Build Income Beyond Your Paycheck (SB1790)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Stacking Benjamins Show – "Build Income Beyond Your Paycheck" (SB1790)

Release Date: January 14, 2026
Host: Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, and Doug
Featured Guest: Mel Abraham (Author: "Building Your Money Machine")
Theme: Building income streams beyond your paycheck, climbing the wealth ladder, and making personal finance simple, human, and intentional.

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Episode Overview

This episode brings financial educator and USA Today bestselling author Mel Abraham to the card table. The discussion blends humor and heart as Mel shares personal experiences—from money lessons learned as a five-year-old to surviving cancer in adulthood—revealing how building intentional, diversified income streams can foster both financial and personal freedom. The conversation dissects Mel's "money engine" model, the five types of income, the significance of saving and time management, and actionable strategies for audience members at any stage of their journey.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Early Money Lessons: The Emotional Catalyst

• Personal Story: Mel recounts witnessing his father’s emotional struggle with money as a child:
  • Quote: “First time I ever saw my dad cry...he looked at my mom and says, ‘I’m trying to take care of the people I love, and I'm failing.’” (07:15)
  • This formed a deep-seated drive for Mel: “So if I don’t make enough money, I’m going to disappoint the people I love?”
• Parental Influence: His father’s work ethic and integrity left an indelible mark, summarized by the principle: “Because it was the right thing to do.” (08:25)

The Magic of Entrepreneurship

• First Hustle at Age 11: Mel’s entrepreneurial journey began with his love of magic, leading to paid gigs:
  • Quote: “I put together a 25-minute act that I started to do for kids’ birthday parties...I got paid $50 for a half hour.” (10:12)
• Key Lesson: Realization that value creation—not just effort—can generate income.

Work-Life Harmony vs. Balance

• Life as a Young Single Dad: Mel describes an epiphany prompted by his son's childhood drawing, depicting Mel absorbed in work:
  • Quote: “If a six-year-old had the understanding, he would’ve said, ‘Dad, I don’t need your profits, I just need your presence.’” (14:34)
• Intentional Time Management: Using colored calendars to prioritize his son’s time over clients.
  • “I lost clients over it, but I didn’t care. He needed to know he was at the top of the ladder.” (15:53)
• Takeaway: It's not just work–life balance, but intentionality and presence that matter.

The Four Wealth Drivers

1. Income

• Not Just About More Hours: Focus on increasing the value you provide, not just time spent.
  • “When you look at things through the eyes of value, your income starts to move up—not because you’re working more hours, but because the value...is going up.” (19:38)
  • “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – attribution to Steve Martin via Joe (21:31)

2. Savings Rate

• Key Determinant of Wealth: “It’s not how much you make, it’s not how much you keep, it’s how much you get to work for you that matters.” (22:23)
• Example: Saving a higher percentage is more powerful than a higher rate of return early in the journey.

3. Returns (and Time)

• You control savings and income; you don’t control time:
  • Quote: “Did you invest yesterday? If not, now’s a good time. The answer is always now.” (25:22)
• Action: Get off the sidelines and start investing now; compounding needs time.

4. The Five Types of Income

• Mel’s "Money Engine" Framework: Income exists on a ladder of leverage—aim to fund 80% of your lifestyle from the top three categories:

  1. Active Income: Direct work (job, self-employed)
  2. Business Income: Income from businesses delegating tasks
  3. Asset-Based: Renting assets, real estate, royalties
  4. Residual: Recurring royalties/license fees, network marketing
  5. Portfolio: Investment income (stocks, bonds, etc.)

  “Can I create something that generates income without a one-on-one relationship with my effort?” (28:03)

• Personal Experience – Cancer Diagnosis (2019):

  • The importance of having passive/leverage income streams to weather life events.
  • “...I shut everything down, we turn on the machine, talk to the wealth team...I'm not making a living during the day and fighting for my life at night. The machine paid for it.” (32:50)

Tax Strategies & Life Choices

• Tax Planning: Important, but don’t let it dictate your life at the expense of fulfillment.
  • “It's important...But we don’t allow it to define what our life decisions are going to be.” (34:41)
• Lifestyle Design: Portfolio and asset mix should fit your preferences.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Defining Wealth:
  “Not all money is good money—sometimes you gotta let the bad money go.” (18:49)
• On Starting Out:
  “You gotta start somewhere. Two years from now may not be ‘fixed,’ but it’s hell of a lot better than today.” (34:29)
• On Tax Optimization:
  “Don't allow tax decisions to drive your life decisions... it's the price we pay to have the life we have.” (34:41)
• On Taking Action:
  “You can't win the wealth game sitting on the sidelines. The answer to the time question...is always now.” (25:23)

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Actionable Tips & Takeaways

• Be Intentional:
  Prioritize what matters most—use calendars and systems to protect your most valuable relationships and time.
• Increase Savings Rate:
  Focus on increasing the % of income saved and invested for optimal long-term impact.
• Diversify Income Streams:
  Progressively shift from active to more leveraged and portfolio-based sources.
• Leverage Value, Not Hours:
  Become indispensable by solving more valuable and complex problems.
• Tax is Part of the Equation—Not the Boss:
  Optimize for taxes, but don’t disrupt family or happiness over chasing lower brackets.

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:01 – 04:30: Opening banter, Mel Abraham introduction
• 06:21 – 13:20: Mel’s early money lessons and father’s impact
• 13:20 – 19:04: Prioritizing family, the work-life "harmony" discussion
• 19:08 – 24:45: The Four Wealth Drivers: income, savings, and value
• 24:56 – 34:41: Importance of time, Mel’s cancer diagnosis, diversifying income sources
• 34:41 – 37:32: Tax strategies, lifestyle fulfillment, Mel’s book plug

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Practical Tools & Resources Referenced

• Mel Abraham’s Book: Building Your Money Machine
• Calendar System for Time Management: Use color-coded calendars for intentional planning
• Password Managers & Financial Tools: Briefly mentioned in the headline segment

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Conclusion & Final Thoughts

This episode underscores the human side of financial decision-making—a blend of hustle, intention, and adaptability. Mel Abraham’s journey and framework remind listeners to "be the driver" of their money engine: proactively diversify income, maximize what you actually put to work, and let intentional planning, not pure hustle or tax avoidance, shape your path.

“Let’s make 2026 a breakthrough year for everyone.” – Mel Abraham (37:22)

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For further reading and resources:

• Mel Abraham’s website & book
• Stacking Benjamins Show

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Note: All advertisement and trivia segments were omitted; timestamps refer to content sections only.

Transcript

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

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[Mel Abraham]

Snacking Benjamins is not for everyone. Side effects may include euphoria, increased ability to meet your goals, and aggression from people wondering what the hell your secret is. Stacking Benjamins may be habit forming, especially if you stick around for the entire episode.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wink, wink.

[Mel Abraham]

Please check with your doctor to see if Stacking Benjamins is right for you.

[Doug]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and let's rev it up, baby. Wait, before you rev anything, you gotta have something to rev, don't you? So let's help you build that money engine with today's mentor, the Mel Abraham. In our headline segment, one publication is out with their list of the seven moves you should make to begin 2026. What are will share and of course help you decide if they're truly what you should be doing with your time. And I know you've been waiting for it. I'll also help you wow your friends the rest of the week with another helping of my amazing financial trivia. And now two guys who I describe as amazing when they manage to make it out of bed by 11. Wow. Amazing.

[Mel Abraham]

Good job guys.

[Doug]

It's Joe and oh Jaja Juja G.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You know how much I would love to sleep until 11? Like every day. Like clockwork. Of course. Like 5:45. I'm like oh crap. And the day's begun whether I wanted to or not. Hey everybody. Welcome to Old Habits Die Hard podcast. I'm Joe, Saul Sei and another guy who I don't think he's A big fan of sleeping in either. Mr. OG is here. What?

[Mel Abraham]

Oh.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, look at that.

[Doug]

His face.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I poked the bear.

[OG]

I mean, I get up at the crack of 7:45, so I guess that's still pretty good.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But that's not 11.

[OG]

No, I couldn't.

[Doug]

No, no. I know we all talk a big game, but It's.

[OG]

Unless you're 11.

[Mel Abraham]

I know.

[Doug]

Unless you're 17, it's pretty hard.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

My niece, who used to, you know, wake up early every day, went to college and I don't know what happens to people when they go to college because I used to be like that in college too. Oh, gee, I could sleep till 11. My niece all the way through the holiday season, like the whole week we were there, man, she, she would crawl out of bed at noon. Didn't matter what time she went to bed, she'd crawl out of bed at noon. It was, it was pretty incredible. I was so jealous. 100 jealous. Well, the good news is you don't have to be jealous of anything today because the Mel Abraham is here with us. And if you're a fan of Mel's like I am, you're gonna love his mentorship today. If you haven't yet read one of his USA Today best selling books on money or seen him on a stage, if you've been to any financial conference, you probably have seen Mel on a stage somewhere. But what an engaging, fun gentleman with a lot to bring to the table. And I love this ideology of thinking about your money as an engine. About over a week ago, we talked about a rich dad poor dad, which was about creating a stream of assets, creating an asset base to kind of work from so that you don't have to work as hard and you can live more. Mel is going to help us do that today.

[Doug]

Isn't Rich Dad Poor dad also about taking out so many loans that the banks can't afford to let you fail?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's what the whole too big to fail thing was all about. Wasn't about the banks. It was about Robert Kiyosaki having so much money led to him that that's a problem. I'm super happy that we got Mel Abraham coming up next. Before him though, we got a couple of sponsors who help us keep on keeping on so that you don't pay a dime for any of this. So sit back and relax. We'll hear from them. And then Mel Abraham coming down the stairs.

[Mel Abraham]

Get ready for the rush with Max Crosby.

[OG]

It's time.

[Mel Abraham]

Don't miss the behind the scenes moments, everyone's talking about.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Regardless of what they say. I'll take the fine. I don't care.

[Mel Abraham]

All Pro defensive end Max Crosby takes you beyond the field with exclusive insights.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I could say this because I've played them.

[Mel Abraham]

This is the Rush.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You guys already know what time it is.

[OG]

It was fire.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And we'll be right back on the pod and we'll be talking about it next week.

[Mel Abraham]

The Rush with Max Crosby. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

American Skyjacker tells the story of DB Cooper copycat Martin McNally who hijacked a plane and jumped out with $500,000. But that's just the start of this epic true crime saga. Now American Skyjacker is an action packed documentary available on all major platforms. Go to americanskyjacker.com to subscribe to the podcast and watch the film. And look out for a new bonus episode of the podcast coming soon. American Skyjacker. Follow and listen on your favorite plat. I can't believe this is his first time down in mom's basement. Mel Abraham's here. What took us so long, man? What took us so long?

[Mel Abraham]

I don't know, Joe. It's so cool to be here. I was telling my wife that I said I'm just. This was one of the interviews that I've always wanted to do and, and here we are. We're finally getting it done.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, putting you and I together, we can mess this up. We'll find a way pretty quickly. I want to focus on here in January. Two things that I really want you to help us with. Number one is going to be just the, the different types of income. But also I want to talk about the wealth ladder and how to climb the wealth ladder. Those are two things from your last project, I think early on that are great things for our stackers in January, I think to get a handle on. But I think, Mel, to get there, I think it's gonna be really important for us to tell your personal story because, you know, I have some early money memories, but not as early as yours. Your earliest memory came around when you were five.

[Mel Abraham]

I'm not exact, but it's five. Five and a half.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Ish. Yeah.

[Mel Abraham]

Yeah. It was actually the first time that I ever saw my dad cry. I didn't understand that what was going on, but I understood the context. It had to do with money and it had to do with my dad telling my mom that we can't afford to do that. And then my mom got upset and he then broke down in tears because he was such a great Provider. But in this moment, he looked at my mom and says, I'm trying to take care of the people I love, and I'm failing. And that really hit him hard. And you don't realize the impact of it. I know for me, in hindsight, I look back and I go, oh, so if I don't make enough money, I'm going to disappoint the people I love? And that's what I took away as a five and a half year old, going, okay, so make money, make money, make money, make money. And that was the dynamic that I took away. And I. I didn't really connect it back there until later on in life.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Your dad seems like just from. I didn't read this specifically and everything that I read to prep for this interview, Mel, but it just seems like, number one, an awesome human being, but number two, really a guy who hustled and taught you hustle.

[Mel Abraham]

His work ethic. It was not only his work ethic, his integrity in life. There was a saying that he said to me four days before he passed away. He was in a country where he was being persecuted and he was being hunted, and him and four friends, and they caught two of them. They wanted to get the other three. And I looked at him, I said, you were 17, dad. I know what I was thinking at 17. What possessed you to do the things you were doing, knowing that you could get hung for it? And in these. The four days before he passed away, and he sat up and he looked at me, he says, because it was the right thing to do. And that's how he lived his life. And from his work ethic to his integrity, I think that's the thing. He didn't talk a lot, but he demonstrated a lot. And that was the thing that I think I took away from my relationship with my dad.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Did he ever see those friends again who disappeared?

[Mel Abraham]

He kept in touch with two of them. The other two, I don't know what happened to. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So you had a lot of entrepreneurship then. A lot of. I got to make this happen. Your entrepreneurship journey started at 11. 11 years old.

[Mel Abraham]

11 years old.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Holy crap.

[Mel Abraham]

Well, you know, sitting with dad, watching a movie, Harry Houdini with Janet Lee and Tony Curtis, I fell in love this. With this dude that like. Like, no, no chains, you know? And I started researching him and. And that started this love affair with magic back then. I would take the RTD bus every afternoon during the summer to the magic shop down the road. I would stay there all day and learn and learn and learn. And some guy came in and said, I have a gig this weekend. I didn't know what a gig was. I was 11 years old. And when he left, I said, what's a gig? And the guy behind the counter says, oh, he gets paid to do this. I said, you can get paid.

[OG]

Wait, what?

[Mel Abraham]

Yeah, that was it. And I go, okay. And so I put together a 25 minute act that I started to do for kids birthday parties. Now we're talking about 1972ish. 73ish. And I got paid $50 for a half hour.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wow, that's 72 money. I'm doing some inflation money. You're getting paid pretty decent.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What was your best trick?

[Mel Abraham]

I used to do the linking rings. Really, really well. The thing is that I actually came away from that when I got involved in sports, but full circle. And I've been a member of the magic castle for 40 years now. But I actually, in a keynote, recently integrated a magic effect in the keynote to demonstrate one of the points and totally blew everyone away. And now I'm like going, all right, it's back. Let's bring it back.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Isn't that wild? That's so fun. By the way, total question, I didn't think I'd ask you, but I'm a guy who appreciates a good magician. I've seen several. What's the best magic trick and who is the best magician you ever saw?

[Mel Abraham]

The guy that I love the most right now is a guy by the name of Colin Cloud. He's a headline act. He's got his own residency at Harrah's in Vegas. He's a mentalist, comedian, magician. He's from Scotland. He is funny. He's amazing. He'll blow you away. And the beautiful thing with his act, it's not a bunch of big illusions and boxes and stuff. It's him with the people and the mind and the thinking and. And he's just sheer genius. And it's so entertaining that we've become friends. But I've seen his show. My wife and I've seen a show. If there isn't another good show in Vegas, we just go to his show.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's a great way to. Great way to spend time and with somebody that you respect and watching somebody who's great at their craft do. Do what they do. I hear what you're saying and I think about like some of the David Blaine stuff that I've seen where it's just him with like cards and somebody one on one. And I Think that little stuff is for me, my favorite. But the trick that I can't get out of my mind. We saw David Copperfield in Detroit and he took a crowd of people on the stage and without enough time in my mind to get them to the back of the theater, he moved them all behind us to the back of the theater. Just, just like, bam, all of a sudden they were gone and they were behind us. And I have no idea how the hell he did it. I don't know how you swear that many people to secrecy about how you did it, but it was, it was an incredible illusion.

[Mel Abraham]

We just saw him in Vegas and he made a spaceship appear above our heads. It's like we're looking up going, oh my God, what happened?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, let's magically help people make money occur in their life. We'll make some magic there. But this magic isn't always good. I want to tell one more piece of your story to get into this idea of wealth and income. You then have your own 5 year old Mel at home, comes home super excited, draws this awesome picture of you, the stick person. Really looks like, it totally looks like you, the stick, the stick person.

[Mel Abraham]

A little more hair.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Can you tell this story? Because this, I would have been horrified too, sadly at. Your son is so proud of you.

[Mel Abraham]

I was a single full time dad raising my son from five and a half and, and I was also building a business at the time. So I was doing what most entrepreneurs do, running on the treadmill of earnings and doing the things that you needed to do to get clients and cash flow and all that. And as a CPA at the time, I was swapping hours for dollars. He came running in and says, daddy, daddy, I drew a picture of you to school today. And he was so excited, like I stopped everything and, and when I knelt down and I got this picture, it's, it's me in a blue felt tip pen, stick figure and. And yet there I am standing in front of two computer screens with a phone in each ear and my son wasn't even in the picture. And this is how he saw me. And at the hands of a six year old boy. I had this mirror into my soul that said, you're screwing it up. You've got your priorities wrong and you're screwing it up. And the challenge was that there was so many people in my head at the time saying, oh, it's just work, life, balance and you just got to get balance and you'll be fine. And I could have come up with the excuses of hey, we need the prophets for the things that we're doing. But we weren't doing the things that he liked. And if a six year old had the opportunity or understanding of what profits were, he would have, he would have looked at me and said, dad, I don't need your profits, I just need your presence. And he didn't have that. That's the moment where I said, balance isn't the issue. That's not what we're trying to get here. It's harmony. And harmony is driven by being intentional with your time. And I knew that as long as I was unable to separate my earnings from the efforts to earn it, I would always be imprisoned by that earnings treadmill. And I would never have the freedom to be the best dad that I wanted to be. And that's where the obsession started, was in the hands of a six year old.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Back when I was a financial planner, I would ask business owners, are you working for your business or is your business working for you? And you know the answer, Mel. Every single business owner would go, oh, I started off with a business working for me and now I work for the business. I am always feeding the fire of what's going on inside of my business. How do we start to change that though? How did you start to make the shift then to be more present? Because as you know, that's not an overnight thing for any of our stackers listening to this who are on that wrong pathway to hell.

[Mel Abraham]

I, the thing that I did is that whole idea of being intentional is I realized that it wasn't the quantity of time at the beginning, it wasn't the quantity of time that I controlled for Jeremy, my son, it was the quality. And so one of the things I did was we created a calendar. And that calendar, because I was traveling and I was speaking, we colored the calendar. And the red zones were always his and they were immovable. And I lost clients over it, but I didn't care because I needed him to know that he was at the top of the ladder, that he was the priority. And I always told him that any other color on the calendar, if you need me, will turn it red, I'll be there. That way he always knew what his time with dad was going to be. And even today, my wife and I, we've already booked our vacations for 2026 for this year because we're kind of doing the same things because we can get really busy in our days and, and we're not intentional. And then the things that are so important to us, we take for granted and we push them aside for a little bit. But when you take the time and say, hey, this is important to us and so we don't lose touch and we don't lose contact, let's put those rocks into the calendar now and let's work everything around it. And that was, that was kind of the beginning of at least the time management piece of what I was doing with him. It was well before remote computing and all that stuff. But I put an office in the home. I would only work till 2 o' clock at my other office and I would go home, I would get him from school, he would be at home with me doing his homework, and I would work from home at the time. So I tried to make sure that the time that I was there with him, I was present with him as much as possible, but also to give him more time and be much more intentional of it and not allowing the social acceptance of, oh, well, we work and we do that and I get, we have to earn a living, but what are we sacrificing in the process? And as long as we're conscious and aware and intentional with what we're doing, then I'm cool with it. But too often I think we're not conscious or aware of what we're doing 100%.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I've been on both sides of this as a W2 employee and as an entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, I do have time freedom. Sometimes it means I'm working at midnight because I'm not working at three in the afternoon, but I do have time freedom to block off the middle of my day. But even for our stackers out there that are listening, that don't have that 9 to 5 freedom, that makes your weekend time even more important, what you do in the nighttime. And sadly, I'll see people, you know, with the kid begging for their time and what do they do in their scroll in their phone.

[Mel Abraham]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Instead of really, truly being there. You know, you mentioned that you lost clients, but I just got a bet, Mel, for people that are entrepreneurs listening, that's what's in your head, right? Going, well, I can't do that because I'll lose this big relationship, I'll lose this big account. I'll lose this thing. I'll bet your income didn't actually go down. I will bet money your income did not go down.

[Mel Abraham]

It didn't go down. And something that someone said to me, it was a very wealthy client of mine and I told him what I was doing, he said, just remember one thing. Not all Money is good money and sometimes you gotta let the bad money go. And I go, oh, okay.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

By the way, that sounds like it came straight from your dad.

[Mel Abraham]

Yeah, it does.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It totally does. Based on what we were talking about earlier, let's talk about the wealth drivers because, you know, we tend to think in these big picture, you know, there's so many different choices, Mel. And what I love about you and your style is your ability to take these 9,000 different things ago. It's not that complicated, dude. You'll, you'll take it and make it easier, but you've got on one side, you start off with income and savings rate. You got four. Number one is income. Can we talk about income first?

[Mel Abraham]

There's four wealth drivers that I see when it comes to building wealth, the tendency is to focus on one. And that first one is income. We think that income's the solution to all the woes, but. But it really isn't. It is the fuel. It is the thing that we need. And income is important. But we see a lot of people with income out, income in, income out, and they got nothing in between. And so. So that' actually the most important thing for wealth. But when we're starting our wealth journey, we do want to maximize and optimize our income as best as possible. Which means this is not about working harder. It's not about side gigs, it's not about hustling more. It's about being so hyper focused on the value you create as an individual, as an employee, or as an entrepreneur that you become indispensable and invaluable to the company or to your clients. And when you start to look at things through the eyes of value, your income starts to move up. Not because you're working 100 more hours, but because the value of the solutions you provide are going up.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Which means then you can charge more per hour.

[Mel Abraham]

Yes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Or you demand more as a W2 employee.

[Mel Abraham]

Exactly. And that's exactly what happened. When I was in my CPA firm and my partners, I was doing valuations, which was a very niche kind of area, which I had some specific licenses and certifications at the time. When we split up, they were charging $150 an hour, I was charging 1 75. A year later they were charging $165 an hour, I was charging 350. You solve more complex, bigger problems and everything. And you can push your compensation up, whether it's fees you charge a client or whether it's the, the amount you get paid in salary and bonuses.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's Funny, Mel. You know, you hear, I think Tony Robbins said this. You hear somebody say something once, and it's kind of their thing, right? And it could be cool, it could be good. But you hear three or four really smart people say something, and this is a truism, it's a truth in life. And I think about comedian Steve Martin saying, be so good they can't ignore you. Right, no matter who you are. And. And then last year we opened up the year, we're opening it up this year with you. We opened up last year with Alex Hormozi. And Alex said, be indispensable. Just be indispensable. Be the person that they have to call. Which is, I think, 100% what you're saying.

[Mel Abraham]

Exactly. It is. It is.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. And I love this idea that it's not just about income rate. Whether you're making $12 an hour, $350 an hour. You tie that to one very specific thing, which is it truly is your savings rate that matters as much as your income.

[Mel Abraham]

The savings rate is the second piece of this equation, and it is actually more important than the income. It's probably one of the most important elements of the four elements. So that's how much of the income are we getting to work for us? We hear the saying, hey, it's not how much you make, it's how much you keep that matters. Those are both wrong. It's not how much you make, it's not how much you keep, it's how much you get to work for you that matters. And the savings rate is how much as a percentage of we get to work for us. It matters. If, if you think about this, this is how it's impacted. If I have someone that's making $100,000, we'll put some numbers to it, $100,000. And they decide that they're going to save 5% of their income, but they're going to put it away in a 1% investment. Actually, let's increase it to 10%. So they're going to put $10,000 away at a 1% investment, but then the other person's making the same hundred thousand, but they're going to save 5% and they put it in a 10% investment. So they get 10 times the return, but they're putting half the amount away. The first person that's putting 10% away will hit the first hundred thousand dollars at 9.6 years. The second person, even though they're getting 10 times the return because they're saving half, is going to take them 11.7 years, it's going to take them almost 12 years to hit the first hundred. So the savings rate is the metric that we need to be maximizing on the journey, especially early on, because the time value of compounding is so powerful. When we start, I remember a guy.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Talking to me about. I was at a party, Mel, and this is a nightmare, when you and I tell people what we do, and then you're stuck in a corner with some person who won't leave you alone, wants to talk work. But he wanted to talk about technical analysis, which made me, yeah, maybe roll my eyes. And he was talking about how he had discovered the upside down teacup. You know where it goes, it goes up and then it comes back down. And that. You don't buy it at first. You wait till the handle of the teacup, and then you buy it. You make a killing. And I finally said to this blowhard, I said. I said, this is fantastic. This is wild. I haven't spent any time with this. How much money have you made? And he said, well, the cool thing is I'm getting ready to start. Like, oh, crap. Come on, come on.

[Mel Abraham]

Tarot cards with Fox.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Doesn't matter how genius your thing is until you have a great savings rate, that's great. But once you get it invested, then you turn to investment returns.

[Mel Abraham]

Returns and time. Yeah, yeah. And that's the other thing, is that the two elements that you actually control is the income and the savings rate. Time is one of the elements that a lot of people say, well, I have time, or maybe I'm too late, but time's the only thing we don't control. And so to me, when people come up to me and say, is now a good time to invest? My answer is a question. Did you invest yesterday?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No.

[Mel Abraham]

Then now's a good time, because you can't win the wealth game sitting in the. It's not a participation trophy sport. It's not a sideline. We have to be in the game. And so the answer to the time question in this equation is always now. Now, how you invest is different for everyone. But the first thing is the mentality is that we will always start investing now. And then we can speak to the returns and the risk that's appropriate for us. But if we get the savings rate right and we make the decision to invest now, then all. All's left is getting a plan in place that works for us and then getting in the game.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Let's turn back to the income side, because all income's not created equal. And because of that, this actually worked in your favor. Was it 2017 or 2019 when things changed for you, Mel? 19, 2019. Can you tell our stackers? Because, man, this was not a. Not a great time.

[Mel Abraham]

No, at the beginning of that, my life was great. I was traveling, I was speaking, life was good. And I had just come back from a speaking gig and I found myself in a hospital bed with a surgeon looking at me saying, hey, we found a 5 centimeter tumor in your bladder. You have cancer. And it dawned on me like no one in my family ever had cancer. I wasn't a smoker, wasn't a drinker, really. I ate healthy, other than the sweet tooth. So we had plenty of heart disease, blood pressure. I would have expected that, but not the cancer. And so there was this moment, because he looked at me, he says, the weird thing is it's in an odd place. It's on top of the prostate. So we have to go in surgically and remove it. We might have to remove the prostate. I might have to put a bag and a tube in for the kidney. And if it's bad, you lose your bladder. He says, it's cancer. So I can't take it off the table that your life's on the line. So no matter how much I did, no matter how much I worked and everything in that moment, life shifted and everything changed. I looked at my wife, I looked at the surgeon, I looked at my son, and I said, stop everything. I'm not getting on a plane, I'm not doing anything. I gotta fight this demon with everything I have.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We always use the term you're lucky, right? You're lucky that you save. But truly, luck didn't have a lot to do with it. Mel, you had put money away, you had devised these strategies to work on your savings rate and have money in the right place that you could twist then where your income came from and when you most needed it, you were able to still have money coming in the door even though you couldn't work. Yeah.

[Mel Abraham]

So, and this is the whole concept that was born out of the drawing that Jeremy made, that this idea of the. The money machine is that, can I create something that generates income without necessarily a one on one relationship with my efforts? And as I was kind of going through that, I realized there's five, five incomes, as I call them. It's not about. Because I hear this talk all the time about, oh, it's passive income, passive income. There's nothing that's really passive to me. Income and wealth is a relationship. And if we take a passive approach to any relationship, it's going to wither and die. So I look at it through the eyes of leverage. How much effort does it take to generate it? And at the bottom, which is where all of us start and many of us are still there. I mean, the work that we do, we do it because we love it, but it's still what we call active income at the very bottom. And that was my, that was the CPA work, that was the consulting work, that was the speaking, that's my employment, all of that type of stuff. And then as we start to go up this ladder, we slowly start to get more of our time back. And the next level up I call business income. That's where I can start to delegate. And it could be delegating something in the business so I get some of my time back. It could be delegating something at home. Like, Lord knows I tried to mow a lawn once with an electric lawnmower, ran over the cord and now we have a garden.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, ouch.

[Mel Abraham]

So you can delegate that to get your time back. And like you said, the weekends are important and everything. So. So we start to create income streams that don't require us all the time to be there, but both of those bottom really still require a fair amount of our effort. And it's the top three of the five incomes that really start to give you your freedom back. Because that the next level up is something called asset based income. Now this is like real estate. It could be like, I've got some clients that rent equipment to the movie industry or transportation to the movie industry. So it's stuff that I can rent out a buy an asset, rent it out, get paid royalties or rents on it and everything. So the effort is to create the asset and get the asset and then it's just about putting it to play. And now you have income streams that don't require that one on one. So that's the next level up. And as we go up, it gets more and more leveraged.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And this is, by the way, it's next level. Not because it's what you do next. Like, a lot of people won't go from active employment into owning a piece of the business. It's the next level up, I'm assuming, because it's less active, it takes less of you that's personally being involved.

[Mel Abraham]

Yeah, and that's exactly it. And it doesn't need to be in sequence. And I'll explain when we get the other two in place. Yeah, we'll contrast me and one of my best friends because you have asset based. The next step up is what I call residual based income. This could be a downline in a, in a network marketing type of thing or direct sellers, but more, more readily. It's, it's like royalties, it's licensing, it's creating something once and getting paid repeatedly for it. It could be courses that you license out. Like I've got some courses that are licensed out to associations and I get paid a per head fee for that. And so now you have residual based income. And then the final level up of the five incomes is portfolio based. This is what we do a lot of times, spend a lot of time talking about. It's paper assets, it's stocks, bonds, ETFs, index funds, things of those nature that don't require this active, active role in generating it. What I'm striving for and what everyone, what I try to get people to do is I want 80% of your lifestyle to be able to be funded by the top three. 80% or more. Does that mean that we should have all of the top three, the asset, residual and portfolio? No, the decision of how that mix is actually a lifestyle decision. I don't own a ton of real estate directly. I have, have it through partnerships and things like that. I don't want the call at 11 o' clock at night that says the toilet's clogged. That's not my issue. Don't call me. Okay? So most of my assets are in the residual and the portfolio primarily. And that's where the cash flow comes in from. But I have a friend who loves real estate, so the majority of his stuff is in real estate and I'm getting him now into the portfolio. So it's a lifestyle decisions. But the most important thing, and this is what saved me during the cancer, is to build enough of those assets in the top three that can support at least 80% or more of your life and allow that to happen. So when I got diagnosed and you know that was on a, on a Friday, my wife and I were miserable on Saturday crying because we didn't know what to do. And, and it was not till late on Sunday where I said, well, these are the cards I've been dealt, here's how I see, we attack it. I shut everything down, we turn on the machine, talk to the wealth team. And now that money that was being reinvested, a portion of it was going to come to us. So I'm not trying to make a living during the day and fight for my life during the night. And that's what allowed me to sit back and say, my purpose in life right now is to beat the steam. And I'm going to allow the machine to pay for it, and I'm going to allow ourselves. We're not selling things. I'm not downsizing. I'm not draining accounts. I didn't sell my wife's shoes. Lord knows that would have been a fate worse than the cancer.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, boy.

[Mel Abraham]

And you know, so. And I. Look, I don't discount the privilege and the blessing, but it was from long work and effort and discipline over the years. And truthfully, if Jeremy didn't draw that picture, I don't know that I would have been in that position.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, I mean, on one hand, it was a ton of work, and you did. You said earlier, time's not under your control. And luckily, if there was a lucky piece, it was the cancer diagnosis. Happened long enough afterwards that you were able to build it. But even if you hadn't been able to build it, heck, if somebody starts today because of this lesson, Mel, that you and I are sharing, and two years from now, something bad happens, they might not be able to solve everything and change it completely, but it's a hell of a lot better than where people might be right today.

[Mel Abraham]

Right? Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You got to start somewhere. Everybody sees the. The CPA behind your name. So I got to ask you a tax question. How important is the tax strategy part?

[Mel Abraham]

It's important, especially when you live in a state like I do that gouges you and you don't know where the money's going. I mean, it's like when you have a partner that wants to take, let's call it 25 to 55 cents on the dollar. It's important. Now, I say that, but I think that it's important to not allow the tax decisions to drive your life decisions. I've had many friends that decided, oh, I'm going to move to Puerto Rico and I'm going to do this. But then their life, they didn't enjoy their life. And I go, we looked at where do we relocate. We live in a beautiful place on the beach. And my wife and I said, this is the price we pay to have the life we have, and we're blessed enough to be able to afford it. So I don't think you disregard it, but we don't allow it to define what our life decisions are going to be. And especially as you start to accumulate more assets, where we locate those assets and how we do that becomes important because, look, I'll be fully transparent. I don't have a lot of Roth assets because I was. It was pretty. I was accumulating things to a DB plan and, and it was pre. The backdoor rules. And I'm going to be 65. And at some point, the fact that I have all this stuff in tax deferred assets is going to be a burden to the estate, to me, to my heirs, and it's something that we're going to need to deal with. So it does have an impact and it's not something you completely disregard.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

If only somebody had written a book about this topic, about building a money machine. I just think, man, this, this would make a great book. And if only it had been like a USA Today bestseller. Like that would have been awesome if that would have happened. Oh, wait a minute. You did write a book on this topic. It's called building your money machine. How to get your money to work harder for you than you did for it. And it was a USA Today bestseller. It's funny, as I flipped through all the people that have written kind words about the book, some of some of our mutual best friends are in here. Some just incredible, incredible people. David Bach, who's been on it several times, our good friend Farnish, Tarabi and, and others say great things. And I gotta tell you, as I was prepping for today's interview, just looking again, not just at the breadth of what you talk about, but how you also have this wonderful ability, Mel, to just go, you know what? Yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there, but it doesn't have to be complicated. Yeah, it's fantastic. Available everywhere. It is. It is awesome, man. Happy New Year to you and thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today. And it's about damn time, dude. It's about damn time.

[Mel Abraham]

Anytime, man, anytime. I'll come to the basement anytime, man. Thank you for having me on. And Happy New Year to you and the stackers out there. Let's make 2026 a breakthrough year for everyone.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Amen.

[Mel Abraham]

Hey, Nick Loper here from the side Hustle show. When I'm not helping people earn money outside of their day job, I'm stacking Benjamin Benjamins.

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Duck. And today let's say happy birthday to Steven Soderbergh. Here's a money storyline involving the famous director and producer in what Soderbergh film do, a group of thieves, including characters played by George Clooney Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Bernie Mac and Matt Damon try to steal from a casino. Casino run by Andy Garcia. Garcia runs casinos too.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wow.

[Doug]

Holy cow. That's an all star lineup of talent and a huge amount of money they stood to gain if successful. What's the name of the Soderberght film? I'll be back right after I finish helping the neighborhood kids design a raid on Joe's mom's cookie jar. We got lasers, we got like rock climbing gear, soft shoes. I mean, you have to. That place is locked up like Fortnite Knox. Hey there, stackers. I'm potential cookie thief, but guy you'd think of as still the protagonist because, I mean, well, look at me, right? Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. We're celebrating the birthday of famous director Steven Soderbergh today by Total, talking about one of his money themed films. What film depicts characters played by George Clooney, Bernie Mack, Julia Roberts, and a host of other well known actors trying to steal from a casino run by a ruthless mob boss played by Andy Garcia? The answer, of course, is the classics. Ocean 38.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I think it's what we're on now.

[Doug]

I mean, I could pick any number and there's one of them, right? That's not all, you know, Soderbergh for, though. He also has a string of other critical and box office hits including Sex, Lies and Videotape Traffic. Aaron Brockovich, or as it says here, Eric Brockovich, the Girlfriend. It was the sequel didn't quite go over as well as Aaron Brockovich. He did the Girlfriend Experience and Magic Mike starring OG Ocean's eleven alone spawned sequels and countless lookalike films. Happy birthday, Stephen. And now back to two guys who were just looking for any opportunity to eat more cake. Joe and OG.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, birthday cake for the win. Ocean's Eleven was such a fun movie. And I think I might have seen Ocean's twelve to your point, Doug.

[Doug]

You know, right there with the Mission Impossibles, another movie series I've never watched.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, super fun again, just so campy. Oh, gee, Ocean's eleven right in your wheelhouse. I think you've seen Ocean's Eleven.

[OG]

Yeah, yeah, no, I like those kind of fun, kind of whodunits, maybe like.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You know, getting away with stuff. Super good time.

[OG]

They had a motive.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And you're right, looking at all of the people in that movie, Doug. Holy. Like, how do you get in hindsight that many big names?

[Doug]

You know, that could have been one of the reasons I wasn't motivated to see it initially, because My presumption is that anytime you put that many a list actors together, the movie's not that good.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is definitely the exception. I would. I would. See, I know you're watching classic films with your sons, like ones that they missed. This is one that if we're hanging out in the basement, I go, you haven't seen Ocean's Eleven. All right, we're doing that right now because I easily watch it again. Yeah.

[Doug]

And I wouldn't resist like I do most of your proposition.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Big thanks to Mel for joining us. And I love this idea of creating a money engine. Let's do a headline.

[Mel Abraham]

Hello, darlings.

[OG]

And now it's time for your favorite.

[Mel Abraham]

Part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's Headlines.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Our headline today comes to us from Kiplinger. Kiplinger out with this piece. OG timely piece. What's clickbait for the beginning of the year 2026 to do list seven best financial moves to make. I see a headline like that, I immediately roll my eyes. Oh, boy. Donna Lavalley wrote this one. And I thought we could go through and evaluate whether these are good ideas or not for January. First thing to do in January, they say number one on the list is to change your passwords. How do you like that one?

[OG]

I mean, boy, which ones? Yeah, I must have 900 of them saved somewhere.

[Doug]

So there's no way I'm having a.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Good password manager because I don't even know what my passwords are anymore. I have a password manager that comes up with a password. It also tells me when I get alerted when there's an opportunity that it might have been compromised. It reminds me to change them from time to time. Different than, you know, the smoke alarm, changing the batteries and smoke alarm on your birthday or whatever that might be.

[OG]

It's basically in the spring and fall. That's when you're supposed to do it, but who's counting?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, but different than that, I just, I just think a password manager solves all this. But changing your password, I think still a good idea. She writes. High profile data breaches, including one at TransUnion this last year and Medicare back in 2024, highlight the need to improve the security of your online accounts and transactions by using hard to guess passwords and changing them regularly. The text I get on almost a daily basis, well, since before I installed our own Vault products. Stacking Benjamins.com Vault, by the way, to get that. Because your names get sold to these entities who then begin texting you. But the texts that I used to get were crazy and we're getting better and better. Oh, hey, your package has been delayed. Click here to see what the status is. Oh, my package. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute, hold on. Second thing on the list, Use two factor authentication to protect your accounts.

[OG]

I agree with that. It's super annoying, but got to do it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. Why? That's January. Of course, all the different companies are pressing you to do that. I 100% agree. Number three, protect your important data and documents. Paper copy storage. Do you have paper copies of anything anymore?

[OG]

OG I have lots of paper in my office. Yeah. It's mostly just stuff that hasn't made its way to the circular file. But I mean even some tax documents still get sent paper wise.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I have my estate plan. That's a paper document. She recommends fireproof and waterproof safe or a safe deposit box at the bank instead of at home.

[OG]

Makes sense.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Second, of course electronic copies, password protected format on a removable flash drive or external hard drive. So it's harder for people to get to make sure that that's removable. I like that one. Number four, adjust your W4 tax withholdings. Now we're into things that could be actually something that January applies to.

[Mel Abraham]

Yeah.

[OG]

If you've done your taxes already and you have an idea of what your tax liability is going to be, this might be a better thing to do in April once you've filed your taxes and you know, you can see whether or not you have a refund or an amount due. That's sizable one way or the other. But I think now is also a good time to reconfigure not just the withholdings, but all of the savings stuff. Right. I mean, HSA numbers went up this year. Dependent Care flexible savings account numbers went up this year. 401k contribution numbers went up this year. If you turn 50 sometime this year, you can put more money in. You don't have to wait until you're 50. You can build that into the average, you know, for the paychecks. IRA contributions went up. So there's a bunch of different things that have changed. And if you're on autopilot, then you might not be putting in the right number. So just a quick, quick refresh of all those things I think is helpful.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Number five on the list, create or update your monthly budget. Cheryl and I of course have a weekly meeting. We use Monarch OG like you do. And when I start getting so many Monarch alerts that go, you violated that budget area. Yeah, you're over that Budgetary, you're over that. Budgetary.

[Doug]

I'm like, violated.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We have to. We have. We have to. We get together and go, you know what? We just got to change that number because we're not spending inside of that. That number. That's not a realistic assumption.

[OG]

Can't make the field goal, make the goal post wider.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's all you got to do. Isn't that the way good football teams do it? Number six, prepare to file your tax return. I like what you said earlier about the savings thing at the beginning of the year. It is nice to go through last year's stuff, get it ready for tax time early, but then it also is kind of a review of what went well and what went poorly in the previous year. So doing that to begin the year, I think is a good one. What else do we got here? Increase your retirement plan contributions, which you were already ahead of the game on. Yeah.

[OG]

On the tax front, for tax planning or tax preparation, I should say, for the previous year. A lot of people do it different ways. I have a big envelope that I just write, you know, 20, 25 on, because starting in the next week, week and a half, you're going to start getting bunches of documentation. Some of it's electronic or notifications that you have the electronic version. This is one area where I do print off the stuff because, you know, I'd rather print it and then rescan it honestly into a format that's more usable for the CPA than just, you know, setting them up. 1500 different attachments, like, here's my income attachments, here's my charitable contributions, here's my taxes, here's my contributions, here's my whatever. To me, that makes more sense. Plus it gives me the opportunity to review it to make sure that there's no surprises. But the piece about tax preparation that gets people in trouble is they think that April 15th is a long ways away, and it's not. It's the same distance as the first part of fall was this year. If you can remember the first football game of the. Of the year. That's about how far away April 15th is. And CPAs, if you don't know this behind the scenes stuff, here they are hurting for talent, they are hurting for experience and expertise. And, you know, you used to be able to, like, stop by your local tax Preparer's office on April 10th and be like, hey, here's all my stuff. You know, let's knock it out. And I know plenty of firms that say, if it's not on our desk by April 1st, it's automatically extensions. So I know a lot of people seem to think that that's a badge of honor to get an extension. Like, oh, I'm under extension. You know, it's like, well, first of all, it doesn't do anything. All it does is start the statute of limitations later. You still owe the money on April 15th. So now you have to guess at how much you owe if you're going to owe. And I understand there's some reasons to do it. Maybe the tax documents aren't ready or if you have a special tax program that, you know, you don't get all your documentation until later in the summer. So that's a few people. But if you're doing it because you're like, I just don't want to get to it, you're delaying the inevitable. Like, start now, start gathering the information and be the first one to get to your CPA's office. Like, get to them when they're fresh, right? Like, just came off of Christmas break. They're like, okay, ramping up for the big season. You go, hey, guys, here you go.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

They're full of ideas. They're excited to see you. Maybe a little more guidance to plan better.

[OG]

There's some stuff you're not going to get right. Your 1099s aren't coming until middle of February, no matter how bad you want them and whatever. But if you're a business owner, for goodness sake, like that stuff could be done.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Now.

[OG]

There's really. You don't really get a lot. You get some 1099s, I suppose, but you know, those all have to be to you by the 31st. I mean, February 1st, you could be like, here's my business stuff and knock that out of the way. My goal is to be the first in line at the cpa, not the last.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We will on Friday expand this topic because we're going to talk about in 2026. Don't do this, do this. These are topics that are things people normally. Things people normally do and have done that are so 2025. We're going to set some new courses on Friday. Should be a fun, fun show with our roundtable team, which is live on YouTube. You can see us recording those episodes generally Monday afternoons on YouTube. There's a few different times, but if you get the 201 newsletter, we also write to you and tell you when we're going to be live and come join us. And we've been given some prizes away from time to time to people that join us live. So come hang out with the team and watch the sausage being made, as they say on our YouTube channel. All right. At this point in the show, we pivot to our wonderful community of stackers. Doug, we got another review of the show that you wanted to highlight.

[Doug]

Yeah, we got a great review. 5 star review from K. Curtis 02 saying best finance podcast man. That pretty much sums it up, right? I've been listening to the Stacking Benjamin's podcast for a few years now. I don't remember how I found them, but I'm so glad I did. I can count on them for great content and entertainment. Thanks for all you do. Short, sweet, to the point. I like it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Thanks, K. Curtis, Very nice. Thank you so much. And this last weekend I was able to send out some books to people. So people that have been waiting while I was traveling. So sent some of those out, wasn't able to send all of them. So I have not forgotten and sadly I'm going to be gone now for I'll be on the road for two weeks, which is crazy. Running my last shocking back to Basil is. Is it pronounced Basil? I think it's pronounced Basil. I'm running my last marathon. Running the last one. My foot's had enough, my back's had enough. So I've always wanted to do what's called the Dopey at Disney, where you run the 5k on Thursday, the 10k on Friday, the half marathon on Saturday, and the marathon on Sunday.

[Doug]

Why don't you just take a sledgehammer to your back? You probably feel better.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I've always wanted to do it. I know it's dumb, but I'm really looking forward to that. And then of course, going to a big podcasting conference I'll be talking at. I'll be speaking at in Orlando called Podfest after that. So should be a great two weeks. But books are on the way for people. And by the way, if you're wondering what the heck we're talking about, and that is for people that please don't give us a review to get a book. Just be the type of person that wants to help other potential stackers learn that money management's not as hard as you may think that it is, leave us a review for that reason. But if you do, I always get books from authors to prep or people trying to pitch us to be on the show and I just don't have room for all of them. So I would love to send them to you. And if you just write to me, joestackingbenjamins.com or DM us on social media. I am happy to send one of those your way. Big thanks to Mel. Big thanks to all of you for joining us. Big thanks to OG and Doug for bringing it today before we send it to Doug to wrap up the episode. If you're not here because you were wondering what the top things are to do with your money in January, most of which I think are pretty evergreen things that we listed today, I can't wait to see what the team comes up with on Friday. But you're here because you just need to make better money decisions and have a better team in your corner. OG and Anna and their team, they're taking on new clients right now, so give them a Holler. Stacking Benjamins.com OG is the link to their calendars and that will be the first step to interviewing them to see how they can help you in 2026 and beyond. That's stacking benjamin.com OG all right, that wraps up today. Doug, what should we have learned on today's episode?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Mel Abraham. By thinking of your money as an engine and not something you just spend, you're well on your way to building a stack of assets you can live on. Second, protecting yourself in early 2026. Let's make that a plan. But the big lesson, these neighborhood kids are horrible at planning our great cookie escape. No diversions, no smoke and mirrors. Like, nobody's even willing to take mom to the Sizzler to get her out of the house. They're suggesting we just use, like, this plan, please. Like, could I please have a couple of chocolate chip cookies? What kind of evil master plan is this? Who's raising today's youth? Thanks to Mel Abraham for joining us today. You'll find his work building your money machine wherever books are sold. We'll also include links in our show [e-mail] this show is the property of SP Podcast, LLC, Copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Salsihai. You'll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamin 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.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Sam. Oh, gee, you would like this. But. But, Doug, this is specifically a question that I have for you. Did you ever purchase Hitster after we talked about it, the party game Hitster?

[Doug]

I don't think I did, no. No, because.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Because that game is. Has you all over it. By. By the way, I have never played a game of Hipster that didn't go over well. Like, you know, every once in a while there's a game, you play it and you're like, oh, I regret playing the racing game with Doug and Dean and a few other guys. This one night where Doug decided that that means that every game night sucks, because that game did suck. That game was horrible. But. But hipster. So why, when I was in Germany, I walk into this board game store, you know, as you do, you're in a foreign country, you go to the board game store. You got to check that out to.

[Doug]

See on my agenda what's going on.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And sure enough, right in front of the door, like, it was a cool game store. They have all this hipster stuff that they don't have in the United States. So I bought Hipster Guilty Pleasures, which It says Uber 300 new hits, which you can tell by my fluent German, I'm sure means over 300 new hits that you add to your game. Did this thing all holiday season long hits your. Wow, you would love this game. So all.

[Doug]

I think I would.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

All it is if people know the game. Timeline. If you know the game timeline, you say, hey, what date did this thing happen? And people have to guess, but then they have to guess where it goes in their timeline of all the other events. So when was the shoelace invented versus when was the base first baseball game or what? You know what I mean? Whatever. Whatever the dates might be and they surprise you and it's kind of fun. But this is timeline with music. So I've had friends that have said, I don't. I don't know the bands. You don't have to know the bands. I don't know anything about music. Those people generally win. They're just like, oh, this sounds like a song that was probably from the 1970s. And then you're guessing where it goes in your timeline. So for any family, it's really fun. But Doug, for you, hipster is just, holy crap, this is your game.

[Doug]

Yeah, I'd like that. I think I'd like that. I mean, you can use some clues, maybe, like if the song title is my Kalamazoo Gal versus FTP. You could probably figure out where. Where it goes on the timeline.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And we have fun. We play as a family. So my nephews teamed up with my mom, and so my mom was a Ninja at the 50 songs and anything over 2010, which I have no idea any of that music. I have no idea. Like, I don't know who that is. Like, what are you talking about? This is so and so I'm like, oh, but give me the 1990s. Yeah, I got.

[Doug]

Yeah, I want to play it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, Hipster is super fun.