On today’s special roundtable episode, our panel members share what money lessons we should have learned in 2023. Joining us on the year-ending roundtable are Paula Pant from Afford Anything, OG, and …..NEIGHBOR DOUG. What are some of the most important things that happened in 2023?
From Taylor Swift to Charlie Munger to inflation and rising interest rates, we cover the year’s hottest topics in today’s episode and dissect them into lessons you can apply to your life in the coming year(s).
We’ll touch on lessons in appreciation and gratitude, lessons in building systems, lessons in the importance of team building, lessons about the convergence of career and financial success, the life and lessons of Charlie Munger, the concept of “enough,” how retirement (or FIRE) isn’t just about accumulating a huge stack of Benjamins and then stopping work altogether, how recent inflation has impacted how we handle our money and where we go from here, the wisdom of waiting to buy a new home, AI, the fallacy of short-term thinking, and more.
Since our year-long trivia competition’s winner was locked in by Len Penzo last week, Joe unveils a new twist on the trivia game: deciding who goes last in our first trivia episode next year by playing a little game called “Benjamin in Your Box” (insert 12-year-old snicker here). Will Paula or OG win the advantage of going last?
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Watch On Our YouTube Channel:
Our Topic: Our top stories of the year and what lessons you can take away.
During our conversation, you’ll hear us mention:
- Our top stories of 2023—and what lessons we can learn.
- Time Person of the Year: Taylor Swift, and what we can learn from her decision to cut out the middlemen when distributing her Eras Tour movie.
- The risk-reward relationship that comes with entrepreneurship and betting on yourself.
- The value of experience and repetition.
- If you want more, you have to do more.
- Focusing on what you want to be great at and putting in the work.
- Showing appreciation to those around you who help you succeed.
- The impact that Charlie Munger left on the world.
- Charlie’s lessons about making smart decisions with your money.
- The impact that practicing your passion in life has on your life’s path.
- Continuing to live actively as you reach old age.
- Retiring TO something instead of FROM something.
- Simplifying the topic of finance so everyone can understand it.
- Trust>skill.
- Slowing housing and automobile purchases.
- Higher interest rates on savings accounts.
- Recency bias and how it impacts our decision-making.
Our Contributors
A big thanks to our contributors! You can check out more links for our guests below.
Neighbor Doug
Another thanks to Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor Doug for joining our contributors this week!
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
- Here is the video Joe based his game on for the Benjamin new a box. “Carrot in a Box” Jimmy Carr IN TEARS After Game with Sean Lock & Jon Richardson! | 8 Out of 10 Cats – Bing video
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
- A Big Money Lesson From Taylor Swift (ep 1412)
- The Biggest Trends in Real Estate in 2023 with Mindy Jensen and Paula Pant (Stacking Deeds)
Join Us Monday!
Join us on Monday for a special Best of 2023 Christmas Day episode – The Top 5 Plays with Your Money.
Miss our last show? Check it out here: Year end recap with Jean Chatzky.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Episode transcript
I don’t need anybody. I’m, I’m independent. Yeah,
me too. I am. What? Whatever you said. Independent, what do you say? We both be
independent together.
Huh?
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today we are recapping all the best financial lessons of 2023, bringing us gold for prosperity. It’s fall a pant here with frankincense to help soothe our financial anxieties. It’s OG and coming in with some me, so we have something to throw away later, like three week old leftovers.
It’s me. Me. Really? Wow. I guess I’m on this one, but that’s not all. Halfway through the show, since we’re breaking all the rules, we have a new game called Benjamin in Your Box, and now a guy who’d come down your chimney if he had to, to bring you the best financial advice. It’s Joel, see. Hi. So many
phrases there that we
regret already.
Hey everybody.
Welcome to our last episode of 2023. That’s live. We got a big week
next week. Oh, sorry. Was that not appropriate? We are.
No, it’s complete appropriate because, uh, OG we’re breaking it today. We got a really good show. A little
recap. A little recap.
Action we do. And here to help us recap the Paula pant.
How are you ready to do some
recapping? I am, I am. Great. I am so ready to review the, the last 365 ish days.
Looking at the list of things you might talk about. I was thinking there’s a lot of, uh, dumpster fire. Yeah. That happened in 2023 and, uh, because Len Pezo on our team had a, uh, family emergency neighbor.
Doug has been nice enough to step in. Doug. You think you’re up to
it? Nice enough. You, you literally had my arm behind my back. I don’t, I’m like, wait, I did what? I’m twisting my arm. I was like, I was
getting cuffed. No, we’re super happy you’re able to do it, but I don’t think you know the rules. I mean, you know the announcer person rules.
Do you know the participant rules?
No. ’cause you always put me on mute. Whenever, uh, I’m done. So I, you did it again. Every damn time. You muted me and now you’re,
wow, we’ve made it through that. Doug’s here. Oh, G’s here, polo’s here. Let’s recap. 2023.
All right. We’re just gonna take these in order of, uh, what you all think are I importance? And, uh, Paula, let’s, uh, in order of what you think are importance, did I say yes? Uh, what I think are importance in order of what you b think if what you B think are importance, I think is the correct phrase there.
Paula, why don’t you kick this off? Let’s go. There’s a lot to choose from in 2023. What would you like to tackle? Sure.
Well, as we all know, or as I hope we all know, times person of the year is Taylor Swift. Taylor has. Revolutionized so much of how the entertainment business operates. The movie that she shot about her era’s tour, she cut out the middleman when it came to distributing that movie to movie theaters that has not been done before on any major scale.
So she was able to produce the movie, cut out the middleman, make a direct deal with a MC theaters and all other theater chains, and that is likely to send some pretty significant reverberations throughout the, the film and entertainment industry. In addition to that, as I mentioned, in every city that she goes to, she creates massive economic effect.
There’s a boost to the economy of each city, to the point where leaders in Thailand, in Chile, in countries around the world have begged her to come do shows in their countries because they want economic boost from a Taylor Swift concert. She’s also one of the few people who in a highly polarized environment, pretty much everybody can agree on.
She doesn’t represent one extreme or another. She’s, she’s one of the last, or I should say, the few hallmarks of national unity.
There’s, we, we covered this, uh, this story right as it was happening when she was cutting out the middlemen. That’s episode 1412. People want to hear that round table episode where we talked about this.
But I think Paula a big lesson. ’cause I think there’s a lot of people going, what does that do with me and my money? But I think there’s a huge lesson here that a lot of us. And a lot of the products we buy, we’re dealing with middlemen. We’re not dealing with, you know, there’s a lot of people calling themselves financial advisors, and in a lot of ways they are middlemen.
And man, if we do what Taylor did, we might be able to save some significant money.
Yeah. You know, I think there’s a lot of financial essence. There is, uh, finding efficiencies, right? So her cutting out the middleman in the distribution of her movie is an example of finding inefficiency. She spotted an inefficiency in the way that things are, are done in standard procedure, and she shied standard procedure in order to do something in a, in a more cost-effective way and in a more economical way.
She, in addition to that, I think we can also learn the financial lesson that she, at a very early age invested in herself. And I know that, that, that phrase invest in yourself is a little nebulous and can sometimes be used in this rah rah, uh, rainbows and unicorns kind of, uh, subjective manner. But what she did in a very real sense is that she decided to be laser focused on just one thing and to devote all her time, all her money, all her attention and energy to just that one thing, which was the development of her music career.
So she, after high school, did not go to college. Instead, she started touring full-time. She, and not that I’m telling people not to go to college, but it’s an example of choosing one path and not getting distracted from that path. Every check, every, especially if you read the time person of the year profile, every early paycheck that she got, including when she was 18, she got a check from Kenny Chesney, the country singer, Kenny Chesney.
It was a, from the point of view of 18-year-old Taylor Swift, it was more money than she had ever encountered in her life. And what did she do with that? She invested in tour buses and then she used those tour buses to take her show on the road and get into more performing venues and, and grow her. What at the time was a very nascent career that had really, you know.
Lots of 18 year olds want to be professional, famous singers. Very few do it, but she was not willing to consider the quote unquote safe route. She was willing to take the risk of, of being an entrepreneur, of betting on herself and, and of really pursuing. Something that has outsized rewards If it works out,
I think obviously Paula, there’s a ton there to unpack.
You know what’s interesting though is that I heard another interview this year from, uh, Bruce Springsteen Mm-Hmm. And Springsteen talking about when he got his first record deal, he knew he had one shot. He knew it was the biggest shot of his life. But by that time, even though a lot of people didn’t know who he was, he had performed so many times that he’s in this executive’s office.
It was just another performance. Mm-Hmm. Like for him at that point, he was a seasoned professional. Yeah. Making sure that he, you know, to your same point about Taylor’s early career, just honed it and honed it. And honed it. And honed it. Right.
Exactly It. The other thing that was written in the time profile, which I encourage everybody to read, it was fantastic.
Is that in order to to train for the ERAS tour, she ran on a treadmill for three and a half hours a day while singing the songs that she’s going to sing in the eras tour, a catalog of about 40 songs while singing every single one of those songs out loud. So for three and a half hours a day, she ran while singing.
Wow. Is the lesson here. og, if you want more, you gotta do more. I, I
like what Paula said, you know, just seems like she, I, I don’t know much about Taylor Swift other than my daughter is infatuated and, uh, would do anything to go to the concert, you know, the next time that it’s around. It seems like, you know what Paula said about her being laser focused on what was hers and what she wanted to be great at.
Obviously I followed a little bit some of the story about when she had to kinda redo her own music because the contract sucked. And I think the thing that’s most impressive to me is instead of like crying in her beer or. Getting in trouble. You see a lot of famous people who fall off the deep end somehow, you know, and just something off the wall happens.
She just went, all right, cool, that sucks. That’s not what I wanted to have happen. Think through it, solve the problem, and then solved it by going, oh, this is the best way for me to solve this problem is just go redo this in a different way. And from my unscientific viewpoint, it looks like it worked out pretty well.
I also like some of those other anecdotal stories about her. ’cause you know, you don’t see this a lot, and I think it was her. Who gave, didn’t she give like a bunch of like gigantic bonuses to all the tour people who help? Right. You know, because I mean, she was making billions of dollars and
she gave bonuses of around a hundred thousand dollars to, to each
person.
Yeah. It gave people like a hundred grand bonuses. Like, Hey, here you go. Thanks for, yeah, thanks for helping. That’s, I mean, that’s super cool to see too. But
again, I think a lot of people listening to this are gonna be like, I can’t give a hundred thousand dollars bonuses, but taking care of the people around You think, but you can show appreciation.
I think it’s the right, yeah. You’re only as good as your team.
Right? Absolutely. You can show appreciation for the people that are around you and, and remember that before you were successful, there were people, you know, what do they say? Be, be kind to the people that you pass when you’re going up the ladder, because they’ll be the same people that you pass when you’re coming down.
You know? It’s like, it seems like she’s had a pretty big impact in just about every, I mean, look at the NFL, the impact of, you know, on football and people who’ve never watched a football game in their lives or watching football. So that hopefully I. They can see Taylor Swift in the stands. I mean, it’s crazy.
Doug, a lot of people
don’t know that. Uh, in your career, you’ve always been a a systems guy. When you take a look at some of the systems that Taylor had, if we’re trying to emulate some of those systems, how would you approach that?
You know, I, Paula touched on a few things. OG did too. One of the things that she did was build a team.
And then trust the people on that team to do what they’re really good at and allowed them to create processes that were repeatable and also expandable so that they weren’t just processes that worked for that tour or for that album, but their, their financial processes, their operational processes that were what we call in the systems world, we would call them extensible, that could grow as she grow, grew, grow, be growing.
I think it’s b grow be growed. Yeah. She is a business person as much as she is an entertainer and I think that’s what really makes her impressive that she has both of those skills. ’cause it is really hard to continue to create music that is appealing to a really broad audience, but it’s also really hard to keep that going financially.
We’ve heard of so many entertainment acts that have failed not because of their losing their appeal, but because of their. Business decisions that they’re making. Hall Oats come to mind. Billy Joel comes to mind who have lost everything because of business decisions they made, whether it was having the wrong people on their team or investing in the wrong things.
And so, so far it would appear that Taylor has figured out how to avoid those
missteps. An interesting piece of this is when she sidestepped all of Hollywood, I mean, clearly Taylor knows what she’s doing, but I also think that points to smart people in her corner as well. You know, I don’t think OG that Taylor Swift just calls up Disney one day and goes, I’m going around you.
You know, I, I think she’s running that by some pretty good people on our team, I
suspect so.
Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of you og, what’s an event of 2023 that, uh, really you think impacted, uh, our stacker’s money?
Uh, from an event standpoint, I liked all the conversation that happened around Charlie Munger’s death.
I mean, not the fact that he died, but all of the, that’s a big wow. Yeah. I like the fact that this old man kicked
off. I had the under on that one, under a hundred and I won by just a couple weeks.
Yeah. You look at his life, which obviously got highlighted here over the last, you know, month and a half or whatever, and I’m struck by a couple of things.
The, the fact that he was kind of the silent number two over the more gregarious, certainly more face of the organization, Mr. Buffet. The fact that he was more successful than Warren Buffet going into their partnership, which I thought was kind of interesting. By a 10th of a point, I guess, and the credit that he gets now for changing the whole direction of their organization, which, you know, Warren Buffett’s not shy about giving praise and making sure that, you know, he’s pretty, uh, humble.
Also as humble as you could be with a hundred billion dollars, I guess. But some of the lessons, I think that the two of them together and as we’re, you know, learning more about Charlie Munger’s role in this whole thing, the lessons that the two of them had around making smart decisions with your money, making smart decisions from an investing standpoint, and basically holding onto stuff forever.
You know, they both lived in their own houses that they bought, you know, in 1950, whatever, 1960, whatever, you know, they were both going to the office every day virtually, which I don’t know that I feel like work until I’m 99, but I bet that some of the fact that he worked until 99 was the fact that he made it to 99.
You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, he was doing what he liked to do. He was. Obviously financially independent, decades and decades and decades ago. And yet he still went to work every day. And I don’t think that he went to work for the pursuit of more. It’s not like he was like, what do you mean I’ve only got a billion, I can’t retire on that.
I need a 2 billion. You know, I gotta keep hustling and get my side hustle going to, to optimize my, you know, that’s not why he was working. He was working ’cause he liked what he was doing and he felt convicted in the, in the daily activities. And I look back on my grandfather, who has now been passed away for almost seven years.
Grandpa was 97 when he died. I think that a lot of the reason that he was healthy and well and you know, had a great life was because he had all sorts of stuff going on. He wasn’t the proverbial retiree of, I’m just gonna sit on the rocking chair and you know, watch the sun go across the sky from my porch.
And I see a lot of comments on Reddit and all this other sort of stuff about financial independence. I can’t wait to leave this crappy job and get the heck outta here and well, what are you gonna do? So you got 2 million bucks in the bank, that’s great, high five. But now what? You can’t stop doing stuff when you’re 40.
You have to keep growing. I think that the more we recognize that phrase of like, if you’re not growing, you’re dying type of thing, makes a lot of sense. You know, it, it works in everything in fitness and money. Yeah, I mean, how hard is it to be in shape when you’re 46? You know, it’s like, it’s like if you didn’t do this stuff when you were 36, you know it’s a lot harder at 46 and I can’t imagine what it’s like to be you old guys.
Like, my God, you must be, oh my. You either just mail it in every episode. I am what I am at this point. You know, I word, we know the you death, baby. Yes, well noted. It’s very obvious, but it just seems to me that there’s gotta be purpose and thinking about how this man worked until he was 99. And obviously lots other great things.
He gave away lots of money and he was gifting, you know, all that other sort of stuff is really cool too. But there’s a lot of lessons here about how to, how to live your life, be happy with what you have. And surprisingly, when you’re happy with what you have, you get more of the things that you like. You know, we did
a show, oh gee, do you remember when we did the woman who was studying Catholic nuns and why nuns live longer?
The reason they live longer is the sense of purpose that they have a mission. And I think there’s a tie in here. You know, she definitely lived a different life than Charlie Munger, but, uh, Rosalyn Carter at 99 as well. And you look at the Carters after Jimmy Carter left the White House, just his mission and purpose beyond president of the, uh, habitat for Humanity stuff.
The thing that, the things that both of them did, I think that has a lot to do with their longevity. Uh, Doug thoughts on, uh, Charlie
Munger? You know, I think it’s his candid approach to managing money that was so refreshing. He showed it doesn’t have to be a PhD. It doesn’t require a PhD in economics and finance to be successful.
You can just be very simple about your approach and be remarkably successful. That’s what I think made him so appealing. You know, he dressed it down for sure. He, he did not try to make it. It sounded like you had to be a genius to be successful. And I, and I think that really helped everybody in our community for sure.
He definitely stuck to his guns, Doug, and he had an opinion. I mean, I love an, our tribute to him after his death. Just that, uh, snippet of him, you know, his thoughts on crypto, crypto crappo, he called it like he, he definitively that had a point of view. Paul, your thoughts on Munger?
He brought an immense amount of wisdom into money management and into the world of finance.
So many people, I don’t think people actually think this once they go like deep into finance or personal finance, but I think people at the beginning, people who may only have a superficial understanding of the fields of, of business or finance might think that it’s only about money. You know, a superficial understanding of it leads to the assumption that the field itself is superficial.
And I think Charlie Munger perhaps better than almost anyone through his quotes, his observations. Was able to express financial lessons through words of wisdom that could be applied in many arenas of life, whether it’s about risk taking or about diversification, or about, here’s one example. His hiring philosophy was that trust is more important than skill.
Meaning you, if you hire somebody, you can always train them on development of a particular skill, but you can never teach them to be trustworthy. Either they are or they aren’t, right? And so he prioritized character. I. Above
skill, wasn’t it? His quote, it was something to the tune of, I’d rather have somebody with an IQ of one 40 that thinks they have an IQ of one 20 than have somebody with an IQ one 20 who thinks they have an IQ of one 40.
mm-Hmm. I thought that was pretty
good. Like lake Wobegon, where everybody’s above average. Everybody thinks they’re above average, right?
All the kids are beautiful Doug. What’s the first event of 2023 that you would like to
shine a light on? Two events really stand out to me. That happened in 2023 and one.
Well, you get one. I know. Well, but I’m just, I’m foreshadowing the listeners for my next one that’s coming to let them know that I’m thinking cohesively, but one led to the other. And so I’m gonna quote Jimmy McMillan from, uh, your neighborhood Paula, who said so eloquently. The rent is too damn high. So now how that would translate to us is the rates are too damn high.
The Fed raised the rates. If you looked at January 1st, 2023, rates interbank overnight, lending rates were 4.38 and were ending the year at 5.38 and matches their goal of trying to be somewhere between five and a quarter and five and a half. Why’d they do that? Well, we all know they did that to try to thwart suppress inflation.
It seems to have worked certainly recently. The markets have reacted in a way that said, great, it’s working. And because you’re not gonna continue to raise them, markets have really gone crazy in the, in the last couple of days. All of that’s great. But there were some negative downsides of, of those rates being raised, one of which was a lot of consumer spending that would’ve happened over in 2023.
Like buying houses and buying cars slowed down considerably. Even though savings rates have really, you know, they’re in the, the top four or five of the last 25 years, 20, 23, people are saving a ton of money. Not quite 20, 21 levels, but they’re saving a ton of money, but they’re not really able to spend it on the things that you often save money for, like houses and some investments, other tangible investments, because the cost of those funds have gotten really high.
We talked about, uh, the effective rates on real estate investors. On our wrap up show for our sister show Stacking deeds, uh, Paula, you and, and Crystal Hammond and Midy Jensen, uh, dove into that. So people want to hear, uh, rates for real estate investors that that’s a whole different discussion. But Paula Doug talked about rates and homeowners or first time home buyers.
Like if you’re somebody that a year ago thought you were gonna buy a house and you waited, is there a lesson there? Well,
so there’s a few lessons there. Number one, there is enormous recency bias. I have been speaking publicly about purchasing real estate for over a decade, and I remember in 20 12, 20 13, 20 14, everyone was saying, oh, isn’t that dangerous?
Isn’t the market going to crash again? There was this recency bias in which, because the memory of the 2008 crash was so recent and so vivid. People overestimated the likelihood that it was going to not only happen, but happen again soon. Likewise, as the memory of the great recession got further and further away, people’s recency bias instead started trending more towards, well, home prices are so much more expensive than they were a year ago or two years ago.
Doesn’t that mean it’s too late? Starting around, I’d say 20 17, 20 18, I would hear that consistently every year. Oh, it’s 2018. Home prices are so much higher than they were in 2016. It’s too late. Oh, it’s 2019. It’s so much more expensive than 2017. It’s too late. So that continued to happen. And so I think that part of the lesson is anchoring.
You know, there’s a cognitive bias of price anchoring. Anchoring your evaluation of something being overpriced based on what it was priced at a year ago is a flawed way of evaluating an asset. Now, it does make sense to look at your personal budget and say, alright, given how much money I make, how given my income, given my debt load, given the personal circumstances of my life, does this fit in my budget?
Absolutely. That is the proper way to do it. The improper way to do it is to price anchor on what a given any given asset, whether it’s a stock, whether it’s a home, what anchor on what that asset was worth, and conclude that just because there has been a runup, that means it is necessarily overvalued. So those are a couple of cognitive biases that I’ve seen.
I’ve seen recency bias in the way that people evaluated risk, and I’ve seen price anchoring in the way that people evaluate. Whether or not a home is quote unquote overpriced. Let’s
talk about recently what’s been going on with rates. Paula, sticking with you for a second. A month ago, uh, the average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage was 7.87 mm-Hmm.
As we’re recording this, today’s average 30 year fixed rate mortgage, 7.41. So we’ve seen a big drop right off the top. If I’m buying my primary residence right now, do I wait because it looks like the Fed might continue to lower rates?
No, no. Uh, you buy now refi later. Assuming that it, again, assuming it’s within your budget, the operative question is given your income, your debt, you know your personal finances, can you afford it?
Yes or no? But assuming that it is within your budget, do not wait because home prices are likely to only climb higher. One year from now when we’re concluding 2024, all of the factors point to home prices at, at this time, a year from now being nationwide higher than they are today. So waiting doesn’t make sense from a financial perspective, assuming, again, assuming that, that it’s within your budget.
Oh, gee,
we
talked about rates and savers on Wednesday show. People can go back and listen to the headline that you and I did about that. Anything to add to what Paula said on rates that we didn’t cover today or on Wednesday? I think
the other thing to think about is if you believe that the rates are gonna go down, or at least stay the same for the foreseeable future, but probably trend down over time, then the only logical conclusion is that the house prices have to go up to match that.
If you kind of just use history as a guide, what happened when rates went cratering down? Everybody went, whoa, I can buy a million dollar house now with my income. I’m in. And so what did everybody do? My $800,000 house is now selling for a million. Why? Because there’s tons of demand, and as the demand goes up, the price can go up to match it and what’s gone on.
As interest rates have gone up, then the demand has gone down. It’s softened a little bit. So to Paul’s point, if you’re in the middle of a transaction right now, or you’re going, Hey, now’s the time we are, you know, we’ve saved our money, we’ve done our thing, it’s time for us to buy our our family home, or a rental property or whatever you’re gonna do.
I don’t like necessarily using the maximum that you hear from realtors, but I’ve heard people say, you know, you buy the house, you rent the rate. And that’s kind of true when it comes to interest rates that are not two and a half percent, which by the way, probably won’t ever happen again. So, back to Paula’s point, who so eloquently said it already, there’s just so much recency bias there.
And I actually saw this the other way ’cause I had a friend of mine who bought a house and it was like at six and a half or 6.3 or something was the interest rate and she was just, oh gross. I can’t believe I got this crappy rate at 6.3 and all of my friends are at five and this is so horrible. And you fast forward a year, she’s like, boy am I happy I got that 6.3 rate.
All those suckers are at seven and a half right now. Woo. Look at me. I’m at 6.3. Look at all the money I’m saving. It really is kind of a recency type thing. So if it’s the time, it’s time and it’s a good deal, make it happen. Can I
say one other thing about the housing market? I have this theory, so you know how right now there is a disconnect between public sentiment about the economy versus actual data about the economy.
If you look at economic data, we’re doing really well. Productivity is high. Unemployment is at a 50 year historic low. GDP is great. I mean, economically, all of the data shows that the US is incredibly, incredibly strong. But public sentiment about the economy is very pessimistic, very negative. And so why is there such a disconnect between the two?
Many people, I’ve, I’ve listened to a lot of pundits who have tried to offer hypotheses about this, and the most common explanation that I hear are pundits saying, Hey, inflation, it may be slowing, but it hasn’t reversed, which means prices are still significantly higher than they were a year ago or two years ago, and wages have not kept up with it.
And so, although economic data may be strong, the gap between people’s wages and what they and their purchasing power. Is, uh, causing a lot of this pessimism? I’ve heard that explanation many times. Eh, I’m not sure. I don’t really know if that’s a complete explanation or not, particularly given that consumer spending is high given that people are going to restaurants more often than, than they were previously.
But I have this theory that the reason there is so much pessimism right now is because of the housing market. What’s happening is the existing homeowners, 82% of whom have a mortgage interest rate below 6%, that that is of mortgage homeowners, I think those existing homeowners feel stuck, right? Because their mortgage interest rate is sub 6%.
They don’t feel as though they can move. They’re incentivized not to move, and so they feel stuck. And when people feel stuck, when they feel a lack of mobility, they feel as though they are in a bad economic situation. Meanwhile, people who do not yet, boom, prospective, first time home buyers feel priced out of the market because they’re hit by the double whammy of the price runup that happened in 2000 combined with the interest rates of today.
So you’ve got people who are current, you know, prospective, first time home buyers who feel priced out, and you have existing homeowners who feel as though they can’t transact and therefore they, they lack mobility and they’re stuck. And I think that combination is why there’s so much pessimism, even in a time of robust economic data.
I think
there’s another piece of this though, that, um, is a harbinger though Paula of maybe not so great times coming. You look at the debt load of the average person in the United States, I feel like the average person is still living like it was a year ago. Like inflation has not gone up, interest rates haven’t gone up.
And so I’m living this lie and I’m just mortgaging it using credit versus changing my budget. I don’t know, but I think that piece of data. Just looks a little doom and gloomy to me, right? There’s so many other headlines there. Well, we’re gonna have three in the second half of this show, but if you are a longtime listener of Stacky Benjamins, you know, here is where we put our usual trivia game.
But the trivia game ended last week with Len Penso as our winner for 2023. I have his
trophy. See, it says, Len. Wow.
Are you holding it hostage until he, uh, are you
sending it out? No, I just, you know, I just, it’s, it’s a busy time of the year. The year isn’t
over yet. You don’t get, don’t send it to him until 2024,
until he gets, he can’t put the crown on his head until
January one.
It was nice of you, og to re engrave it. Have it engraved with his name on
it. It says you’re the best. You can’t see that, but it says you’re the best. Mine came full of Hershey kisses, but, uh, alas, his will not somebody ate ’em. They were eating. We’re not gonna point fingers somebody. We’re
not gonna name names somebody may have.
So we know that Len, in our first episode of next year’s competition is going to guess first, but who’s going to guess last? Well, the winner of today’s special competition is going to do that. We have a game I’ve been waiting to play for a long time. This is a game to see who gets to guess. Last kickoff next year.
It’s a game called Benjamin In the Box. It’s a bluffing game. Paul, are you up to play?
I am so ready to play
and win. og. Ready to og
ready to play. No idea what you’re talking about, but yes. Well,
here’s how it works. What I’m going to do in just a second is I’m gonna send you both emails and in that email, well I’m already losing.
One of you will have the word Benjamin and the other has nothing. But neither of you look at your emails until I tell you. All right? So I am sending you both emails and the email subject line says, is there a Benjamin in your email box? There goes the one to Paula. Do not look at it. Here goes the one to og.
Now OG, you are going to get to look at your email and Paula cannot look at hers. The goal is to end up with. The Benjamin in your box. Paula, have you ever had that goal before?
Can’t,
can’t say I have.
This whole thing was a setup for that
line. It was a hundred percent. I guarantee he is like, he is like, how do I put this in there?
Oh, look what you did. I
know Oog, you’ve had that
goal. I, uh, would always love to have Benjamin Yes. In my
box.
So whoever ends up with the word Benjamin in their email wins.
Now Paul, what’s gonna happen is OGs gonna open up his email and he’s gonna see if the word Benjamins. So I
get to check my email? Yes. And then he’s going to decide what, which email did you
send it to? OG at Stacking Benjamins dot com. Okay. Obviously, and Paula, you are going to, you’re gonna decide whether Benjamin, you wanna keep the.
Come. Wait. Whatcha doing? Did I win?
Oh boy. I, I assume I was supposed to guess whether or not his says
Benjamin, if it really hadn’t. Well, so Paula, what’s gonna happen is because I’m not going back, okay? I’m not go, we’re just gonna play the game. Paula, your goal is to either keep the email that you have. Or take the one that OG
has
OG very well might have, might erect the game.
We don’t, he could be bluffing. We don’t know. It might not said Benjamin and he could just be playing dumb. Right. We don’t know. He can be smart on Thursdays sometimes.
All right. Am I supposed to make the decision
right now? I generally think that OG just doesn’t like to listen to the rules
to anything that we do.
I think Paula might be
thinking about, uh, OGs
long history.
No comment.
All right. Paula, would you like to keep your email? Mm-Hmm. Or would you like OG to forward Benjamin to your box? I don’t know what you guys are laughing at. I have no idea. This is a bluffing game about email obviously. Paula, would you like your email or do you want OG to forward his.
I would like OG to forward his email.
OG forward your email to
Paula. Here you go. Paula.
Here’s OG forwarding the email to Paula. Now you each get your email. So Paula, do you have the email? Can I look at mine?
I can look at mine. No,
look at the one OG just forwarded to you. All
right.
Who’s
going first?
Whoa. Her mouth was a game. What? What happened?
What happened? Whoa.
I got played. I got played. Wow.
There is no Benjamin in your box. Wow.
Congratulations og. Thank you. I always wanted a Benjamin in my box.
Yes, OG will be, will be going last. This
is like Christmas at my mom’s house where. My mom’s like, how much money do you want for Christmas this year?
And I’m like, but you’re charging it to my Amex card. So this is a little weird. Joe’s like, Hey, I’m giving, I’m giving away a hundred dollars. Kind of like, isn’t it my money? Congratulations. You went a hundred
dollars. Yes. Thanks for playing. I’ve been wanting to play that game all year. Thank you for playing guys.
It
is well worth by the way. It is. Well worth going to see the original of that.
Yes. Thank you to Jimmy Carr and company for, uh, we will link to it in the show notes, uh, because we just stole their game, which is a carrot in the box by the way. Ah, which might be even was say than Benjamin.
Film wasn’t cucumber.
Second half of this podcast is brought to you by deposit accounts.com. Og You know what happens when you go to deposit accounts.com, you deposit your
accounts. At the.com, you can
deposit your account. Uh, the, you find out what the rates are from more than 275,000 deposit rates, over 11,000 banks of credit unions, all for free.
As we record this, the top 1% average 4.9399999999999995% on savings accounts, national average, still less than half percent, 0.49%. You know how I know that? I just went to deposit accounts.com. You can then find out banks that are near you and, uh, make the switch deposit accounts.com. Alright, let’s go to our second choice.
Uh, Paula, what’s another event? A 2023. You’d like to shine a light
on the two letters that everybody’s talking about. ai, artificial intelligence as a field has existed for decades, but this was the year that chat, GPT came into the public consciousness and completely overtook everything. Since the popularity of this latest version of chat GPT that was released in the early part of the year since that took off in the spring, AI has since dominated conversation in every industry as people try to figure out how AI is going to reshape their industry and how, when I say reshape, what jobs will be created, what new jobs will be created, like prompt engineers or prompt developers, and what jobs will be maybe phased out or made obsolete, or might have to shift in some way so that AI can be embraced as part of the new workflow.
I was
at my, uh, strategic coach meeting, uh, yesterday, a room full of entrepreneurs and the number one I. Phrase over and over was ai, how do I use ai? How am I gonna make it so that we can speed up, be more competitive, be better? Mm-Hmm. It’s the thing that a year ago at this meeting, nobody was talking about.
Right. That, uh, flooded every conversation. We saw this, by the way, and a lot of stuff. Another big thing that happened this year, of course, the Hollywood writer strike and ai, a big piece of Mm-Hmm. The writer strike the use of AI versus, versus writers. Right. But this is all jobs. Oh gee. I know that a lot of people have fear around ai.
Your thoughts around, uh, the growth of Che GPT and others? I know you have some stats on this, don’t you?
I found this, I thought it was really interesting. It was race to a million users. So how long did it take before somebody got to a million, some technology, got to a million users, a million subscribers, whatever you wanna say.
Netflix took three and a half years. Twitter took two, Facebook took 10 months. Dropbox took seven months. Spotify took five months. Instagram took two and a half months. How long did it take chat, GPT? I’m gonna guess a week. Yeah, five days. Hmm. And now with the, with the app, I don’t know if either of you have downloaded the chat GPT app with the image creator that’s tied to it.
It’s fascinating. My wife was sitting on the couch eating popcorn, you know, just kind of playing on her phone. And I said, I just wrote in 40-year-old woman blonde hair, sitting on a couch eating popcorn, playing on her iPhone, go. And it created this image of this person in her pajamas just having, you know, just playing on her phone, having a popcorn, and you could literally tell this thing to do anything you wanted to do and it will create whatever image you want.
It’s unbelievable. But I think the impact on this is learning how to use the technology as a tool as it relates to taking away the tasks that are. Already things that’re already doing. I’ll give you an example. In our business, one of the things that we were looking for a couple of weeks ago was tying our CRM, which is our contact management system that we use for our business with our email service, which is a whole different thing, you know, ’cause you have, you know, an email program that does that.
And I always said, well, why is it the case that when a client does one thing, we can’t automatically do the next thing for them automatically. They, they have a child that goes to college. Why does it not trigger all of these automatic events of, hey, we need to reach out to the estate planning attorney and make sure your kid is signed a power of attorney for their healthcare.
You know, just like these other things that people don’t think about that we do one-off at a time. And I think from a technology standpoint, people are worried about AI taking their jobs. AI’s gonna move their jobs up is what’s gonna happen. Mm-Hmm. You’re gonna do more and better things. And the tasks that can be repeatable are gonna be thought of one time programmed, which is the technology part, and then done for you moving forward.
It’s gonna be, I’m excited.
Doug. Uh, there was a classic book written in the, uh, early two thousands called, who Moved My Cheese, where it’s a bunch of rats and uh, and the cheese clearly moved and a bunch of rats bemoan the fact that cheese moved. Is this a who moved My Cheese situation? It
absolutely is.
Yeah. And, and we’ve been worried about this for 50 years, 75 years. How about a couple hundred years since the dawn of the industrial age. As any new technology has happened, whether it’s mechanical or artificial and, and ethereal, we’ve been worried about losing our jobs to pick a device and yet. More jobs happen and become available to us because the economy expands and new products and services get created because of these new capabilities.
And so the only danger is if you are not willing to evolve with your skillset,
oh gee, let’s go to another one. Let’s shine a light on a fifth event. Uh, we, we’ve actually shined a light on more of those. We got the Hollywood strike there. We’ve had many things, but what’s
another one? No, I think as I look back at just, just overall market performance, I think it’s just such a great story of, of what happened in 2021, followed by 2022, followed by 2023.
And it’s, it’s such a great microcosm of things are great, things are not so great. Things are great again. And if along the way you made the decisions from an investing standpoint based on the results of the previous year, you would’ve always been wrong. If you would’ve said, oh my gosh, 2021 was awesome.
I’m gonna dump all my money and now January 1st, 2022, and then you waited until the end of 2022 and looked, you would’ve said, oh my gosh, I’m down 25%. This sucks. I’m taking all my money out. And now we sit here today, ah, dang it, I’m up 23%, or the market’s up 23%. So it’s just such a great example in a, in such a short period of time of the day-to-day ups and downs, the fluctuations of what happens in the market have no bearing on long-term outputs or long-term outcomes.
And if you’re, if you’re day trading, if you’re thinking about, oh my gosh, I need to make changes based on small things that are happening in the economy, or small things that are happening in the world, you’re missing the boat. You’re investing for 30 years, invest for 30 years. We don’t have any idea what 2050 is gonna look like, but you need money then, and it should be invested in the greatest companies in the world.
So invest it. Don’t touch it.
But Paul, you were talking earlier about sentiment, you know, sentiment being down OG saying that the, you know, the market had a great year. Mm-Hmm. Like, imagine if you just followed sentiment, you would’ve done Exactly, you would’ve stepped
right in it, right? Yeah, exactly. Mar market had a great year, but you would never know that by talking to a, you know, random to the average person at the average bar or coffee shop.
The disconnect between economic reality and public sentiment is wider than I’ve ever seen it. So that’s just another reason not to listen to voices at the water cooler or these days, social media. Do not listen to voices on social media when guiding any money related decision, particularly your investments.
Joe, I OG talks about how old we are, so maybe it’s time to just lean on that a little bit. Wailed, can you remember a time when this has happened before, as Paula was describing, where we’ve had so many great economic indicators, but one or two that is making everybody so bummed out. I can’t. I mean, usually when the market’s doing what it’s doing now people are, it’s like 1988 all over again and woo-hoo, let’s go.
And yet that’s not happening at all right Now. Can you, can you think of another time we’ve had this polarizing kind of, uh, indicators?
I think it’s more the news cycle. Versus then economic indicators. More the news cycle versus the, because the news cycle with all the stuff going on in the Middle East with the just world uncertainty, the Ukrainian conflict, you, you’ve got so many, you got so many things going on, just, just worldwide, nationally, that I think that’s the thing.
It feels like there’s a lot of uncertainty, doesn’t it? And yet the market marches through it based on, based on data. Like it’s data versus
emotion. I think. Yeah, based on fundamentals. I was listening to a podcast the other day that the host was talking about presidential whatever, you know, approval ratings, and when they poll individuals about what’s going on in the world.
They can, you know, they manipulate that stuff based on whatever’s going on in the news. It’s like, tell us how you feel about the US and their international, whatever, international aid package. Well, it just so happened to be that five minutes ago there was just a bunch of news stories about, you know, we’re helping, we’re not helping, we’re doing too much, we’re doing too little, whatever.
Right? And it’s like, well, what do you think about that? And it’s, and, and that always seems to be the focus of whatever the polls are happen to be. And so if all of the economic news is inflation, interest rates are high, boy, this probably sucks. Huh? What do you think about that? Like, everybody’s like, well, I guess, I don’t know.
You guys just told me it sucks. So I guess sucks. I guess it sucks. I guess I go with sucks. Bob sucks. I’m gonna take, uh, sucks for 200, Bob. Poor number three. It’s very manipulative. Let’s
do one more here. Uh, Doug, uh, finish it off.
Yeah. I said my first one led to my second one, uh, which was, you know, the, the rates got really high.
The rates got high to try to stave off inflation, but the negative impact of that one of thousands was Silicon Valley Bank collapsing in March of 2023. Uh, because, you know, when, when, and, and OG can speak far more deeply on this than I can, but when they raised those rates, a lot of the investments that Silicon Valley Bank had were treasury bonds and other long-term investments that got hugely negatively impacted by the cost of funds rates going up.
Because of what the, what the Fed was doing. And so they collapsed. Everybody freaked out. All the depositors, huge depositors in Silicon Valley Bank thought, I gotta get my money now. What did SVB have to do to give them their money? They had to sell off a lot of those and they took huge losses on those investments in order to give people their money back.
I know, Joe, when you asked for your 50 million, that was probably the straw that broke the camel’s back. Only got 25 back. It was, you only got 25 back. Pretty rough. Way to go, Joe. Thanks Joe. Thanks Joe. You know that that was a pretty unique situation for Silicon Valley Bank. They had enormous amounts of deposits between 2019 and 2021.
’cause what was happening in the technology sector and uh, but what did that do to the rest of us? Back to just a minute ago, you were talking about the news cycle. We all freaked out. We thought, oh, the whole banking system is about to collapse. Well, maybe not. There were an awful lot of safeguards put in place that really isolated the unique situation that Silicon Valley Bank had that led to its demise.
But the rest of us had about 20 minutes there where we were thinking, we gotta go. It’s time to, you know, it’s a wonderful life, this thing, and get our money out. Yeah.
Paul Jean Chasky talked about this on uh, Wednesday with us. Her point was, the banking system’s the one thing we think you’d rock. Right?
Mm-Hmm. This is, I mean, is this a time when having a name brand bank is the lesson, have your money? You know, maybe that Wells Fargo’s not as bad as we thought it was. ’cause I know it’s a name
brand. I wouldn’t go
that far easy, Joe there. There was certainly, especially right around that time of Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic, there was certainly, I think at that point, more than ever, a lean towards.
Putting your money into large banks rather than community banks or credit unions, which really doesn’t actually make sense because as, as long as your bank is federally insured by, if it’s a bank, it’s gonna be one agency. If it’s a credit union, it’s gonna be a different one. But so long as it is federally insured and you don’t have accounts that, that are above and beyond that insured amount, you are likely to be okay, or you’ll be as okay at bank A as you would be at Bank B.
But we come back to the theme that keeps recurring throughout this episode, which is that there is a disconnect between reality and sentiment. So the sentiment might trend towards a bigger bank because there’s a psychological feeling of safety. Even if the reality is any bank that is federally insured or credit union that is fed federally insured is as safe as any other one, assuming that your, the total value of the deposits in all of your accounts at that institution does not exceed the insured level.
Oh gee, this happened on March 12th. We came up with a special episode directly after a rare Tuesday episode of our show where we walked through what was going on. Now you’ve got, you’ve had another nine months. Do you look at, uh, Silicon Valley Bank situation differently now than you did nine months ago?
I mean, it certainly was disconcerting for a lot of people who were involved in it in the moment. And I think backing up to 2007 or 2008 when the money markets went down and kind of broke the buck as that happened, patients really served a purpose there. It all worked out okay. And the same thing was true, like Paula, you said, when it comes to the Silicon Valley Bank and, and what was the other bank that took a crap?
First Republic. First Republic. Signature Bank. First Republic. You know, if you followed the rules as it related to. FDIC insurance. And you see a lot of changes with that. We’ve got a product with our firm that now allows people to have up to $12 million of FDIC insurance because we can kind of manipulate it and, and aggregate all the different banks and have one statement.
So if you’re not paying attention to that, it’s a really big thing. But for the vast majority of Americans, I mean, we’re talking 99% of people. This is a non thing. Your money is safe, the banking system is safe. Don’t have over a quarter million in your savings account, you know, and if you do, oh damn.
Don’t get somebody else to have another two 50 with, and then you get up to 500. I gotta go, Joe,
that’s our number one. Uh, to do, I’d just like a very quick answer to this one. Either just a couple words, a sentence, maybe even one word. Uh, optimistic your thought about 2024. Optimistic, pessimistic, uh, Paula, I’ll start with you.
Optimistic or pessimistic?
Absolutely optimistic. So every indicator is that the economy is strong and will continue to be strong. Unemployment is low, uh, which means jobs are prolific. There’s innovation happening across a, a wide range of industries. There’s enormous GDP growth and we’ve seen a steady pattern of that.
It looks as though there’s wide consensus. I. That the Fed is going to start lowering interest rates next year. In fact, the Fed even came out with statements to, you know, they, they can’t make any definitive statements, but to the best of their ability to, to really kind of indicate that they would.
They’ve, they’ve basically said that that’s on the docket for 2024, given what we know now, given the current trajectory with inflation. So the only thing that people are really arguing about is when will they start lowering rates? Is it gonna be Q1, Q2? You know, that’s the debate. The debate is not if the debate is when.
So with all of that together, uh, we’ve got every reason for optimism,
Joe. There’s no spaces between the words she’s saying. So that was all, just one word. That’s a lot for one word. Gimme
one word, maybe a phrase
or,
oh, sorry.
I thought you were running for president there like
Doug. Sorry, I, I missed that part of the directions.
I think Paul is optimistic. Yeah. Uh, Doug, how about you? Good
og. Finish it off. OG just gives
us a thumbs up, which is perfect on an audio podcast. We got fireworks behind me, bro. Here comes the fireworks. Yes. All right. I think that’s a great place to put a pin on this before we head out to the back porch and find out, uh, whatever craziness is going on with you guys.
og what’s happening, uh, with you this weekend? You, somebody’s got a birthday.
Not for 364 days from now, but, um, it was yesterday all day.
Happy birthday yesterday. Thank you. So that means you probably didn’t get my gift ’cause I didn’t even know it was your birthday yesterday.
Yeah. And Bethany, he guessed it.
That is like the singular best line in the, in the whole Christmas vacation. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go watch Christmas vacation. Watch the part with Aunt Bethany and when they walk in the house and he says, I got you a present. And he says,
Paul, I know you haven’t watched this movie.
You’ll love this movie. I have not. You’ll
watch, you’ve never seen Christmas vacation.
Never seen Christmas vacation. Oh my gosh. Oh, but you know what, you know what I did recently see is Polar Express. That’s a whole different thing. Polar Express, whole D deal. It’s not different than the same, it’s a, it’s a Christmas movie also.
It’s a
warm fuzzy, but it’s not like, no, Christmas vacation is the S full. You have to
watch it a thousand times to get all of the stuff. So basically, Paula, the, the old man walks in and says, we got you the perfect gift, Clark. And he says, you didn’t have to get me anything. And he goes, damn it, Bethany. He guessed it.
And it’s like, but it doesn’t hang there. It’s not like he says it and it just kind of hangs out. Yeah. They’re like, boom. It’s just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Onto the next thing. Onto the next thing. Yes. You should go into the living room and say hi to everybody. I should say hi to everybody. You should say hi to, I should say hello to every Hello, everybody.
Doug. Big weekend. Not doing anything. That’s what you’re asking. Good. Thank you.
I’m gonna be skiing on lots of artificial snow this weekend because we are having a lousy start to winter, but. It’s still cold enough. I can, we can make some snow and I get to go skiing.
Don’t eat the yellow stuff buddy. No, boy.
No. Fabulous.
Paula, what’s happening in afford Anything?
Three words. Paula, you get three words.
I, I miss that so I don’t, I don’t listen to directions. Here’s you four. I’ll follow instructions. So on the Afford Anything Podcast, coming up in the new year, the first episode that we will be airing in the new year, coming out on January 3rd is going to be an interview with Hal Elrod, the creator of The Miracle Morning All about how to set a morning routine that will set up your day for success.
And so with the New Year people setting New Year’s resolutions. Hal Elrod is here to say, you know what? You’ve got your New Year’s resolutions, you’ve got your goals. Let’s build you a spectacular morning routine so that every day can start strong and then you can move forward in the direction of your New Year’s goals.
Love me some Hal Elrod. That should be like a one page book. Yeah, but Hal’s got the, he’s got the recipe. I wish, uh, Hal had some energy. Paula, right? Seriously. Yes. What a great way to not just kick off a morning like hell L Rod, but way to kick off your, the stuff that Yeah, exactly. Hal brings to the table.
Yeah, good stuff. We’ll link to afford anything on our show notes, stacky Benjamins dot com or just pause this right now and go, uh, make sure you follow up for anything wherever you’re listening to us. All right. That’s gonna do it for today. Time for the back porch. Uh, Paula, uh, you’re eating some gross stuff.
What’s going
on there? I’m eating some delicious stuff. Macaroni and cheese flavored ice cream.
Hold on. Before we dive into this. Do you just like regularly buy mac and cheese ice cream and just have it in the refrigerator? Was this, are you doing this for us? So this is
limited edition. When it first came out, it was very, very hard to get.
I checked, like every store couldn’t find, I put myself on the wait list for it, you know, it’s like a Mercedes.
Yeah. Shocking that, that wasn’t widely available. The wait
list. Yeah. Um, could not get it. And finally, finally, finally, I, in like some far back freezer depth of like the 18th store, I checked, I finally found it
like, ma’am, you can’t be back here ma’am.
Ma’am.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s our private stash. Bought out their entire supply and then like slowly, uh, rationed it over the span of, of the next year. And when I was done I was like, kind of grieved that, like I had just finished the last of the world supply. You know, speaking of eras to her. That’s right.
And then an era is over. They brought it back. They brought it back.
Hallelujah.
Yeah. Hallelujah. I suspect it might be, uh, it might have succeeded so much if devalued
the whole thing. All of a sudden it’s all over the market. You can get that crap anywhere.
You know, it may have succeeded so much that I suspect they might bring it back seasonally, because I noticed they brought back the mac and cheese ice cream right around Thanksgiving, which was also when they rolled out the sweet potato casserole ice cream.
So I suspect, wait, hold, stop. What? Yeah. Sweet potato casserole ice cream.
Oh
God. Oh, shh. Yeah, of course.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s scintillating and gross Doug. Let’s get outta here before I throw up in my mouth again. Doug, what should we have learned today? Or what, what’s, what’s, uh, what’s our
thing? What’s our thing?
What’s our thing? What’s our thing? I
know. Wrap it up. Well, Joe, here’s your thing. First, take some advice from our panel. The news matters except when it doesn’t. Sometimes when big stuff happens, whether it’s financial or not, you need to decide if and how that might affect your long-term plan. If it doesn’t, just let it flow by you.
Second, if your plan includes making a large purchase, don’t let recency bias prevent you from buying that house, even though mortgage rates are higher, that might also mean that housing prices are suppressed. Consider moving ahead anyway and refinancing when rates come down. So what’s my biggest to-Do set up a nest camera in my living room so I can see how the hell Santa is getting in and outta here without making a mess.
And also to see if he’s the one who’s been dipping into my spiked eggnog. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You’ll find her fab, fabulous podcast. Fabulous, fabulous. You’ll find her fabulous podcast. Afford anything. Whatever you listen to find a podcast, find a like ha. This show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Sulci High.
Our producer is Karen Repine. This show is written by Lisa Curry, who’s also the host of the Long Story Long podcast With help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast. Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the 4 1 1 on all Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Wonder how beautiful we all are. Of course, you’ll never know if you don’t. Check out our YouTube version of this show Engineered by Tina Eichenberg. Then you’ll see once and for all that I’m the best thing going for this podcast.
Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Want a chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend, Gertrude and Kate Kin are our social media coordinators. And Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement.
Say hello. When you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor.
I’m Joe’s Mom’s Neighbor, Doug, and we’ll see you next time Back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
Or would you like OG to forward Benjamin to your box?
Okay. If we’re airing this, then what I know in 2024 is the censorship is going way down because this is spectacular. But I know this takes the muzzle off.
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