Stop Relying on Willpower (Build This Instead) SB1821

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode Title: Stop Relying on Willpower (Build This Instead) (SB1821)
Release Date: March 27, 2026
Hosts: Joe Saul-Sehy (Joe Osiha), OG
Guests/Contributors: Paula Pant, Jesse Kramer, Doug

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles the idea that relying on willpower is overrated when it comes to improving your financial life. Instead, building systems, habits, and automation are presented as far more effective. With the classic Stacking Benjamins banter and laughs, the roundtable shares their tips for making small manageable changes that lead to big improvements over time—covering everything from automating savings to simplifying your accounts, tracking spending, and rethinking what actually brings you joy with your money.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Willpower Versus Habits and Automation

Timestamp: 09:12 – 15:30

• OG introduces the idea that willpower is overrated; referencing Benjamin Hardy's book Willpower Doesn’t Work and his own past experience quitting chewing tobacco—not by gritting his teeth, but by changing his environment:
  • “Willpower requires an affirmative decision every time you have to do something... Instead, I just created the habit of never walking into the place that sells it.” (10:15, OG)
• Paula Pant asserts a hierarchy for behavior change:
  • “First automate, second habits, and third, willpower. Because willpower is a depleting resource... That’s why it’s useful to work out first thing in the morning—willpower is highest then.” (12:03, Paula)
• The group jokes about “eating the frog” (doing the hardest thing first in the day to use willpower when it's strongest), as Paula notes willpower wanes throughout the day.

2. How Often Do You Revisit and Tweak Habits?

Timestamp: 13:51 – 16:54

• Jesse relates his “Rochester snowbank” analogy: habits pile up and melt away, so he reviews habits monthly:
  • “At some period throughout the month, I focus on the habit I'm bad at. I'll be on a good streak, then I fall off and tweak again.” (14:11, Jesse)
• There’s consensus that habits often need regular recalibration rather than a once-a-year reset.

3. Health Habits vs. Financial Habits—Which First?

Timestamp: 16:00 – 18:22

• Jesse advocates starting with health:
  • “You’d probably rather be an older, healthier person who’s less rich than a fat, dead young person with high net worth.” (16:00, Jesse)
• Joe counters money unlocks many health opportunities—quality food, gym memberships, trainers.
• Paula pushes back:
  • “There are so many free workout videos on YouTube...For food, though, yes: healthier food often costs more.” (17:25, Paula)

4. Small Habits That Lead to Big Change

Inspired by the Kiplinger article by Bill Schultheis
Timestamp: 18:22 – 27:35

a) Start Small…or Go Big?

• Bill recommends “Start with a modest automatic transfer.”
• OG disagrees, prefers bold action:
  • “I would much rather dial it back than try to crank it up.” (18:44, OG)
• Jesse: “If you can track one budget category, you can probably do the whole thing. Don’t underestimate what you can do.” (20:16, Jesse)
• Joe and Paula bring up the “Twyla Tharp” and “Zen Habits” examples: tiny starts (hailing the cab, doing one push-up, or flossing one tooth) often lead to larger actions.
  • “If you want to start flossing, just floss one tooth—then you end up doing them all anyway.” (26:03, Paula, citing Leo Babauta)

b) Should You Announce Habits Publicly?

• Paula: The research is mixed. Sometimes announcing your goal gives you a dopamine hit that tricks your brain into thinking you've succeeded.
  • “It can be counterproductive—your brain may feel like you’ve already done it, so you put your feet up.” (27:20, Paula)
• OG: “You get all those feel-goods and then don’t actually have to do it.” (27:38)

c) Automation Wins

• The act of setting up an automation—whether a money transfer or a spending tracker—is the hardest step. Once it’s done, momentum carries you.

5. Simplifying and Consolidating Your Financial Life

Timestamp: 28:54 – 32:13

• Bill's advice: Consolidate one account this month if streamlining makes life easier.
• Paula: Simplification isn’t always about fewer accounts—it’s about “mental buckets.” Use as many as you need for clarity:
  • “Mental simplicity is not necessarily the same as a reduction in number. Do what creates clarity.” (29:45, Paula)
• OG: Too many buckets can add complexity but using dashboards or automation helps aggregate for clarity.

6. Making Spending Decisions Simpler

Timestamp: 50:12 – 55:11

• Paula: Streamlining spending can also bring peace of mind. Doing repeat purchases with brands you trust cuts out decision fatigue:
  • “I more or less stick with one brand. I don’t have to think about it. So, yeah, I think consolidating the spending... now I don’t have to think about my shopping.” (50:26, Paula)
• Jesse: Less is more when it comes to complexity—“as simple as possible but no simpler.”
  • “My wife and I share one credit card. Straightforward.” (52:29, Jesse)
• Joe: Suggests listing the top five things that brought you joy last year, then checking if your spending aligns; if not, it’s time for a recalibration.

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Memorable Quotes

• “Willpower is a depleting resource. That’s why you want to automate what you can, build habits, and leave willpower for the margins.” – Paula Pant (12:03)
• “I used to chew tobacco… so I decided I was never going to walk into a gas station again. I created the habit of never being in the place that tempted me.” – OG (10:15)
• “Health habits probably come first. All things being equal, you’d rather be a healthy person who’s less rich than a rich, dead person.” – Jesse Kramer (16:00)
• “If you want to start flossing, just floss one tooth.” – Paula Pant (citing Leo Babauta) (26:03)
• “Tell people your goal and you get the dopamine hit. Sometimes that lets you off the hook from actually doing it.” – OG (27:38)
• “Mental simplicity isn’t just fewer accounts; it’s clarity. If more buckets help, then do that.” – Paula Pant (29:45)
• “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” – Jesse Kramer (paraphrasing Einstein, 52:29)
• “If you say travel is important to you, but your budget says wine is important…” – OG (55:11)

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Practical Takeaways & Audience Tips

Timestamp: 58:20 – 61:28

Each panelist shared one small change you can make:

• Paula Pant:
  Automate something.
  “Even if it’s just $50 more per month into your 401(k), set up that automation right now. Do it once, and you’ll reap rewards over and over.” (58:30)

• Jesse Kramer:
  At the end of every month, flag three expenses that you regret or question. This builds awareness for more joyful future spending. Also, think about what it would take to increase your income by 50%—career development matters too. (59:12)

• OG:
  Track your spending using a tool or app, download the CSV, and analyze it (he uses Monarch, then Claude AI for summary).
  “See what jumps out, ask what brings you joy, and make changes based on those insights.” (60:07)

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Notable Light-Hearted Moments

• Ongoing jokes about “eating the frog,” “tweaking habits,” and Jesse’s “Rochester snowbank” analogy.
• Classic Stacking Benjamins “trivia wars” over the scoring rules, with plenty of banter and mock indignation (34:17 – 47:20)
• Several asides about wine spending and automating self-improvement.

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Important Timestamps

• Willpower, Habits, and Automation: 10:07 – 15:30
• Health vs Money Habits: 16:00 – 18:22
• Start Small or Go Big (Automation): 18:44 – 27:35
• Simplify Your Finances: 28:54 – 32:13
• Simplify Spending & Find Your Joy: 50:12 – 55:11
• Panelists’ Top One Habit Suggestions: 58:20 – 61:28

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Conclusion

This episode’s core message is: Don’t rely on willpower—build systems and automate good behaviors. Start anywhere you like, but starting is key. Simplify your finances and your spending so you can focus on what really matters to you. And, as always on The Stacking Benjamins Show, doing this with some humor and peer support makes the process much more fun.

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For more on today’s contributors and the full show notes, visit stackingbenjamins.com

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Noteworthy Quotes Recap:

• “First automate, second habits, and third, willpower.” (Paula Pant, 12:03)
• “If you want to start doing pushups, do one.” (Leo Babauta, via Paula, 26:03)
• “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” (Jesse Kramer, 52:29)

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Skip the willpower marathon—build your financial life by combining small, sustainable habits with powerful automation and routines. That’s what really leads to stacks of Benjamins!

Transcript

[Paula Pant]

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[Jesse Kramer]

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[Paula Pant]

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[OG]

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[Paula Pant]

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[Joe Osiha]

Hey there. Before we begin, time for a non sequitur alert. If you were listening to last week's episode, and at the beginning, I had this thing that said, hey, you know what? We had a controversy coming and we're going to solve it next week. And then you're like, okay, where's the controversy? That's because I played the wrong episode. 14 years of podcasting, I've never played the wrong episode, and I did. So you remember how Star wars started off with Episode four? We are going to go back in time. This is the episode with the controversy. And then if you go listen to last week's episode and the next week episode, it'll all make sense. I promise it'll all make sense, but it might not make sense today. So if you're a big fan of the trivia competition, it's gonna be fun today. All right, that's it. Oh, one last thing. Thanks to everybody who came out on Wednesday night to join us for the screening of Retirement Plan, the short film. If you haven't seen Retirement Plan, you can watch it on YouTube and we'd love to get your thoughts. Such a great, great movie. Tom and Don were wonderful. We're going to try to do many, many more events like that. We were get financial planning movies out. Let's watch as many of them as we can. Join or Die, by the way, is another good one. Of course, we had the creators of that one on last summer. We did make one big announcement last night for people that came that I want you to hear as well. And that is you've heard about our digital product, the Vault. The Vault is getting vault 2.0. If you've gone to any of my walkthroughs, you know that we always are working at making our tools that we create here Mom's basement, better and better and better so that they're even more usable. The Vault in the very near future is getting budgeting and net worth tracking. And if you're a coach, you can write to me because you can use the Vault with your clients. It's incredible. I'm glad that we are associated with the Vault. Check it out@Stacky Benjamins.com Vault now's a great time to sign up. There's more that's going to be coming to the Vault, but I can't tell you about that yet. What I can tell you. Great episode today. So in Star wars fashion, we're going back in time one week. The episode you should have heard last week. Here it is. 30 seconds to flowers.

[Doug]

These are for the guests for these mics.

[OG]

Anyone have the promo for the show? Notes this. Wait, where's the Fiji water? Is this. This isn't.

[Joe Osiha]

Is this tap water? 15 seconds.

[OG]

I can't drink tap water. Can someone tell Joe's mom to stop vacuuming?

[Jesse Kramer]

It's not hard to find.

[OG]

Tian watered. Natural quiet on the set.

[Joe Osiha]

Live in three, two.

[Doug]

Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it's the Stack Benjamin show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And what little changes with your money can you make that will yield big lasting results? We've got them. And our contributors are sharing their best ideas today. But that's not all. Now that we have all of our frequent contributors together again, can someone please stop og during my trivia segment? That guy's on a tear. And now a guy who's on a tear every time he hears that it's Fajita Friday at the Sizzler. It's Joe Osiha.

[Joe Osiha]

Not kidding. I had fajita lettuce wraps today for lunch. Hey, everybody. Welcome to what's Joey podcast. It's Friday and that means it is party time here in Mom's basement. Our chattiest show of the week, where we get some of our good friends together to talk about your money. Amanda, we got a good show today. Somehow I clicked the button that made myself go off the air.

[Doug]

Wow. We got a great show today because we're out. It's going to be the best show ever. Just an hour of silence.

[Joe Osiha]

We got a great show, Doug, because it's going to be quick because it's going to be done, and who cares?

[Doug]

How are you, man? Better to be lucky than quick. I'm good. I'm really good. I. I'm enjoying my time here, Joe.

[Joe Osiha]

Well, the guy who makes sure that you don't enjoy your time here, across the card table from me, Mr. OG is here to ruin Doug's day. Right? Isn't that why you show up?

[OG]

I mean, I mostly try to ruin your day. It's an ancillary benefit to ruin Doug's. And if I don't, I'll just call him afterward and be like, hey, let me tell you about all this stuff that you did that was wrong today. And then that usually puts him in a good mood for the rest of the week.

[Doug]

Put it in my file.

[Joe Osiha]

Super. And the guy who never does anything wrong besides living in the Arctic North. Mr. Jesse Kramer's here. How are you, man?

[Jesse Kramer]

The snowbanks are almost gone. The snowbanks are almost gone.

[OG]

Call him.

[Jesse Kramer]

J.C. i need you to advocate for me a little bit, Joe. Maybe around some family, friends, spouses, something like that. The man who never does anything wrong. You'd be a very special advocate in

[Joe Osiha]

my life at any time.

[Doug]

He's special.

[Joe Osiha]

Put me on the phone here. This is. This is Joe. They're like, who the hell's Joe? I don't know. But, yeah, I'm happy to do it. Just 10 bucks, Jesse. And I'm. I'm there for you. And the woman behind the Afford Anything podcast is also here. Paula Pant.

[Paula Pant]

Hi. It's amazing to be here.

[Joe Osiha]

You never do anything wrong, do you?

[Paula Pant]

I constantly do things wrong all the time, every day.

[Joe Osiha]

What are you talking about? Huh? You're to ruin everybody's image of you.

[Paula Pant]

Well, no one should expect perfection. If you get a few things right, then you can get a lot of things wrong and still be okay.

[Joe Osiha]

It takes what, a lifetime to build a reputation and just one or two things to let her rip?

[Paula Pant]

That's also true. Yeah. Which is rather unfair of society, isn't it?

[Joe Osiha]

It totally 100% is unfair. It's horrible. You know what I found annoying, Jesse? As I've gone around the country meeting our stacker friends is they're always like, what's it like to work with Polo Pant? Not what's it like to work with Jesse Kramer or OG or Doug, which is great, but what's it like to work with Paula Pant? I skip to the microphone every single day. It just is absolutely amazing. You know what's More amazing. We've got a great show today. I know everybody's going to find that amazing because we are talking about ways to get better with your money. We often talk about willpower. We're going to start off with willpower and maybe do we need more willpower? What do, what do we need? We're going to start there but first we have a couple of sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. So you don't pay a dime for any of this. Goodness. What do we say, Paula?

[Paula Pant]

Oh, it's totally free and worth every penny.

[Joe Osiha]

Absolutely. 100 is. So let's hear from them. And then Paula, OG, Jesse, Doug and I, we're going to talk about little habits that can make big change. Dell PCs with Intel Insider built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't there for those all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken. The times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you. Built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for an outlet. And built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you [e-mail] Dell PCs built for you.

[OG]

My day kicks off with a refreshing Celsius energy drink. Then straight to the gym, pre K pickup back home to meal prep. Time for my fire station shift. One more Celsius. Gotta keep the lights on when the three alarm hits. I'm ready. Celsius live fit. Go grab a cold refreshing Celsius at your local retailer or locate [e-mail].

[Paula Pant]

hello darlings. And now it's time for your favorite

[OG]

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

[Joe Osiha]

The inspiration for today's discussion comes to us from Kiplinger. And this is written by a financial planner. Let's see, scroll up, scroll up, scroll up. Joe, it's from Schulteis. Bill Schultheis. Do you know Bill Schultheiss?

[Jesse Kramer]

I think he wrote a book or maybe he came up with a. Is he the guy who came up with a coffee portfolio? Coffee house portfolio? Bill Schulteis. It's one of the Boglehead's portfolios.

[Joe Osiha]

Oh cool. Fantastic. Well, Bill, Bill has a piece we're going to be chatting about today. He says, I'm a financial planner. These small money habits stick and now's the perfect time to adopt them. OG let's start with you. Today, because I never. I never start going to OG First. And I thought this might be a good one. You know, he's going to talk about habits. But let's talk willpower. Why wouldn't we begin with going, you know what? I have no willpower. Why wouldn't I just get a little more, stick to it Iveness and get on this money stuff?

[OG]

I mean, what was the Benjamin Hardy book, Willpower Doesn't Work? Is that the name of the book?

[Joe Osiha]

I've never read that.

[OG]

I believe that is the title of the book.

[Joe Osiha]

Apparently, I didn't have the will.

[OG]

I read it. I really. I was going to say I didn't. I just have it. I couldn't. I couldn't get the COVID opened. The thing with habit versus willpower. Willpower requires, I think, an affirmative decision every time you have to do something. Right. And I'll just use a personal example. A habit that I had many, many, many years ago from the service was I used to chew tobacco. It was just something I did. And it got to the point where I knew I had to stop because I had kids at home and they were starting to emulate dad by spitting in their milk jars. And that was a bad vibe. So I decided I wasn't going to quit. I decided I was never going to walk into a gas station again because that's like, that's where I bought it from. Like, you'd stop and get gas in your car. I'd go into the gas station like anybody else who buys cigarettes or something like that. And so for the longest time, I never walked in the gas station. And that just kind of. It just dripped away. Like, I didn't put myself in a position to have to make the decision of, like, am I going to do this or not today? I just said, I'm just never going to be. I'm just going to create the habit of never walking into the place that sells it or the place that I bought it from. So you have much higher likelihood of being successful if you build a system around your life or whatever it is that you're trying to work on, rather than every day going, today's the day I'm not going to drink, or today's the day I'm not going to smoke, or today's the day I'm going to save money in my brokerage account. If instead it's just I just automate it, or whatever the case may be, you have a much higher likelihood of success.

[Joe Osiha]

But, Paula, do you think we can build a case for willpower where, okay, oh gee, saying, yeah, habits win. But can we maybe build the muscle a better willpower? Or do you just throw that in the trash and go, you know what? I'm going to stick with better habits.

[Paula Pant]

I think the hierarchy is first automate, second habits, and third, willpower. Because the reality about willpower is that it is a depleting resource. It depletes throughout the day. Often, like you wake up, you're refreshed, you're rested, and so you often have the highest willpower early in the morning. That's why it's. Many people find it very useful to work out first thing in the morning. And then when you get to work, there's that expression, eat the frog first. Do the most unpleasant work, task first.

[OG]

Frogs are gross.

[Doug]

Nobody's ever said that.

[Joe Osiha]

Paula made up that expression right now.

[Jesse Kramer]

No, it's a thing.

[Paula Pant]

It's a thing, It's a thing.

[Doug]

Were you at like a Louisiana Cajun

[Paula Pant]

restaurant, working at the reptile store?

[Joe Osiha]

They always said, and the lizard's like, oh, thank God.

[Paula Pant]

But it's, you know, if you do the most unpleasant thing first, then you, you know, if you work out first thing in the morning, you're more likely to do it, you know, technically later in the afternoon you tend to have, you have more energy, you can do stronger workouts, but you're more likely to skip it. Do the thing first that you want to do. And it's because willpower tends to deplete throughout the day. And then that's why when you get to the end of the day, like when is the time that you just binge watch tv? When is the time that you absent mindedly scroll social media? It's usually at the end of the day, not at the beginning of the day. Why? Because willpower is depleted.

[Joe Osiha]

Jen, on YouTube. We're recording this live on YouTube. Come join us. We record Monday afternoons. If you subscribe, it'll give you an alert that says that we are going live. I got one. Actually. It's weird. You get one as soon as you hit the button. Like I hit the button that we're going live and I get the alert that goes, hey, you're going live. I'm like, really? Jesse, question for you.

[Jesse Kramer]

Sure.

[Joe Osiha]

This topic feels like a January topic, right? Let's have some habit. The beginning of January and the author here addresses that. He says that, you know, January is fine, but really this time of year in March is a fantastic time to look at your habits. How often do you look at your habits and see about tweaking I. E.

[Jesse Kramer]

And flow like a Rochester snowbank, you know what I mean? I build up over time, then I melt away, and then I build up again and melt away. So I guess if you're asking me personally, I think about it, I don't know, probably on a monthly basis because at some period throughout the month, I feel like I, you know, there's certain habits that I've always been kind of bad at and I'll focus on that one and I'll get better. I'll be on a good streak, whether it's for a few days or for a couple weeks or something like that. And then I fall off the wagon in some way. And now I'm thinking about it again. How do I. How do I build this system in my life, maybe so that. Right. So I don't have to lean on willpower so that it truly is some sort of built in habit. And by no means do I consider myself to be an expert. I'm. I'm more interested to hear about. What was it again? Not walking into convenience stores. And was it spitting in your milk jar? Was that what it was? OG I did not understand. I did not understand that at all.

[OG]

If you, Sorry. If you've ever chewed tobacco, there's, you know, you kind of have a little spit thing that happens. But my kids were doing it. They're copying me.

[Jesse Kramer]

I see, I see.

[OG]

So they got the milk. Got it.

[Jesse Kramer]

Got it. I see Dan in the chat. Dan hears I constantly tweak my habits.

[Joe Osiha]

You're all about the tweaking.

[Jesse Kramer]

A lot of tweaking going on over here.

[OG]

Yeah. Not surprising.

[Joe Osiha]

I don't even know what we're insinuate.

[Jesse Kramer]

Some of us chew tobacco and some of us tweak.

[Doug]

Some of us tweets too. Some of us tweet younger people here. Joe know what tweaking is?

[Jesse Kramer]

I was tweaking so hard I ate a frog

[OG]

first.

[Joe Osiha]

Oh, Jesse, I'm going to stick with you until you. So we don't have to wash your mouth out with soap because mom's going to come running down to the basement. These financial habits, because we're about to list some cool financial little habits. Where do you rank financial habits versus habits in other areas? Are they the habits you should establish first? Are they habits that come later than other habits? Like, where do you put them in the hierarchy?

[Jesse Kramer]

I got to think that health habits should probably come first. Like if we're talking about personal habits and like personal growth and looking within and optimizing yourself as a human. If that's what we're talking about. I would probably put health habits at number one between, you know, dietary habits and exercise habits, because I think all is being equal. You'd probably rather be an older, healthier person who maybe is slightly less rich than a fat, dead young person who at least has a high net worth. That'd be my two cents, but I

[Doug]

heard him say all the.

[Jesse Kramer]

Doug, you have a rebuttal?

[Doug]

I heard you say all the right words, like we should prioritize our help,

[Joe Osiha]

but screaming into your mic, Doug.

[Doug]

Well, I'm really passionate about this, Joe. I. He said all the right words, but the tone of his voice sounded like there's a. Somebody holding a gun to his head. Right now,

[Jesse Kramer]

I have a slight cold today. I might not sound the most enthusiastic. Apologies, apologies.

[Joe Osiha]

I hear what Jesse's saying, but let me do the counter argument. You could tell me if you agree with where Jesse's going, or I'll do the other side of that, which is it's easier to have great health habits if you have the money to do that. A money gives you more flexibility. Money gives you gym, it gives you trainers, it gives you access to the higher. You know, when they did nutritional studies, they show that cheaper food are the processed foods in the middle of the store and the more expensive foods that are better for you around the outside. So the financial habit gives you the access to have better health.

[Paula Pant]

Mm, yes. There are so many workout videos that you can access on YouTube for free as long as you have Internet connectivity that you can do from your home, from your living room, that even body weight exercises that don't require any equipment. So when it comes to exercise specifically, there's a lot that you can do from home, not requiring any tremendous amount of space or anything like that there even.

[Joe Osiha]

So you're saying. You're saying exercise wise, you can build the exercise habit before the money Habit.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, you can build the exercise habit for sure. Now, when it comes to access to food, I agree with you. That's a much bigger issue because you're. You're absolutely correct. The cheapest foods are simple carbs. A pack of spaghetti, like plain white spaghetti or a. A big bag of rice or white bread is a lot cheaper than vegetables. So, yeah, access to food. Thousand percent, that is an issue.

[Joe Osiha]

He walks through then some of these, I guess we'll call them hacks, and he starts off OG with 1 and I to get your take on this one and to see if this is one you use in your practice. He says, if you want to save more, start with a modest automatic transfer. Not the big automatic transfer, just a little small one to maybe get the. I don't know, to start building the. Building the muscle.

[OG]

We do the exact opposite, actually. I would much rather dial it back than try to crank it up. So within reason, as we're trying to sit and visit with people to calculate, okay, based on your cash flow, based on da, da, da, da, it looks like you have $2,000 a month left to save. And then, Jesse, probably back me up on this. Clients will go, yeah, yeah. To probably more like 750. You're like, no, it's actually probably 2500. I just rounded down to make your. You know, because I knew you're going to do this. And they go maybe 825. And you're like, look, let's do the two. And if you call me in a month and it needs to be 1850, I'm fine with that. Or 1500 or whatever. But let's. The math. Math is math. Your feeling about math doesn't change. Math being math, I think you get more done by kind of aiming higher and then kind of dialing it back as you run into, you know, run in. Especially for people that have marginal capabilities. Right. If your lips are just barely above water, that's a different thing. But if you're trying to set up a plan, I would much rather start with the number that I think it is based on, based on the calculation. And then if life is reality or life is really something a little different, then come down from that. Going from 500 or 700amonth to 2000 will take years to do. Going from 2000 down to 1500 can take a minute, and you're still hundreds of dollars ahead.

[Joe Osiha]

Well, that was my next question, actually, for you, Jesse, was why not start small? You agree with og Start big and

[Jesse Kramer]

dial it back in some of the ways. Some of the things that we can do is certainly bigger than I think maybe the article might lead you to believe. I think one thing it says in here is, hey, you don't have to create a budget all at once. Just track one category. And at least to me, I say, like, that that's probably too small. It's like if you're sitting here saying, I need to figure out how much money I'm spending. I need to figure out how much money is going on in my life while I get it. It's like tracking your groceries is better than tracking nothing, but tracking your entire budget is the goal. And I don't think it's such a crazy goal that you can't start from scratch and 30 days later, 60 days later, say to yourself, oh, I'm now tracking all the money that's moving in and out of my life. I think we're all, we're all capable of doing that well, and it's not

[OG]

like you're doing it on paper and pencil.

[Jesse Kramer]

Exactly, exactly. Right.

[OG]

You're doing it on an app. And like, you know, and even if you don't want to use an app, you can just take the downloads from your credit card or bank and dump it into chat and tell it to organize it.

[Jesse Kramer]

Exactly. And so, yeah, when it comes to the saving muscle, I do agree with OG. I think that left to our own devices, I understand it can be scary to say, wow, someone's telling me I have a thousand dollars a month of extra room and they want me to put all thousand dollars into this investment account or whatever it may be. They want me to save all thousand dollars. The answer is, yeah, you do.

[OG]

What they say is, you want me to spend this thousand. It's like, actually, I'm trying to get you to not spend the thousand. I'm trying to get you to put it in a different bucket so that if I' and you really are spending the thousand, like you've got a place to draw it from.

[Jesse Kramer]

I got an email over the weekend from a listener who, long story short, his story was the times when I was younger in my life when I decided to like, oh, no, let me just. I'll eventually start saving the money. I could save a thousand a month right now. And I'll. I'll eventually get to it. For now, though, that thousand a month, I'll just kind of keep it over here in my savings account. He's like, I spent that money. I intended to one day save it, but I spent it. And his point was the money that you don't intentionally go ahead and save in the way that OG is describing. A lot of people will, one way or another, convince themselves, like, oh, I guess I will take that extra trip because the $10,000 is there in the bank, and now you're not, you're not saving it. So I do think it's really important to truly save what you're capable of saving.

[Joe Osiha]

I don't know if this is a congruent analogy or not, but I'm thinking about on the opposite side of this. Why is the guy saying, start small then? And I think about, there's a great book on creativity by a woman named TWYLA. Tharp, who is a choreographer and she talks about how she works out and everybody wants to know how she works out. She's like, let me share with you my system. Step one is she lives in Manhattan. She goes, step one, I call for a cab to come get me at 5:15 in the morning. And then she said, that's my entire system. Because if the cab comes and gets me at 5:15 in the morning, then at 5:30 I will be at the gym and at 5:30 I will work out. It's almost like, oh gee, you and I have talked about if I just put on my running shoes.

[OG]

I mean that's what I'm doing about this race, right? I like literally just scheduled it and then went, well, I better learn how to ride a bicycle for 120 miles up a mountain.

[Joe Osiha]

But that's, I'm wondering if people have never budgeted before. Okay, don't try to do a full. Although it will be better. Just do one category. If you've never saved money automatically before, just schedule one modest transfer and see how fricking easy this is. I mean it feels like the equivalent, isn't it og the equivalent of just

[OG]

putting on your shoes or schedule 120

[Doug]

mile bike race or go tell everybody you're going to do it.

[OG]

Yeah, even my kids are like, so how's that? What's the out? How do you. What could they get you out? But to me I'd rather have that big goal and now I'm not going to fail it unless something catastrophic happens. But to me, if I just said, oh, I'm going to try to do something without anything attached to it, if I said, oh, I have a bike and I should get better cardio on my bike, there's no measurement to that. There's no success. You didn't hit the goal. How do you know that you did it? Well, this is a finite beginning and ending. I know it's March, I know this thing is in July. I know the fitness level that's required. I have a coach, I did hire a coach to train through this whole process. It seems like I have a better outcome than if I just arbitrarily in February said I should be in better shape by July. I should really buckle down, get after it. I know this week I have to ride that frigging bike hundreds of miles. It's a thing that's now a success factor. Two sides to a different coin, Joe.

[Joe Osiha]

Jesse.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah, I think when you're talking about what's her name, Twyla. Ms. Stark?

[Joe Osiha]

Yep. Twyla Tharp.

[Jesse Kramer]

Twyla Tharp. We might almost be talking about some of the same things. Because when I think to myself, again, let's think about this exercise example where I'm thinking about, okay, for me to go on a walk around my neighborhood, I have to take our daughter, put her in the stroller, put the dog on the leash, put on my own shoes. But then once I do that, it's like, well, yeah, I'm gonna go for at least a 30 or 40 minute walk. The hard part isn't the 40 minutes of walking. The hard part is the prep. So similarly, in this article, the author, who is great, but what he's saying is like, hey, just, just do one category in your budget. And I'm thinking, I guess maybe we're talking about the same thing, because if you're going to do one, you're probably just going to do the whole thing.

[Joe Osiha]

You might as well, as long as you're there.

[Jesse Kramer]

Exactly. You might as well.

[OG]

And I, since you're downloading all the transactions, you might as well have it sort all of them, not just the ones.

[Jesse Kramer]

And maybe that's his point. Maybe he's sitting there as he's writing this article going, if I convince you to do1 category, 90% of you are going to follow through and do the entire thing. So maybe I do agree with him. But I guess what I'm saying is I bet you should do the whole thing. And I bet you will do the whole thing.

[Joe Osiha]

I like that analogy, Paula.

[Paula Pant]

I'm forgetting the guy's name, but there was this guy, he wrote a blog called Zen Habits.

[Joe Osiha]

Leo.

[Paula Pant]

Leo Babuta. Leo Babuta, yes. There were two things that he said that really struck with me. One was he said, if you want to start doing push ups, he said, just do one push up. Literally just get on the ground, do one, and that's it. And then you're done. Because.

[Joe Osiha]

And you'll never just do one.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And even if you do only do one, if maybe you do only one for the first week, but then week two, you do two, and then week three, you do three. You know, like, okay, even if you do start with one, you eventually get stronger and you eventually start doing more. The other thing he said was, if you want to start flossing, he said, just floss one tooth floss, like literally just one gap and then put your floss down, you're done.

[Joe Osiha]

You and I both have interviewed Laura Vanderkam before, and I was listening to Laura talk about the Other side of this that you guys were mentioning, which was say it out loud. Say the thing out loud that you're going to do and tell other people. And she was talking, Paula, about how, how effective that is. Like they've run studies about how effective it is to say the goal out loud about what you're going to floss. I'm going to floss all my teeth and do a social media post.

[Paula Pant]

I don't know.

[Joe Osiha]

But when you're just getting started, should you, should you be telling everybody what you're doing?

[Paula Pant]

You know, the research on that is mixed. Anecdotally, I've heard some people say that that has worked for them, but I believe that there is also research that shows that it tricks a part of your brain into believing that you've already done it. And so therefore it can be counterproductive.

[Joe Osiha]

What does that mean? So then you just put your feet up and go, oh, yeah, well, yeah, yeah.

[OG]

You get the dopamine hit of like telling people that you're doing it. So everybody gives you the accolades, right? Everybody's like, oh my gosh, that's such a big race. I can't believe. Boy, that's going to be awesome when you get that done. Boy, 100 miles, that's a long ways. And then you get all those feel goods and then you don't actually have to do it because you already got all the feel goods.

[Jesse Kramer]

Could you imagine if og just a few days before the race is like, eh, I'm good, not gonna do it.

[Joe Osiha]

I just said I was gonna do this big thing up a mountain for the dopamine hit. That's the old, that's the only reason I was gonna do it.

[OG]

Give me a little, give me a little.

[Joe Osiha]

All right, so that's number one here. Start with a modest automatic transfer. So what we're saying is set up the automatic transfer system and then when you get there, we're betting that start

[OG]

with an aggressively modest, you'll.

[Joe Osiha]

You may do an aggressive one, but either way, setting up the automatic transfer is the hard part, right? Getting that, that fusion between your, your savings account and your brokerage account or wherever that money's going. Number two, he says if you want to get a better handle on spending, track just one category, Jesse, Same thing. And then third, if you want to simplify your financial life, choose one account to consolidate this month. Not all of them at once. This could be a much more time consuming proposition. How often, Paul, have you had to consolidate accounts?

[Paula Pant]

Oh, man, there are times I've had to Consolidate accounts. There are times I've had to expand accounts because too many things are piling into just one. And they're, you know. Yeah, I've had to go both ways, and both times it's onerous.

[Joe Osiha]

But generally, you like the idea of simplifying that he's mentioning here.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I like the idea of mental buckets. Like, in the times that I've had to expand, it's been because so many things are piling into just one that there isn't good bucketing anymore. And by virtue of being able to bucket things out in different ways, it creates a cognitive simplicity. That is to say that, like, mental simplicity is not necessarily the same thing as only having one as a reduction in number. Do whatever it is that creates that mental simplicity, whether that comes from consolidation or whether that comes from expansion.

[Joe Osiha]

This is why OG I prefer just one dashboard. You know, at the very least, just have one dashboard. Because so much stuff gets lost when you got money all over the place.

[OG]

It's funny that Paula was talking about this, because I'm going through something similar right now as we are trying to be simpler with our cash flow. But I realized that it's not simple because I have a lot of weird timed expenses. College costs are not every six months. They're not every quarter. They're August and December. Yeah, it's just a weird. That's a weird time. You know, taxes are due at different times for different things. So I'm at the spot, too, Paula, where I'm like, okay, I can't just keep having this all be in one account, because I can't mentally, like, go, okay, the taxes are squared away. Tuition's good to go. You know, it's all in one bucket. And so now I'm thinking, okay, maybe I want to split this up a little bit just so that I can, like, visually go, okay, I'm a little ahead on taxes. I'm a little behind on college. Okay, this is where my focus needs to be for the next quarter. But there's a downside to that. Then you end up with, like, five savings accounts, you know, or whatever. So I know a lot of tech companies. You can do the bucket thing in your account. But, yeah, dashboards work really well if you've got a system to automate it. And sometimes the process of doing the dashboard, even if you have to manually do it, is actually very helpful because it requires you to kind of dive back in and literally sit down and fill out the spreadsheet again. You know, there's a benefit to Using tech and going, hey, boom. Download categories. Okay, cool. Right? There's another benefit to, like, literally logging into American Express and going, show me my spend for the last year. Holy crow.

[Joe Osiha]

It, like, creates some thoughtfulness.

[OG]

Yeah. You're doing something around it. It's like. It's like memorization. Right. If you guys remember having to memorize stuff when you were kids, however you had to do it, it's like if you just thought about it, but if you said it or wrote it at the same time. The more senses you got involved in that task, the stickier that memory was going to be. You know, I bet that most of your memories of being a kid involved a lot of senses at one time.

[Doug]

Right.

[OG]

I was doing the basketball game, the crowd was cheering. I remember I was really sweaty and I made the foul shot that won the championship and I got mobbed by everybody. You know, all of those senses were helping solidify that memory. The same thing is true, I think, when it comes to unraveling your money. The more you can get involved with different things or the more that you can involve your different abilities, the stickier

[Joe Osiha]

it is just a conversation. The future, Jesse, you're going to have with your daughter. When I was a kid, I had to memorize my own stuff when I went to school. I didn't have Claude memorize everything for me.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah. And there's actually a big plan about this. So what we're going to do is we're going to turn the thermostat up hot in the house. I'm going to take some symbols and crash them together. We're going to be cooking soup so that there's a big smell. Because the thing is, we really want to impact all her senses all at once so that that conversation really sticks, you know, Perfect. There's going to be a lot of senses going on. I'm sorry, I had to, I had to, I had to. You know.

[Doug]

Sweaty Earl Woods, School of PARENTING yes.

[Jesse Kramer]

To answer your question, to answer the serious and well put question, I see.

[OG]

Speaking of soup, sometimes I think we can be friends, Jesse. And then I think sometimes, speaking of

[Jesse Kramer]

soup, I think OG is simmering right now.

[OG]

I think, I think, like, every so often I'm like, I got a 50% vote on, like, I need to exercise my vote every so often. And, you know, it's just saying, just remember, just be careful, care.

[Jesse Kramer]

Oh, gee, there's a little bit of Sun Tzu going on here. We're right before the break, we're right before the trivia, and you're up 7 00. I gotta get in your head.

[OG]

It's gonna make beating you senseless that much more fun.

[Joe Osiha]

Define the battlefield. Define the battlefield. Jesse Sun Tzu. Well, speaking of that, in the second half of today's show we're going to talk about spending because he talks about simplifying your spending. I want to spend just a few more minutes about simplifying your life because he's got a couple more points about simplification. So we'll talk about simplifying accounts, simplifying your spending and where to find joy and kind of wrap this discussion up. But at the halfway point, we have this year long trivia competition that this year has a brand new feature that man, we're probably going to see today actually. And I know that because there's only two weeks left in this quarter and two of our contributors have not used their margin call. So what this means is our three contributors are all trying to win this dollar store trophy by the end of the year. And the score, Doug?

[Doug]

Well, it's not great James Bond territory. Now, Joe, it's double oh seven here in the basement.

[Joe Osiha]

Because it is.

[Doug]

We've got big fat zero for Jesse and even fatter zero for Paula and a little skinny stick figure seven for

[Joe Osiha]

OG So seven points. Now what the margin call does, if you hear one of our contributors, either Jesse or Paula, because oh geez, used

[OG]

you had to have a point to margin call somebody because you do not

[Doug]

go down, you just can't go negative. So it's a freebie for them. Why wouldn't they?

[OG]

I don't know. I distinctly remember this as being one of the rules earlier. No, no, we should check tape.

[Joe Osiha]

No, they can margin call.

[Jesse Kramer]

Can I march and call OG on this ruling? Because I feel like he's losing this ruling.

[OG]

Can I find it?

[Joe Osiha]

Jesse gets a point for the ruling.

[Doug]

Before the ruling, we might give him a margin call during the question and another one during the answer to keep pushing back.

[Paula Pant]

Can a person get double margin called in one episode?

[Joe Osiha]

I don't think so.

[Doug]

I don't think that even I wouldn't do that.

[Joe Osiha]

Judges are ruling. No, you gotta hit him twice. All right, so somebody's probably going to bargie call OG today. And the contributor says that if OG wins the point, he still gets the point. But if they had more than zero, the other contributor would lose a point because they only have zero. They can't lose a point, so they can't get further behind. But OG will get the point. If they win, they steal the point. A point From OG and they get their point.

[Paula Pant]

This is going to be the week that I win a point and that I immediately lose it next week. That's I predict.

[Joe Osiha]

Don't predict the future, please. God.

[OG]

Let's get it over with. Doug.

[Joe Osiha]

Doug, Here we go. Let's get it over with. What's our trivia question this week?

[Doug]

I think we need to have a whole ancillary betting market on how many words I'm going to make it into this question before somebody yells margin call. We will see. Get out on Kelsey, folks. Right now, I'm going with 3.5. Hey there, stackers moms. There it is.

[Joe Osiha]

On who? Jesse, who are you barging on OG Continue, Doug.

[Doug]

Okay, I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and today's the anniversary of the day that the Beatles were headed for the dumpster. That's right. It was the day that John Lennon married Yoko Ono, whose name had been originally Yoko maybe until she proved that. Oh, no. She could indeed help finish off what was arguably the greatest band of all times. Not that I have an opinion about this topic or anything. Let's focus on the aftermath of the Beatles then, to keep it positive. Lennon's top Benjamin Stacking song of the all sadly rose up the charts posthumously after he was murdered. Starting over rose all the way up to number one four. Well, here's today's question for how many weeks I'll be backward after I go figure out how to change my social media profiles. That's right. I'm saying it here. If you're a Yoko Ono fan, you're dead to me.

[Paula Pant]

Dead.

[Joe Osiha]

All right, OG you are in the hot seat, my friend. Starting Over, John Lennon's top hit, made tons of money. Sadly, it was when he passed away.

[OG]

How many weeks can I get a few bars of. Of what this song sounds like, Doug?

[Doug]

Nope, Because I never liked this song, actually.

[Joe Osiha]

Oh, I love this song.

[Doug]

Yeah, you go, man.

[OG]

Joe, anything?

[Joe Osiha]

No, I think I'll let you just.

[OG]

Yeah, I don't know the song. That's not fair.

[Doug]

That's irrelevant.

[Joe Osiha]

It'll be just like starting over. Starting over. There you go.

[OG]

All right, so he died. When was that disclosed? So, like, today's day or something like that?

[Doug]

Yeah, we said we covered it. 1980.

[OG]

I don't listen to anything you say. Just waiting for the questions. Biting time. Okay, so I want to say this is the dude that was killed in the 80s. Does that sound about right?

[Joe Osiha]

John Lennon?

[OG]

No comment from anybody. Okay. Long before Jesse and Paula. So they're gonna. They're not gonna get this anyway. And then it was kind of like a mercy album listing on Casey Kasem. It's like. And then we're gonna have this guy number one for a while because he's dead. So how long would they have like had the song on there as like a courtesy? First thing that popped in my head was 26 weeks, which is half a year. I'm going to say 34 weeks. Just a little bit over a half a year.

[Joe Osiha]

34 weeks stayed number one at 34 weeks. Jesse, you're second. Do you know the song Starting over by John Lennon?

[Jesse Kramer]

I don't. I feel like I'm a decent Beatles and Beatles members fan. I know enough. Like there aren't a ton of songs. Well, let me put it this way. I feel like the songs that were number one for like half a year are like super well known and super famous. So I'm thinking lower than OG I'm gonna go with two months. So let's say. Well, I'm gonna go with eight weeks.

[Joe Osiha]

Eight weeks at number one. So we've got 36 and eight. Paula, I said 34.

[Doug]

He said 34.

[Joe Osiha]

30. Sorry.

[Paula Pant]

34. Man. I feel like strategically I should just take the middle because I have no idea what the answer is.

[Joe Osiha]

Do you know this song?

[Paula Pant]

No. You lost me at do. I know pretty much any song ever by anyone.

[Joe Osiha]

She's like, I don't know who John Lennon is. I'm not sure why we're talking about bugs.

[Paula Pant]

No, I. I do know that I. I like the Beatles a lot, actually. I know some of their more popular. Like I don't mean to imply that this is not a popular song, but I do know many of their albums and many of their songs, but I don't know this one. So I'm trying to mathematically do the average in my head. So 34 plus 8 would be 42 divided by 2 is 22. So I guess that's my answer.

[Joe Osiha]

22, 22. She goes right in the middle. We've got 34, 22 and 8. Who's gonna win it? We'll be right back. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus.

[Doug]

Let's go get ready for a new case.

[Paula Pant]

We're the greatest partners of all time. New friends, Gary the Snake and your last name, the Snake Dream team.

[OG]

The new habitats.

[Paula Pant]

Zootopia has a secret reptile population.

[Doug]

You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home.

[Joe Osiha]

Zootopia 2 now available on Disney Plus.

[Jesse Kramer]

Right.

[Joe Osiha]

And right now you can get Disney

[Jesse Kramer]

plus and Hulu for just $4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th.

[Joe Osiha]

After three months, Plan Auto renews at $12.99 a month.

[Jesse Kramer]

Terms apply.

[OG]

The problem with radio is we can't show you our new box packed with a KFC snacker, five nuggets, fries and a drink for just $7. So you'll just have to trust us when we say the crispy golden fried breading will make your mouth water. You'll have to trust us when we say this is a ridiculous amount of chicken for such a small price. And you'll have to really trust us when we insist that yes, it

[Paula Pant]

seven

[OG]

dollar box feast from kfc. Trust us. It's finger licking. Good.

[Joe Osiha]

Prices and participation may vary.

[Jesse Kramer]

Tax tips and fees extra.

[Joe Osiha]

AI is incredible. It can teach you how to fry an egg and even write a poem pirate style. But it knows nothing about your work. Slackbot is different. It doesn't just know the facts. It knows your schedule. It can turn a brainstorm into a brief. And it doesn't need to be taught because Slack Bot isn't just another AI. It's AI that knows your work as well as you do. Visit slack.com forward/meetslackbot to learn more. All right, Paula, you finished this off with 22. You took the field goal up the middle.

[Paula Pant]

I know.

[Joe Osiha]

What could go wrong? Could anything go wrong?

[Paula Pant]

I mean, given that none of us know it, it probably indicates that it wasn't on the charts for that long. So there might have been an argument for taking the under that I missed.

[Joe Osiha]

Well, oh gee, you're up there at 34 weeks. How you feeling?

[OG]

Don't care. I'm up seven nothing. So if I'm up six nothing or six to one, I'm still half a quarter ahead of him.

[Doug]

We have, we have a two point swing here, right?

[Joe Osiha]

It could be six to two.

[Doug]

It's going to be six to two if it's Jesse.

[Joe Osiha]

If it's Jesse, it could be six.

[OG]

Keep on making up new rules every single week.

[Doug]

But whatever Jesse wins, he gets the point that he sucked out.

[Joe Osiha]

How are we making up a new rule that's the same?

[OG]

First of all, it was never people with zeros couldn't do it. But we changed that. Then you said you couldn't do it because they could go negative. And then you said you can't do that. But go ahead. Let's just give it to one of the other two because I get it. It's not good radio when I kick everyone's ass. So let's go.

[Joe Osiha]

Jesse, how you feel?

[OG]

Probably just texted one of these two. The real answer.

[Doug]

Joe, I don't know if we talked

[OG]

about this, but the eye investigation.

[Doug]

But it's a special this week only. Margin calls are worth three points this week.

[OG]

Whatever.

[Doug]

We have a special in aisle four.

[OG]

Whatever you got to do to make it interesting.

[Jesse Kramer]

Well, to answer your question, I'm feeling a little guilty now, Joe.

[Joe Osiha]

Why is that?

[Jesse Kramer]

OG Answered my question for me. You asked me how I felt, but OG Answered. I'm feeling a little guilty if I win because OG feels his lead slipping away and I'm.

[OG]

I'm up by half the quarter. It's not slipping away, Jesse.

[Jesse Kramer]

Well, he's gonna get margin called. He's gonna get margin called. Next week, he's gonna drop down to four. I mean, you. You see how this thing goes from here.

[OG]

Stolen last year.

[Joe Osiha]

Everybody in the comments are saying we should change the rules more often, that we need to like.

[OG]

Not joking.

[Joe Osiha]

Change rules as often as we can. Doug, I think this is like a 12 point.

[OG]

Let's just, let's just let Paula win and then we don't have to do this part.

[Paula Pant]

No, no, I don't want your sympathy vote.

[OG]

Okay, then let's have Jesse win. Somebody's gotta win.

[Joe Osiha]

Who's gonna win, Doug?

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm yogurt lover, but Yoko despiser, Joe's mom's neighbor. Doug, today's the date that John Lennon married Yoko Ono way back in 1969, which eventually led the Beatles to becoming nowhere men living in nowhere land.

[Joe Osiha]

Nice.

[Doug]

See how I see what I did there?

[Joe Osiha]

Nice work.

[Doug]

But because I'd have to chat with my therapist about anger management on that topic, let's focus on his biggest record of all time, a song called Starting over, which he recorded just before he was shot and killed in 1980. Today's question was, how long did this Benjamin Stacking hit last on top of The Billboard Hot 100 chart? The answer? Well, in terms of weeks, it was 29 weeks fewer than what OG said. 17 fewer weeks than Paula's guess. Just three weeks less than Jesse, because the correct answer is five weeks.

[OG]

So it was a crappy song. Jesse, our winner when I was 2.

[Doug]

You guys are all missing out on the fact that this was just John Lennon as a solo artist, not the Beatles. He was for certainly famous for being in the Beatles. So I think that skewed all your answers to the high side.

[OG]

Also, I wasn't 15 when this came out. Like you Guys.

[Joe Osiha]

So it's cool, Jesse scoring two points,

[OG]

trying to get dates for prom.

[Jesse Kramer]

I definitely got it right because I was alive in 1980.

[Doug]

All right.

[Joe Osiha]

It's Jesse's favorite song. He's got the poster and everything. Hot take, by the way, Doug, was that Yoko Ono didn't break up the Beatles. John Lennon broke up the Beatles because he decided that his relationship with YOK was more important than the ban.

[OG]

By the way, when I margin called Jesse several weeks ago, I did not get two points for winning. I got one. But that's okay.

[Doug]

We will review.

[Joe Osiha]

The committee will say, Jesse, I think

[Jesse Kramer]

I remember that too. It's a two point swing. It's a minus 1 and a plus 1, I believe.

[Joe Osiha]

Yeah, it's a minus 1 and a plus one. So you lost a point. Yes, exactly. So OG loses a point to go to six. So this is the same stuff. Jesse was at one point for winning earlier in the year. Went back to zero.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe Osiha]

And then gained a point. So the score is now 616100. Pa's like, wait here.

[Doug]

We were trying.

[Joe Osiha]

All right, let's move on to the second half of today's. Today's discussion. I want to finish off this talk that we're having about simplification because some of these things, Paula, combining old IRAs into a single account, when appropriate, streamline taxable accounts across banks or investment firms, reduce the number of savings account unless each one has a clear purpose, like you were talking about earlier. I think he makes a great point there that if it doesn't have a purpose, it just creates more friction having this money all over the place. It's not diversification.

[Paula Pant]

Sure. If you've got a whole bunch of random accounts and they're all being used for random things. Absolutely. Yeah. Then that. It just creates unnecessary complexity. But if you can mentally bucket, you know, this account is earmarked for this purpose, this account is earmarked for this other purpose. Sure. That actually creates some clarity. And sometimes it's nice to be able to log into a particular account and just see a very streamlined view of. Here's how this mental bucket is going. And so you see all of the. Especially if it's a mental bucket that has both inputs and outputs that happen every now and again. It's nice to have a very streamlined view of just that bucket. So I think it really depends on the way in which you treat your accounts.

[Joe Osiha]

Yeah. I'll give you an example. I had a client, Jesse, back when I was a financial planner. This was just at the Beginning of charging fees. There weren't a lot of firms to charge fees, so we managed people's accounts, and I was assigned this family. They had no idea they even had a account with our firm. And so they were making all these decisions about their money. And then it turned out that they had in this one fund about $70,000 that they. I mean, this is way better than finding $10 in your. In your pocket. The problem is, though, once they knew that that money was there, guess what they started doing? Immediately blew it all. It was amazing how fast they went through 70,000 bucks, like, very quickly. And I remember meeting after meeting, I go, you know, you're depleting this really quick. Before you were living one way. Now it's hidden. Like, I think that making confident decisions can kind of go both ways. And hiding money from yourself isn't always a bad thing.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah, I've heard the term found money before. Like, people treat found money differently because to them it's like, right, it's money we never counted on. It's money we never assumed we'd had. It's basically like I stumbled upon $70,000 under a rock. Great. Now I just get to blow this money on whatever I want. And then after I blow this money, I'm still going to have the same lifestyle. And while I don't get me wrong, I understand where that line of thinking comes from. The word that I. It's not a word I invented. The word is fungible. Right? Money is fungible. Dollars are fungible. And technically speaking, you should respect that hard earned dollar that your blood, sweat, and tears went into just as much as you should respect that dollar that you literally picked up at the grocery store parking lot. It's the same dollar. It can get you to the same place in your life. Now, I don't know how to convince someone of that truth. I'm not sure I exactly know, other than maybe if I just explain it that way, maybe some people, it'll sink in and they're like, oh, right, it is all the same and I ought to treat it all the same. It can get to me to where I. To where I want to go. Not really sure where I was going with that point, but I felt like it started to answer your question, Joe.

[Doug]

But you got to use the word fungible. And that's fun.

[Jesse Kramer]

That's. It is very fun. You're a fun guy, Doug.

[Doug]

I thought fungible is what happen when I don't clean my shower.

[Joe Osiha]

He's a mushroom.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah, he's a mushroom farmer.

[Joe Osiha]

Paula, what's interesting is he kind of flips this on his side, the author of this piece, and says you should do the same thing with your spending. You should whenever possible look to consolidate spending and make spending easier because it's easier to make confident spending decisions. You agree with that?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I actually really like doing that because you know, when it comes to stuff that you buy regularly like clothing or groceries or shoes, I think there is something to be said for having brand loyalty just for the sake of mental simplicity. Like if every time I bought a sweater I had to shop or around that would just be. It would, it'd be a headache. It would be another task versus I know where I go, I know what I'm buying. Two seconds, it's done. And same thing with shoes. Like I'm more or less just unless they're heavy winter boots. I more or less just stick with one brand. Cool. We're good. I don't have to think about it. So yeah, I think consolidating the spending and having some brand loyalty and a couple of staples that you know are going to serve you great. It now I don't have to think about my shopping.

[Joe Osiha]

Cut the credit card OG and use just one or two.

[OG]

I don't know. I mean from a simplicity standpoint, sure. I'm not a great example here because I'm kind of a points so I kind of play that game just a little bit.

[Joe Osiha]

I use this one at the gas pump and that one to book plane tickets.

[OG]

Not quite that bad. More like I got to spend X dollars to get this bonus over here and then it'll probably be sock drawed for a while. I mean we have definitely kind of a normal go to don't get as granular as Chase's 5% bonus cap is 1500 bucks this month on this purchase category. And so yeah, we're not getting that far into it. But I think generally speaking if you've got a Visa card and an AMEX card or visa and a MasterCard, some, some, two different brands from two different banks, I think you're generally well covered just about anywhere, you know. And then after that you can pay attention to what you really do your spending on. If you do a bunch of international travel, you probably make sense to have a card that doesn't charge you travel fees, you know, or foreign transaction fees. Yeah you know, or whatever. So you can be smart around that. But I think for most people one or two would be.

[Joe Osiha]

Jesse, how do you streamline.

[Jesse Kramer]

My wife and I share one credit card pretty Straightforward on that front. Like that. Spending is very straightforward. It's either that or if it has to be cash, it'll be cash coming out of the wallet. For the most part, I'm trying to have all my custodian, all my accounts at one custodian and consolidating those as much as I can. I think that Einstein quote of everything should be simple as possible. What is it? As simple as possible, but no simpler. I really think that gets you a long way in personal finance. I think sometimes there are ways that you can oversimplify things for sure. But more often than not, simple beats complex.

[Joe Osiha]

Paula. He flips this again then and says that it's really tough to look at what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy when you're lost in the weeds of spending on different places. Like once you've got it all in one place or just a couple easy places, then you can start sitting back and then you can have those discussions that we talk about all the time here and not afford anything. And on personal finance for long term investors, does this, this spending actually light me up? He says it's impossible to do that if you're in the weeds with all these different things. Do you agree?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I do agree. So I was talking earlier today with Paulette Perhech. We were discussing the concept of what's my joy budget. You know, when you think of it as a joy budget, sometimes it's a meal that you order out or getting your nails done or going to topgolf or whatever it is. All of it. Whether it's clothing or food or entertainment, it all kind of goes into what you would call the joy budget. And when you think about top line, like what are all of those things that bring me joy that I spend on and what is the max that I'm willing or able to spend in a given week or month on that, then you're kind of thinking outside of the, the standard budgeting boundaries because you're not thinking about how much am I spending on entertainment versus restaurants versus clothing. You're thinking more broadly, what am I spending on joy and how much can that be?

[Joe Osiha]

It's funny, OG you and I went through a exercise, I guess we call it, with Strategic Coach, where through a series of steps they're like, what are the things that are important to you? And these things that people normally put off till later, right? When I'm, when I'm old, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And then they ask you the question, why aren't you working on any of that now? Because you go through what you're doing today versus what you said is important to you, and often those two things are nowhere the same. He says the same thing. With your spending list, the top five things that brought you joy last year. Look at your spending summary. Compare the two. If the alignment's not. If the alignment is strong, you're on the right path. I guess I'd never thought about doing that with my spending as well.

[OG]

I mean, it's kind of putting money where your mouth is, right? It's like Maury Povich, he's got the envelope, you know, and he's like, you say travel is important to you.

[Joe Osiha]

Your budget says wine is important.

[OG]

I think when it comes to spending or any financial goal or finance anything whatsoever, it's very deeply personal. And I don't really like the common refrain of you must do this or you have to do these things or to be successful. This is what successful people do. It's like you only have to go around the block once or twice. And you see, there's like, thousands of ways to be successful. There's thousands of ways to spend money. And the way that somebody likes to do things is different than other people. And I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, if you don't owe anybody an explanation for what you're choosing to do with your money or your resources, as long as it's in alignment with what you say is important, important. And so if somebody holds up the mirror and you're saying, hey, this is really important to me, and then you're not living that in alignment, that's where you run into, like, just that. That weird grindy feeling of, like, really, you know, it's like, oh, no. Being physically fit, super important to me. It's like, I just saw you eat three donuts. Like, what? What are you talking about? You know, it just. It just. The incongruency is very obvious to people. So I don't know that it's anybody's business, honestly, what you feel like spending your money on. Some people want to travel, some people want to buy wine. Don't at me, bro. But if you're saying one thing and doing another, I think that's like a personal thing where you need to just go, hey, is this really what I want to be doing? Am I just saying I want to travel? Because I heard on some blog somewhere that retirement means travel.

[Joe Osiha]

Just sounds like what everybody's doing.

[OG]

So that's what everybody does. I'm supposed to travel. I'm supposed to want to travel. Some people don't like to travel. So don't travel. You don't have to say that you

[Joe Osiha]

want to do that. I remember I had this couple that I worked with, and she wanted to travel, and his job was travel. He was all over the place. He's like, I want.

[OG]

He's like, I can't wait to not right.

[Joe Osiha]

And we had the best discussions og mitigating. How were they going to get both of their goals, which were polar opposites of each other?

[OG]

The final scene of no country for Old Men, if you guys have seen that, that movie. I know Paula hasn't. Don't. It's fine. It's one of the best movies of all time. But the final scene, he's retired, right? And he's sitting there drinking his coffee, and he's just like, what are you doing today? You know, maybe I'll help out around the house. And she's like, what are you talking? Like, I have stuff to do. And he's like, well, okay, I was gonna go into town, but maybe I'll stay with you. And he's. She's like, no, no, no. You do your thing. And you can tell he hasn't thought through what his thing is. Like, he's just done doing that thing. Didn't really spend a lot of time thinking about what the next thing is going to be, and he's just kind of stuck. That's the end of the. And the movie ends. Fade to black. And, you know, he's just sitting there with a cup of coffee. So just be true to yourself. Nobody says you have to do stuff.

[Joe Osiha]

I want to ask you guys just one small habit. You think our stackers could change? What's one small thing, Paula, that people could do today, right now, that could give them big results over time?

[Paula Pant]

I would automate something because again with the hierarchy of automate, then habit, then willpower. If you could just automate a thing, whether that's, let's say you're increasing the amount of money that goes into an IRA or a Roth IRA, or you're increasing the amount that goes into a 401k. Just set up that automation just once, even if it's an extra 50 bucks a month, set up that automation just once. And then it's just. It's going to happen in the background. Outside of your conscious awareness, outside of your active decision making, It's a small thing. You can do it Right now, and it will reap rewards over and over and over and over.

[Joe Osiha]

Automate. One thing, Jesse.

[Jesse Kramer]

Two came to my mind, but they're really quick, so I'll go through them. The first one is at the end of every month, flag three expenses that just upon retrospect, you're like, ooh, I'm not sure I really liked that I spent money on that thing. And I think getting in the habit of doing that will make you maybe a more conscientious spender going forward on

[Joe Osiha]

that joy we talked about.

[Jesse Kramer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the other side of the habit, though, is right. So there's, like, limiting spending. The other side of the coin is expanding your income. It's to start to think about, like, if you needed to increase your income by 50%, if you had to make changes over the coming years, that would grow your career. And maybe this is more targeted toward. Targeted towards younger people who are in that stage. But it's like, start thinking through what you would do, what you would need to do, what you would have to do to expand your career to make that side of your ledger kind of healthier. So that'd be the two. The two things.

[Joe Osiha]

Ochi, you got the final one.

[OG]

I'm just gonna cheat and use one that I talked about earlier. And since we've recorded three times today, I don't know when the hell I said this, but if you don't use a tool to track your spending, you should. I know. I use Monarch, but what I did recently, which I thought was really fantastic, was I went on the desktop. I sorted by, you know, show me all the transactions for the last 12 months. In 2025, it was 3900 and some odd lines of. Of CSV file. I dumped it into Claude and said, now take all this and organize it per account and by category within each tab. And so, like, literally in each account. So I can say, well, on my amex card, here's what I spent in each category, and here are the individual transactions. And in my bank account, same thing. And on the Costco Visa card, here's what it. Costco, shocking, but it gave me an individual's printout of each one of those on a tab. And then I said, okay, now you're a budget expert. Tell me what I should know. Ask me questions like what jumps out at you in a previous show earlier today, I said, it flagged an expensive wine for me, and it said, did you have a wine subscription you forgot to cancel? Question, question, question. Like, here's a line Item for what you spent last year.

[Joe Osiha]

Just a good double check called it out. Then you had to ask if that brought you joy or not.

[OG]

And it sure does. And I don't owe anybody an explanation. Damn it.

[Joe Osiha]

There it goes. So why did you bring it up two shows this week if you don't owe us an explanation?

[OG]

Because I have a limited repertoire of information, Joe.

[Joe Osiha]

I think there might be some guilt going on.

[OG]

Oh, now you're trying to psychoanalyze my loss to Jesse today. Great. That's all I need.

[Joe Osiha]

All right, that's gonna do it for today. Thanks to everybody for hanging out with us in the chat. By the way, next week, people are like, we, we need a redo of the rules explanation for the trivia. It's a contested episode, Doug. There's nothing going on at Stacky Benjamin's if we're not contesting the trivia. This will be blowing up all over the place now that Jesse won.

[Jesse Kramer]

Jesse, I think the way we settle this is you give me two points. But we do put an ask. Oh, give me a half point. Give me a half point. Continue the tradition.

[Joe Osiha]

I think we said we're not doing that anymore after last year. Yeah, that one I do remember. Might not remember the rest, but we will have some clarification from the judges in next week.

[Paula Pant]

We're back to the coalition, Jesse. There we go.

[OG]

There we go.

[Joe Osiha]

Oh, boy. Paula. It's. This thing's going downhill fast. So let's find out what all of you are doing. It is the last weekend in March, which means, oh, gee, if I've known you a little bit, that means you're glued to your TV and March Madness all weekend.

[OG]

Oh, I wish. This is after school activity weekend just kind of kicked off a couple of weeks ago. So I am in. I'm in Las Vegas right now. Lost wages right now at a meeting. So I'm not even, like, doing any fun stuff in Vegas.

[Joe Osiha]

One star.

[OG]

I know. Not even at a cool hotel.

[Joe Osiha]

Yuck. It's like, so sorry to hear that.

[OG]

I know, but I'll manage. It'll be okay.

[Joe Osiha]

You'll figure it out.

[OG]

I probably will find some basketball on tv.

[Joe Osiha]

And by the way, Shane says he doesn't want just a rules clarification. He wants the entire episode on the trivia rules. No, no, we're not going there, Shane. Paula, the afford anything podcast wrapping up March, I'm sure with a bang. What's going on?

[Paula Pant]

You know, I just realized my entire trivia guess was wrong because I was going for the average right. 34 plus 8 is 42. Half of that is 21. It's not 22 and that's why you're wrong.

[Joe Osiha]

That is 100. Why you lost right there.

[Paula Pant]

I got the whole premise of the oh my goodness. I got the math wrong on my entire not that it would have made a difference, but should have margin called your math right. I got the math wrong on my trivia answer. But a person who doesn't have the math wrong is Bill Gurley. He is a venture capitalist who is a guest on one of my episodes. So tune into the Afford Anything podcast to hear Bill Gurley, the VC talk about how to choose a career that's a great fit for you. You know how to, how to spend your time doing the thing that you truly love.

[Joe Osiha]

That's fabulous. And that's at the Afford Anything podcast where only the finest podcast are found. Yes, speaking of finest podcast, another one of the finest podcasts in the land. Personal finance for long term investors. Jesse, how are you doing Fireworks here at the end of March.

[Jesse Kramer]

Well, the exciting personal update is that knock on wood, hopefully we have a happy healthy baby by the end of March. Baby number two, due date is the 19th, but we still have some episodes coming out.

[Joe Osiha]

We have like hopefully I'm not sleeping Right.

[Jesse Kramer]

Right. Everything's been pre recorded so that I don't have to do any actual, actual work when we're trying to raise an infant. But I've got a couple episodes ones that ask me anything which are usually well received and then a deep dive on. I had a bunch of question Monte Carlo analysis. People ask me how it works and what's going on under the hood. So I did a deeper than it ought to be dive on Monte Carlo analysis.

[Joe Osiha]

Awesome. And that is it. Personal finance for long term investors where only the finest podcast are found. I love that Monte Carlo analysis. That's there's so much that people get wrong when they first dive into Monte Carlo. So I can't wait to hear that one. All right, that's going to do it for today. Doug, you got it from here, man. What should we have learned on today's show?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, are you struggling to decide which habits are most important to establish first? Learn from Paula. Eat the cold blooded amphibious vertebrates first. Don't worry if you need to saute them in a pound of butter, wrap them in bacon, deep fry them in peanut oil and then dip them in ranch dressing. It's still a good habit to do the part you don't like first.

[Paula Pant]

You can Throw them in a salad.

[Doug]

Take some advice. Yeah, I mean, whatever you got to do.

[Joe Osiha]

Choices.

[Doug]

Second, take some advice from Jesse. Keep all your money with your custodian. Apparently. I mean, no one will ever think that the parolee pushing a bucket of bleach would be holding on to that much money. It's safe as houses with that guy. But the big lesson, when you've got a great thing going with a couple of buddies, you're laughing all the time, you're putting out hit after hitting. Never date anyone. They'll just ruin the amazing chemistry you've worked years to cultivate. It's like that old saying, bros before ho. Let that cat in here again. How many times do I have to tell you I'm allergic. That's it. I'm out. I quit. It's over. Thanks to Jesse Kramer for joining us today. You'll want to hear more from Jesse. Be sure to check out his podcast called Personal Finance for long term investors who have a desire to achieve a comfortable lifestyle in their later years or maybe sooner. Can't remember all that. Don't worry. We'll include links in our show [e-mail] thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You'll find her fabulous podcast Afford Anything wherever you listen to Finer podcasts. And thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good financial plan planning help? Head to stackingbenjamins.comog for his calendar. This show is the property of SP Podcast, LLC, Copyright 2026 and is created by Josal Sehai. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello and oh yeah, yeah. Before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. That. That's it. Like, what are we waiting for? I'm done.