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The Stacking Benjamins Show
The Shocking Retirement Hack That Has Nothing to Do With Money (SB1697)
01:10:03
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- [00:00]
Joe
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- [01:04]
Doug
We are back we are back we.
- [01:08]
Joe
Are getting Doug back and we're the three best friends that anybody could have we're the three best friends that anyone could have we're the three best friends that anyone can have and we'll never.
- [01:21]
Rebecca
Ever, ever, ever, ever leave each other.
- [01:23]
Joe
We'Re the best three friends that.
- [01:31]
Pete
Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And are you ready to find your best retirement? Living what does a successful life look like? Look like A new documentary shares an unexpected answer. The key to living well might not be what you think. On today's show, we'll meet the creators of the film, Join or Die, Pete and Rebecca Davis. And speaking of living your best life, remember that advice. Follow your passion. In our headline segment, we'll shine a light on some people who ditched that advice and still found big stacks of Benjamins. And you know you want it. So I'm happy to deliver a case of today's best fresh new trivia. And now, two guys who thought a hot market was a real estate term. Not the driveway at noon. It's Joe and. Oh, Juju. Jj.
- [02:39]
Joe
That's what it's turning into. It is getting hot in Texas. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the hottest podcast on personal finance, the Stacky Benjamin Show. And not just the driveway. Oh, gee, that's hot. Holy cow. Welcome to summer in Texas. Huh? So hot. What are we doing?
- [03:12]
Doug
It's getting hot in here.
- [03:13]
Joe
Just getting hot in here. But Don't. Is there a line in there? It's getting hot in here. So take off all your clothes. Isn't that a.
- [03:20]
Doug
No? That's the good part.
- [03:21]
Joe
I don't want that. I don't want that hanging out with you guys around the table. No.
- [03:25]
Doug
Well, guess what?
- [03:26]
Pete
When you guys walk.
- [03:27]
Doug
I'm already not wearing any clothes.
- [03:28]
Pete
In Texas, when you walk outside on asphalt, do you just. Do you leave footprints like. Like Neil Armstrong did on the moon?
- [03:35]
Doug
No. No, Doug, you don't walk on asphalt.
- [03:38]
Joe
You just don't go. We have no idea. Because you do.
- [03:42]
Pete
It's like the floor is lava everywhere in Texas.
- [03:45]
Joe
Everywhere is. If you see concrete or you see asphalt, you just don't go there. Yeah. You know what? We also don't want it to be awkward down here if we've. It's getting hot in here because Pete and Rebecca Davis are here. Imagine if we. Oh, no, no. That was. That was white, Doug.
- [04:05]
Pete
That was my nipple.
- [04:06]
Joe
That was white. That was the whitest. Were we blinded Doug? The hell yeah. Pete and Rebecca Davis coming down here. And we don't want it weird for them when they come down here because they're the documentarians behind this great, great show that I watched a few weeks ago called Join or Die. And I'm so happy that they could join us. I was thrilled because it was funny. I was watching the preview for it OG And. And Cheryl's nudging me in the movie theater. She's like, they are singing off your song sheet. The key to a successful retirement is actually, even if you are a. An introvert, it might be different than you think it is. And we'll chat with them. Pete and Rebecca created this movie, Join or Die with the subtitle. A film about why you should join a club, actually, and it's way deeper than you think. That it is, is a film that follows the story of legendary social scientist Robert Putnam. Pete was one of Bob Putnam's students and learned a ton from him and the things that he learned from Mr. Putnam, who had a book that in the late 90s was a huge book called Bowling Alone and has been honored by several presidents. The Davises who were about to meet, who made this. Pete, of course, as I mentioned, was a student of Robert's. He's a writer, a civic advocate, and he's the author of Dedicated the Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing. His sister Rebecca has been a producer for HBO, Vice, A& E, and others. She was a senior producer with NBC News for nearly a decade. So between Rebecca's ability to frame a story and Pete's firsthand knowledge of the topic at hand, man, we got people that are going to talk about why, why, why it's so important that you have little more than a hobby when you get to retirement. We're going to hear from Pete and Rebecca next, but before them we have a couple sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on. And you don't pay a dime for any of this Goodness. We're going to hear from them. And then with notes on their film, Join or Die, which you can watch on Netflix. Pete and Rebecca Davis I know personally that debt isn't just about money. It's about stress and sleepless nights and that constant weight on your shoulders. It can affect your relationships. It can shred your confidence. Truly, it can overshadow your whole life. So know that if you've ever felt any of that, you're not alone. There are millions of Americans struggling with debt, but there's a solution that can help. Beyond Finance was founded with a simple mission to help those struggling with overwhelming debt find a pathway to financial freedom. They can help you escape that endless cycle of making just minimum payments. Typical Beyond Finance clients see their payments on enrolled debt lowered by 40% or more. So you can expect immediate relief and the chance to start saving. The team prioritizes a hands on compassionate approach coupled with a focus on helping you get out of debt as soon as possible. Save save money and establish long term financial well being. They offer personalized 24. 7 support and financial wellness sessions with accredited financial therapist and you know you're in good hands with a Trust pilot rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. So if you're ready to take that first step or learn more about achieving financial wellness, visit Beyond Finance.com not available in all states. Fees vary by state. Results may vary. Small Business Owners State Farm's 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 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 and I'm super happy they're here with me today. Pete and Rebecca Davis are here. How are you two doing? Great.
- [08:31]
Rebecca
Glad to be here.
- [08:32]
OG
Thanks so much for having us I'm.
- [08:33]
Joe
So happy I found out I was telling all of our stacker family about me catching up two years late to this party.
- [08:40]
Rebecca
So better late than never. And I think the themes of the film, you know, I think have just continue to be more relevant every month that passes. And so we welcome you into the Joyner die family.
- [08:54]
Joe
Well, thanks, Rebecca. We had Scott Galloway on who I'm sure the two of you are familiar with. He's also singing off your song sheet, talking about how while we're all yelling at each other on social media, we're not paying attention to our local institutions, which is wrecking our democracy. Well, for our stackers and for the two of you, I'm going to try to do two things here at once. Number two is the themes are clearly important for our stackers. Number one, not just for the communities that we live in, but also for our own longevity and our own happiness levels. But also I love talking about what people are passionate about. And clearly the two of you have a lot of passion around this topic. And having just screened the film, there's so much love and care and expertise that went into the making of it. So I also want to kind of do the behind the scenes making of it. We're going to go back and forth between the two of those. But let's just start out from the idea generally. I'm guessing this was originally must have been Pete's idea. Is that true?
- [09:53]
OG
It was both of our ideas. You know, it came out of these two streams that we were experiencing. You know, on my side, I was in Bob's class. Bob Putnam is the figure at the center of this film, the researcher about community in America. And you know, my stream was basically I had this class that changed my life, which was that I was in school as this political science major. I thought politics and democracy was all about what happens in Washington. And what Bob Putnam taught me and taught so many people through his book Bowling Alone is that the most important thing happening in our democracy is, is not what's happening in Washington, even though that's very important. It's what's happening in ordinary neighborhood and community organizations all across the country. And then meanwhile, my sister Rebecca was traveling all around the country seeing the symptoms of community decline. And Rebecca, if you wanna say more about that cause.
- [10:46]
Joe
Rebecca, were you with NBC News at the time?
- [10:48]
Rebecca
Yeah. So in 2017 when Pete and I approached Bob together about the possibility of doing this documentary, which is about eight years ago now, I was working as a news producer and camera woman for NB News. So, as Pete mentioned, I was based in New York, but every few days I was hopping on an airplane and north, south, east, west, rural, urban, seeing all the different types of ways people are in community in America. And no matter where I was touching down, the conversation was hitting on these similar themes, you know, that Bob addressed in his famous book, Bowling Alone. I was just talking to a lot of folks that felt like things were off in their community. They felt like the daily rhythms of their life were not fulfilling them in the way that they had hoped. And at that point, 2017, we were coming up on the 20 year anniversary of Bowling Alone. And so this project, you know, was a chance, Pete and I hope to revisit that famous book, especially for anyone that maybe didn't want to sit down and curl up with a 500 page social science text. Although we do encourage folks who watch the film and are interested to, you know, go deeper, not just with Bowling Alone, but many of the incredible books that Bob wrote and the other experts in the film. So, yeah, we approached Bob. It was his last year of teaching, so he was about to retire. So there was kind of this now or never moment where we were like, you know, we really got to get in touch with Bob and see if we can capture his last semester of teaching and capture him in this moment, you know, where we thought he might be ready to kind of, you know, look back. Where are we at on Almost 20.
- [12:22]
Joe
Years later, I want to dive into first the premise. But even before we do that, there's also just the parts. And Rebecca sticking with you for a second about the fact this is going to be a documentary, which means, you know, you have important things that you want to say, but there also has to be a stylistic way that you present this. How hard was it to kind of storyboard this project out? Because for people who haven't seen the movie yet, you guys have wonderful animations. You. You have live interviews, some of them where a person's at one place. Others you're out in a field, like with members of a church in Michigan. You're out in a field walking around. You're following people around towns and Texas and other places. And then you've got like old movie clips, like, I feel like there's gotta be Rebecca. This entertainment value that kind of keeps people attached so we get this bigger message.
- [13:14]
Rebecca
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the challenge anytime you're working in translating text into a visual language. You know, I think at one point Pete and I joked, we tried to narrow down Bob's graphs, and we narrowed them down to about 100 graphs. And I said, this movie's going to be only 100. You know, I think maybe 10 finally made it in the film of probably thousands that we could have chosen from.
- [13:38]
OG
And that's probably the most graphs in a film.
- [13:44]
Rebecca
But, yeah, I mean, you know, that was the challenge. How do we create a visual language and translate social science text and data into film form? How do we condense these complex academic ideas? And I think that's where, you know, definitely Pete's background in studying government and social science definitely came into play as we partnered up. And then, of course, you know, we had an incredibly talented team around us that was able to realize this challenge. So we had this awesome animator, Mark Lopez of so Form Studios out of Austin, Texas, great editor Chad Irvin, who once joked, if you got together with another American in the last 200 years, you were fair game. Archival footage. So his job was really lick with the graphs. How do we winnow down with just so much Incredible.
- [14:34]
OG
Yeah, because usually you do a documentary about Roberto Clemente or something, and there's a certain amount of clips of him doing interviews. But if you're doing a documentary and you're trying to, like, get the most out of the available clips of that one person, and, you know, we did that with the Bob side of the story, but with the community side of the story.
- [14:53]
Joe
Clubs are everywhere.
- [14:54]
OG
There are a million clips of Americans getting together. So it was often a challenge of, okay, we're talking about the history of dinner parties or the history of picnics or the history of the Kiwanis Club. And then you go and you try to find the clip that really gets the emotion of reviving that idea of what life was like at a time when we had peak civic connection.
- [15:16]
Joe
How did you decide to put, like, 50s and 40s movie clips in here, too?
- [15:21]
Rebecca
I mean, that one. I think we have to give credit to our editor, Chattervin, both to him and to Marc Lopez. You know, we told him, like, get weird. We want to have fun with this film. Even while we're making our way through.
- [15:35]
Joe
Some very seriousness material, let's dive into that serious material. You decide to start with that group in Waxahachie, Texas, that I was talking about before, the Odd Fellows Club. Pete, can you explain a little bit about the Odd Fellows?
- [15:48]
OG
Yeah. You know, in American history, it used to be very normal to be part of a large federated fraternal organization. What a federated organization means is it's an organization that has Local chapters, state chapters, national chapters. What a fraternal organization means is it's mostly just about getting together and connecting with each other. And the most famous in world history is the Masons. We have all these. There's the animal clubs, the Elks, the Lions, the Kiwanis, the Rotary. Rotary is more of a service club. And Kiwanis, But Elks, Lions, Moose, all the Animals. All the Animals. And the Odd Fellows were the second huge mass membership org in the United States after the Masons. And the reason we wanted to focus on this one chapter in Waxahachie is we wanted to find a chapter of a mass membership fraternal organization that was turning around the decline trends. Because the biggest problem with federated fraternal organizations is they're graying. Not a lot of young people joining, less people in each of them. This is what Bob studied in his work. That's what the Bowling Alone phenomenon is. And we wanted an example of someone turning it around. And so that's why we found this group. We had heard from someone that all the Odd Fellows around the country knew about Waza 80, which had turned things around. And so we wanted to focus on them, and we specifically wanted to start the film with them because we wanted to show people how deep these groups had gotten into people's lives. And so we wanted to start with one person sharing how deep their relationship with their club was. Deep to the level that they had tattoos running down their arm of their club logo. And they had a whole building that was devoted to their club. We wanted to enchant people with the idea of, don't you want this? This is amazing. So that was how we started with the Odd Fellows.
- [17:43]
Joe
As a viewer, I found him to be a quirky individual. You start off with him looking through, like a peephole like it's a secret organization. And, you know, almost like I'm going to a speakeasy when I'm going in. And so I think it's kind of weird and wonderful, especially to your point, Pete, as he's going through, you know, showing his tattoos. But then it's funny. One of the last things he says really widens it because I'm like, okay, being in a club's a little weird because this guy is a little wonderfully weird. But then he said, I'm not really a joiner. And ever since my brother died 20 years ago, I just felt this need for community. And I really feel like Rebecca, all of us have felt that, I think, more and more, even though we're connected, More and more.
- [18:25]
OG
Yeah.
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Rebecca
What I hear in what you're saying to this weirdness is more like they've built a culture inside our culture. And so it would be similar to encountering, you know, you go travel somewhere and you talk to someone else, and they have a whole other language, identity, traditions. And you might say, oh, that culture is a little strange. I'm not familiar with it. And I think that is the aspect that made these federated societies that Pete was just speaking to such a deep part of people's life, because it was not just, I'm ticking the box to go do my volunteer work and put this line on my resume. They were fully building a new culture of membership. And culture gets at the core of what it means to be human. And I think for our groups that want to start kind of rebuilding, looking at what type of culture are you building around your community? I mean, even, you know, we see that around podcasts, you start to kind of have your own little words that you use, little songs that you sing, and all of that is important and adds to meaning.
- [19:36]
Joe
Pete, in one piece, to Rebecca's point, you go on the road, you're speaking with a union organizer, and she's talking about how in many cases, these people have nothing in common besides the fact that a boss picked them all. And yet, Pete, this shared culture really does something that helps us with democracy. How does a club help us with democracy?
- [19:59]
OG
Yeah, there's so many aspects to this. So one is that you learn the skills of democracy at a club. So you learn how to give a speech, you learn how to run a meeting, you learn how to get people to show up. You learn how to come to a decision together. That's one aspect.
- [20:15]
Rebecca
And how to disagree importantly.
- [20:17]
OG
Yes. And that's a huge part of it. You learn how to have fights and resolve them.
- [20:21]
Joe
That is interesting because late in that film, because I thought this was really important was because we don't join clubs as much now. We just show up and yell at each other. And I really like the fact that you. You subtly make this point that maybe if you join a club, you can show up and disagree with somebody in a much more helpful way.
- [20:40]
OG
We aren' born with the skills to be able to navigate tense situations. We have to learn them. And you don't learn them from a textbook. You learn them from doing, which is, I want our bird watching club to be about this. No, I want our bird watching club to be about that. And then you have to figure it out. And maybe figuring it out is calmly creating Two branches of the bird watching club. Maybe figuring it out is figuring out a compromise. Whatever it is, it's muscles that you build up. And then the second aspect of this.
- [21:08]
Joe
Hold on. Before you get to the second aspect, I just have to say I can't believe you talked about bird watching clubs because. Just a quick aside, I went on a bird watching tour one time on a boat around the Channel Islands.
- [21:20]
OG
Yes.
- [21:20]
Joe
And Cheryl and I thought this was going to be a low key thing, Pete. They, they had to get everybody around in a circle and they had to say, okay, we have three experts with walkie talkies and when they see a bird, everybody's going to get a chance. And I'm like, okay, well that's fine. This is bird watching. And you know what they said, Pete? They liter said, this can't be like last time.
- [21:44]
OG
Well, that, wait, that exactly is a moment of cultivation, a moment when culture is created. Because what creates a culture, a culture is a set of experiences that you learn a new response to. So you know, oh, remember that time that everything went to heck because of the birds?
- [22:07]
Joe
We all wanted the birds.
- [22:08]
OG
Now we have this practice that we all understand together. And slowly over time, all of those practices equals people really knowing how to do something together. So that's one aspect of it. You individually learn how to do something and you collectively learn how to do something. And while you're doing it, here's the final aspect that helps with democracy. You get connected with people who are different than you and form new identities about the ways that you are the same. So in all the groups that we feature in this movie, there's a bowling league. There are rich people and low income people in that bowling league, but they're connecting right now over bowling and having a cross class interaction. There's a gig workers advocacy group. There are people from all different races, religions and politics, but they're all working together on fighting for better safety and higher wages for gig workers. What you do is you come into contact through clubs of people who are different than you, learn that they're real, learn about what you might have misunderstood and build understanding amongst each other. And the next time that you're back with people that are similar to you and someone says, oh, I hate all those people over there who are like that. You can say, actually I know Gary from church, or I know Gary from the bird watching club, or I know him from the union or the party or whatever, or the neighborhood block party that we were at. And actually, you know, not everyone's like that. You don't know all the nuances of this. That type of stuff. And this shows up in social science studies. Those little connections are the stuff that together form our social fabric that makes everything work better in our society.
- [23:43]
Joe
I love a point that you make that the ability to be upwardly mobile. They talk about you are the five people that you're around. In some neighborhoods, you have no ability to be around these five people that might change your life. And being in a club can really make that happen. I want to do some definition time here for a second. But first, and I want to take this from a clip in the film that I'd like to play on this program. Obviously we talk a lot about building capital, about stacking Benjamins, right, About building money and diversifying a portfolio. But you talk about another type of capital. And here is Dr. Robert Putnam talking about these two different types of capital.
- [24:23]
F
I mean, the core idea of social capital is so simple, I'm almost embarrassed to say it. Sometimes it is that social networks have value. Physical capital is simply some tool like a screwdriver. And so you invest in buying screwdrivers and you can repair more bicycles more quickly. Now, economists invented the term human capital to refer to training and education. So just as you could invest in a screwdriver and repair more bicycles more quickly, you could go to auto mechanics school and learn a lot and that education would make you more productive. Social capital simply says the same. You with the same tools and the same training can get more done if you work in an organization or you live in a community where there are productive connections with other people and everybody.
- [25:18]
Joe
High fives each other. By the way, congratulations to your editors again, Rebecca. On the, on the sound clips. Everybody could hear the sound clips in that piece. Like, just keeping us awake as you're explaining this.
- [25:30]
Rebecca
Yeah, totally. And you know, Bob likes to joke about that clip in this context of, you know, social capital that you just played, it's the one type of capital, when you spend it, it actually grows. So unlike, you know, when dollars are flying out of our account, you know, and we're buying stuff. When we're spending our social capital building those connections in our community, we're putting more money in the social capital and it's increasing. What that looks like practically from our lived experience in the world is it means if I lose my job, I've got five people that I can call up and say, hey, are you hiring down at your shop down the street? Instead of trying to just send a resume out to the Internet. And, you know, we all know one of those experiences is a lot easier to navigate than the other. When you got friends looking out for you who have your back.
- [26:20]
Joe
Bob's work is all built on this fact that we used to join bowling leagues. Now we don't join the way that the way that we used to. What's the reason for that? That we stopped joining things, do you think? Is it social media?
- [26:33]
OG
What's so interesting in Bob's findings is that he wrote the book bowling alone in 2000. So that's before the iPhone, that's before Facebook, that's before Instagram. He wrote the article that became the book in 1995 where hardly anyone even had email. So these declines have been happening since the 60s. They were definitely accelerated by our hyper digitalization of the last 20 years. It has only gotten worse since he wrote the book. The book did not succeed yet in turning the trends around, but maybe in this coming decade we can. But things started going down mid century. There is not one culprit we can point to. There's some things he found on. Maybe television was part of the story. We know that people still watch five hours of TV a day. That's time not spent not going to a Rotary Club meeting. We know there was something generational about this, which is the people who were joiners 50 years ago, if they're still alive, they're still joiners. So it didn't happen over the course of a lifetime. They just didn't pass joining habits onto their kids. And each successive generation is less and less of a joiner. But we know it started way before the Internet and it might have contributed to the fact that the Internet accelerated it because we designed an Internet in. For the most part, we designed social media that was not necessarily about joining up in person because we already had a individualist culture by the time most of these apps were created. And this gets into a really important thing, which is the way we design our spaces affects how many relationships we're building with them. So for example, we have all this information right now about everything all around the world, but it's still really hard to find out which clubs are in your town to join. You know, it's easier to get some giant opinion out to someone halfway across the world than it is to like meet your neighbor. And so we are always promoting we need to build civic, localized technology. It's not technology good or technology bad. It's we need to use these tools to promote this ideal of local community and connection.
- [28:43]
Joe
It's so amazing. I belong to a group Here in Texarkana that builds walking trails, and another group called Leadership Texarkana, which brings local leaders together. And it was amazing. A few years ago, they realized that the only people that were reviewing our restaurants in town were outsiders. As they came down I30, the locals that know the local restaurants, Pete, were not recommending places. So everybody was going to Outback Steakhouse and to Olive Garden, and nobody was going to Verona, which is a great place to eat downtown. Yeah.
- [29:16]
Rebecca
And were those reviewers getting paid by the Outback Steakhouse? That was the other question the reporter in me is curious to hear.
- [29:24]
Joe
Good point. That's a great point. So we got together as a community and encouraged each other to start. And now you go on to Yelp and you see some better reviews of the local places, which helps our town. But I feel like that makes us think, you know, that we want to skip to the chase and go to national stuff because the local stuff is so boring. And yet, Rebecca, when you're talking to these people at this wonderful church in Michigan, like, everything's happening in this field, not on a national level.
- [29:54]
Rebecca
Totally. I mean, how many times do you hear people say, you got to come to my town. We've got this great Starbucks, you know, and the other thing I also say to people is that Starbucks letting you host a gallery show of a local art artist, is it letting you put up a poster for your club meeting on a community poster board? And I don't mean to call them out specifically, but just, you know, example of a national chain that most of us have, and that is the type of critical eye I think that all of us need to be taking to businesses as they come into our communities. And if they are not serving that dual purpose of providing whatever service they're providing to the community as far as, you know, the food they're offering or other service. But are they also adding to the community in some way? Are they putting their name on the back of the Little League T shirts and making sure the Little League field is maintained? If they aren't, you know, we as citizens of those communities need to say, you know, maybe this might not be a great home for you.
- [30:55]
Joe
Halfway through the film, you switch from you can help your democracy by joining a club to specifically we've been talking about today. No, you can really help yourself. You found a woman named Julianne Holt Lundstadt. Could you tell me who this woman is?
- [31:14]
Rebecca
Yeah. So she was one of the advisors on the Surgeon General. Vivek Murthy, who was Surgeon General at the time, were working on the film, she was one of the advisors on a major report he put out in his time in office on this loneliness and isolation crisis where he was really trying to bring to the center of the health conversation, not just our physical health. You know, in the past, surgeon generals have on things like smoking campaigns and making sure you wear your seatbelts, things for our physical body. And Dr. Murthy, in his time in office, really in partnership with the research of Julianne Holt Lundstadt, who's. Who's based out of byu, her research really looks at the physical impacts of isolation and finds that being isolated is as big of a health risk to you as those things that, you know, we all know well about smoking, not eating right, not exercising. And through her work, you know, she's really trying to lift up the importance of getting involved in community for our physical health.
- [32:17]
Joe
You have this statistic, Pete. I think the chance of dying goes down in a given year by what, 50% just by joining 50%, just by.
- [32:25]
OG
Joining one group that's from some of these public health and loneliness researchers. Bob has been citing this for a long time. Here's the way to think about it. You know, when you have social connections, these are the people that tell you to take your meds. These are the people that help invite you to their running club. These are the people that help you in recovery to get off drugs. These are the people that notice a mole on the back of your neck because you don't see the back of your neck that often, but your friends do and tell you you should get that checked out at a dermatologist for cancer. Also, you know, we know we're starting to see that, like, cortisol levels go down. And if you want to get evolutionary evo bio about this, we know that as we evolved as humans, we evolved in community. And so 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 and that causes stress to our body.
- [33:25]
Joe
I feel like we all felt that. And you guys point this out. We felt this during COVID You really felt it during COVID Yeah, I mean.
- [33:31]
Rebecca
And, you know, Covid was a surprise to us. Like I mentioned, we started the film in 2017. So three years into production on this film, suddenly we get hit with this surprise, 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 into 19 pandemic. And no one wants to wave to their grandparent on their birthday through a screen either.
- [34:03]
Joe
You've got a video of everybody saying Happy Birthday to Bob online, which is so depressing.
- [34:08]
OG
We weren't able to film during the pandemic. Bob's on the older side, and so we didn't want to have any risk for him. And we sent him a camera and said, record some of your pandemic life during this period.
- [34:18]
Rebecca
So, yeah, Rosemary Putnam deserves a crew credit in that one. For a year of camera work on.
- [34:24]
Joe
This project, I can't imagine. I'll save that for episode number two, where we talk about how that affected your schedule. I can't imagine, like, oh, my God. You get halfway through the project and that hits.
- [34:34]
Rebecca
Yeah. But I think it's brought that conversation that much more to the forefront of people's heart. So as we're touring the film around, people are really ready to have this conversation and to figure out what we want our world to look like, you know, in these years ahead.
- [34:49]
Joe
I love the doubt halfway through the film that, did we get it all wrong? And then talking about, well, maybe parts are wrong, but I think we got it mostly right. I thought that was exciting. But then the fact that we don't have to reinvent the wheel, and I'm not going to even really talk about that, but the cool thing is that we've been here before, and you do a great job of pointing it out. You don't have to do anything new. We truly just go back to where we were before.
- [35:11]
OG
You know, there's all these nuances. You could make a film about community plus Blank. Community in schools, community in hospitals, community in business, all of the stuff. But it really comes down to a simple thing. And we said, just join something. And if you're looking for something to create, we're really into this idea of just do what you love together. Just ask yourself the question, what are you doing alone that you could be doing together? Are you celebrating alone? You could be celebrating together. Are you dealing with neighborhood problems alone? You could deal with neighborhood problems and come up with neighborhood ideas together. We're all sitting at home alone watching streaming services. Hopefully you're watching Join or Die on Netflix. But let's revive a culture of I'm really into this Jerry Seinfeld quote. Going to the movies is part of the movie. The popcorn, the building, the other people, the conversations in the hallway afterwards.
- [36:02]
Joe
Our stackers know how much I feel about this. Yeah, I'd rather see it in the theater.
- [36:06]
OG
Yes. And that's part of community. And we've actually been telling a lot of institutions that are wondering about their future. Have you thought about pivoting to community? If you have a local newspaper, why not have parties every month to celebrate the release of all the issues of the past month? If you're a local library, so many libraries are not just collections of books. They're becoming community spaces. If you're a local theater, start the Tuesday Horror Club. If you're a local business, think about ways that you can also be a place to host community events about what you're doing. You know, even podcasts. Tell everyone. Here's an idea we've been pushing on podcasts. Have your listeners meet up in chapters with each other every so often.
- [36:48]
Joe
Oh, yeah, we're doing that now. And it is really cool to see our stackers getting together. We've got a great, robust group in Minneapolis St. Paul shout out to you guys. Possibly looking at starting one in the Seattle area. We've been having talks there like, that's cool.
- [37:02]
OG
One shout out to St. Paul. Three of the highest social capital states in America are Vermont, Minnesota, and Utah. And so we always get a lot of Minnesotans who really understand community.
- [37:13]
Joe
Well, there you go. Stackers, Minnesota Stackers. There's your shout out. And everybody knows how much I love Vermont. And just the beauty in Utah, the film, which clearly everybody can tell I hate. I can't stand this. It is. It is. I love this film so much. It's called Join or Die. And as I told the two of you beforehand, we're even talking about doing a public screening in Texarkana, which will be great because our local Kiwanis group wants this. All of our local groups, our local Rotary group wants it.
- [37:40]
Rebecca
Yeah. Anyone who wants to host a screening, I think we're up to about 400 community screenings as of this week. But if you head to joinerdive film.com we've got a host a screening button right there. And so you can head right to our website and request screening to come to your town.
- [37:54]
Joe
That's awesome. And we'll link to that in the show notes because I would love to see communities do that. And lastly, I know one of the things going back to the pandemic. Did you guys see that meme that said I finished Netflix? You clearly haven't finished Netflix until you've seen Joyner die.
- [38:10]
Rebecca
I cry at that one.
- [38:13]
Joe
Rebecca, Pete, thanks. For educating our Stackers on the importance of joining. I super appreciate you.
- [38:19]
OG
Thank you for having us on. Love what you're doing.
- [38:26]
Pete
Hey there Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And how about Pete and Rebecca Davis, huh? Joining a club actually sounds like a lot of fun. I know some of our Stackers get together in Minneapolis St. Paul and we've got new groups coming together in Boston and Seattle as well. Great news though, while forming new money groups is a cat idea, see what I did there. Joining Joining one of the many great service organizations is not only helpful for your community, but also can get you involved. Here's today's question. What's the largest service organization on earth? I'll be back right after I help these neighborhood kids with their service project. It's always fun to help the younger generation.
- [39:10]
Joe
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- [40:27]
Doug
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- [40:43]
Rebecca
30, 2025 I think you're on mute.
- [40:47]
Joe
Workday starting to sound the same.
- [40:50]
Doug
I think you're on mute.
- [40:51]
Joe
Find something that sounds better for your career on LinkedIn with LinkedIn job collections.
- [40:57]
OG
You can browse curated collections by relevant.
- [41:00]
Joe
Industries and benefits like Flexpto or hybrid workplaces so you can find the right job for you. Get started@LinkedIn.com jobs finding where you fit. LinkedIn knows how.
- [41:19]
Pete
Hey there stackers. I'm neighborhood helper guy and man. Always lending a hand or a foot if you weren't nice to your elders. Joe's mom's neighbor Doug these neighborhood kids, man, apparently for this amazing service project, they have to go out around midnight with some toilet paper and celebrate some of the unsuspecting neighbors before they wake up.
- [41:40]
Joe
Man.
- [41:40]
Pete
It's just inspiring, isn't it? In this ceremony, I guess you run the toilet paper like through the trees and bushes around their house. They said it's a great way to highlight different houses around the neighborhood, really bring attention to the best people in the neighborhood. They're such good kids. While these guys are forming their own service organization, there are many that already exist, like the Rotary and Kiwanis today. I ask the question, though, what service organization is the largest one on earth? The answer? The Lions Club. And now here come two guys ready to growl into the microphones. Joe and Og growl. The Lions growl. I think they rower.
- [42:23]
Joe
They roar.
- [42:24]
Doug
Roar.
- [42:24]
Joe
Roar.
- [42:25]
Pete
Rower. Is that how you sound sometimes, especially when Og's grumpy. It sounds like he's growling into the microphone.
- [42:32]
Joe
I want to shine a light on some of the things here, OG, that Pete and Rebecca talked about. 50% less chance of dying this year if you belong to an affinity group than if you don't. Even if you're an introvert. Just belonging to your community. Such an important part of really successful retirement goes along with what Wes Moss's research and his great book, what the Happiest Retirees Know. The happiest retirees belong to at least three different groups, and one they have, one they officially belong to, three they help out with. You might help out with a pancake breakfast for the Kiwanis. Just, you know, volunteer to help out with that, help another group for their 5K. But you truly are a member of the men's club at your local church, you know, and you're deeply involved. But it seems like having Something that's bigger than us. Big part of a successful retirement.
- [43:23]
Doug
I mean, your whole life you've probably been working toward some sort of achievement of some kind, right? It's like throughout your life, there's always these things that are on the horizon. And there's a problem with always looking at the next greatest thing that's also could be bad in terms of happiness. But you're working towards something. And, you know, whether it's where we are right now, where it's. We're working on getting the kids through school and we've got one going to college and like, that's on the. You know, we're kind of in this achievement type of thing. But then you think about, you know, as you get closer to retirement, and it's like, I'm working toward the gold watch, I'm working toward the pension. I'm working. You know, you're working towards something, but along the way, you're doing it as part of your overall. In this case, from a work standpoint, you're looking at it from the perspective of your company. Right. It's like, I need my division to do really well, so I get a bonus or I need my division, my company, to do well. So our stock options vest and are worth a lot of money. And, you know, we're always working towards something. And then you get to retirement and you go, now I don't do anything.
- [44:25]
Joe
Yeah.
- [44:25]
Doug
How does that jive with everything else that's been going on your entire life? You know, so having the next thing, whatever that is, and helping that thing work toward whatever goal that they're working on helps. I was, you know, we had a lot of graduation stuff the last month or so. There was a family member of a friend of my son's who made it to all of the games like he was. They were an older couple and they never had kids. We were talking a little bit about that, and he said, you know, that's what we decided to do. We decided that we were going to invest all of our retirement time into our nieces and nephews and making sure that we made it to their sporting events and supported them in their school functions and help them as we could as the cool aunt and uncle. That was their retirement time. It was living those teenage years again, basically, you know what I mean? Like being at the football games and the baseball games and the track meets and that sort of stuff. So they were every bit as busy as we were as parents, even though they're a generation or half a generation ahead of us. And in the retirement time, they shouldn't be doing all that stuff, but that's what they filled their time with. And we were talking about, well, now that they're graduated, now what, right now, what are you gonna do now?
- [45:34]
Joe
Go on and find some other kids, I guess, to follow.
- [45:37]
Doug
Well, they said that. What's funny is they said, well, you know, we're gonna miss seeing you guys, but we'll probably be back to see William and yeah, Caroline's class, you know, we'll probably stop by every so often.
- [45:48]
Joe
That's really cool, being a part OG just of a community, having that community feeling, thinking about the fact that we live in the same place. And while these aren't, quote, my kids, they're the community's kids.
- [46:01]
Doug
Yeah, they honored a group or a husband and wife at our son's graduation for being mentors and helping out at the school all the time. And they're the people that you'd see everywhere, but you'd go, I don't know who they are, but they seem to always be here. I don't know who they belong to. Well, I didn't know the story. I mean, they had had kids at the school for 25 years in one way, shape or form, but they were all gone. And it's been seven years since their last kid was done, but they still are there all the time. And so they've gone all the way through kindergarten through through 12th grade multiple times with multiple kids and doing all the kindergarten stuff and all the first grade stuff and so on, so forth. And now they're still there doing all the volunteering. And they honored them with a special award at graduation for, for being mentors for all the kids even though they don't have kids anymore.
- [46:50]
Joe
Which is funny because it's phenomenal and you should honor those people. But that has nothing at all to do with why they did it.
- [46:57]
Doug
That's exactly what he said. He was like, you know, let's bring Mr. And Mrs. Smith up here. And they give him a big thing. And he's like, look, this isn't about me. This is about the graduates today. So let's just move on with the program.
- [47:07]
Joe
Yeah.
- [47:08]
Doug
And everybody's like, yeah, good job. We're all here to get through this together. Buddy. Thanks for getting off the stage.
- [47:13]
Joe
That's fabulous.
- [47:15]
Doug
You knew it wasn't about.
- [47:15]
Joe
We just honored people that know a little bit of my story, know that I work on this non profit group in Texarkana that helps build walking trails. Our city early this year recognized the Founders of this group, John and Julie Ray Harrison. And when John and Julie Ray got up at the city council meeting to accept their award, all they wanted to talk about. Yeah, okay, this is nice, but we need to build more trails. Here's what we need. These trails don't help them. I mean, per se. Right. That there's no profit motive. There is nothing that they stand to gain business wise. And they wouldn't even really look at the honor. Oh, yeah, that's nice that you did this. But let's use this as a platform to maybe. Hopefully the newspaper is going to talk about this event and we can build even more trails. It was, it was really wild. But you think about this, you know, this idea of the biggest accomplishments that you remember. Not all of them, but, but many of them. I remember one time a group of us OG were going to volunteer at a homeless shelter. We were going to serve food and I was like, yeah, I don't want to do that. No, a hard pass. Like I did not want to do that. And for some reason I went and it was incredible. It was one of the most amazing days. And this has been several years ago now that I did that particular community focused activity. But I remember it very much. And it's always surprising to me how some of the highlights of my year are usually things that are bigger than.
- [48:39]
Doug
Not about you.
- [48:40]
Joe
Yeah, not about me helping the community. Great stuff. And a lot of science that supports all this. Of course. We talked to Anna Corwin several years ago about why Catholic nuns live longer. They have a mission that's bigger than them, that is beyond their lifetime. The study that we all saw of nursing homes, they had half of the, the people in the nursing home that had to take care of a plant. Don't let this plant die. And the other half just left to their own devices. Of course. The half that had to take care of the plant, live longer. Great idea. And by the way, a great documentary. I know that our group in Minneapolis, our meetup group in Minneapolis St. Paul, they're going to watch this documentary together. So make sure if you're in the Minneapolis St. Paul area that you come to that meetup. We're going to do a movie night in Minneapolis. Hope you can attend. I think right now they're planning that to be the August meeting.
- [49:31]
Pete
But it's always the best day in class. When they brought in that. The TV on the cart.
- [49:35]
Joe
Yeah. But the bad news, when the A.V.
- [49:37]
Pete
Club brings it.
- [49:38]
Joe
I really like this documentary. When they brought that card in, Doug, I knew it was nap time. I was like 45 minutes, I get to nap. Oh, so good as I skip these. Skip the entire movie. All right, let's do a headline.
- [49:52]
Rebecca
Hello, darlings.
- [49:54]
Joe
And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our stacking Benjamin's headlines. Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal, and it's written by Juliet Chung. Juliet writes, meet the stealthy wealthy who make their money. Wait for it, everybody. The boring way. You know the stuff og that people talk about with follow your passion and, you know, passion will lead to riches. Well, these people completely did the opposite. Derek Olson grew up dreaming about the thrill of running his own business. Decades later, that dream came true and made him wealthy, just not exactly in the way he expected. Olson has made a fortune making machines that rip up flooring, like carpeting in elementary schools. Imagine. What do you do for fun? I rip up flooring in elementary schools. Quote, this is how sexy it is. The average elementary school in the United States is seven miles of carpet and children are disgusting, Said Olson, chief executive of National Flooring Equipment and the father of two. CHUCKLING so elementary schools basically need their floors redone almost every summer. It's this niche industry that no one knows about and everybody needs. It turns out og that when it comes to a lot of these people that have made tons of money doing some of these sometimes off the wall, but usually just these very boring businesses, you know what? They're in love with?
- [51:15]
Doug
Money.
- [51:15]
Joe
They're in love with running the business.
- [51:17]
Pete
Money.
- [51:18]
Joe
No, they're in love with running the business. They love the thrill of entrepreneurship. They love keeping customers happy. They love all these things which people don't think about when they think about follow your passion.
- [51:30]
Doug
Yeah, it reminds me of that micro. Or is it micro? Does the dirty jobs.
- [51:35]
Joe
Micro. Yeah, dirty jobs.
- [51:36]
Doug
If you're world class at something or if you have something, if you have a unique skill or a unique niche, there's plenty of money to be made. I know a guy who cleans turf. So you think about, like, football fields and soccer fields and, you know, you go, oh, well, that's all the schools. Well, all the schools have it, but then all the rec areas have it. And, you know, you think about, like, the layers and layer, you know, how many football fields there are, how many soccer fields there are, you know, in your community. And they have to get washed because kids throw up on them and birds crap on them and, you know, just. Who knew you had to wash turf?
- [52:12]
Joe
There's somebody that does that.
- [52:14]
Doug
Yeah, you got to Redo the pebbles, you know, the little rubber pellets that are in there, they get kind of moved around, you know, and so they gotta even them out again to make it last longer.
- [52:22]
Joe
A couple weeks ago on Memorial Day, and a lot of people every year miss the Memorial Day episode. Obviously, you're with friends and family on that holiday, but we feature Bonnie Hammer, who was the vice chairperson of NBC Universal. And Bonnie was talking about the lies we get told at work. And, oh, gee, one of her biggest lies, one of the first ones she talked about on the show, if you go back and listen to it, is follow your passion. And she said, it needs to be. Follow the opportunity. Because I'm sure that that guy that cleans turf didn't, you know in sixth grade go, oh, my God, I'd love to. You know. You know what I love? I love clean turf.
- [52:59]
Pete
I want to pick barf pieces out of plastic grass.
- [53:04]
Joe
I am all about that. But somewhere along the way, he got an opportunity to do a thing where there was a spot for him, and he turned that into an entire industry and career for himself.
- [53:16]
Doug
I think it's also interesting to juxtapose this against, like, the formulaic after you get done with school, you have to go to college thing. There were some kids in my son's class that were not going to college. They were going to H Vac school or going to be firefighters or whatever. And he didn't say, he's not the type of kid to be like, look down on that. But. But I could tell there was a little bit of, like, you know, well, Jack's not going to college. You know, that kind of.
- [53:43]
Joe
Just a little bit.
- [53:44]
Doug
Just a little something. I said, well, what are they? Well, he's gonna go, you know, work. He's gonna go be a welder or something. I go, jack's gonna make more money than probably 85% of your class.
- [53:53]
Pete
Yeah.
- [53:54]
Doug
And he's gonna start making it tomorrow right away. Like, he's making 30 bucks an hour training. You're spending $600 a credit hour at, you know, at whatever it is, you know, at school. So it's like this dude's getting paid day one, and by the time he's 25, he's going to have a thousand hours or 2,000 hours of experience doing this and be making a million dollars a year. So I think there's some of. It is not necessarily follow your passion, because the things that I'm passionate about, I don't happen to be uniquely able to do. I love playing Golf. I'm just not particularly strong at it. So if I were to say I want to follow my passion of golfing and be a pro golfer, I. I would be penniless. But I think there is some truth to find the thing that you're good at and do repeatedly because that will lead to. To your point, I think, Joe, opportunities, but you also have to be open to. Open to the things that show up in your lap.
- [54:47]
Joe
Yeah.
- [54:47]
Doug
Was this the article that the guy who did the, the floor mats, the Weathertech guy. Everybody knows Weathertech now, but I think he was in this article too.
- [54:55]
Joe
It is, yeah. Further down.
- [54:57]
Doug
Yeah. His story is pretty interesting. You just notice he was renting a car in Europe and he goes, well, this is way better. This is just rubber floor mats. Everything just stays clean. Like this is a way better deal than those crappy ones you get when you buy a brand new car and they get dirty with all the whatever. And so he just said, the heck with it. I'm going to buy the patent and move the production to America and market the crap out of it. Off he went.
- [55:20]
Joe
The piece goes on behind a paycheck. The largest source of income for the 1% highest earners in the U.S. is it being a partner at an investment bank, something we always hear about, right? Or launching a one in a million tech startup? We hear about that all the time too. It's owning a medium sized regional business. Many of them are distinctly boring and extremely lucrative like auto dealerships, beverage distributors, grocery stores, dental practices and law firms. According to Zeidar and Zwick, two of the people they talked about before, their analysis of tax data from 2000 to 2022 suggests the importance of such business ownership to the US economy has grown. The share of income that ownership generates has increased to 34.9% in 2022 from 30.3% in 2014 for the top 1%. So more and more. But people OG that are in the top 1% or even the top 0.1% of earners are there because they own businesses. That's a, that's a big number. In fact, for people watching the video this, they'll see the graph. I'm going to explain to everybody else what we got here. For people that are in the top 90 to 95%, wages are how most of those people made money. You get to top 95 to 99%, wages come down and here comes business. It's when you get to the top 1%, they begin to come close, closer. Or 50% of the people report that wages got them there, 35% report businesses got them there. And then the point zero one, business ownership is the way to go. So there's owning these small businesses. Oh, gee, can be a real boon.
- [56:56]
Doug
Yeah. Owning medium sized regional businesses. Yeah, yeah.
- [57:01]
Pete
Wouldn't we all love to do that? I mean, we're obviously very pro entrepreneurship and pro small business on the Stacking Benjamin show. But I think it's a huge disservice to use that old trope about, you know, find something you love to do and you'll never work a day in your life. Because honestly, what most of us love to do is not something that is incredibly valuable to other people. You know, when I was that age, I thought I was going to be a writer, that I have a degree in technical writing, but I really thought I was going to be a creative writer at the time. And it was something I love doing. And the path to being incredibly successful in that arena is so narrow and so twisty and almost impossible to get really good at. And had I tried to do that, I would have missed out on the greatest joys of my life with my family.
- [57:50]
Joe
That's why I love. Great points, Doug. That's why I love this piece. And I absolutely loved Bonnie's advice of follow the opportunity. I mean, I loved her story. You know, as I mentioned, people should go back and listen to it. But, you know, she thought she was going to be a photographer and then she figured out that that was not only, oh, God, incredibly boring.
- [58:09]
Pete
When's the last time you paid for a photo?
- [58:12]
Joe
Commercial photography where she's setting up these shots that are just all very generic and doing the same crap over and over. She didn't like it at all and it wasn't what she thought. She ended up in television instead. So she used the best of photography to really set up shots to make, you know, shows that we watch. So she was still using her talent but looking outside. To your point, looking outside that thing, there's still been things in your life that were creative where you got to use writing and it really worked. You didn't have to be a quote writer to write a ton and use that skill forever. I also want to do this because you also began with, you know, we're entrepreneurial on this chart from this Wall Street Journal piece. It's also important to see that people that are in the top 99% of people wages will still get you there. We're not saying you have to be an entrepreneur, right? You don't have to be, but Certainly, if you want to be that top 01, being an entrepreneur is the way to go. Wonderful piece in the Wall Street Journal. I'll link to it in our show Notes at Stacky Benjamin's. And of course, we will reference great pieces like this that we find out on the Internet. We always try to curate the best stuff, the best of the best that we find. Kevin Bailey is just amazing at parsing out all the goodness. Before he worked with us at Stacking Benjamins, he was at Vanguard and at tia, two incredibly fine institutions. And now, man, he is always out there digging. And the stuff that he finds in our 201 newsletter every week to advance these conversations further, which is why we call it the 201. You can get in your email for free stacking benjamins.com 201 all right, we got one segment left. And we call this the back porch. And. And I just want to say a big thanks to people around the country that we've met. You know, this episode was so much about community, and whenever we go, we meet our community. Truly, you don't create a podcast for reasons other than. Than community. And that said, it can be a little. A little weird when it's just guys, the three of us sitting here on the mic, just chatting with each other, and then you go to places. I was just in Boston, and that was fantastic. I was in Seattle. When I've gone to Cleveland, when. When we've. We've gone around the country and talked to Stackers, it's always the community, I think, that really makes this makes sense. A great time.
- [60:34]
Pete
Yeah, I don't think that's why Meghan Markle did it, though.
- [60:37]
Joe
Created a podcast.
- [60:38]
Pete
Not for the community.
- [60:39]
Joe
I didn't even know Meghan Markle had a podcast.
- [60:41]
Pete
Yeah, except she got a giant freaking fat check because to start a podcast, she didn't care about a community like us.
- [60:49]
Joe
Well, then maybe it should. Maybe I should have said us.
- [60:54]
Pete
That's why people do podcasts. No, Joe, some of them get approached.
- [60:59]
Joe
You think they might be in it for a little bit of. A little bit of cash.
- [61:03]
Pete
I want to go sleep with a royal just so I can.
- [61:07]
Joe
But community is definitely important to us. And having these great friendships and meeting all these different people. I gotta say, I love, love, love the discussions we can have on Spotify when people talk to us there. And I also get a little frustrated on. On Apple because we can't. And the great thing about this community is we can decide what to do with our money whenever we want to we talk about that all the time. We can live our lives the way we want to. Right? We don't have to chase our, quote, passion. We can go after the boring job if we want. This is all about choices and about really being different people. And a little frustrating to me is a couple of the reviews that we've had recently that aren't even about the podcast. It's really just judging somebody's choices about how they decided to spend their money. And for people that don't know, Paula Pan's cat has cancer. Paula's financially independent. She decided to do something I wouldn't do in a million years. I would never, ever, ever put my cat on treatments to extend my cat's life. And that's my decision. Paul is not me. Paul is not you. So I. I don't know. I'm always up for a good review. I'm always up for a bad review. Reviews about somebody's life choices and then talking about the. Our show because somebody expressed the fact that they did something with their money. That's different than you, man. I love you guys. I love our community. And I come here, and I think we all come here to just have a good time. And so I'm really sad at Apple that we can't just answer that directly. I didn't want to even really talk about that on the show, but I do think it needs to be addressed. All right, big thanks to people who've hung out with us. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Thank you again to our whole community. By the way, if you are in the twin cities, Minneapolis, St. Paul, our meetup group is going to be living the show all over again, looking at this great work that Pete and Rebecca created. So go dive in. If you're not there, grab a bunch of friends and dive in. In fact, we're talking about guys bringing Pete and Rebecca to Texarkana, because friends of mine that are in Rotary and Kiwanis are like, I think we need to just bring this to our community.
- [63:22]
Pete
I just think it's amazing how Pete Davidson has turned his life around. I mean, he. He really. He went from being this guy that was just off the rails, totally covered in tattoos, finally got the tattoos removed. He's getting some great promotional deals with Taco Bell, and now he's making movies on. On personal finance.
- [63:40]
Joe
You talk about Pete Davidson.
- [63:42]
Pete
That's who. That's what we've been talking about this whole time, right?
- [63:44]
Joe
I love how Doug shows up the last. Wait a minute. What? Who are those People that came down.
- [63:49]
Pete
I thought maybe he got rid of that, that. That accent that he had. Also maybe just to make himself a little bit more approachable to Midwesterners. But I just, I mean, I'm just really impressed.
- [63:59]
Joe
I love the thing Pete Davidson said recently goes. Remember when I was blonde for like 15 minutes?
- [64:03]
Pete
Yeah, that was pretty funny. That was pretty good.
- [64:06]
Joe
Ability to laugh at himself. Pretty damn good. All right, Doug, get us out of here. Ma' am. What should we have learned on today's show?
- [64:12]
Pete
Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Pete and Rebecca Davis, not Davidson apparently. Want to live a long, happy life, take on some things that are bigger than you and join. You'll find yourself living longer and happier. And it only costs marginally more than living alone. Second, follow your passion. It turns out you can be wealthy and happy without following any of that advice. But the big lesson, these neighborhood kids are so civically minded. It's just so inspiring. Listen to this. Besides the wonderful toilet paper and the trees celebration, they plan to ring older people's doorbells and then dash off and hide. Apparently so that these older people get reminded of the joy of just going outside just to enjoy the fresh air. Just no reason at all. Just be outside. God, they're always thinking about the whole community and the elder people. These kids are just so great nowadays. Thanks to Pete and Rebecca Davis for joining us today. You'll find their film and join or die on Netflix. Netflix. Grab a group of friends and watch it together. We'll also include links in our show notes@stackingbenjamins.com Netflix this show is the property of SP Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025 and is created by Josal Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find find out about our awesome team@stackingbenjamins.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.
- [65:49]
Joe
Oh, yeah.
- [65:50]
Pete
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 Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. Sa.
- [67:01]
Joe
We were talking about the prank phone calls the best way. Somebody, somebody. I heard a comedian maybe say this.
- [67:09]
Doug
Doug, you might know it's really not a thing anymore. You know that, right?
- [67:12]
Pete
I know, but it's a lost art.
- [67:15]
Joe
Well, you can actually still do this, but the, the stakes are much higher because people are going to know it was you. Now, there's no way for them to not know it's you. But they said, let's say you're out late, you're in Vegas, you have no idea what time it is. It's just the middle of the night and your watch stops working. You know what you do? Just call up a random person. And the first thing that Doug's gonna say when he answers the phone is, my God, it's 3:30 in the morning. You just go, thank you.
- [67:44]
Pete
Like back in the day when we. There was a number we could call to get the time.
- [67:48]
Joe
You could.
- [67:48]
Pete
You needed to set your clocks and there was a number you could call.
- [67:51]
Joe
Do you think that number still exists?
- [67:53]
Pete
No way.
- [67:54]
Joe
Like, but the Google ranking has gone way down. They're like, bill, maybe we need to play a different chime and people will come back.
- [68:03]
Doug
You mentioned earlier, you know, it's the time of the year where people are. There's some change, right? You got college graduates and high school graduates and things like that. I saw this the other day that I thought would be. Was pretty apropos for the time of the year. They'll see you in September.
- [68:16]
Joe
Have a great summer. What's up? You going somewhere? No, it's June 30th. It's time for summer vacation.
- [68:22]
Doug
Oh, before I forget, will you send my daytimer?
- [68:24]
Joe
Yeah, we don't, we don't have summer vacations here. This is your job. What? You work through summer. But what am I supposed to look forward to? Retirement? Death?
- [68:40]
Doug
Oh, you know, I had to replace my furnace and I got a little.
- [68:42]
Joe
Bit of a rebate on it, so. That was nice.
- [68:45]
Rebecca
Yeah. All right, well, see you Monday.
- [68:48]
Doug
See you Monday.
- [68:49]
Joe
Every Monday. What is that from?
- [68:53]
Doug
It's just a video. That's. Yeah, it's just a young worker that's like, well, have a nice summer, everybody.
- [68:59]
Joe
Wait, what?
- [69:00]
Doug
Like, wait, what are you talking about?
- [69:01]
Joe
Hold on.
- [69:02]
Pete
Stay gold, pony boy.