have to be very careful.
[00:45:27] Doc G: ’cause one of the things that I think people really miss is they’re like, well, I kind of like my job and I don’t wanna rush it. And, and maybe it is an excuse not to save as much, but five years down the road, like, all your friends have retired, they’re all going out to eat every day, and then they’re going to play golf and you’re stuck still going to the nine to five, uh, because you thought you liked it, so you were gonna extend it.
[00:45:46] Doc G: And so I guess that’s the biggest issue is you just don’t have as much flexibility, right? If you really become very dependent on your finances, on continuing that job, even if you think, boy, I am gonna love that job. Things change in five years and you might be a very different person and you might have very different interests.
[00:46:02] Joe: Yeah, yeah. Boss changes, business gets sold, whatever it might be. Yeah. Shane says the devil, you know, Chris says, I’ll lose my identity if I change. Masley brings up something really, really neat, doc. Not neat, but I guess another point of this, which is, I don’t know if guilt is the right word, but if I’m sitting here filling a desk in my eighties and I enjoy what I do, but I know I’m not as productive as I used to be, how much should I be worried about the fact that maybe I’m not as productive for my employer as everybody else is around me, even if they’re letting me stay there?
[00:46:36] Joe: Is there a philosophical issue there?
[00:46:38] Doc G: Yeah, I mean, that’s a really hard one to figure out, right? ’cause there’s so many, so many different details. Are you taking up the space? Someone else could be growing and learning in someone who’s maybe more appropriate or who is more of a career path or trajectory than you.
[00:46:51] Doc G: Yeah. That was
[00:46:52] Joe: specifically what Masley said, was perhaps not giving a new employee a chance.
[00:46:55] Doc G: Yeah. And it, it’s so hard to know that because it’s so dependent. But I would guess a lot of these people we’re talking about like the psychiatrist who maybe will go back and do a few years more of seeing patients.
[00:47:05] Doc G: I would guess that in most situations that’s not the case. Right? In most situations, the employer will tell you, look, it’s not working here anymore, et cetera. And most of the situations, if there’s a young buck who should be moving into your place, most workplaces will eventually start that transition.
[00:47:19] Doc G: But yes, I mean, all of that’s possible. And I think that’s some of that nuance and all the good reason, again, to get back to let’s have our finances in order so that we can actually look at that nuance and make decisions.
[00:47:32] Joe: I, I know. Paul, how interested are you in this idea of career forever?
[00:47:36] Paula: I love it. I honestly really love it.
[00:47:38] Paula: It appeals to me because, you know, we, we joked earlier about nobody’s on their deathbed regretting that they didn’t hit certain KPIs, not getting KPIs. But I do think I’ll speak for myself. I have a deep curiosity about how big I can grow something into, you know, and so when I think about what I’m doing now, what I find highly motivating is seeing how many people I can reach.
[00:48:05] Paula: It’s two, two levels. How many people can I reach and how big of an impact can I make in their life? And over the span of 20 years, or 30 years or 40 years, that can kind of grow into a relatively small number or a very, very big number. And I think if it doesn’t grow into a very, very big number with a big impact, there can be that sense of regret.
[00:48:27] Paula: Like if, if I feel like I didn’t really try, you know, if I feel like it was lack of effort on my part. And so anyway, where all of this is going is. What I like about the working forever or for as long as it holds your interest is that you still have a goal that you are trying to attain and there can be a lot of joy and a lot of purpose in reaching for that goal.
[00:48:50] Joe: I hear everything you’re saying and I wonder if though, still being a well-rounded person with other things outside of that pursuit is still important.
[00:48:58] Paula: Yeah, I I think that’s why scaling from 40 hours down to 20, um, you know, at, at a certain point in your life or two. Yeah. I dunno what you can really get done in two hours a week, but, you know, I can, I could certainly see a time where you scale to 20 hours a week ’cause that feels very well balanced.
[00:49:16] Paula: You could work 20 hours a week and have a very balanced life outside of that.
[00:49:20] Joe: I know, speaking with, uh, Clark Howard about this, our mutual friend mm-hmm. Clark was talking about how just the older he gets, the more he likes, he wants to do the things that he loves. But he doesn’t want to do the things he doesn’t love anymore.
[00:49:31] Joe: He just likes giving that away and giving that to somebody who might be able to do it better. But that, that core thing, being on the microphone, Clark Howard being Clark Howard, there’s probably nobody in his organization who could, who can beat him at, beat him at that. Yeah. Oh, gee. What’s interesting is, is I’m listening to Paula being friends with you.
[00:49:48] Joe: That’s not your path. What are you looking at as you go forward and think about retirement or non-retirement?
[00:49:56] OG: God, like putting me on blast right now. It’s like what? Like I just, when are you gonna be done? Um, yes.
[00:50:03] Joe: Is this, uh, coming soon?
[00:50:05] OG: Yeah. I mean, I just, I’m one Powerball winning away from, from changing my phone number.
[00:50:11] OG: Like do, do, do. We’re sorry. The number you’ve called is no longer in service.
[00:50:15] Joe: I’m much less worried about you and financial independence. I’m much more worried about you and the, you know, remaining active, remaining doing your thing.
[00:50:23] OG: I think, like Paula was saying, it’s more about like eliminating the things that you don’t find fascinating and motivating.
[00:50:31] OG: And really that’s the big challenge I think for a lot of entrepreneurs is to continue to find things that are exciting to do. ’cause you know, when you’ve done something for a long time, we’ve done the podcast for 15 or 16 years, we have to keep on like finding energy to do it right. It’s not as, it’s, it’s still exciting, but it’s not like new exciting, right.
[00:50:50] OG: We have to find new things to find us excited to talk about because we’ve talked about Roth conversions 700 times. I know though,
[00:50:56] Joe: man, sometimes the old stuff by the response we got recently about, uh, your reaction to the gold discussion. Sometimes the old stuff still slaps. It’s stupid. I mean,
[00:51:06] OG: you know, ’cause gold is stupid, so that’s pretty easy to, to talk about.
[00:51:10] OG: Take that Frank. But yeah, so I think that the, like for me personally, what the challenge is going to be is to continue to find the things that are fascinating motivating to do and continue to find other people to support me doing that. And the things that I don’t find exciting anymore. Finding people that can support, still doing that.
[00:51:34] OG: And that’s really the, that’s really the biggest thing. What I do say to people who, ’cause you know, people ask this question honestly, especially, you know, our clients, they’ll say, Hey, you know, if you’ve been drinking your own Kool-Aid for a little while, maybe you’ve got a few bucks saved. So what are you thinking?
[00:51:47] OG: And the thing that I tell everybody is, well, I have a fourth grader, so it’s not like I’m jetting off to Paris. Like, hey, discounted tickets to, you know, to the UK right now. It’s like I have a fourth grader. So like we’re still doing that for the foreseeable future.
[00:52:02] Joe: But that doesn’t mean you have to keep doing what you’re doing.
[00:52:05] Joe: You could still do, you could do something else.
[00:52:06] OG: Well, a hundred percent. What does the next 10 years look like? I can’t do a good job of pinning it down, but I can tell you what the next 10 years doesn’t look like, and I think that’s the better way of looking at it. It’s like I’m still not doing the dishes.
[00:52:20] OG: Or rinsing out my bowl despite my wife’s incessant. Please. I
[00:52:23] Joe: think this is interesting and I want to head something off At the past, sun Sue the Art of War, the best battles, the one that’s never fought both. You said as an entrepreneur, Paula, you talked about something is very entrepreneurial. I don’t think anything either one of you said is specifically about entrepreneurs.
[00:52:36] Joe: Oh, true. Yeah. So for people going, oh, those don’t, those don’t apply to me. Sure they do. Paula’s on this infinite game of. In this infinite game, it’s how fast can I run? How far can I get? What can I, well, how fast can I follow? Sorry, pull in a running analogy. That was bad. See, not very fast. Yes. How far can I walk?
[00:52:57] Joe: What can I do, but how far can I chase this thing? Mm-hmm. And you’re passionate enough about it. And you could do that if you work for somebody else, if you work for yourself. And finding that thing, I think is fantastic where you show up every day and you’re engaged. And og, same thing, like eliminating the stuff that you don’t like from your life and deciding what it is.
[00:53:15] Joe: If you can work with your boss on that and moving into different roles, you know, so that, that suit you and, and where you can really help the company better. I mean, you
[00:53:24] OG: just, the reality is, is you don’t get what you don’t ask for. And when you can clearly identify or articulate exactly what it is that you want or don’t want to do, especially if you’re looking at like.
[00:53:35] OG: You know, I’ll take it away from the entrepreneur side and looking at it as, let’s say a manager and a new employee. It’s like, here’s what I like doing. I like training new employees. I will dedicate all my time to training new employees all 20 hours a week of doing that. So can you create a job for, for me, both hours a
[00:53:52] Joe: week?
[00:53:52] OG: Yeah, both hours. Like, I don’t want to do these, I don’t want to be the worker bee anymore. Like I’ve maxed out in my interest level of doing that. But I find a lot of passion in doing this and I will spend all the time and energy necessary to make sure that these, you know, young people that we’re recruiting can drink the culture, get really smart, transfer all this knowledge, and I can do that in 20 hours a week.
[00:54:12] OG: Can you create this role for me? Because I really wanna keep doing this. And you’ll be surprised. I mean, there’s gonna be times where they say, well, no, that just isn’t a thing that we have. But, um, uh, but if you’re a valuable employee, there’s plenty of opportunity to do that. And, and there’s so many stories.
[00:54:28] OG: We all know anecdotally the stories of people who like leave their job and then come back as a consultant because they’re like, actually, we screwed up by letting you retire. So can you, can you come back? And then you’re like, yeah, but at 20,000 a month for 20 hours a week. Sure.
[00:54:42] Joe: You know, and, and I’m not doing this.
[00:54:43] Joe: I’m not doing this. Yeah. I’m not doing that. Yeah.
[00:54:45] OG: I’m gonna come in and I’m, we’re talking about these two projects Monday from 10:00 AM till 2:00 PM and, and yeah. I don’t do eight o’clock meetings and I don’t stay to past martini hour.
[00:54:56] Joe: Jordan, you’ve already started to make this transition.
[00:54:59] Doc G: Yeah, I mean, I, I pretty much have, uh, you know, the wonderful thing about financial independence, the best argument you can make for not doing reverse fire and just doing it right away is I pretty much do what I want.
[00:55:10] Doc G: Every day, all day. My life is full of pursuing things I really, really enjoy. And I do very few things I don’t wanna do. And I hopefully, fingers crossed, will have, you know, 30 more years of doing that.
[00:55:24] Joe: But, and again, this isn’t being an entrepreneur, you, I mean, you were a physician with a patient load. Yeah.
[00:55:29] Joe: And had to decide to make the change.
[00:55:32] Doc G: Yeah, I mean, I think financial independence levels the board. You can be an entrepreneur, you can be an employee, you can be this, you can be that. You can be a side hustler, it doesn’t matter. Financial independence levels, the playing field. The difference is this, I probably waited till I was, you know, 45, 50 and worked really, really, really hard doing things I didn’t like to do for a long time to get there so that I could be here now.
[00:55:54] Doc G: Now if you’re more interested in something like reverse fire, you’re gonna start doing more of what you want now and sacrificing a little bit of the economic headwinds.
[00:56:03] Joe: Yeah.
[00:56:04] Doc G: But both of them are fine. You just have to decide what fits you.
[00:56:07] Joe: I love this idea as more people work longer. Still designing it, staying on top of it.
[00:56:12] Joe: Not using it is an excuse to live less, but to actually live more. I think it’s a great place to leave it, everybody. I’ll link to this piece again, Anne Tson and Veronica Dagger, two people whose work we’ve appreciated for so long. And again, another stellar piece outta the Wall Street Journal. Let’s talk about what’s going on where you are.
[00:56:31] Joe: We’ll start with you Doc, just back from Bali, what’s going on at Earn and
[00:56:34] Doc G: Invest. We are talking to Sean Malaney, uh, this week about his book and we’re talking about taxes. He wrote a fantastic book and it takes our tax code, takes everything that’s happened over the last bunch of years with legislation and just makes it more clear.
[00:56:50] Doc G: So it’s a wonderful book. It’s a great conversation.
[00:56:52] Joe: He’s a fun guy to talk to, and he was on a round table a couple weeks ago. Sean and Cody, by the way. I just saw, just as we record this this morning on LinkedIn, Cody reported this is what’s going on in the age of ai. There are now four books that have the same title and are called a workbook too.
[00:57:12] Joe: And what, like just all AI written? Yeah,
[00:57:15] Doc G: that’s, that’s been going on for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Back in 2022 when my book came out, when a bunch of people skipped. It’s same thing. It just, it’s a pain. Maybe that’s a testament to my work that
[00:57:24] Joe: that didn’t happen with Jack. I, no, I can’t copy this. It’s too way too much going on there.
[00:57:32] Joe: It was
[00:57:32] Doc G: too original. It was too original. It’s too way too original. It’s all
[00:57:35] Joe: cute
[00:57:35] Doug: drawings.
[00:57:37] Joe: Og what’s going on with you? This, uh, fine October weekend?
[00:57:41] OG: Oh, great weekend. Uh, mom’s in town. Uh, I got a little, uh, high school football tonight. Uh, the penultimate, uh, regular season game that we’re, uh, headed down to, uh, Waco for, it’s gonna be a tough matchup.
[00:57:53] OG: And then the wife and I, uh, start a little bit of a trip starting, uh, tomorrow, go to Arkansas. We got a little, little afterschool activity in Arkansas tomorrow, and then onto the house of mouse. So if any of you caught my, uh, vi, can I say, was it viral? Can I say viral?
[00:58:09] Joe: 188,000 people have watched it so far.
[00:58:12] Joe: Viral
[00:58:12] OG: talk tick oof about Disney. I am gonna go to, uh, blow a bunch of money at Disney with our, with our team on our annual team retreat. So we picked Disney this year. We’re gonna have some fun going to the Mickey’s Not so scary Halloween party. Oh, that’s gonna be
[00:58:24] Joe: great. That will be fantastic. Fantastic.
[00:58:27] Joe: I will be, as people hear this, I am at a theme park myself. We’re going to Dollywood and then to West Virginia to get another park, new River Gorge, nice. National Park we’re gonna be at. Yes. Perfect. Which is all a lead in for what’s going on at Afford Anything.
[00:58:41] Paula: So on the Afford Anything podcast, Doug and Heather Bonaparte.
[00:58:45] Paula: Um, and so Doug is hilarious. Uh, he works in the financial space in New York, but he’s really known for all of the jokes. He cracks on Twitter. Probably one of the best financial comedians in the written form that I have. Uh, wow. We’re right here.
[00:59:01] Doc G: Other, other financial comedians, other.
[00:59:06] Paula: So he and his wife joined me to talk about money for couples and how they, uh, manage money as a family.
[00:59:13] Joe: That’s fantastic. Doug and Heather Bonaparte great people. Yes. On the Afford Anything Show. We’ll have them, by the way, as part of our Halloween week here too. And pull like everything. You’re taking the positive. We’ll take the negative. So we’re a good one. Two punch. We’re talking about couple, uh, communication horror stories.
[00:59:30] Joe: Oh, ooh. Gonna be gonna be good. But that’s it. The Afford Anything Podcast, where Finer Podcast are found and. Trivia winning podcast,
[00:59:39] Paula: right? Exactly. Exactly. A tri, the trivia, winning trivia winner, hostage, new
[00:59:45] Joe: host. You should put that at the top of your graphic. I won Stacking Benjamins trivia once. That’ll
[00:59:51] Paula: be my new Twitter bio trivia winner.
[00:59:54] Joe: All right, that’s gonna do it for today. Big thanks to everybody for hanging out and giving us the gift of your ears. Thanks to everybody who hung out with us and was a part of this, uh, podcast on YouTube. You guys were fantastic and we were able to include quite a few of you in the show. Uh, so thanks for being a part of the show, making this really fun.
[01:00:11] Joe: Again, we’re here Monday afternoons, and if you get our newsletter, the 2 0 1 stack of regimens. Com slash 2 0 1. You’ll get a note that says, Hey, here’s the time we’re going live, and come join us and hope you can hang out with us on YouTube. Alright, at this point of the show though, we turn it over to Doug and ask him, Doug, what are our three big to-dos today?
[01:00:33] Doug: Well, Joe first, and this might be the first time I’ve ever said this in 16 years, take some advice from Joe. You’ve got all these things. All these things you wanna do with your life, you should do, do,
[01:00:48] Doc G: just don’t do it on a scissors. He said, do, do,
[01:00:51] Doug: or said Definitely by Doc G, we seem to wanna make rules for how other people should live their lives, but if you’re one of those people who likes working, then do that.
[01:01:02] Doug: Second, don’t forget about what OG said. If you give yourself a tight timeframe on financial goals, you are more likely to hit them. And if you don’t, you’ll probably come closer than if you cut yourself too much slack. But the big lesson. Don’t give Joe’s mom any ideas about buying t-shirts? Listen to this.
[01:01:20] Doug: She just bought a shirt that said, I’m with stupid and there’s a finger on it. That points mistakenly right at me. Huge mistake, ma. You should have bought the one that pointed at Joe. Thanks to the incredible Paula Pant for joining us today. We’re getting t-shirts that say, I’m with Paula, except you know about pop culture.
[01:01:41] Doug: We’ll also include links to her Afford Anything podcast in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Thanks to Doc G for hanging out with us today. We’re gonna print up some Purpose is for everyone’s shirts that I think you’re gonna love. You’ll find his fabulous podcast, earn and Invest wherever you listen to finer podcasts.
[01:02:00] Doug: And finally, thanks to OG for joining us today. Doug checks, notes, looks like we’re not printing up any T-shirts for og. Okay. But if you’re looking for good financial planning help. Head to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash OG for his calendar. This show is the property of SP podcast LC copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.
[01:02:25] Doug: Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know.
[01:02:47] Doug: 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.
Leave a Reply