Building Your Personal Finance Curriculum (At Any Age) SB1824

Summary

The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode SB1824 – Building Your Personal Finance Curriculum (At Any Age)

Air Date: April 3, 2026
Host: Joe Saul-Sehy
Panelists: OG (Josh), Paula Pant (Afford Anything), Reuben Miller (Fortunes and Frictions blog)
Theme: Creating Your Personal Finance Curriculum at Every Stage of Life

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how to build a personal finance "curriculum" for yourself, no matter your age or financial background. With graduation season approaching, hosts Joe, OG, Paula, and special guest Reuben Miller (advisor and blogger at Fortunes and Frictions) exchange ideas on what foundational financial knowledge everyone should have, what’s often missed or misunderstood, and how to keep your learning relevant throughout life’s stages. With their trademark friendly banter, the crew breaks down what you need to know, when you need to know it, and how to keep growing your money skills for the real world.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why a Personal Finance Curriculum?

[02:26–04:00]

• Joe frames the need: “There’s a bunch of stuff that we need to know… we skip around a lot. So how do we build that foundation from the bottom?”
• Personal finance education now required in 39 states (WSJ headline). But financial learning is lifelong, and it’s never too late to “go back to school” with your money.

2. Are We Teaching the Right Stuff in Schools?

[11:50–16:20]

• Paula welcomes the rise in personal finance classes but wishes schools wouldn’t skip economics: “It would be better as a both/and, rather than an either/or.” – Paula Pant, [13:23]
• Reuben points out most high school students’ money questions center on debt: “Every single question was a different facet of how do I get myself into debt up to my eyeballs.” – Joe Saul-Sehy, [15:28]
• What sticks? “So much of our financial lives…the way we get paid, 401k matching—these things are not relevant to a 17-year-old… What is the curriculum and are the kids going to remember it?” – Reuben Miller, [14:29]

3. What Should Be Lesson One?

[17:05–21:00]

• OG on where to start: “The first order of business…is to go, where is everything at presently? And that is being truthful to yourself.” – OG, [20:12]
• Paula adds: Always ask “what’s coming up in my life in the next three to five years?” Planning for the near future makes financial goals concrete and actionable.

4. Goal Setting and Trade-Offs

[21:00–25:00]

• Joe summarizes: “You can afford anything. Just not everything. This idea of trade-offs feels like it’s where you would start.” – Joe Saul-Sehy, [22:27]
• Paula: “It’s easier to pick investments, understand insurances… if it’s all aligned with this thing we want for ourselves.”
• Reuben: Once you’re organized, most decisions come down to “what is the distribution of likely outcomes? … I wish people understood distributions of likely outcomes more.”

Memorable OG Quote:

“I think the really relevant things are: how do we teach kids or anybody for that matter…just defer gratification a smidge, you know, like just a little bit.”
— OG, [19:50]

5. Curriculum Structure: Key Pillars & What Gets Learned Too Late

Foundation: Cash Flow, Debt, Emergency Fund

[50:41–53:23]

• Reuben: “The traditional way of using a savings account is pretty much irrelevant today.” Seek high-yield savings or brokerage accounts.
• Paula: “Your behavior matters more than math. The best nutrition plan is useless if you won’t follow it… same with money.”
• OG: “Debt is awful in every form… every dollar you pay someone else is money you’re not accumulating for yourself.”

Risk Management: Credit, Insurance

[53:30–58:34]

• Reuben: “When you buy life insurance…just identify the gap to sustain your family’s lifestyle. Don’t overinsure.”
• Paula: For those struggling financially, “the thing to fix is not your credit score… focus on increasing the gap between what you’re earning and what you’re spending.”
• OG: “Most people spend way too much time insuring low-probability events… and not enough time on the higher ones, like disability or long-term care.”

Growth: Investing, Retirement, Taxes

[59:03–64:13]

• Reuben: “Most investors’ issue is they just get in their own way. You need a philosophy, a design, and an implementation plan.”
  • Decide: Do you believe in the market (index funds/low fee) or active management? Stick to your plan.
• Paula: “People should be aware of behavioral/cognitive biases… loss aversion, recency bias. Once you can name it, you can spot it in yourself.” – [61:09]
• OG: “Taxes are a year-round event. Don’t wait for April. Especially around investing, the difference can be huge.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Forecasts & Humility:
  “No one should be making those forecasts on a one year basis… If you look at long-term data… Just don’t play that game.”
  – Reuben Miller, [07:33]
• Paula’s Credit Score Wisdom:
  “Why do you want to improve your credit score when instead you could focus on…increasing the gap between what you’re earning and what you’re spending? Because that delta…is the crux of your problems.”
  – Paula Pant, [55:29]
• OG on Debt:
  “There’s no such thing as good debt. There’s just less crappy debt.”
  – OG, [53:06]
• Reuben on Curriculum Fatigue:
  “23-year-olds without dependents don’t need insurance.”
  – Reuben Miller, [54:50]
• Joe on Personalizing Learning:
  “If I can’t do what I want in life, my financial plan failed. It doesn't matter if I beat the S&P or not.”
  – Joe Saul-Sehy, [23:19]

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Suggested Basic Curriculum Structure

1. Foundation
   • Know your own numbers (assets, debts, income, expenses)
   • Emergency fund in high-yield or money market, not default savings accounts
2. Trade-Offs & Goal Planning
   • Build plans around your actual goals in the next 3–5 years
3. Behavior & Awareness
   • Recognize your emotional triggers and habits
   • Be wary of behavioral biases (recency, loss aversion)
4. Risk Management
   • Use insurance for real needs, not just to “have more”
   • Disability insurance often more important than life insurance when young
   • Don’t over-focus on credit scores unless planning a major move/loan
5. Investing & Growth
   • Develop an “investment philosophy” (e.g., passive vs. active)
   • Stick to your plan and know that markets are random
6. Taxes
   • Plan tax strategy year-round, not just during filing season
7. Ongoing Education
   • Adapt your curriculum as your life changes (new family, job, aging parents)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:26] – Joe introduces the concept of building your personal finance curriculum
• [11:50] – WSJ headline: most states now require personal finance courses
• [17:05] – Each panelist shares their “lesson one” for finance beginners
• [21:00] – How goal setting/trade-offs drives good planning
• [50:41] – Things people learn too late: cash flow, debt, and emergency fund
• [53:30] – Risk management, insurance, credit scores
• [59:03] – Investing philosophies, avoiding behavioral pitfalls
• [62:59] – Humility in investing, learning from failure
• [64:13] – Taxes: think ahead, all year

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Panel’s Suggested Resources

(As requested for people wanting to dig deeper)

• High-Yield Savings / Brokerage accounts:
  • NerdWallet, Bankrate
• Behavior & Budgeting:
  • “Your Money or Your Life” by Vicki Robin
• Investment Psychology:
  • “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan Housel
• Investment Policy Statements:
  • Bogleheads.org; DIY resources
• Personal Finance Blogs:
  • Fortunes and Frictions (Reuben Miller), Afford Anything (Paula Pant)
• Financial Planning Tools:
  • Spreadsheet, Personal Capital, Mint

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Tone and Takeaways

Light-hearted and relatable as ever, the Stacking Benjamins panel stresses the importance of self-awareness, pragmatic decision making, and building financial knowledge that’s relevant to where you are in life—not just what’s on a standardized class syllabus. They argue for a curriculum that’s goal-driven, adaptive, and grounded in real-life scenarios, not hypothetical textbook cases.

“Start with the stuff that matters in your life right now. Then you can worry about learning the stuff you might need in the future.”
— Reuben Miller (as highlighted in Doug's outro, [67:24])

Main Takeaway:
Your personal finance curriculum should be flexible, rooted in your own goals, and focused on behavior as much as on numbers. Don’t wait for a crisis or a class—start where you are, know yourself, and keep adjusting as your life changes.

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[Trivia and recurring show in-jokes omitted for focus on main content.]

Transcript

[Joe Sal Sehei]

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[Paula Pant]

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[Reuben Miller]

Hey, still got my hoodie?

[Paula Pant]

Nope. But I've got tonight's dinner paid for. Start selling on Depop. Where taste recognizes taste list. Now with no selling fees, payment processing fees and boosting fees still apply. See website for details. I just can't get these numbers to add up.

[Reuben Miller]

It's like we're never gonna get out of this hole.

[Paula Pant]

Credit card debt, does it ever end?

[Reuben Miller]

Maybe I can help.

[OG]

We sure could use it.

[Paula Pant]

We've tried debt consolidation companies.

[Reuben Miller]

We've even taken out loans to help make payments. Did you know millions of Americans live with debt they cannot control?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

That's why I developed this unique new

[Reuben Miller]

program for managing your debt. It's called don't buy stuff you cannot afford.

[Doug]

Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and as we approach graduation season, it's time to look at your own money report card. What should you know to graduate in your financial life? Today, we're helping you create a better curriculum to learn about personal finance. With a fantastic team of contributors and a live YouTube audience. And that audience will be helping us along, except when it comes to our year long trivia contest at the halfway point of the show. And now, a guy who's helped lots of people graduate with better money habits. It's Joe Sal Sehi.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Hey there stackers. And Happy Friday to you. Welcome back to the Stacking Bell. I am Joe Salsihai and I'm super happy that you're here. Whether you're here with us live on YouTube or you're listening at home on Friday, we got a great show for you today. Because this idea of a financial curriculum, we know there's a bunch of stuff that we need to know and I also know that when we do these podcasts three times a week, we skip around a lot. So how do we build that foundation from the bottom? Well, today we've got a team that's going to help you with that, including the guy who just so eloquently did the introduction. Mom's neighbor Doug is here. How are you, man?

[Doug]

I'm great. I love when you say that. I did it eloquen eloquently. It's like I'm Charlton Heston reading from the phone. Like, I can make anything to sound like with the cool British accent. It just, it's great for my ego. So thanks, Joe.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, I'm not saying that you're Don McDonald from Talking Real Money. You're not that level, but you're the next step.

[Doug]

Thanks for keeping my feet on the ground, Doug.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

We do got a great show today. I mean, you outlined it pretty well. This idea of a financial curriculum, that's something you can get behind.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah. We all need a playbook. We all need a recipe once in a while and. And we're here to dish it out.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

And a guy who's a rest who's got the recipe every Friday and Monday and Wednesday. Mr. OG's here with us. How are you, man?

[OG]

I'm great. How are you? I am happy to be here. Joe, first time caller, longtime listener.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

It is fantastic that you're here and you're ready to help people get the curriculum in order. I mean, you see people, they're at totally different states of readiness. Like, people come to you in your financial planning practice. And some people are, you know, 400 level. Some people just like, which way is a savings account.

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah, that's right.

[OG]

Let's talk about it today.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Can't wait to do that. And the woman who's gonna help us do that today, as she does most Fridays from Afford Anything, Paula Pant is here. How are you?

[Paula Pant]

I am riding high from last week's victory.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

She's still enough.

[OG]

I knew I turned it off too early. I was on vacation and I was watching some of it and I was like, I'm good. Whoever's filling in for me has probably got this easily handled.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, and had it been this year, Paul Merriman, who sat in for you, he would have had it. Had it been this year, Og.

[OG]

Oh, I see the question. So just another controversy, basically, to add to the stack of controversies the first 12 weeks. I like it.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yes. And we're going to resolve, for those of you longtime listeners that know there's a Controversy. We just got the answer back from Wichita, Doug and we're going to resolve that at the halfway point.

[Doug]

We are. Thanks to Dottie and all her hard work. Sitting in her studio apartment in Wichita, smoke filled studio apartment, she finally came up with a resolution and we will have it for you. During Trivia, she looked at the tape

[Joe Sal Sehei]

to see if Jesse's foot was on the line and she has her ruling. So we'll have that part way through.

[OG]

Reminds me of Roz from Monsters Inc. That guy.

[Doug]

That's pretty accurate.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

And our special guest today, the guy that's going to help us get this curriculum in order. He is the mind behind the Fortunes and Frictions blog. It is. The one and only financial advisor, Reuben Miller is here. How are you, man?

[Reuben Miller]

I'm fantastic. Thanks for having me.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

For people that are brand new to the world of Reuben Miller, tell everybody about what you do, man.

[Reuben Miller]

Well, yeah, I write the Fortune Frictions blog. I run the second most important RA in Texas. As Josh will tell you, I had a little boutique RA here in Austin, Texas with two other people. We all used to work at Dimensional Fund Advisors, so we kind of came from the investment world and now we do the financial planning world. Most people do the opposite. They learn financial planning and then learn investments. So it's been a fun little journey. We're about three years old and then I hang out on the Internet mostly on LinkedIn and Josh just basically makes fun of me on there and I deal with it.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

That's shocking. Oh gee, making fun of anybody, that's so weird.

[OG]

I don't, I actually think if you don't follow Ruben on LinkedIn, he's a great follow, mostly because he says the things that everyone wants to say but don't have the, what's the word I'm looking for? Cojones to say out loud.

[Reuben Miller]

So I came from the fund world where there's a lot of compliance and when I left it was pretty liberating. I like calling out Wall street for what it is and we run our firm that way, we run our lives that way. So yeah, I'm not afraid to sort of call it out there on LinkedIn.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

One of my favorite things that you called out in your blog post at the beginning of this year, people go to your website, which we'll link to on our show Notes is your predictions for the financial market, your expectations, Ruben, because you guys had phenomenal expectations. I mean, JP Morgan puts theirs out there, Chase says theirs, Goldman's got theirs, Goldman's got theirs, Reuben's can we run through yours?

[Reuben Miller]

Sure.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

What is Reuben Miller's expectation for large caps in 2026?

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah, we don't have one.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Because you must have one then for small caps. It's got to be small caps that you have. What's your expectation for small caps?

[Reuben Miller]

We also did not publish one.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Okay, wait a minute. What about international?

[Reuben Miller]

None.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Oh, come on. Bitcoin? How about crypto? You must have crypto.

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah. Unwilling, unwilling. No, not, not against owning it, but unwilling to make a, make a forecast on where it'll go in one year.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yeah, but what I love is your point there. What's the bigger point you're making?

[Reuben Miller]

I think it's an expectations versus reality thing for investors. And we, we're all in the ecosystem of Wall street, that's who has all the advertisements and that's who owns the stadiums and puts the commercials on. And so we all just are accustomed to it being normal for some brokerage or wirehouse to come out and say our S and P forecast for the year is seven and a half percent and our expectations for inflation or crypto or whatever it might be. And the reality is if you look at the long term data, no one should be making those forecasts on a one year basis. And so a few years ago I started putting out this blog post at the beginning of every year where I said, look on risky assets, we don't have a forecast and our clients better be cool with that because that's the only way we're going to do it. I do think it's important for investors to realize that all assets are on a spectrum of our ability to forecast what we expect them to do. And so some more reliable investments, maybe like traditional bonds or short term bonds, something like that, it is reasonable to have a forecast of what a range of what that might be. But when it comes to something like small caps or international stocks, it's a fruitless effort. And you see it right now with the recent downturn of what's going on in the Middle East. You have these banks and warehouses now updating their forecasts. What the hell uses an update of a forecast? I gave you my money January 1st to do the right thing with it. I don't care if you what you think now, how did we do the last few months? And I think you can have a better investment journey if you don't play that game.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Paula, your economic updates would be horrible if it was all Rubin stuff like we got nothing.

[Paula Pant]

My economic updates are always backwards looking. So Those updates are here's what happened in the economy in the past month, not in the future month.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, thank goodness they're not forward looking and Ruben's not your only contributor because

[OG]

that would be awfully. Fight. Fight. Fight.

[Reuben Miller]

Fight.

[OG]

Fight.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, we've got a fantastic show today because people come at Financial Planning as Ruben, OG and Paula. You guys all know they come from different stages of life and they're all starting in different spots and we tend to skip around a lot in the world of podcasting. So really, putting that foundation together, where does it come from? We've got a Wall Street Journal piece that I was very fascinated by and I thought, you know what, even if you're not in high school, which is what this piece is about that I'll get to in a moment. What if you decide you know what, I want to go quote back to school with my money. Where do you begin? We'll get thoughts from Paula, from Reuben, from OG, and maybe from people hanging out with us on YouTube. First, we have a couple of sponsors who help us keep on keeping on so we're going to hear from them. And then let's help you start your personal finance curriculum. In business, there is no room for guesswork. Every shipment matters. Every deadline counts. And when you're trying to keep operations running smoothly, the last thing you need is uncertainty. That's why reliability is at the core of USPS Ground Advantage. From the moment your package is first scanned in, it moves through a secure nationwide network, aiding in a timely and accurate delivery. You get near real time tracking so you can keep up with your shipments. And with affordable upfront pricing, there are no hidden fees or surprise surcharges to throw off your cost sheets. It all adds up to predictable deliveries you can depend on because knowing your logistics are handled lets you focus on everything else. Your customers, your team and the future you're building. Visit USPS.com ground advantage to start shipping with confidence. USPS ground advantage we mean business. Dell PCs with Intel Insider built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't. They're for those all night study sessions, the moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken the times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you, built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for an outlet and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you [e-mail] DellPCS built for you.

[Paula Pant]

Hello, darlings. And now it's time for your favorite

[OG]

part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's headlines.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Today our headline comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. This was a great, inspiring piece writt by Oyen Edoyan. The piece is called what's Cool in High School Personal Finance. It seems that states are ditching economics and instead giving us more practical education. We are up to. This is some great news, guys. We are up to 39 states that require a personal finance course to graduate high school with four that have added it since 2024. That compares, by the way, with 22 states that asks students to take economics. That's down for since 2024, according to a report from the Council for Economic Education. This idea of a curriculum, Paula, they're getting it in school. But it's pretty cool that more states are adding this. Like, I feel like states are going, oh, wait a minute. Instead of teaching you about,

[Paula Pant]

you know, because of all of the times I've used the Pythagorean theorem throughout my life,

[Joe Sal Sehei]

now we're just in time to teach people how to balance a checkbook. When kids are like, what's a checkbook?

[Paula Pant]

You know, I had a roommate once, I mentioned writing a check, and she was like, you know, I don't have any checks, and even if I did, I wouldn't know how to write one. And I said, oh, I'll teach you how to write one. And she said, oh, well, then can I just borrow one of yours?

[OG]

Seriously though, she was being serious.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. Which if you don't know how to write a check is actually a reasonable question.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yeah, 100%. I'm all out. Why don't I just take one of yours? That's awesome.

[Paula Pant]

I love the fact that schools are teaching personal finance. I think this is a wonderful development. I do not like, however, the fact that in the article it's pitted as an instead of economics. I think it would be better as a both and rather than an either or. Yeah.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

But I do feel like if I am somebody out of high school listening to us or watching us, and I see that more schools are figuring this out. Most states require it now. Shouldn't that mean we all should be

[Paula Pant]

building our own financial curriculum, like as individuals?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Absolutely.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. Well, and I mean, lifelong learning generally is something that I believe that we all should pursue. But there's a difference between policy that you make for the aggregate versus the decisions that you make as an individual, and when it comes to policy for the Aggregate. Particularly when it comes to curriculum in schools, personal finance is a wonderful development, a much needed development.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Ruben, your whole Fortunes in fiction blog is basically about how money doesn't behave the way the textbook says it should. Are we even teaching the right stuff?

[Reuben Miller]

It's a great question. I don't know what each of these states are teaching. When we think about personal finance, there's so many parts of this, there's core parts of personal finance that I think are the foundation to understanding how money flows through our lives. So if I take a personal finance class in high school, I'd like someone to teach me what the time value of money means. I can't see a world where that's not useful. But if you teach a 17 year old about how mortgages work, is that going to be relevant to everyone? Especially when they don't use it for 10, 15 plus years? I don't know. Teaching personal finance in schools gets thrown out there as like a ubiquitous good, which it probably is, all things considered, but it's a lot more nuanced in implementation. We now have, as you said, 39 states or whatever it is, like what are you actually teaching? What is the curriculum and are the kids going to remember it? So much of our financial lives, the way we get paid, 401k matching. These things are not relevant to a separate role and they don't, they don't care. I think it matters a lot, sort of what foundation are you laying and how do we do that in a way that a lot of it sticks in their brain for a long time.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

It's interesting that you say that because I remember when I would give talks at high schools, Ruben, I would always, you know, take questions at a time. And every single question was a different facet of how do I get myself into debt up to my eyeballs. Like every single question. Yeah, don't get me wrong, it wasn't phrased that way. It was, when I graduate, how do I finance a truck, how do I get a credit card, how do I get student loans, how do I. Everything was debt focused. A friend of mine, Gan Nulli in Pittsburgh said that when you talk to kids about debt or about mortgages like you talked about, we lose them. But when we actually talk to them about getting wealthy, something they think they can do, you know, beginning with the part time job they have, all of a sudden the Roth ira. You teach him the Roth ira, he's like, you see their eyes light up. Because that compounding interest thing, Ruben, you talk about, that's Dynamite to a 16 year old. Wait a minute. Time's on my side and I'm 16. Holy crap.

[Reuben Miller]

I think that similar to our lives as older adults, it's all trade offs. The whole world of personal finance is just trade offs. It's just that for them it's a little less tangible. I remember being 16 years old and I wanted my mom's credit card so I could go buy crap. I didn't understand it right. No one had laid down to me what happens if you contribute the max to a Roth every year. So I do think it's about reinforcing that. They do care when they see those numbers pile up. That is what they want. But this idea of immediate payoffs and getting those dopamine hits, they're harder for 15, 16, 17 year olds to avoid that they're more susceptible to it than we are as older adults. And so again, I think it goes back to it's complex designing a personal finance curriculum, but there are going to be some core tenets that are going to be relevant your whole life.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, that's a great segue. Let's go around. If we're beginning our journey, then. Oh gee, where did somebody hand you a blank syllabus? Life and money 101 for the average person, what's lesson one in your book?

[OG]

Oh, man, you had to pick me first. I was all ready to talk about the fact that my 16 year old yesterday said, can you teach me how to day trade? And I was like, I would love to learn from you if you know what to do, actually. And he was referencing a friend of his that he said, well, you know, such and such a person started with X dollars and now has this, you know, has been really successful with this. I'm like, that's awesome. I don't know that those things are connected. You know, I was thinking about this in the context, Joe, of. And maybe just dovetailing a little bit off of what Ruben said about like not having any control over the content. I think it's probably a good thing that there's somebody somewhere that's saying, hey, we need to have some sort of education on personal finance, like whatever the hell that means to whoever decided to do it. Right. But is it, is it one of those things where we're trusting that the government officials who. May we talk a little bit about broke professors a little bit on the show? You know, you and I do, Joe, Is it like, do we have the problem with we might be teaching the wrong thing or focusing on the wrong stuff and if I were looking at this or how I think about this is as a parent and I've got a 16 year old and a 19 year old and even a 9 year old. I feel like this is our job, you know, in terms of our, our responsibility to, to share the story of money, you know, And I think, Ruben, what you were talking about about, like, you know, nobody cares about like how mortgages work. You know, my 19 year old could give a crap about that. But what he does care about is I still don't think he understands the impact of not paying off credit cards. We were talking about it and he's like, I don't understand this. Interesting. Like, why would you. He had actually had a really great idea. He was. Or a great comment. He was like, why would you charge something that you didn't want to pay off? Like, how would, why would you want to pay more?

[Reuben Miller]

Save that moment, Josh, for the thing.

[OG]

I know, I know, but you know, because they didn't teach this in school and he's got a credit card for when he went to college and he's like, what do I do with this thing? Because his whole life has been, I just apple pay with dad's money. And now I'm like, well, hold on, you're 18, bro. This is on you now. Like, I'll pay for college, but if you want a sweater that's on you. So he's trying to like learn that stuff. And like you said before, Ruben, it's like the really relevant things are how do we teach kids or anybody for that matter? I mean, I'm 48 and I still need help doing it. Like, defer gratification just a smidge, you know, like just a little bit.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yeah, let's get away from school and what we learn there. Let's just design our own. Like, do we begin no matter what age we are? You know what, there's people watching this that are 50, that are like, I think I'm too late. There are people that are 35. Like, we don't know where they're starting from. Does it start og with cash flow? Does it start with emergency fund? Does it start with don't screw up the basics? What is lesson one on the lesson plan?

[OG]

I think if you're designing your financial curriculum, I think the first thing is taking stock of where everything is and not, not kidding yourself. If you're going to look at your cash flow, you got to count everything, right? If you're going to look at your net worth, you got to count all the assets and all the debt. I think the first order of business if you're starting over, whatever that looks like, is to go where is everything at presently? And that is being truthful to yourself. You're the only person there, so you don't have to prove this to anybody, but don't lie to yourself because you know you're the most trustworthy person that you know of. So be careful with that. But I think if you're going to start, you got to start with what are the facts of the case, where is everything, how much money do I make, how much, you know, where do I spend my money, how much money do I have, who do I owe money to? Start there.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Do you like that first starting place, Paula?

[Paula Pant]

You know, I like it. But one thing I would add to it is what is coming up in my life in the next three to five years? And when we're talking about high school students, the answer to that is the decision around whether or not to go to college. And if you're not going to go to a four year college or university, then what are you going to go to a two year school? Are you going to go to a trade school? Are you going to start working right away after high school? You know, if broadly speaking, any person at any age can ask themselves what's coming up in the next three to five years? And no matter how old you are, that answer might be I need to replace my car because my car is 10 years old and in the next three to five years it might break. Or in the next three to five years I might want to buy a house. Like when you're older, those might be your answers in high school. Yeah, it's, it's in the next three to five years I need to figure out what the next step is in terms of either vocation or education and then how am I going to pay for that? And so my hope is that these high school personal finance classes have a lot of how much debt should I take out if any built in.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

But I'm going to say this guys, for the fifth time, you're all stuck on high school. I don't care about high school. Let's say that you're 50, let's say that you're 35. Let's say that you're, you're, you're whatever age. Yeah, yeah. Where do you start there? And Paula, I'll take that and wide it out for the 35 year old. What I hear you saying is this weird phrase that I just came up with. You can afford anything. Just not everything.

[Paula Pant]

Right.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Like, this idea of trade offs feels like it's where you would start.

[Paula Pant]

Exactly, exactly. Well, and that's what I mean by the, you know, the next three to five years. So maybe you want to replace your car because you've got an old car and you know it's a clunker and you know it's probably going to die. Maybe you want to buy a house, maybe you want to take a sabbatical from work and travel for six months or you plan on switching jobs and in that interim period in between jobs, you'd like to take six months. And all of that is going to require financial planning. And those are all things, you know, when you're talking about retirement or you're talking about a goal that's like 15, 20 years into the future, it can be harder to visualize what that's going to cost. But when you're Talking about that three to five years in the future, even if you're 50 years old, it's easier to put numbers on it and then it's easier to work backwards to say, what's this going to cost and what do I need to do today in order to be able to set that money aside?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

What I, like Ruben, about what Paul is talking about is this idea of beginning with what's really important to you right now. Because I feel like financial planning gets really good and it's easier to pick investments, it's easier to understand insurances, it's easier to if it's all aligned with this thing that we want for ourself, because now we've got a little. I don't know if it's greed or fear involved, maybe both. But is that where you start? Do you start with goal planning and then the curriculum kind of flows out of the goal?

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah. I'd be interested in what Paul and Josh would say to this. But basically, for us at our firm, we think about the organization process of getting all these assets and liabilities together. Once you have that loaded up in a spreadsheet or a financial planning software or something that's there and you can either sync it and it automatically updates through time. Or when you readdress your financial plan, that updates through time. That part's not, to me, doesn't take a lot of time afterward. It's kind of what Paul was talking about. Just like when you hit these inflection points of what am I trying to accomplish in the next three to five years? And these big moving rocks that we're trying to either endow through our Assets or debts we're trying to pay off or whatever it might be. I think that once it's all set up, most conversations I find that we have with our clients are really about unpacking what is the distribution of likely outcomes here. If we do all these things and we have our portfolio, let's say we have a 70% stock and 30% bond portfolio or something like what's likely to happen? How's this money likely to grow? And in this distribution of things that will happen in our future, how do we mitigate some of these tail risks of really bad outcomes, making sure they don't shock our lives? Because to your point, Joe, then that's where it's like really about. If I can't do what I want in life, then my financial plan failed. It doesn't matter if I beat the S and P or not. To Josh's point about day trading, this is not just a problem with teenagers. This is a problem where everybody's enticed by hearing about their friend who made a bunch of money trading zero dated options. The challenge is it's always going to be a distribution. There's always going to be a few people in the right tail who crushed it. Even if 95% of the people go bankrupt, we're always going to hear about these five people and people are going to be enamored by that, especially if they don't understand distributions. So to me it's more of a quantity, statistical answer. But like, I really wish people understood distributions of likely outcomes more.

[OG]

I got a C plus in statistics, Ruben.

[Reuben Miller]

I wasn't far behind, to be honest.

[OG]

So I like, I get the concept, but I think, you know, sometimes you look at those and I'll use financial planning as a, as charts or Excel or there's a lot of million tools that people can use to build their own plans. And so you do that and you see this number, right? And it says, okay, if I put this money in my account, that it says, you know, $17 million when I'm 100 years old or 65 or like whatever. And we look at that, we go, this isn't right. Even if it's just an Excel formula that you dragged over for 30 years, it's some number that is an unbelievable number, but the real number is somewhere in a range of returns there. And I think maybe what you're talking about here is understanding what that range looks like and planning around the variability of that maybe, as opposed to saying, this is a linear outcome, I'm either going to succeed or fail. It's like, well, no, succeeding and failing is not binary. It's not zero or a dollar. You'll have some money. You might have a lot or you might have not as much as you think, but you're going to have some. And how do we, you know, how do we address that as the years go on, as you get closer to these liquidity events or things that you need?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

You know, I like Josh about your story about.

[OG]

Hold on, we gotta stop that for a second. I think that's the first time Joe has called me Josh in like 15 years.

[Doug]

Yeah, Ruben did it and all hell broke loose.

[OG]

No, you can. Ruben, it's fine. But Ruben is contagious.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

My bad.

[OG]

I was listening the first part because I was like, who's this, who's this Josh guy?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

There's an interesting piece about your C plus story because I feel like a lot of the time these concepts don't make sense to us because they're not connected to our real life. So this idea about distributions or risk or whatever, we don't grab onto them because they don't have any real meaning. I get the feeling, Og, that it would have meant more and maybe you would have done better if it was attached to your goal, you know, because as an example, Monte Carlo simulation, like you look at the variability in a Monte Carlo simulation and how the statistics work out for that. If you just said Monte Carlo simulation, blah, blah, blah, here's the statistics, I go, whatever. But if you said to me this is your probability of being successful in your retirement with zero moves, I'm all ears. Like, I'm like, wait a minute, how does this work? What are the downsides? What's the process? They made this like. I'm fascinated. I feel like some of these abstract things, if we start to make this curriculum, we get pretty good at in a hurry.

[OG]

The whole piece about, like you said, curriculum is taking the parts of money which are from simplistic things like creating a net worth statement to the invest, like the 1%. And you see these esoteric type of tools that people can use or strategies I think is a better way of thinking about it and trying to gain enough understanding to recognize the areas that you should focus in on. I'll just use a very simple example. I think generally speaking, most people would say annuities suck. Unless you sell annuities, then you think

[Reuben Miller]

they're pretty awesome or you're married to someone who sells annuities.

[OG]

Fair enough. Yes. Yes. If the likelihood of you paying your AMEX bill is Determined by how many annuities are sold in or around your person. Blanket you have a particular feeling about it. But I think we could all intellectually step back and say, you know, there are cases that this makes sense. There are some scenarios and there are some tools. It's an arrow in the quiver. It doesn't make it a good arrow or a bad arrow. It's just an arrow. And sometimes it's useful and sometimes it's not. And maybe that's a broad statement for that particular product. But if you say something like something else, like a charitable remainder trust sounds pretty cool. Like I have some charities, maybe that will remain the trust. Maybe, you know, it's a good place for them. There's so many different things. And I feel like the problem with personal finance or financial planning in general is there are so many ways to get yourself in trouble. And part of your curriculum, part of your learning has to be around. Is this even relevant for me to even be thinking about right now? Like, I think all of us generally know what a charitable remainder trust is. Maybe half the people listening have an idea of what that is. But for the half the people that don't, they might be going, well, maybe I should know. Maybe I should spend energy on this. Maybe I should I call my attorney and find out if I need like this is all just probably energy that you can put on other things that will produce a better outcome. So part of education is, you know, not going a mile deep on every single thing, but just a little bit to know, like this is relevant for me or this isn't.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, and I think you're more likely to do that if you begin with a plan. Right? If you begin with your own plan, then you're like, oh, I'm interested in charitable giving. What are the outcomes that I'm looking for? And then. Reuben, were you going to say something?

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah, I was going to say that once you have all your information organized or if you work with the financial planner and you go through financial plan. I think what Josh is really highlighting is this idea that like the magnitude of our decision making and the outcomes of our decisions, that magnitude changes through time. Like a 23 year old probably doesn't give a about giving money away to charity right now. It doesn't move the needle. It might really move the needle for a 60 year old who just sold their business that year. We have this, this client. This is just a fight through the hatos this year who a very, very large client is the first time he's had an HSA and we had all this frustrating paperwork to like open this HSA that was at one place and have the account we can invest in Schwab and the magnitude of this HSA in this guy's life is diminished.

[OG]

But we had like, it's like $8,000 decision and it takes you seven weeks to get open.

[Reuben Miller]

It's de minimis. And yet we have this frustrating paperwork process. The Schwab wasn't approving it and whatever. So like for him it doesn't matter. For a 23 year old, HSA is an incredible tool. Maxing your 401k and getting a free employer match is an incredible tool. So the magnitude of these things we can do in our financial life changes through our life cycle. And I think it's important to have an idea of that. Otherwise you just jump on podcasts and you hear people talk about charitable remainder trust and you're like, that's cool. How do I do that? Like, actually, maybe that's not that relevant to you, right?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yeah. We start learning a ton about the wrong stuff. I'm going to propose a structure that in the second half, I'd like us to just play with that. If we start off with in our curriculum, a foundation, I'm going to ask you all a couple questions. Number one, what do you think people learn too late? That should be part of your curriculum. Number two is maybe what's a good resource that's not the five of us for people to get more information about that. I think if we start off with foundation, then we'll talk about risk management growth, which will include investing, retirement, taxes, big decisions. I think I'll call the fourth area and then more advanced stuff like negotiation, behavior, financial independence, like some of these, these more heady philosophical things. Well, not necessarily when it comes to negotiation, but behavior. Financial independence mostly. But I'd love to get your take on the two of those things. What do people often miss in the curriculum? And then number two, what's a good resource for us? But before we get to that, we have something very important we have to do. Because on Fridays, if you're new to the show, we have a year long competition between our three frequent contributors, OG Paula and Jesse Kramer. And by the way, Reuben, you're going to be playing on behalf of Jesse Kramer. You know, Jesse and I got some good news from Jesse. By the way, as we record this last week, I found out it was Jesse's birthday. And so I texted him and I said, dude, is it your birthday? He said, it is. And he showed Me a picture. And many of our Stacker family might not know this, but Jesse and his spouse Kelly were expecting. And on Jesse Kramer's birthday, Kelly gave birth at 2:47am to test Elizabeth Kramer sharing a birthday with her dad. So 8 pounds, 4 ounces. And Jesse said, and she's hungry and Kelly is doing well and resting. So congratulations to the Kramers with their new member of the family.

[OG]

Just a real quick point. Do you have 190 unread messages? Is that what that. Is that what that said on your phone?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Does it say. It says 282.

[OG]

Oh, my God. Yes. Folks, if you're trying to get a hold of Joe, this is.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

I think I'm a distant second to Paula Panto.

[OG]

Do you have a bunch of stuff on?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Red says 1500.

[OG]

Really?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, it's pretty up there.

[OG]

How do you live with yourself?

[Paula Pant]

My phone's plugged in over there, so I can't check it right now.

[OG]

I have a phone.

[Paula Pant]

What's the point, right?

[OG]

Just start over. Just redo it.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

I have to admit, Paul and I have laughed about this before. People like, hey, I know you're friends with Paula. Could you get a message to her for me? Could you wave your arms?

[Paula Pant]

I just don't understand how people are able to tolerate so much inbound.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

It's just, it's good.

[Paula Pant]

It's bananas.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

It is good that you can focus, Paula, that it is an amazing trait. But two weeks ago, we had a controversy. Three weeks ago now, actually, we had a controversy which was we had mentioned slight disagreement. We had mentioned that Jesse could margin call. Could margin call OG when he didn't have any points. And as we reviewed the tape, we found out that, yes, in week number one, we had said that you couldn't margin call somebody without a point. So in fairness, while Jesse keeps his point, OG goes back up the point that he lost because Jesse couldn't margin call him.

[Doug]

However.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

However, we do have a better rules explanation than we had at the start of the year because we didn't realize just how crazy this was going to become. So, Doug, Doug, for Reuben, because it's his first time on the show doing this, and for everybody else listening to this amazing trivia competition. Doug, what are the rules of our Friday trivia?

[Doug]

Yeah, I will recite them now. Joe, I think this is a big lesson for us. We had no idea just how invested our stackers are in trivia. Boy, did we find out.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Anger, Reuben. There was anger.

[Doug]

Oh, it was vitriol on the highest level. So here they Are here it is everybody and, and pay attention because the most important rule is last. But we're going to build up to it. So rule number one, each contestant gets one margin call per quarter. If a contestant has zero points, they can't use a margin call. They specify component that they're margin calling. They can, they can utter that, that phrase margin call at any point that the second I start reading the trivia question, they can say margin call on OG or whoever. It's probably going to be og, let's be honest. Rule number two, if the person margin called OG gets the correct answer, they gain a point as usual and the margin callee loses a point. So you stuck your neck out there, you tried to make them pay, but it didn't pay off because the person you called got the answer right, you're going to lose a point. If the person margin called gets the answer wrong, they lose a point. And rule number four, if the margin call, the person who got margin called gets the wrong answer and the margin callee gets the correct answer. It's essentially like a two point swing because when OG got margin called and he got it wrong, he lost a point and the person doing the margin calling got the, the answer correct, they win a point. That's a major swing in the field of battle. But here's the most important rule. Rule number five. Trivia Host.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

This is this, this is the rule we should have mentioned at the beginning of the year. Yes, Trivia we are now 100% putting into effect.

[Doug]

Right? Trivia Host. This guy reserves the right to make up any and all rules necessary. If one contestant starts running away with the competition and or gets a big fat head about being in the lead,

[OG]

you guys are jackasses.

[Paula Pant]

So rule number five is that there are no rules.

[OG]

Just so you know, it was 7 to 0 to 0 and then all

[Joe Sal Sehei]

of a sudden somebody kept bragging about it. Reuben. Somebody kept bragging about bragging.

[OG]

I was just winning. You know, it's like the DJ Khaled song, man. What are you gonna do? Like that's all we do is win here. But apparently haters gonna hate. As they say. Hate, hate, hate.

[Reuben Miller]

Well, it sounds like a very host friendly approach and I'm here for it.

[Doug]

It's all about the listeners, Ruben. We're trying to make this exciting and compelling for our stackers. We don't want to get to October. Oh, geez. Winning like 39 to 0 to 1. And there's no point in doing trivia anymore. So we got to keep it this a Battle and we'll do whatever we have to do.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

But let's be realistic. Doug, that is number two. Number one is watching OG's head explode when we change the world.

[Doug]

Fair point. Like that is fair point. That is purely.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

What we're doing is entertaining ourself at OG's expense.

[Doug]

Joe, did you, did you understand from Dottie in Wichita that as a revision after the rule review that og, who previously had seven points, he's back to six points now.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

He regains the point that he had

[Doug]

called, so he's back up to seven. Okay, so it's now our score now after Paul is miraculous performance last week, our score. As it stands right now, OG in the lead with seven. Jesse, slash this week. Ruben, you're the beneficiary of his illegally gotten gains previously. He has one point. And Paula, Paula now has one point. So it's seven to one to one going into today's competition.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Deal. And Reuben, guess just to keep it easy, don't Margin call. So don't worry about all the Margin call stuff. You just get to answer the question, which is fantastic.

[Doug]

We ready?

[OG]

And this is, this is the first

[Joe Sal Sehei]

episode of Everybody has a Margin Call again, starting right now. And to do that we actually need to. Now that we got through that, are we ready for some trivia? Let's go.

[OG]

The trivia question is how many rules are there?

[Reuben Miller]

What are the rules?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Here's what's gonna happen. Og, because he's in first place, it's gonna guess first.

[Doug]

First.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Reuben, because Jesse was last year's champion, you're going to go second and then Paula gets to go last. And it's closest. Closest person to the answer either side. It doesn't have to be close about going over. It's just closest. Doug, you've got the question. What are we talking about this week, man?

[Doug]

Hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And today we celebrate the birthday of the iconic comedian, actor and big fan of the show, Eddie Murphy. Yeah, Eddie and I were together a lot growing up and old Eddie was crazy. He cracked some joke and, you know, of course I'm gonna laugh. I mean, it's Eddie Murphy, right? We're pretty much best friends, except he was always up there on the movie screen and I was just in the audience watching him. But other than that, we were tight. Known for hits like Coming to America and Beverly Hills Cop, Murphy's not quite as well known as a singer. And yet back in the 80s, he also released three studio albums. While some were Funny. Like his hit boogie in your butt, which. Come on. I mean, that's just. Just the title alone is funny. Others were Bonafide radio gold. His song party all the time, produced by none other than Rick James, was part of an album of. Of songs, none of which included any comedy. After comedian Richard Pryor told Murphy he couldn't do an album without comedy, the two BET and Murphy won, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks and being certified as a platinum record holder by the riaa. So here's today's question. How much did Richard Pryor bet Eddie Murphy that he couldn't make an alpha album without comedy? I'll be back right after I figure out how to get some comedy into this podcast, man. Wouldn't that turn a good thing? Great.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

That'd be amazing. If we could only do that. OG you are first. Richard Pryor bet Eddie Murphy. Yep. Around comedy. How much did they bet?

[OG]

Do we have the year in which this bet occurred?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, what year did party all the time come out? This was a late 80s song. I don't know that I have the exact year, but I remember it was a late.

[OG]

That's the vibe that I had.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

80s.

[OG]

So this is post Brewster's Millions. So obviously, Richard Pryor had a gazillion dollars after inheriting all that money in Brewster's Millions. If you haven't seen the movie, it's great. So he inherited what, 300 million? Wasn't that how much he inherited in Brewster's Millions?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

As the character in the movie, I

[Doug]

was going to say. Are you using a movie plot to help your logic?

[OG]

He didn't get to keep any of that. You don't think.

[Reuben Miller]

Has Josh explained the logic on all seven wins?

[Doug]

Yes.

[Reuben Miller]

Does he just go through and just to arrive at the conclusion, yes.

[Doug]

We got a lot of air time to fill. Reuben got it.

[OG]

Yeah. So he has 300 million and Eddie Murphy. Maybe not. Not as rich. I'm gonna say that the bet was a poultry. A poultry. $999.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

999. Reuben, how does that sound?

[Reuben Miller]

That sounds low. Very low.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

So you think they would have bet a lot more?

[OG]

Come at me, bro.

[Reuben Miller]

I don't have logic to defend my answer, though.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

If you call what OG just did logic, I think there's a flaw in your.

[Reuben Miller]

I don't have flawed logic. To arrive where I am arriving, I'm gonna say 20,000.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

$20,000. So we got $999 and $20,000. Paula, do you know who Eddie Murphy is?

[Paula Pant]

He's an Actor. I do know that that's probably the only recognizable name in that entire question.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

No, Richard Pryor.

[Reuben Miller]

Not Richard Pryor.

[Paula Pant]

I have no idea who that is.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Okay?

[Paula Pant]

No clue.

[OG]

Minor league baseball player. Nerd at 300 million. Trust me, it's a great movie, Paula. You'd love it.

[Paula Pant]

Let's see. So what logic do I have? Well, 65 million years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth. Sometime after that. But before today is when this deal took place. Place? I'll be honest. When I heard the question, the first two numbers that popped into my head, I figure if it's a bet, it's got to be a round number. Most people bet in round numbers. So the two numbers that popped into my head, one was 10,000 and the other was a million. But if this was, like, closer to the dinosaurs than it is to today, a million was a lot back then. So I'm gonna go with 10,000. So I'm just taking the middle of the field goal.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Wait a minute. And Ruben, what was your guess?

[Reuben Miller]

I'm at 20.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

He said 20,000.

[Reuben Miller]

Next person, say under 20 and I'll feel pretty good.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

And Paula takes the middle at 10,000.

[Paula Pant]

Why don't I take 10,001? Yeah.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Why?

[Paula Pant]

Because I think that numbers that end in zero are unlucky.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Okay. Well, there we go. I got no idea. Our guesses are locked. We're going to see who's our winner in just a moment. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customers. Customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Paula Pant]

K Pop Demon Hunters, Haja Boy's Breakfast Meal and Hunt Trix Meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi? It's not a battle. So glad the Saja boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

It is an honor to share. No, it's our honor.

[Reuben Miller]

It is our larger honor.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side

[Reuben Miller]

and participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

[Paula Pant]

This episode is brought to you by. Indeed. Stop Waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Oh, gee. You started this off by saying $999. Turns out both Ruben and Paula thought that number was very low. What are you thinking?

[OG]

I mean, it was a gamble for me literally to anchor everybody around something, and I was trying to decide if I wanted to anchor everybody at a low number or the million dollar number or the 500k number. We're going to find out. I. It's, it's. It's one extreme or the other. I will. I will recognize it's going to be something stupid like they bet a dollar.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Right?

[OG]

Because you guys have pulled that crap before where Doug's like, how much money, dude, this is like 74 cents. You know, it's gonna be something really dumb like that, or it's gonna be like a million bucks, and Paula's gonna be like, son of a biscuit. I knew zeros were unlucky. So many zeros in the answer.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Ruben, you've already seen there's nothing ridiculous at all about this competition. So when you've. Now that you. All the bets are in, you've got all the upside. Everything above 20,000, what do you think? You gonna win this?

[Reuben Miller]

I normally feel like Paula would be stymied in between the two, but she's kind of perfectly in between the two. So I feel like if it was a lower range bet, she's actually got a pretty decent chance, which usually the person in the middle maybe doesn't. But I do think I have a lot of upside here. Any.

[OG]

Anything you have until infinity. Statistically, yeah.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Correct. A million dollars. You've got it.

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah.

[OG]

The long tail.

[Reuben Miller]

I think we all have a decent chance. I think we all have a decent chance.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Paul, you've been playing this for a long time. You could have pulled a Chelsea BRENNAN and got 19,999.

[Paula Pant]

It was either going to be 20,001 or I was going to pick 10,001.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

And so you went 10,001.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. You know, the two numbers that popped into my head, either 10,000 or a million. I just don't think 100,000 is the answer.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, your guy can't be wrong. 855,000. Times in a row, Paula. So let's see. Is OG Reuben or Paula bringing home today's winning answer?

[Doug]

Well, hey there, Stackers. I'm Eddie Murphy fanboy and guy who likes to party all the time. Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. That's right. It's my old pal Eddie Murphy's birthday today. Man, we got a lot in common. I mean, he's from the mean streets of Brooklyn, and I'm from the middle class suburbs of Detroit. I mean, that's the same thing, right? He started on Saturday Night Live, and I, of course, got my beginnings on a little podcast called Stagging Benjamin's Parallel Lines. I tell you, parallel. Both of us also bet friends that we could make a record out of comedy. All right, well, I lost that bet to og. Murphy won. Although Richard Pryor, the guy who bet Murphy, died before he could pay up. But how much did Murphy bet? Well, this is OG's favorite part of the show. I will tell you that it was $99,001 more than what OG guessed. It was $89,999 more than what Paula guessed and just 80,000 more than what Jesse Sl. Ruben guessed. Because the correct answer is $100,000, making Reuben Jesse our winner.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Reuben brings home the win.

[OG]

I just like how Paul is like, it can't be 100,000.

[Paula Pant]

I love that I just got finished saying those words that. That's kind of perfect.

[Reuben Miller]

I feel like I would be. I would be remiss to just like, my middle name is Jesse. So this Ruben Jesse thing. This Ruben Jesse thing's been working out.

[OG]

It really works out.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yeah. This is.

[OG]

This is for you, Paula. So close. Yeah.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Paula thought I was being a little ironic when I said your gut can't be wrong 800,000 times.

[OG]

I said 100,000, but it can't be be that.

[Paula Pant]

My gut literally said, it just can't be a hundred thousand. Got. Got to be either 10,000 or a million. It can't be 100.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Oh, well, this is a Reuben. Thanks for bringing home a great birthday gift to both Jesse and a Tess Elizabeth with your wins. That's a nice, nice present for them. All right, let's dive back into our conversation. And I proposed this structure that we maybe start with foundation. So, Reuben, we'll start with you as the guy that just won cash flow, debt and emergency fund. Let's just take those areas, right? Kind of your financial position. What's something people learn too late that maybe really needs to be a part of this curriculum to make it really

[Reuben Miller]

good that the traditional way of using a savings account is pretty much irrelevant today.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

What do you mean by that?

[Reuben Miller]

When I grew up, my parents told me to have a checking account and a savings account. And savings accounts don't earn any yield. And so in reality what you want is a checking account and either a high yield savings account or a brokerage account where you buy short term bonds or something. But this idea of a lot of people who went through a personal finance curriculum maybe in high school and were told, you know, your emergency fund of $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000, whatever it is, belongs in your savings account and don't touch it. That's really good for banks and not so great for you.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Paula, what's another area that we need on that curriculum that people get either get wrong or learn too late?

[Paula Pant]

I think your behavior matters more than math. I think that's something a lot of people learn too late because people, it's similar to like food. People will learn what makes sense in theory. But the best nutrition plan in the world is useless if you're not going to follow it. And the same is true with money. And so you might learn what is mathematically sensible, but if you're not going to follow it, then it's useless.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

So you're saying like instead of the that old 50, 30, 20 rule, which is different parts of your budget, like this kind of tired number really trekking, what you do is what I'm hearing. Tracking what you actually do and learning from it.

[Paula Pant]

It's less about tracking and more about understanding your own psychology. Understanding, hey, you know, I can, when I get stressed, that's when all my plans for restaurant spending go out the window. Because if I'm stressed, I'm going to pop into the restaurant down the street and order a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine or whatever, or a beer, that sort of thing that sort of like the observation of your own behavior so that you can find out what your behavioral triggers are so that you know what are those emotional breakpoints that cause you to steer off

[Joe Sal Sehei]

of your plan and that hits Cash flow could hit. Debt could hit emergency fund, could hit all three.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly. So I, I think the nutrition analogy or the diet and exercise analogy is I think the closest one because you can design a perfect plan. But when you hit those emotional breakpoints, that's when the whole plan collapses.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

OG cash flow, debt, emergency fund.

[OG]

I think out of those three, the thing that people figure out too late is that debt is awful in every form and fashion and there's no such thing as good debt. There's just less crappy debt. And every dollar that you spend paying other people is money that you are not accumulating yourself.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Wait a minute. What about what we said on Wednesday about using other people's Money on our April 1 episode?

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Exclusive of that second go round, let's go to protection. Ruben, I'm going to say protecting your credit score, using insurances, risk management. What do people learn way too late and needs to be a part of the curriculum.

[Reuben Miller]

Not my forte. So I'd probably Paula or Josh be better at this. So I'll briefly say, you know, as a planner, I think the one thing that really smart people I meet don't quite get is that life insurance is just for this lower probability event that you actually need it so you don't want to ever have to use it. Probabilities are that you won't. That's why the business model works for these life insurance companies. So when you buy life insurance for our firm, we tend to recommend term insurance. You just want to identify what is the gap between what the person who's going to get paid out on me passing needs to sustain my family's lifestyle. If it's your spouse, something like that, what's the amount they need to keep up the lifestyle? It's not worth paying. Above that, don't go get a ton of life insurance for no reason. Most people on expectations should not do that. But also identify what that gap is and that is the amount that you should probably fund for some term life insurance.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

I like that in the curriculum because how many times have we met people in their 20s with no, no dependence really nothing to their name and somebody convinced them to buy a million dollar whole life insurance policy as a savings account.

[Reuben Miller]

One of the best decision like outcomes of going or not going to college can be just do not end up in college where one of your like frat or sorority sisters goes into selling awful life insurance policies when they graduate, that is a great outcome. If you can get through college without knowing any of those people because 23 year olds without dependents don't need insurance.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Just a general rule too. If you graduate from college and you've got a friend who wants to have a lunchtime meeting and won't tell you what the topic is, that's not going to go well. Paula, credit scores, insurance, risk management, what do we need to know that we either learn too late or is super important in the curriculum?

[Paula Pant]

I think if you're struggling with debt and you can't pay your bills and all of that. Don't worry. Like the thing to fix is not your credit score. If you're not planning on taking out any new if you're not planning on moving apartments or taking out any new debt. Like, I meet so many people who are in these very precarious financial situations where they've got credit card debt and they, they're, they're in a bad spot financially. And I talk to them about what do you want to fix? And one of the first things they say is, oh, I want to improve my credit score. But why you're not moving apartments, you're not planning on borrowing any money anytime in the near future. Why do you want to improve your credit score when instead you could focus on doing these other things that would increase the gap between what you're earning and what you're spending? Because that delta is right now way too narrow and that is the crux of your problems.

[Doug]

But all those funny commercials about credit score, they tell me that's important. That's why I do it, make it better.

[Paula Pant]

I mean, I'm not saying it's bad to improve your credit score. It's just in the waterfall of the hierarchy. Right, the priority list.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Yeah, Having it, protecting it is important. But I do feel like it's always people with a lot of debt that over are overstimulated. Yeah, I think, oh gee. Credit scores, insurance, risk management.

[OG]

I think the biggest thing on insurance is most people spend way too much time and money insuring low probability events and not enough time and money insuring higher probability events. Ruben talked about life Insurance is a 1 in whatever chance of getting hit by a bus when you're 35, but you've got a 1 in 20 chance of being sick or hurt for an extended period of time. And so you look at the life insurance number and you go, I can get a million dollars of life insurance for 50 bucks a month. I'll do that. Instead of saying I need to have 15,000amonth of disability insurance in case I get hit by a car or in case I slip off my stairs and I can't work for a while, that's going to cost me $800 a month. That's where the risk is. And you can just look at it from a cost standpoint. It's pretty obvious the reason that it costs more to have disability insurance than it does to insure your house, even though your house is a million dollar house or something like that, is because the probability, the likelihood of you Collecting on it according to statistics is way higher than it is than your house burning down. Look at like cars versus houses is another great example. Car insurance probably costs more than your house insurance unless you live in Texas. And then everything costs too much.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Roughly 300 to 1 risk to 1200 to 1 risk chance of something happening to you in your car and something happening to you in your house. Something happened to your house.

[OG]

Or like long term care insurance as you get older, people go, that's really expensive. Yeah, no kidding.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Guess why?

[Reuben Miller]

Guess why?

[OG]

Because it costs a crapload of money to have somebody take care of you 24, 7, 365. And the statistically the chance of a couple age 65, one out of the two people are going to need some assisted care later in life.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

This is where that C +C in statistics gets better. Because when you start looking at risk management, knowing statistics can save you a ton of money. If you couple those just magnitude and probability, those two things. Let's go to growing investing, retirement and taxes. You know, we spent full episodes on just one of those Reuben. But tell us, what's one thing in those three areas that people get too late?

[Reuben Miller]

It maybe echoes what Paul said earlier, but I mean most investors issue is they just get in their own way. And so what you need is a philosophy around how you want your money to grow through time. So an investment philosophy, you need a design and you need an implementation plan. If you get those three things and you can get out of your own way, to me that's a foundation to a successful investment journey.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

What does philosophy look like when you say that word? Because I think a lot of our stackers don't know what you're talking about.

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah, so generally I'd say you need to decide what drives my returns when I'm an investor. So do I think that the market drives returns so I just want to buy an index fund that maybe looks like the market? Or do I think that a manager should drive my returns and I want to pay someone a relatively higher fee to go pick stocks for me or pick sectors at certain times for me. It's important you can have a successful investment journey either way. My personal belief is people should probably accept that the market does a pretty good job on its own. So if you can keep your fees pretty low and your taxes pretty low, that's probably the best way to build an investment journey. As far as this probability of a successful outcome goes. If you believe in stock picking or something like that, the more you can sort of set it up Be systematic, not change halfway through because you have a disappointing outcome here or there. Markets are very random and noisy over short periods. And it causes us as humans and our behavior and inclinations to sort of hijack our own experience away from ourselves. So whichever route you go, we can all have preferences, what we think is better, but whichever route you go, you're always going to be a human. And so that's not a good thing when it comes to investing. And you want to make sure you can, you can design a process where you can get out of your own way.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

It was fascinating. Last Wednesday we interviewed for our normal Wednesday interviews, Claire and Lee, who research what they call stock market maestros. And they dove into how the best of the best stock pickers pick stocks. And what struck me was the fact that there's no gut decisions to your point. You know, there's no man, my brother in law has this, so it should be in my portfolio. And even people with investments having that investment policy statement, which no matter what you do is so important. I think the philosophy piece is so huge, Paula, when it comes to investing,

[Paula Pant]

retirement, taxes, you know, to build off of that. I think one thing that people should be aware of are behavioral biases, cognitive biases, things like recency bias or the availability heuristic or loss aversion. People should be aware of these things. They should have names for these things. Because once you know that this is just how the human brain is wired, you begin to see those patterns play out in your own thinking. And then you have a, you know, when you do feel yourself pulled in a certain way, Nobody thinks of themselves as panicking. They see a changed set of circumstances and they will rationalize that in light of new information, they're going to change that investor policy statement. Right? We saw this happen a lot during the pandemic where no one said, oh, it's April 2020, I'm panicking. Like nobody has the thought of I am panicking at this moment. People will say, oh, X happened. And because X happened, that brings new information to light. And because that new information has come to light, I'm going to do things differently. And that is actually a panic decision, but it is rational and so it doesn't. It's wearing the clothing of reason. And that's why I think it's so important to understand behavioral biases and like cognitive biases, because you can then start to poke holes in that rationalization, which is also interesting.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

These researchers talked about, Paula, having the humility to, instead of defending where you thought you were Right where you were clearly wrong, having the humility to say, no, I'm wrong. And that's how the best investors among us do so well, is through humility, which you would think they'd just be right all the time. They're, they're wrong a lot. They just curb it by making sure they don't compound the error investing retirement taxes.

[OG]

OG I don't know how I'm going to beat these two guys here because yeah, they have some pretty good stuff. I'm going to say taxes are a year round event and most people think about them in February or March, maybe into April, and then go, oh, thank God my taxes are done and then throw it in the trash and then wait until next February and go, well, it's time to do taxes again. And we know from research that especially around investing decisions, there's some benefit to paying attention to your taxes. There's some benefits to paying attention to what investments you put in different type of taxable accounts or depending on the type of account, tax treatment in the account. Ruben was talking about not having a savings account and instead of using bonds or fixed income or something like that, that has a taxable difference and can be impactful to your long term wealth. And so sitting down in the summer or in the fall and saying, where are we at? What's going on with my tax situation and what can I do in these final four months to plan for what this liability is going to look like and make any adjustments to assuage those issues? The government sucks at managing money. I don't want to give them anything that they don't absolutely, positively need.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

I think that's a fantastic place to leave this discussion. Let's talk about what's going on, where all of you work. Oh, gee, this first fine weekend in April. What do you got going on, man?

[OG]

Yeah, so it's Easter weekend after school activity today on Friday, and then my kids home from college, so I get to hang out with them for a few days before he goes back to school and wraps it up.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Paula, what's going on at the Afford Anything podcast?

[Paula Pant]

On the Afford Anything podcast, we have Jamie Hopkins on the show. He talks about your retirement sketchbook.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

This guy.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly, that guy. He came and joined us up in Westchester County, New York, sat down at the radio station with us. We had a long conversation through lots of different points of and non obvious elements of retirement planning. So that was what I loved about the conversation. If you think that you have heard, you know, retirement planning 101 or 201. This goes way beyond that. This goes to some sophisticated nuances of retirement planning. So that is Jamie Hopkins on the show.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

That is awesome, because you're going to hear him stackers on Stacking Benjamin's. But if you've ever heard Paula and I do interviews, it's like a great one, two punch. We ask completely different questions. And Paula, because we don't plan these in concert, we both were pretty taken by the work that he and his co author Bonnie did.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, absolutely love that work. Very impressed.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Really great stuff that's coming up on the Afford Anything podcast, where finer podcasts are found. Reuben, thanks for hanging out with us, man.

[Reuben Miller]

Been great. Thank you.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, I'm excited that you made it to the end of the interview or the end of the the hour, because some people, they like.

[OG]

You didn't know this was an interview, did you?

[Joe Sal Sehei]

For a minute, he had no idea. So what's coming up on the Fortunes and Frictions blog or what's coming up in your practice?

[Reuben Miller]

Unfortunately, Friction blog, I really write whenever I want. So running the small firm, I'm not as consistent as many other content creators. I just got back from four days at Disney with my three and a half year old.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

You're exhausted.

[Reuben Miller]

So I'm on break for like three weeks. Yeah, maybe I'll get a blog out.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

But if people want to know more about your firm and what you guys do, how do they get in touch with you?

[Reuben Miller]

Yeah, thanks. You can find me on LinkedIn. Again, it's Ruben Miller and peltomacapital.com if you're interested in sort of getting introduced to our firm. And then the blog, as you said, is fortunes and frictions dot com.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

And as OG said earlier, you're a fun guy to follow on LinkedIn, so make sure that you follow Ruben.

[OG]

Okay, guys.

[Doug]

Yeah, fun and LinkedIn don't go together.

[OG]

Yeah, if you logged in there every so often, Doug, you'd see it's a pretty fun follow.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

I was gonna say, I think there's some people on LinkedIn more and more that I find I find my happy place more and more on LinkedIn.

[OG]

He says all the stuff we want to say, but we all have jobs and, you know, responsibilities, and apparently Reuben doesn't, so.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Well, that's going to do it for today. Big thanks to everybody who hung out with us for the last hour. If you know somebody that needs to create their own curriculum, this is a great opportunity to share an episode of Stacking Benjamin's with them. And I hope that it helped you begin your curriculum for better personal finance habits. Doug, you got it from here, man. What should we have learned on today's show?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Ruben Miller. When you're building your own financial curriculum, start with the stuff that matters in your life right now. Then you can worry about learning the stuff you might need in the future. Second, Rubens, Like I said, that's second.

[Joe Sal Sehei]

Wait, what?

[Doug]

Second, learn from Paula's sage wisdom. Know thyself. Understand your own emotional triggers and how they impact your spending habits. But the big lesson don't bother trying to teach the neighborhood kids why it's important for them to help pay off your mortgage. You need to meet them where they are in their lives. They're just trying to figure out how to save up for a case of Shinerbach. Thanks to Ruben Miller for joining us today. You'll find Reuben's writings at fortunes and frictions.com which is a weird coincidence because that's the name of a gentleman's club out by the airport and also his financial planning [e-mail] we'll also include links in our show [e-mail] thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You'll find her fabulous podcast Afford Anything wherever you listen to the finest podcasts. And finally, you thank thanks to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial planning help? Head to stackingbenjamins.comog for his calendar. This show is the property of SB Podcast, LLC, Copyright 2026 and is created by Joe Sal Sehei. 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.