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This is an iHeart podcast.
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We care a lot about being intentional with our money. That is why we use dafy, a giving app that makes it easy to organize donations like the ones I send.
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To my kids school or the recurring ones I have to give to my church and to a local mentoring organization called Blueprint 58. And because DAFI is also a donor advised fund, you can set aside cash, stock, ETFs or crypto. You can take the tax deduction right away and support charities anytime with every receipt already organized. So visit Daffy.org HowToMoney today and for a limited time, get $25 to give to the charity of your choice. That's Daffy.org HowTomoney where do you see your career in 10 years? What are you doing now to help you get there? The sooner you start enhancing your skills, the sooner you'll be ready. That's why AARP has reskilling courses in a variety of categories like marketing and management to help your income live as long as you do.
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That's right, AARP has a bevy of free skill building courses for you to choose from because the steps that you choose to take will help you to love what you do in the future. And that's why the younger you are, the more you need AARP. Learn more at aarp.org skills hey, it's.
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Joel and Matt from how to Money. I was just in Seattle, Matt, and honestly, it's one of the greatest cities in the world, particularly in the summer. I went on this run by the water. We hopped a ferry across Puget Sound. Just an unforgettable trip.
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That's what struck me. What seems normal to a homeowner? It can be the thing that makes a guest trip really special.
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Which is why hosting your home on Airbnb makes sense, right? Travelers are looking for those authentic, memorable spaces, and if you don't have time to manage all that well, Airbnb's co host feature makes it easy. A local co host can help with everything from creating the listing to keeping your place running smooth. Find a co host@airbnb.com host welcome to how to Money. I'm Joel, and today I'm talking money truths you won't hear anywhere else with Len Penzo. Okay, so I've always appreciated Oddballs. My guest today, he fits the description and he's publicly willing to admit it. If you're looking for generic personal finance customers content, you're not going to find it in his writings. When I was first trying to figure out how I could contribute to the personal finance community, something I was really interested in doing. I started off writing on the Internet mostly because TikTok didn't exist yet. Well, Len Penzo allowed me to contribute to his already successful blog. I will not link to that post in the show notes because it's old and bad. But it is a testament to the beautiful community of personal finance nerds and to Len's graciousness as well. Len has a new book out. It's called True Money Stories. It's about the intersection of personal finance and family life. So I'm excited to pick his brain today on the podcast. Len, thank you so much for joining me.
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C
Joel, thank you for having me on your terrific show podcast. I'm honored.
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A
It's a pleasure to have you my friend. And yeah, you and I have been corresponding for many years, although we've never had a sit down chat like this. So I'm excited to, to get to talk to you in a long form way. My first question though, of course is going to be what's your craft beer equivalent? What does Len Penzo like to splurge on even though he is so you're so smart with your money, you're so thoughtful about saving and investing for the future, but there's got to be something you're like spending a lot of money on now that people think is a little weird.
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C
Yeah. And it is weird for probably for most people, believe it or not, I'm a model train buff. I model in N scales and I, I have a weakness for buying anything related to the N scale model railroad hobby. So I'm always, always splurging on that. Always.
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A
How expensive of a hobby is this?
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C
You know, it can be very expensive. So if you want to buy just for example, just a locomotive for example, that pulls your little, pulls the little cars behind it. Right. Those run over $200 each. Okay, so. And just give you an idea. I have, I think I have. Gosh, I bet you I have 25 locomotives alone. So you can do that just on the locomotive. That doesn't count all the modeling, all the models you have to buy the buildings and the track and the, all the electronic stuff. I mean it's thousands and thousands of dollars over time.
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A
Would you ever go into like Walt Disney territory and build your own little railroad in your backyard? Is it could. Have you ever get that?
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C
What is that, is that called? I think that's, I can't remember which gauge that is. Is that G or O or. It's huge. And I've seen some Fantastic. Have you ever seen on, on the Internet? You can go online on YouTube. So you're getting me all excited here. You can go online and see people's backyard railroads that they built themselves where, where the, you know, these grown men, these grown old men like myself can sit on these locomotives and they pull, you can pull kids and whatever in the cars behind and, and they have beautiful setups in their backyards. Just, it's just fantastic. Just really, it's really awesome.
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A
I can't imagine when you get to that point, laying track in your backyard and making it so that it can pull humans. It's probably getting, it's getting even more expensive, out of control.
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C
That would be crazy. And I mean, that gets into other stuff like hardscape and landscaping. You're building little bridges made out of stone. I mean, it's really fantastic stuff, actually.
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A
Yeah. Okay. You, Len Penso, you had an awesome gig as an aerospace engineer. You're a really smart guy. Why did you start a personal finance blog so long ago? And yeah, what leads someone who's got this intense day job, you do quite well for yourself to start blogging on the side.
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C
Everybody needs a hobby, right? And before, before I was spending money on my model railroading, I had. My son was in little league and so I had for seven or eight years. And I used to volunteer for little League. I used to be a coach and a manager and then I got into the board and I was a vice president and a president and that took. That was a 40 hour a week hobby for me on the side. It kept me very busy. Well, my son got out of little league and left me with. I needed to find another hobby, just keep from running my wife crazy, which who I affectionately call the honeybee. So I decided, well, you know what, I'd been reading some personal finance blogs on the side and I was like, you know what, I have some thoughts on that myself. So why don't I just try that just as a hobby. I was just trying to just kill some time and I started doing it and lo and behold, I mean, within six months, it really became very popular and it just kind of blew up and grew from there.
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A
It was like a different era, right? Like you couldn't start a blog today and six months later be super popular on the Internet. I mean, I guess, you know, substack is. There's that model. Some people are successful at it. But how has blogging changed since you first started?
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C
Yeah, blogging is. It's like the horse and buggy now to today's. You know, compared to the podcasting and, you know, doing your YouTube videos and TikTok and Instagram and all that stuff, it's kind of, it's kind of seen. It's. It's day is behind it. I mean, there's still, you can still blog and there are blogs. Mine's still going, but it's nowhere near what it used to be. But people have moved on and to bigger and better things. And your podcast, for example, I mean, that proves it. That's where people are, rightfully so. But back then, back in 2008, I started in 2008. Back then, blogging was just getting started. And I remember my first post, I was just commenting on the blogging zeitgeist, they call it, I guess. And there was, at that time, there was like nine. Ars Technica did a survey and I think they said there was. By then, by 2008, there were already like 9 million blogs out there.
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A
Wow.
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C
But it was still an ascending medium.
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A
Well, I'm sure it's kind of like podcasts in the fact that there are so many, but there are so few that put out good enough content and put out content for long enough to gain traction.
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C
I'm sure even today that can happen. It's just that there's. You just don't get the numbers that you used to get back in the day. There were years where I would get up to 2 million views a year. And those days are long. For me, those days are long gone. Part of that is on me because I don't blog as much as I used to. Things have changed. The medium has changed. And so that's why that was the whole impetus for this book. I had all those articles that I've done. Many were very popular. They were popular. The reason for that popularity, why I think my blog became so popular, is it wasn't like your everyday personal finance blog. It was. How do I describe it? I treated it almost like a sitcom or like a show. I had my family, and not just my immediate family, my wife and my son and my daughter, but I had my father in law who played a big part in the roles and they were characters in my life. And I always used stories from that to relate back to personal finance. And they were always. I tried to make them very, you know, there was humorous stories, but I always tried to end with a lesson on personal finance in each of the stories. And it resonated with the, with the Internet. And that's what got so famous. It was really like a running sitcom for many years. So. And people became familiar with my family members and that's just what happened. That's how, that's how it became very popular, actually.
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A
I think stories are so powerful. Right? People can relate to a story. It's easier to learn from it. It feels less dogmatic and more approachable. And I think that's certainly a big part of your success. I'm curious too. Just you had this kind of fancy job that's for smart people. And how do you think about translating personal finance for people who might not have, you know, a ridiculously high IQ like you? Len, does it take. Does it take. But does it take a lot of intelligence to be. I've seen it on both ends of the spectrum. Sometimes there are people who are super duper smart and man, for some reason, personal finance just does not take with them. They don't seem to get it. And then there are like, I don't know. Where do you think what's the intersection of intelligence and personal finance accumulating?
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C
Yeah, I think intelligence, I think intelligence has nothing to do with. At all, with personal finance management. Nothing at all. I've. I know smart, very smart, intelligent people whose personal finances are a mess, absolute mess. I had co workers back when I was still working before I retired who were in financial difficulties and they actually lost one of them, lost their security clearance because they got into financial trouble. That's one of the, you know, there's a thing with security clearances where it's called adverse information. I mean, if you do get into financial trouble, a lot of times they'll pull your security clearance because they fear you're a danger. You're susceptible to getting money from foreign.
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A
Powers for whatever, blackmail, bribery.
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C
Right, exactly. So, I mean, so there's, you know, that happens. And it has nothing to do with, you know, your intelligence at all. It's really your organizational skills. Really. I think that's what it comes down to. How organized are you and how detailed you are, are willing to be. And that's, that's. I think that makes the difference between somebody who's good at managing their finances and those who aren't.
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A
You build your blog as being the offbeat personal finance blog for responsible people. Why did you go in that direction? Why offbeat and why is it for responsible folks? Is that that organization key? Is it like, if you can't be responsible, you're not going to be able to succeed?
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C
Well, that's part of it, yeah. I mean, that's part of managing your finances is. To me, that's part of being a responsible adult. Right? I mean, if you don't know, if you don't manage your finances, you don't take the time or the care to manage your. You're not being a responsible adult. I'm sorry, that's just, that's my personal feeling. And the offbeat part was, was kind of the reason for the popularity of my blog, I believe, because back when I started the blog, there was, there was a lot of personal finance blogs. The thing is, they were all. They're very straightforward, right? They're very, very straightforward with their lesson. I mean, they just tell you, okay, here's how you balance a budget. Here's how you, you know, manage your finances. Here's how you decide whether it's smart or not to buy a house rather than rent. Just very straightforward rote writing. Boring. And I figured, you know what? I gotta. It'd probably help. One, it'd be easier to learn personal finance if you kind of make it funny, offbeat, do something strange. And two, you know, I think it sticks more so it sticks more in the head if you, if you can relate a funny story or something to your personal finance. Just something I think it'd be more entertaining. And it helped me differentiate myself from everybody else. So. And that's. And it ended up being true. That's what happened. I think people just gravitated to, hey, this personal finance blog. But it's not like all the others.
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A
You are very organized. You love spreadsheets. See, it's funny, you say these things and I'm not like that. I'm still obsessed with personal finance. I'm very interested. I'm not the most organized, I'm not the most detail oriented. Spreadsheets. I'd rather play Russian roulette than get in the mix with some spreadsheets. Yeah, I don't know how I've succeeded at this point knowing that you think organization is the key to that. Because, man, I wish I could be more organized, but I'm not. How do you run your household finances and what does that look like with the honeybee? You're the CEO of your household finances, but she's the cfo. Is that right? Okay, how do you delineate and what does that look like?
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C
Yeah, one of the themes throughout, throughout my blog, whenever I always stress running your household like a business, and we do that in the Penzo household, we do that. As you said, I am the household CEO. My wife is the household cfo. We each have distinct duties that we're responsible for. Mine is more big picture stuff and long term strategic. Hers is more on the tactical level. So for me, it's handling the investments, the household investments. It's looking at our household strategic planning for how we're going to sit save for, for example, their college educations, our retirement, our big ticket items for the house in the coming years, for example. You know, you don't just say, hey, I'm going to buy. But most people don't, hey, I'm going to go buy a, put a pool in this year. You know, here's some money. And here, no, you got to usually save up and spend that, you know, save that over several years. So I'd set out a plan on how we were going to save, set aside money to save for that big ticket purchases. And then basically what we do is we meet once a month and we go over the, the individual budget, our household budget, how we're meeting our budget. We go over that spreadsheet that you keep mentioning that I do all the time, variable spreadsheet. So we go over our spreadsheet of our income and our outgo. We look and see if we're meeting our plans and if we don't, my that. And that's my wife, the household cfo. She's the one that handles all that stuff, the tracking, the income, the outgo, our expenses. I look it over and then if there's a problem, you know, that's my job to figure out, okay, what do we got to do to change if we're, if we're not meeting our budget, if we're overspending, if we're not meeting our savings goals? That's my job to figure out, okay, what are we going to do to, to correct that? How do we fix our, our monthly income and our outgo to do that?
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A
So, so it's a real joint effort.
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C
And it is a total joint effort.
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A
Do you think that is where some, at least from people who have a partner is, Is that where some of them go wrong? They try to put it all on the shoulders of one person and then they're not in it together or.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Where do couples go wrong in finances?
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C
The reason it's personal finance. Right. And the personal part was everybody's different. There's no one right way to do anything. That's one thing that I've learned and I've tried to tell people there's no right way to do it. A big thing you have to do first off is you have to first decide, well, your husband and the wife are they the same in the spending category is one a big SA and one a big spender. You're going to run your household probably differently than like me and my wife, for example, who we're both savers. We're not big spenders. We live modestly. We live way below our means. So it's a lot easier for us to go ahead and do what we're doing. It makes perfect sense for us to do the way we're doing it, because we are, we're like minded. If you have a big spender and a big saver, it might be totally different. You might decide, for example, we have joint, joint checking accounts, joint, you know, everything's all joint. But I can see if you have a, you know, one's a big spender and one's a big saver, you might have to have separate accounts and figure out how you're going to handle that. How is the income? You have one income or two, you know, how do you handle the income, you know, from. If you have a big spender and a big saver, you know, how does that work out? It's totally different.
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A
Do you think, Len, I think one of the things you're known for is honesty. You, you don't necessarily sugarcoat things. Do you think personal finance content has become too nice? Is, is there too much telling folks what they want to hear as opposed to what they need to hear?
- [17:24]
C
Yeah, I do believe that. And that's another thing. None of my stuff is that way. It's. I've pretty much. I just tell it like it is, you know, you've got to face reality if, you know, if you're not willing to come to the truth and say some difficult things and nothing's going to get fixed. So, yes, I do, Joel, believe that sometimes they're a little too nice and you got to be a little harder, you know, and just tell those hard truths. You just have to. For kids too, you know, I'm a big, I was a big believer in my kids growing. It was, they were growing up to let them fail financially. So I had no problem watching. Although it hurt. I mean, it hurt to watch, but I purposely let them squander money so they would learn that, you know, learn the hard way that, you know, that's the only way they'd learn is by making mistakes.
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A
Like the BMX bike episode you relay in the book.
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C
Exactly. Yes, that's exactly right.
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A
So tell me about that real quick.
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C
So my son, he had a bike that it needed brakes and I told him, fix your brakes you know, put your money. You have saved some money so you can fix your brakes. Unless you do, you're not gonna be able to ride that bike. Well, one day, finally, the bike got so bad that his brakes completely gave up. He had none at all. He couldn't ride them without any brakes at all. So I said, well, okay, let's go buy some. Let's go buy. Get some new brakes for your bike so you can go ride it. And he said, well, I don't have any more money, dad. And I was like. And my son's down here. I know he can hear me tell him the story about it. He's laughing. Yeah. So I told him, I go, well, get the money so you can buy your. Fix your brakes. You're not riding that bike anymore because it's dangerous. And he said, well, I don't have it down. I said, well, why not? He said, because I bought a BB gun with the last of my money, you know? And I was like, what were you thinking? I told you, you know, to take care of those brakes a while ago. And he just. He said, well, I didn't. And I said, well, guess what? You're not riding your bike anymore until you earn enough money to repair those brakes. And he couldn't go anywhere. He was basically stuck at home unless he wanted to walk somewhere. And he was mad. He was so upset. But anyways, that's what happened. And I held to my guns until. And he had to. I think it took him like a month, at least more than a month to earn enough money to actually be able to go anywhere. He was basically stuck at home, you know, so that's the kind of thing that I let him fail. It is what it is, and you pay the price.
- [19:57]
A
I think that lesson. Did that lesson take? Like, is that the kind of stuff that really. Is that something that he remembers now? He's obviously downstairs laughing right now as you tell the story. Did that have an impact on his ability to connect the dots as far as personal finances goes? No. Okay. No.
- [20:14]
C
And if you go through the book, my son's one of the stars of the book. You know, he's one of the main characters in here. There's so many things that he did wrong. God love him, but, you know, there were lessons to be learned, not just for him, but for anybody reading this book. Things that he did that were amazing. He used to quite a precocious teenager when he was 14. And there's the stories in this book as well. He actually tried to sign up for credit card as a 14 year old and it was Discover, Discover credit card and Discover actually he almost got it. And the only reason he didn't get it is because my wife opened the mail one day and saw that Discover it sent my son. There looked like a bill from my wife was like, what's going on? So she, she opened up the bill and found out that my son, who tried to use a slight alias to his name but for some reason to think didn't put his Social Security number down. So, and that was. They were asking, hey, you're one step away, you know, what's your Social Security number? You get your card, you know. And that's when we, we called Discover and that's. You can listen to the rest of the story from the book. But yeah, we caught him doing stuff like that. So he's done that. There's another story in there where he. One day we opened up, went to the mailbox again and the wife, I think it was T Mobile at the time. There was a bill from T mobile wasn't just your normal bill in a regular envelope. This was a bill that was in an envelope eight and a half by 11 envelope. And it was about a half inch thick. And it turns out this was before we had unlimited texting. So my son had just gotten his cell phone and the cell phone bill, the texting bill was well over $1,000 and it was a half inch thick. You'd have to see. I actually show part of the bill in the book, but it was like a half inch. There was like 141 pages long. The bill of all the stuff that had happened for that month, I think it was over $1,000. So that was fun trying to get that fixed as well. That's just a taste of some of the stuff my son did. We share that kind of stuff in the book for him.
- [22:37]
A
At one point in the book you say our spending habits reveal our priorities in life. Do you think, is it just that some folks don't value financial freedom as much as the stuff that they can get from Amazon, Target, whatever it is? Yeah, I guess. Do people just value different things and you are one of those people. Maybe I'm one of those people who value financial freedom and other people are like, I don't know, just not really something I care about.
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C
Yeah, I think they're just short term thinkers. I don't think they think of the ramifications of spending now and not saving later. I just, they don't look at debt like, Joel, I know you and I We both look at debt as slavery almost. It's, it's financial slavery. You're putting chains on yourself every time you, you take a loan out. You're, you're, you're reducing your spending power. You know this obviously, you know, you're reducing your future buying power. You're, you're basically sacrificing your future for, for now. And I think most people don't even think of it that way. I think most people just think it's instant gratification and I'm, you know, I spent my money, I'm happy and they're not even thinking about the impacts down the road. And I think the further you're willing to look down the road, I think the more willing you are to, to embrace the discipline needed to, to not to stop doing that. And it's just a way about how you think about money.
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A
There's also been like a kind of cultural movement to make it, to normalize, I guess, getting the thing you want when you want it as quickly as possible. The costs or the additional amount of money that you're going to pay to get that thing quickly, who cares? It's fine. But whether that's buy now, pay later, right it, well, you actually sign up for this annual subscription to Target, Walmart and Amazon and then you'll get your stuff in 30 minutes instead of even two days. Do you think part of it is just the normalization that everyone's like, well, that's just the way it's done, Len. You're old school.
- [24:31]
C
Yeah, well, I am old school. That's funny. Now we are so spoiled about getting things within a day or two. I mean, I remember, I'll do my old man thing now. I remember you'd send away for something in the mail, it would take weeks to get just via mail. You wanted to buy something and Amazon is so spoiled as you get it within a day or the same day for something, it's just crazy. But yeah, that's how it's just kind of different world. But you have to think of how it impacts you down the road yourself. Like I said, it's those chains. Debt are chains on your future and you don't want to do that. You don't want to shackle yourself. It's easy though, to do that when you're young. It's just when you're younger, you just can't imagine being older, you know, you can't imagine being 60 or, you know, I'm 60 years old now. It's like it's, you can't. It's just, you can't fathom it. But when you get here quick, it's, it's very fast. And so before you know it, if you're not paying attention, it sneaks up on you.
- [25:29]
A
All right, I've got more questions I want to get to with you, Lynn, including I want to talk about your Aunt Doris and your grandpa. A lot of family members this make appearances in your blog and in your new book. So we'll get to some more questions with Len Penzo right after this. My how time flies 2025. It's going to be gone before we know it. But before it's gone, there's a lot of life to live, right? Including a lot of kid activities, the holiday get togethers and a whole lot more. All this activity though, it can cause us to put off tasks on our to do list. But juggling a million plans shouldn't mean your future doesn't make your to do list. Trust and Will turns estate planning from a when I have time task into a quick, straightforward process ensuring you're protecting your family's future today. Go to trustandwill.com howtomoney to get 20% off their simple, secure and expert backed estate planning services. That's right.
- [26:25]
B
It makes me think you mentioned kids, Joel. I might be done having kids at this point, but my friends, my neighbors, they aren't. I've got family members who have a a fresh baby at home as well and it is such an amazing season of life. But those changes should also bring about a reassessment of whether or not you've got your estate planning ducks all in a row. Trust and Will makes it simple and straightforward. Their easy to use website is simple to navigate and plus all your information, all your documents, they are securely stored with bank level encryption.
- [26:55]
A
Add some peace of mind to your future with Trust and will go to trustandwill.com howtomoney for 20% off. That's 20% off@trustandwill.com howtomoney tracking your spending well, it might seem daunting, but it's a crucial first step to taking control back. And that's because finances that can be messy and confusing. Well, Monarch money acts like your personal cfo, giving you full visibility and control so you can stop earning and start growing. Monarch has so much functionality, but the basic dashboard even is just one of my favorite features. You get your net worth, your goals and crucial budgeting data all right there when you first log in. I love it.
- [27:32]
B
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A
Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Use code how to money@monimalmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monimalmoney.com with code how to Money As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 24 7. So when you're hiring, you need a partner that works just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn Jobs. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network and get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place.
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- [29:06]
A
Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com howtomoney that's LinkedIn.com howtomoney to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Still talking with Len Penzo talking about his new book True Money Stories. And Len's personal finance writings have. I've always enjoyed them and Len is very honest in his approach to personal finance, which I think is something that is missing in a lot of personal finance content these days. I'm curious Len, like how do you think about and I really don't want to get political and we try to stay away from politics most of the time on this show. But it is true that like political leaders, legislation, those things have an impact on our economy. They have an impact on our personal finances. Like that stuff, the things that happen at the national and the state level and the local level, they trickle down and they impact us as consumers. And then people around in different parts of the country are impacted differently, too. Right. Think about, like, offshoring and how that's impacted in particular, people in smaller Midwestern towns, manufacturing towns. And you talk about, like, there's a tendency, I guess, for some folks to blame circumstances for a lack of their ability to make progress. But it is also true, right, that more difficult circumstances do hamper our ability to make progress. How do you think about that dichotomy?
- [30:28]
C
Yes, there are cases where people in personal finance, they run into difficulties and it's through no fault of their own. I mean, that's just a given. People have health issues. People have unexpected expenses that come up, natural disasters come up. It'll wipe you out for certain things. I get it, I get it. But there's also, There still doesn't absolve people of the obligation, if at all possible, to save up for those emergencies if you can. Again, I realize there's certain health things. There's nothing you could ever do. There's nothing you could ever do to avoid that. And that's just, that's unfortunate. And that's not on the, on people. Where I get rough with people, though, is when things come up. For example, maybe they get a car accident and they, they have damages to their vehicle that are, you know, five, six, $8,000, and they don't have their insurance or they don't have enough, and they didn't have enough insurance to cover it, and they don't have their savings. They don't have an emergency savings account to cover that, you know, that, I believe is on them. I think one of your first responsibilities is to somehow make sure you build up an emergency savings account as fast as possible to at least be able to handle a new engine in your car or something like that. You know, you gotta have a significant amount of emergency savings built up as fast as you can, and that comes even before you're saving for your retirement. That has to be the first thing, in my opinion. And if you don't do that, I mean, and that's on you. I mean, it's not hard to set aside. It's not asking a lot to set aside a small percentage of your paycheck every week, even if it means foregoing things, you have to do it. That is, again, to me, that's your, that's the responsible person will do that.
- [32:17]
A
What's the, what's the biggest barrier you see for most people from getting to that point where they're like, yeah, I probably should do something. My personal finances are not headed in a good direction. I need to start thinking about my future and my near term future because I don't have the cash in the bank. What are the biggest hurdles you see for most people where they're like, they can't quite get there or bridge that gap? What are they doing wrong?
- [32:38]
C
Sometimes I think what they're probably doing is they're just not willing to forego things that they want that they don't need, that they could be saving, sacrificing. Okay, doing sacrificing. For example, when we first bought the house I'm in now currently, I know the honeybee and I, I made a terrible mistake before we bought this house where the honeybee wanted to be a stay at home mom. And she said, yeah, okay, that's great, so go ahead. And she, she quit her job right before we bought this house, which lowered the amount of income we had for the house. And to get into this house after that happened, I mean, we were, we were pinching pennies, let me tell you, for at least two years. I mean, we weren't doing a lot of anything. Eating rice and beans, not going a luxury week weekend for us. Our luxury night out was going to McDonald's once a month. You know that for, for the first.
- [33:32]
A
Two, you were house poor.
- [33:33]
C
We were house poor. I mean, we were house poor. I mean, that's an extreme example. But I didn't run myself into debt despite that. Just because said, hey, well, we got to have fun, we deserve it anyways. No, we, we sucked it up. And that again, that was partially a mistake on my part. We shouldn't have her probably leave her job quite so soon. But anyways, the point is, I think you just have to be willing to suck it up and make some sacrifices for a little while just to get to where you need to be. That's how I feel anyway.
- [34:08]
A
I think probably a much bigger percentage of Americans could reach financial independence than currently do. But then there's other people who say, I think everybody can reach, can, can achieve financial independence, especially in a country like the United States. Would you agree with that assessment or do you think. No, like there's some people who just, it's not gonna be possible for them.
- [34:29]
C
Yeah, no, it's, it's harder now. There's no doubt about it. Gen Z and to a lesser extent, the millennials are, they're screwed compared to Gen X and the baby boomers and the, what do they call the silent generation. Or whatever they are in a totally. It's, it's not fair. It's due to the monetary system. It's just the way our debt based monetary system is. It's, we're in a position now where the way it's set up, they were doomed. It was, it doomed them from the beginning. Once Nixon got us off the DE anchored the US dollar from gold, that put us on the path to where we're at now.
- [35:08]
A
So what do they have to do differently? Young listeners who are like, wait, you just told me I'm screwed. What do I have to do differently then?
- [35:14]
C
Yeah, well you're screwed in that it's so difficult now. You're not totally screwed. You've got a lot harder admittedly than Gen X and baby boomers. You know Gen X, it was no problem. Even in the 80s you could work at a grocery store. I know this for a fact and I have friends who didn't have, they just had regular blue collar jobs and they had houses. They were able to afford a house in their 20s with a blue collar job, you can't do that anymore. And that's the fault of our monetary system basically. But that's what's made things so much tougher for them. I look at my kids as well, my Gen Z kids both have good jobs and they can't afford a house. They can't afford a house. If this was the 80s or 90s.
- [36:01]
A
You'Re also in Southern California.
- [36:03]
C
Admittedly yes, it'd be easier to afford a house somewhere else outside of Southern California, but still, it's still difficult. It's still difficult. So how do you overcome that? Well, you just have to, I know this is not satisfying and I don't mean this to sound glib. You just have to work harder. It's just harder. You're just going to have to do save more. You're going to have to invest. You might have to even take bigger risks with your investments to get bigger returns. The beauty of that is, and this is a mistake I made when I was younger as well, investing in your 20. The beauty, the beautiful thing about being in your 20s and 30s and investing is you have time to make mistakes. You can take those risks and survive those mistakes because you have the benefit of time to recover. Somebody who's older can't do that. That's why older people have to, you know, invest in much safer investments because they can't afford a big downturn.
- [37:04]
A
So when you say when you're younger.
- [37:05]
C
You can take bigger risks.
- [37:06]
A
When you say Take more risks as younger investors. What do you mean? Are you saying like go all in on the latest cryptocurrency, Len, is that your advice?
- [37:13]
C
Well, one I'm not big on and I do discuss cryptocurrencies in my book and precious metals as well. I'm not a big fan of cryptocurrencies at all, although I am a big fan of precious metals.
- [37:28]
A
So what does it look like to swing bigger than as a younger investor?
- [37:31]
C
Yeah, so make sure you're not putting anything in fixed income bonds. I mean you got to be invested in the stock market. I'm not going to tell you what to invest in. You've got to do your own due diligence there. But you do not play it safe. Do not do any stable value of your 401k. Don't put anything in your stable value fund if you're in your 20s or, or your 30s. I wouldn't. Don't take advice from me. I'm just saying if I had to do it over in my 20s and 30s, I would have been much less risk averse. I would have been much more risky with my investments. I'd been much better off. It's the only way out, really.
- [38:10]
A
Yeah. I remember when I first started investing, I was investing in target date funds. That was what had been recommended to me. I remember the more research I did, I was like, target date funds are great, low cost target day funds through some of the Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity. But I'm also really young and I really don't even know that I need this sort of bond exposure in my portfolio at all. It wasn't that target day funds are bad. They just weren't as risky as I was willing and wanted to be given what I was trying to accomplish, especially in those 20s. The target date fund for some people up to you could be a little too risk averse even.
- [38:50]
C
Yeah, I think anybody in their 20s and 30s. Right now you're losing out to inflation. I mean the bonds are, you're losing money. I don't care. You're not even stable vesting in bonds just to keep a little bit. You're losing money. I would stay far away from that and try to, like I said, be aggressive, do your research. There are sectors that are doing very well even in this environment that are doing much better than others. Be diversified but take risks. You have to somehow figure out a way to get bigger returns. That's all I can say. It's really, it's not very satisfying right now. It's Our monetary system, it's got everybody over a barrel right now, the younger generations. It's terrible.
- [39:35]
A
Talk to me about the other members of your family who make an appearance in the book and the impact they've had on you. Your aunt Doris, Grandpa. Right. Who had an impact, impact on you from a personal finance perspective.
- [39:46]
C
One of the characters in there in this book is my cousin Kevin, and he's mostly in my blind taste test challenges. So I have a whole bunch of blind tastes. You talk about popular things on my blog, one of the more popular segments in my blog. But he is an accountant. He's retired now, but he's the one that really got me thinking about looking at debt as financial slavery. And he's also very good about being organized and watching your money and always putting your money to work and making sure that your money's working for you. So my cousin Kevin, I think had the biggest impact, but there's others as well. I have my aunt Doris, who you mentioned, she's passed away 94 several years ago now, but she lived a very. She lived well, but she's a very frugal person and despite her limited income, she did very well. I don't know, I don't know how she. If she invested or what she did, but she just showed me that, you know, you can, you can enjoy life. You don't have to. Spending money is not all about life. What life is about. Right. It's about living your life and enjoying the things you have and family and things like that as well.
- [41:09]
A
You're making me think about value formation, which is something that you talk about some like is sometimes like runaway spending habits and an inability to really figure out personal finance. Is it a lack of being able to connect your values to what's happening with your money? How important is like the, like we have this thing on howtomoney.com like people can go through the why behind their money. We help them go through a bunch of questions to figure out what they care about so they can link their money habits to those deeper values that they, that they have, that they espouse. Do you think that maybe that deeper step is something a lot of people have missed?
- [41:48]
C
Yeah, I do, actually. Yes. You got to. I think a lot of people these days, I think they're tied to. They're tied to the almighty dollar. Actually, here's another thing. I guess I should go back to my aunt doors as well. Is it really not about. I know people have these dollar amounts that they have and I got to have this much Money by this time on my life. Yeah, you have to have a target on there. But again, the dollar, it's not just chasing the dollars. Right. It's just about. It's your life. Your life experiences, your family. There's more to life than money itself. That being said, money is required, especially as you get older. You better make sure you have enough of it to at least live modestly. And it really isn't that much, actually. My family, for example, even today, I'm just like, we're. We're at right now. What is. This is end of September. And I've. I've just. We just had our review a few weeks ago, our previous for August, and we had only burned through, I think, $65,000, my house. So $65,000 through August, three quarters of the way. So you really don't. And that's with a lot of splurges. We had spent some money for us, little splurge things on. On trips or whatever, what have you. It could have been much less than that. So, I mean, that's a living, you know, that's just having a lot of fun. And we spent only $65,000. You'd be surprised how little you can get by on as you get older. People think it. You actually kind of spend less as you get older. Most people, I mean, if you're not wanting to travel all around the world and everything. Yeah. You can spend a lot. A lot less than you might think.
- [43:25]
A
So do you think those commercials about.
- [43:28]
B
Oh, you can.
- [43:29]
A
You need $3.2 million by the time you retire. Those overblown. Is it utterly ridiculous?
- [43:33]
C
Yeah.
- [43:35]
A
Okay.
- [43:35]
C
They're overblown. Totally overblown. Yeah. You know, it all comes down to you, right? What are you. How are you willing to live your life? You know, again, we're modest spenders. We're not big. Me and the honeybee. We don't, you know, we don't do a lot of fun things. We're gonna go. We're gonna go to Cabo San Lucas later this year for a week maybe. We got a Hawaii trip next year, but that's it. I mean, those are our trips. You know, one or two trip, and then the rest is just living life, being with family and doing family things. And it's really, you know, you don't spend a lot of money, and we enjoy and we have a. We have a very satisfying life. So, you know, you don't need a lot. You really don't.
- [44:13]
A
All right, I want to talk a little bit about retirement and one of the most popular, maybe maybe the most popular post on your blog of all time. We'll get to a few more questions with Len Penzo right after this. Tracking your spending well, it might seem daunting, but it's a crucial first step to taking control back. And that's because finances that can be messy and confusing. Well, Monarch Money acts like your personal cfo, giving you full visibility and control so you can stop earning and start growing. Monarch has so much functionality, but the basic dashboard even is just one of my favorite features. You get your net worth, your goals and crucial budgeting data all right there when you first log in. I love it.
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B
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A
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- [46:29]
A
Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com howtomoney that's LinkedIn.com howtomoney to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This Episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Buying a car, it can be like a long road trip, right? There's negotiating prices, there can be lots of fees involved. It can be a difficult process. But with an auto loan from Navy Federal, you're on the highway to higher savings.
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So if you want to save more on your next auto purchase, learn more and apply for an auto loan@navy federal.org autoloans Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Credit and Collateral subject to approval terms and conditions apply for military discounts. Refinanced loan must be at least $5,000 to be eligible for the $200. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. Still talking with my friend Len Panto and talking about his new book which is called True Money Stories. And it's a compilation of a lot of his most successful blog posts throughout the years. And he's been blogging for quite some time. And Len, on your blog, one of, I think my favorite things we talk about on how to money when it comes out every year or we tend to is your annual sandwich survey. It's so just like meat and potatoes, basic. It's actually more like bologna and white bread, I guess.
- [48:03]
C
But it's wheat in the survey, Joel.
- [48:05]
A
Wheat in the survey. Sorry, my bad, my bad. But like how have you, why did you start writing that and what have you seen talk about like inflation at the grocery store. You know, that's like instead of talking about the weather, that's what we talk about now as humans. What have you seen like as you've been writing this survey over the years, what's the impact been?
- [48:25]
C
Well, I started that survey in 2000. I started that the first year I started the blog and it was really popular. I mean it got the, I couldn't believe the first year I did it. I got, got a lot of good feedback on it. I was like, well, hey, okay, I'll, I'll do it. I didn't really plan on it being a, an annual thing. It was a one time thing. You know, just check. I wanted to check out the price. You know, my kids were in school. The price of a school lunch was, I forget what it was way back then. A buck, a buck and a quarter or whatever? And I wanted to know if it was cheaper. Yeah, but was it cheaper to make a sandwich, you know, every day for your kids and then, you know, give them the banana and the. And the little mini bag of chips and whatever? Is that cheaper than the school lunch? So that's what started it. So I said, well, you know, I'll pick 10, because everybody has their favorite sandwiches. I said, well, I'll pick 10 different sandwiches. I'll set up the ingredients for, you know, as a benchmark, you know, you know, so much mustard and so much mayonnaise and, you know, two slices of wheat bread, anyways, cheese, whatever, set up all those benchmarks. And I'll measure the prices of those benchmarks. I'll assemble the sandwiches and come up with a price for each sandwich. Okay, so long story short, there is every year, it has always come out. The price of the sandwich in a brown bag lunch is always far less than a school lunch, the price of a school lunch. And it's. And it's healthier for you too. Okay. But what I've learned since then, the price has gone up and its price has gone down. I think back in 2009, the average price of all 10 sandwiches was about 54 cents, something like that. And now it's up to a $10 or something like that is the average price of a sandwich. Now it's over. Over it. So it's pretty much doubled. But in those years, the price has gone up right before the pan. Then it was dropping, the pandemic. It made a spike and then it dropped one year, and then this year the price went up again. So this is. The prices are as high as they've ever been on those Sandwiches. But there's 17 years of data. If you go to my article, you'll see the prices over those 17 years of all the sandwiches. It's really turned into. It's really quite interesting. Now there's so much data there that it's quite fascinating.
- [50:30]
A
Yes. Taken on a life of its own, your sandwich survey.
- [50:33]
C
Yes, it has. Yeah, it absolutely has.
- [50:36]
A
Well, it is fascinating to see. It's such a lowest common denominator thing. It's something that we're making every day at least. We are at my house, Right. For my kids, my kids who are all school age, seventh grade, fifth grade, kindergarten. And so we're in the. We're in the throes of school lunches. And yeah, like every once in a while, my son, when it's hamburger day, he's he wants to buy. Right. And fortunately, I think a school lunch for him is like three bucks. I'm like, okay, once a week for hamburger day.
- [51:01]
C
Yeah, that's what it is. It's $3.50 in our area.
- [51:04]
A
I still can do that, but most days, yeah, you're going to eat healthier. Even if, even if the price discrepancy between the school lunch and what we're making at home is like minimal, which it is when you. That's the cause you're doing the sandwiches. But then like you slice up some apples. Apples aren't cheap, like some carrots, whatever. Try to give them a well rounded lunch. It's going to get pretty close to the price of school lunch. But you're just, at least you know what you're feeding them then. I'm curious, you still write about personal finance? You still have this kind of passion for the subject after all these years, Starting the blog in 2008. Does it ever bore you? What keeps you excited on the personal finance front? Why do you, why do you keep talking about it, writing about it?
- [51:44]
C
Well, I'll be honest. So I'm not quite as excited as I used to be. Joel. You know, there's been over 3,000 articles right now on that, on the blog, if you can believe that. I think I've written about 2,000 of them. The book has what I consider to be the 167 of the most popular blog pieces that I. That I did.
- [52:04]
A
Yeah. It's a lot of consistency though. And you've really encouraged and helped a lot of people, motivated a lot of people, I think, to take charge of their personal finances.
- [52:11]
C
I try. And the blog is, don't get me wrong, the blog is still there. You can come over, you can sign up, get my newsletter. And I go. We do about five. There's always five articles a week there. And I do every Saturday I do something called Black coffee. So that's my main. That's the thing I do every week without fail. And what I do is that's my personal finance roundup at the macro level. So it's not more, not so much personal finance, but it's what's going on that's affecting our personal finances in the macrosphere. And I do that. And it's a humorous thing where I pick up the memes of the week, funny memes, the best Twitter posts that I find. Usually there's 10 or 11 different things which topics which I call credits and debits. I Opean on them. And it's Just, it's funny, I have a squirrel cam in there. It's just silly. But, but I mean, again, you still, there's still things to learn and it's very popular. That's what I, that's the main thing I do every week now with the blog.
- [53:10]
A
And you, you, sir, you are now a retiree. All that hard work has paid off. You don't have to work anymore if you don't want to. What are the, what are the biggest difficulties of being a retired person? Is it mentally difficult to not have a paycheck coming in anymore? Because you've obviously, you've done a lot of the hard work when it comes to front loading the sacrifice. I can't imagine that you're, you know, that you're having to make significant sacrifices in order to be okay. Right. So what's, what's it like as someone who has done really well with their personal finances over a long period of time to finally hit retirement? What are the things that like weigh on you?
- [53:47]
C
Gosh, I don't want to be a downer. As you get older, there's things you have to worry about like long term care. It's like the big expense that could in theory wipe you out maybe if something bad, you know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, like if a family member gets Alzheimer's and you can't take care of them anymore, will I have enough money for that? If that happens, the trouble is long.
- [54:11]
A
Term care insurance could wipe you out too. It's so dang expensive.
- [54:14]
C
Exactly. And that's something that, you know, I had to make and I'll just come. I did the risk assessment. One thing being about being an engineer, one of the things we do is risk assessment and that's personal finance is a lot about personal finance is risk assessment. You have to make a lot of decisions on risks. You know, is it is the risk worth taking. So, and in that, that arena, I did a lot of, lot of data gathering and running numbers and crunching and I decided that the risk, a better risk for me, for me only I'm just as me to not go take the insurance for that reason, for what you said, Joel, because it's expensive. And you know, that's so, so yes, that's, to me that's the biggest thing, you know, is long term care. Some, some medical thing that will totally wipe out my, my retirement savings. That being said, you know, I think I'm not really worried about that. I think I'm comfortable enough even if that happened, that, that, that's not going to happen. I mean, if I have to pay for it out of my retirement savings, I'll be good enough anyways because I did a good enough job saving on the way up to retirement.
- [55:25]
A
I think just as someone who would like to retire in 20 years, speaking to someone who is retired, one of the guys, my friend Wes Moss writes about the habits of happy retirees. And I'm curious, have you inculcated any of those? Like, what does it look like? Because so many people go full bore working 45, 50 hours a week to working 0 hours a week. They just retire all the way. You've had other. You've got other hobbies.
- [55:55]
C
Yeah.
- [55:56]
A
Are there any. Any secrets to being a happy retiree?
- [55:58]
C
Well, you just named it. You've got it. Look, life is long and, And I've. I'll probably tee off some. The fire people, the people who want to retire at 30 years old, you know, 35, 40. Let's say you retire at 40, you got another 40, 50 years of life. I mean, what are you gonna do? I mean, yes, you can have hobbies when you're older, it's easy to say, yeah, I got a couple hobbies that does it. And usually when you're older, you have grandkids, you have. You have other things to keep you busy. But when you're in your, you know, 40s, 50s, you know, that's all. How many, how much tennis can you play? How much golf can you play? Right. You really need to think about what you're gonna do to fill that time or you're not gonna be happy. You're probably gonna go back to work anyways, because, you know, that's a long life and a lot of things can happen, you know, so you got to make sure you're busy. Yes, hobbies is one. It helps if you have, you know, if you're older and you have grandkids or something like that to keep you busy, too. There's only so much traveling you can do, too. I can't imagine. I can't imagine people who travel. I mean, there are people who enjoy it, but, I mean, gosh, you know, life is long. Believe me. It's really long. It's short, but it's long. And you got to figure out a way to fill that time.
- [57:11]
A
All right? Have something to do with those hours if you're really aiming to retire early. Because you're right. I've seen some of those folks retiring early, and then they're like they're clawing to get back into some sort of.
- [57:22]
C
I don't know how they do it.
- [57:23]
A
Paid labor, you know, so I get it. Len Penzo, this has been a joyful conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today. Where can listeners find out more about.
- [57:32]
C
You and your new book, lenpenzo.com that's easy. You can always check me out on Twitter lenpenzo and I'm there on Amazon so you can just Google True Money Stories Len Penzo on Amazon. And there it is. You can read more about it there.
- [57:48]
A
Wonderful. Thank you Len. Appreciate it.
- [57:49]
C
Thank you Joel.
- [57:51]
A
It's always fun to connect with somebody who's kind of an og, really in the personal finance space. Think about writing this content for almost two decades, putting your thoughts out there. 3,000 blog posts. That's quite a feat from Len Penzo and just cool that he gave me a quick start when I was starting to write about money as well. I think my big takeaway from Len, and it's kind of the unpopular truth that a lot of people don't want to hear. Len talked about problems with the monetary system. He mentioned the fact that not everybody has the same advantage or starts from the same place. But he discussed the necessity to face reality and to sacrifice. I think that's true that the more you're willing to face the reality of your situation and to make sacrifices to get where you want to go, the more likely you are to achieve some of those long term financial goals. And he talked about the inability most people have to sympathize with their future selves to think about 20, 30, 40 years down the line. I do think that's probably a place where a lot of people fall short. They are like, yeah, but what am I saving for? And there is a disconnect between the 20 something year old you and the potentially likely to be 60 something year old you. It just reminds me of what Fidelity found one time of taking a picture of yourself and putting it through one of those apps that make you look a lot older. It really did have meaningful results in helping people increase what they were willing to put into their 401k or into their IRA. So find a way to think about, hey, what do I want my future to look like? What am I going to potentially even actually look like when I'm reaching that age? When you can do that, I think it does become a little bit easier to put aside some of the money you would have spent today and save it for tomorrow. One of the things Len said too, that I really appreciated, it was right there at the end. He was Talking about risk assessments, I think it's a really important part of personal finance. It's not just, oh, which fund should I choose to invest in? Because am I going to get 12% returns in this fund versus 9% returns in another? Past performance is not indicative of future results. That's a really hard thing to do anyway. It's an imperfect process to try to figure out which funds you should be investing in. But when we're talking about risk assessment and risk mitigation, which was kind of the Jeff Bezos framework of like regret minimization for life, I think that's a good way to think about personal finance. My advice to you would be to actually write down and think about the risks of different paths you could choose, right? Whether it's the risk of over saving, over investing. Some people really do have that risk where they're saving too much or the risk of not doing enough. The trade offs that you're going to make actually like writing those down and having a conversation with a friend, bouncing ideas off of them, or with your significant other. Like I think doing some more risk assessment work would help us make better personal finance decisions. Trade offs are the ultimate reality in life, but so many of us make those trade offs without having weighed the pros and cons beforehand. So thank you as always for listening. I really appreciate it. You'll find show notes, links to Len's new book and his website up on the website@howtomoney.com until next time. Best Friend out if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know we care a lot about being intentional with our money and that includes how we give it away.
- [62:01]
B
That is why we are big fans of Daffy, which is a modern donation platform and app for charitable giving that is also a donor advised fund which means you can contribute cash, stock, ETFs or even crypto. You take the tax deduction right away and then send the money to over one and a half million charities, schools and other faith based organizations whenever you want with the funds that you've already set aside.
- [62:25]
A
I've personally been using it to send recurring donations for causes I really care about like my church and a local nonprofit called Blueprint 58. Same here.
- [62:33]
B
Yeah, I've got recurring donations going to my kids school. Daffy also keeps your receipts organized for tax season. But the best part is Daffy itself is a nonprofit with a mission to help people to be more generous more often. So if you want a better system for your giving, head to Daffy.org howtomoney and for a limited time, you'll even get $25 to give to the charity of your choice. Visit Daffy.org howtomONEY today Johnny Knoxville here.
- [63:01]
C
Check out Crimeless Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the nimrods who almost pulled it off.
- [63:14]
A
It was kind of like the perfect.
- [63:15]
B
Storm in a sewer that was dumb.
- [63:18]
A
Do not follow my example.
- [63:21]
C
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [63:30]
A
Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it.
- [63:46]
C
They actually lose it.
- [63:47]
A
They sort of went nuts until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an iHeart podcast.