Breaking Money Rules and Playing Survivor Pantry SB1789

Summary

The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode: Breaking Money Rules and Playing Survivor Pantry (SB1789) Date: January 12, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, hosts Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and neighbor Doug bring their characteristic humor and relatable banter to a deeply practical personal finance theme: Questioning financial planning assumptions. They tackle the debate around the "right" time to claim Social Security; discuss the behavioral vs. mathematical sides of financial decision-making; challenge common projection mistakes; and riff on strategies for more realistic, flexible retirement planning. Along the way, they drop practical wisdom, share listener insights, and sprinkle in some “Survivor Pantry” fun, all with their signature light-hearted, offbeat style.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Challenging Assumptions in Financial Plans

(03:33–06:59)

• The hosts play with the "farm-to-table" analogy, suggesting just as “local, unprocessed” is better for food, so is customizing money rules for your own life rather than following industry “organics.”
• Joe: “We’re going into some of the assumptions we make when we build financial plans. So if you’re building your 2026 and beyond money plan, this is the episode for you.”

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2. Social Security Claiming Age: Should You Really Wait?

(09:07–26:17)

• Prompted by an Elijah Nicholson Messmer article, the team explores Derek Tharp’s new research, which argues that claiming Social Security early (at 62) can be rational for many—contradicting the standard advice to delay for a bigger payout.
• Traditional advice: “Delay until 70 for an 80% bigger check.”
• But new thinking (Tharp):
  • Behavioral factors often outweigh the math:
    1. People want to spend more in their “Go Go” early-retirement years.
    2. People balk at spending down their personal savings.
    3. Desire for simplicity and clarity—retire and claim at the same time for peace of mind.
• Memorable Quote (Joe, 12:33):
  “While traditional economic models often frame early claiming as a costly mistake, what Tharp says is that it's likely a rational response to real world retiree problems and preferences.”
• OG cautions: Don’t use behavioral comfort as a blanket excuse for poor money decisions; make sure any “emotional” choice doesn’t lead to long-term regret.
• They break down the buckets analogy:
  • Social Security is a “guaranteed to grow” bucket (8-10%/yr after 67, plus COLA).
  • Your investment portfolio is variable.
  • Which would you rather delay tapping?
• Key Takeaway: Math isn’t everything—behavior matters, but so does understanding the cost of early claiming, especially if you have a long or uncertain life expectancy.
• Notable Quote (OG, 15:20): “The only thing you can’t predict with any of this is your life expectancy... If you have a rational reason you won’t live long, taking early makes sense. Otherwise, you’re leaving guaranteed money on the table.”
• Nuanced conclusion: Claiming at 62 might be right for you, but only if it fits your true circumstances. Don’t decide out of habit or fear.

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3. Common Money Plan Mistakes: Projections & Human Behavior

(26:17–32:07)

• Projecting level spending in retirement is a mistake—people’s spending and desires change with age and net worth.
• Joe’s Observations:
  • Many plans use overly rosy investment return assumptions.
  • Many people assume they’ll want to (or be able to) work longer to “make up” for under-saving.
• “You have to build changing feelings and unexpected life events into your plan.”
• OG, on lifestyle inflation (29:53): “Your definition of a ‘normal person’ will change. ...Even the best spenders see lifestyle creep—they help family with college, splurge on big family trips, or just give away more. Spending does go up.”

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4. The TikTok Minute: Real Talk on Retirement Spending

(42:56–47:15)

• Featured TikTok by Genie (former 401k pro, 4 years into retirement):
  • “Yes, of course retirement is about the money. But what’s actually more important than ‘do you have enough?’ is how much are you going to spend?”
  • Says seeing your investments drain is emotionally different than just knowing the math.
• OG:
  “If the market’s going up, you can fool yourself into feeling rich and spend too much. But you need to be tracking what you should have, not just congratulate yourself for any portfolio gain… When hard years come, you still have to eat.”
• Key lesson: Building a basic spending “fence”—learning to budget—is crucial, especially before retirement removes the paycheck safety net.

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5. Building a Money Plan: What Numbers Should You Use?

(50:44–59:43)

• Rate of return assumption:
  • Joe: Many advisors use 7% as a “rule of thumb” for long-term real returns.
  • OG: “7% after inflation return is a good base case. If you want to be conservative, use 6% or even 5% and see what happens.”
  • Cautions against going too conservative and “saving so much you never enjoy your money.”
• Inflation:
  • Joe/OG agree: Use 3% as a practical baseline for inflation—real planning trouble starts if you use too low a number.
  • “If you’re afraid of volatility and keep your money in cash, inflation—the ‘silent killer’—is going to eat you alive. Long-term, you must invest to beat inflation.”

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6. Fun & Community Moments

• Survivor Pantry Challenge (62:14–63:48): Listener describes her family’s yearly game of only eating pantry food all January to reduce waste and save groceries.
  • Joe and OG riff on the “game” aspect and how this can force some fun frugality.
• Listener Q&A:
  • Discussion about accessible joint savings accounts for the visually impaired—examples of “stackers helping stackers.”
• Dow Jones Trivia & Index Math (33:19–41:38)
  • Doug explains myths and realities around how stock indices are actually calculated—reminding listeners to be wary of financial urban legends.
  • OG: “If you added up the prices of all the shares, that’s not the index number. It’s way more quirky thanks to the Dow Divisor…”

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Notable Quotes (w/ Timestamps & Attribution)

• "While traditional economic models often frame early claiming as a costly mistake, what Tharp says is that it's likely a rational response to real world retiree problems and preferences."
  – Joe (12:33)

• "If you have a rational reason you won’t live to 80... it doesn't make sense for me to wait to 70... Otherwise, you’re giving up hundreds of thousands of dollars for a 'lazy excuse.'"
  – OG (15:20, 18:31)

• "You have to be a hell yes to claim early. If not, it’s a no—because you only get one shot at this."
  – OG (25:36)

• "People look at those net worth increases and go, 'oh, I wouldn’t ever change.' Your definition of normal person will change… Even the most conscious spenders see lifestyle creep."
  – OG (29:53)

• "Yes, retirement is about the money. But what’s actually more important is how much you’re going to spend. Intellectually I knew that, but seeing your assets actually go down is different."
  – Genie (TikTok) (42:56–43:42)

• "If you use too low of a rate, you’re going to be forced to save so much you die with a hundred jillion dollars and you didn’t do the things you wanted to do."
  – OG (54:41)

• "The biggest thing you have to protect against is the rising cost of goods and services. …If you sit on cash, you’re not avoiding risk, you’re guaranteeing loss to inflation."
  – OG (53:43)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Challenging financial plan assumptions: 03:33–06:59
• Social Security debate & new research: 09:07–26:17
• Common projection mistakes (returns, spending): 26:17–32:07
• Lifestyle creep & changing retirement needs: 29:53–32:07
• TikTok Minute: Retirement spending is different: 42:56–47:15
• Projection numbers: returns & inflation: 50:44–59:43
• Survivor Pantry & community stories: 62:14–64:35

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Tone and Style

Light, conversational, self-deprecating, with a blend of useful financial information and humorous tangents. The hosts routinely poke fun at themselves and the financial advice industry, making even technical topics approachable and fun. They use real-world anecdotes, listener emails, and relatable metaphors (e.g., “Farm-to-table money plans,” “Survivor Pantry”) to drive points home for a broad audience.

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Summary

This episode challenges listeners to scrutinize their inherited financial planning assumptions, especially around Social Security, projections, and retirement spending. The big message: Financial decisions are personal, and “the math” doesn’t always capture your real-world context and feelings. Build your plan for your life—not just for maximum money. Use realistic numbers, question your own biases, and keep it fun—because you only get one chance to get this retirement thing right.

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Got a question or story? Join the Stacking Benjamins Facebook group (“the Basement”) or write in for more banter, answers, and possible on-air shoutouts!

Transcript

[Joe]

Why do growing businesses love working in Slack? Let's ask Christia Ari Bikes.

[OG]

Running things in Slack saves me so much time.

[Joe]

AI summaries save 97 minutes per week. What say you, Rocks from Gosney?

[OG]

Slack helps us build community. It helps us build connection.

[Joe]

Your partners, vendors and customers all in one place. Take us on home. Ashley from Carraway.

[Christia Ari Bikes]

If we didn't have Slack tomorrow, I would explode.

[Joe]

Well, let's not let that happen. Visit slack.com podcast to get 50% off Slack business plus this is pro linebacker.

[OG]

TJ Watt and I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another activewear drop. My second co design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in season workouts. And their new Restore collection is a game changer off the field too, because even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores because your personal best is greater than anything.

[Joe]

All right, one last time before I put these away for the rest of the year. Well, until the holidays again, but check out this Christmas mug from one of the Christmas markets. Did I tell you guys I went to the Christmas markets?

[Doug]

You travel a little bit, Joe.

[Joe]

Slightly. Once. Once in a while.

[OG]

Once every week.

[Joe]

Yes.

[Doug]

Basil. And that's the European city I like the best because they actually pronounce the herb correctly. It is the correct and preferred pronunciation. And yet we all say Basil like it's some dude in England.

[OG]

Settle down, boy. Settle down.

[Doug]

Oh man, you got me started. It's your fault.

[Joe]

I hear this escalating. We don't want to alert the military. We do salute the military early on, but let's not get the military involved in this.

[OG]

Douglas too.

[Joe]

It's puzzle.

[OG]

It's like that big giant like lever that they gotta pull. It's like. Take him down a notch.

[Doug]

Doug's firing up his engines.

[Joe]

Well, let me raise a Christmas bug here one more time. And on behalf of the men and women making podcast, Mom's Basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union who help our veterans and our active duty members, thank you for all you do members of the military.

[OG]

Salud.

[Joe]

So go stack some Benjamins.

[Doug]

Thanks everybody. I'm going to go put some basil in my pasta sauce.

[OG]

Nervous? Yes. First time? No.

[Joe]

I've been nervous lots of times.

[Doug]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[Joe]

Foreign.

[Doug]

I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and let's challenge some assumptions, shall we? When People build money plans. They often make some big assumptions that might not be true. What ideas should drive your own plans? We'll dive in. But that's not all. I'll also share a TikTok minute about planning a better retirement. And then I'll also share some fresh farm to market trivia. And now two guys who are the originators of the first Farm to Market Money podcast. It's Joe and O. Jj. Jj, you can't laugh in the middle of what I'm saying.

[Joe]

I'm just thinking, no preservatives, no additives in this podcast.

[Doug]

Definitely neither of those.

[Joe]

No filters, no filtering it down. Hey, everybody, Happy Monday. Welcome back to Stacky Benjamins, the Farm to Market Money podcast. I love that. That's great. Farm to table. Farm to table.

[Doug]

Farm to table. Like we're in some Visa commercial and just living this wholesome life out. All the chickens are roaming in the nice green pasture.

[Joe]

We got our money out wandering around the pasture.

[Doug]

Everybody's beautiful. They're all uncomfortably well dressed for a farm.

[Joe]

These are free range hundred dollar bills. Free range Benjamin.

[Doug]

The whole thing's a scam. The whole organic farmdom market, it's just all built for Hollywood.

[Joe]

It is interesting. That's a whole side discussion. But Michael Poland, the food writer, talks about that how buying local is actually the way to go. The whole farm to farm to table is the way to go versus looking for organic in the grocery store. Is it?

[OG]

Though Doug prefers to have his avocados grown a thousand miles away.

[Joe]

Doug's like, it's pronounced Avocado after the town of Avocado. Avocado, Ecuador. It's a super day. That voice you just heard was the OG and we're off the rails already. How are you, man?

[OG]

Okay. Just looking up the pronunciation of things. Texting, various people, you know, different things like that.

[Joe]

Well, I'm super happy. Stackers, you made it. You found us. Because today we are going into some of the assumptions we make. We build financial plans. So if you're building your 20, 26 and beyond money plan, this is the episode for you. If you know anybody else who's building, invite them along too. Sit back. We're going to have some fun for about the next hour. Some good news for you. Before we do any of that. Finally, the ferrets that spin the wheel here, Mom's basement have made their master product. Talking about farm to table. We call it the Stacky Benjamin's vault because we know how important it is. Protect your identity, stay away from unused subscriptions. Get off the text and email list. Protect your credit, run your credit what ifs. It's finally here with help from the team at Array who help protect millions of people. They helped us build the vault. Stacking benjamin.com vault gets you to the tool. I love these apps that you've got 10 of them on your phone. They do one thing. We built a tool that does 10 different things in one place. Fewer mess ups, fewer logins. Get it all together. Stacking benjamin.com/vaccault.

[Doug]

You know what I hear is on the developers list next? Because I slipped this in into their Kanban board and they didn't even realize it.

[Joe]

It.

[Doug]

It's going to toast your bagel in the morning for you perfectly.

[Joe]

It does 11 things.

[Doug]

It's going to do 11 things in the next release. It's going to. You know how you just. You need it to have that crispy top so you get a little bit of crunch with the butter, but then it's still soft and chewy on the inside.

[Joe]

It's hard.

[Doug]

It's like when you pour milk in your frosted flakes and there's a moment when it's perfect. That's what's on the list next for the vault.

[OG]

The butter on bagels.

[Joe]

Heck yeah. Yeah. Oh, boy. Another fight about to break out. So we got to move on before. Before this gets heated. It's pronounced boggle. We got a great show. We're going to challenge some assumptions with the help of a piece from financialplanning.com but before that, we have a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on so that you don't pay a dime for any of this. Goodness. We'll hear from them. And then let's do a headline.

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Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about you from public records and the Internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a vpn, antivirus, password manager, spam, call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to $5 million in identity theft insurance. All backed by 24. 7 US based fraud support. Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a vpn. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price. Competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial [e-mail] secure. Protect yourself [e-mail] secure.

[OG]

Hello, darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's headlines.

[Joe]

Our piece today comes to us from financialplanning.com this is written by Elijah Nicholson Messmer. Why claiming Social Security is 62 isn't a mistake. I'm like, wait a minute. This seems to have been a battle that was fought and you should definitely wait until age 70. There's been this debate. OG before we even get into this, I guess we should explain to people that are new here what the debate has been, which is you got this sliding scale when you take Social Security and when should you take it? And the math, the quote, more money math, the more money math still points to wait and take it later.

[OG]

Well, first of all, you just have to understand how Social Security works, right? So your entire work life, you put contributions in and then based on your earnings, there's a calculation that will be your Social Security benefit at your full retirement age. And I think now I feel like this is the year, maybe this is the last year where full retirement age is age 67. And so that has been increasing from 65 to 67 over the last 25 odd years where they've just slowly ratcheted the Definition of full retirement. That date matters because if you claim Social Security before then, you get a reduction in your benefit because you're taking it earlier than the government thinks you should. The other problem that happens is if you take it back before you, quote, unquote, should before that full retirement age, then you're also limited in other things that go on in your life, like your own personal income. So you can't draw from Social Security and make money, any meaningful money anyway, at the same time. Because the government says, well, then you're not retired, you're just still working. This isn't like a bonus. This is for you to use when you retire. And then after retirement or after full retirement, I should say, which, let's say, is 67. Now the government says, well, if you wait, we will pay you to wait for three more years. So if you wait till 68 or 69 or 70, we will pay you a delay. They're called delayed retirement credits. So we'll give you extra money if you just wait to draw on that until you're a little bit older. And that's the trade, right? So you can. You got 67 as kind of this midpoint. That's your full benefit. That when you, when you go online and you go to SSA.gov and you log in and say, hey, what? What am I going to get for Social Security? It says your full retirement benefit. It also will show you age 62 benefit and age 70. And anywhere in between 62 and 70 you can claim.

[Joe]

And you look at those numbers, those credits end up being quite a bit of money.

[OG]

A big difference between 62 and 70. Of course, that's also eight years difference, right?

[Joe]

Elijah writes, when it comes to Social Security, professional guidance often boils down to just one word, delay. The argument's simple. Delaying claiming Social Security till age 70 maximizes a retiree's monthly payout by 80% compared to claiming at 62. But a new study challenges that conventional wisdom, suggesting that for the vast majority of households, claiming benefits at age 62 is the rational financial choice. I was like, wait, what? The study's author is Derek Tharp, a finance professor at the University of Southern Maine. He's also the head of innovation at Income Lab. What he wanted to know, og was if early claiming reflects mistakes, irrational responses to preferences overlooked in standard analyses. So here's the deal.

[OG]

English, please.

[Joe]

Yes. Nearly one in four people claim benefits at 62. Right now, fewer than 10% actually delay until age 70. Most take it somewhere in between, probably at full retirement age or close to full retirement age. While traditional economic models often frame early, claiming it a costly mistake, what Tharp says is that it's likely a rational response to real world retiree problems and preferences. What he did was he looked at three different behaviors. This is much more about behavior than about more money. OG and he says these are often ignored in standard financial planning, which looks at just the money aspect, not the behavioral aspect. So first of all is people want to spend more during active early years. They want to consume more. So having less money overall, but having access to an income stream of Social Security so I don't have to tap money, which will come up here in a minute, that makes it something people want to do. The second thing is there's a reluctance. People have to spend down their personal savings. People freak out when they see their savings depleting. So if I can have less Social Security, but I can use it to not deplete my savings well, then I want to take it early again, behaviorally. And third is a desire to retire and claim benefits simultaneously. So I just want to get the crap done right. The third one is behaviorally, I just want to retire. I want to know where my income's coming from. I want to get everything rolling and just have it, have it make sense. And it's funny because I read those three things and I thought, okay, yeah, more money's one thing, but I think for some people, I don't know if for the, quote, vast majority, but for some people, this makes a bunch of sense to me.

[OG]

Well, I guess ultimately, when you think about any money decision, if you're going to use the crutch of, well, in my particular case, emotionally this is better, then ultimately you can do that with any sort of finance decision. I mean, you could say, well, for me, I'm emotionally better if I don't have any volatility in my portfolio. Doesn't mean that you're going to be better. It just means you may feel comfortable on the ride to bankruptcy. That's what's going to happen. The only thing that you can't predict with any of this is your life expectancy. In my opinion, when it comes to this claiming decision, the only thing that really matters is if you have some sort of rational reason why you're not going to live to be 80 and it can't be, well, mom and dad didn't, because that's. It was a different generation.

[Joe]

Right?

[OG]

You can't use that. But if you have a health concern of some kind, you're like, Look, I'm 62. I've got this health thing. This is what it looks like in the long run. It doesn't make sense for me to wait to 70, because while it is true that you don't spend your own money, I want to reframe that a little bit because I think that's probably the majority of people. If I think about the people that I talk to about this, the main group of them, of the categories that the professor was talking about here is I want to use their money instead of mine. And that's somewhat true in the sense of you don't get to carry on your Social Security benefit. That's the trade. And so it isn't your money, although it kind of is. But if you reframe this, if you just assume, hey, I'm going to live this normal life expectancy, and instead I have two buckets of money, they're both yours. One is my bucket of money that I invest. It's going to grow at some unpredictable rate of return, but I think it's going to grow at 8 or 10%, right? Because that's my asset allocation. Or it's going to grow at 6 or whatever. Whatever my asset allocation is, I'm fairly confident that's going to happen over a long period of time. However, it could be a minus 20, it could be a whatever, right? And then I have this other bucket that is guaranteed to grow, and once I get to 67, it's guaranteed to grow it at 8% plus whatever the inflation rider is. This last year, I think the inflation number was 2.8 on Social Security checks starting in 2026. So the person who went from 67 to 68 got a 10.8% increase in their Social Security benefit. You do that a couple years in a row. 2.8% is not like life altering inflation. Several years ago, when the COVID adjustment happened and it went up 9%, that was almost a 20% increase in your Social Security benefits. By waiting that one year, if you were in that group of people. So instead of thinking about it like, I want to spend their money instead of mine, just think about it like, I have guaranteed money that's going to grow at a guaranteed rate, and I have another bucket of money that's going to grow at a variable market rate. Which one of these two do you want to lock in? If you went to the bank, you know, just think about retirement. So you're 62 years old, you're like, okay, I'm out of here, ready to be done. And your Financial planner says, guys, I have this great. I have this fantastic tool. It's going to guarantee 10% a year return guaranteed for the next eight years. How much do you want to put in? Well, you might look at that and say, well, the S And P did 17 last year, so 10 would suck. But guaranteed 10 is pretty good. Over 10 years, like, I might take that deal for some of my money, right? And it's kind of the same thing you're saying, I'm going to take some of my money, I'm going to do that. Now, the big if, the big what if here is, what if I get to 72 and I get hit by a bus? It's like, well, you did the math wrong. But your spouse, if you're married now, gets that greater benefit for the rest of their life, which is not inconsequential. You know, if you have an income discrepancy in, you know, in your, in your, in your household, like many people do. So there's more to it, I think, than just feeling of like, I just want to be done. It's like, that's a lazy excuse. You're giving hundreds of thousands of dollars difference.

[Joe]

He applied some math to this too, which I found interesting, which was he found that for people with $800,000 or less, the threat of going through your own money early, if you don't take Social Security early, take less, but take it early becomes greater if you try to have any go, go years early in retirement. But if you take that money early to supplement it and allow your. The other side of what you're saying, OG is now you allow some of that 800,000 or less to grow. So for people that, that are on the lower end of the savings bucket, taking it early is going to help them do more during the early years.

[OG]

I just submit to you that it's two buckets. And by looking at it and saying, I've got 800k in this bucket or zero, I say you have two $800,000 buckets. And by choosing to take the money out of your Social Security bucket, you're guaranteeing that that $800,000 bucket never grows to 1.2 million.

[Joe]

And it is funny because when you reframe it that way, you realize that something's being sacrificed either way, right? Either I'm sacrificing Social Security or I'm sacrificing my investment strategy. Like one of the two's gotta go. Like, if you want to go, something's gotta go.

[OG]

And to give you some more real World anecdotal stuff here. The other risk that happens, and maybe this is kind of built into this person's projections here, is let's say that you're the person who does rationally believe that Social Security later is better. And you also want to have the Go Go fund now, right? So you retire at 65 and you're like, I get it, I know that I have two buckets, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm going to wait. So I'm okay withdrawing from my personal portfolio at a rate greater than a sustainable long term rate. Because that's the trade, right? It's saying, hey, I've got this million bucks, I got 800k. The math says I should only take out 30,000 if I want it to last forever. But because I'm going to let my Social Security sit, I'm going to take out 60, but I'm going to do that for the next four years. And then in the fifth year, I'm going to go drop down to 30 and turn on Social Security, which is the other 30. Right? That's the, that's what you do in practice. On paper, what I've seen happens, unfortunately, and this is maybe getting to your point or to the, to the author's point here, they say, okay, from 65 to 70, I'm gonna draw both. And then at 70, they go, whoa, bonus, another 30k. Let's frigging go, bruh. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what was supposed to happen. You're supposed to stop the other 30, extra 30 and keep cash flow the same.

[Joe]

Wait, what?

[OG]

I mean, just this year I'm going to take a little extra. That's where this blows up. Because you've accelerated the decline of that 800k in this example and then didn't offset it with the income. You basically treated it as a 50% bonus at 70. Which newsflash, 70 ain't old either. So it's not like 62 to 70. Is this magical? At 70 you can't do stuff anymore. I feel like that number is gonna. You guys will be like the canaries in the coal mine for me.

[Joe]

Oh my God.

[OG]

You guys can try it out and let me know.

[Joe]

We already, we should have seen this.

[OG]

But I'm saying, like, further on, I'll be like, so house 77 fellas. And you'll be like, well, we're back in my day when I was 65, like you, I wish I would have taken.

[Doug]

Have you noticed though, Joe, that he doesn't Believe the canary indicators that we give him whenever we say, oh, when you get to this age, you're gonna start feeling this. And he's just like, are you old man? No, I'm not. Cause I do all these. I mean, never believes us when we start flapping around and bouncing off the walls of the cave.

[Joe]

Tharp. I'm gonna get back to the piece. Tharp does, does warn people. He says the observation that claiming at 62 is optimal for everybody does not imply that everybody ought to claim at 62. He wrote the results presented here apply to a hypothetical individual whose preferences precisely match every parameter that he specified. Which, which also goes back to the point, og of what are we solving for? You know, what are we actually solving for? And I think what he's bringing up is, I think sometimes people are solving for more money and they're not solving for more happiness. There can be a difference. There's a person who is older, friend of mine in town who notoriously never spends money. And everyone knows that he has lots and lots and lots and lots of money. But he always says, I can't afford it. It's too expensive. I can't afford it. And by the way, he talks about how it's debilitating to his life how expensive some of these things are, but he's solving for more money and complaining about how much his life sucks. Yeah, because he wants a bigger pot at the end of some, you know, hypothetical rainbow that's never going to come.

[OG]

Hypothetical rainbow. The interesting thing, of course, is you don't know when tomorrow stop coming. That's always the challenge with the Social Security decision continuum between 62 and 70. It's the Crux of all of financial planning problems. It's like, if you can tell me when my last day on earth is, I can tell you exactly how much money you need to have. Super easy penny. And so you also have to recognize that when you're doing these projections, I think on purpose we're being conservative in projections. Right. You don't want to, you don't want to be, you know, too aggressive. I like the idea as you're debating and as you're considering whether or not to make this filing decision, because once you, once you do it, it's virtually irrevocable at that point. You're some few outs that you can get, but not very many. And they're very time sensitive. But as you're debating this, like, I'm 62, should I take it? Maybe, maybe not. I like the idea of if it's not a hell yes, then it's a no. And what I mean by that is, let's just take the last couple years as an example, right? So 2021 till present. So you retire in 2021, you're 63 years old and you're like, I'm not sure, maybe I. And so you just wait. Well, what happened with your money? Your portfolio grew at a fantastic rate of return, 2022. Now the market's down 22% in that year or 20% that year. And maybe you're that 800k person that went from 800 down to 600 and you go, okay, I gambled wrong. Have the flexibility to say, I'm going to wait, I'm going to wait, I'm going to wait. Oh, now is the clearest time. If it's not a clear time, if the market's growing at 16 or 20% like we've had the last couple of years, your money is keeping up with your increased spending, or it should be anyway, right? Like it's growing at a rate faster than any projections you might have. But there could be a time 2026 could be the year where the market's down 38% and it's just chaos bomb everywhere. You have that piece of paper that says, oh, looky, looky, I got 2,500 bucks guaranteed income anytime I want. Hold onto that. Because the longer that you hold on, it's worth more and more money. And then when you go, okay, yeah, it'll be clear, you know what I mean? Like, you'll have that feeling of like, I, okay, I need to put some stability in this is too crazy. And then you can claim it. And they even let you go backwards in time a period a little bit when you claim you can say, hey, I'm 67, I'm gonna go back and get a lump sum and pretend I filed at 66 and a half. And they give you a big chunk of money to kind of grease the skid. So there's a lot of flexibility in there if you keep the flexibility. So if you're kind of in that, like, I'm not sure whether or not to do this. I don't know if this applies to me. I say you're a no because you got to be a hell yes on this because it's a one shot deal.

[Joe]

Well, it struck me when I read this that people don't think enough about what they're giving up. They don't think about the fact that, hey, I'm giving up a potential 10% next year, I'm giving up. Like if you make that decision with your eyes open, you're like, yes, 10% less is great, fine, I have enough. Life's going to be great. That's fantastic to me. I was thinking as you were talking, by the way, some of the financial plans that you and I have seen og over the years and some of the projections, you know, this struck me that Tharp in this case is solving for something different than the average person is and making a case that, you know, maybe it's, it's not ironclad. I think, and you brought this up a second ago. I think I've seen a lot of projections that people have used where the returns from their money way too rosy. Like way, way, way too rosy. Rate of return assumption. And I've also seen projections that people are going to level spend their entire retirement. Like they're just going to spend the same amount of money all the time. And those are two, I think, mistakes. That is we're building our money plan. I think we can help people avoid.

[OG]

Well, on the rate of return piece, especially if you've been an investor the last 15 years, you're like, I mean everything just goes up at like 20%, right? It's easy. Just buy.

[Joe]

Yeah, duh.

[Doug]

What's everybody making such a big deal about?

[OG]

You know, you guys are way conservative.

[Joe]

Remember a few years ago we saw that financial planner, maybe it was in our TikTok minute going, all these older advisors are looking at 7% returns. That's ridiculous. In our financial planning firm, we use 10. Let's see how that works long term.

[OG]

Actually, I have a story about a client that that happened like basically retired in the first part of 2000 because his whole investing career was like 1985 to 2000 and it was like living the dream. I mean, let's just use 10 to be conservative here, right?

[Joe]

I mean, yeah.

[OG]

And then rolled into the lost decade as they say. But anyways, I think that that's the first place that I would stress test would be, would be rate of return. And I think it's also, you know, interestingly, I think about plans. The other side of it, you said level spending. The power of compounding is so profound. Doesn't take very long on an Excel worksheet to say, okay, I start with 100,000, I put in my 401k and my Roth and I mean you can just back of the envelope calculate this and say, and then I get X return and you drag all those cells down and 30 years later, it's like you have 75 bajillion dollars and you're like, okay, that's ridiculous. I agree. That is ridiculous. Because your lifestyle will change as your net worth changes for the vast majority of people and even like the most conscious spenders and like the most well behaved people. Like, lifestyle creep. Doesn't happen to me. It's like, well, yeah, it does. You still don't eat like you did in high school. You have more people in your house. And what happens isn't necessarily consumption in the sense of like, oh, cool, now I get to buy a car every year instead of every five years. It's not like frivolous consumption necessarily. It's like, okay, what else can I do? Oh, I have excess. I'm going to help my nieces and nephews out with college. That was never on my plan. I had never thought about that in a million years. But now I look at my net worth and I see this chart and I see this every year ballooning more and more. And I, and I at the Christmas dinner and I hear my sister not complaining, but I hear her talk about, like, how stressful it is. And I think I made like 25 grand in interest last month. Like, that covers the whole, you know, like, I'm just using this hypothetically. I'm not saying me personally, whoa.

[Joe]

I was like, well, I need a loan.

[OG]

Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, now, not on us, og.

[Joe]

We got to start bitching more. Doug. You know, she feels bad for us.

[OG]

My point is, is that people look at those, those net worth increases or projections and go, oh, I wouldn't ever change. My. I'm just like a normal person. And I submit to you that your definition of a normal person will change. Oh, yeah, like, you may not go, like, I get to go buy a Gulf Stream now, right? That's probably not it or a Ferrari or something, but you might have the whole family on vacation. You might just say, okay, it's more important to me than to have all my kids and grandkids in the same place for a week than how much it costs. So I'm going to use that, or I can give more money away or whatever. So your spending does go up.

[Doug]

And I think what also happens, because I've seen it, is I'm going to do this one time because this is a special moment for me and we're all going on a Disney cruise, but it ends up not necessarily being one time.

[OG]

That was so awesome, grandpa.

[Doug]

You should do this every Christmas, every, every year. Or maybe it's Every two or three years. But it's that. That's the creep.

[Joe]

We should spend your money every year, Grandpa.

[OG]

Yeah, exactly. I'd be saying that I would too.

[Doug]

Or in our case, og.

[Joe]

But there's another point there too, that I think is related. The assumption that you're going to feel the same at 50 that you did at 40, that you did at 30, that you, you know, at 60, at 70, that you're going to feel the same. I think there's these assumptions, especially when you're younger, that you're going to work, oh, I'll just work longer. You know, I'm not saving that much money because I'm gonna, I'm gonna just keep working.

[OG]

That's my plan. Live to 140. I don't have to start saving for retirement until I'm like 100.

[Joe]

If it only takes 30 years to save, I could start. I could start saving 110.

[OG]

Exactly.

[Joe]

That'd be fantastic. But I think these projections that assume your work, those go off the rails consistently because it isn't about whether you want to or not. It's about. And sometimes it is, your feelings change. Like, you know, we see people. When I was 25, if you would have told me that I could tent and be retired, live in a tent and be retired, I would have gone, oh, that'd be so cool. I'd have all my time to myself. I just go hiking and be in a tent now. Bougie Joe at 57, it's like, there's no way in hell I would be in a tent for more than the.

[Doug]

Sleeping pad you need. Gets thicker and thicker, doesn't it?

[Joe]

Even the custom Matt, I'm like, yeah.

[Doug]

No, yeah, I got, I got the fin turn, a sleeping pad for Christmas this year. And I looked at that and I'm like, nfw, man, that's so far in my rearview mirror.

[Joe]

Just everything changes your feelings about things. So I think projecting the fact that these assumptions that. That you're going to feel the same way 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I think you have to build that into your plan. We're going to talk about not just mistakes. I want to talk about what some of the assumptions are that maybe we should start with as our baseline and then change it based on our preferences. We're going to do that in the second half of today's show. Plus a tick tock minute. Last week we had a tick tock minute that was actually helpful to new homeowners. We're going to do a lot of helpful TikTok minutes. Can we string two together in a row? We're going to find out probably.

[Doug]

We're not the Cleveland Browns here.

[Joe]

We. Well, TikTok might be the Cleveland Browns. Not talking about us. Have you been on TikTok? We're going to find out about that. But first, Doug, you've got something big happened on today's date in history.

[Doug]

Important information for everybody. Joe hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and it's a big day here in the basement. Joe's mom has a lineup for our beginning of the year growth charting. Although instead of marks going up the door jam, she started going horizontally. I'll just take it right to the end of this movie. I'm still a growing boy on today's date back in 1906, one of the financial indices people used to measure money results reached 100 for the first time. Today it's trading well over 48,000. What index was it? I'll be back right after I go erase last year's mark on the wall. Sometimes you don't want to be reminded just how fast you're growing. You know what I mean?

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[Doug]

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[OG]

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[Doug]

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[OG]

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[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm food goal setter and weight sustainability novice Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Keeping the fridge devoid of leftovers isn't a job for just anybody. And I am pleased to report that I have taken up the mantle on that grueling task. Ask once again in 2026. You're welcome, Ma. But today's trivia was about a stock index that's grown from 100 back in 1906 all the way up to well past 48,000 today. Which one was it? The Dow Jones Industrial Average clocked in at 100 way back then, but today it's a collection of 30 stocks you've probably heard of. From American Express to Walt Disney and United States Healthcare to Amgen. The Dow Jones is meant to represent the general U.S. economy. And now two guys who represent the average investor. It's Joe and OG.

[Joe]

Can you imagine the Dow Jones duster average at 100? OG yeah, just 100.

[OG]

I think it's a fun exercise to know what it was when you were born, or roughly, you know, about when you were born. So that way you can just be reminded how your parents had an opportunity for you to be insanely wealthy. If they would have just like, taken a thousand or ten thousand dollars.

[Doug]

Ow you how much your parents when.

[Joe]

You write your memoir. Something else to bitch about.

[OG]

Exactly, one might add. And how much did you put away for your children on their birthdays? None. Yeah, we just keep this thing going like this is going to be like family lore.

[Joe]

It's a family tradition.

[Doug]

I slipped a 10 into the birthday card.

[OG]

You can p complaining about this is why you can't. I mean, I always tell people you can't see compounding in advance because you don't believe it. You just do not believe that something as simple as milk's five bucks a gallon, right? Something like that, give or take. No one in the universe actually believes in our lifetime it'll be $15 a gallon, right? You just go, no, I just won't buy milk. No. Yeah, you will. You will. You'll still buy it. I mean, 15 fricking dollars.

[Doug]

Joe remembers when you walk into a McDonald's and the Big Mac was like 85 cents and it was the lowest.

[OG]

Price of gasoline that you guys remember paying for.

[Doug]

Oh, well, that's.

[Joe]

I remember hanging out at a dollar forever.

[OG]

Dollar. I remember 79 cents.

[Doug]

Yeah, you didn't, but I. That's a part of your question.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe]

Gas hanging out at a dollar forever and just thinking, I can't believe the price of gas is stated. Yeah.

[OG]

Like when it went over a dollar consistently. Yeah. They did like rework all the signs because they all were like 0.8.

[Doug]

Right. They didn't have room for the left side of the decimal.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Doug]

I got a question for you guys, though, about. Because I think there's a Misnomer is not the right word, but a false idea out there. Back to the index, Basil. Okay, Back to the indices.

[OG]

Dexes.

[Doug]

Okay. Both are accepted.

[OG]

Thank you.

[Doug]

I have heard people say over the years that the index, of any given index, the number of any given index, Dow Jones, nasdaq, et cetera, is the total of one share of all of the companies in that index. So if it's the Russell 2000, you took one share of every one of those 2000 companies and added it up. That's the number. But that's not right, is it?

[OG]

I've never heard that. So I'm going to say no.

[Doug]

Okay.

[OG]

I mean, maybe it is. I hadn't thought about it.

[Doug]

I mean, it's not. But the reason I bring it up.

[OG]

Okay.

[Doug]

The reason I bring it up, I.

[Joe]

Don'T think it is.

[Doug]

I'm trying to give you guys an opportunity to be all big brains. Yeah, it's not. But that is out there. Like that, I think, is one of those urban myths. Urban financial myths. And I just thought this would be a good time as a huge 101 level podcast that we are to share with people what that number is. Now that we're talking about it, now that I've imparted this knowledge through my trivia, it is so.

[Joe]

Yeah. But even when you get the answer, Doug, I mean, the answer still makes it even more esoteric. Like, it just. It doesn't make it easier. This is a frustrating. The frustration when I started trying to learn about money was I'm like, what does that number mean? The fact that it's just. Well, you just kind of get used to where it's at and then what it's going to be. But it is the average price of the 30 stocks that are in the. This is for the Dow Jones specifically. And then they divide it by this figure number they call the Dow Divisor. And that's used to adjust for stock splits and changes in the components of the index so that it reflects the true market value of the stock. So it's a, it's a price weighted index.

[Doug]

And different indexes, indices can do it differently. Right. Some of them are going to be market weighted, some are price weighted.

[Joe]

None of what I just said made it easier. Right.

[Doug]

Nor me. Right. I agree.

[Joe]

It didn't make it easier at all. So. But I had never heard that it was, that was just the. It was one share of each. But the average price of the share, the average price does factor into the calculation of the Dow Jones.

[Doug]

It's one of the criteria in.

[OG]

I'm bored a piece of it.

[Doug]

You're bored. I just wanted to disabuse any of our listeners who might have heard that and thought, oh, it's that simple. If I add up the 500 stocks, it's going to be, do it.

[OG]

Just buy one of each.

[Joe]

You know, it's getting too technical when OG starts drooling because when we got the financial nerd going, can we move on? Because this is so.

[Doug]

Wow. Sorry.

[Joe]

No, that's fine. It's good.

[OG]

It reminds me of that Nikki Glaser bit when she was roasting Tom Brady and she goes, you know, she's talking about how did he lose money on. Lose money on crypto? And the funny line was like, even Grokno that that not real money. That's how I feel.

[Joe]

Before we get back to our topic, by the way of talking about setting up your own financial plan and what numbers should we maybe use as baselines? Let's do our TikTok minute. This is part of the show where we shine a light on a TikTok creator who's either shining some brilliance into the universe. Like our TikTok creator last week, which Tina sent to us, or this week. This is actually kind of funny because Gene sent this and the Tick Tock creator's name is Genie, who wrote this. But Genie has some retirement advice. So do you guys think that Genie's retirement advice can Tick Tock get it right two weeks in a row? Or is this Tick Tock going back up in flames?

[OG]

Oh, I'm sure it's amazing because everything on the Internet is fantastic.

[Joe]

That's a no from OG Tick Tock can't do it two weeks in a row.

[Doug]

Doug, you're not allowed to lie on the Internet. This is going to be gold. It's going to be good.

[Joe]

Well, let's hear from Jeannie. Retirement.

[Christia Ari Bikes]

As of tomorrow, I will have been retired for four years. I spent my career in financial services in the 401k industry, and I thought I knew everything there was to know about retirement. But I retired when I was 54, which now I just turned 58, and there was so much I didn't know about retirement. So, yes, of course, retirement, it is about the money. Do you have enough? But what's actually more important that I know now, not actually do you have enough, it's how much are you going to spend? Because regardless of how much you have, if you outpace your savings and your investment growth, you're going to run out of money. So you really have to keep track of how much you're spending. So that's like, number one thing that I've learned. And I kind of knew that intellectually, but it's quite different when you're actually spending down your assets.

[Joe]

This goes on. I'll link to it in the show notes. She goes on for a while, and I like the fact that she says, intellectually, I already knew that. But when you're retired and you see your money draining out, it's different. Which is why I think another mistake I see people make before we get into what you should use is just this idea of, I'm going to spend every penny. You see, these people focus on safe withdrawal rates, right? Why? So I can potentially spend every dollar. And I will submit that, like Jeannie kind of is talking about here today, you kind of start freaking out in retirement when you see your money go down, when you're like, oh, I think I'm. I think I'm spending too much. I think I'm gonna run out of money. Like that feeling. Even if you're not running out of money, I mean, how many conversations have you had with people? You're like, listen, you're fine. This is built so that your pile of money can go down. Unless you live to 180, you're not going to outlive it. It's going to be okay. Like, it, it, it freaks people out when they, when they're cutting it too close.

[OG]

I was thinking as she was talking about a more sinister way for this to work, which would be because the market's basically gone up for her four years of retirement. A. If it's going down, she is spending an insane amount of her portfolio, right? Because assuming that it's been invested, she's gotten what an average of 15% a year for the last four years, which is so much more than what she should be taking out. But I was thinking about this in the context of a retiree thinking like, oh, I'm still good. I had a million last year and now I have a million one. I'm good. And it's like, well, if you had a million and you went to a million one, that means you spent 7, 7%. Because the S&P was up 17% last year, which would be far beyond what you should be spending if your portfolio.

[Joe]

Was based on that, though. Because for a lot of retirees, as you know, you're using a benchmark that' to be an investment strategy. It's going to deliver a lot less than the S and P, just so you have less volatility.

[OG]

I wouldn't, but maybe some people do. I mean, last year the S and P didn't do as good as other indices. Actually, like, international was. I mean, I think most people should have done better than 17 last year because of other asset classes. But I was just thinking about this in the context of, like, if the market's going up, like, where can you get in trouble if you're diying this? And you can get in trouble if you go, I have more money today than I did 12 months ago, therefore I must be okay, so I'm good. And the reality is that you still have to know what you should have been at. Because the way that the 4% rule works, safe withdrawal rule works, or any of these rules of thumb is you're consistently applying them. So if you say, I'm only going to take out the excess when there's excess, then you're not building the excess into the bucket so that when the crappy years happen, which are common, then you can still take your 4%. Because if you spend all of your growth, if you're like, oh, well, you know, I have a million bucks and I went up 10%, why can't I spend the 10? Because you need to hold on to the 6 for the crappy years. You know, just like you can still spend four when you're down 30 and you're down 25 the next year, you can still spend four. Like, that's totally cool if you've only spent four during the good years also. And where people get in trouble is they just go, oh, you know, everything's gold, man. I don't pay attention to this, which I think maybe is her point. You still have to pay attention to it.

[Joe]

No, I think that's 100% her point. She's like, you know, intellectually, I know.

[OG]

That it's kind of an interesting dichotomy also because, you know, we spend a lot of time talking about working on the income side of your income statement, right? Like, you can't cut all your expenses to zero and all this other sort of stuff. And we've talked about that for years. However, when you get to retirement, unless you're actually going to have a side hustle in retirement now, you really have to manage that expense side because you can get yourself out of a lot of trouble if you keep making more money. It's not great, but you can stay, your lips can stay above water. If you're an idiot with spending. As long as you keep making money and with all of a sudden that money train goes away and you can't out earn your bad spending habits anymore, that becomes a muscle that you haven't ever exercised. So maybe that's another piece to think about in that kind of five or seven years prior to retirement is can you control your spending? Can you budget? Instead of just going, ah, just spend like Paula's approach, right? Paula's got to just save what you save and spend. Like, who gives a crap? You know, as long as you're saving on track for your goals, you can spend. That works in the context of reasonable earnings and reasonable spending. But if you apply that to, I had a hell of a year, I got a huge bonus and I made 800 grand this year, but I still saved to reach my goals, which was 47,000 and you blew 600. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's pretty comfortable spending. If you don't know how to tailor that to what's really happening in your life, you could run into some pretty fun trouble early on in retirement.

[Joe]

I love this idea that you're bringing up, kind of just, it doesn't have to be complicated. Just this, build a simple fence. Can you build a fence?

[OG]

Can you even do it? Like, if you're one of the people, you know, very notably, I'm on that side of like, just spend and it'll be okay. Save money and your plan will be fine. But I was thinking about this in our group chat. We've got a group of people and we are pretty open with each other about our lives financially. And we were sending our spend numbers from Monarch over the holiday break. What was your total? And then you start looking at that and you go, I don't really feel like there was anything I did that was extra special. But damn it, I spend a lot of money. I said this to my wife the other day. I said, we're deleting doordash.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[OG]

No, I'm serious. For the next three months. The idea being it's fine you go out to eat, but get your ass off the couch and go get it. Like, you used to stop paying the 40% markup. And like, how bad do you really want those tacos? If you have to, like, put on pants? You don't have to put on pants for that matter. You probably do it through a drive through, but you still gotta, like, get in the car and go somewhere and do it and fight all the traffic. Like, how bad do you want the tacos? Like, nah, I'm good. I'll just eat soup at home. Like, exactly.

[Doug]

I'm just picturing the drive through person looking down at OG in his tighty.

[OG]

Whes be like, holy moly, put that thing away.

[Doug]

It's just so nasty.

[OG]

We're serving tacos here, not ham hocks.

[Joe]

Oh, geez. Like, like, I'm not uncomfortable.

[Doug]

That's not.

[Joe]

Two weeks in a row stackers. You've actually sent us good stuff. I. Where's the ridiculousness? Send us the, the. We need the ridiculousness back. Please, [e-mail] Send that to me.

[Doug]

What are we, a serious show here?

[Joe]

I know, come on. But Gene, Gene sending us stuff from Genie that actually made sense. How about that? Let's get back to our primary topic today, which was this idea of what do we use as we're creating our money plan kind of as our benchmarks. We talked a lot about the stock market and either using two rosy pictures or maybe two gloom and doom pictures for the average person who's a stacker out there. Like, what's a, what's a number we should use? Oh, gee, we, you know, we'll often hear in financial planning organizations, maybe around 7%. Is that a number?

[OG]

7. 7% is a number.

[Joe]

Yes, that's a number. Correct. It's a hot take. And it's a hot take. Yep, it's a number.

[OG]

I mean, 7% is the after inflation return number. I saw a thing on Reddit a couple of weeks ago where a person updates his net worth, but only in after tax dollars or after inflation dollars. Interesting approach of basically taking out the nominal return and saying, yeah, my net worth went from a million to a million one. That's 10%. But it's like, no, it really didn't.

[Joe]

The price of goods went up by X. Yeah.

[OG]

Offsetting it by inflation seems like too far the extra step, in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, I steadfastly believe that the only way to beat inflation, which is the biggest risk in long term portfolios or long term wealth creation, is inflation. And the only way to beat inflation is to own the things that actually cause the inflation or can deal with it, depending on how rosy a picture you want to paint. But if you're sitting on the sidelines and you have your net worth as in cash, or your net worth is in fixed income because you're scared of volatility, you're scared of the wrong thing. The thing you need to be afraid of is that milk, in 25 years from now is going to be 15 freaking dollars a gallon. And your grandkids are going to come over to your house and say, grandma, can I have a bowl of cereal? That's what's going to happen. And if you go, well, I can't because milk's 15 bucks, you're not going to have the grandkids come over to your house anymore. That's just what's going to happen. I'm telling you, they want to hang out where it's cool.

[Doug]

But I don't like oatmeal.

[OG]

Grandma, you can have bread. And I mean, bread's going to be $3 a loaf. What is it, 99 cents now? I don't know.

[Joe]

Wow.

[Doug]

Oh, my God. Dude, it is $3 alone.

[Joe]

You're off by a huge magnitude, OG.

[OG]

I don't grocery shop, so I don't know.

[Doug]

No.

[Joe]

Wow. Say you don't grocery shop and they'll say you don't grocery shop. It is funny though, Doug. We were talking about chicken and stars, remember a couple weeks ago?

[OG]

Yeah, another dollar a can thing. Right?

[Joe]

Well, and I said a dollar 20 and then I go to Super 1 in Texarkana, it's a dollar 90.

[OG]

So basically the same.

[Joe]

Basically almost double what I said.

[OG]

The biggest thing that you have to protect against is the rising costs of goods and services. And we've been lulled to sleep with, like, low inflation for a long time. And then there's been a few times in the last five years where it's gone up and people get uncomfortable with this. But the reality is, even normal inflation, 2, 3% is doubling every 25 years. So you just have to assume that that's going to happen and maybe at a rate greater than we want it to happen. So how do you protect against that? You own the Companies that are part of the problem, but they're also part of the solution. So in my opinion, when you look at your retirement assets, I don't know why you would have money in a thing that can't outpace inflation, except for cash for your short term, two year cash or goal or whatever the case may be. I do think that your investment return should be similar to what the market is. Maybe it's 80% of the market return. So if you're saying, hey, the S and P does 10, I'll take 8 as my number. If you want to be conservative, sure, pick seven or six and see what happens. But I think if you're investing correctly, then it gives you the flexibility to have life and opportunity in the future. And that's really the goal with any financial planning is at the end of the day to say, how do I live my life the way that I want to right now and also still protect the fact that I have some stuff that I got to do out in the future. Because we're all selfish people at some level and we just want to do. I want to do me now, but I want to figure out how to not screw up the future a ton. You know what I mean? So be careful. If you use too low of a rate, you're going to be forced to save more money, which you would think is a good thing except for the fact that you're foregoing stuff today and then you die with a freaking hundred jillion dollars and you didn't do any of the stuff you wanted to do. Back to what we were talking about before.

[Joe]

You don't know what tomorrow's going to give us. Yeah, let's talk about inflation. Here's how I take as a fan of Jim Rogers for a long time, good financial writer of a long time. Government statistics about inflation are a joke. I do think they are. I think any government statistic that's not aimed at a political party, it's not aimed at the United States like it has named it Every government the Statistical way that.

[OG]

What was the book that. What was his name John Stossel wrote Lies, Damn Lies and Government Statistics wasn't the name of a book.

[Joe]

What is a realistic number though? Oh gee, we should use for real inflation. Forget about the consumer price index. What it's doing, what it's not doing.

[OG]

Ex Food and energy.

[Joe]

Yeah, yeah. What magic we're putting into the sauce to make it say what we wanted to say. What number should we use as a real number for inflation?

[OG]

I mean, I don't Know why you wouldn't use three? Yeah, I can't see why not to use three. What's, what's really interesting. Again, back to the profound nature of compounding. If you adjust that, if you make it, say, four, if your plan is good at three, it explodes just in a ball of fire. At four, it's not even close because of how fast stuff compounds. Even with that extra 1%, no different than if you put in your, hey, I'm going to grow at 7 or 8. My 401k is going to grow at 9%. Oh, let's see if it grows at 10. How much do I have? Well, a shitload more in 30 years. It's the same thing that happens when you go from 3 to 4 on inflation. So be careful. Again, back to real world, real life type stuff. I think rational actors in their financial plans make changes year to year based on what's really going on. And if you've given yourself a margin of safety and your lips just aren't barely above water, then that's a rational thing to do. You just, you have your known expenses and the things that you can get rid of that are the frequent contributors to your known expenses are debt and healthcare expenses. So if you can manage your income to take advantage of credits and that sort of thing on the healthcare side or have that prepaid, whether it's through a company program or something like that, if you look at your mortgage payment and you say, well, my interest rate's 2%, that's fantastic, I'm gonna have my mortgage forever. That's great debt. It's like, yeah, but your house payment is three grand a month, dude. You gotta make $50,000 to pay a $36,000 mortgage payment. 50 grand. The first 50 freaking grand you make has to go to your house. Like, I get it, you still have to pay it off eventually. But think about this. In retirement, if you get rid of that 50k withdrawal, like, what does that do? It gives you so much more margin of flexibility, more margin of safety. So if you can make as many expenses as you can be, variable expenses, then you have the flexibility as you get to this retirement time where, you know, you go, hey, like your friend Paul says up in the Northwest, hey, the market's great, man. We're going to Europe, we're going to summer in Italy. It's going to be fantastic. Or market's not so great, we're going to summer in Oregon, you know, which is also cool, by the way.

[Joe]

I love that plan. Just, I'm going To do a different.

[OG]

Warren Buffett did that. His, his wife famously would give him enough money to have the hash brown if the market was up the day before. If the market was up the day before, he got to have an egg McMuffin and a hash brown for breakfast. If he. If he got the market was down and he didn't have to look because he knew what was in his change jar when he went to McDonald's, I.

[Doug]

Bet you if you looked at his productivity rates, the days when he got the hash brown, it plummeted because he spent an hour and a half in the bathroom later that morning.

[OG]

Donald's hash browns are delicious.

[Doug]

Yeah, they are going in, but they will. They will affect the system.

[OG]

Tighten up the Kegels or something there, Doug.

[Joe]

I think we'll end it on that. Thank you. Talk about financial planning, statistics and Kegels. You only get that on stacking Benjamins.

[OG]

You know what, some exercises down under.

[Joe]

Let's chat more about this in our Facebook group, the Basement. What type of assumptions do you use? You know what? And we can even do this on Spotify. If you listen to us on Spotify, leave us your notes there and I'd love to chat with you. More about statistics and assumptions in your financial plan. And if you want to dive more into topics like this, the 201 newsletter we have available stackybenchments.com 201 to sign up for that comes out once a week. And we curate the best of the best that we find across the Internet so that you can dive even more into this. Let's journey out on the back porch. And Doug, I wanted to start the Back porch segment. This is where we celebrate the things going on in our community. Speaking of the basement Facebook group, Zachary in the Basement made a made a stunning discovery and that is that Doug Bowser, who was the COO and president of Nintendo of America, retiring.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Joe]

And tragic day said he looks a lot like you but with less hair.

[Doug]

I know. I wasn't sure how to take that. I mean, look at him. He's a handsome man.

[Joe]

Yes.

[Doug]

I like his glasses more than mine.

[Joe]

Are you secretly Doug Bowser and just neighbor Doug is your alter ego?

[Doug]

You don't know. You don't even know. You have no idea. But yes, I am retired now.

[Joe]

Thank you. By the way, also to people who helped out Stacker Chad, he said his wife and him are both visually impaired and they use voiceover on the iPhone and he has an Apple savings account. He doesn't like the fact she doesn't have access to. He's looking into joint high interest savings accounts. But also, this is interesting for some of our stackers who need to use things like voiceover because they're visually impaired. What's out there? And it's interesting. We had a really good discussion about that Stacker Josh helped out by saying the fidelity CMA solved all this and a couple other great suggestions. So thank you much. Stackers helping stackers. Doug.

[Doug]

Yeah, I love. I really love to see. It's fun. We have fun. Like, hey, what should the name of my new robot vacuum cleaner be? Clean Latifah, by the way, is the correct answer there. And those are fun. But I really do love when the community gets used for exactly those kinds of questions. That's what. When we're at our best, that's what the basement and our community is used for. So keep that stuff coming, reach out to the hive mind and get some good ideas from everybody else.

[Joe]

I want to play one more thing that stacker Carrie brought up. This was from our friend Gretchen Rubin, who's been on the show a few times from her podcast. And this is a game that Gretchen and her sister are playing, which is. Well, just have a listen. You guys in for this in January.

[Christia Ari Bikes]

Every January, my husband and I play.

[OG]

A game we have affectionately named Survivor Pantry Island.

[Christia Ari Bikes]

We do not purchase most groceries in January. We eat the food we have already purchased. This year is year 17 for us. Most years we spend less than $40 for the entire month. And it's a good reminder not to be wasteful.

[Joe]

Can you imagine, though, turning into a game of Survivor? Like, you take all your food, you put it in a circle at the.

[Doug]

End of the day, and you're like.

[Joe]

Frozen pizza that's been in there for four months. You're voted off the island. Tonight's your night.

[OG]

I mean, we just talked about this at our house. Not in this context, but that's a fun way to put it. But we just talked about it, like, you know, there's frozen whatever in the back right corner of the freezer. It's like, either eat it or get it gone. Yeah. And I said, and how many cans of soup do we need? Like, it just seems like, well, it's winter, we should get some soup. It's like, but we have the soup from five winners ago.

[Joe]

What is that still doing there?

[Doug]

Some of it, you're right.

[OG]

But these, like caramels. How about we eat those?

[Joe]

I went a month ago to stock up on soup because we do a good job of pantry and food Planning with just two of us. I can't stand to your point, Ochi. Just having food that isn't planned for just sitting there like. Like, when is. What's the deal with this thing? Let's eat it or let's.

[OG]

Let's get rid of it and chicken.

[Joe]

But I went and bought because working from home, I. I buy some cans of soup so that I can just quickly get it done. The freaking Boy Scouts came by with their canned good drive. And I go. I go last week to grab a can of soup. We don't have any. We got none. Because Cheryl decided. Because she doesn't need it. She's like, I didn't know why we needed these cans of soup. I'm like, I just bought. I just freaking bought them last week. And she donated them all to the Boy Scouts.

[OG]

Did you get a receipt?

[Doug]

Jeez, you heartless. It's the Boy Scouts.

[Joe]

It is the boy Scouts. It's people that good more than me.

[OG]

Yeah, I don't think they're the boy Scouts anymore, but I had plans.

[Doug]

They're just the Scouts. They're just the Scouts.

[Joe]

Thank you so much. Just stackers, for joining us today for another episode coming up on Wednesday. Mel Abraham. The Mel Abraham gonna join us to help us create our money machine from the Bible.

[OG]

6 Just his first name was Abraham.

[Doug]

I mean, if there's a. If you said from the Bible. If you said, is Mel Abram a character from the Bible? I'd say yes. Nine and a half out of ten.

[OG]

Someone needs to go back to Sunday school.

[Joe]

What was Noah's real first name? Jim Noah. What was his name? Jim Noah.

[OG]

Oh, boy.

[Joe]

Getting into trouble here. All right, Doug, let's end this thing. What should be on our to do list today?

[OG]

Going to church, clearly.

[Joe]

Clearly.

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our focus topic. Just because something is an accepted assumption doesn't mean it's right for you. Begin with what you want and then build your plan. Second, our preference. Build a plan that encompasses the worst, but also gives you the freedom to celebrate your best years by using realistic numbers and planning what you you'll do with excess money. You'll feel gratitude and enjoy your retirement instead of worrying about every penny. But the big lesson. I wouldn't ask Joe's mom if she wants you to measure her growth. That conversation got awkward quickly. How do you answer the question? What do you mean by that, Doug? I meant nothing, Ma. Nothing at all. Join us Wednesday when Mel Abraham helps us help you build a money engine. Telling you he's in the old testament somewhere. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, Copyright 2026 and is created by Josal Sehai. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello and oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin show. It.

[Joe]

Our friend Kevin who writes the 201 and is always scouring the Internet, guys found this lovely thing in USA today. It's written by Michelle del Rey. Back in late December, women sues irs. It's always interesting. This woman's an attorney, by the way. A New York attorney sued the internal revenue service hoping to claim her dog as a dependent on her taxes. Lawsuit filed by Amanda Reynolds seeks to claim her eight year old golden retriever finnegan Mary Reynolds as a non human dependent under u. S. Tax law. And her complaint which has been reviewed by USA today, Reynolds states her dog is entirely dependent on her for survival.

[OG]

Duh.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe]

Reynolds, lives in New York city, filed the lawsuit on June 19th in U. S. District of court for the eastern district of New York. The attorney said she spends more than $5,000 a year on her dog, including boarding, daycare, transportation, veterinary services, grooming, food and housing. And so, According to Section 152, the IRS code, Finnegan meets the qualifications of a dependent. To count as a dependent, they have to prove they share residence with the individual in question and the individual requires financial reliance and lacks an independent income. This is a layup, OG I just got a financial boon. Cooper is now going on the tax return.

[OG]

I don't think this is going to end the way that everybody thinks it will, but okay.

[Joe]

Isn't it great, these lawsuits? Does she really think she's going to win? Like, if she's an attorney, she knows where this is going to go.

[Doug]

Is this one of those I got time. I'll just make an example of this.

[Joe]

Maybe. Maybe I get my name in lights. I'm going to file this lawsuit to prove that I'm an attorney who thinks outside the box.

[OG]

In lights as in here's your prison cell lights. I don't know.

[Doug]

Right?

[Joe]

I don't know. Orange might not be your favorite color.

[OG]

I do think about the context of dependence, though. There is that period of time where your kid's making money, and there's always the argument of, am I supporting you 50% at this point, or am I not? And should I claim you? Should I not claim you? I wonder how many people. Did you guys go through that with your kids, or was it very cut and dry out of college, off the payroll?

[Joe]

Well, we definitely had a discussion about claiming you or not claiming you. And in our kid's case, they moved out of the house. They were gone. They had income, so they were done.

[OG]

Pretty cut and dry as to.

[Doug]

Like, we didn't have to have a discussion. It just happened.

[Joe]

We weren't allowed to claim them, which is annoying.

[OG]

I mean, you could see that, though, right? Like with the boomerang kids and stuff. Like, you know, they're working, but they're, you know, living at home. Maybe they're paying some rent, that sort of thing. You know, trying to ease them into adulthood. Like, how do you make the judgment call of that 50% number? Because that's, you know, that's really it. I mean, there's some other factors like you mentioned there, but they could be your dependent and not live at home, too, I think.

[Doug]

Right.

[Joe]

Oh, because you're subsidizing if you're paying much of their life, even though they're.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joe]

Slippery slope. But taking it all the way down to the dog, I think, is. Is a little hard.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe]

Oh, gee. Were you at. Were you at American Express at the time that Jim Weinrich, a business advisor, was there was Jim Weiner.

[OG]

I do remember him. Yeah.

[Joe]

So Jim Weinrich was this crusty, has seen it all advisor. And I remember one day, I'm in our Brighton, Michigan office, Jim gets a call. And of course, Jim was always happy to tell everybody about some of the calls and still maintain some privacy. But if it was funny, it was. It was great. This was Jim's sage advice to a couple. This business owner calls Jim one day. And Jim always talk like this, if you remember. Oh, gee, he's like, so. So I get this call from a guy and he goes, jim, I got a problem. The IRS is in my lobby right now. What should I do? And Jim said. So I told him exactly what the strategy would be. I said, bill, don't go in the lobby.

[OG]

I have a funny story about something similar like that. When I was at Amex, my office was in Farmington Hills. And Joe, if you remember that office there Was like a little bit of a lobby thing. And then there was the reception desk.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[OG]

And then it was like, just a straight hallway.

[Joe]

Long hallway.

[OG]

Long hallway with offices on either side. And so I was down one of the little cutouts, my office. I could, like, peer around the corner, and I could see the front desk. But most of the time, people who are standing at the front desk, I was behind them and whatever. Anyways, so my client texts me, and he works for the irs, the criminal side of the irs. So he's got a badge and a firearm. And so he calls me and he says, hey, I'm in the elevator. I'll be up in two minutes. I said, you want to have some fun? He's like, sure. And I said, I need you to badge Kim at the front desk. Because we had a receptionist who was very protective of everyone and whatever, which was great, making sure solicitors didn't bother us and all that sort of stuff. So my client comes in and goes. Flips the badge over and goes, hi, I'm Special Agent Son whose. And I'm here to see Mr. Flips open his book and Mr. OG and she's like, hold on a second. And so she dials. She's like, hey, it's. Came at the front desk. There's a. There's a guy here from the IRS to see you. And I was like. And I, like, I could hold my phone, like, the way my desk was. I could, like, lean out the. My. My office so she could see me. And I was like, stall him. And I, like, dropped my phone, and I, like, ran down the hallway the other direction as fast as I could. You just see her face, like. So then I went out the back entrance and came around the front door. Wait. And she's like, oh, my gosh. I didn't know what to do. I just saw you running.

[Doug]

And we laughed and laughed and then performed CPR on Karen.

[OG]

It was great. We had a good time. And then I was arrested. It was so fun, so great.