Here's An Easy Way To Save $3,000 Per Year (with Bryan Suddith) SB1688

Summary

Episode Summary: "Here's An Easy Way To Save $3,000 Per Year (with Bryan Suddith)"

The Stacking Benjamins Show episode released on May 28, 2025, features hosts Joe Saul-Sehy and OG engaging with guest Brian Suddith to explore effective strategies for reducing household food waste. This episode delves into practical methods for tracking and minimizing food waste, leveraging gamification to make the process enjoyable, and understanding the broader financial implications for families.

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Guest Introduction

Brian Suddith, a seasoned speaker and advocate for reducing food waste, joins Joe and OG to share his personal journey in cutting down his family’s food budget. Brian’s insights are rooted in his experience implementing systematic approaches to minimize waste and maximize savings.

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Main Discussion: Reducing Food Waste

Brian begins by recounting how the COVID-19 pandemic became a catalyst for his family to reassess their food consumption habits. With both him and his spouse working from home, they found themselves together more frequently, leading to increased awareness of their food habits and waste.

Brian Suddith ([14:29]):
"At first, we would just sort of just speak it out loud. If I threw something away, I would just yell to the other room where my wife was probably working, and I would say that was $0.35 of pasta, dairy, butter and cheese that we just put into the trash."

Key Strategies Discussed:

1. Tracking Waste:

   • Initial Steps: The family transitioned from a mental tally to using post-it notes on the refrigerator to document each instance of food waste, noting the type and cost of wasted items.
   • Long-Term Tracking: They invested in a year-long monthly planner to meticulously record every purchase and corresponding waste down to the penny.

2. Intentional Shopping:

   • Purposeful Purchases: Every grocery item is bought with a specific plan for use within the next week or ten days, ensuring that nothing lingers unused in the fridge or pantry.
   • Meal Planning: By sketching out a light meal schedule, they align their grocery list with their planned meals, reducing the likelihood of overbuying.

3. Creative Repurposing of Leftovers:

   • Innovative Recipes: Brian shares examples like creating Hawaiian French bread pizza loaves from leftover ham, bell peppers, and pineapple, or transforming excess tomato sauce into a unique tomato soup.

4. Use of Preservation Tools:

   • Blue Apple Products: Incorporating blue plastic apples with special packets that absorb gases, thereby extending the freshness of produce by one to two weeks.

Brian Suddith ([42:50]):
"By using blue apples, it truly extends the life of your produce by a couple weeks."

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Impact and Results

Over a span of six years, Brian and his family achieved remarkable reductions in food waste:

• 2020: Approximately $30-$35 wasted.
• 2021: Reduced to $18 through mental tracking and system implementation.
• 2022: Further decreased to under $10 by adopting a detailed planner.
• 2023: Achieved less than $4 in waste through refined processes and continued discipline.

Brian Suddith ([28:19]):
"By 2023 we were at less than $4 waste."

These significant savings not only alleviated financial strain but also provided the family with additional funds to enjoy discretionary spending, such as dining out.

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Career Discussions: Skilled Trades vs. College

The conversation transitions to the evolving landscape of career opportunities, highlighting alternative paths to traditional four-year college degrees. Brian emphasizes the growing importance and profitability of skilled trades, especially in the context of current labor shortages as baby boomers retire.

Highlighted Points:

• High-Paying Skilled Trades: Jobs like welding, fabrication, and other technical roles offer substantial salaries and benefits without the need for a college degree.
• ROI Considerations: Brian stresses the importance of calculating the return on investment (ROI) when choosing educational paths, advocating for vocational training where appropriate.

Brian Suddith ([57:50]):
"If you're going to go to college, you've got to calculate your return on investment. What's the college going to cost and what do you expect to earn when you get out of college?"

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Headlines Highlighting Skilled Trades

A key segment of the episode covers a Wall Street Journal piece by TPing Chen, which discusses high school juniors being offered $70,000 per year job offers in skilled trades. This trend addresses the critical shortage of workers in industries like manufacturing and nuclear recycling.

Key Insights:

• Recruitment Strategies: Companies are increasingly courting high school students to secure a skilled workforce for the future.
• Benefits for Students: These positions offer paid training, competitive salaries, and direct entry into the workforce without the burden of student loans.

Joe Saul-Sehy ([56:02]):
"Listen to this. So Elijah, when he graduates next year, he plans to work as a fabricator at a local equipment maker for nuclear recycling and other sectors. A job that pays $24 an hour plus overtime regularly and paid vacations."

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Conclusion and Key Takeaways

The episode underscores the importance of mindfulness in both daily habits and long-term financial planning. By adopting systematic approaches to reduce food waste, families can achieve significant savings and improve their overall financial health. Additionally, exploring vocational training and skilled trades offers viable and profitable alternatives to traditional college degrees, addressing current labor market demands.

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Notable Quotes

• Brian Suddith on Gamification:

  "The game really took hold and become something for us to drive toward. And that was a lot of weird meals and a lot of weird concoctions, but a lot of fun as well." ([24:22])

• Joe Saul-Sehy on Savings Motivation:

  "If you're saving almost $2,000 a year on food, Len, you could buy the more expensive food." ([46:18])

• Brian Suddith on Confidence in Storytelling:

  "Know that people want to hear your story, that there's value in what you have to say and believe that, and to practice that in front of an audience you trust." ([34:45])

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Additional Segments

Investing Strategies:

• The hosts discuss the importance of maintaining a long-term investment strategy, especially during market downturns. Brian shares his approach of staying committed to his investment plan despite short-term volatility, emphasizing the benefits of dollar-cost averaging and trusting the investment process.

Listener Engagement:

• The episode features comments and reviews from listeners, reinforcing community engagement and shared experiences in financial management. Notably, the hosts respond to feedback regarding meal planning tips and grocery shopping hacks.

Trivia and Fun Elements:

• A segment includes a trivia minute where listeners are quizzed on financial knowledge, adding an element of fun and interactive learning to the show.

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Final Thoughts

Brian Suddith’s insights offer actionable strategies for listeners to reduce food waste and enhance their financial well-being. By integrating these practices into daily routines, families can achieve substantial savings and foster more sustainable living habits. Additionally, the discussion on vocational training provides a timely reminder of the diverse pathways available for career advancement beyond traditional academic routes.

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For more detailed insights and resources mentioned in this episode, visit StackingBenjamins.com.

Transcript

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

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[Doug]

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[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I need right now with my biz plan.

[Len Penzo]

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[OG]

Are we going to let Len be all dad jokey to start or you just want me to dive in?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What do you mean?

[OG]

What does he always start whenever he's on? He starts with like he has this big joke set up and we're like, oh, crap, here it comes. Here it comes. Is it going to be as bad? Yes, it's as bad as I thought it was going to be.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You're totally on his intro. Yeah, stepping on Len's like, saving it.

[Brian Suttath]

I don't jump in front of you. I let you do your thing first, Doug.

[OG]

All right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Okay.

[OG]

All right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Nothing better than watching Doug do his thing first.

[Len Penzo]

Len, they call that sloppy second.

[Brian Suttath]

I was just going to say when I watch Doug do his thing first, I don't have to wait very long, so.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But you do get to watch.

[Len Penzo]

We're talking about eating a cheeseburger, right?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes, you do get to watch later. All right, Dougie.

[Len Penzo]

Mommy, no, please.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Let's start the show. Please, please, please.

[OG]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the stacking Benjam. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And how's that refrigerator looking after the long holiday weekend full of leftovers you might not eat? Well, today we're gonna cut your food cost and get inspired to meal plan better with a guy who's cut his family budget to the bone. Brian Suttath. Plus, in our headline, some high schoolers are being offered $70,000 per year to go to work. In what field? We'll share that news and our thoughts. And because I like you better than all the other stackers, I'm gonna make sure the guys play a TikTok minute and include some of my homemade trivia. By homemade, I mean I found it myself. Not that I made it up. I've never done that. Definitely never made up trivia. I just. I found it. And now three guys who never have to make up painful money lessons because they've lived them all firsthand. And it's Joe Len and. Oh, ja, ja, ja, ja, jaja, Jaja.

[Brian Suttath]

G.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Hey there, Stackers. Happy Wednesday to you. You made it through half your week. So sit back and relax because we're about to have some fun talking food. Today, our favorite topic, we got the man across the card table from me, Mr. OG. You had some food earlier. Apparently, cherry yogurt. Not your. Your, not your go to.

[Len Penzo]

Yeah, couldn't do it. Fake cherry flavor. Almost even real cherries are like that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And the guy who's the cherry on top of this podcast today, Mr. Len Penzo, is here. How are you, brother?

[Brian Suttath]

I'm doing great. I just got back from walking my dog, so I, you know, had to rush here to get in. Get. Get in front of the microphone. And. And I, you know, sometimes I walk my dog and he gets. People get irritated. He had, like, this morning, we were walking, and my dog likes to smell so many things. He's a scent hound, and he's always constantly smelling everything. Well, this morning he was smelling. He particularly likes cars that have covers over them. You know, people put covers over their cars, they leave the driveway so they don't get raina. So he's always attracted us. Well, this morning, he was sniffing one of the cars with the covers. He was really into it, and the guy comes out the front door and he's like, hey. He goes like, what are you doing? And I was like, oh, I'm sorry. You know, my dog is. My dog's just interested in your car.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brian Suttath]

He's like, what kind of dog is that? And I go, well, he's a scent hound. I go, he's being trained to be a cadaver dog, so. And that kind of shut the guy up right away. So.

[OG]

Wow. What neighborhood do you live in again, Glenn?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Are you insinuating there's a body in the back of the cat's award?

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah. Well, that's what, you know, what, he went back in the house?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. The guy's done well. I'm super excited for this episode. Brian Suddet is a guy that I saw at the economy conference. He was one of the main stage speakers. I got so excited by Brian finding these ways to control food waste and the things that his family did. I can't wait for all of our stacker family to hear what he did because it's super exciting. Gamifying this idea of not wasting food. And, well, he took it a little more extreme than I think most of us will. But let us. Your refrigerator running?

[Brian Suttath]

You know, I'm laughing. Probably nobody else is, because we're too old to. To understand. Anybody under 50 is probably wondering what. Why we're laughing.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No idea.

[OG]

You have Prince Albert in a can.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

My favorite. These were prank phone calls. Kids, let's tell some old guy stories. These were prank phone calls. My favorite one was you call up. You call up and you go, yes, is. Is Mr. OG there? And they're like, oh, no, you have the wrong number. And you hang up the phone, you wait three or four minutes, you call back again, is Mr. OG there? Like, no, you've got the wrong number. I told you, stop calling me, okay? Oh, I'm sorry. My bad. I'm sorry. Wait five more minutes. Call up one more time, is Mr. OG there? And the person on the other end gets just irate. I told you, stop calling this number. There's no Mr. OG here. Okay? I'm so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. And then the piece to resistance. Wait five more minutes and call up. And you know what? You say, len.

[Brian Suttath]

No, tell me. I don't know.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You change your voice. You made it really deep, you know, because you're like 9 years old when you do these things. You've made your voice really deep and you go, yes, this is Mr. OG have there been any messages for me? And you should hear how much people swear at that one. Oh, that's so bad. It gets better.

[Brian Suttath]

So when you did your pranks, how did you do. Did you just open the phone book and randomly pick a name or did you just dial a number at random?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I just dialed a number at random. Like, used our same area code. And you had to make sure it wasn't a long distance call back then?

[Brian Suttath]

Well, of course, yeah, yeah, mom and dad would not like.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No, just pick numbers at random and you were good to go. All right, there's your one on one on prank phone calls, kids. It gets better from here, though. We're talking Food waste. But before that, we got a couple sponsors that make sure that we can keep on keeping on. And you're not going to pay a dollar while you're saving yourself a ton of money by not wasting so much food. So we've got a couple of our sponsors. We're going to hear from them and then the Brian Sudth, the most amazing guy when it comes to making sure that what comes into your house gets eaten. We're going to hear from Brian next. I know personally that debt isn't just about money. It's about stress and sleepless nights and that constant weight on your shoulders. It can affect your relationships. It can shred your confidence truly. It can overshadow your whole life. So know that if you've ever felt any of that, you're not alone. There are millions of Americans struggling with debt. But there's a solution that can help. Beyond Finance was founded with a simple mission to help those struggling with overwhelming debt find a pathway to financial freedom. They can help you escape that endless cycle of making just minimum payments. Typical Beyond Finance clients see their payments on enrolled debt lowered by 40% or more. So you can expect immediate relief and the chance to start saving. The team prioritizes a hands on compassionate approach coupled with a focus on helping you get out of debt as soon as possible, save money and establish long term financial wellbeing. They offer personalized 24. 7 support and financial wellness sessions and with accredited financial therapist. And you know you're in good hands with a Trustpilot rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. So if you're ready to take that first step or learn more about achieving financial wellness, visit Beyond Finance.com not available in all states. Fees vary by state. Results may vary. 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 moves 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 who 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 or you've finally going to write it? And I'm very proud of Stacked, but without Murray Lou, I would have never had stack. 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 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 healthcare professional. But, guys, let's get smart people around us, shall we? And it's about time we got him down in Mom's basement. Mr. Brian Sudeth is here. How are you, brother?

[Doug]

I am great. It's a beautiful day here in Ohio. These are the days that those of us who live here look forward to. And we have one today. It's just beautiful up here.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

All of my friends in the Midwest are getting that change in the weather cold right now. And here in Texas, we got that two months ago. So we're slightly ahead of you, man. All right, well, let's talk about this because, you know, you and me and everybody else, we go to a restaurant, we do the Jim Gaffigan thing. There's a Jim Gaffigan joke about, hey, I didn't finish my food, so can you put this in like a styrofoam thing so I can put it in my refrigerator for five days and then throw it out, right? The little bit I know about your story is you got tired of just chucking food after four days, Brian.

[Doug]

That's it. And we'd always been in the habit of trying to throw away as Little as possible with tight budget as a young family. But as soon as we took notice of the volume that was going to the trash, it became this sort of internal competition with only ourselves to see if we could find a way to stop putting food into the trash. And that started with takeout, but then later it was in our kitchen, you know, we could make a protein. It's a Mac and cheese for your kids. And I had teenage boys at the time. And then four or five days later, you throw the leftover Mac and cheese in the trash. And we just began in earnest at the beginning of COVID when we're both home all day just putting a dollar figure to what was going in the trash, then challenged ourselves to drive that number down as best we could. And it became a real over the top competition with ourselves to get creative and to pay attention to that cost. And we drove that number to an insanely low number. And then we begin to tell people about what we've been doing.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, I can't wait until we we share what that number ended up being. When you say insanely low stackers, you have no idea how insanely low. But let's go back to the beginning. I love this idea. Did you then start writing it down just to kind of piss yourself off, to just go, you know what? If I got to write it down, I'm going to make myself angry enough that I'm not going to waste food.

[Doug]

At first we would just sort of just speak it out loud. If I threw something away, I would just yell to the other room where my wife was probably working, and I would say that was A$35 of pasta, dairy, butter and cheese that we just put into the trash. And after that year of just sort of keeping a mental tally, we put a post it note on the fridge and we would write down what was wasted, what the cost was, and what date it happened. And I just remember like dropping an egg once, and eggs back then were only like a buck fifty a dozen. So it was like 12 cents for that egg. And we wrote it on there. An egg lost 12 cents. And we just kept a running tally on the fridge as a reminder that everything that we bought and put in that fridge had a value and we didn't want that value to go to the trash.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We talk about the fun a lot here on stacking Benjamins about gamification and about how that just, you know, then it goes from a chore to being fun. It's funny, for you it was gamification. For your spouse, it was Much more of a mission, it sounds like it really was.

[Doug]

But she's. She's an engineer by trade, former Air Force officer, so she's really process oriented, systems oriented, and driving toward goals better than I am. And so for her, once we had that first year dollar amount in our head, she just simply wanted to find the system that would drive that lower and put that system into practice in our house. And not with a formal set of rules, but that first step of writing it down was to move in that direction, to build a process that held us accountable, to drive that number even lower the second year.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What year did you start this?

[Doug]

We started keeping track in 2020 when we first were sent home. You know, we both worked typical nine to five office jobs. We both went home, set up home offices in the same room with each other. And so for somebody who'd been married a long time by then, we spent a lot of time together that first year. And this. This grew out of that time together.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's so funny if we were all doing weird entertainment like those happy hours that we got sick of in week number three, you know?

[Doug]

Yeah, I'm glad those things are gone. The virtual happy hours are a thing of the past.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Like, I feel like you watched everything on Netflix, everything on Hulu. You got rid of the happy hours. You're like, you know what? Let's write down our food waste.

[Doug]

Tiger king's over. Let's move on to this thing where we calculate how much pasta we threw into the trash. So, yeah, that's not far from it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Do you remember what that number was the first year?

[Doug]

Yeah, the first year since we kept it all mental, that first nine months. So for April to December 2020, we landed at around 30 or $35 of food into the trash can. You know, that egg dilemma was one of the turning points where we dropped the egg. It was an accident. Do we count that? And we decided we would, that the. The definition would be any food brought into the house to be consumed that was not consumed and left the house in the trash would be counted. So that broken egg counted. And that year we were just a little over $30 of total food into the trash.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's still a phenomenal number. We had Frankie Chalenza, who's a chef, on the show a couple years ago, Brian, he was talking about the fact that you know more about this than I do. I believe the number Frankie said was the average American waste about a third of the food that comes into the house. Is that still about the same today?

[Doug]

Yeah, the Number we use is 32%, which is a third. That still holds true and it hasn't shifted over much of the last decade.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Do you know what that means? What's the average family's food budget then? If we put that in dollars, how much money is the average family wasting?

[Doug]

The USDA says this year the average family of four will spend $10,000 on household groceries. You're talking it's 30$200, which is the lead for my talkback at economy was what we do with 30$200, because that's the average. And average means there are houses like mine that do way better. But that also means there are households that 3200 would be a neat goal, right? That they're beyond that. That that's just part of the cycle of lifestyle. They shop, they use a little bit, they throw it away. But 3200 a year is the average that we're not using.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I thought it was funny. This was stackers. If you weren't there the first morning of economy, and I begin by talking about being more efficient with your assets, that will save you some money. Then you step up and talk about how we can do the same thing in our refrigerator. Like, these are assets as well. I start off with, what would you do with $4.5 million? And you're like, forget that. What would you do with 3200?

[Doug]

Yeah, I'm not ready to dream four and a half million yet. But yeah, moving that way.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But it's not either or, brother. It's both.

[Doug]

Right, exactly. And that was the response that I got, that the $3,200 question had as much value as your question, which was very humbling.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And so what are some of those early moves that you and your spouse made, Brian, that our average stacker can do that will set them on the right track here? Like, when you began counting, what were a few of the kind of obvious swings that you took?

[Doug]

I mean, really that's the first step was just counting and drawing attention to it because it really was built into how suburban households like mine live. So until you put it top of mind by giving a value to it, you're not really thinking about it. And so that was the first step. Then the second was that everything that went into the fridge had a plan, that it was deliberately put there, that we didn't shop just to fill the fridge, but that when we picked things up off the shelf at the store, put it into the cart, it had an immediate purpose or plan for the next week or 10 days this is.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Going to be Tuesday, let's say, right?

[Doug]

Yeah, exactly. We would sort of sketch out a light list of the week, like, who has an engagement? Do we need four night meals this week, or we need five evening meals? Are you leaving the house this week for lunch or are you packing your lunch? What do you need for snacks? So things were bought with intentionality so that we didn't end up with things in the fridge without a purpose. And when foods go into the fridge without purpose, they seem to languish, get pushed to the back, are lost, and oftentimes wasted. The same with the pantry, the dry goods.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Did you find still that you were buying too much food? Yeah.

[Doug]

Like you we mentioned earlier at the beginning of the call that we've just moved since the beginning of COVID from four people to two people. Right. And so that adjustment, how do you prepare a pasta dish for two people after feeding two teenage sons for so long? How does that adjust? There were times that we ate the same entree three nights in a week because I had to learn to scale our recipes down. And I've spoken about in my talks before is that we didn't make too much. Think of it as you've just planned ahead. So now I'm better at freezing a portion immediately. So that's a meal in the freezer ready for the future, that it doesn't go to the fridge to languish. It was repackaged and ready to go for a future meal. We did that for a long time until we learned how to scale meal prep to just two adults.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But still, it's a great idea. Man. I love chili, but there's always half a pot. And then I eat it the next five days. I still throw stuff away. Freezing it, I mean, that's still great. You know something I wondered even after I heard your talk, Brian, you know, so you buy this sauce, you know, you eat half of it or a third of it or whatever. Like, how do you start bending the meals around so that the sauces go in a timely manner?

[Doug]

I was just pulling up some old pictures from our Instagram, and there's a post where we had a little bit of fresh pineapple leftover, some bell pepper, some pieces of, like, a ham steak, and then a half a can of, like, your traditional red Italian sauce. And we're like, how do you combine these ingredients? And according to the notes from Instagram, this is back a few years ago, we made, like, these Hawaiian French bread pizza loaves. So not pasta again. But how do you repurpose that ham and bell pepper and pineapple together, and it turned into a delightful pizza bread sort of thing. And it does take creativity. Not too long ago, we had a half a can of sauce, some cream. We just made this. I don't even know how to explain it, but a very decent tomato soup that had some very unique flavors to it, but it worked. That sauce extended with cream, a little stock, something's left over, and it was a pretty decent soup. It oftentimes does feel like a bizarre episode of Chopped. You've got these mystery ingredients. How do you prepare a meal that is appetizing and enjoyable, but at the same time using these four or five different leftovers that on the surface may not match or pair well together?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You must have been surprised by some of the matches. It turns out that you like that you had no idea.

[Doug]

Yeah, and I will be honest, Joe. My wife is more game. Like, I think in the economy presentation, we showed a picture where she was eating leftover pasta one night, but then she had a side of like two pancakes. Like two, you know, silver dollar pancakes the boys had not eaten on a Saturday morning or something. And for her, it's easy to make that transition of carb is carb. So that pancake in her mind is just cousins to a garlic knot. Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Separated at birth. They were just separated at birth.

[Doug]

They're not far apart. And I think it is a mental shift where you have to decide that maybe the cultural norm for dinner is kind of silly. There really isn't a rule about having a pancake as a side instead of a dinner roll or a garlic knot or a biscuit. Right. It is a bread. It carries butter and jam or honey the same. So it is shifting that mentality. And I think that's why this talk is received well by financial, independent people. Fi people because they're used to bucking convention and doing things that may not be understood by everybody, but serves a purpose that we can't see immediately but will give return in the years to come? So I think that's where there's a good parallel, Brian.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

After I heard your talk and Cheryl and I had gamified this a little bit, we certainly have done it in the time between economy and the time you and I are talking much more because of your talk. It is actually just the playfulness of it for me. Let's see what I think of eating a pancake with my pasta. Let's see if I like it. Like, you know what, turning myself into a little bit of a science experiment and having a Good time with it has been really fun.

[Doug]

You know, the same for us. We're too adventurous eaters. We like to try new things, but it is that puzzle piece. Like, what can you create? How will this go over? And if it's not great, it's one meal. You could try again tomorrow, something else. So it has been fun, and we've looked at it that way. And driving that $30 number down has helped feed that gamification, has made it. Made it fun for us, and that's how we're still living that way. Six years into this experiment.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

How often, though, do you find yourself scheduling, like, scheduled leftover night? Is that twice a week? How often?

[Doug]

We usually have one once a week. And we both cross our fingers that there's nothing left. So we can order pizza or take out Chinese. So we have one scheduled this week. Our son is home for a short period of time, so we have one scheduled. And I looked at it yesterday. I'm like, we don't have a lot in there. And I'm just hoping that he is doing his job while he's at home this week so we can order out Friday night.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's totally my son. Like a human vacuum cleaner for the refrigerator.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. When Nick went to the University of Texas and they told us what the number was going to be for room and board, they showed me the number that it was going to cost for him to eat. I was like, dude, I'm winning that battle. University of Texas lost money on my son.

[Doug]

If he does it correctly and does it well, you will win. Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Now, the cost of the overall education, that's a whole different thing. But the board only. Yeah, I made money on that thing. There must be also an order of operations to like what you buy and. And how you buy it. I mean, you made a comment during your talk at Economy about, hey, we're like everybody else. We buy the bag salad. I know I'm not saving money with a bag salad, but you had a specific, like, order, like, that bag salad's gonna go bad.

[Brian Suttath]

Sure.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Quickly. So I eat that tomorrow. Tell us about kind of. This goes first, this goes second, this goes third.

[Doug]

We've really found that most. That prioritization with fresh fruits and vegetables. You know, I've told this joke before. A carrot can live a long time in your crispr. It's going to be okay. A bell pepper or tomato, there's only a couple of days in a sweet spot for those things. And same with fruits and berries and the way that we store them. If we buy strawberries and blueberries from the farmer's market. Those are going to get pretty early in the week. But there's always apples or bananas, things that need to ripen that are going to be there at the second half of our cycle of our two week cycle. But those bagged salads are another example. It's a treat. It's a $4 treat. I don't know who says those words, but it is a treat for us, the bagged salad. But then we'll get into that head of lettuce that's still intact before we dive into that again. Everything we purchase has a plan. So when we buy that bag salad, we know that's going to go with Sunday nights, grilled, whatever, dinner. But we know that there's leaf lettuce or heavy lettuce that's going to carry us through for the rest of that week and fresh vegetables in the crisper. And we started to dig into how we store those things too, that they can't just sit in the crisper willy nilly forever.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That was going to be my next question because I just gave a talk to a group of veterinarians actually and they were talking about some of the cool things they do to just make their fruits and vegetables last longer. I've never done any of them. Except recently Cheryl's been hanging our, not just the bananas, but hanging our apples. And my apples are lasting longer because they're in this bag that we hang from a hook which I never knew we've taken.

[Doug]

Like all of our berries and grapes are all washed and stored in glass jars. They tend to last longer than jar they would that plastic bag they come in. So we try to get them out of that original packaging into glass containers. We find that's extended the shelf life and the appealing nature of fresh berries longer. Same with lettuces and the carrots, onions, the way we store those again on wire racks and things so there's air circulation. But again, we're only looking at two weeks. We're not prepping, we're not hoarding, we're not stockpiling especially fresh things. What gets us into trouble is that we love the manager specials and we love the clearance at grocery stores to save that dented box of pasta because we think, well, that's a dollar and it's normally $4. We just saved $3 by bringing that box of pasta home. But now we've got pasta on the shelf that starts that shelf life thing. And then we need a plan for that pasta. So we're still learning five years in.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, let's go back. So 2020, you save $35.

[Doug]

Yeah, about loosely tracked. Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And then 21, 22, 23. Like tell me about this number.

[Doug]

I think the second year, 2021 was the full year. That was the post it note year. That was $18 total. And I think we spent around, I believe it was $6,000. So we're pretty well below the average on expenses but really low on the waste. We bought a year long planner, a monthly planner where we tracked every purchase to the penny and every bit of waste as close to the penny as we could. In that third year, which been 2022, we were under $10 and then by 2023 we were at less than $4 waste. So that took it down to just $3 and change.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's just so, so incredible what I told Cheryl that. She said the same thing. Brian, all your audiences say the people around me were saying this at economy I'll do well, but I don't think I'm getting to four bucks.

[Doug]

Yeah, and again, I don't think that four dollars should be anyone's goal. I think awareness should be the goal. And once you're aware of it, then you begin just to rethink about how you use it, how you purchase it. The number will drive down organically just by the awareness piece and making a conscious effort to think about it. But for us, that game really took hold and become something for us to drive toward. And that was a lot of weird meals and a lot of weird concoctions, but a lot of fun as well and a lot of leftovers. But I think just being aware and thinking about it will change the way that you approach food and leftovers and you'll see success pretty quick. I know for us the first time we realized we were saving some money, well, that's extra money. We love Thai food. We love good Thai takeout. Like there's extra money just to go outside the budget to go pick up some Thai food or pizza or something. So for us the rewards are pretty instant. To see the impact it has in your household. It's weird, but it's fun.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What also is interesting to me was that no plan goes perfectly all the time. I recommend this budget meeting for our stackers where we have like a 20 minute quick meeting about our money every week. And Cheryl and I often don't have the meeting. And then it's funny that our, our money situation a few weeks later, like if we just don't communicate about the little things the big things then kind of blow up. You guys had this go kind of sideways for a little bit when you made a big discovery. I know that sounded really good at the time. Yeah.

[Doug]

You know, we do the same with the money meetings we do every week. We shop. We have meetings before we shop. But we recently joined our first warehouse club and it's overwhelming. We've avoided it all this time. And I found a snack that I thought I liked. And you have to buy just pounds of it. Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You bought a pallet.

[Doug]

I just so much. And it didn't turn out to be as great as I'd hoped. And we didn't understand the storage of it and we'd understand the shelf life of it. This year it set us back. I think we attributed five or six dollars of waste to that one purchase. That's not the disparage. Warehouse stores, we're still a member, we're still shopping there. But it really did cause us to evaluate. We thought we were saving money, but in the end we lost money, you know, and so we are learning. And it's a constant cycle of trying new things and learning how to do this.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You know what I love about that story though, is that a mentor of mine a long time ago said that there's the short term and obvious and the long term, not so obvious. And while the warehouse store can save you money, it seems obvious. You walk in there like, oh my God, look at the price of all this. This is fantastic pricing. The fact that you're buying it in quantity, you know, and these lean corporations have already learned this, and maybe we need to know it in our household just by being more conscious as a shopper. Even if I'm shopping at Whole Foods, let's say, versus the warehouse store, the conscious piece, which is more long term and not so obvious, really. It sounds like did better by you.

[Doug]

I agree. And we've had that same conversation about, like, milk. You know, to buy a half gallon of milk is more expensive if you compare ounces to ounces of a gallon of milk. But a half gallon of milk lasts longer than a gallon of milk. So is it worth the investment not to waste the productivity of bringing that milk to the store to rent at my house, or should I save money, buy the gallon, then get creative on how to use an entire gallon of milk, which we would never do in two weeks in our house anymore. I think attention in households, you know, do you buy more expensive, smaller volumes so you're not sending to the landfill and you're not wasting the resources it took to produce it or is the dollar savings paramount? And get creative with the volume that you have to buy to save that dollar amount. And so it's a tension that I think again is different from household to household and budget to budget and priority to priority. None of this is cookie cutter. It changes if you have small kids or older kids or no kids. But it does have you thinking that way and it's changed the way that we approach our shopping for groceries.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, it was a fantastic lesson and the gamification so fun. And I'm glad that you're here right after Memorial Day because I know a lot of people have all those leftovers from the holiday weekend sitting in. You just made all the stackers in stacker lamb feel guilty about all this food, which is not on you, by the way. That's totally on me.

[Doug]

Yeah, get creative. I mean, I think you have to go back to the fridge and look and. But how do you, how do you repurpose those eight hot dogs that weren't eaten because the kids didn't have them that day? Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, well, you have me a hot dogs. I will find. I will find a way. I remember comedian David Tell talking about that one, Brian saying, if you look at me, you can tell like 5k. I'm out. Hot dog eating contest. I'm listening. That's, that's the thing. We'll link to Brian Stock at Economy at our show notes page stacking benjamin.com Brian, I got one more, one more question that's off the main topic. Sure you have. And we didn't talk about this earlier. We didn't mention it as we were introducing what a rock star you are. You also are a person who is a TEDX speaker. You have won the moth storyteller competitions four times, I believe, among other storytelling. Being able to talk, being able to speak in front of people is a skill. I think they call it a soft skill. But man, if you can get up just in front of your group at work or, you know, the Kiwanis Club or whatever, just for 30 seconds, it can be such valuable time. What are some of the keys you learned to being a good storyteller?

[Doug]

That's a great question. I think first is that if a struggling storyteller or a struggling speaker, I think the first thing is similar to what was talked about in Economy. People want to hear your story. And so when you stand up in front of a mic or in front of a room, people are interested in what you have to say. First. If you could flip that switch to know what you have to say is important and has value, then a confidence will come from that and it will make you more comfortable. For me, I think for a new speaker or somebody who has something to share, find that small trusted audience first and then learn to trust that they lean in and they listen. And then that makes it easier when you speak to 50 people or 100 people or like we've gotten two hundreds. So I think that's the two things. One is know that people want to hear your story, that there's value in what you have to say and believe that and to practice that in front of an audience you trust, and that's friends and co workers or colleagues or fellow volunteers in a Kiwanis Rotary Club. And then that builds that confidence and that's what gives you that comfortability. I know people say it's a soft skill, but it is practice, it is rehearsed. And there is a self talk to be able to be perceived as comfortable in front of a stage. But that comes just from knowing that people want to hear what you say, trust that it's valuable and that you've done this in front of small groups who will give you honest feedback and be encouraging in your corner.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Man, thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today, Brian. I super appreciate the time.

[Doug]

Thanks for having me, man. This is awesome. I appreciate you. I love the podcast. I've been listening more and more since economy and what we've done in food. We've got work to do in other places. And thanks for you and your guests sharing that wisdom with us out here.

[OG]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and with Brian Suttath sharing how to reduce your food waste, let's talk about the money you've got in cold storage over at your bank. See how I got food in the to the bank. See how he did that? Because different than your fridge, where food can still go bad, with the bank, your money is protected. That's right. It was on today's date, way back in 1934, when a new government agency was tested. The Fond du Lac State bank of East Peoria, Illinois closed. And for the first time in the U.S. a government agency began working to pay off depositors. Which government agency that still protects savers today, was it? I'll be back right after I go check the expiration date on everything I own. Time for me to get saving. You know that feeling when someone shows up for you just when you need it most?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's what Uber is all about not just a ride or dinner at your door.

[OG]

It's how Uber held you.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Show up for the moments that matter because showing up can turn a tough day around or make a good one even better.

[OG]

Whatever it is, big or small, Uber.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Is on the way.

[OG]

So you can be on yours.

[Len Penzo]

Uber on our Way.

[Doug]

At Capella University.

[OG]

You can learn at your own pace with our flexpath learning format.

[Doug]

Take one or two courses at a.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Time and complete as many as you can in a 12 week billing session. With Flexpath, you can even finish the.

[OG]

Bachelor's degree you started in 22 months for $20,000.

[Doug]

A different future is closer than you.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Think with Capella University.

[OG]

Learn more at capella.edu.

[Doug]

Fastest 25% of students cost varies by.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Pace, transfer credits and other factors. Fees apply. The new McCrispy strip is here. Dip approved by Ketchup Tangy Barbecue Honey Mustard honey mustard Sprite, McFlurry Big Mac sauce Double dipped in Buffalo and Ranch More ranch and creamy chili McCrispy strip dip at McDonald's.

[OG]

Hey there, Stackers. I'm the basement's official mold tester and the guy with three car warranties on his El Camino. Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Those car warranty people are amazing. How do they always know that? My existing car warranty is no good and I'm gonna need another one. I'll tell you, it's great to have all these experts in my corner, but I don't think you need to be an expert to know the answer to today's trivia question. What federal agency protects your money while it sits in a bank? The answer? Well, back in 1934, when it was founded, this agency protected up to $2,500 per account holder. Today, it's now 100 times that amount, with each depositor receiving $250,000 of protection per account type. But what agency provides this protection? It's the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or fdic. While this is helpful and makes sure your money is safe, it won't be available right away if your bank goes under. In fact, back in 1934, it took over a year for FDIC to get savers their cash. And even today, it's still a process. I mean, come on, we're talking about the federal government here. Am I right? But still, as mom says, late is better than never, especially when it comes to your money. And now back to Len. We're just going to Len.

[Brian Suttath]

Is that. Yeah, you can go to me. Because what is that kitty trivia? I mean, who doesn't know the FDIC doesn't protect your money.

[OG]

Wow, way to make our listeners feel great.

[Brian Suttath]

I'm telling you, there's like four of.

[OG]

Them out there listening right now who had no clue.

[Brian Suttath]

Question would have been, what year was the fdic?

[OG]

Oh, no, no, that's a Friday trivia question.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. No, no, no, no, no.

[Brian Suttath]

What is this?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Golf courses have tough holes land, and this is meant to be.

[Brian Suttath]

What's that?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

One of those easy pitch and putt holes.

[OG]

Joe, Joe, you've never seen an easy golf hole.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I never have.

[Brian Suttath]

Okay, so this was the putt putt.

[OG]

This was the putt putt putt putt.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, this was. And if you're the stacker that didn't know fdic, shame on Len.

[OG]

Yeah, it's the final hole of the putt putt where they. Where they want the ball back.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah, like, who's stupid enough to do that? Right? You just go to the next course.

[OG]

It's just a funnel down to one.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's right.

[OG]

Only one spot.

[Brian Suttath]

You give everybody a hole in one on 18 and go to the next.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Course, play 17 holes and on to the next one. Welcome to the how you rip off the putt putt show. By the way, if you are with the credit union, they have similar insurance, but it's called ncua, so they're not fdic. It's. NCUA is the same thing. And by the way, where was that first bank at, Doug? That was in east Peoria, Illinois.

[OG]

Not the major metropolis of Peoria. Yeah, it was in East Peoria and.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Not around those idiots in west Peoria. No, no, no, no, no. East. East Peoria. I love how we're even distinguishing which part of Peoria.

[Brian Suttath]

East Peoria.

[Len Penzo]

I'm glad I'm here today, guys.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Apparently there is. This is the hard hitting Peorias. Hard hitting part of the show.

[Brian Suttath]

Is it like Connecticut? You know, they have like New Haven, then there's West Haven and East Haven.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And I think they have all the.

[Brian Suttath]

All the havens.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, I think they have all the tax havens. Big thanks to Brian Suddeth for stopping by. Len, we had a discussion at an Angels game. You and me and the honeybee. Like all the stuff Brian talks about, like, that's cool. You guys also have some fun things you do to control food waste.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah, we do. Well, of course we do the leftovers, which. And you know, and I. A long time ago I was calculating my leftovers and this was 10 years ago. I think I did this now maybe 15. And at the time we saved $1400 a year just making sure that we always ate leftovers. So, I mean, that's no big secret. And the key is you got to like leftovers. I know a lot of people who don't like leftovers, and that's a problem. Our. Our good friends, it was good when.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You ordered it a day ago or two days ago, even if you don't.

[Brian Suttath]

Or if you made it, they'll make a meal. And if there's leftovers, it goes in the tray. It's a shame. It's a, It's a dirty shame. But it costs them a lot of money. I tell them that all the time. So leftovers, of course, that's. That's one. I think some of the others we talked about at the game, though, that maybe you didn't know about, is the blue apple that I use to extend the life of our.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, this was the part that produce. This is the part that Brian didn't even. I mean, he talked about, of course, order of operations ever. You guys just heard. But eat the bag salad first, you know.

[Brian Suttath]

Yes, that's. Of course, you have to do that too.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And the carrots and the potatoes will last longer. But you, you even extend the life of your vegetables and fruits by using this.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah, you ex. We can extend the life of our vegetables by one to two weeks by this. It's called blue apple. If, like you go to Amazon or Google Blue Apple, you'll see what I'm talking about. What it is, is it's a blue plastic apple. And then you put a little packet in there, like, kind of like those silica gel packets. I don't know what's in there, but what's in that packet absorbs, I believe it's sulfur and other gases that are outgassed from your fresh vegetables. I think it's sulfur, though, or some sort of sulfide whatever combo. But that outgassing of the other fruits and vegetables speeds up the decomposition of your. Of your vegetables. Those packets absorb that and it truly extends the life of your produce by a couple weeks. One to two. One week for sure, but sometimes two weeks.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wow.

[Brian Suttath]

And that has saved us $400 a year. And now that calculation was done probably six or seven years ago, so I'm sure by now, you know, with inflation, maybe 6, $700, at least for us is what it saves. We have those blue apples in both our crisper drawers and we keep the blue apples out on the counter with our fruits and vegetables that sit on the counter. And that works fantastic so that, that's a huge one. I, a lot of people don't know about that, but that's cool. That's a good one. And the other one I do is, I just want to second what Brian said about menus too. We've been doing it since our kids were five years old, roughly four or five. We let them pick two meals for the week. And then me and the honeybee, we would pick several more for each three. So we'd have 10, 11, 12 meals for over a two week period. And if you pick those meals and then you get your grocery list to correspond to those meals, you don't over buy, you know what you're going to eat. As Brian also said, you order your meals for those two weeks in order of which vegetables and fruits are going to go bad first. So you want to eat those first. But if you do it absolutely perfectly right, I mean, you can save a lot of money. And that meal picking, it's fun for the kids. And everybody gets at least a little something of what they want to eat every week.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's cool.

[Brian Suttath]

And it saves you money. And it's foolproof, it really is. And that way you don't over shop too. I know, I can't believe people go shopping still without a list, but a lot of people do and that can be very wasteful.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Ever since I heard Brian on the main stage and the reason I wanted to have him on today was for just that very reason of mindfulness. I mean, the second that I heard him, it's funny, my refrigerator has been so much better. Like we have safe. And to his point, you know, the average family loses over $3,000 a year in food waste. And so Len, you know the fourteen hundred dollar number, the eighteen hundred, I guess if you add both of those two points that you had together, just by cutting your food waste in half, you've got almost 2,000 bucks. Like that's.

[Brian Suttath]

You don't realize it. Food is expensive.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[Brian Suttath]

One thing we don't splurge on really is food. I mean, to me that's one of the things about life that makes life worth living is eating. So I always try not eating. I always say, hey, don't worry about the price of the food. Just make sure whatever you buy gets eaten. All of it gets eaten. But I don't care about the price of the food. If, you know, everybody wants to enjoy life and that's a great way, it's a relatively inexpensive way to enjoy life. Just make sure you don't throw any of it into the waste can.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, and if you're saving almost $2,000 a year on food, Len, you could buy the more expensive food.

[Brian Suttath]

Exactly, right. Yeah. You can get the more expensive cut of meat or, you know, splurge on the lobster for a weekend barbecue or something.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, speaking of that. Oh, gee, I know you're on this train. I have been a big, big fan lately of buying locally sourced meats. Obviously living in Texas, we've got some fantastic local farms here with pigs and beef and just.

[OG]

Are you just going to start listing off farm animals, Chickens?

[Len Penzo]

That's exactly what I was thinking. There's all sorts of things like giraffe, zebra, hippopotamus.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I actually met a guy, we were at Big Bend, he was a rancher and he had zebras and he was talking about how zebras are nasty. Just they don't care about your barbed.

[OG]

Or fans, the meat or their personality.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Their personality. Their personality is just they're mean and they also will go right through your barbed wire fence without even thinking about it.

[Brian Suttath]

But wow.

[Len Penzo]

A holes.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But Og, you're all about the, the locally sourced meats, I think, right? Didn't we talk about this?

[Len Penzo]

We've talked about wanting to be all about it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Gotcha.

[Len Penzo]

We have a local farmer's market that comes to the community and we'll get some stuff if we're happen to be in town and down there on Saturday morning type of thing. But it's on my list of things to do. I gotta believe just like at Costco, you get a little bit of a discount for buying in bulk. I got to believe that by having the whole cow at the same time.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[Len Penzo]

There's some sort of marginal benefit to that. But I'm also concerned with, you know, just sitting in the freezer for a long time because we have the. We're going through it right now. We're doing the freezer clean out. You know where it's just like what's in here. It's like, oh, meat like substitute. Okay, let's thaw that and see what it tastes like.

[Brian Suttath]

You know somebody on the, on the Facebook, on the stacking, Benjamin's Facebook, I can't remember her name, but she talked about how to avoid waste in your freezer and she mentioned. Or maybe it was a he. I'm sorry, I can't remember that they mentioned they have a whiteboard on their freezer and they keep an inventory of everything that's in that freezer. And we do too at our house.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh yeah, that was a he. I think that was Colin.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah, I replied to them and said, yeah, we do. The great minds think alike. That's a great way to make sure something's not sitting at the bottom of your freezer for a year. Because you didn't realize that.

[OG]

Yeah, if you have a chest freezer, man, it is hard to remember what's down there at the bottom.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah. That's why you have a whiteboard and you keep an inventory and dates you rotated forces you to rotate. So yeah, that's another way to not.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And Brian mentions this, but Frankie Chalenza did a couple years ago when he was on talking about food waste, Chef Frankie Chilenza, he said labeling. Just have some tape and label the date that you put it in the refrigerator, the date that you put it in the in the freezer. And that will help you remember to rotate as well. Great stuff. We'll link to, by the way, Brian's incredible economy video. As I mentioned earlier in our show [e-mail] Time for us to do. Well, you know what, let's do the Tick Tock minute. First time for the Tick Tock minute. This is the part of the show where we shine a light on a tick Tock creator who's either saying something brilliant or air quotes brilliant. Len, you think we're going to hear brilliance today from Tick tock? Are we going to hear some air quotes brilliance?

[Brian Suttath]

I got in trouble last time we did this. I was wrong. Woefully wrong. I'll say brilliant.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You guys are going to recognize this voice. This is a little known guy from Tennessee named Dave.

[Len Penzo]

100% chance that a year from now.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We'Re gonna be sitting here smiling.

[Len Penzo]

Those of us that did not take out our money. The only person that gets hurt on.

[OG]

A roller coaster are those that jump.

[Len Penzo]

Off in the middle. 100% chance that a year from now.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We'Re gonna be sitting here smiling. Oh, well, I accidentally. So good. I accidentally played it twice. It is funny as we record this a little bit early, the stock market back to 0 OG pretty much for the year. And man, if you just kept investing in your 401k, you didn't change a thing. You actually took this downturn and you made money even though the stock market didn't.

[Len Penzo]

I think it's funny if you looked at your statement on March 31, you looked at your statement on April 30, and then you look at your statement in two days from now or whatever, you would probably have an attitude of like, okay, whatever. But like Dave said, if you did the roller coaster ride. The whole time you're going like, oh my God, what is going on? I mean, for us, we see, you know, this is what I tell people. You feel the emotion of the roller coaster ride. Now multiply it by 170 families. That's the, that's the roller coaster ride we get, you know, because we look at everything in aggregate. So I see that and I have the same emotions and I have to do the same thing. Which is to go, yeah, nope, we've got a system, we've got a plan. Stay the course. And if you did that and paid no mind to the last two months of chaos, you're, you don't even know.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

How do you get through the downturns, Len, without jumping off the roller coaster?

[Brian Suttath]

I don't look very often. That's, that's, you know, that's the, the beauty of, you know, once a year is kind of nice doing that. And I have a very highly volatile mining sector IRA that I've let the experts do the managing for me because I'm not an expert in that stuff, but I believe in it. There's been times my entire portfolio and it's just in that IRA has dropped 20, 25%.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[Brian Suttath]

And you know, it's like you got to say, well, look, have strength of your convictions. You know that you are correct, that if you hold long enough, you're going to be just fine. But you've got to, like I said, you've got to have that strength and you just have to trust in the process. Because if you don't trust in the process, you're going to, you're going to mess yourself up. People talk about the importance of exponential growth. There's also the importance of dollar cost averaging and dollar cost averaging. I mean, it's great when things are going up in price, but that means you're buying more expensive, you know, higher price too. So you got to look at it this way. Prices are down, you're buying things on sale and who. Stocks are. The only thing I know that people get upset when things go on sale. So it's just kind of funny just that you got to look at it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. If you didn't touch anything and you're doing that paycheck deduction at work and you just stayed at it. You're looking at your US based stuff now. Assuming the stock market stays the same for the next few days until this goes live, you're, you're high fiving yourself. You're like, yeah, yeah, I stuck with it. The only, the only problem I have with this OG and you know, it's easy to pick on Dave a little bit. The only problem I had with that clip was a hundred percent certainty. A year from now. I would much rather, if I'm an advisor, I would much rather tell people nothing is certain. There's a great chance, you know, 10 years, okay, I'm, I'm much more certainty. But a year from now, I don't know.

[Len Penzo]

Yeah, I mean, obviously one year is probably a little off, but honestly, even if it is, in a year from now, you're still going to be happy that you're buying, right? To Len's point. It goes on sale and people freak out. I prefer to look backward and see today's price in the rear view mirror. So you see that mountain chart and it goes up and then it comes back down. I like to look back and go, okay, where were we the last time we were at this price?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Like November or whatever.

[Len Penzo]

Yeah, I'm buying September of 2024 numbers. I'm buying October of 2023 numbers. I'm buying December of 2020 numbers. Knowing what you know now, if you got to go in a time machine and go backwards and they said, okay, we're going to put you back in time to October of 2022. How much money would you like to invest? If you knew the future, what would you do? You borrow as much as you could. You would, you would like all of it. Put all of it in right now on margin, 5x leverage. You know what I mean? Like, you just, you know, the future.

[OG]

Champ, settle down.

[Len Penzo]

So it's the same thing, you know, the future, if it's gone up and gone down, you know it's going to come back. You just don't know the time frame.

[OG]

I like that phrase. The only people who get hurt on a roller coaster are the ones that get off in the middle.

[Len Penzo]

That is pretty funny.

[OG]

It's really accurate. And the end is. You guys use this phrase all the time, is, when do you need the money? That's the end of the ride. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking the money's going down. And I need that money now. So now is the end of the ride. It's not, stick to your plan. The end of the ride. For certain tranches of money are somewhere out in the future. You don't need that money now or you would have never invested it. Right. If you needed it now for daily living expenses, should not have put it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

In the market in the first place.

[OG]

Right. It shouldn't have gone in the market. So it's probably five years from now or maybe 35 years from now. That's the end of the ride.

[Brian Suttath]

You know, people have been spoiled too, the last decade or so. I mean, the stocks have pretty much gone up, up, up, up with very few pullbacks. And historically, it hasn't been quite that up, up, up, up, up. It's usually two steps up, one step back, two steps up, one step back. And I think a lot of people have just been conditioned to think it's five steps up and maybe a baby step back and then five more steps up. That's, that's not how it really.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Imagine that you started investing in 2009 and you're like, I don't think there's gonna be another pandemic. So we're not gonna have that bump in the road again, hopefully, God, anytime soon. But besides that, heck, what a nice, fun ride that's been for those people. But you're right. I mean, that's why people were questioning international. We're gonna have international week next week. Talking about for those of you that have not invested internationally. Let's get on that. Let's get diversified. Let's go. Good stuff. We'll link to that on our show notes page. A little bit of Dave in today's show, but let's do a headline, guys. Hello, darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's headlines. Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. And this piece was written by TPing Chen. And TPing writes the high school juniors with $70,000 a year job offers. Doug, you found this one for us.

[OG]

I did. It jumped out at me as I was reading the news in the morning. And that's a headline that's going to get your attention. And I'm like, yeah, those are the basketball playing kids who are getting these nil deals handed to him. But it wasn't. How amazing was it that it was? Well, you go on. I mean, tell everybody about it. It's incredible.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes. This kid, Elijah Rios, they talk about. And actually, Doug, to your point, he says that so many companies want him. He said, quote, it honestly feels like I'm an athlete getting all this attention from all these pro teams. As a high schooler, he's a junior taking welding class at Father Judge Catholic High School in Philadelphia that works closely with companies looking for workers in the skilled trades. Employers are dealing with a shortage of workers as baby boomers retire. They've Increasingly begun courting high school students like Rios. A hiring strategy they say is likely to become even more crucial in the coming years. Listen to this. So Elijah, when he graduates next year, he plans to work as a fabricator at a local equipment maker for nuclear recycling and other sectors. A job that pays 24 an hour plus overtime regularly and paid vacations. And also think about this roi. He's being paid while he's being trained. So instead of paying for training at some university, he's being paid as he's getting this experience.

[OG]

It's a win win all the way around. The employers get to sort of test out a potential employee, find out if they're going to fit well with the team on the floor. It reinforces to kids and to parents, frankly, college isn't for everyone. I mean, it is the right solution for a lot of people who have aspirations into certain professional arenas, but it's not for everybody. And I love that this is hopefully going to take off.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I mean, Len, this idea that you have to go to college, probably not.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah. I've been saying this for 10 years. If you're going to go to college, you've got to calculate your return on investment. What's the college going to cost and what, what do you expect to earn when you get out of college? And a lot of people haven't been, didn't do that over the last decade and it's come back to bite them. So the good news is there are so many jobs out there that don't require a college degree. And there are some jobs out there. If you look at the ads for job positions, it'll say they need a college degree. But there are some jobs that you really don't need the college degree if you can prove that you can do the work anyways. And I've talked about my son being one example. He applies regularly for jobs that require a college degree and he still got hired. He got hired by a major aerospace company that required an engineering degree. And he, he got the job anyway.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Because he had the skills.

[Brian Suttath]

He proved that he could do the work. You just have to be careful. Vocation, there's nothing wrong with vocational. There are so many. When we were in.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Not even not wrong. These are some highly paid jobs.

[Brian Suttath]

Oh my gosh. They're highly paid. They're. And they're highly skilled.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

He's starting out at the bottom, out of high school with no College at $24 an hour. And it goes up quickly from there as he gains skills in these Pro.

[Brian Suttath]

Welder will make $200,000 a year.

[OG]

There's a serious dearth of welders right now in all industries. But you know, I think there's an odd corollary. I'm glad you brought up the notion of trade school, Joe, because there's an odd corollary between college and what we're learning about here because essentially they're both trade schools and that's different. That was not the case when we were kids in high school. The three of us, the four of us were in high school. That was not the case with colleges and with a four year degree. And I think as parents, we didn't adapt. So if you look at what was happening with kids coming out of colleges in the 60s through probably the late 90s, mid to late 90s, was the employment market valued the four year degree more broadly just the piece of paper?

[Brian Suttath]

Yes, they did.

[OG]

And so we could get degrees in liberal arts. And the employment market thought, look, they're well rounded, they have clearly the aptitude and the ability to stay focused on tasks and, you know, and work through a college degree because that's tough. And they recognize that it was tough, but it changed somewhere in the late 90s to ascent college, to essentially being vocational school for very specific skill sets. And if you didn't have one of those specific skill sets, you weren't getting a job in the pharmaceutical industry or in the engineering industry. And if you just came out with the more general degrees, your ROI plummeted to your point, Len, because there was no return on investment or very, very little if you came out with more of those generalized degrees. And we didn't adapt. We were conditioned to think after high school you're going to college, what college are you going to? It's the first question out of most of our mouths was what college are you going to? Or you say, what college is your friend going to? And we didn't realize that wasn't the right question to be asking.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

These are not the jobs they were before. These jobs are also changing quickly as more professions are getting tech infused. The piece here says employers say that as the skill trades become more tech confused, they anticipate doing even more recruitment in early age because they need workers who are comfortable programming and running computer diagnostics. Quote, I'm not looking to hire the guy I used to have 20 years ago, says Bob Walker, founder of Global Affinity, the Bristol, Pennsylvania based manufacturer who offered Rios a job. The equipment he uses is highly advanced, including a 1.7 million dollar steel laser cutter. And he says he needs to have Tech savvy workers to operate it. So these jobs also changing. And by the way, there's a resource here. Woman named Angie Simon is the creator of this cool experience that now is across the country in Canada, 51 locations they have these. It's called the Heavy Metal Summer experience where kids between 15 and 18 can go for a few days to a camp and they're just immersed in these different trades. It was created because of the fact that contractors building houses were having trouble finding people to finish these housing projects. So they decided, you know what, I'm going to immerse these kids at a young age in it. And we'll link to the Heavy Metal Summer experience in the show notes. I'm not sure if enrollment's up for this summer or not, but certainly go and go and check it out if you've got a kid.

[Brian Suttath]

It's just a shame now that the high schools when we were in high school, at least my high school and I'm sure yours too, we had every shop class. We had wood shop, we had metal shop, we had welding class, we had mechanics Bay. So people did auto shop. All of those shops were electrical. Metal, I think I said metal. They were all at my high school. And it was a great way to pick up experience. And you know, I think parents today, young of young kids, maybe they should talk to their school boards and start asking hey, can you get this back in the high school?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Bringing it back.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah, bring it back.

[OG]

Well, it'll more than likely, I mean you're right, we should ask our school boards to do that. But it may also happen naturally as fewer and fewer kids for most school districts go on to these super expensive four year colleges. They need to provide a training avenue for. It's a thirst for their.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Because a lot of what this piece talks about is manufacturers are going to the high school going give me kids, please, please, please, please, please give me kids. And the high school obviously wants to take advantage of that great piece. We'll link to it on our show notes at Stacky Benjamin's.

[Brian Suttath]

Just remember folks, hard work pays off in the future, but laziness pays off right now. Remember that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes, that's what I think, Glenn. Procrastination means I always have something to do tomorrow.

[Brian Suttath]

There you go. Think positive.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Let's wander out on the back porch because we've had. I know some reviews, Doug. Also we've had some great comments. I had a great comment from someone again on Spotify. We did our related to this episode. We went back a couple years to our grocery bill tips roundtable when Janice Torres joined Len and we had so much fun. Remember Len? The there's no joke funnier than tuberculosis day. Tuberculosis day humor. Like why somebody made tuber tuberculosis. I can't say that word tuberculosis a thing.

[Brian Suttath]

Say tb.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes.

[Brian Suttath]

Everybody's called it tb.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You're just ruining it. Joe A guy named Rich says thanks for the tips. Laughs that's why I wanted to replay that. And I also thought with Brian coming on, it was good one, two punch hearing about tips that really held up even a couple of years old. And then our friend Silent Shade on Spotify said, cool discussion. I'm also a frequent Instacart user. Len, was it you talking about Instacart? I don't remember somebody. Maybe it was Jason.

[Brian Suttath]

I don't think so.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Says especially the pickup. Listen to this. I really like seeing the total cart price before I check out so I can make good budget choices. So when you meal plan, you put it all into Instacart and then Silent Shade says the nearest grocery store to me is a Publix one hack I've started doing because Publix does raise prices on Instacart. So not only you're paying the Instacart fee, you're paying a higher price that Instacart has with Publix. So Publix is gouging you a little bit is you shop on Instacart without checking out. Then you use the Publix app to load up on coupons and then you go into the store and use the Instacart app as the shopping list and then you cancel all the items in your Instacart. So. So you get all the coupons you can get. You can see what the prices are going to be ahead of time. That's like meal planning 201.

[Brian Suttath]

Len yeah, I hey, I can't say enough about the Honeybee. She uses our local grocery store app and you save so much money. If you don't use those grocery store apps, you are missing out on a ton of savings. There's so many deals in those before she goes shopping every other week or so she's on that app and she's just checking things off on that list and it's just amazing. I just boggles the mind how many people go into those stores and don't use those apps and they're really missing out on a lot of hidden, hidden savings. So yeah, they're talking about the Publix app there. So I highly recommend you look into that if you're not doing it already.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, it was a great episode. Thanks everybody for the comments on that. Doug, you also had a review I think that you wanted to read.

[OG]

I did. You know, one of my. I get so much out of these reviews and just think people for submitting them. And one of my favorite things is trying to decode who the real people are behind the reviews based on their, Their name, their. I guess it's their Apple id. And this one, clearly there's no question in my mind. This is from Stacker Blair, who's obviously Lisa Welchel, the actress who played Blair on Facts of life in the 80s. And I mean, was that another reference? And trust me, I mean, I used.

[Brian Suttath]

To have a crush on her.

[OG]

Oh, who did it? Are you kidding me?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh gee, did you watch Facts of Life?

[Len Penzo]

Yeah, not a lot. It wasn't. It was not on the approved list when I was a kid.

[OG]

What? That was pretty clean. That was pretty squeaky clean show, I think.

[Len Penzo]

Not for my age at the time.

[OG]

Wow. Okay. Well, Blair was something else. And Lisa Welchel, who is obviously a fan of the show, writes, great show, highly recommend. Long time stacker and first time reviewer. Great for people new to personal finance, but also great for those wanting to continue building better financial habits. Love the content and format and this is where it really heads south quickly. And she broke my heart. Except for Doug's lame trivia. Only kidding, Doug. Why are you laughing, Blair?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Knew you were going to read that.

[OG]

That was a hurtful thing to say and you're laughing. Only kidding, Doug. Keep it up guys, it's important work. See ya.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's awesome. Thanks Blair for the nice comment. And by the way, if you send these to me, I've got all these books I really need to keep unloading books. So send them to me, Joe stackybenjamins.com and we obviously don't want you to do a review that you don't mean, but if you're leaving us a review anyway, thank you for helping us out there. Help new Stackers, the family know what they're getting into and I'd love to give you a choice of some of these stacks of books from people who've been on the show. All right, that's going to do it for today. We got a lot of people to thank. Thank you Mr. Penzo for hanging out with us. Good seeing you again.

[Brian Suttath]

It's been a pleasure as always. I love it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes. It's so funny. We, we heard a ton from Len today. Oh gee, is OG asleep?

[Len Penzo]

Yeah, I was just wondering why I need to be here today. Provided absolutely no value. I had some good commentary that I had in my mind about the going to, you know, work thing after high school, but apparently it was not. Was not needed.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Just. Just jump in, man. Jump in.

[Len Penzo]

It's all good.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What? Was a trade school ever something that your kids thought about?

[Len Penzo]

No, I. No. Nope. Because we're not going to talk about it now. Too late.

[Doug]

Sorry.

[Len Penzo]

My good ideas are gone. So come back next week for my good ideas, I guess.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

There you have it.

[Len Penzo]

It's a cliffhanger.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Doug, what should we have learned today?

[OG]

Well, Joe, here's what's stacked up on our to do list for today. First, take some advice from Brian Suttath. Want to make some easy money? Focus on your food costs. Not only can you quickly afford the little extra things, but you'll also have fun gamifying the experience. Second, big career money. That may not mean taking the path you think it does. But the big lesson. If you want a food lesson, come share dinner with Joe's mom. I dare you not to eat all of her green bean jello casserole. Double dog dare you. Thanks to Brian Sudath for joining us today. You can find his full talk from this year's Econome Conference on the Econome Conference's YouTube page. We'll also include links in our show [e-mail] thanks also to Len Penzo for joining us. You'll find squirrels gone wild wherever you watch your spicy videos or just settle for lenpenzo.com, the upbeat blog for responsible people. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul Sehi. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, yeah.

[OG]

And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[Doug]

Sa.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It'S actually funny. Oh, gee. I didn't even think about the fact that we hadn't heard from you. I was just looking at the time. I was seriously looking at the Timestamp.

[OG]

Thinking about what a nice, peaceful show it wasn't. Have any arguments. Nobody made us feel stupid.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I didn't even think about it. And I feel bad, but. But actually, Len, I didn't know that you were going to be here for this particular episode when I found this. I want to get OG's take, but I do want to get your take on this, too, because you have kids of a certain age, and those kids have friends. This is from Conan o' Brien's podcast. And this is. He's talking to comedian John Mulaney. Let's get both of your take on this.

[Brian Suttath]

I ask you a question.

[Doug]

You have a friend of your daughter staying with you, correct?

[Len Penzo]

Yes.

[Brian Suttath]

What does she call you?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

She hasn't said my name. She just showed up last night, so.

[OG]

She hasn't said, oh, hello, Mr. O' Brien.

[Doug]

Or do the kids friends call you Mr. O' Brien?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes, because that was something that happened.

[OG]

Started in grade school. Is that apparently the word went out.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You call parents Mr. O' Brien or Mrs. O' Brien, and they do that. And I used to think that's a little formal. I don't know that I need that. But the second a kid says, hey, Conan, I want to tear into their torso with, like, my sharpened nails.

[Len Penzo]

What the.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Pull their heart out and eat it.

[OG]

In front of them.

[Brian Suttath]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Maybe an overreaction or Proportionate. Thank you. Yeah, proportionate. So that's the question, guys. Oh, gee. Do you feel like Conan does? People say, hey, OG kids. Friends of your kids.

[Len Penzo]

There's two things, and I think this is a smidge generational. So I've been educated to now learn that kids born after 2016, of which Caroline is in, that group is called Gen Alpha. Do you guys know that?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Nope. But I do now. I was this many years old.

[Len Penzo]

Yeah. So that's Gen Alpha. And the boys are. So there's X.

[OG]

And then millennials created these things, were like, damn it, why did we start at the end of the Alphabet? And so they went all the way back to the beginning to give us.

[Len Penzo]

It reminds me of that Nate Brigazzi bit on Saturday Night Live where he's, like, playing George Washington. And he's like, and this is relevant because we just had the senior kindergarten thing at my kid's school where the seniors gave a gift to the kindergartners, like, the new generation upcoming and we're out of here, and it's your guys's now type thing. And in the bit, he's like, I dream of a country where we can Educate our kids how we want. And the first year of school, we'll call it kindergarten. And then the guy goes, general, what will we call the second year? And he says, we'll call the second year first grade. But anyways, it's just all these idiosyncrasies. But anyways, back to that. So for the boys, their friends will call us Mr. And Mrs. For Caroline's age group, for some reason. And this drives me completely crazy. Somewhere along the line, they got okay with saying Ms. Instead of Mrs. And first name or Mr. And first name. And so now. So a lot of the.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So Mr. OG.

[Len Penzo]

Yeah. Mr. Josh or Ms. Lissa. And I'm like, what the. Who decided this?

[OG]

See, that's a Southern thing. I've never heard that happening up here in the real world.

[Brian Suttath]

We do that in California. Down here in my neighborhood, first name, same thing. Mr. This, Mr. That, Mrs. This, Mrs. That.

[Len Penzo]

First names or last names?

[Brian Suttath]

Mr. Gary, Mr. Mike.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, some kids call me Mr. Joe, but that's because they can't pronounce my last name. Like, I fully thought that it was because they can't pronounce my last name.

[Len Penzo]

Yeah, nobody's called me by my first name. And I'm like, Conan. I would punch a kid if they did that.

[OG]

I had read recently that the Mr. Or Ms. And then first name was somehow a sign of respect that originated in the south, like, kind of the deeper South. And I think it is. It's moving now. I mean, I've been on, like, customer support calls where I get. I'll get that. You know, Mr. Mr. Doug. They forget the neighbor part. And I was wondering, like, why. Where's this coming from? Starting to hear it more and more often. And then I read that article. I even have a problem. You know, my kids are older. They're. They're young adults now. They're off on their own, earning money, living by themselves and their peer group that I coached in baseball because I coached a ton of baseball. So all these kids used to refer to me as coach or Mr. Last Name. Now they're just calling me Doug. And they're grown adults, and I still have a problem with it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's funny.

[OG]

They're almost 30, and I'm like, I kind of. I bristle cowboy.

[Len Penzo]

We're not quite that informal.

[OG]

Right. Exactly. Hey, hey, Doug, you want to be? I'm like, whoa, whoa.

[Len Penzo]

Yes, I do. But that's Mr. Doug to you.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's right, Len. How about you? Are you Mr. Penzo?

[Brian Suttath]

I'm Mr. Len among the neighborhood Kids. And most of the neighborhood kids now are a grown up, and they still call me Mr. Len, and that's fine. I will echo what Josh said about my kids friends. The males will call me Mr. Penzo, but the females don't. They kind of don't call me anything to my face. But I did discover. And then my daughter has confirmed this. When they're texting back and forth amongst them friends, they refer to my daughter, refers to me and my wife, the honeybee, as by our first names.

[Len Penzo]

Your. Your kid does that?

[Brian Suttath]

All of her friends refer to their parents in their text messaging. By their parents first names, which to me, I don't like. I would never want. If I ever heard my kid call me by my first name, I would. I would go off the rails.

[OG]

Absolutely.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We had an intern that worked here, a friend of mine's kid that worked here that called his dad. His dad's name was Doug. And he called his parents to me one day, Doug and Jenny. And I was like, who the hell is Doug and Jenny? He's like, my mom and dad. And I'm like, you got to stop that. Yeah, stop that. Right.

[Brian Suttath]

The younger generation thing, I think it's become acceptable now. I mean, I don't care, as long as I don't hear him talking or seeing.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I don't think that's ever acceptable. I don't know, man.

[OG]

Well, but it's our fault, right? Because we're not. We're not reinforcing the side. The deferential sign of respect of the Mr. Or Mrs. Oh, I. We're just some people. Parents are letting it happen.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I totally reinforced it.

[Len Penzo]

My kids, my. My friend's parents, who. Other than your mom, which she calls me daddy.

[OG]

There it is. Thought we were going to make it a whole episode. I thought we were gonna make it a whole episode without one.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's also a side of.

[Len Penzo]

Other than that. I still call her Mrs. Neighbor Doug, you know, Mrs. Neighbor's Doug's mom. I still call her that, but.

[OG]

Probably slows the whole process down.

[Len Penzo]

I couldn't. I couldn't let it go. I just. I was like, there's so much I could do with this right now. But no, no, no. I've gone on vacation or, like, been, like, at a condo, Like a vacation condo with my friend who, like, his dad's there, you know, and it's still mister. I mean, his dad's 75. I'm damn near 50. I'm not gonna. I don't even know what his first name is. It's still Mr. Something, you know, I would never in a million years.

[Brian Suttath]

My old teachers, I have a still every once in a while, keep in contact with an old teacher. And she's like 78 now. 70, 80. And I'll still call her by Mrs. Lewis. And she just cringes. It's like, you know, I'm 60, you know, Mrs. You know, she's like, call me Kathy. I'm like, yeah, I can't do it.

[Len Penzo]

No. I would have got slapped sideways if I would have done that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So my daughter's first serious boyfriend in high school comes over to our house. And of course, at our house, you're playing games with us, right? So this kid Aaron is sitting at the table and I'm doing something, and he goes. He goes, joe, it's your move. And I just kind of look at him and then I take my move. And then a few minutes later, I said, hey, I'm going out to the kitchen to get something to drink. Would you. Would you kids like something? And Autumn says, oh, yes, please, I'd like a whatever. And he goes, oh, yeah, Joe, I'll have a Coke. And I just kind of look at him. I go back and kind of slam the Coke down in front of him. And I hear my daughter lean over to him and whisper. He doesn't like it when you call him Joe. You gotta.

[Len Penzo]

Thought you were going to say he was like, 38. No, my daughter's first serious boyfriend was out there smoking a cigarette with me.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And seen. And cut. No.

[Len Penzo]

You want anything to drink? Yeah, I'll have whatever you're having, but otherwise, bourbon or something. Whatever you got.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Like a Woodford.