OG (2:35)

No, I'm glad you picked up on the breadcrumbs. I'm like, I'm leading them right to the segue. Come on, Joe, nail this one.

Joe Saul-Sehy (2:43)

And we salute those fine people who are a little edgy so that we don't have to be every Monday morning. They're edgy all week. We are trying to be edgy here on Monday morning. So raise your glasses, gentlemen, on behalf of the men and women at Mom's basement and men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union serving our troops. Here's a salute to the troops.

Angelo Poli (3:03)

Cheers.

Joe Saul-Sehy (3:04)

Go stack some Benjamins now, shall we?

OG (3:06)

Thanks, everybody.

Angelo Poli (3:09)

Hey, Shake and Bake Galaxy.

OG (3:17)

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And how's your portfolio looking? How about your waistline? Well, if the market has you nervously noshing on donuts, we're bringing in the guy who's helping you look and feel 100%. From MetPro, it's Angelo Poli. And on the money side, have you been thinking about finding some professional help? Well, professionals are also talking about you and how to get you to hire them. What are the people across the table from you thinking? We'll share on today's episode. And of course, we'll also answer a question from one stacker who thought, you know, I'd better call Saul.

Joe Saul-Sehy (4:07)

See? Hi.

OG (4:08)

And OG Austin wants to know about a heloc, which I just found out isn't the name of an awkward wrestling hold. But don't you worry. I'll hold you tightly with my heartwarming trivia question halfway through this circus. And now two guys. Who are the ringmasters in Mom's basement? It's Joe.

Angelo Poli (4:27)

Oh.

OG (4:28)

And. Oh, J.J. ja, ja, G.

Joe Saul-Sehy (4:32)

You know why we'll let you hold this, Doug? Because you're safe.

OG (4:37)

Exactly why I offer no threat of any kind.

Joe Saul-Sehy (4:41)

Hey, everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Saul Sehi. Average Joe Money on Twitter or the X thingy. Although I haven't been on much social media outside of Mom's basement in quite a while. But the guy who lives for Monday, Mr. OG is here. How are you, my friend?

Angelo Poli (4:59)

I'm good, man. Just trying to keep my head above water right now. I got the. I'm shuffling papers.

Joe Saul-Sehy (5:05)

I know. We got a busy week, don't we?

Angelo Poli (5:06)

Trying to. Okay, Boomer, I got stuff to return. I got. You know, it's just papers.

Joe Saul-Sehy (5:12)

I'm super excited because we've got Angelo Poly back for his.

Angelo Poli (5:16)

Great. So another guy that can yell at me for not reaching my goals.

Joe Saul-Sehy (5:20)

If you thought Dave Ramsey was bad when it came to yelling at you about your money, now we got the guy yelling at you about your waistline. Actually, you've been looking svelte lately, OG what's been going on?

Angelo Poli (5:31)

Better living through science.

Joe Saul-Sehy (5:34)

It's amazing. You drink enough Woodford and it reverses action.

Angelo Poli (5:38)

Ain't no. Woodford.

OG (5:39)

No, no. He found his mom's old stash of Dexatrim pills.

Joe Saul-Sehy (5:45)

Shush. He's on the grapefruit diet. Remember the grapefruit diet, Right?

Angelo Poli (5:50)

Can't take grapefruit with my cholesterol pills.

Joe Saul-Sehy (5:53)

No, I didn't know grapefruit high in cholesterol.

Angelo Poli (5:56)

No. It counteracts the medicine. It's a bad, bad, bad thing.

OG (5:59)

Grapefruit actually messes with lots of medicines. There's something magical about that.

Angelo Poli (6:03)

Yeah, just stay off. You know, if you're taking anything more than an aspirin, basically, you can never eat grapefruit again.

Joe Saul-Sehy (6:07)

Just don't eat grapefruit. That's what I say about green beans and broccoli and squash and.

Angelo Poli (6:13)

Well, I can't do it. I mean, I'd hate to counteract the medicine.

Joe Saul-Sehy (6:18)

Can't counteract the donuts, right? Angelo Poli is the CEO of metpro. He's also the guy who's worked with tons of stars and CEOs on their health. He comes here a couple times a year. One of those visits, he always shares best practices for year end. And you know the time when we're all beefing up to begin a new year to make sure that that workout routine is a challenge. And then the other time in about now, he comes and he answers your question. So we took a bunch of questions in mom's basement. Our Facebook group, stacky benjamin.com basement if you'd like to join there. We're going to hear from Angelo in just a moment. But before we get to Angelo, we have a couple sponsors that make sure that you have to pay for any of this goodness. So let's hear from them and then let's get your diet and exercise program working so that all that money we're going to help you put in your pocket you can actually use on some fun Angelo Poly coming up next. This message is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. May is Military Appreciation Month, and we're celebrating the military community that goes above and beyond every day with Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal was created for the military community. It is dedicated to ensuring that its members feel celebrated and honored every single day. For over 90 years, Navy Federal's mission has been to support and uplift the military community. And this May is no different. It's not just a credit union. It's also a partner dedicated to helping its members achieve their financial goals. All active duty veterans and members of the military families are eligible to join. Navy Federal is excited to celebrate Military Appreciation Month as a special time to recognize our troops and the profound contributions that they make. Learn more@navy federal.org Celebrate Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by ncua. Today's show is sponsored by Strawberry Me Stackers. All right, everybody, let's talk careers. You know, you work hard, you bring in a paycheck, maybe even contribute to your 401k. Like a responsible adult gold star for you. But here's the thing. Making money is great, but making the right move to actually grow your career and earn more, Are you doing that because, let's be honest, hoping your boss finally notices you and hands you a raise. That is not a plan. That is a gamble. And unless you're the type of person who gets excited about betting their retirement on meme stocks, you probably want a better strategy. I certainly do. I have a coach, Mary Lou, that I meet with every Monday morning. And Mary Lou and I lay out my week. We talk about doing the things that are important to my family, that are important for my health, and the things that are important for financial literacy and stacking Benjamins and the intersection of all those things. And that's where Strawberry Me career coaching can help you. They'll match you with a certified career coach. Somebody knows how to help you get ahead. Like, my coach helps me negotiate better pay and actually make smart money moves. So you're not leaving money on the table. You've heard me talk about this before. The key is to have people around you, smart people around you who hold you accountable to getting those things you say that you want for yourself. If you're anything like me, you've been meaning to, quote, update your resume for like the last five years. I remember what Mary Lou said. Are we going to keep talking about this book? Are you finally going to write it? And I'm very proud of stacked. But without Marie Lou, I would have never had stacked. Your career is your biggest financial asset. It's time to start treating in that way. When I started treating it that way, things change. It can be the same for you. So here's the deal. Go to Strawberry Me. It's Strawberry Me stacking, and you'll claim your $50 credit. That's Strawberry Me stacking. Because maximizing your earnings is just as important as maximizing your investments. Strawberry Me does not facilitate or provide healthcare services. Please consult with a health care professional. But, guys, let's get smart people around us, shall we?

Harley (10:37)

The thrill of the financial markets clicking the order on another day trading win introducing the perfect Coffee for that perfect moment when you've just nailed an upside down candlestick. All in move. Or that glorious time as the sun's coming up and you've pushed through the nighttime hours trading Tokyo, Hong Kong, French, Frankfurt and London exchanges and you just barely eked out that option harness that saved your ass before your 2450 call expired. What's the perfect coffee for that moment? Pour yourself some I Got Lucky Again brew. Imagine delicious trades and a fantastic taste. Sure, you might not slowly because that caffeine combines beautifully with your betting the farm lifestyle, but heck, it's nearly worth it because you found the perfect fix to keep you motoring. Staring at that monitor, waiting to squeeze out another quarter point on the VIX every time I push the button.

Joe Saul-Sehy (11:42)

On another Wisdom Tree Coffee 3x Daily Leveraged out of the money option, I sip on my I Got Lucky Again.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (11:49)

Brew and think I got lucky again.

OG (11:53)

I haven't gotten lucky in weeks, but I'm still up all night trading.

Joe Saul-Sehy (11:57)

Are you coming to bed? Be there in a couple hours, honey. That doesn't stop me from drinking a.

OG (12:03)

Cup or three of I Got Lucky Again coffee.

Harley (12:08)

Sure, coffee won't make you millions, but you'll feel like a million while you drink I Got Lucky Again Brew available now.

Joe Saul-Sehy (12:20)

Well, I'm super happy he's here to help us get in shape for beach season. It is nearly summertime as springs springing all over America. Angelo police back. How are you, man?

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (12:32)

I am doing great, Joe. Thanks for having me back on the show.

Joe Saul-Sehy (12:35)

You and I know we should be focusing on diet and exercise our entire life, but this time of year, everybody's looking to get in shape. Angelo, like, also, they're like, oh, the.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (12:44)

Sweaters come off this time of year. That's why we're reminded I might want.

Joe Saul-Sehy (12:49)

To do something about this now. Well, what's super cool is that our stackers have asked a bunch of questions and we're just gonna hit them quick, guys. So Brent says, what are some diet tips or foods to focus on for a person who has elevated blood pressure? Obviously. And we'll start with this. Angelo's not a doctor. Make sure that you're talking to your doctor first. But you've got the right guy here to supplement that stuff in Angelo. He says, not quite over the threshold to be diagnosed with high blood pressure, but was told is just below that point. I understand exercise gonna play a role, so I'm looking mostly for dietary advice. I'm not great in the kitchen and I genuinely hate grocery shopping. I'm A get in and get out as quick as possible person when it comes to grocery shopping. Lol. Thanks for that, Brent, man, what do you think?

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (13:37)

All right, Brent. Well, like you said, you know, I get to stay in my lane because when it comes to medical scenarios, there are details that you don't want to be taking advice from the guy on the radio. You want to be taking advice from your doctor who's medically trained and has your details that I don't have. With that said, let me kind of lean into the lifestyle aspect of it because there's the stuff that everybody's heard for blood pressure and that is avoid junk food, manage sodium levels, don't overdo on salt. Alcohol obviously is a big one as far as when it comes to blood pressure. But Brent, you already know those because you've heard them a thousand times. So let me tell you, the more subtle wins that I hear from my, my clients who express, hey, my blood pressure is getting better, all markers of my health are improving because I've been consistent with clean foods and exercise. And, and I'm going to tell you that the key ingredient here is the consistent part. It's so hard to get. We get on a kick usually when we get our blood work back or we come back from the doctor or something like that pops up and all of a sudden we're Mr. Health for five days. So my recommendation, Brent, is might actually surprise you. It's going to be pick the low hanging fruit, so to speak, and stick with it. Do something you can do ongoing. And I'm going to give you a couple ideas of what that can be. First thing is you want to have some sort of aerobic activity in your life on a consistent basis. A lot of guys will ask me, well, you know, I go to the gym different times and I really hit it hard when I'm there and I tell them, I don't care. Here's what I actually want. That's great if that's you and you can be consistent with that. But here's what I actually want. I want something for 15 minutes that you can reproduce almost daily. If you can't do that, I'll take five minutes. And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, five minutes, that's nonsense. What can I really accomplish in five minutes? You can accomplish installing a habit into your daily routine that you can convert into something bigger over time. But if you don't start with just five minutes or start with something simple that you can reproduce on a daily or near daily Basis. It is so hard to get to that next step. So start slow, create habit and routine. Brent, on the food end, I would say manage the big ones, you know, the alcohol, things like that. You really do want to, if you're looking at blood pressure, you want to be careful about those things. But focus on good things that you like to eat. And I know you don't want to go and cook something different every day. So what is clean and healthy? Talk to your doctor about this and you're going to go to him, you're going to say, here's some foods that I like. He's going to know your health profile and he's going to say, yes, this is great. Stay away from that. Have more of this. Come back with those foods. And what I want you to do is I want you to come up with lunches and a couple snacks where you say, I like these foods. I could see myself eating this fairly consistently. And I'll even give you one more step into that direction. Brent. Write out yourself two or three lunches you feel like you could do consistently. And then when you go to the grocery store, shop for those ingredients and cook in bulk. Don't cook one meal at a time, you won't be able to be consistent with that. But cook those clean, healthy meals in bulk. So you have lunches for at least three or four days in a row. Combine a couple healthy foods, think like fruits, nuts, things like that. Gonna be great for almost any scenario. Fruits and vegetables are never the wrong answer, right? So they're gonna be great for almost any scenario. Come up with a few good snacks and then prepare in a way that you can eat those meals cleanly. And when I say cleanly, literally not messy. They need to be low, perishable, not a big cleanup involved. They need to be quick, they need to be convenient. Bring those with you on a day to day basis and just have for most days of the week a clean lunch and one or two healthy snacks already prepared. That's going to be 90% of the battle. Outside of the big items you already.

Joe Saul-Sehy (18:09)

Know about, there's obviously I don't know what I'm doing, but I do know what I've been told to do by Jesse, my Met pro coach, and Brent. I will tell you the cool thing about my diet. Trying to follow through on the stuff that Angelo's talking about right now has allowed me at the grocery store to get in and get out. Because I've identified those few foods that I want. I know where they are. I get them the same stuff over and over and over. I'm always looking at my diet. It's funny. The honeycrisp apple is my go to snack food. I love that. Grapes are a nice side. Blueberry sometimes a nice side. I know the nuts that are part of my diet. I know exactly where those are. So it's from one fellow get in and get outer to another. This idea of bulk buying and bulk making your foods makes the grocery store super easy. It just, it made it so easy, Angelo, because now it is a habit. I just go boom, boom, boom. I'm, I'm gone.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (19:04)

I'll tell you, kind of a real, a real short but funny story. When I first was traveling and doing the speaking circuit and giving seminars on metabolism and weight loss and all those topics, by the way, if weight loss is a factor for you, then there's absolutely direct methods and these play into that because that can of course help with blood pressure and all these things as well. I would say to the group, I had this question, I would ask them and I'd say, raise your hand and tell me about different diet approaches that you guys feel in this group work well. And then I would just spout whatever was common for the time, you know, plant based or doing, you know, vegan or doing paleo or keto or calorie counting or, you know, whatever the the in vogue at the time was. And I would get, you know, people to raise their hand, say, you think this works? You think that works? I said, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to think about this meal approach that has worked best for you. And I want to ask you an honest question. Do you think if you go home tomorrow and try and do that, it will work better than if I just give you one rule? Here's the rule. You can eat anything you want, but you have to prepare it the day before. Everyone unanimously stops and says, well, yeah, if I prepared my meals in advance, that would have a bigger impact on whether it's a weight loss goal or a health goal or a fitness goal than any other blanket strategy out there, underscoring how important the strategy and behaviors are when we're looking for a transformation.

Joe Saul-Sehy (20:42)

That is so funny. Well, and I'm thinking about all the stuff that you've never emphasized being here on the show, which is just the. I'm prepping when I'm not hungry. I'm prepping with my brain and not my taste buds. So I'm prepping based on a knowledge base, not based on, oh, man smells like burritos, you know, that's it. That's wild. He also asks about sleep. Then he said, how much effect does sleep have on blood pressure? Currently work full time on third shift and a full time student in the morning. So sleep's usually consistent. But I can have those bad sleep days from time to time. Let's just talk. Let's even get rid of the blood pressure piece. Let's talk about Angelo sleep in general.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (21:20)

Well, you already know the answer to this. I'm not going to shock anyone. So there is literally no biological function that is not directly and profoundly impacted by sleep. If you're not getting enough sleep, it's going to have a negative impact across the board. So sleep is to be jealously guarded. Now, I say that somewhat ironically. I am an insomniac. That is my number one challenge when it comes to my own health. I battled it for years. It has forced me to focus on it, to focus on behaviors and strategies that don't, you know, shoot myself in the foot when it comes to sleep, since I already struggle in that department. But I can tell you across the board, when I am having a bout of insomnia and I'm not getting enough sleep, my concentration is off. I can see the difference in my body composition, my muscle tone, my motivation, my energy. And studies have shown and I can confirm appetite and willpower. They all suffer when you're not getting enough sleep. Sleep needs to be the foundation. And again, I'm not telling you anything you haven't heard before. I'm just saying it as the guy in the trenches who dieted about 20,000 people over my career, that, yeah, it's not just a stat, it's a real thing. Sleep is important.

Joe Saul-Sehy (22:47)

It was so funny. I was listening to one of the podcasts out there. I think Dr. Peter Attia or something. The place I think that guy's brilliant is in his framing because he'll get done with a topic. Angelo. And I'll get done. I'm like, wow, that was really good. And I'm like, wait a minute. He just said that alcohol sucks and it doesn't help you and you're excited. Everything Peter Atia tells me, I already do. But he's so good at framing it. Which you are. You're very good at framing it as well. Absolutely. Which is why we love having you here. Jennifer asks what is better, consistently maintaining a low impact exercise program or periodically managing a high impact program that historically only lasts for short periods of time?

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (23:29)

Jennifer. So the answer is both. It really depends on your goal. Now I'm going to give a blanket statement. Assuming we are talking about healthy people who are at a, at least semi advanced level and there's no other mitigating or conditions or things that would create risk. If there's no risk involved, the greater the intensity, the greater the corresponding adaptive process. I know that's not a popular thing to say right now, but being in the gym for years and years with thousands of clients, you absolutely see a greater return on investment when intensity is involved. Now here's the caveat and here's where you get all the low intensity, low impact. The caveat is this. If you cross the threshold to where the intensity that you're trying to achieve is actually causing you to struggle to recover, miss workouts, worse still, become injured in some way, then you are always better with lower intensity. The reason that I am a fan of low intensity is because what trumps all of these factors is, is consistency. You know, the people we're going to do this knockout drag out boot camp session for an hour and a half doesn't impress me. If you can't repeat it, give me just a few minutes each day that you can sustain and then add one of those peaks, one of those spikes in your routine. So I would encourage as a general, without knowing your specific details, Jennifer, your base routine to be moderate intensity, consistent and as your body tolerates, look to add a few days a week where you have a little bit of that spike in intensity and get the best of both worlds.

Joe Saul-Sehy (25:22)

Which is why you'll see a lot of people that are really good at this. Like Wednesday's their intense day or Tuesday's their intense day. Is that the reason why. So they built inconsistency.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (25:32)

That's it. In fact we did. When I was writing a white paper for our company, we were reviewing, oh just ad nauseam, study after study and I recall coming across basically the paperwork on all the different modalities of training and across the board. When you had like that high intensity interval training style approach across the board, the results outpaced nearly everything else. But it came with a very significant caveat or asterisk and that is most participants, unless at an advanced level, could not sustain true high interval training. I'm not talking about varied intensible where you're doing 60 seconds a little harder, 60 seconds a little less. But a true scenario where it's a all out, everything you can give, sprint or push, whatever you're doing, followed by a brief recovery period. You have to be A beast to sustain that. If someone says, yeah, I did hit training for an hour, they didn't do hit training, they did varied intensity training.

Joe Saul-Sehy (26:41)

There's no way you'll last an hour.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (26:42)

No, you throw up at 12 minutes if you're doing true hit training. Right. So that's the caveat. Just understanding that a lot of it is degree. So when you can add some of that high intensity work, there are profound adaptive responses that take place in your body and it's great if you can tolerate a measure of it, but it's not going to be your foundation, your bread and butter for the vast majority of us mere mortals.

Joe Saul-Sehy (27:08)

I love the overlap there between Brent's answer about food and Jennifer's answer about exercise. Consistency trumps everything.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (27:16)

That's it. Absolutely.

Joe Saul-Sehy (27:18)

James has a question for us. How do you feel about the new over the counter continuous glucose monitors? He wonders if it's a good way to drive behavior and glean insight.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (27:28)

Great question. So I'm actually really excited about where the technology is going. I don't know how I feel about what's on the market yet, but I'm confident we're going to get there. The tech is getting better and better, the science is getting better and better. And so where will it be used? Well, anytime you get an immediate feedback mechanic at NetPro us coach, we're the feedback mechanic. We get to see, here's what you ate, here's the result and that's a feedback mechanic. But I love the idea of being able to add to that real time. Yeah, I probably didn't need to eat that third dinner roll with the steak and and veggies because now look here, I could see how my body's responding. So I think there will absolutely be a place for it. I think it will drive behaviors for people who are just dabbling in it. I'll be interested to see application for higher level of athletics. I'm not sure it's going to revolutionize that scene yet. That will be. We'll have to wait and see. But for the average user, I think that that's going to be something that will be incorporated more and more in the future and I'm actually very interested to see how it develops.

Joe Saul-Sehy (28:45)

I'm going to ask you the hot question that we answered back when you're with us in December, but it's going to be on everybody's mind if I don't ask it. The Ozempics.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (28:54)

Yeah.

Joe Saul-Sehy (28:54)

What do you think about the Ozempics?

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (28:58)

It's like anything. It's a tool. And the problem is if somebody, okay, I want to look, mow my lawn. So what's someone going to do? Well, I say, well, what did you do today? I bought a lawnmower. Why? Because I wanted to buy a lawnmower. No, you buy a lawnmower to mow your lawn. So if you're using a medication to aid you in achieving something, but the goal is to achieve something and you're going to do all the things in preparation for that. I'm going to put gas in the tank, I'm going to put on my outdoor work outfit, I'm going to get the sunscreen out, I'm going to go outside and I'm going to mow the lawn. You're going to do all those things, you're going to end up with a very nice looking lawn. Now if you just go and purchase the lawnmower and it's sitting there in your garage shiny and new, all you're doing is taking a medication. It's a tool along the way. It's not the ends of itself. That said, it's absolutely having an impact for some people. People ask me, will your, do your clients take Ozempic or any of the semi glutides? And some do. It just depends. Now it's interesting. Would I start someone there? Would I say, hey, you should consider this? Not typically, that's not typically where I start. But I have no problem if somebody finds they're getting some benefit out of it. But at the end of the day, it is not going to do any of the lifting for you. So my sport of choice as a young man, I love powerlifting when you power lift.

Joe Saul-Sehy (30:30)

I couldn't tell by those guns. I could. I had no idea you like powerlifting.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (30:34)

The when you put on the bench press shirt, it's like magic. Now all of a sudden I can lift an extra 50, 70 pounds. And people say, well, the shirt's lifting that for you. I said, well, you put the shirt on the bench and see how much it lifts. The shirt's not lifting it, it's a tool that's allowing you. So with that illustration, if you're going to take any medication, oh, by the way, this medication isn't the first nor will it be the last. There have been weight loss medications out there, some that have worked well, some that I didn't care for in the past. They all fall under this classification. This is just the latest, hottest thing. I do believe this one will be here to stay a bit longer and I do believe this one may have a little more impact, but at the end of the day, it's what you eat and your lifestyle. And if we don't fix those two things, this is just going to be one more frustrating blip on the way. We're going to be right back where we started. It's key that it's understood where it falls in the lineup of relevancy, but I am neither for nor against it. What I want is people to understand what it is and what it is and what the main point is.

Joe Saul-Sehy (31:52)

I love how that view aligns so much with my doctor, who's a friend of mine, and I asked him about this and he said the same thing. He's like, listen, at the end of the day, it's about habit and behavior. If you have the habit and behavior, this can help make that signal of man, I'm hungry, go down a bit so that those habits and behaviors are even more effective. But he goes, well, what really bothers him is when he's put people on it and there is no habit behavior and they lose some way. And you know what happens, Angelo? The second they're off it, they balloon. And it's actually even worse in some cases than it was before they were on it.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (32:26)

Well, it's just like anything where you're implementing an approach, so I don't want to get too much in the weeds, but if we talk about, for example, when we take somebody on at MetPro, the very first thing we do is we identify based on their goal. Are they a metabolic client or are they a behavioral client? I'll give you kind of a peek behind the curtain of what that means internally as a coaching organization. So to us, that means that either A, they have. I'm just using weight loss because that's the most common thing people will reach out to us for. They are not at the weight they want to be because a their behavior, lifestyle choices, food choices, is a roadblock. It's preventing them. Those need to change. You'd be surprised, though. There are a lot of clients that come to us and when they tell us what they're eating, they're eating very clean, they're eating very good. There's not a whole lot of proverbial fat to trim there. They're a metabolic client. In other words, they're at the point where the reason they're not at their goal weight is because their metabolic rate is running slower. So it's so critical to identify what category we fall into, because what tends to happen without guidance is you could Take and. And this is separate from semiglutides. This is any appetite suppressant medication. And what tends to happen is people don't just eat a little less at each meal. They tend to simply eat less often. And that's not the goal if we're trying to force our metabolic rate up. So that's where the guidance is critical and where some of these medications can be useful. But do it with the proper guidance on the most meaningful pieces, which is going to be the nutrition and your.

Joe Saul-Sehy (34:17)

Lifestyle point, the emphasis on metabolism. Angelo, as you know, our audience may not know, I hurt my foot. And when I hurt my foot, just in all the data that Jesse and I are sharing about my journey, man, the second I hurt my foot and I couldn't do as much cardio, I thought until talking to you and Jesse, we said, hey, there's ways to stay off that foot and still get the cardio, man, we're sleepy like that. But I hit this metabolic wall. To your point, it is a combination of both. It was the full thing. It wasn't just diet or exercise. It was the whole program that was really important to work in tandem with each other. And when you slowed my metabolism down and even with MetPro, I've got this diet routine that I'm used to. All of a sudden I just skidded to a stop because all of a sudden the metabolism is just on a different level. So then Jesse's, you know, trying to get it revving and revving it back up, and y. We discover all kinds of cardio stuff. I can do without the. Without being on my foot. It is so important. I'm gonna. I'm gonna take the last two questions from Ron and John. By the way, thank you Stackers for all your questions. Every time we ask Angelo these because they're so good, Ron asks he'd like some insight on the Carnivore diet. He was six months on just eating meat, eggs and cheese. Enjoyed it very much. Had great results. He said he weight trains at least five days a week. He drinks an electrolyte powder mix but cannot stave off cramps. What's your opinion? But then I want to add to it because we've had questions like this in the past. So the Carnivore diet's one type of diet. John is going to ask about another type of diet. He says, I'd like to hear your thoughts on intermittent fasting. So both these guys have diets that they want to know about. Just your thought about these different diets in general. And then Maybe more on Ron with the cramping or.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (36:00)

I don't know, I'm going to be a little not brash, but I'm just going to be blunt. There's nothing wrong with any diet. They all have an impact. What my pet peeve is, is people blindly following a nutritional protocol, having no understanding of the influence it exerts on their body. So here's what I mean by that. The carnivore diet, paleo diet, the ketogenic diet. These are all the Atkins diet. They're the Atkins. It's the same diet. Repackaged. The Atkins diet is the same diet. That was a diet all the way back in the 1920s. Yeah, it was this like, like fisherman guy that, that observed a native tribe. I want to say it was either Alaska or something like that, where they would just eat Alaska or was it Australia? Don't get hung up on the details, but he observed these people eating essentially whale blubber as a mainstay of their diet and found that, wow, these people actually lost a lot of weight and whale blubber has really high fat content. And so this has been a thing for over 100 years that just keeps getting repackaged and repackaged and repackaged. Here's what I wish someone would just say. What you're going to do is you're going to push your body to a greater or lesser degree towards ketosis. Maybe not all the way into a ketogenic state, but by removing carbohydrates, your body is going to be forced to convert, convert lipids and some proteins, ketones, the whole nine yards into fuel instead, because there isn't enough, essentially, sugar present. That's good because it forces your body to burn a little more fat. Bad because you can end up with electrolyte imbalances. Potassium levels are off, Cramping can ensue, hydration issues, because each gram of glucose, that's sugar in your muscle and livers is stored with 3 grams of water. When you no longer have that glucose, you no longer have that water buffer, which results in cramping and all of these side effects. And, oh, by the way, when you eat less carbohydrates, your body gets hypersensitive to carbohydrates. People don't bring that stuff up. But that's absolutely the case. Most people don't know. Pro athletes doing a professional level carb loading cycle actually decrease their carbs for 24 to 48 hours before loading because it hypersensitizes their system.

Joe Saul-Sehy (38:24)

Hit it harder.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (38:25)

Yeah. To carb uptake. So there's absolutely science behind low carb dieting, but it's not necessarily a one size fits all. This works perfect for everyone. At MetPro, we use low carb dieting, but we use it as a tool. We're going to bust through, we're going to reduce carbs temporarily. My goal, unless there is some secondary reason why we should do otherwise, is always to get that person reintroduced to more carbohydrates. Because I really am less interested in what someone's body weight is. Eating nothing but chicken breast and protein shakes all day long. I want to see what I can get their body weight to. Eating a balanced, performance oriented meal plan that they're going to enjoy and is going to feel good for them the rest of their life. So it's not that there isn't science with there and it's not that I don't use them even with my clients. It's understand the biology of what's happening when we implement a particular strategy. Now, the intermittent fasting, I'm going to stay in my same ill tempered mood for it absolutely is scientific, but unfortunately people don't tell you what it is. And I'm going to be super honest and just super real with you. There are two categories. I'm not talking about this for use for medical purposes. There are some people that will fast and there are medical implications digestively, blood sugar wise, et cetera. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the 98.5% that say they just want to kind of cleanse themselves. But really what they want is weight loss. They just want to lose weight, so they're doing intermittent fasting. So it falls under two categories. Who benefits from intermittent fasting? Well, if you're one of those guys that eats junk food for breakfast, junk food for lunch and junk food for dinner, and you quit eating any food for breakfast. Now you're just eating junk food two out of three meals instead of three out of three. You're gonna definitely see some benefit for a lot of the population. And I'm, you know, I'm just speaking candidly and I know this is not everyone's experience, but unfortunately, fortunately this has been my experience. This has become a socially acceptable way for some individuals to justify ultra low calorie dieting without saying that, because I can't. Oh, I'm going on a 700 calorie a day diet. You should try this. Ladies. This is the greatest thing ever. You can't say that. Everyone looks at you what's wrong with you? That's no good for your health. But if I just say, oh, well, I'm just doing intermittent fasting, that becomes a socially acceptable way of drastic calorie restriction. That's not for the guy that's eating junk food, lunch, dinner. Maybe you're listening, going, that's not how I do it. That's great. But there is a demographic out there where that's how they're applying it. Do they lose weight? Yes. Because 800 calories results in weight loss. It also results in a host of negative consequences. And it comes back to the same excuse in the same conversation about the ketogenic style diets is, I'm not interested. And the weight you can achieve with a gimmick that allows us to eat hyper, hyper restrictive caloric or zero carbs. I want to see my clients get to a weight and a body composition they love while eating like a normal.

Joe Saul-Sehy (41:47)

Person, and they understand why they got there. I think that's the big thing that you've emphasized today, Angelo, because I, I get exactly why I'm here. I'm not following a plan. I'm creating the thing that works for me and my biology. I'm actually listening to my body and my body's reaction. I'm responding.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (42:05)

Yeah, that's it.

Joe Saul-Sehy (42:06)

Oh, if only there were a community of people that were working on this together, like professionals in this area that could help us. That would be so nice.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (42:16)

Come on down. This is where I think you're inviting me for the shameless plug. We would love to visit with you if you go to MetPro Co SB and you know, I'll give you a passionate invitation. Come and talk to someone if you've been struggling with. I have a specific goal. Come and talk to someone where it would be different than this conversation that Joe and I are having. Because in this conversation, what I have is kind of just this nebulous voice in the crowd asking a generalized question where I don't have any context. Come and give us context. What we want to hear is tell us your health and fitness culture, your history, your body composition goals, performance goals, weight goals, what you're currently doing and what you've done in the past. And then what we can do is we can share with you. Here are thousands of others that have had a similar story. Here's what we have found to be the most effective protocols for them long term, not just quick fix, but sustainably. And we love talking with people. So please, please come on out, visit with us. We love talking with people, it's what we're passionate about.

Joe Saul-Sehy (43:25)

Yeah. The reason Angelo's here with us is because there's no. When I did it, there was no. And everybody that I've sent there, there's never a high pressure sales pitch, number one. Number two is I learned so much during that first meeting. And I don't know if it's changed Angelo from when, and it probably has changed some, but when I went through it, I learned so much about how my body's different than other people and about why some of the things I was trying wasn't working was because specifically it didn't apply to my body. And even if I hadn't started working with Jesse, my coach at that time, I still would have walked away from that meeting knowing a better approach. Like they told me ahead of time, here's what we would do. We would do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. And then you decide whether working with metpros for you or not. But at the very least, I felt really educated.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (44:12)

Thank you, Joe. That, that's our passion. And this is really what we've been doing for the last almost 20 years, is, you know, we know, we go to the doctor. You see those charts on the wall that, you know, BMI charts and height, weight that say, you know, if you're this size of person, you burn this many calories a day. The entire industry, including the medical industry, knows that is rubbish. But everyone looks at each other and goes, well, we don't have anything better, so we're leaving the chart on the wall. There's a way to identify exactly, exactly where your metabolic rate is at, where your body is at, and then actually have an intelligent structure to. Okay, that means this approach will likely have the most impact for you or taking this strategy or this route. And that's what we love doing with our clients.

Joe Saul-Sehy (45:02)

MetPro co. Not.com. it's MetPro co. SL, SB. And yeah, when you go, write me and let me know how it went because I love to hear success stories. Angelo, speaking of success stories, thanks for being successful again, man. Our mentor as we usher in summer.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (45:20)

Thanks a million for having me, Joe.

OG (45:26)

Hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and there's no way April is just about over. Seriously. Come on, where's the year gone? Speaking of racing one, one guy who was known for fast cars and making tons of Benjamins was born today. Ferricio Lamborghini. I'm confident that's how you say, I'm.

Joe Saul-Sehy (45:46)

Sure That's exactly how he pronounces it.

OG (45:49)

There's so many double letters.

Joe Saul-Sehy (45:50)

I think it's Lamborghini. Well, and then there's an H in there first name.

OG (45:54)

I mean, Italians just throw like ch sounds in there where they don't belong. Anyway, that guy would be a spry 109 years old to, you know, like if you were still alive even before Lamborghini. Another racing event happened in 1887 on today's day. It was the first car race in 1887. Hey, Joe, what was it like? Tell me all about it. I mean, like, what does it smell like, what it sound like?

Joe Saul-Sehy (46:19)

Nope.

OG (46:20)

Huh, Missed that one. You're still riding your ride your buggy. Easy. Couldn't get the buggy there.

Joe Saul-Sehy (46:26)

Keep moving.

OG (46:26)

Okay, Bon.

Joe Saul-Sehy (46:27)

Seriously.

OG (46:27)

The racer was won by French engineer and I'm going to say this right, Georges Bouton. Here's today's question. Who finished dead last in that race? I'll be back with an answer you should have seen coming. As soon as I race upstairs to see if Joe's mom will change her will to say that I get the Harley.

Joe's Mom (46:51)

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Doug (48:03)

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Progressive loves to help People make smart choices. That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer that allows you to compare your Progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies. So you save time on the research and can enjoy saving savings when you choose the best rate for you. Give it a try after this episode@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.

Joe Saul-Sehy (48:45)

As a contractor, I don't pay for materials I don't use, so why would.

Angelo Poli (48:49)

I pay for stuff I don't need in my mobile plan?

Joe Saul-Sehy (48:52)

That's why the new my bizarre plan from Verizon Business is so perfect. Now I can choose exactly what I.

Austin (48:57)

Want and I only pay for what.

Angelo Poli (48:59)

I need right now with my biz plan. Get our best price as low as $25 a line. Visit verizon.com business to get started today. Price per month with five plus lines includes auto pay and paper free billing and special intro offer discounts, taxes, fees, economic adjustment charge and terms apply. Offers end June 10, 2025.

OG (49:20)

Hey there, stackers. I'm Harley, lover and guy who's ready to dispute the will. Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. Well, apparently just because Joe's quote, family and also quote my kid, he's gonna get Joe's mom's Harley at some point. She did mention she'd sell it, but I mean, who wants to negotiate with that shark? Not this guy. I'll just be happy dishing out the world's best trivia. Like today's question on today's date. Back in 1886 when the first car race was won by Georges practically French, who who finished dead last in the race to Georges, that would be Georges Bhutan himself because there was only one car entered. How did they get away calling that a race? Who was he racing? A squirrel. And now back to two guys racing back to the microphones. Joe. N o g, isn't it?

Joe Saul-Sehy (50:19)

By definition, I just.

Angelo Poli (50:22)

I win.

Joe Saul-Sehy (50:22)

I need some clarification. You probably need two people to call it a race, don't you?

Angelo Poli (50:27)

I would think so.

OG (50:28)

Yeah, I agree. But the Internet apparently disagrees.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (50:32)

And.

Joe Saul-Sehy (50:33)

And he probably got a participation medal too.

OG (50:37)

And those little cut up oranges. When he was done, his parents came.

Joe Saul-Sehy (50:40)

By and gave him a medal.

Angelo Poli (50:42)

Got a big old medal.

Joe Saul-Sehy (50:43)

It's okay. You finished last. It's all right. Or the grandparent who's kind of passive aggressive about everything. Oh, you finished last, huh? It's okay. It's all right. Let's move on to our headline. Hello, darlings.

Doug (50:57)

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

Joe Saul-Sehy (51:02)

Today's headline comes to us from investment news. This is an industry rag for financial advisors, financial planners, and you kind of get to see what's going on on the other side of the table. This is written specifically for the other side of the table. Advisors discussed the best ways to grow assets under management during an economic downturn.

Angelo Poli (51:23)

Annuity sales.

Joe Saul-Sehy (51:25)

Well, I did find this interesting because infomercials, this is the time, as you know. Do you remember. Oh, gee, what? In 2007, 2008, we saw half, half of the people that had any type of advisory license went bye bye. During that crisis. They lost their client base. Everybody saw that they weren't doing anything for them. And so they, they, they went away. It washed a bunch of people out. And now you got a bunch of crappy advisors again running scared that you know what, assets are down and so our job might be going down.

Angelo Poli (52:03)

You think that advisors got washed out because clients left?

Joe Saul-Sehy (52:07)

I think assets went and they couldn't afford to pay the bills anymore.

Angelo Poli (52:12)

Assets didn't go anywhere, they went down. Right. And there was no mechanism to, you know, the advisors that didn't have a business and that were just relying on whatever they could sell that moment didn't have anything to sell.

Joe Saul-Sehy (52:26)

Okay, let's ask you then, why do you think they went bye bye?

Angelo Poli (52:29)

That's why I think that there's professional firms who treat this as a profession like you would a law business or a accounting firm or something. And there's a lot of pieces to that. One of those pieces is you need to have somewhat of a recurring mechanism for generating new business. And if you don't have that, then eventually the business dries up. Especially when, in fact. Although I would think times like this are a good time to reach out to people because there's a lot of chaos and there's a little bit less confidence. The market's up 25%. Everybody's a genius. It's just, oh, this is easy VTI and chill. You know, I think it's harder if.

Joe Saul-Sehy (53:09)

You'Re a good advisor to convince people that, you know what, Good times.

Angelo Poli (53:13)

Yeah.

Joe Saul-Sehy (53:14)

You need a comprehensive game plan.

Angelo Poli (53:16)

Well, the harder part. Sorry, Doug. The harder part is being okay with the fact that, well, hey, the S and p was up 25% last year. How come I was only up 15? It's like, well, because you have diversification, you have some international positions and small companies and they don't all work like the 500 biggest companies in the world, but then the trade off is what you're experiencing right now. You know, the S P is down a whole bunch, but international's doing okay.

OG (53:40)

I would think this is analogous to a lot of different industries. I'm thinking real estate as one of them, and the mortgage industry. I mean, when things are going gangbusters, anybody, you know, people want to jump in. Oh, people have lots of money. Right now, I'm on a. You know. But the serious businesses, to your point a second ago, OG they know how to weather this. But real estate agents drop like flies as soon as the market takes a dip. And that's all of the people who got in because, hey, I just retired and I think I can get into this business. Business, they realize it's harder than this.

Joe Saul-Sehy (54:10)

Yeah, but isn't real estate, though, Doug, a little bit different? Because when you look at real estate markets, when real estate markets go south, everybody freezes. I mean, you don't see a lot of transactions happening. And that's the only time when a real estate agent gets paid. So it's tough to find people that want to move when they think they're walking into a trap.

OG (54:28)

Well, I guess I was using it as a. I drew a correlation between that and what OG said, where, you know, right now the people who are running a serious advisory business know this is. This is a time, you know, the revenue is down because the. The asset values themselves are down, but the assets are still there. But the people who are just kind of dabbling in being an advisor may not have those assets under management yet to.

Angelo Poli (54:54)

Yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, you're onto something here. I mean, thinking about real estate's a great example, you know, the ebbs and flows of real estate professionals and how that rises and falls depending on how the economy is. But I also think that a lot of it has to do with staying power. I look back over my career, and I started in 1999, which was almost the peak of everything, Right.

OG (55:20)

I'm going to get into this business. It's easy to make money.

Angelo Poli (55:23)

This is easy. I was one of those guys. To your point. No, I wasn't. I was 21, but. And I could fog a spoon like nobody's business. They were like, can you get this moist? And I was like, they're like, you're hired. Call these people. Also call your parents. Then in 2000, the Y2K stuff and 9, 11, and that sort of thing was an awful time. Seven years later, great recession happened and So I look back now, and I feel so fortunate as to have had a lot of those experiences early because it really hardens you against temporary market declines. And I think some of it has to do with confidence from a advisor standpoint, too. If you're an advisor and you've been an advisor for 15 years, you had the COVID thing that happened in a splash. You had 2022 that happened over the course of a year. You've never had a really long economic malaise, a big recession for an extended period of time, where the overall tenor of all of your consumers or all your clients are, this sucks and whatever. And so I think some of it is being able to communicate that and have the confidence that what you're doing is doing the right thing for clients. I think most of us get in this business not because we want to be like Gordon Gekko, but more because it's like, this is a good way for me to help people that don't know how to do this. And a lot of it was on the job training. It just is. I mean, that's true for just about any job, right? It's not just this business. Doug, you were in consulting, right? Your first consulting gig. It's not like you're like, oh, I've got all the answers. You sat in the corner, listen to some other people for a while, and then finally you kind of fashioned how you wanted to do.

OG (57:05)

You know, me at all. I didn't sit more than 30 seconds without opening my mouth.

Angelo Poli (57:09)

Yeah, well, that's true.

Joe Saul-Sehy (57:09)

Remember that advice that Doug gave last week with Lorraine Lee when he said, a lot of people in their career, OG they jump in too quick. Doug knows.

OG (57:18)

How do you think I know that?

Angelo Poli (57:19)

OG Also can't do teach.

Joe Saul-Sehy (57:21)

It's a big mistake. Big mistake.

Angelo Poli (57:24)

Yeah. So you cut your teeth on that stuff. I think if you don't have the confidence, it kind of comes through pretty quickly, right? Like, you know, if your surgeon comes in and goes, oh, boy, do we.

Joe Saul-Sehy (57:36)

Amputate or give you a Tylenol?

Angelo Poli (57:38)

You're like, what's happening? What do you mean, oh, boy? Like Dr. What's his name from the Simpsons, you know, with. When Homer was in surgery, I think a lot of those things are in play. It's not just the economic aspect of it, Joe. And there's a good chunk of that, right? There's no money to be made. Or if there's no. Certainly if there's no easy money to be made, that kind of washes out a handful of people if. If there's no system for developing new business, and that has a pretty big impact. And. And then I also think it has to do with the professional's personal experience and the confidence that he or she can have in leading people through stuff like this.

Joe Saul-Sehy (58:11)

Yeah, I think it is the confidence of the captain. I mean, we just started this project on the back of our house. It's going to go all summer, so people are going to get sick of me talking about this already. But we just gave. We just gave the first check to the builder. And I got to tell you, just the confidence and competence. This guy, we've worked with him before, is, I would say, 80% of why you hire this guy. Because everything's under control. He's seen it before. Yeah, we're going to take care of this. The first thing I'm going to do, I mean, the very first thing that he said was something I didn't even think about. He's like, the people that put this patio that we're getting rid of and we're putting this addition on. He said, I'm really worried about the concrete there. This is clearly a weekend warrior project.

Angelo Poli (58:54)

I'm not sure this is to code, sir.

Joe Saul-Sehy (58:56)

Oh, He's. He was 100% sure it wasn't. He's like.

Angelo Poli (58:59)

But he totally gave you the. The kid gloves on it. He's like, look, we're going to evaluate the structural integrity of the concrete. You know, I've got some concerns.

Joe Saul-Sehy (59:07)

He didn't say that. He's like, the concrete's all going.

Angelo Poli (59:09)

He goes, we're tearing this.

Joe Saul-Sehy (59:10)

That is correct.

Angelo Poli (59:10)

Okay, got it. Yes.

Joe Saul-Sehy (59:11)

What he said instead, though, was something I didn't know about. He's like, we got to do a soil sample. Because the problem isn't that this was a weekend warrior contract. The problem is what underneath is not going to hold. Then we have a bigger problem, and I want to know that before we start doing anything. And just the confidence that that gave.

Angelo Poli (59:28)

Me that we're knowing how to deal with the unknowns that you didn't even know were unknowns.

Joe Saul-Sehy (59:33)

Absolutely.

Angelo Poli (59:33)

It was something. Something you hadn't even considered a soil sample.

Joe Saul-Sehy (59:37)

He says recessions are second only to receiving an inheritance is a reason why people change advisors. The third, by the way, is loss of a spouse. Those are the three main reasons. This is a time OG when people doubt the captain of the ship. When you get a little bit of stress, as you've said before, this isn't nearly the stress that you could have on a portfolio. When you get A little stress on your portfolio. You start going, does this dude know where he's going? This woman have any clue what's going on?

Angelo Poli (60:06)

Well, sorry, I was just going to say. Oh, good.

OG (60:09)

Yeah.

Joe Saul-Sehy (60:09)

Well, just one last thing. Jonathan Viscount, a financial planner, says that what people value are stability. And I don't think it's stability of assets like an annuity. I think that it's stability of relationship and of the plan. They also value security. Again, I don't think it's security in the funds that they're in. And third, it's a long term plan. I know that even though there's going to be storms along the way, that I actually have a plan to get through the storm and come out the other side.

Angelo Poli (60:40)

Well, and that I think is the biggest difference here. It's when you're evaluating your outcomes in the context of an overall 30 year lifetime plan of savings and investing and income distribution and so on and so forth, you can quickly see that this stuff was already planned for. People are going, oh my gosh, what's going on with my. This was already planned for. When you see the range of returns or you see people talk about like Monte Carlo assumptions and says, I've got a 87% chance of success in my Monte Carlo, well, guess what? That's accounting for the fact that every so often this crap's going to happen. So if you're working from the basis of a financial plan, you're much more likely to have confidence in the plan and have confidence in, you know, your decision making or your team's decision making or whatever it looks like. Where we see people that don't have confidence is when all of their decision making has been around the portfolio. All of the decision is which stock should I own and how come I don't own all Nvidia, you know, and I read on Wall street bets that this is a new, you know, option strategy that I should be doing. And how come I'm not doing it on margin right now? Because I read that that's really good. And my friend's account went up 25%. I only went up 24.7. That's BS. What's going on? You know, what did I do wrong? And everything centered around the portfolio or around product. No different than somebody who works in the insurance space and all their stuff is, you know, whole life insurance or all this, you know, just like when you focus on the product, you're not likely to get a good outcome because it's not in conjunction with the plan. The portfolio Serves your plan. And when you start with, here's what my goal is and here's how you know how much I have to save and do those sorts of things up front, you can back into what does my portfolio have to do for me to reach my goals. Then you build in those assets and you say, okay, over a 80 year time horizon. I mean, we almost have a hundred years of really solid data at this point. Over 80 years of ups and downs and all sorts of turmoil across the globe. These are the types of assets that largely get me to my goal. There's nothing to even worry about right now.

OG (62:48)

Yeah. You know, I had a friend call me the other day whose daughter is looking to get an advisor and said, do you know anybody? And I had to think long and hard, like who could I call me back in 20 minutes, I'll think of somebody was what I said. But we're talking through some things. And he said, so, you know, the market was up x last year. Is that where you are with your guy? And I'm like, well, no, but that's not really how it works. And what really struck me about that is it's, it's no different than following the media on pick a topic. The headlines that jump out at you are rarely applicable to you in or to everybody in exactly the same way. So we, I had to walk him through like this was my time horizon and these were my goals for my own retirement and took him through all of that stuff. And so no, my portfolio reacted a little bit differently than your daughter's might or than yours will because I worked through a plan with my advisor and that was tough for him to wrap his brain around. He just assumed, well, you should be doing at least as well. If not if you're paying somebody, you need to be doing better than the market always. And that that was a really hard thing for him to wrap his head around.

Joe Saul-Sehy (64:01)

Yeah. Understanding the fact that this is all meant to dovetail and beginning with the end of minus about not making mistakes, I think it's a difficult place. I'm glad that you went there though, Doug, because I think during this time, oh gee, if somebody in our stacker land is worried right now, I think there's three different types of people that they can look to. The first one is you're going to walk into some offices. Are you going to have some, some advisers that you'll talk to that are going to sell the crap out of fear? They're going to sell you the fear. But. The fear, but advisers that's all the.

Angelo Poli (64:36)

Stuff that's on the news right now. Right. It's. Gold is a perfect inflation hedge. It's not. But okay.

Joe Saul-Sehy (64:43)

Yeah. And those people, you know, our friend Roger Whitney said it and I love this line. If they lead with product and not with process, if it's fear and I've got a product that solves that, you need to go running.

OG (64:57)

Are you saying I shouldn't have bought those commemorative gold coins I saw the ad for?

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:01)

I think those will work out just fine.

Angelo Poli (65:03)

They're fantastic.

OG (65:04)

Let me buy 17 of them. But I thought that's a good start.

Angelo Poli (65:07)

They're fantastic. It's not going to do. I know you're tongue in cheek. They're not going to do what they say they're going to do. It's no different than the annuity salespeople on TV that say protect your downside and get market like returns.

Joe's Mom's Neighbor Doug (65:18)

The.

Angelo Poli (65:19)

The like is the word that they say under their breath.

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:21)

Like.

OG (65:22)

But they were Marty.

Angelo Poli (65:23)

Like turns.

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:25)

Doug. Is that a bad day when you wake up at like 9:30 in the morning, you hear the doorbell ring and it's, it's, it's the Amazon guy with the big box that you don't remember ordering. But there's a. I have a hack.

OG (65:36)

Is that a bad day? That's just called every day in my house.

Angelo Poli (65:39)

I know that's Tuesdays. I have a hack on Amazon. I'll share it later. I uncovered this Amazon hack.

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:45)

Maybe I'll Money saving or money spending hack.

Angelo Poli (65:48)

Oh, money saving.

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:49)

I mean excellent.

Angelo Poli (65:50)

Not, not necessarily saving per se, but I mean kind of.

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:55)

I think the first type of person that's cleaning up is a person selling you on. This is a scary thing. You just got to quit investing in financial markets.

Angelo Poli (66:02)

Yeah.

Joe Saul-Sehy (66:02)

You need to do this stuff that has guardrails on it like we're bumper bowling for money. You need. You need that. I think the second group of advisors are advisors that clearly don't have a plan. They're not worried about the different areas of financial planning. They're pretending like they can beat the market that they're going to talk to you about. Well, we're going to take advantage of this and we're going to do these crazy strategies and we're going to. And it. You know their whiteboard, if they have one looks like an NFL playbook where there's stuff going 50 million different directions. I love the guy. Did you ever read OG the Wealthy Barber?

Angelo Poli (66:40)

I don't think so.

Joe Saul-Sehy (66:42)

In the Wealthy Barber, the author writes that the basis maybe not your entire financial plan, but the basis of your plan should fit on like a bar napkin. You should go, here's what I'm trying to do.

Angelo Poli (66:53)

No, I believe that it should fit.

Joe Saul-Sehy (66:54)

On a bar napkin. And. And that, by the way, the advisor that you want is the one. The confidence during the ship that we talked about. The fact that they're not going to promise you the moon. And they're also not. Doug, to your point, they're not going to pretend like we're going to beat any, any market. They're going to swat that away like a fly going, what? What does that have to do with anything? So I think you really got to look for that option number three. Important piece. I think, especially now. It's funny to look at what's going on on the other side of the table, which is why I wanted to bring that up. Something else I like to bring up is when stackers need our help. Guys, this is the part of the show where we realize that somebody said, hey, I better call Saul. See high and OG if you have a question for us, head to stackinbenjamins.com voicemail and we're super happy to help you do better with your money and get more confident. And today we're going to help our brand new bff Austin, get more confident. Austin, what's going on, man?

Austin (67:59)

Hey, Joe and OG and Doug. I figured I'd call in to keep the Minnesota love going. Go Gophers. This is Austin again. So I'm really trying to learn something from you guys. I'm going to have to hit on a rare topic to go after that. HELOCs. We're looking to get a HELOC as a just in case, but I'm wondering what you would key in on when shopping around. For one note, this would not be a primary emergency fund. We have roughly five to six months of expenses saved in cash. Our mortgage is about 23% of our gross income. Hope hopefully that's enough information for this. Thanks in advance. Love what you guys do. Bye.

OG (68:35)

Social Security numbers would help next time.

Angelo Poli (68:38)

Mother's maiden name.

OG (68:39)

Mother. I mean, we need a little more info.

Joe Saul-Sehy (68:43)

What are we going to sell to the hackers if you don't leave that kind of information? Come on, Austin. Thanks for the question about that too.

Angelo Poli (68:52)

Maybe I'll talk about that too later.

Joe Saul-Sehy (68:53)

Oh, wow. Oh, gee. What's going on here?

Angelo Poli (68:56)

Hackers. I got to write this down. So don't forget hackers and Amazon.

Joe Saul-Sehy (68:59)

The basics of a heloc. Heloc. Home equity line of Credit. This is like a. Almost like a credit card or a checkbook against your house. You get X amount of money the bank gives you, and you can use it or not use it.

Angelo Poli (69:17)

So a couple things that I heard him say, which I just find a little interesting is, didn't he say, we were thinking about getting this just in case? Yeah, just in case what?

Joe Saul-Sehy (69:26)

Well, I hear one advisor a long time ago talk about the fact that she liked what she called the ice cream approach, the ice cream cone. So the bottom of the ice cream cone was money in your basic savings. Like, I can get to it. Right. At that time, CDs, OG were paying pretty well. So that was like the next scoop. And she goes. And then in case things really go fubar, she really liked having a home equity line of credit available that she could. If push comes to shove, she's got this. She can go dig into it and grab that money.

Angelo Poli (70:04)

Unless you have a purpose for it. Most people have more credit than they need anyway. And I don't know why you would have this open unless you're planning on doing something with it. You know, it's like, idle hands are devil's workshop. You've heard that phrase, idle credit is.

Joe Saul-Sehy (70:19)

Mom says it all the time.

Angelo Poli (70:20)

You know, whatever. I don't know. There's some.

OG (70:22)

You got to lean, you got time to clean.

Angelo Poli (70:25)

Yeah. So I'd just be concerned with that. Like, what's the purpose? You know, it's like, oh, so I have this available in case. It's like, well, you're going to find reasons to use it in case, you know, if you've got. They're like, you can get this $300,000 anytime you want, you know, for things like home improvement projects. Or you're like, well, actually, now that. Now that we have it right. We have been meaning to put a pool in. It's like, okay, well, so it can.

Joe Saul-Sehy (70:48)

Be convenient, OG because if you already have the home improvement project and you know how you're going to pay it off, this is generally a lower cost, lower interest rate way to go than tapping the credit card a mile.

Angelo Poli (71:00)

Yeah, a thousand percent. Sure, sure, sure, sure. I guess a couple of things. He didn't really ask my opinion about getting a home equity loan. He said things about getting, you know, I'm getting one. What, Where? Where. Where am I getting it at? I would want to make sure that the rate is tied to market race and the adjustments are similarly tied. Two different types of home loans. You can get a home equity loan, which is a pile of money that they just give you and then you pay it back over a period of time. A home equity line of credit, like you already talked about, Joe, is basically an open ended line where you can draw from it. Usually there's a period of draw and a period of payback and the draw period is renewable, generally speaking, but you just have to go back and do the requalification. Usually what happens is they'll say, okay, your house is worth a million bucks, you owe 200,000, we will give you a $500,000 line of credit on your house. You can use that money in, there's a minimum, usually $4,000 minimum withdrawal or something, but you can use that money up to 500k anytime you want for the first 10 years. After the 10 years, whatever the balance is, that money's locked and now it becomes paybackable.

Joe Saul-Sehy (72:09)

I don't know, I think it's be paybackable.

Angelo Poli (72:11)

It becomes most be paybackable over a 20 year period, whatever the terms are in there. And during the loan period, during the draw period, your payment is interest only. So that's also pretty attractive, especially if you're doing, let's say that you're going to build a vacation condo or a vacation house somewhere. You're like, I can do this as a line and then when it's all done, then I'm going to get a mortgage and kind of put it all together, you know, type deal. So it can be attractive because the payment's a little bit lower. I would want to know the payment amount, I would want to know how they calculate the payment amount and I would want to know how frequently they adjust the interest rate based on market adjustments.

Joe Saul-Sehy (72:49)

Yeah, clearly I want to know what that interest rate is.

Angelo Poli (72:52)

Yeah, it's going to be prime plus something based on your credit and based on the bank. And a lot of times home equity lines of credit seem to have a lot of fungibility in them. If you're showing up at a bank that you've never done business before, you can't expect to get any sort of special treatment. But if it's your bank and you have all of your savings there and your credit card is there, and you've been banking there a long time and your mortgage is there, and you know what I mean? Like you have a big relation, your business accounts are there, you have a big relationship, you have the opportunity, I think, to play that game a little bit and say, yeah, seven and a half, can we do seven, you know, or whatever. And you're more likely to have some.

Joe Saul-Sehy (73:30)

It'S all relationship based there.

Angelo Poli (73:32)

Yeah, I think so.

Joe Saul-Sehy (73:33)

Also, you know, a credit union generally, generally going to be an option where historically you may, if you don't have relationship anywhere, you may have a better chance of getting a little bit lower rate. Two other types of fees that you may have besides that interest rate that you compare. One is a lot of home equity line of credits have an annual fee. So you want to know what the annual fee is to keep it open. It'd just be just like a credit card has an annual fee. Another one may be maybe an origination fee and they will probably charge you for an appraisal because this becomes a second position on your house. So you're going to want to find out what the fees are to open it because those will vary from bank to bank as well.

Angelo Poli (74:11)

Yeah, most of them. To your point on those they will advertise low, if not zero closing costs.

Joe Saul-Sehy (74:16)

Yeah.

Angelo Poli (74:17)

Sometimes they do drive by, you know, appraisals because again, since it's a second loan, the bank is not going to lend you 100% of your house. Right. If you, if you have, if your house worth 500k and you owe 350, your line of credit might only be 50 grand, you know, because they're not going to say, oh well let's have, you know what I mean? They're not going to let you.

Joe Saul-Sehy (74:36)

If you're not asking for a specific amount of money. You mean you're just saying, hey, I just want this, this X amount, plug.

Angelo Poli (74:42)

It into Zillow and say here's the most we can give you.

Joe Saul-Sehy (74:43)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

OG (74:44)

Joe, you pointed out it becomes a second lien on your home, which made me think of a question some of our listeners might be interested in. Is that so let's say you have a heloc, but it's at a pretty decent rate. Whatever it, you know, now I, I remember we had one that was stupid low, but nowadays it's probably in the whatever 8% range or something like that. But it's going to be lower than your credit cards. But when you're creating a debt pay down strategy because it's a lien on your house, does that maybe change how you prioritize your pay down? I mean I know a lot of them are, people are thinking I'm going to pay down the debt that has the highest interest rate right now. But do you change that because of it's a second lien on your house.

Joe Saul-Sehy (75:25)

Whereas the credit card is not? Yeah, it's an interesting question. Oh, gee, I'm still going after the credit cards first because those are going to be at such an egregiously higher interest rate. Does it change it for you?

Angelo Poli (75:35)

Well, the only thing that would change it would be if. If I had a lump sum, let's say that I had a bonus. And I've got two things side by side that are fairly equal in terms of balance. Maybe one's a little higher interest, but whatever my take on that is, I'm going to go after the one that frees up the most cash flow at that moment. If it's just monthly. Good point. If I'm going, hey, I can put an extra 100 bucks a month on my debt. Where should I put it? Yeah, absolutely. Highest interest. You know, Dave Ramsey snowball method also works. I like that. But if it's like, hey, I just got a bonus of 50 grand, I can pay off my car, which is 695amonth for the next five years, or can pay off my HELOC, which is, you know, 1700amonth interest only, you know, I'm paying the HELOC off because that frees up 1700 bucks a month of.

Joe Saul-Sehy (76:20)

Cash that can spend stuff.

Angelo Poli (76:23)

Yeah. Now I can put 2500 on my car, and that thing's gone in two years instead of five.

OG (76:27)

If you're of the mindset of, look, if all the stuff hits the fan, all hell breaks loose. I want to make sure I got a place to live. I got to pay my mortgage. I can let some of that other stuff ride, but I don't want anybody taking my house.

Joe Saul-Sehy (76:42)

But assuming it's a second position, you're already screwed. I mean, the mortgage people are going to take your house already.

Angelo Poli (76:50)

If you're getting a line of credit because you're like, I need it just in case, and then you're really just lying to yourself. And the just in case is actually happening, and you're using your lifestyle expenses to take the equity out of your house, and you're kind of burning through that and now you're worried about paying that, there's other major issues going on. You need to sell the house is what you probably need to do and do something different. I mean, that's a whole different extreme example, I think.

Joe Saul-Sehy (77:16)

Doug, thanks for the question, Austin. If you've got a question for us, head to stacking benjamins.com voicemail and we're happy to answer your question as well. Big thanks for that one, Austin. And Gertrude's gonna write you because we got a little something something for you. Not just because, guys, because he called in. We generally, we don't advertise as much as we used to, but just as a thank you, we send you some cool swag, some Stacking Benjamin swag for calling in and being a part of the show. But Austin is caller number 1000 to the stacking Benjamin show.

OG (77:51)

Get out of here.

Joe Saul-Sehy (77:52)

He is.

Angelo Poli (77:53)

Oh, wait. Nope. Check that. 1002. Sorry. Never mind, Austin, you missed it.

Joe Saul-Sehy (77:57)

Oh, you were so. I forgot about those two episodes.

Angelo Poli (78:04)

I mean, to be fair, there probably is some. Some erroneous addition here somewhere. Once you get past 100, you're just making it up. The judges have confirmed. This is a thousand.

Joe Saul-Sehy (78:14)

No, no, this is.

Angelo Poli (78:15)

Okay, there's no.

Joe Saul-Sehy (78:16)

This is ish. This is so ish, it's not even funny. You know what's funny about this is that it was the company that runs the voicemail program. It's a really easy voicemail program. You can call in from any device, but they have it listed as voicemail. You will see voicemail number 1000.

Angelo Poli (78:33)

Gotcha.

Joe Saul-Sehy (78:34)

Right? And that's how it's. And you know, and some of those have been some crazy stuff, and we've had people call in in other ways and. Yeah, so ish. But Austin, ish is good enough for us because horseshoes and hand grenades. This is close enough. So, Austin, we are giving you. You're from Minnesota. We've got a badass Stacking Benjamin's hat. We have brand new Stacking Benjamin's mugs just made with the new logo on them that are awesome. I'm also going to send you a copy of my book stacked. And we got a bunch of these books from. We. We haven't gotten them yet, Doug.

OG (79:09)

Okay.

Joe Saul-Sehy (79:09)

We just talked about it last week.

OG (79:11)

You think you're throwing them out to Austin like they're candy? And yet I'm sitting here with my robin's egg blues.

Joe Saul-Sehy (79:18)

Austin realized, unlike Doug, it's gonna take a week or two to get there. It's gonna take some time to make it there. Bunch of swag for you, Austin. Big thanks to everybody for being a part of the show, for helping us make the Stacking Benjamin show. If there were no stackers, we would have no show. Speaking of stackers, Doug, I got just one quick thing for the back porch, because I'm looking at the time. It is that I'm headed to Boston. Am I pronouncing that right, Doug? Is it pronounced Boston?

OG (79:44)

It's Boston.

Joe Saul-Sehy (79:45)

Yeah. There we go.

OG (79:46)

Boston.

Joe Saul-Sehy (79:47)

I am headed there. Let me get the date for everyone. And if you want particulars as we record this, we don't have them yet, but as you hear it.

Angelo Poli (79:56)

Let me get the particulars, which I do not have.

Joe Saul-Sehy (79:59)

I think we're gonna have it at the same place we had the last one, but I think we're gonna get a quieter area because people are gonna go, man, it was kind of loud there. And it was loud, but it was a kick ass place. It was an old bank. But anyway. May 20th. Tuesday, May 20th, I'll be in town. I've already talked to Paula Pantasy if she would come. We talked to Doug. Doug said no. Just so you know, I asked Doug and Doug said, pass.

OG (80:21)

No, I will not go there.

Joe Saul-Sehy (80:22)

Hard pass. But stackingbenjamins.com meetup lets us know that you are on your way so we can plan the right space for the right amount of people. Stackbenjamins.com meetup and we'll have all the details when you hear this episode. Doug, it sounded like you were going to say something.

OG (80:39)

Well, we have three new reviews, but I know you needed to be quick. We've had a chock full episode, so I thought maybe, well, we could say.

Joe Saul-Sehy (80:46)

You know what? We totally will. We're. I can't wait to read that. Oh, some great stuff. Yeah, I'm reading these. Yeah, that's good. All right, next time. That's something to look forward to. Foreshadowing. Everybody foreshadowing. One thing we don't foreshadow, we just get right to it. What are the three big takeaways that should be on our to do list, Doug?

OG (81:03)

Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our headline. If you're worried about the market, don't panic. Learn from it. Now is a great time to become more scientific about your approach. Either find people to help or build an investment policy statement. Second, want a heloc? Just because remember, idle hands are the work of the devil. But the big lesson, don't worry about Joe's mom's will. She said her will is strong.

Angelo Poli (81:32)

Strong.

OG (81:33)

I say that must mean there's good stuff coming my way in the future. Can't wait. Thanks to Angelo Poli for joining us. Want to find out more about the concierge nutrition and Fitness coaching at MetPro offers? Head on over to MetPro Co for details.

Joe Saul-Sehy (81:50)

No, you got to finish that Doug with. They will pump you up. No.

OG (81:57)

Okay.

Joe Saul-Sehy (81:58)

No, I'm sure Angela's gonna be like, yeah. No, no, no, no, don't.

OG (82:06)

This show is the property of SP Podcasts LLC, Copyright2020 25 and is created by Josal Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome team@stacking benjamins.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.

Joe Saul-Sehy (82:27)

Oh, yeah.

OG (82:28)

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 every 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. Sa.

Angelo Poli (83:36)

I've told this story a bunch, and I don't think that I've said it on the show, or maybe I've said it on some show somewhere or just to friends or maybe just to you guys individually.

OG (83:44)

Other shows.

Angelo Poli (83:45)

Is he cheating on us? I mean, you know, play has got to play, yo. But I am a little bit of a credit card points dude aficionado.

OG (83:55)

Yeah.

Angelo Poli (83:56)

Anyways, but I'm trying to clean some stuff up a little bit, and I've got a couple cards that I don't need anymore. And I'm trying to tighten, as it were, my life. And what I found out, as we.

Joe Saul-Sehy (84:08)

Heard last week, Doug.

OG (84:09)

Yeah, that's a good one.

Joe Saul-Sehy (84:11)

So many cards, I forgot I already had one.

Angelo Poli (84:13)

Yeah, well.

OG (84:14)

And all these offers just sitting, one of them was for, like 125,000. I didn't even. I was just left at collecting dust.

Angelo Poli (84:20)

Yeah, well, anyways, what I found out was that capital one doesn't combine your points. So if you have, like, a card with this, you know, this card, or if you have this credit card or this credit card, they all accumulate their own points. I just assume, like, amex. They all just go in one bucket or like.

Joe Saul-Sehy (84:36)

No, you do it manually.

Angelo Poli (84:38)

What's that?

Joe Saul-Sehy (84:39)

Combine the points at capital One.

Angelo Poli (84:41)

Yeah, I wasn't able to figure that out.

Joe Saul-Sehy (84:42)

Oh, I did. Between two cards. I don't remember how I did it, but I got it done.

Angelo Poli (84:48)

Oh, well, maybe I could have done that. But anyways, so I wanted to close these two cards. They had small balances or small limits, and I had already transferred limits to the other ones. And so I wanted to go away, but I had these points, and I was like, I just, you know, I don't have any use for them. I'm not traveling anytime soon. But you can't have points on a card, they just go away. So it says, oh, you can turn these into gift cards. And I know from a redemption standpoint, gift cards are like the stupidest redemption ever because you get like, a flat penny per point and somebody out there is gonna be like, you could have flown to Singapore for, you know, two cents a point. It's like, I know, I got it, but I'm not going to Singapore. But I wanted to get rid of them. So I go online, I do the thing, and it says, you know, which gift cards do you want? I'll give you the whole list of them. And it's Amazon, right? Like, we buy so much crap at Amazon, I'm gonna pick Amazon. So I pick Amazon.

Joe Saul-Sehy (85:33)

Just go Amazon.

Angelo Poli (85:34)

And it says, they come in 50, 100, $200. And I'm like, oh, I'll just do the $200 one. That's less cards. And then it gives me a drop down. It says, how many of these do you want? And I'm like, well, I would think that it's gonna. I could say I want 10, but you know, it's gonna be relative to how many points I have.

Joe Saul-Sehy (85:53)

Sure.

Angelo Poli (85:54)

And so I just. I don't know, the conversion, I'm not really paying attention. I don't really care. So I go all the way down, hit 10, hit submit, and it goes, your gift cards will arrive in seven to 10 business days. And I'm like, wait, what just happened? So apparently I had enough points on Capital One to get $2,000 of Amazon gift cards. So I gave them, which could have.

Joe Saul-Sehy (86:17)

Been free flight or two.

Angelo Poli (86:19)

What? Yeah, well, obviously it would have been that. But I'm not. Like I said, I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. So I had no use for them. But here's the great news. So it shows up in the mail. You get this big stack of gift cards. So that's totally secure, by the way. That's not suspect at all. Not ripe for mail fraud. But they came and handed to my wife, and she's like, what the heck did you get all this from? I'm like, oh, this is from Capital One Point. She's like, wait, how many points do we have? I'm like, well, let's not worry about that. Let's just focus on the cool thing, which is we're not paying for Amazon crap. We buy whatever we want on Amazon and it goes to these gift cards for, like the next, you know, at least the next two days. At least the next two or three months. So my Amazon hack is if you buy Amazon crap all the time, like we do. And you have points just sitting there. Points devalue themselves. They do very quickly.

Joe Saul-Sehy (87:06)

You gotta remember that when everybody's talking about maximizing and getting $0.02 per and stuff, everybody freezes. A buddy of mine, I'm at, I'm at dinner with him this weekend and he shows me one of his credit cards. He's got 625,000 points. Yeah, I'm like, when you started building that thing, they were probably worth 2.5x what they're worth now. Like the, you know what I mean, those first.

Angelo Poli (87:30)

And you know, you don't see it. What happens is the redemptions cost more. So the hotel that used to be 30,000 points per night is now 50. The 50,000 hotel point per night is now 75. That's how you know that's where the inflation happens.

OG (87:44)

And you don't see it's like a South American currency.

Angelo Poli (87:46)

It kind of is. It is. And you get to the point and this isn't. I don't mean to say this in a sense that's like, oh, look at how cool I am. But I have a million Marriott points right now. And last year every hotel that I could stay in, I stayed one with points because I'm like, this is stupid. Like I don't have a, again, I don't have a big trip I'm planning. There's just whatever I need to start using them. We have a Marriott credit card and every time you stay you get credit and the double points and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I stayed 30 nights at hotels last year and I ended the year with still a million points. And I paid for every hotel room last year with points. I didn't spend a dollar in hotels last year.

Joe Saul-Sehy (88:27)

And your point value did not go down.

Angelo Poli (88:29)

I still had a million at the end of the year even though I spent 30 nights in hotels for free because of just the bonuses and the credit card spend and whatever, just my normal life. So to your point, there's no. Unless you have a purpose. If you're like, I'm getting to a million so I can do the honeymoon trip, it's like, all right, cool, but you better get after it because that million dollar thing's going to require 1.2 million by the time you get there.

Joe Saul-Sehy (88:53)

Probably I'm pretty new ish to the credit card point game. I've used credit card points, but just for ones that I was going to use anyway, like, you know, in Texarkana, like I've said, you can fly any Airline you want, as long as it's American. So I should probably get anywhere you.

Angelo Poli (89:07)

Want as long as it's Dallas, as.

Joe Saul-Sehy (89:10)

Long as it includes DFW.

Angelo Poli (89:11)

At 11am on a Tuesday, I went.

Joe Saul-Sehy (89:13)

To a campfire and the amazing Mark Troutman, who's been on our show before, Mark was talking about Hyatt and these, you know, Uber points. People are like, you. You need to use. Use Hyatt. Now the bad news is, you know, OG because you and I talked about there's no Hyatt's. There's. There's not that many of them.

Angelo Poli (89:27)

There's seven of them.

Joe Saul-Sehy (89:28)

But what is incredible is. So I've stayed at Hyatt's now 10 times, just trying out this new point program. I get on because we were headed to downtown Dallas, and I go to get a hotel room because staying at Hotel OG was already booked. So we. It's weird, Doug, how every time I come to Dallas, it's. Hotel OG is booked. It's incredible.

OG (89:52)

Well, you shouldn't have done that thing in the pool the last time you stayed there.

Joe Saul-Sehy (89:56)

When. When we go to. How'd you hear about the thing in the pool?

OG (90:01)

Because I have access to the Internet. That's how I know about it.

Angelo Poli (90:03)

I was like, there's a camera been posted.

Joe Saul-Sehy (90:07)

Oh, geez. Making. Making bank on that one. So. So we. We go see, now I'm all flustered.

Angelo Poli (90:17)

Hyatt Dallas points.

Joe Saul-Sehy (90:18)

Yeah. So I've only stayed there 10 times. I finally became a discoverist, which is their first tier of many. Right? Marriott. I. I've been way up that chain. But I was told that Hyatt, you accumulate points much quicker. So I'm like, oh, let's just see if we have a free one. Who cares, dude? I've got like 19, 000 points at the Hyatt house right by the Katy Trail. Just walking distance to everything in. In the Harwood district, a nice part of town. 6,500 points for the free night. Marriott, like 18, 000 points. So I'm getting three nights. And by the way, before I found out how easy these points are to come by, I got the Hyatt credit card that just came, and I probably.

Angelo Poli (91:02)

Got one of those too, somewhere.

Joe Saul-Sehy (91:03)

You could. You get a free night a year. You get a free night a year just for your. Which is funny, you know, the card cost 100.

Angelo Poli (91:09)

I actually don't.

Joe Saul-Sehy (91:10)

The card cost 100 bucks. So the night of year is covered by your annual fee. So you're like, okay, I stay there one night and I use that one and then I get the oh, my goodness, Hyatt points. Those are going to be super easy to complete. And when you get to those high end hotels like the Mr. Mrs. Smith chain of hotels, that's they're like super bougie high. Oh, my God.

Angelo Poli (91:30)

Park, Hyatt.

Joe Saul-Sehy (91:31)

Yeah. Some of these places are amazing. Yeah.

Angelo Poli (91:34)

So anyways, if you got points, spend them, you know. Yolo, right? That's kind of the message here.

Joe Saul-Sehy (91:40)

That's the lesson, kids.