Mid-Year Financial Reset: Key Takeaways from the First Half of 2025 (SB1708)

Summary

Mid-Year Financial Reset: Key Takeaways from the First Half of 2025 (SB1708)

The Stacking Benjamins Show episode SB1708, released on July 14, 2025, serves as a comprehensive mid-year financial reset, encapsulating crucial lessons, discussions, and strategies gleaned from the first half of the year. Hosts Joe Saul-Sehy and OG, alongside guest Gary McDermott, navigate through themes of goal setting, budgeting, consumerism, retirement planning, and the psychological aspects of financial management. This summary delves into the episode's key sections, highlighting significant insights and memorable quotes to provide a thorough understanding for both regular listeners and newcomers.

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1. Introduction to the Mid-Year Financial Reset

The episode kicks off with the hosts acknowledging the halfway mark of 2025, reflecting on personal goals and the collective progress of their listeners, affectionately known as "Stackers."

Joe Saul-Sehy (01:55):

"We began the year in a spot that for you and I made a lot of sense. Which was the first thing you do in your financial plan. The very first thing is get income moving the right way."

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2. Goal Setting and the Importance of Milestones

A central theme is the significance of setting and regularly reviewing financial milestones. Joe emphasizes the necessity of periodic assessments to adjust goals, preventing stagnation and ensuring continuous progress.

OG (04:22):

"If you have a good system, if you are poor with money and you make $70,000 a year and you think that magically, if I make $100,000 a year, I'm going to be magically good with money, that's not going to. You'll just have $100,000 worth of problems."

The discussion underscores that increasing income without a solid financial system can exacerbate problems rather than solve them.

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3. Mindset and Risk Management in Financial Planning

Drawing from insights by Alex Hormozi and observations of high-profile entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, the hosts delve into the nuanced understanding of risk. They argue that perceived risks can be mitigated through skill acquisition and strategic thinking, allowing for greater financial rewards without proportionate risks.

Alex Hormozi (12:47):

"If you want to make more within a business, you need to take on more risk. The people who are most highly compensated in any business are the ones who incur more risk."

Joe Saul-Sehy (13:16):

"Skill is how you mitigate the risk 100%. That's what you're saying."

The conversation highlights that successful financial growth often involves embracing and managing risks intelligently rather than avoiding them.

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4. Budgeting Tools and Frugality

The episode transitions to practical budgeting strategies, emphasizing simplicity and mindfulness over restrictive austerity. Guests Kristen Wade and Brian Suttis share techniques to track and control spending without falling into the trap of shaming oneself for financial missteps.

Gary McDermott (25:15):

"When people are looking at budgeting, they think it has to be this huge undertaking and a really intense process and stop eating out, stop having fun."

Joe adds that starting with broad categories can prevent overwhelm and increase the likelihood of maintaining a budget.

Joe Saul-Sehy (25:48):

"Start big picture and then when you find the thing that's going to, you know, when you want to dive into it, then you have the technology already built up."

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5. Consumerism and Intentional Spending

A spirited debate unfolds around the concept of consumerism, where Joe initially frames it neutrally as the act of consumption, while OG highlights the negative connotations often associated with the term. They stress the importance of intentional spending—purchasing items that align with personal values and contribute to genuine happiness.

Joe Saul-Sehy (32:19):

"If you go to a NASCAR race, NASCAR wants me to go to the NASCAR race. I love NASCAR. Everybody knows that."

OG (36:46):

"If we do the things that we want to do, I don't owe you an explanation for why I do it."

The hosts agree that mindful consumption fosters financial well-being and personal satisfaction, countering societal pressures to spend impulsively.

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6. Redefining Retirement

Retirement planning takes center stage as the hosts explore shifting perspectives on what retirement should entail. They reference insights from Benjamin Brandt and discuss the importance of purpose and meaningful activities over traditional notions of leisure.

Benjamin Brandt (Referenced at 48:54):

"We should be looking at ourselves all the time as a science experiment to think about what truly makes us happy so that when we leave our job, we're actually filling our hours with things that we appreciate."

OG further elaborates on the necessity of testing retirement activities to ensure they bring genuine fulfillment, rather than adhering to clichéd expectations.

OG (50:06):

"You need to do the things that you think you're going to do. If you've been working for 20 or 30 years, go test it out."

The discussion emphasizes flexibility and continuous evaluation to craft a retirement lifestyle that genuinely enhances well-being.

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7. Importance of Community and Social Connections

The hosts underscore the role of community in personal fulfillment and stress management, referencing the documentary Join or Die by Pete and Rebecca Davis. They argue that active participation in community groups fosters a sense of belonging and reduces stress, contrary to the isolating tendencies exacerbated by excessive online interactions.

Joe Saul-Sehy (72:22):

"Our friend SJ Fjord says Joe seems to have selective amnesia. Flying to Egypt and Nepal and all the other places visited is a form of consumerism."

OG (37:40):

"But it turns out that we also get energy, even if we're an introvert, from being a part of a community. And you just don't get that online."

The episode advocates for balancing personal financial goals with community engagement to achieve holistic well-being.

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8. Investment Strategies and Trends

Barry Ritholtz's viewpoints on investment strategies are explored, particularly his caution against following transient market trends influenced by media personalities. The hosts highlight the importance of timeless, foundational investing principles over chasing fads that may not yield sustainable returns.

Gary McDermott (69:18):

"A lot of people to catch the trend, they go listen to all of these CNBC personalities... You have to be willing to adjust to changing conditions."

The discussion encourages investors to focus on enduring strategies and adapt philosophically to evolving market dynamics rather than relying solely on historical expertise.

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9. Mindfulness and Spending Decisions

The conversation returns to the theme of mindfulness in financial decisions, illustrating how intentional spending can lead to greater happiness and financial stability. The hosts caution against spending for the sake of spending, advocating instead for expenditures that provide meaningful benefits and align with personal goals.

OG (62:30):

"Anybody who thinks that spending money is going to make them happy by definition is to be severely disappointed."

Joe Saul-Sehy (65:28):

"This idea of time, right? It's not the money in Uber, it's, do I want to spend. Is that quality time that I spend with my kid in the car, or is it just I'm an Uber?"

They discuss the balance between financial expenditure and the preservation of time—arguing that wealth should enhance life quality without eroding valuable moments.

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10. Conclusion and Takeaways

In wrapping up, the hosts consolidate the episode's key lessons: prioritize mindset, implement robust financial systems, practice intentional spending, redefine retirement with purpose, engage with community, and adopt enduring investment strategies. They encourage listeners to apply these insights through actionable steps and continuous self-assessment.

Doug (77:09):

"First, take some advice from our team. We made some great podcasts for you. Now go implement. Second, while our topics covered a wide range of tools, lessons and strategies, overwhelmingly it's mindset that changes everything."

Joe Saul-Sehy (78:35):

"Flip the script. Whether it's this consumerism idea, whether it is your portfolio and managing your portfolio, whether it is what brings you happiness. Flip the script. Get mindful about it."

The episode concludes with an invitation to listeners to engage further with their financial planning through expert consultations and continued education via additional podcast episodes.

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Notable Quotes:

• OG (04:04):

  "Moment of silence for the repurchase requirement."

• Joe Saul-Sehy (35:32):

  "I don't owe you an explanation for why I chose to do that."

• Gary McDermott (62:18):

  "When experts are wrong, it's because they're experts in the way the world used to be."

• OG (76:11):

  "Flip the script."

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Final Thoughts

Episode SB1708 of The Stacking Benjamins Show offers a multifaceted exploration of mid-year financial strategies, blending practical advice with psychological insights. By emphasizing the interplay between mindset, strategic planning, and intentional actions, the hosts provide listeners with a robust framework to navigate the remainder of 2025 successfully. Whether tackling budgeting challenges, redefining retirement, or fostering community connections, this episode serves as a valuable guide for anyone seeking to enhance their financial literacy and achieve enduring financial well-being.

Transcript

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal can help you find and finance the right vehicle with ease. With Navy Federal's car buying service. Powered by Truecar, you can find the vehicle that's right for you as you search through inventory, compare models and you could get an amazing rate when you finance with Navy federal. Visit navy federal.org truecar to learn more. Navy Federal Credit Union Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Credit and collateral subject to approval. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Is this thing on? Hello?

[OG]

Hello. Wow.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Feels like it's been a long time. Greatest this week, last week. But we begin this week as I'm waiting for Og and Doug to come down the stairs. Begin this week like we do with every other one. Stackers, raise your mugs because on behalf of the men and women creating podcast in Mom's basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union like to begin our week with a sloop to our troops. Kept us safe during the weekend and over our greatest hits week. Thanks for all that you do. Thank you for your service. Let's go stack some Benjamins together now, shall we?

[OG]

Here's the song that we'd like to.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Do for all the younger set of.

[OG]

People, the teenagers and what have you. This one's called Vacation Zole. It's over.

[Doug]

How are your 2025 goals coming along? Stackers? Let's get ready to reset for the second half of the year, shall we? Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and look at how the year's gone. We we're halfway done. What have you accomplished today? We'll look back at the Hot topics we covered during the first half of 2025. So you can either fill in what you've missed or get moving. Stacker. I said stacker, not slacker. I believe in you. I promise. And because you've come to demand it, each show, I'll call a timeout so you can Score a helping of my incredible trivia to amaze your friends. And now here come two guys who are still arguing over whether Nintendo cartridges count as collectibles or asset backed investments. It's Joe and. Oh, J.J. ju.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Welcome back, Stackers from greatest hits week. I am Joe Salsihai. Average Joe. Money on Twitter. And across the card table from me, the guy who we call the asset on this asset backed podcast, Mr. OG.

[OG]

Better to be an asset than a liability, I suppose.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Just keeps going.

[OG]

Which is. Which is what you mostly call me.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Try not to. Is a Nintendo cartridge an asset backed? Asset backed.

[OG]

No, no, no. In fact, we performed a little surgery on our one of our gaming consoles the other day. It was not successful. The patient died.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh. Oh, that's a bad day. Do you have a moment of silence?

[OG]

Yeah, mostly moment of silence for the repurchase requirement.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's what I was thinking. Just moment of silence so you can focus on Amazon to go get the next one. It's a great day down here in the basement. OG, how are your 2025 goals coming along?

[OG]

You know, today's a new day. I'll be honest. Today's a new day. Something's okay, something's not okay.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We have goal setting week here on the podcast because I love this idea of milestones, as do you. The fact that if you have a year long goal and you get a quarter of the way through, halfway through, three quarters of the way through, stop, see where you're at, and then go, you know what? I need to make a minor correction versus a major correction if I wait until the very end. So often we say set a goal and then we, we don't do anything along the way. And then we realize at the end that we didn't get where we wanted. Gary McDermott joins us on Wednesday. He's a guy OG who worked with nuclear reactors in the Navy. It's amazing. He's going to talk about goal setting. I know all of our stackers are going to go, yeah, yeah, goal setting, whatever. This guy breaks it down. It isn't rocket science, but it's the way the Navy gets stuff done. It's the way multi bajillion dollar companies get things done. And yet you and I go, yeah, goal setting, putting it down on paper, building milestones, I don't need that. Smart goals, forget it. And yet I think it's a great time for that reset.

[OG]

I think equally important to goal setting is recognizing that it's a whole process. It's not just, here's where I am here's where I want to go. That's the end. Because the reality is your idea of what you are goal is, especially if you don't write it down, especially if you don't have any specific milestones, if you're like, oh, I just want to lose weight or I want to be in shape or I want to have more money, right? All of those things are things that have no end to them. You will never get to it. You will never get to, I have enough money. I know people say, oh, if I had a million dollars, I'd have. No, you won't. Trust me, you have a million. And be like, if I get a million too, that'd be great too. But if you can. And I catch myself doing this too, right? We talk about it being r par Lance from strategic coach called the gap, right? We're always looking at this ideal outcome or this ideal future as opposed to recognizing how far we've come. I was looking at just kind of some financial stuff the other day. Not really, not really doing a deep dive on progress, but I was mentally thinking about from one number to the next. I hit this number and now I'm about to hit this other number. And how long has it been since I went from one to the next? And it took me a second to go back and go, my goodness, it's only been like 19, 18 months since I hit that first number and I'm on the doorstep of hitting the next one. Meanwhile, I've got this idea of like, well, it's still not enough. I gotta, you know, I'm not even close, right? It's like, well, hold on. Go backwards and go. Remember, you hit this milestone just a year and a half ago and you're like, oh, that's a pretty cool milestone. Like, that's awesome. And now you're gonna hit effectively double it in another 18 months. But meanwhile, my mind goes immediately to, yeah, that's not good. I'm still, I'm still far behind. So I'm guilty of this. If you don't write down the progress that you're trying to make, if you're active in like the fitness blog world and one of the major things they say to do is you have to take pictures. You're like, I don't want like half naked pictures of me and my phone. Just put them in, like the secret folder. Apparently that exists somewhere. But the only way that you can tell if you've made progress is by looking at the progress, right? Because you don't see minus £2 is looking good. And then you look at the picture, you go, oh, because it happens so small.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And there's other things that happen along the way. You could lose two pounds but gain muscle. There's other unintended outcomes. That's a reason why I love the approach of milestones. So today at the six month Milestone Stackers, we're going to jump on this.

[OG]

We'Re going to take you back kind of seven months.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But semantics is the amazing, through some of the amazing mentors we've had on this show during the last six months, we're to go back, we're going to go through some of their lessons. This is an episode, if there ever was one, where you're going to want to have either the notes app on your phone, open a piece of paper, whatever it takes, I'm going to give you the episode number. So if you need more to make sure that you're actually working toward these things that we gave you on a silver platter the last six months, well, now's the time to really reset and get moving so that by the end of the year you have made some progress on 2025 and you're roaring into 2026. So we're going to start that journey here in just a second, but we got a couple sponsors who make sure that we can keep on keeping on. You don't pay a dime for any of the Stacky Benjamin show. We're going to hear from them and then OG and I taking you through just a few of the big themes from the start of 2025. This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal can help you find and finance the right vehicle with ease. With Navy Federal's car buying service powered by Truecar, you can find the vehicle that's right for you as you search through inventory, compare models and you could get an amazing rate when you finance with Navy federal. Visit navy federal.org truecar to to learn more. Navy Federal Credit Union Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Credit and collateral subject to approval.

[Gary McDermott]

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

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We began the year in a spot that for you and iog, made a lot of sense. Which was the first thing you do in your financial plan. The very first thing is get income moving the right way. Too often you and I see people try to. I optimize everything. They try to ring every nickel out of the experience. And yet making more money can solve so, so so many problems.

[OG]

If you have a good system.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

If you have a good system. So what do you mean by that?

[OG]

Well, if you are poor with money and you make $70,000 a year and you think that magically, if I make $100,000 a year, I'm going to be magically good with money, that's not going to. You'll just have $100,000 worth of problems.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Instead of 70, 100%, which is why we went there. Second. We're going to talk about that system second. But first, because, you know, which one do you put first? Make more money or have the good system? Make more money. Have a good system. Those two things in order. So we started off by talking to a gentleman who has made tons of money. OG you know him well? I know him well. Alex Hormozi. I flew out to Las Vegas to his headquarters, sat in his studio. This is a guy who works with multi millionaires may make. He doesn't tell you exactly how much he makes, but it's. What do you think, 80, 90, $100 million a year?

[OG]

It's a good start.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[OG]

Probably can't retire on it. Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

The guy was making $30 million a couple years into his career and he just dropped gold. And I, I kind of hate that because it's so cliche. Oh, gold nuggets. He's just laying it out.

[OG]

You're gonna get a nugget. Every time you go to a conference, you want to get yourself a nugget.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

There was so much here, though, that we had two episodes decoding it. But let's start off here. Everything in 2025 or any year begins with mindset. And Alex Harozi talks about earning more money means changing your mindset. By the way, we're playing these off of our YouTube channel, YouTube shorts, clips that we made. So you're going to hear some sound effects that we put in there. So sometimes you'll hear some sound effects in these. That's because we're at our stacking Benjamin's YouTube page, just pulling these right up. But here's Alex Hormozi talking about mindset.

[OG]

If you want to make more within a business, you need to take on more risk. The people who are most highly compensated in any business are the ones who incur more risk. Sales guys incorporated incur risk. They have commissions. Some people are only commission. You take on more risk if you're an insurance sales guy, you work within an organization, but you're a mini entrepreneur, if you will. If you're willing to take on risk, you will get disproportionately rewarded. Where you get the real outsized returns is where it looks like risk to other people, but to you, you understand it, and then it's not risky. And then you just get the outsized returns without the risk.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Skill is how you mitigate the risk 100%. That's what you're saying. You build skills that take things that other people think are risky, that to you, OG are not risky. Here's how I look at this. Over the years. Where do we spend a lot of time on this podcast? We talk about risk in the portfolio. How much risk do I want to take? And people go, oh, I'm a risk taker. I take a bunch of risk in my portfolio, or I want to take more risk in my portfolio. But when we look at the way that you make money where you're taking no risk in your career, you not doing anything to move the ball faster, to move the needle further, yet you're demanding your portfolio take more risk, I think we need to look at risk wider. And Haro says if you just learn a few of these skills and you get the game down, where you're building a muscle that our people don't have, looks risky to other people, you're used to it. The guy in the high wire doesn't think it's risky because he's done it a bajillion times, right?

[OG]

Well, and he's. And he's got the skills and the process and maybe even some protection that you don't know exists. Like those idiots that, like, walk across the Grand Canyon don't. But, you know, like, at the circus, they do, right? They got a net and they're like, yeah, if I fall, it's the show gets screwed up. But, yeah, I think, you know, if you look at your company, if you look at your industry and not going down the path of, like, what's good? Is capitalism good or bad or wealthy people good or bad? Jeff Bezos was in the news lately, right, for having his wedding. And maybe it was a little over the top, a smidge slightly. I mean, it's cool you can rent a city. I didn't know that existed, or half of one or whatever he did. But anyways, he's one of the wealthiest guys in the world because he took all the risk at the front end. And for those of you who have only experienced Amazon of where it's everything, and Amazon prime has always been around in your life, and it's always been a stock that's gone up. Go back and look at the stock of Amazon from like, 1995 through, I don't know, maybe 2005, 2010 maybe. And there was a very profound interview that he gave, and they were talking with him when he was the CEO about the stock price, and he's like, I don't care about the stock price right now. I'm. I'm interested in the client experience and client journey and da, da, da, da, and all this stuff. Meanwhile, his company was losing like $100 million a day or something. It was like. And then the host, he was on CNBC or something. Like, the host is like, but you're losing hundreds of millions of dollars. He's like, yeah, but we'll make it up. It'll be fine.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Here's Bezos talking about risk with. I believe this is with Fortune magazine. One observation I would have is that I think it's generally human nature to overestimate risk and underestimate opportunity.

[OG]

And so I think entrepreneurs in general.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Would be well advised to try and.

[Gary McDermott]

Bias against that piece of human nature.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

The risks are probably not as big.

[OG]

As you perceive, and the opportunities may.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Be bigger than you perceive.

[OG]

You say it's confidence, but maybe it's just trying to compensate for that, accepting that that's a human bias and trying.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

To compensate against it. That's, by the way, with the New York Times, not with Fortune magazine.

[OG]

Yeah. So if you look at your own organization and you say, well, who are the people or what are the sections of our organization that have a good roi? Right? Like, have a good. If I do really well, I get rewarded at a much greater scale than I do for my normal things. And. Or Mosey talks about it. He gives it a couple of examples, right? Like if you work at an insurance agency as an example and get a W2 salary, there's virtually no risk with that. Right. The risk is you do a bad job and they fire you and you just go get another job. If you work with a base salary but you get a little commission, you're going to have a little bit higher upside because you're taking a little bit more ownership And a little bit more risk is what he says. If you say, well, I don't want any base salary. I want all upside, you're going to have more opportunity on the upside. And if you're the owner of the insurance agency, you have all the upside. You get all of it. You're on the hook for every single solitary thing. So think about, you know, in your own organization, are there places where you can pivot to. Are there places that you can dip your toe into and say, well, let me experience a little bit of this to see if there's an opportunity for me to take a little bit more ownership over results. And that's really what it boils down to. If you're in charge of outcomes, if you're in charge of results for your organization, you're going to be rewarded for those results.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I like hearing two successful entrepreneurs, obviously Hormozi, very successful Bezos a thousand x times more successful. But when you hear two successful people tell you the same thing, that you need to look at risk differently, I think that's a truism and it's something we need to do. And I think that's job number one. Stackers. What are you doing in your life to look at risk differently? And risk is always going to be there. And if you learn to accept it, more money often comes along with that. I want to move on to her Moses next point. And there's so many, as I mentioned her, Mosi talks about asking better questions as well.

[OG]

One of my favorite questions to ask when you want something is what would it take? Because it assumes, yes, like, I won't let you marry my daughter. What would it take? What do I have to do? Because then they give you an equation, then you can just solve it. And it's my number one strategy for negotiation, too. Like when you go in for an S for the raise, don't say, I would like to make $180,000. Say, what would it take for me to make 180 grand a year here? What would I have to do? And then you can make the assessment of whatever the equation they give you if you think that's reasonable.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Or you can do it whole different way to negotiate. What would it take? It's not about, yes, no, can I have a race? It's what would it take for me to make this. All of a sudden you're taking the person across the table from you and you're helping them think differently.

[OG]

Well, they come on your team, they're like, bang, that's what I want. To do, like, nobody think about this from a. If you've ever been a boss of anybody, right? A leadership role of any kind, you're, hey, go do this. This is what we're doing. Da, da, da. You know? And then finally you get the one person who shows up and goes, how can I help you? You know, like, what do you need me to do? Here's what I would like to do. How do I get that? Give me the roadmap of how to do this. You're like, oh, somebody that wants to row with me, not just against me. Let's do this, man. It's a. It's a breath of fresh air sometimes. I love that. What would it take?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

The person gets super excited. The owner of the company or manager, whoever's running the department gets more excited because they're like, yeah, this person wants to go faster. Like, how cool is that? We're all going to reach our goals. I'll tell you how to make 180,000 bucks. You do this, this, this, this, this. We're all making more money. Yeah, it is fantastic. So we began the year with Alex, and it's funny how, again, themes reverberate. He talks specifically to entrepreneurs. And we spent the. The first two episodes, you and I, rounding out those lessons so that they were also good for the majority of our audience, which are people that work in an organization for somebody else becoming an intrapreneur. As much as Horosi is talking to entrepreneurs. Right? Entrepreneur, Somebody entrepreneurial, but working inside of a company for somebody else. Later on in the year, we bridge this same territory, talking about, who is the person who's going to get the job? Who's the person that's going to get the promotion? Who's the person that people want to work with? Horosi talks about it, hey, be the guy on the team. What would it take? Bonnie hammer in episode 1687, our Memorial Day episode, Bonnie, for a long time was the NBC Universal vice chairperson. She OG connects the dots to people working in the corporate world as well, that, you know what? Doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur or an intrapreneur. Here's what's important to get the raise or get the job.

[Gary McDermott]

As you start showing people you're willing to work hard at something, they look at you as, okay, they're earning this. I want them around because they're going to do just about any will succeed. Some of the research I've been looking into literally is saying there were eight out of 10 different people that were Interviewed in corporations are very leery about hiring a Gen Z person right out of college right now because they do not believe they have a work ethic. Their assumption is, number one, they don't want to be in the office. They're going to fight to basically work remotely. I'm not a big believer in that because if you're not in the room, you're never going to be in the room. There's a belief that they just don't understand starting out in a work world and having to earn that worth.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Working hard gets you the job. Being in the room gets you the job. Familiarity gets you the job. Asking OG, what will it take gets you the job. And it's funny, I think we say that about every generation. You know, she's picking on Gen Z right now about how 8 out of 10 employers are saying, I'm worried about kids out of college because they don't have a work ethic. I remember when I was 18 and people were saying that about, about us, you know, every, every person. But if you want to stand out regardless of how old you are, be the person that's going to show up.

[OG]

Yeah. If you are the problem solver, you get to be in the room. Like she said, if you're the one that somebody goes, you know, who can help with this, this guy. Right. I don't know why, but somehow they always solve the problems, then you'll get invited in the room.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Once we talked about making more money, we moved on then to oh gee, your second half of that equation which was now we need a good system. Now we need to make sure that we hold on to those dollars. So we spoke with Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni to Talk mindset on 1627 and what I liked about their appearance and I don't have a clip from it. But living a frugal life isn't about having enough. It's about knowing what you really want. What do you truly want? Why am I buying this thing? Am I frugal because I want to be cheap or am I frugal because I only buy the stuff that really moves the needle in my life? So they kind of reset your whole feeling about a budget. People find a budget limiting. They're like, no, no, no. Starting off with this mindset of I know what I want and I'm going to spend money on that stuff really makes it so there's always money available for the stuff that lights you up. I actually have some family members that frustrate the hell out of me because they're so busy spending money on crap they don't want that they never have money when everybody wants to do the big cool thing like, yeah, we're too broke to do that. Well, I can tell you why you're broke, because I was at your house when you got doordash on Thanksgiving from Burger King down the street. Literally, we could have walked down the street to Burger King and they door dashed it. And why are we going to Burger King when we got a house full of food?

[OG]

Food?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No idea.

[OG]

I haven't had a good Whopper in a long time. I've been seeing those ads lately and honestly I'm like, I should probably go get a Whopper just to double check it because I remember liking them a lot, but it's been a while, so also I haven't had breakfast yesterday. So basically I just heard like, have you seen those cartoons where like the cat's only thinking about the bird to eat, you know, or whatever.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Right?

[OG]

Tweety birds.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Once you see Whopper, you're like, now.

[OG]

I have this Whopper with like a big melty cheese. Maybe a double Whopper. Got the onions on it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Stop. No, don't. Because I'm hungry too. That discussion led us into tools though, because people, okay, I got the mindset. We've talked a lot about mindset these first 20 minutes. Let's talk about tools, episode 1648. We dove into budgeting tools and basics and here's Kristen Wade. I asked her, where should you start?

[Gary McDermott]

When people are looking at budgeting, they think it has to be this huge undertaking and a really intense process and stop eating out, stop having fun. So my best advice is just to start. Start observing what your spending is before you control it. Because then you'll come at it from a place of nonjudgment as opposed to shame. Because if we start with the shame cycle from the get go, you're not going to stick with it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Not just the shame psychology, but I also like the fact of start simple. Just observe how do I spend money, Track just a couple things. Don't try to track every single little thing. Big mistake I see people make when they budget. They get this kick ass budgeting tool, let's say Monarch, who sponsored the show in the past, that I use myself or Tiller money, whatever it might be. But they create 18,000 categories. Three weeks later. They're not using any of it because it's so convoluted and it takes so many hours to even input your stuff that you don't use the system it.

[OG]

Reminds me a lot of the craze that's going on. Maybe it's just because this is what's visible to me, because I pay attention to it around health and supplements and tracking and you know, because you can do all this stuff for food, right? You can take pictures of your food. I did this. Chatgpt did a really great job. We were at our family's cottage in northern Michigan for a couple weeks, a couple weeks ago and there's this ice cream store that we love to go to. I think we were there 14 days and I think we went to Nibbles 11 of those days, which according to my kids was 17 too few times.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, yeah, you need to go more.

[OG]

And they had a creation last year that they did like a staff creation competition and then the winner of the thing stayed on the menu and it's called the Salty Dog. And let me just explain it to you since we're talking about food. It's a 16 or 20 ounce cup of ice cream. But before you put that in there, they put brownies in there and then some caramel and then maybe some more brownies and then some more caramel and then and some pretzels and some more caramel and whipped cream and a little bit more caramel and some pretzels. It's really good. And Chatgpt exclaimed that it was about 1500 calories. So you can track all this stuff, how much fat and saturated fat and you know, all this sort of stuff or you can say, all I'm gonna keep track of is my protein target. I'm just trying to get the protein number because if I eat a bunch of protein I'm probably gonna be pretty full and I'm not gonna wanna have cookies and you know, whatever and just see how that goes. If you're going to do money tracking, you don't have to track, just track how much comes in and how much goes out. Just start there. The systems, like you said, Monarch, they're pretty close, right? Like they'll say, yeah, you know, this looks like doordash, this looks like a whopper, you know, it's going to be close enough. And if you're starting big picture, your big picture is how much do I have coming in and how much do I have going out? That's the basis of everything else, right? If, if it's like I've got 10,000 coming in and 11,000 going out and it's July and then in August I have 10,000 comes in and 11,000 goes out in August, and then on September, 10,000 comes in and 11 thousand goes out. I think you've established the issue. Right. It doesn't matter that well, this is categorized incorrectly. So start big picture and then when you find the thing that's going to, you know, when you want to dive into it, then you have the technology already built up.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. Take it just a step at a time. So if your budget didn't work in the first half of 2025, stackers just zoom back out maybe for the next couple months. Make it just track, just a couple things and then another piece. I think that's important. From episode 1688. By the way, Sean Morgan was on with Kristen Wade. They're both budget coaches so they were leading us through these tools. But on episode 1688, a guy named Brian Suddet took what Sean Morgan. Sean Morgan pointed to food waste. Talked about us eating at restaurants a lot. That that's an easy one to cut out. Kristen Wade said don't even get on the shame cycle where you shame yourself around restaurants first. But if you identify restaurants or you identify food waste, well, Brian and his spouse, they turned it into a game.

[OG]

We had always been in a habit of trying to throw away as little as possible with tight budget. But as soon as we took notice of the volume that was going to the trash, it became this internal competition to see if we could find a way to stop putting food into the trash. Became a over the top competition with.

[Gary McDermott]

Ourselves to get creative and to pay attention to that cost. And, and we drove that number to an insanely low number. At first we would just speak it out loud.

[OG]

If I threw something away, I would just yell to the other room where.

[Gary McDermott]

My wife was working and I would.

[OG]

Say that was $1.35 of pasta, dairy.

[Gary McDermott]

Butter and cheese that we just put into the trash.

[OG]

And after that year of just keeping a mental tally, we put a post.

[Gary McDermott]

It note on the fridge and we would write down what was wasted, what the cost was and what date had happened.

[OG]

Everything that we bought and put in.

[Gary McDermott]

That fridge had a value and we.

[OG]

Didn'T want that value to go to the trash.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What I love about Brian Suttis appearance was and we had a great discussion with frequent contributor Len Penzo about this. OG in fact, you and I went and bought the blue.

[OG]

Yeah, the blue apple.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, the blue apple.

[OG]

I don't know where it is but we bought a bunch of them or one or the pack.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Mine is in the refrigerator and we just had a pepper that was probably in there four or five Days longer than peppers had been in before we had the blue apple. So I'm already a fan of the blue apple, but I didn't want to get into food waste as much as look at what Brian and his wife did. Kristen talked about the shame cycle. You don't want to get in there. He yells, hey, we just threw away A$50 of pasta. But it was a game. It was like, let's see if we could lower that number. And it was playful. And they start putting post it notes on the fridge, right. Of seeing if we can get that number lower and lower and lower. And they did get it to an insanely low number. People can listen in, but I think in 2023, I believe they threw away about $3.50 worth of food all year long. It was. It was a crazy number that we will never get to stay away from the shame. But gamification og turning it into a game wins almost every time. And we hear that over and over on the podcast.

[OG]

Well, and the stuff that you pay attention to, the stuff that you focus your energy on is the stuff that you're going to improve. I mean, it's just. It. It just 100% happens. Tell me this has not happened to you. You got a new car. Not brand new, not whatever. You get a new car, and now everybody's driving the same car, right? You haven't seen this color ever in your life. And you get it on your. Like, nobody's got this color. All you see, everyone's got the green Mazda. All of a sudden you're like, where are they? Did we just walk into the green Mazda store? You know, like, how'd this happen?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

When my kids were driving a Volkswagen Beetle, I'm like, man, I barely ever see Volkswagen Beetles on the road. The second my kids had a Volkswagen.

[OG]

Beetle, because you know why I thought about this today? As a matter of fact, I was driving the kids to their practice and camp and stuff this morning, and I saw two cars that look exactly like Alex's car. And I know why. Because I pay attention to that. Because I go, oh, that's my kid. And I remember thinking, like, why is Alex driving his car? Isn't he at orientation? Oh, no, it's not Alex's car, but it's. I never saw that car ever. And now I see it everywhere. It's the stuff that you tell your mind to pay attention to, that normally it filters out. So if you pay attention to money, you say, hey, I'm going to pay attention to food waste, or I'm Going to pay attention to my budget. You are going to improve it without any effort. It's just. It's magical.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. This idea of what we look at is really important. And we did. We did a week on consumerism in June. Well, and it's interesting, OG because I was going to save this for the back porch, but this is a good place to put this, is that I not only lost you when I brought.

[OG]

This up, you lost everybody.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, I lost a bunch of our stackers. And let me go into this because Vicki Robbins says this and everybody goes, this is phenomenal. Katie Gatty Tassen talks about it on the show on Wednesday, and I was trying to set it up on Monday by broadening out what she was going to talk about, which is the clip I'm about to play. I was broadening it out and I lose you. I didn't lose Doug. Doug and I were like, no, no, no, no, no. But, man, we. The thing that we have when we start saying the word consumerism that I found out is that there is a lot of judgment that people assign to that word that I did not mean. Consumerism specifically is just the act of being a consumer. If I am a consumer, I need to then look at whether this is worth it or not and realize if there's somebody who's influencing me to play a game, is that game important? And so during our episode on this, which was 1693, if people want to listen, you said, I feel like I'm fat shaming you. Which took me by surprise because sounds.

[OG]

Like something I would say.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, I wasn't assigning any judgment to the word consumerism, but you clearly were. And even afterwards, OG a lot of our stackers, we had a great discussion on Spotify, as we often do, a lot of great comments. And these comments show that a lot of us assign a lot of negativity to this word. Our friend SJ Fjord says Joe seems to have selective amnesia. Flying to Egypt and Nepal and all the other places visited is a form of consumerism. S.J. fjord, that's 100% correct. That is a hundred. It is 100% consumerism. He says, why not drive to the Alamore or Yellowstone or fly to Niagara Falls, Anything. And anytime you spend money is consumption, period. A big amen. Which is why Silent Shade, who's also commented before, says that Joe's about to actually agree with everything OG was saying that Joe was taking issue with and I wasn't. Oh, gee. When we changed the argument halfway through from judgment, which is not at all where I wanted to go. And you said, well, wait a minute. Doug wants to buy pocket knives. If Doug's buying a pocket knife and he really likes pocket knives and he buys another one, it's in the budget. Who gives a. And I said, yes. And you're like, oh, all of a sudden you're agreeing with me? And I went, no. I'm saying the same thing I've been saying, which is, I'm not assigning judgment to consumerism. I'm just saying if I go to a NASCAR race, NASCAR wants me to go to the NASCAR race. I love nascar. Everybody knows that. Disney, I like Disney. But if Disney has commercials to go to Disney, I decided to go to Disney. I am involved in consumerism now. Am I going to Disneyland on day one because I'm a quote, influencer with my phone and I just want to take pictures of me at Disney so people think I'm cool. Is that a reason to go to Disney? Like, do I need to rethink that, or am I going to Disney? Because somehow it resonates with me in a different way, and it truly is the happiest place on earth for me. Thinking through that, the way Vicki Robin talks about and the way that Katie Gasson talks about, frankly, was exactly what I was trying to get to. And I apologize.

[OG]

I think it ties into what you were saying just a few moments ago about if you are being intentional around spending, then you're doing the stuff that makes you the happiest. I was watching this clip by Simon Sinek.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Love that guy.

[OG]

I don't know how it came up, but he was talking to a woman who had survived a cancer scare, and she was talking about how she kind of lived her life in a sense, during that period of time of like, I've got two years. I'm not. I'm just. I got two years. And that was how she lived her life. And now it seems, based on this interview, that she has conquered that disease, if not just temporarily. So. But anyway, their discussion was around. If you think about, like, what if I had two years and you don't change anything, Then you're doing the thing that you should be doing, right? Like, if you're like, I hate my job. I quit. Well, then quit, man. Like, just go. Then just go do something different. You know? And I think what your point is about frugal and, like, we do assign words to that. Like, when I hear the word frugal, I go, oh, that's not me.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, because we think cheap.

[OG]

I think cheap. Yeah, I Think you're leaving something on the table. When I hear the word consumerism, I think that everybody thinks that that's a bad thing. And I don't have a problem with that. Like, to me, I go, yeah, I'm happy to prop up the economy. It's one of my favorite things to do.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But it was interesting. And this is where I triggered you. OG was. We talked about what Katie's about to talk about, which is women who play the game of beauty products. And I said, your kids and you play the game of college sports. And you go, but that's not consumerism. That's an experience. And I said, yes, it's consumerism, though. But I lost you because of the judgment that, yeah, the language really matters. Yeah. So I apologize to everybody for that because I, I didn't realize until I got back from my vacation. And I read these after I got.

[OG]

Back from my overseas vacation where I was definitely not a consumer. My private experience in Greece, that's not consistent with all my friends, with all of my rich friends. And I was like, I am not a consumer. I don't understand what their problem is.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

A hundred percent consumerism. Headed to Greece. Oh, my. You can't not involve yourself.

[OG]

But, yeah, we do assign meanings to words. And I vaguely remember this conversation. I. I kind of dump a lot of stuff in the show. I'm like, you're like, yeah, we talked about that last year. Like, I don't remember, but, like, what? I vaguely remember this. Two things that I think about here. One is, it's totally fine to spend money any way that you want. I don't owe you an explanation. I don't owe the Internet an explanation. Maybe my family, to some extent I do.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Right.

[OG]

Because I'm responsible for them. But if we do the things that we want to do, I don't owe you a reason for why I do it. And as long as I'm not burdening you with my decision making, right? And so, like, if I'm taking care of my business, if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing for my family and my community and, you know, and up to the extent that I feel responsible for that and I decide to go to Greece, okay. I don't owe you an explanation for why I chose to do that, because it's okay.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And the 100% key here, OG is mindfulness, right.

[OG]

The decision that gives you the joy, like, as opposed to your friends who you said, you know, we can't do this thing because we're broke. It's like, well, you're broke because you mindlessly spend money.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. And then they do frustrate me even though they still don't owe me an explanation. They frustrate me because I want to do stuff with them. I want to do stuff without me having to pay for them to go along because they wasted all their money on stuff that they hadn't examined. Look at what happened to Katie Gaddy Tassen when she looked into her budget and actually saw even though she thought she was spending money mindfully. Well, let's take a listen to Katie.

[Gary McDermott]

Living within my means. I'm not driving Alexis. Food spending, pretty reasonable. But as I did that personal finance audit and I got everything down on paper, there was something that jumped out at me that I had never seen anyone talk about in all of the personal finance dogma that I was ingesting. And that was my beauty and personal care budget. 10% of my income on beauty and personal. That's interesting. So at the time, I was spending around $300 a month on beauty and personal care. I start thinking about my take home pay and I'm like, whoa, I'm working for an entire month every year just to support all of these appointments. And that was a real aha moment for me. I find that, oh, wow, if I do this for an entire 40 year working career, I am giving up a million dollars. That's not a trade off I'm willing to make.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And, and that last line, that's not a trade off I'm willing to make. Now for some people, I'm willing to make. Right? I'm willing to make. There's a beauty industry Katie talks about that's designed to have women tell other women, hey, you deserve it, girl. Hey, you need to buy this beauty product. You need to. And if Katie examines that and it makes sense to her, then it's money well spent for me. And going to NASCAR races, hey, I go to a, you know, for a while I was going to a NASCAR race every year. Is it actually a trade off? When I look at that money and I go, okay, I spend X amount on this whole NASCAR weekend, going to races Friday, Saturday, Sunday, camping out there, spending the money on groceries and getting myself there, all of these expenses. Is that worth it? And the answer I came back with was, hell yeah. Katie came back with hell no. So I apologize about trying to open that up. I think Katie said it better than I did, though. Good stuff there. We've got a whole second half where we're going to go into a few more of the big things from the year. Have you gone through your budget, mindfully looked at all these expenses? What a great, great use of time to spend an hour just looking through your bank app and doing that. But before we get back to this, Doug, let's take a little break because you've got some great trivia about today's Dayton history.

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And how you doing on your 2025 goals? I know things are rolling along for me. I've taught these two knuckleheads on a podcast, even though they only recently figured out how to use their thumbs. Back on Today's date. In 1960, a young woman with a goal began a remarkable career journey. She used funds raised by her friend and mentor and set off for Gombe Stream national park in what would later become Tanzania to study chimpanzees. And here's today's question. Who was this remarkable woman? I'll be back right after I go peel a banana.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Small business owners State farms there with small business insurance to fit your specific needs. Whether you're starting a new venture or growing an existing one, State Farm helps you choose the right coverage to protect what matters most. Working with a local state farm agent helps you understand your coverage options. Offering local support to help you achieve achieve your goals. Focus on turning your passion into a thriving business, knowing your insurance can change as your business grows. Stay Farm here to help you succeed with your business. Like a good neighbor, Stay Farm is there. From the award winning morning show on America's favorite radio station, the Ticket, the Musers, the podcast. So right now we're podcasting?

[OG]

No, not yet.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

He just put us into it.

[OG]

No, I was accidentally podcast were for.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

A second, but we're not now.

[OG]

Well, we want to, we want to start intentionally podcast. That was accidental.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That was a false start.

[OG]

3, 3, 2, 1. Every Wednesday, Junior Miller, George Dunham and.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Gordon Keith drop a new episode of the Musers the podcast Follow and listen on your favorite platform, Stackers. Here is a podcast recommendation for a show that pairs phenomenally well with Stacking Benjamins. Especially if you're new to all this. If you've ever been curious but you don't know where to start because there's so many options and acronyms and you find yourself swimming in questions like, okay, Joe, no G, you're talking about Roth, Ira and 401k. Like what's the difference between those? Do I invest in specific companies or a fund? We, we cover that a lot. But These guys, this is exactly what they do. The show is the Investing for Beginners podcast. Dave and Andrew, these two phenomenal hosts have become friends of mine over the years. In fact, you will hear yours truly on an episode of Investing for Beginners. But they break down investing terms and strategies in a way that is sure to help you understand. So that's why I think it pairs so well with Stacking Benjamins. And you know you deserve to have your money working for you, right? Investing is this important tool for everyone. If you're a stacker, you know that already. It's not just for people who can afford to hire financial professionals to do it for them. And frankly, you don't want to do that anyway. I mean, don't get me wrong, you want to surround yourself with smart people, but you want to know what's going on. So even if you're not ready to start yet, and that's why you're here, pair up the Stacky Benjamin show. When you're done with our episode today with the Investing for Beginners podcast so that you understand the stock market and your finances so you can really understand. If you want a great break in, go scroll to the episode where I'm in so you get a little bit of Stacking Benjamins and Investing for Beginners. I think it's a great place to start. And of course, you'll find the Investing for Beginners podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to podcasts now.

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm banana peeler and guy who doesn't like double entendres. Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Chimpanzees. Now, there's a species that can teach us great money lessons. No random racing around to score a bigger raise. No decisions on the right outfit to wear. Just eat, sleep, and repeat. Boy, that's the dream, isn't it? On Today's date, in 1960, a young woman set out to study chimpanzees in what would later become Tanzania. Who was she? Of course, it was the amazing Jane Goodall. And now back to two guys who confound even Jane.

[OG]

It.

[Doug]

Joe and OG.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

OG is opposable thumbs. You have opposable thumbs, don't you still? Absolutely.

[OG]

At least one.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Ah, let's pick this up. Because we have a lot of ground still to cover. We had some fantastic roundtable episodes the first half of the year. One episode that resonated with a lot of people. And because we don't think about it enough, if disaster strikes, what's in your financial go bag. You remember this one, OG.

[OG]

Maybe.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What's in your financial go bag? There were some great takes about what really is the holdup to getting at things. If we have an emergency and it turns out there's one thing we own that we need to do a better job of making sure that it's available in the case of an emergency at estate planning experts on our show. But as part of your emergency, somebody else that can get into your online stuff besides you. Everything stored on my phone and nobody knows my access code to my phone.

[OG]

Isn't yours just password? 1, 2, exclamation, exclamation.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No, it's. Well, it's a number sequence on my phone. Right. So it's just 1, 1, 1, 1. But who's going to guess that?

[Gary McDermott]

If I had an estate planning attorney.

[OG]

If there was any attorney that I.

[Gary McDermott]

Was regularly working with and I had a recurring relationship with that person, that's the person I would give it to.

[OG]

This is one of the things that I think is really overlooked in an estate planning process overall, which is how do other people get access to the two factor authentication thing? Yeah, I think generally speaking, the two factor authentication stuff you can bypass. Not easily, but you can call Schwab and say, I don't have that device anymore. Grandpa died. What can we do to access this and kind of proceed with the estate plan? But to your point, all about the master password that needs to be somewhere so that somebody you know, whether it's with your attorney written in code in your estate plan, like every 15th letter of my trust is my master pass.

[Gary McDermott]

That would be cool.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wow.

[OG]

It's an interesting way to do it. I don't remember saying that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But who's got the master password? And this is an important thing for people to do right now. Just pause the podcast, OG and make sure somebody's got that master password into Dashlane or whatever thing you use to get into your phone. Because holy moly. We went from there into your financial plan. And of course, being a financial planning show, this is for us, where the rubber meets the road. And I think a big theme OG in 2025 has been redefining retirement. Right. What does retirement really mean and what are we looking for? And a lot of the time, the things that we're looking for truly don't make us happier. They don't give us longevity. They don't give us more, more or better. I almost had more, better retirement. More or better retirement. And Benjamin Brandt, a CFP friend of ours, came on episode 1639 and really early in the year. Started shaking up the podcast with does the retirement date really matter? Should we be doing things pre retirement that make sense at retirement? Benjamin thinks that we should be looking at ourselves all the time as a science experiment to think about what truly makes us happy so that when we leave our job, whenever that is, we're actually filling our hours with things that we appreciate.

[OG]

Good data and bad data are both good data. I tried volunteering at the Humane Society. I don't like it. I don't even like dogs. That's good data. Check that off. That's not something we're going to do in retirement. So I want you to take small risks of time, money, and energy. Figure out what you like and what you don't like, and then we need to artificially create that in retirement. That could also go for your career as well. Write down what specifically you like about your job you and you might like. I like being an engineer. There's probably more pieces of that. Like, I love working on projects with people. I love bringing something across the table under budget and on time. Or I like collaborating with other people. Or I like just hanging out in the break room and chewing the cud with friends. Specific notes of that, then recreate that in retirement. Again, bad data is also good data. Write down what you hate about your life and make sure you don't do that in retirement.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

How often do people work 30, 35, 40 years at a job and they build up this stuff quote, that I'm going to do when I retire. And they get there and they're disappointed because those things og that they thought were going to be the fun things that they were going to do in their retirement years did not bring them the joy that they thought. To Benjamin's point, turns out, I don't even like dogs.

[OG]

I think that it's a good idea to try to do the things that you think you're going to do. If you've been working for 20 or 30 years, you probably have some pretty decent vacation days built up. Go test it out. You famously said that you've tested out moving and living in different places and say, hey, let's travel a lot. And you went, yeah, that sucks. If you think you're going to play golf every day, go take a week and go play golf every day. Report back. Let me know how you feel. Most of us can't do it every day. We can do it twice a week, three maybe, but every day is a lot. It just, you know, a. It gets boring and then B, it's like, it's tough to do. You know, it's a lot of walking. And as you hit the ball as many times as I do, it tires you up.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, it's amazing the number of times people will go on a vacation. And you're bored on the third day, fourth day, right. You go to the beach and by day four, you're bored. Think about this. You retire and you haven't really thought about it. You're four days in and you're already bored. Yeah, I think you need a lot more data.

[OG]

Think about how much time you spend planning a vacation. We literally have. We, we won this condo in an auction. So we're gonna go to Park City in a week. For a week. We're like, all right, cool, just go to Park City. And we've spent weeks talking about, like, what are we gonna do? Oh, they have ziplining. Let's, let's schedule that. Oh, they have the little toboggan thing. Cause it's by the Olympic, you know, testing thing. So let's do that. Oh, they have a concert. We'll go to the concert. You know, we're like booking all this stuff out. We spent weeks trying to plan a five day trip of which two days are travel. So it's really like a three day trip. And then how many people think about retirement, go, yeah, I mean, I'm just going to play golf all the time and maybe do some traveling. Okay, pencil it out, write it down, tell me what you think that looks like.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We're going to talk again on Wednesday with Gary McDermott about setting better goals, about making them work the way they worked in the Navy for him, the way that they work in big business. So we're going to dive more because I think setting this goal of gathering data is important. But we also looked at what makes people flourish, and this is different than what we thought. In fact, it's funny, I remember when Christine Benz was on late 2024 OG from Morningstar. Christine interviewed a lot of people and found out that, you know, this idea of waking up whenever you want to doesn't really work in retirement. It still needs to be mission based. There still needs to be a mission, there needs to be a purpose. There needs to be a reason to jump out of bed that freaks people out. Ryan Doolittle was with us on episode 1689 and was talking about some data we had about why people flourish in retirement. People 80 and older report that they are flourishing the most. Why do you think that is?

[OG]

I interviewed A guy who runs a.

[Gary McDermott]

Horse retirement state stable, for lack of a better word. It's a big horse retirement community of racehorses that used to be successful.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I used to be something horses.

[Doug]

Is there a glue factory right next door. And this guy's just finding multiple revenue streams.

[OG]

His last name was Elmer, so I'm not sure.

[Gary McDermott]

He said, man, being old is awesome. I love being old. I like it so much better than being young. For example, if someone invites me to something and I don't really like them.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Or I don't want to go, I just say no. And they go, well, he's old.

[Gary McDermott]

Whatever.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

They're not offended.

[Gary McDermott]

There's a sense of freedom, freedom of being older. There's obviously a lot more to it. You might be more financially independent when you're younger. You're thinking, I don't know who I.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Am, I don't know how I'm going.

[Gary McDermott]

To get to be who I want to be. All of that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's funny OG because later on in the year we had a roundtable about the 4% rule and about setting up distribution channels. We had Dana Ansbach, a cfp, Karsten Jeske, AKA Big Earn, who during his professional career was an economist, and Frank Vasquez, who in his professional career was a lawyer and now is interested in Ray Dalio and setting up risk parity portfolios. When we get close to the 4% rule and we have just barely enough, and I think this is why 80 year olds are flourishing, we have just barely enough. The fighting that happened on that episode between four of us who knew what we were doing when it came to setting up retirement portfolios and how we didn't agree and we had some people say I left that more confused. I think that was a great lesson. I think the great lesson is there are a lot of ways that work and these are four people that know what the hell they're doing and they can't agree on the best way to set up a retirement distribution strategy that's the most efficient. The because some on paper look good. But the practitioners, Dana and in my past life, me go, yeah, that sounds great on paper. But trying to implement that crap, you're going to blow yourself up. It's not going to work. And the quote theorist Frank and Karsten look at what Dana's saying and what I really applaud and go, that is so inefficient. It could be so much more efficient. Yeah, but you can blow yourself up like, like the argument that that creates the, the biggest thing to do OG I think is something past guest Paul Merriman talked about, which is people are flourishing in their 80s because they know they have enough money and they're not worried anymore about the negative consequences. So if you can retire and be sufficiently above the 4% rule, and I know that's not what people want to hear, but you can be sufficiently ahead of it that you don't have to worry so much about every damn penny, we're going to stay away from these arguments around tracking nickels.

[OG]

Yeah. But the other side of that is if you wait until success is 100% guaranteed, then you're leaving life on the table.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Agreed.

[OG]

And so back to the very first thing that we talked about, which was risk. I think this applies to an investment portfolio as well. People overestimate the amount of risk that's in their portfolio relative to market risk and underestimate the risk relative to behavioral risk. And so I think that most people have a bad experience. If they're going to have a bad experience with their money relative to the ups and downs of the market, it's because of the decisions that they made, not because of decisions or not because of outcomes of the market. And it sounds really easy. You know when you're 35 and you have 150 grand in your brokerage account and you go, ah, just. And I just totally stay the course. I just live, I just live life, man. I'm totally all equities all the time. High five. Woohoo. And you go, okay, all right. Report back when you're 69 and you have 4 million and your 4 million just turned to 3.1 or 2.9 and you're like, this doesn't appear to have an end in sight. It's easy to stay the course when you know your swings are 50 grand. When they're 500, it's a different thing. And when they're a million five, it's a way different thing, even though the percentages are the same.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But if I start off with the amount of money that I want to live on, and I know that, let's say I can live on 3%, 3 1/2 percent. And I know Monte Carlo, simulation wise, I got a 75% chance of this working the rest of my life, like for me, that's a great number. But if I've got a 75% chance of it working and I'm taking what Bill Bangin just talked about, you know, just over 5% and I have a 75% chance of it working, I think I Get a little bit more worried, don't you?

[OG]

No, no, no, I don't. Because first of all, I think we use back to. Back to what we were saying before around using the language correctly. We use the word risk when we mean volatility, when we mean ups and downs. We use Monte Carlo numbers. Like, I have a 75% chance of success, as if failure is the other one. That's not what it means. It means 75% of the time you had to make zero changes to your portfolio, zero changes to your spending, zero changes to your goals. It might mean like, okay, well, you just go on vacation every other year while the market's down.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. This goes back to milestones. Right? You're saying you're just course correct if you've set up milestones to check it over and over.

[OG]

Zero. It's not like, it's not a binary thing. I either have money or I don't. The other thing is, what number are you using for Monte Carlo? I think it's totally realistic to use 100 for your life expectancy. My wife's grandfather is going to turn 99 this year. Man was born in 1926. Think about the life that dude's gone through, like world wars and famines and all sorts of crazy stuff that's happened. And so, yeah, I do think life expectancy is going to be longer in the future, despite the fact that the statistics are saying the other thing is go that it's not. But I think it's reasonable to plan for a hundred. But I've seen a post on YouTube recently from a show that we did where you talk about your healthy life expectancy is 66. So how do you balance all that stuff out? Well, you just have to be okay with making changes. You have to be okay with the fact that, hey, it's not going to be a perfect straight line. You know, there's going to be years where the market does well and years where it doesn't. There's going to be times when I spend money within budget and there's going to be times when I blow it up. But if you're just waiting for, okay, I need this. I need the Monte Carlo to say 100%. I need the Monte Carlo to say 99%. I gotta, I can only do 4%, you know, the 4% rule. Because 4.1. My God, the horrors. I think you're leaving a lot of life on the table. And the other side of that is the other side of it. Right. I have a client who retired way earlier than he should have in terms of the math. And the reason for that. He came to us as a client after he had already made his decision to retire and was already into it. But he retired at the beginning of 2000 because his advisor at the time said, you got 700 grand, 10% a year, 70. Just live on the. Just live on the 10%. Well, of course, that's great when the market's doing 10%. When it doesn't do 10% like happened in, oh, I don't know, 2000-2001-2002-2000, half of 2003-2007-2008-2009, you know, and so he experienced a lot of volatility, and he spent all of his money. He retired when he was 52. He. By the time he was 72, roughly 20. 20. 2022, time frame, he was pretty. His. His account was at zero. And you know what he said? He goes, I want you to know I'm not mad. And I said, well, okay. Well, I appreciate that. I mean, we did what we could, right? You were kind of into it by the time he came to us and he said, I'm so happy that I retired at 52, even though now I have to make these changes. Yeah, now I had to downsize. Yeah. I have to be very cautious on our spending. We have a small pension and Social Security between me and the wife. But you know What? I spent 20 years of my prime life hanging out with my kids, hanging out with my grandkids. I went to every baseball game, every track meet, every softball game, every dance recital across the country. I didn't care. I was like, I'm good. I can make it. He's like, so, yeah, now I'm 75, and I gotta pay better attention to what we spend money on. Okay, that was a good trade. There's a balancing act between those two wild extremes. I think of, hey, retired at 50. Maybe foolishly a few years too early. Yeah. Or I wait until all the numbers exactly line up perfectly and there's no chance of ever running out. There's somewhere in between there.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

This is where we go back to milestones. Because if you haven't, in the first half of 20, 25, set up these milestones, and today is a milestone that we're helping you celebrate halfway through this year. Do you have those milestones in place so you can make those? Imagine if he course corrected a little bit earlier, OG you know what I mean? If he made small changes earlier, would he have to make the big changes? Big changes. Now I think though, focusing on how much money can I spend versus what do I want to do is a mistake. And we were joined by the J.L. collins on episode 1685 and listen to this discussion.

[OG]

The only caveat I put to that is sometimes when people shift the conversation to time, it becomes spend more money because that's how you make yourself happy. Anybody who thinks that spending money is going to make them happy by definition.

[Gary McDermott]

Is to be severely disappointed.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I heard a guy tell me once, he goes, you would see a lot more happy multimillionaires. And whenever you see these multimillionaires in the media, three quarters of them are still miserable.

[OG]

There are times when buying things can make your life better.

[Gary McDermott]

But don't spend money for the sake of spending money, thinking somehow it's going.

[OG]

To make you happy.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It was about time we got JL Collins on the show. And you can hear JL joining us on episode 1685, spending more money. You've tried it. I've tried. It could be a lot of fun, OG but that alone doesn't make you happier.

[OG]

Yeah, I mean spending money for the sake of spending it is not ever a good thing. But if there is some opportunity, right, to improve your lifestyle or improve your life in some way, shape or form by spending money, freeing up time or energy to do other things. I think in conjunction with what Alex was talking about or whoever was talking about risk. Oh, it was. Bezos was saying that risk is underappreciated. I think freeing up time is also underappreciated in terms of its usefulness to you. Whether it's personal utility, like I can do other things that provide more joy in my life or that frees up time or energy to make more money to do the thing that I'm really good at. This week my wife's been gone and it's been kind of a quiet week for me. Just kind of coming off vacation and checking emails and that sort of thing. But I've done. And you know this because it's affected our recording schedule. I've done four trips so far today. It's 11:35 to and from school. Four times since 7:45 this morning, football practice and then cheerleading and then back for football and then over to Dunkin Donuts and back to school and then back to this. You know, it's like when I have got my partner here, that's what she does, which is a full time job, right? Everybody is like just a stay at home mom. It's like, well, stay at home moms work eight hours too. They just work from like 7:00am to 10:00am and then from like 4:00pm to like 9:00pm That's. Those are their eight hours. You know, there's no way that I could do this every single day and be successful and be as successful at work. You know what I mean? Like, I'd have to find a way to invest in having somebody else do this. If I was a single parent and I look at this and go, well, this is killing my productivity. This is killing my opportunity to get in the zone or to, I mean, even work, really. We've recorded a little bit of, you know, recording today, but it's broken up, right? So, like, that affects the flow and it affects the quality and that sort of thing. So would it be stupid of me to have my kids Uber? You say, well, that costs money. I know, but is that an investment or is that an expense? You know what I mean? So you have to be careful with that. You know, you have to be careful with justifying expenses as investments, you know, because that's a slippery slope. But there's a time where spending more money would increase your productivity.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, and that also becomes the currency. I mean, this idea of time, right? It's not the money in Uber, it's do I want to spend. Is that quality time that I spend with my kid in the car, driving and talking, or is it just I'm an Uber?

[OG]

Yeah, that's certainly something to consider using that as an example, for sure. Because, you know, there's kind of that forced, the forced communication.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Because I'll tell you, that becomes the currency I worry about now that I have a large degree of financial certainty. It isn't the cost of the object as much as the fact that I have to spend time on it. Even if it's a shirt, will this shirt just sit in a closet or am I going to wear it? Like the time that I spend a board game, I'm like, oh, that sounds great. I got a closet full of board games. What am I going to play this one? Like that? You know what I mean? The time that represents is horrible.

[OG]

You know, it's really funny. I was on Reddit again. You know, the Algos just show you what you want to see, apparently. I don't know, but it was this couple of threads about, like, downsizing and kind of the transitional stage of, like, kids are graduating, high school and college, and, you know, we're at the front end of that, right? Like, Alex is going to college in, you know, a month, and we've got some time, but we're on the front end of it, so it just happens to be what shows up for me. But one of the overriding themes that I've seen repeatedly is nobody wants your crap and you can't give away your parents crap. Like kind of in the Gen X thread community type stuff. It's like all your boomer folks of giving you all these knickknacks and all this stuff, right? That was important to them and it's not important to you. But you're like, whatever, I'll take it, mom. You know, and then, and then as you start downsizing, you're like, hey, I've got all this stuff. You guys want it. And your kids are like, I don't want your crap.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I don't want any of that.

[OG]

Can I give it away? No, no, no. No place wants it. You know, it's like. And basically what this thread was talking about was do your best to stop accumulating things for the sake of accumulating them. You know, like, you don't need another couch and you don't need another like, basket of tchotchkes or whatever it is. Do your best to start eliminating these things from your life. And basically the person who wrote this piece was advocating how stress less life became when they downsized, how stressful it was when they had to try to get rid of it. But, but once they've moved and downsized, they're like, I have so little stuff now. I. Cleaning is easier.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Nothing more fun in my life than that time when we lived in a three bedroom apartment. Simplifying like that was a. Not three bedroom. What am I talking about? Three bedroom apartment. Three room apartment. Because we didn't have room for all that stuff. OG and it was so simple. Everything was so simple. If it was completely necessary, we had it. If not, we didn't. And I thought at the time, I'm like, what are we going to do with all this stuff? And. And now I think, why did I burn myself with all this crap?

[OG]

I got all this crap again.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, I know.

[OG]

Yeah, you have big houses and you got to fill big houses with a bunch of stuff. You know, it's a, it's a. It's consumerism. Oh, wait, no, sorry. No need to. Yeah, I need to go back to that one.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No, we don't need any more stank on that word. We also talked to one of the most famous financial planners in, in the world, frankly, Barry Ritholtz, Besides me, came on the show besides OG Barry Ritholtz came on the show, you know, he was talking about chasing trends versus just doing straight up, timeless, classic investing. And Barry said, you know, a lot of people to catch the trend, they go listen to all of these CNBC personalities. Which is funny because he's kind of one at his, his cohort Downtown. Josh Brown, who's been on the show as well, is also another one. Well, here's what Barry had to say about listening to talking heads.

[Gary McDermott]

When experts are wrong, it's because they're experts in the way the world used to be. It has to be that because whenever you got your doctorate, it's always in the past. Whatever we know today is pretty much backwards looking and historical. And if things are changing, if the world is changing, well, then an expertise in the way the world used to be, it'll only get you so far. You have to be willing to adjust to changing conditions. And I don't mean day trading or turning your portfolio over. I mean philosophically understanding how to interact with the markets, the economy and investing.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

He also went into, by the way, on that note, og he goes into AI. And of course a lot of people afraid of AI. We spent some significant time this year talking about AI. And here's Barry's take on AI.

[Gary McDermott]

Everything is cheaper, faster, better than it ever was before financially. When you start to observe these big shifts, these big changes, I'm not telling you liquidate your portfolio or go all in on AI, but pay attention to what's happening and find ways to use these new tools to your best advantage. I just think about what we used to do with the blogs and the podcasts. My quarterly call to clients was a painful ordeal four times a year because everything had to be done manually and everything had been, was one take. So now the technology to put that together is so easy.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We spent so much time prepping for all this stuff back in the day. Oh gee. And everybody's like, how can we do that? How are we going to remain productive when AI comes around? It's like people, oh my goodness, the car. Like, how now that we got this car, what am I going to do with all this time that I save? We've always found a way adjusting, staying broad based, not listening to people that are promising you they know the future when they know the past. All right, just a couple more themes I want to point to on retirement. Well, one more. That was a big one. It turns out, truly when it comes to retirement planning, this idea, you know, and a lot of people pointed this, oh gee, this idea of Sitting in a rocking chair. We thought that it was bad. Well, it turns out that it's really, really bad. Pete and Rebecca Davis were the creators of a wonderful documentary called Join or Die and Pete, Dave. And by the way, Join or Die sounds horrible, but they truly weren't kidding. This is the takeaway that Pete had about this project as they worked on it. People are starting to understand that actually it's not that our default state is isolated and community is a nice to have. Our default state is in community. And when we are away from it, our body senses that something is lacking that causes stress to our body. We felt this during COVID Covid was.

[Gary McDermott]

A surprise to us. Suddenly we get hit with this massive global social experiment of can we just live life on Zoom and through a computer? And I don't think any of your listeners need us to share any data to know that the happy hour on Zoom stopped being fun about one month into 19 pandemic. And no one wants to wave to their grandparent on their birthday through a screen. No.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Nobody remember the first happy hour you had during COVID Hey, we'll just get together on Zoom. Oh, that sucked. That sucked.

[OG]

Basically, just get drunk by myself looking at a screen. Got it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But we still. We spend a lot of time arguing with people that we don't know on social media online. I know you've tried to get rid of this in your life. It's funny. We were listening to Katherine Price's the Power of Fun, where she goes into why the phone not only sucks the fun out of the moment by not being fun, but it also makes future fun. You're going to have less fun fun. It turns out that we also get energy, even if we're an introvert, from being a part of a community. And you just don't get that online. Fantastic lesson from Pete and Rebecca in 1697. If. If you have a chance to watch that documentary Join or Die, it's. It's great. So I think the takeaway there is if you didn't join a group or you're not a part of a group. And by. By group, I mean the Kiwanis, the Rotary, a nonprofit in your community, some group of people that gets together periodically, working on something that's not clearly attached to your financial goals, it's time to do that. And if you don't believe me again, listen to Pete and Rebecca on episode 1697. Of course, we studied the career of Taylor Swift. Swift with Kevin Evers from Harvard Business Review. We also looked at the history of the stock market, just the ups and downs over time. 130 years of stock market crashes. That was on episode 1695. We dove into that great debate again, buying versus renting your house. In fact, I got a lot of emails about that one. That's episode 1677, and I think one of my favorites. And we'll end today on this. Sports agent Molly Fletcher came on and, you know, we opened this up OG with maybe you need to change your mindset. Molly Fletcher went through story after story after story about how some of her clients succeeded purely when they had less talent, just by having the right mindset. When others failed, who. Who should have on paper been far better off. And I think that might be a great place to leave. Today is with Molly Fletcher, 80,000 automatic thoughts a day.

[Gary McDermott]

You can imagine if you aren't really intentional about shifting the self talk what is sometimes an inner critic, sometimes a story that we tell ourselves that's keeping us stuck in this place. Let's say exercise is a high priority to you, but the story that you tell yourself is, I don't have time. How in the world am I supposed to have time to work out? I've got all these emails. I have this job, I lead other people, I have kids, I'm married. So that's the story that keeps you from doing something that you've identified matters rather than pulling back and saying, wait a minute, you know what? When I take the time to exercise, I feel better, I sleep better, I show up better for the people in my life who matter. I might live longer and be healthier. You want to recognize what is that inner critic that's keeping you stuck from what you've identified you want most and then shifting that to a new script that allows you to go after what you really want.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I think that may be the overarching theme of the last six months.

[OG]

Flip the script.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Flip the script.

[OG]

Flip the script.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Whether it's this consumerism idea, whether it is your portfolio and managing your portfolio, whether it is what brings you happiness. Flip the script. Get. Get mindful about it. Leading retirement into today, even if you're not retired. Gathering data. Flip the script. Be in control of the script. All right, Stackers. I hope you got a great to do list for today. OG thanks for another great six months. Here's to the next six months. Rock and roll in or. Well, now we're down to what, five?

[OG]

Like five or December, not counting. Pretty much. Nobody does anything. December, really like four. But then there's also like Thanksgiving and Halloween and labor day, weekend and the opening weekend of NFL season. So basically you got like three. It's like 90 days basically. And then what? School starts and wrap up summer vacation. So 87 days left.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's time to go now. Stackers get after it. It's time to go now. Normally in an episode, today we head out to the back porch, which is our community piece. I'll say this about community. We just talked about community and surround sound. If today's episode got you thinking, yeah, I'm not where I wanted to be with my goals this year. We made this episode because we know that you are not alone. It's always great to listen to a podcast and talk about all the cool things I'm going to do. And maybe you do it, maybe you don't. If you're a successful Gen Xer or high earning millennial trying to manage income equity, comp taxes and life all on your own, maybe it's time to bring in a team. OG and the pros at Bannerman wealth are opening just 10 to 15 new spots this fall for families who are ready to stop guessing and to start planning. So if you're ready to turn things around and finish the year strong, now's the time to grab a spot on OG's calendar. Head to stacking benjamins.com OG to schedule the call. That's stacking benjamins.com OG for his calendar. The idea of surround sound I can't get enough of, man. You gotta put it in your life. And hopefully today gave you a shove. And if you need more of a shove. StackingBenjamins.com OG all right, that's gonna do for today. Doug, as always, man, you were quiet today. You need to wrap this thing up, buddy. What are our big takeaways from today's show?

[Doug]

So what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from our team. We made some great podcasts for you. Now go implement. Second, while our topics covered a wide range of tools, lessons and strategies, overwhelmingly it's mindset that changes everything. Focus there first, then on more money and then on locking down your budget. But the big lesson maybe Jane Goodall should have come to Texarkana. These two guys are nearly as entertaining as chimpanzees. And you truly aren't sure what they're going to do next. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.

[Gary McDermott]

Oh.

[Doug]

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