← The Stacking Benjamins Show
The Stacking Benjamins Show
Financial Literacy for Kids + Are Annuities Actually Safe? SB1757
01:09:14
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- [00:00]
Joe Saul Sehive
This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. We're proud to serve over 2 million veterans and their families because your service inspires ours and your service opens the door to membership, which means you get access to exclusive rates, discounts and financial tools that you can share with your whole family. Become a member@navy federal.org veterans and from all of us. Happy Veterans Day, Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by ncua. 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 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.
- [01:09]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Potential savings will vary.
- [01:11]
Joe Saul Sehive
Not available in all states or situations.
- [01:17]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
My God. Dukes are going to corner the entire.
- [01:21]
Joe Saul Sehive
Frozen orange juice market.
- [01:28]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Live from Joe's Mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and this month we're raising money for a great cause, financial literacy. On today's show, we'll dive into how to lock down the basics of your money with a woman who's teaching young people how to make better financial choices from GivingSense. Karen Holland in our headline segment, one investment product sales are skyrocketing. Should you get in too? We'll share the product and why you just might want to stay away. And don't you worry because I'm also gonna swoop in with some of my life changing trivia. I'm swooping. I'm changing lives. And now 2Gu whose lives changed the moment they met me. It's Joe and oh, J.J. j.
- [02:33]
OG
How.
- [02:33]
Joe Saul Sehive
Much did your life change when you met Doug Koji?
- [02:36]
OG
Some people say for the better. Others, more educated, say not so much for the better.
- [02:43]
Joe Saul Sehive
Hey everybody, welcome to the Middle Mixed Reactions podcast. I am Joe Salcy High. It is Wednesday and it is such a great day here in Mom's basement because we're going to help the Utes of America. As mom says, the ute's get better. Get better at making great money choices. Karen Holland's here. She's a person we're helping raise money for. She is on a crusade to help children do better with money. She's going to talk about the dim score, which Doug is really into and how she goes about this. Karen's an economist by training and she's going to dive into helping. So if you either have children, neighbors, and heck, you know what, for people who act like kids, you'll find this actually works for them. I was actually thinking about the dim score the other day, OG When I was buying the latest board game, I was like, D I M S and she'll explain what that means. And I went, no, but I'm still buying it. And so I don't know, some people might be on help, I don't know. But that said, it's Wednesday, we're in the basement. How are you, OG.
- [03:58]
OG
I'm sorry, I'm not listening. What's the question? I'm being very dim.
- [04:02]
Joe Saul Sehive
Oh, it's going to be such a great Wednesday. With that attitude, young man, you will go far on this podcast. We got a great show. Karen Holland here. And by the way, if you want to help with financial literacy, Karen's 501c3 non profit is called Gifting Sense. You can be a part of this challenge that we are in all month long. Listen to this. We talked about giving. Well, first go to stacking benjamins.com gifting hope, which is the name our stackers picked for this month's challenge because we are gifting hope to parents that their kids will make maybe better decisions than they made. But every time you give, you can also win because we're doing this in partnership with Daffy which is a donor advised fund company. They are partnered with iHeartradio. And listen to this. Every time you give, not only are you helping kids learn financial literacy, you're also put into a competition to get tickets to the iHeart Music Festival and all expats paid trip to see your favorite bands. You can get gift as many times as you want and every time you'll get a new entry. But if you go to stacky benjamin.com gifting hope, you'll find out how to help and how to help us beat Joel and Matt in the how to Money podcast. There's a bunch of other podcasts that are taking part in this. Who cares about them? We got to just beat Joel and Matt. Let's be clear. So we're going to hear all about financial literacy and kids with Karen Holland here in just a moment. She's upstairs talking to mom and while she comes down to the basement, we're going to hear from a couple of our sponsors that help us keep on keeping on. And you don't pay any money for any of this Goodness. So we're going to hear from them and then Karen Holland joins me at the card table to talk about kids and teaching them to make better money decisions. This message is sponsored by Navy Federal Credit Union. As the holiday season rolls around, we know that you strive to do everything you can to bring cheer and joy to your loved ones. And and as a credit union dedicated to serving all veterans, active duty and their families, we understand that every little bit counts. That's why for a limited time, you could earn a $250 cash bonus when you spend $2,500 with Navy Federal's Cash Rewards and Cash Rewards plus cards in the first 90 days. Of course, Stackers, this is part of a big financial plan, right? Don't get yourself into debt. Make sure that you are spending and saving with a plan. But you know what? The giving doesn't stop there. You could also earn up to 2% unlimited cash back with these cards. So saving up for whatever the season brings just got a little easier. Give joy, get joy. Join now@navy federal.org Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA. Visit Navy federal.org cashrewards for details. Cash back terms and conditions apply. Offer ends January 1, 2026.
- [07:03]
OG
The holidays mean more travel, more shopping.
- [07:06]
Joe Saul Sehive
More time online and more personal info.
- [07:09]
OG
In more places that could expose you.
- [07:10]
Joe Saul Sehive
More to identity theft.
- [07:12]
OG
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- [07:15]
Joe Saul Sehive
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- [07:16]
OG
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- [07:19]
Joe Saul Sehive
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- [07:20]
OG
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- [07:26]
Joe Saul Sehive
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- [07:27]
OG
Save up to 40 your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply.
- [07:41]
Joe Saul Sehive
And I'm super happy she's here with us. Finally, in mom's basement, Karen Holland joins us. How are you?
- [07:47]
Karen Holland
I'm great, Joe. How are you?
- [07:49]
Joe Saul Sehive
I am fantastic. As you know, we are so thrilled that we're partnering with you this month. And I'm thrilled that we're going to have you for the next half hour mentoring our stackers on helping kids learn better money habits. But let me start here. Let's talk financial literacy and kids. How big a mission is this, Karen? I mean, what's the scope of the issue?
- [08:10]
Karen Holland
Well, I don't want to be self aggrandizing, but it's worldwide. It's worldwide. I mean, we develop our money habits, beliefs, our feelings about money very young. There's lots of studies behind this. The most famous one is out of Oxford. And yet we make our most consequential personal financial decisions, and we acquire most of our financial knowledge and skills later in life. Sort of, you know, the earliest, maybe 18, 19. That gap, I call it a timing mismatch, creates a lifetime of completely avoidable stress for people around the world. And we think we have an elegant, scalable upstream solution.
- [08:59]
Joe Saul Sehive
And it's funny, back when I was a kid, I think about the resources we had available. Of course, we had a few in our community. I remember the people at my bank sitting down with me and talking to me about saving some money. That was cool. And they came to school. But now with these online resources, there's so much more cool stuff available. There's so much.
- [09:19]
Karen Holland
In the history of the planet, have we had more books, apps, programs? We've never had more information and it's never been more democratically accessible. Right. Like, let's be clear, like most kids have on their wrist the power that NASA had when it sent somebody to the moon. I mean, Hidden Figures is my. One of my favorite movies. So the issue is not a lack of information. The issue, in my humble view, is that we're not partaking of this knowledge. And why is that? And again, it's my view, but I've been doing this a long time. I mean, I can honestly tell you, I go to bed thinking about it and I wake up thinking about it because I think we're really close. I really believe financial illiteracy is a solvable problem. And who doesn't want to work on one of those in this day and age, right? We're awash in problems. Really. What can individuals do anything to help personally resolve? When we help children acquire not all the skills they need, but the basics during the time in their life when their habits and beliefs are being developed, we have vastly simplified the task of creating financially literate human beings. Because once you discover that you can get and use financial information to help shape your future, well, why would you ever stop? And by the way, subject mastery is, is how children acquire the appetite and confidence to want to know more about any subject. So I just baffles me why we treat personal finance differently. We do not start any other subject in the middle.
- [10:48]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's so funny. I remember we were talking to Bonnie Hammer, the vice chairperson of NBC Universal, about this idea of follow your passion. And her point is very similar about careers that yours is about money. How can people be passionate about stuff if they haven't been exposed to it? Like she, she thought she loved photography, turned out she loved television. She didn't have the opportunity at 15 to work in television. It was later on and had she just, quote, followed her passion, she would have ended up in the wrong, wrong spot. And we could do the same thing, Karen, with money.
- [11:17]
Karen Holland
We have this thing in economics. I know economics is the dismal science, but you know, I kind of love it. I'm just going to lean into my interests. We have this thing in economics called a positive externality. And a positive externality occurs when the benefit of a purchase accrues to more than the purchaser. And the textbook example also now a lightning rod, never used to be, is immunization, right? So you immunize a child and they don't get sick, but neither do their siblings, classmates, cousins, neighborhood friends, whatever. The positive externality of early financial education, in particular, if you ask me, middle school mindful spending lessons is so massive it defies description. Think about it. If you enter high school feeling that you have agency, that you have the ability to get and use enough financial knowledge, know how to shape your future, all that does is whet your appetite for more financial knowledge, right? So, you know, right now we have this, you know those big three questions, the big three questions that they use all the time to assess if somebody's financially literate. Well, if you're a middle schooler who's been in a mindful spending workshop, no problem. If you don't know the answers to those questions before you answer them, you're going to go to your magic box or somewhere else and you're going to say, okay, let me think about this. If the interest rate is 2% and I have $100 after five years, they're going to, they're not going to feel any pressure to answer a multiple choice question because somebody put three in front of them. They're going to have confidence in their ability to get and use the information they need to answer that question appropriately. This is what we want for today's school age children. Financially literate people do not possess all the data points required to make good decisions from here to the end of your life in their heads. What they possess is confidence in their ability to acquire the information they need.
- [13:09]
Joe Saul Sehive
Confidence is so much of the battle in this game. It is, it is not even a game. I guess I use the wrong word, but it is so much a big part of the battle. You've done a lot of research on this though, Karen, and you are very, very honed in on one age group in particular. You and I share a passion for this group of people. My Spouse Cheryl and I met as middle school track coaches. These were such are such formative years. They were horrible years for me, which is why I know it's a big time growing season for children. Why did you decide that honing in on middle school was really where this needs to happen most?
- [13:51]
Karen Holland
Well, I mean, to be perfectly honest, the Gifting Sense project is a way for me to pay forward the lessons that I was taught as a young person. And in all sincerity, middle school is when my mother taught my sisters and I how to be wise spenders or, excuse me, to think before we buy. I use mindful spending and thinking before buying interchangeably. However, I mean, unfortunately my mother died very young, but she was a teacher, so I never had the opportunity to have this conversation with her. But I'm convinced she was aware of how much a developmental sweet spot middle school is for the exercise of pausing, gathering information, and reflecting before making a decision. And there's a ton of brain science to support this. We actually just released a blog post@giftingsense.org, because people ask us that question all the time. I mean, I'm not a brain scientist. So with that caveat in place, I'll just try to explain that we make all these synaptic connections when we're born and early adolescence, Roughly between the ages of 10 and 14, is when the brain starts to prune the connections that aren't used. So think of it as editing, right? When you cut away the stuff, that's an excess, then the clear ideas really come through. So it improves your processing power. It's when the fraction frontal cortex is under construction. So that's about impulse control, executive function. Middle schoolers have these massive dopamine receptors. They're really wired to experience rewards and they're very socially aware. So all of this creates such fertile ground for all of these life skills. And that's what thinking before buying is, right? It's just asking questions, simple questions about typical purchases before you spend your money or anyone else's. But that's a life skill. Pausing, gathering information and reflecting before you make a decision. It's not just a life skill for being good with money. It's a massively transferable life skill. So middle school is a sweet spot. Having said that, it is like the adage for planting a tree. I mean, if you have somebody who's just outside of middle school, do not panic, right? There is time. But if a fairy godmother landed on my shoulder, I mean, I would have a mindful spending, thinking before buying workshop in every middle school around the globe.
- [16:06]
Joe Saul Sehive
Well, and as you were upstairs talking to mom earlier. Oh gee, and I were talking about how even though we're going to talk about the Dim score next, this, this works with 57 year old men like me. This isn't just for middle schoolers. This is for all of us. I think just this little speed bump before we go and make the next board game purchase.
- [16:28]
Karen Holland
We do, you know, we're permissionless, so we have no login, no registration, no paywall. So we have no idea who is using Dim Score calculator. We do, however, see every completed calculation on the back end of the site. And we know adults use it all the time also. I mean, adults are forever coming up to us and saying, you know, I really wanted those shoes but the dim score was low. And I'm like, I am not the shoe police. Okay. But it's interesting, we hear that quite often that it's helpful for everybody. I mean, I think fintech, of course is not in and of itself a bad thing. It's, it's hugely efficient and beneficial in many instances, but it has sped up consumerism. Right, sure. So, you know, we all benefit from just taking a beat.
- [17:16]
Joe Saul Sehive
Klarna. I'm thinking of. Makes it really easy. Affirm. Makes it really easy. The friction is. Friction's going away.
- [17:25]
Karen Holland
Yeah, I mean, to me that's a real, that's a problem. I know they think they're solving a problem. My personal feeling is they're creating a problem. I mean, I use a lot of humor and workshops because this is what resonates with kids. And I'm like, you know, a million years ago when dinosaurs roamed the planet and I was in middle school, I'm 59. This, this is how you went shopping. So I had a job at the Dairy Queen. I had to get my paper paycheck, I had to take it to the bank, stand in line at the bank, cash my check. I had to wait for the check to clear because if you didn't have enough money in your account to cover the check, which you know Dairy Queen workers often didn't, you had to wait for the check to clear, go back to the bank, get your cash money. Okay, so now you actually have something you can spend. Then you have to go to a store when it's open, when you're not in school, which for me was like Saturday, you had to figure out how to get there and then the store had to have what you wanted. Right size, right color, white model, da da da da da and then you had to have every dime on your person to execute that transaction. Right. So retail scientists would call all of those friction points. I call them opportunities. They were all a chance for me to say, do I really want this? Is there a better option? What do I have to give up to get it? So those three questions, do I want this? Is there a better option? What do I have to give up to get it? They are the seeds of becoming good with money. And of course, the earlier you plant them, the stronger they will grow.
- [18:50]
Joe Saul Sehive
I think it's a fantastic aha for all of us, Karen, that sometimes with money, friction is your friend. I remember, for me, I had to set up a bank account across town, and I had to make sure that I had no online access, that the debit card was cut up, that I had no access. I would use the frictionless way in. I would use direct deposit into that account. But then a ton of friction on me to have to go get the money. And it was funny because you think about, if something's a real emergency, 25 minutes, who cares? You know, a 25 minute drive. If it's a real emergency, something's happening, one of my kids, of course I'm gonna go get the money. But if it's the next board game, I'll think, you know, what? 25 Minute Drive, I don't want to do that. Like waste an hour round trip to go get my cash. It works so well. And I still use that today where I try to set up these accounts in places. And now, you know, different than having cash in my wallet. I, Cheryl and I have this discussion every week. More friction where I have every dollar's accountable. My wife is not my boss. She's not the Joe police. But having to tell her that I went to Andy's ice cream three times last week is not something I want to do. So instead, I put everything on the card so that it is part of the money conversation. I'm wondering, everybody has these pain points, right? They have these struggle points for middle schoolers as you're helping them make better decision. Where do you see that their struggle points really are when it comes to these early spending habits they're developing?
- [20:24]
Karen Holland
Oh, well, I mean, it's. It's fear of missing out, right? I mean, again, like, you know, social media in and of itself is not. But the. The problem is, like you. So what's the technical definition of fear of missing out? It's this feeling that others are living a better life than you or have access to more information than you do, which is categorically untrue. But of course, what does social media do? It promotes highlight reels. A question I ask kids in every workshop is, if you had a really frustrating day, if you failed a math test or didn't do well in a math test and spilled, you know, hot sauce or a milkshake on a brand new pair of Jordans, would you put that picture on Instagram? And they're like, no. And I'm like, aha. No one else does either. Right. So, of course, when you see everybody else's highlight reels, it invites an unfavorable comparison to your very real, naturally messy life. You know, my father's 86. He has a great line. He says, if you think somebody has no issues, you know what that means? It means you're not friends. Because if you were friends, you'd know what their issues are.
- [21:23]
Joe Saul Sehive
They tell you.
- [21:24]
Karen Holland
Yeah, right.
- [21:25]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah.
- [21:25]
Karen Holland
So they're struggling. They're thinking like, oh, everybody else is doing this. You know, Everybody else gets, you know, whatever they want on demand. There's no conversation or whatever. So we start every workshop. We pull the kids. Sometimes we do it anonymously. Sometimes it's just hands up. And we ask them, has anybody here ever received a holiday or a birthday gift and it wasn't quite what you were hoping for? What do you think the answer is?
- [21:51]
Joe Saul Sehive
Heck, yeah.
- [21:52]
Karen Holland
Yeah. 93% of kids. 93% of kids, and I think it's closer to 100. Sometimes we do parent child workshops, and the younger learners are a little reticent. They don't want to appear ungrateful. You know, that ship is sailed by the time you're in high school. No problem. So then we explain. Okay, well, here's the bad news, right? Even buying underappreciated gifts costs time and money. So you're disappointed, but trust me, so are your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, because they put effort into executing that purchase, and they worked hard for the money to spend. So what if there was a way that you could avoid disappointment? Help your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles stop wasting time and money buying you things you won't use or appreciate, which improves family harmony. Oh, and by the way, there's a side dish of, like, protecting the planet. Because when you only buy what you use and appreciate by default, you're lowering your carbon footprint and the number of items you put in a landfill. What if you could do all of that at once for free? And they're like, what? And I'm like, aha. There's A way. It's called the dim score calculator. Let's go. And then guess what? You can hear a pin drop in class when they're calculating the does it make sense score. And what the teachers are telling us is, you know, this is so engaging because when does a young person get to work on a problem that matters to them in real time? In school? Not very often, right? So they're working on the question, should I buy this item or experience? And they're getting to experience in real time how applying a small amount of consistent thinking is so hugely beneficial.
- [23:30]
Joe Saul Sehive
Just a little speed bump. Just this little.
- [23:34]
Karen Holland
Again, we use driving and sports metaphors like, we're like, when you're in the family car and it goes over a speed bump, does it stop you from getting where you were going? And they're like, no. We're like, yeah, it just helps you get there safely. Same thing. We also compare it to driver's ed. We're like, okay, who's got a brother or a sister who's in driver's ed? Why are they having in class instruction on driving before they take the family car out on the road? And it's because we want them to have these foundational skills and awareness, right? We want them to know, okay, this is what a yield sign looks like. This is how you put your blinker on. This is how you respond in this situation. So thinking before buying. Mindful spending using the doesn't make sense score calculator. It's spending it.
- [24:14]
Joe Saul Sehive
Walk us through the does it make sense score calculator. How does this contraption, this amazing, amazing gift to humanity, how does it work?
- [24:23]
Karen Holland
It is so straightforward. You type gifting cents, G I F, T I N G, and it's S E N S E. So it's a wordplay brain sense instead of C E, N T S into any browser on any device with access to the Internet. It is an online tool. But, you know, we're device agnostic and you just answer the questions on the screen in front of you. So the first question is, are you thinking, are you interested in buying an item or an experience? And then you click on item or experience and then you see secondary silo. So is it toys, sports equipment, electronics, clothes? Is it a trip? Is it an event? Would you like to bring home a pet? Pet is a hugely popular does it make sense score calculation. Really, really massive. And in fact, it was not one of the first ones we developed. But this is the beauty of digital, right? Like, people should not be afraid of digital. It's how we keep it free. It's how we keep it a free public good. Because we mine the other category and we were like, okay, kids are MacGyvering other all the time. To calculate the dim score for a pet, we need a pet's dim score calculator. And in fact, that's one of the more consequential choices we help kids with. Because of course, when they see a puppy in a pet store window and that's, you know, maybe it's $600, they have no feel for the fact that really they're asking for $26,000 because that's what they are.
- [25:41]
Joe Saul Sehive
All the food upkeep, the, you know.
- [25:43]
Karen Holland
How long is it going to live? It needs vaccinations. You have to clip its nails, you have to groom it. It needs a bed, it needs to raise feeder, you need flea, tick, heartworm medicine, all of these things. They have no feel for that. So one of two things happens. Either they discover everything that's involved, because what the dim score calculator really does is it just reveals the phantom costs associated with very typical purchases. Right? You want to go to a concert, okay, the ticket price is just the beginning. What about safe transportation, snacks and souvenirs, right? And on average, it can be like 4 to 1. The total cost of going to something like, you know, World cup is coming to North America. It is a huge topic of conversation amongst middle schoolers. And we're like, okay, so let's really sit back and think about what this involves. You've got, I think now we still, we're 30 weeks out, so you've got time to put a plan in place, right? It's so epiphanous for them. They're like, right. And so again, two things happen. Either they're like, wow, this is a thousands of dollars proposition because I don't live in a town close to a stadium or whatever, and I'm not interested in dedicating that purchasing power towards that purchase or, wow, this is a thousands of dollars proposition. But it means so much to me. Here are all the ways I'm going to support our family being able to do that. Here's what I'm going to give up. Here's the purchases I'm going to forego. Here's how I'm going to do things so that we don't have to pay somebody else to do them either way. If they decide they don't want to do it. If they decide they do want to do it, it's great information. And that's what the dim score calculator does, it gets everybody singing from the same song sheet so that by the time you sit down to have a conversation with your parents or caregivers about moving a purchase that you're axed about from wish list to reality, you have done your homework and you've got all the information you need. So that when they ask you all the questions like, set your watch, they're coming like Christmas and taxes, are you willing to spend some of your own money? How often you're really going to use this? Can somebody else in our family use it? When you're done with it, you've got answers.
- [27:44]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's so funny. It just, I mean, think about stackers. If you're a parent or you're an aunt or an uncle or you're somebody who has neighbors or friends with kids and they sit down with you and your middle schooler has a business plan versus I want new shoes. You know, they say, I want new shoes. There's eye roll. Here's my plan for getting it and here's all the. Oh, my goodness. I can just.
- [28:11]
Karen Holland
We tell them it's their PowerPoint. This is your PowerPoint.
- [28:14]
Joe Saul Sehive
I could just imagine.
- [28:15]
Karen Holland
Parents, do not worry. Like, this is not an espionage tool. Right. Because they can generate a shareable summary of all the math and thinking they've completed. When they calculate the dim score, including, they can upload an image and we're like, do not ask your grandparents for Air Jordans without putting a picture of the exact hair you want in there. You are mandating them to failure. Right. Like they have no chance.
- [28:35]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Right.
- [28:36]
Karen Holland
What happens is oftentimes they do decide that they don't want to proceed. So that's great. So families are reporting that they're getting fewer, better quality requests to spend because the kids go through this process and they're like, ah, you know what? Orange linen bell bottom pants. How often can I really wear those? I'm going to hold off.
- [28:52]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's siphoning out all the bad ideas. Totally.
- [28:55]
Karen Holland
Actually, we just wrote a piece, we were asked for a piece about the holidays and we're like, the ultimate parenting flex for the winter holiday gift giving season is to get your kids to ask for better quality gifts.
- [29:08]
Joe Saul Sehive
Sure.
- [29:09]
Karen Holland
Because when they're asking for something that you have no problem getting behind, all the problems go away.
- [29:15]
Joe Saul Sehive
That's fantastic. You know how often it strikes me is something like gifting sense used to upgrade gifts on behalf of the middle schooler. Because I'm remembering, you know, there's these, there's these horrible bathroom books. And one of them was advice from 8 year olds, Karen. And I remember one of the best piece of advice I've ever seen came from this book. And it was from Melissa, age 8 who said, if you want a kitty, start off by asking for a horse. Like that is.
- [29:48]
Karen Holland
Oh, interesting. You know, I'm thinking about that. I mean, in all sensations, sincerity. I think that, I mean, this is a common concern, right? A lot of principals, if they're trying to decide if they want to have us come to their school, they're like, listen, we don't want to put pressure on any of our parents or buying things that the family can't afford.
- [30:08]
Joe Saul Sehive
Right? That was my next question.
- [30:10]
Karen Holland
Okay, so we're already there. I can tell you with a full and open heart because I've been doing this for, you know, we're coming up on, we launched 10 years ago, but of course it takes like 18 months to get a site going. So I've been doing this for a very long time. Children are so aware of their family's financial situation and they don't want to put pressure on their parents either. And getting the context for these decisions is so helpful. This is why they're stopping themselves. They're like, you know, like every January they're calculating the dim score for super bowl tickets. Again, they really have no feel for what's involved here. And as soon as they do, they want to abandon ship. Like if you've calculated the dim score, I hope you have. So you see, the first half is sort of the numbers, right? Like how much money is actually required and then the second half is what's required to execute the transaction. How much can I use and appreciate it. They want to abandon ship when they see the big number and we're like, no, no, no, just keep going. Because this is a construct for thinking and it's going to help you with all sorts of purchases, right? It ages up and down and across economic realities because you are selecting the purchase, you're assessing. They really don't do it. They really don't. And for people who think that kids aren't aware of their family situation or the world at large. You know, one of my favorite examples is we had an 8th grade boy calculate the doesn't make sense score for the purchase of Greenland.
- [31:27]
Joe Saul Sehive
What?
- [31:28]
Karen Holland
Right, because you know, Donald Trump's talking about buying Greenland.
- [31:31]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:32]
Karen Holland
And so, you know, we're telling them this is a tool to help you understand if buying something makes sense. So, you know, we don't, we don't put any parameters around it. The kids get to calculate. But I thought that. I mean, when that happened, I. I was actually so happy that the teacher was a little miffed. He was like, you're not taking it seriously. And I was like, no, no. First of all, this is a geopolitically aware kid. But I'm like, you know what? If it helps you make sense of the world at large, double win.
- [32:01]
Joe Saul Sehive
How about that? Well, and that's what I was thinking, Karen, is that. And this is what I like about the dim score as well, is that this is not financial use only. You can see how you would use this in your everyday life as you grow up. And the number of times that I've either made purchases or made investments or made career decisions where I didn't take that little moment to calculate, does this make sense in a really meaningful way? Instead, just over. Over feeling my emotion. And as you mentioned, you know, a lot of that stems from middle school, where that dopamine hit is huge. I want it, and I want it now. So let's go get it. There's big piece of me that still exists. But knowing how to. Knowing how to have that circuit breaker is important. But I think even equally, maybe not equally, but also very important, is this idea of building your case. I mean, you're gonna have to build your case with your boss. You're gonna have to build your case with people on the PTA committee with you. You're gonna have to build your case with interested, you know, people in whatever community organization you're in. Like, this idea of building a business plan around the thing that you want and also considering everybody else's feelings in this and what they get. You know what? I love the idea of going to the Super Bowl. I want to go to the Super Bowl. Oh, that's how much it costs. My parents can't afford that. There is no way, when I look at their side of the argument, that it's going to help them. Why would they do. There's no way. I can't do this.
- [33:30]
Karen Holland
This is what we're telling parents and school administrators. Context transforms conversations. It turns impulse into insight, and collected insights become confidence. Right. You know, we feel like, you know, we don't have the time. We don't want to go through the whole rigmarole with our kids. So they ask us for something, and we just say no. Even a yes without context is a missed opportunity. But when you give them context, which is just the information required to more fully understand the situation and why you're making a decision. It is such a gift because I'm telling you, the kids, like, I see it every week, they're like, right. You know, we developed a tool this past summer. We launched it during summer camps. We call it the Worth the Weight goal Tracker. Okay, so it's a visual goal tracker. It looks like a thermometer. So you decide that there's a purchase you're jonesing for. And then we say to parents all the time, the quickest way to move a conversation from can I have it to is it worth it? Is to offer to split the cost with your young person. Right? Because kids spend their own money very differently than how they spend ours. So let's use the example of a FIFA ticket, a World cup ticket. They're very expensive, they're eye wateringly expensive, but you've got time. So like not a knockout game in, not a perfect seat, $400. So let's say your parents are like, fine, if that's really what you want to do, we'll split it with you. So you need $200 and you've got whatever, you know, maybe you have nothing saved. So $200 divided by 10, that's $20. So you put this goal tracker up in the fridge, and every time you save $20, you get to color your way up until you've met your goal. We like it on the fridge because, you know, there it sits a lot of money. Conversations happen at the kitchen table, but here's what a mother shared with us. Her son brought this home from camp and he's in the eighth grade and he wants a new laptop for high school. So they filled it out. He's got to save a lot of money for that laptop. Four days later, he wanted pizza for dinner. And the mother said, that's $35 we don't have for that laptop. And she said, no eye rolls, ophthalmic calisthenics, none of that. No attitude, nothing. He was like, right. She called it a mic drop. And we actually used that image in a social media post. She was like, this thing, this piece of paper on my fridge has changed the family dynamic. Because now he understands why I'm saying we're not going to have pizza for dinner. Instead of just thinking like, I'm no fun or I don't want to spend the money, or, you know, he's like, right, right, right. $35 towards the thing I really want. No problem. Game changer.
- [36:01]
Joe Saul Sehive
I'm hoping, stackers, that you are hearing the same thing that I saw and heard when Karen's and my mutual friend Ted Dinter Smith said, you got to talk to Karen, because I told him about exactly specifically what we wanted to help. And as I got to know Karen's mission, I was even more excited. But, Karen, if anybody's going to put their money where their mouth is, they want to know about you and your organization, Right? So let's talk about this mission. If people help us raise a bunch of money to help kids get more financially literate, how do you deploy that effectively?
- [36:36]
Karen Holland
Well, we're free public goods, so all of our tools are online, but we do deliver workshops in person. Right now, it's just in the greater New York City area and Toronto, but we run educator webinars. We go to a lot of conferences. We're preparing. It's my favorite favorite fall weekend of the year, the Jumpstart national educator conference. It's November 7th, 8th and 9th in Boston, and I really cannot wait to get there. What donating to Gifting Sense does is it lets us keep this dream alive of permissionless, truly permissionless and scalable early financial education. It keeps the dream alive and makes it scalable. So we would like to be able to have. I mean, right now, I'm sort of the conduit through which everybody must pass. So we would be able to train people to, to deliver these educator webinars. We'd also be able to build other silos. I mean, we have a lot of demand. People want a dim score calculator for first car, first department, post secondary choices. The reason people respond to the tool is we put tremendous, tremendous, tremendous thought into it. And it takes a lot of testing and development to build something that does all of what it's supposed to do and none of what it shouldn't. Right. So we don't want anybody to feel bad. We just want them to think a little more. We want to give people helpful benchmarks. Like, if you'll notice, we do give kids parameters as to what most families will think is a lot or a little bit of money. But that ultimate decision is given to parents. That's where it should lie. Right? That's their decision. But we help them understand, okay, well, here's really how much money you're looking at. So we're able to keep developing those tools, meet the demand. It's just, you know, get it into every school. It's. We've had a lot of success. We're growing. There's no reason why this can't be in every school. We're a free Public good. We're a mission driven organization. We do this one thing, but we do it well and we want to do more of it and we want to do it in more places.
- [38:29]
Joe Saul Sehive
And that is my goal. Stackers is to help Karen extend that megaphone to more communities because it's so important. And clearly, as we said in the introduction, it's been time tested. Karen's idea is not new. She's been doing this for a long time. Time, which is important to me that it's been tested. And then also we've talked to Michael Gilmore before, the founder of the Maia Awards, which is excellence in personal finance. And Karen being a multiple year recipient of these awards that we've profiled so many of these wonderful people. And like, just having that also shows me that it's not just me. There's so many people, Karen, that appreciate so much what you do. It's got to be exciting, though, still, every time you just get that pizza or World cup or pizza or laptop.
- [39:19]
Karen Holland
I'm telling you, I love my work. You cannot beat the feeling of knowing that you've really helped a kid or their family. And it just keeps coming, right? Like, you think about what it is we're doing. We're teaching kids about money in a way that's immediately helpful. We're doing it when their default money habits and beliefs are being established, right? I mean, we reduce family arguments. We are preventing waste. It really is the easiest way to be a planet protector. And it goes all the way. People need two things, really, to create personal financial peace of mind. They need a Social Security number and an investable surplus. The investable surplus doesn't have to be big, but it has to exist. So an investable surplus comes from spending less than you make. Now, everybody knows this, right? Everybody knows they're supposed to spend less than they make. It's like, we know broccoli's good for us. Go to a birthday party. Do you see what I was about to say?
- [40:12]
Joe Saul Sehive
The same thing. It's the same thing with weight, right? I know that if I consume fewer calories than I expend, then bam.
- [40:17]
Karen Holland
Wait a minute.
- [40:18]
OG
Yeah.
- [40:18]
Karen Holland
Oh, how does that work? Okay, we know that what the issue is, how do I live the life I want and spend less than I make? That is the crux of the problem, right? So how do I have the shoes I want? How do I have the house I want, the car I want? How do I send my kids to the school I want and still create that investable surplus? And honestly, honestly thinking before Buying is a really easy way to do it because two thirds of us buy things on the regular that we do not use or appreciate. And if we can do nothing other than stop that, we're on the way to creating that investable surplus.
- [40:57]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and don't you just love Karen Holland? That woman's ability to make money easy for kids really cuts through the noise. Speaking of noise, today we celebrate the birthday of a New Zealand singer songwriter who's turned 29. Lordy, Lord is her big day today Lord, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy. I know she's a huge fan of Stacking Benjamin's and you're clearly a huge.
- [41:22]
Joe Saul Sehive
Fan of hers too. Calling her Lordy.
- [41:25]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
That's what her friends. I mean, it's her name, right? She's a giant fan of the show is the point. And more importantly, she does not like. She specifically told me she does not like the how to Money podcast. Born Ella Marija Lani Yelich o'. Connor. That's how you pronounce that too. She changed her professional name to Lordy because of her obsession with the aristocracy. That might also explain the name of her debut single that in 2013 topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts, making her the youngest singer since 1987 to accomplish that feat. Here's today's what was the name of Lordy's 2013 debut song with a name that also could be about the aristocracy? I'll be back right after I go make Lordy a birthday cake. I'm sure if she's a fan of aristocracy, she'll want to eat cake.
- [42:17]
Joe Saul Sehive
Let him eat cake.
- [42:22]
OG
November is heating up for U.S. soccer.
- [42:24]
Joe Saul Sehive
United States need to be a little more nasty.
- [42:27]
OG
Make international friendlies for the men. Callum, that was nasty and a Black Friday friendly for the women. Expectations have always been here for this team. We understand that. Listen anywhere on the go with the Westwood One sports app and for behind the scenes stories, catch the U.S. soccer Podcast. Boy, do we have an episode for you. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
- [42:57]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Hey there stackers. I'm frosting lover Joe. I had to put that in there stuff.
- [43:02]
Joe Saul Sehive
You know you love frosting so much.
- [43:04]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
I hate the frosting part just too much. I leave the end of the cake. I want a nice balance. I'm not a frosting lover, but I am a guy who's lighting a candle for birthday girl Lord.
- [43:17]
OG
Wow.
- [43:18]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Yeah, I was told there's a little correction that happened. And a threat in the break there chose Mom's neighbor Doug, you know, fan of the show. Lord is celebrating her birthday today, and I got to give it to her. That woman became famous in a hurry. She was 17 years old, if my math is correct, when she released her debut Benjamin Stacking single. Our question was, what was the name Lord known for her obsession with the aristocracy, fittingly went big with the chart topping song Royals. Did you get it right? Hope so. If so, make yourself some cake and we'll all celebrate Lord's birthday together. Just don't put too much frosting on the cake. And now here come two guys who are far bigger fans of cool singers like Lord than Joel or Matt. It's Joe and Og.
- [44:08]
OG
Hey, it's Matt from Gainesville, Georgia. And when I'm not delivering on this consumerism in a big brown packaged car, I'm stacking Benjamins.
- [44:16]
Joe Saul Sehive
You like that song, OG Royals?
- [44:20]
OG
Yeah, sure.
- [44:22]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Okay.
- [44:23]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah.
- [44:24]
OG
I mean, who doesn't?
- [44:25]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
It's a song.
- [44:25]
Joe Saul Sehive
I'm too old to put my hands in the air. Like, I just don't care. That's my favorite line in that song. She's 17 when she writes this. I think I'm too old to put my hands in the air. Like, I just don't care. Really? You're 17 because your bursitis is keeping.
- [44:37]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
You from raising your hands above your shoulders.
- [44:40]
Joe Saul Sehive
But that is what Lord and I have in common. I'm like, no, I'm not putting my hands in the air. No. Sorry. Thanks again to Karen for joining us. And we can definitely help America's utes do better when it comes to learning money skills. And man, some of those early money skills that we learned as kids, just super, super important. Do you guys remember early money lessons? Og, you were an entrepreneur at a young age, but what was the first time that you went, oh, maybe I could do better with money? Boy.
- [45:15]
OG
I really never had any regerts as it relates to money early because I, you know, as an 11 and 12 year old, I had so much of it from the paper route, like, relative to anyone else that I knew. I mean, when I was 11, I was making $200 a month.
- [45:29]
Joe Saul Sehive
Wow. For an 11 year old.
- [45:31]
OG
Yeah. I remember one time I bought all the Laffy Taffies at the convenience store, every single one, because they were a nickel apiece. And I was like, I have a nearly unlimited amount of nickels. Okay, here's 200 bucks.
- [45:42]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Here's what I find interesting about that story. Not how much money you had, but Joe specifically asked you, did you learn any lessons you just got done telling us you bought every Laffy Taffy, but didn't glean any morsel of lesson of that?
- [45:55]
Joe Saul Sehive
No, listen, in the world of 11 year olds, Laffy Taffy is power. If you own all the Laffy Taffy, it's like corner. It's like the Dukes in Trading Places cornering the orange juice market.
- [46:08]
OG
I mean, I kind of did. I kind of had, you know, people to come to me like, hey, man, what's up? I know you got a little of that stuff. And I was like, yeah, you want to taste?
- [46:15]
Joe Saul Sehive
You want some of my quote sugar?
- [46:16]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Looking to move any of that?
- [46:18]
OG
Yeah. Okay. I mean, how much weight we talking about? I did have a little. A little empire. But I would say the initial money lesson that kind of smacked me on the face was when I turned 18, I had very bad money mentors earlier.
- [46:35]
Joe Saul Sehive
My parents were not from all the Laffy Taffy, but.
- [46:38]
OG
No, no, I just sold it, man. I just. I never consumed my own product. I had it. I had it in the house, had it around, just. I was a distributor. But when I turned 18, the first thing I did was I got a credit card. Because that's what I was told to do. You gotta get it, you gotta get your credit. And so I got a Clark gas station credit card and the limit was 200 bucks. And every time I went to the gas station for the first month, I would tell my friends, I'm gonna put it on my credit card. You just gimme the cash. And then that bill came and it was $200. Cause I'd maxed the thing out and I had none of the cash. And I was like, oh, crapola. Now I owe $200 and I don't have the money to pay it. So that was probably my initial bad money lesson. I made a killing on Laffy Taffy features that year also.
- [47:25]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
But I'm still laughing about just Picturing this little 9 year old kid going, how much weight we talking about?
- [47:31]
OG
Yeah, Well, I was 11, but yeah, great. I hear you're a guy that can get some stuff like. Yeah, man, I got some stuff. What are you looking for? Looking for banana. Oh, banana.
- [47:42]
Joe Saul Sehive
That's gonna cost you.
- [47:43]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
That was a good flavor.
- [47:45]
OG
I'll take strawberry too, man.
- [47:47]
Joe Saul Sehive
I.
- [47:47]
OG
If I can get a little bit of that strawberry and banana together.
- [47:50]
Joe Saul Sehive
And I'm also thinking at 11, whatever they asked for, you learned right away to go, oh, that's gonna hurt you.
- [47:56]
OG
Yeah, it's gonna. I mean, we're talking seven and a half, eight cents per yeah, at this point. Come on, how much you got?
- [48:02]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Yeah, it's, that's funny.
- [48:04]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's tough. So made a bunch of money on Laffy Taffy. Wasted it at the Clark station. That's the, that's the lesson, the story of my life. But again, the dim score would have come in great there. And as you heard earlier, does it make sense taking people through the four, four parts. Hey, let's do a headline. Hello, darlings.
- [48:25]
OG
And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's Headlines.
- [48:30]
Joe Saul Sehive
Our headline today comes to us from Investment News, the trusted resource according to them, for independent minded advisors. This is a rag for industry insiders, but I often like to go here for headlines to see what they're talking about. And man, they're talking about a product. OG Leo Almazora wrote this one. Product sales hit new high as Americans seek income security amid inflation. I wonder, people aren't reactionary, are they at all? Or succumb to the feeling that maybe, maybe I need to be safer. Quote, safer with my money. Total US annuity sales. Annuity sales. How about that? I would have never expected this. Reached 119.3 billion with a B dollars in the third quarter of 2025, according to new data from LIMRA, marking the eighth straight quarter that sales have surpassed a hundred billion dollars. Latest preliminary read of the annuity space represents a 4% increase from the same period last year and set a new quarterly record. Year to date, annuity sales have climbed to $345 billion, the highest nine month total ever recorded by the industry group. I have seen so many people on social media OG talking about, hey, you know what you got to do. You're seeing these layoffs happen like we talked about on Monday. You just need to be in safe places. And no place safer than an equity indexed annuity.
- [50:07]
OG
No safer place for me to earn a big commission than the annuity that I'm selling you. Absolutely.
- [50:13]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's horrible. And for people that are new here, why is this annuity sales pitch so, so, so unliked by you and I?
- [50:25]
OG
Well, okay, so I mean, we kind of dog on it. We dog on this, we dog on whole life insurance or permanent life. These are all arrows in the quiver, right? And when all you have is this one particular tool, then everything fits. Everything fits. And I think if you go to a more comprehensive approach, you maybe will come to a different conclusion a lot of the times. And that's not to say that an annuity doesn't work for some people, but a lot of times it's oversold and overused. And the benefit of an equity indexed annuity is that it's generally tied to something that you're somewhat familiar with, the S and P, let's say, or the Nasdaq and the insurance company will say, or the annuity company will say, okay, or the sales pitch sounds a lot like this. You'll get all the return of the S and P up to a certain amount. Let's say the max is 6% a year. Everything above 6 we get. Everything up to 6, you get, and you get none of the negatives. So if the S and p is down 22%, you get a zero, you know, so if you have a hundred thousand dollars that you put in, the S and p goes down 20%, you're going to get zero return that year instead of losing 20%, which is all true. Instead of your 100 trillion, it's all.
- [51:38]
Joe Saul Sehive
True and all of that's under. Sounds wonderful.
- [51:42]
OG
If the stock market goes up 12%, you get 6. And there's variations on this, on how this all works depending on the company. So you're trading away some of the upside in exchange for never having any downside. But think about it from the insurance perspective. Are they benevolent institutions just in it to help the common man and not make any money on their own? Of course not. They figured out that they were going to make money by taking all of that upside, even the fact that they have to have some of the downside. They think this works out for us in the long run. An annuity I think is best used not for wealth preservation, but for income generation. If you're looking at a fixed expense and you say, hey, this thing absolutely needs to get paid every single month no matter what, and I don't want to have to risk or I don't want to have to think about how to create this cash flow. An annuity is best used for income planning, not used for asset protection. Here's something to consider. Let's say, for example, you have your long term care premium that's going to cover you in case you have assisted care needs later in life. And that premium payment for you and Your spouse is $5,000 a year. It's contractually guaranteed to be that number. Now we all know that they can change it in the future, but at least the program that you have right now is 5,000 a year. You say, well, I can take 5,000 a year out of my accounts or I can set up an annuity, I can put 50k into this annuity. That annuity is going to pay out $5,000 a year for the rest of my life. And if I live 30 years, my 50k is still going to produce 5000 a year. If I live 5 years, it is closed, but so is my insurance policy. So that's my trade. Like, it's more of an income play than it is an asset protection play. Because ultimately the annuity companies are not going to lose money. If you're looking at it going, hey, I don't get any of the downside. The downside of the stock market is what gets you the upside. The risk of the downside is why you get the all the return of the upside. It's just how it works. If you want to get rid of some of that, you know, you have to choose a different investment. The other piece that people don't like is a lot of times there's a lot of fees here. And when you start factoring that into the calculation, you're not getting all the return of the market. You know, you're not getting the downside, but you're not getting all the upside. And now there's also some fees on top of it that are, you know, pretty substantial. One and a half, two, two and a half, three starts to look less attractive.
- [54:09]
Joe Saul Sehive
And sometimes those fees often are buried in the fine print. Yeah, they're not well explained. Even though insurance commissioners make the agents have people sign a bunch of disclosure documents. If you've ever been to a house closing, you know how quickly the people go through these, quote, disclosure documents. Just sign here, sign here, sign here, sign here, sign here. What am I signing? Worst? Yeah, it's very similar when you sign all of these, quote, disclosures. And insurance is so hard to understand. Listen, if you don't think that you understand how these insurance products work, and it may take a PhD listen to our second headline here. This comes to us from Yahoo. Sports. How often have I said Yahoo Sports in my financial headline? This piece written by Nick Bromberg, senior writer at Yahoo. NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch and his wife Samantha say they lost over $8 million in a life insurance scheme. Life insurance, of course, is the cousin of annuities offered by insurance companies. NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch's wife Samantha said last Tuesday they lost over $8 million in a life insurance scheme. The Bushes released a video to social media saying they wanted others to avoid making the same mistake as they did. RP Legal, the firm representing the Bushes, said in a statement, the Bush's legal complaint Quote accuses Pacific Life and it's a poignant agent of designing and promoting a series of complex indexed universal life policies as quote, tax free retirement plans that were misrepresented as safe self funding investment vehicles. They allegedly paid more than 10.4 million insurance premiums and lost over $8.58 million.
- [55:54]
OG
OG yeah, again this is a symptom of trying to solve a problem by focusing on the product versus focusing on the problem that you have now. The Bushes. Is this who you said it was? The Bushes, NASCAR people?
- [56:10]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah, Kyle Busch. Kyle Busch.
- [56:11]
OG
I mean does he need to have $10 million of life insurance? I mean, yeah, probably. I mean he probably needs 50 million. I don't know. I don't know anything about his net worth and estate planning type of thing.
- [56:20]
Joe Saul Sehive
But you look up his income streams and his estate planning, it would stand to reasons this would be a, I.
- [56:26]
OG
Mean $10 million life insurance, not totally out of bounds. Right.
- [56:29]
Joe Saul Sehive
So but this was just premiums he put in. Yeah, he put $10 million in premiums.
- [56:34]
OG
And this was pitched as a product, not as a solution to an issue. Like you said, it was sold as a tax free retirement vehicle or something. It's, you know, it's not, it's life insurance, it's a product.
- [56:49]
Joe Saul Sehive
This is funny OG because knowing a little bit about these policies and how they work, I can see this, the rep says put $10 million into this policy so that the insurance cost a lot less over a number of years. That's going to pay huge dividends. But the Bushes, not understanding the policy, see 8.58 million of their 10 million go bye bye in year number one, which by the way is what happens right when you put this money in.
- [57:19]
OG
I mean it shouldn't have.
- [57:21]
Karen Holland
What?
- [57:21]
Joe Saul Sehive
How?
- [57:22]
OG
Well, yeah, I mean, okay, it gets so complex. Yeah. I mean here's the thing. There's basically only one way to price this. All insurance costs the same. Whether you're buying term insurance, whole life insurance, universal life, fixed index, universal life, variable universal life, variable life. Like all insurance for a 45 year old male who doesn't smoke and have high blood pressure. Everybody uses the same tables. Like there's slight variations by pennies. Right. Everything is about the same.
- [57:56]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's all state regulated.
- [57:58]
OG
I mean largely. Yeah. And there's different companies that specialize in different things. But if you're just a normal person, you go, I need a million dollars of life insurance. I'm 45, I need a million dollars of life insurance today. How much does it cost? It will cost Markedly the same. No matter where you shop, where it changes, premiums is going to be, do you have a 10 year policy or a 20 year policy or a 30 year policy or a 15 or a 5 or a 1? Because if you buy a 20 year policy they say well at 45 it costs this, at 46 it costs this. At 47 it costs this. At 48 it costs this. They add all that up and divide by 20 and go, your premium's 1,200 a year, what do you think? You go, oh okay. Because if they said it went up every year you'd go I don't want to do that because that's 65. It costs a crapload more to insure a 65 year old than it does a 45 year old because you're that much closer to, you know, getting hit by a bus. Don't want to point out the obvious for the two of you guys, but what A lot more yesterdays than tomorrow's for some of us on the call.
- [58:56]
Joe Saul Sehive
Wow.
- [58:56]
OG
So people would cancel it. And when do you need the life insurance if you're 45? Do you need it when you're 45 or do you need, you might need it closer to 65 statistically. Right. So that's how they price it. So if you have a permanent life insurance policy and they say, hey, you know, here's your permanent policy, they price it all the way to 110 or 120 depending on the company, or 100. And how much does it cost to insure 100 year old, a $1 million policy for one year? What do you think the premium would be? What's the likelihood of 100-year-old dying? What's the percentage chance, do you think?
- [59:31]
Joe Saul Sehive
Well, at that point it's 80, 85%.
- [59:34]
OG
I mean it's insanely high, right? It's not one in two, it's one in one point something, right? Like it's like very high likelihood that a 99 year old doesn't see 100 or 100 year old, doesn't see 101. Very, very, very high. And so if you're buying a million dollars of life insurance, how much money do you think you need to collect in premiums to offset the risk that you're going to write this million dollar check. It's gotta be really high, it's gotta be $800,000. 850, $900,000. That's a big number. And so you take all those numbers and you add em up and then you divide it out. Now you say this is your premium for the rest of your life. When you add this to a permanent policy, the way that that premium is structured so that it's a relatively flat premium your whole life is that you're putting money in today in this account. That combined with Your premium at 99 and the account forecasted growth should be enough to offset the fact that the frigging premium is $850,000.
- [60:35]
Joe Saul Sehive
It's like you're self insuring by throwing more money more quickly at a bunch.
- [60:39]
OG
Of money in early. It grows over that 50 year process. So that when you're taking the money out, or so that when the premiums come due, or the cost of insurance is a better way to say it, when the cost of insurance is due, there's money there to do it. And the insurance company doesn't come to you at 99 and go, okay, this year's premium is 850,000. You know, because nobody would take that, right? It doesn't make any sense. So the only way that these work is to put a crapload of money in. If you don't put a crapload of money in, then what happens is that bucket that you're supposed to have nice and full starts getting eaten up pretty quick. Because it doesn't cost a thousand dollars to have life insurance on a 75 year old for a million bucks, or in Kyle Busch's case, 10 million or 20 million or 50 million. It's an insane amount of money. So you got to put a bunch in. But here's the catch. The more you put in, the closer you get to the actual contract value. Say that that's $1 million policy and you put 800,000 it, you go, well, that's really good, right? You've really funded that policy with a bunch of money. The commission on that is way less than if you say, why don't we have a $5 million policy? You put 800k in it. Because the cost of insurance for the 5 billion is much, much, much, much higher, right? 5 times probably than the million. So I'm going to minimally fund the big policy so that I get a big giant payday. And I bet if we unraveled this whole thing, that problem is what happened to the bushes. Because at the end of the day, this works magically if you use it for estate planning. If you're like, hey, you have a NET Worth of $50 million, your estate plan tax bill is going to be 20 million bucks. Let's buy a life insurance policy instead of paying the government 20 million. We have a life insurance policy for 20 million. The cost of that's 5 or 10. You're saving $10 million. If it's structured that way, it works great. What they probably did was say, hey, put $10 million in this thing. Also, by the way, we're going to probably need two or three million dollars a year of premiums and we're going to sell you a $50 million policy so that my commission's eight frigging million dollars, which is what are talking about instead of it being 800,000, which is a crapload of money too. That's my guess. I have no evidence to support any of this.
- [62:56]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah, this is all conjecture, but looking at these numbers, losing $8.58 million of a $10.4 million premium. I think just knowing a little bit about that industry. And by the way, I'm so glad.
- [63:08]
OG
You I'm trying to make this as simple as possible and I can't do it.
- [63:11]
Joe Saul Sehive
That was my point. I was about to say that I was so happy that you explained that because if you ended that stacker confused by oh geez explanation, which was probably the simplest way to put all this mumbo jumbo, you know how the Bushes feel. And these are people with deep pockets, smart people. I mean the number of engineers on these NASCAR teams are huge and just surrounded by a bunch of smart people, the Bushes. And yet they lose a bunch of money to this. And mostly because I'm sure they also didn't understand it enough to be able to ask the right questions. So good stuff there. We'll link to these in our show notes@StackyBenjamins.com so that you can dive in deeper on those if you want to. And we have a newsletter called the201 where we also dive into topics like these. Kevin Bailey from our team who worked formerly at TIAA and also at Vanguard, writes our 201 newsletter and he finds and curates the best on the Internet on these topics. So if you want a lot of the best sources to learn more about the topics we talk about stackingbenjamins.com 201 Douglas, go out on the back porch before we say goodbye because we've got some stuff happening.
- [64:27]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
A couple of things I want to talk about, Joe one is some important updates are available.
- [64:33]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah, for those of you who get the Stacky Benjamin's guides, either our HR guide, our tax guide, our college planning guide coming soon, by the way, our financial dashboard guide just about ready to go live. But all those Guides. Every single month, we update them. You pay one price for these. We update them every month to keep up with whatever's going on in the economy, whatever's going on with the rules, if you change jobs, whatever it is, the guide keeps up so that you don't have to continually fork out money for the latest stuff. But we have updated all three of those guides with the latest, so check your email box. Sometimes these go to spam and you can download then the latest, the November version of the guides. So big on those fronts. And I'm excited for people to open up that email and see what. What cool additions we've made to all three of them. Always a fun time for stackers to get our guides. By the way, if you want to check out any of those guides, I know that we're ending open enrollment season stacking benjamin.com guides to take a look at them and grab yours.
- [65:37]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Yeah, definitely. Make sure you. You capitalize on that. And then we're doing some great, great charity work.
- [65:42]
OG
Right?
- [65:43]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
I mean, mostly me, but you guys are helping a little bit, right? I think it's important that everybody understand what's going on this month as we completely trounce the other podcast.
- [65:53]
Joe Saul Sehive
Yeah, we want to trounce two things. How to money. That's the biggest thing. And then financial literacy for kids, probably just below that. Let's make sure that we help kids understand money. You heard Karen Holland earlier. OG and I seeded this initially with a 500 donation. So beat that, stackers.
- [66:13]
OG
Wow.
- [66:13]
Joe Saul Sehive
Beat that. And looking, by the way, some of you have been great already. We're. We're doing very well in this competition, so we're beating the snot out of Joel and Matt. But once they start hearing how we are going after them every podcast episode. I've known Joel Ahmed a long time. This is going to be a battle, people. So help improve financial literacy.
- [66:38]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Not happening, apparently. So it's. It's real.
- [66:42]
Joe Saul Sehive
It is. And also because this is, we're teaming up with Daffy, who's teamed up with iHeart. IHeart has a big music festival, a lot of great recording artists. Every time you give, you also get a ticket into the giveaway jar. They've got a lot of cool stuff, but at the heart of it is that you can win tickets to the iHeart Music Festival as well. So not only are you helping America's Utes utes learn about money, you're also going to maybe go to see your favorite artist in concert.
- [67:13]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Lordy, she might be playing there.
- [67:16]
Joe Saul Sehive
You're a huge fan.
- [67:17]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
You can tell you're as is she of us.
- [67:21]
Joe Saul Sehive
Thank you so much for lending us your ears for this last hour. Doug, take it from here, man. What should be on our to do list after today's episode?
- [67:29]
Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)
Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Karen Holland. Want to make better money decisions? Ask yourself the dims question. Does it make sense? If it works for middle schoolers, it'll work for you. Second, buying an annuity because you're worried about the financial markets. Remember, insurance companies are great at math and also are great at knowing that you may not be great at math. They're good at knowing that you know that you don't know that you fell asleep in anyway. While there might be reasons to buy an annuity, controlling your fear of volatility isn't a great one. But the big lesson I would strongly recommend becoming friends with Karen Holland. That woman is so charming. Joe's mom is now trying to impress her by making chocolate chip cookies for all of us. For all of us, Ma. Thanks to Karen Holland from Gifting Sense for joining us today. Head to giftingsense.com to learn more or to sign up children you know. Better yet, help Karen reach more people by joining our drive to raise money for her mission. Head to stack benjamins.com stacking hope to give and win a chance at some cool prizes. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome team@stackingbenjamins.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. Oh, yeah. And 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.
- [69:33]
OG
Sam.