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The Stacking Benjamins Show
Wall Street Creates (Yet Another) Hilariously Bad Investment Product (SB1643)
01:12:09
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- [00:00]
Joe Saul-Sehy
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. State Stay Farm here to help you succeed with your business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. This episode's brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Navy Federal Our mission is to help members, the military, veterans and their families achieve their financial goals. That's why we offer great savings and investing options like our certificates. Certificates come with sky high rates and some even have the flexibility to have money anytime during your term. Whether you're saving for a home, new car, or your future, our options could help you get there. And certificates, while they're just the beginning, Navy Federal also provides financial advisors to help you manage your investment portfolio, along with online tools to guide your savings plan. With our support, you'll have everything you need to take charge of your finances. So don't wait. The sooner you start building your financial future with Navy Federal savings and investing options, the better off you could be in the long run. Sign up at Navy Federal Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission Savings products insured by NCUA Investment products are not insured, not obligations at Navy Federal and may lose value. We've tried debt consolidation companies.
- [01:35]
OG
We've even taken out loans to help make payments.
- [01:37]
Doug
Well, you're not the only ones. Did you know millions of Americans live with debt they cannot control?
- [01:43]
Joe Saul-Sehy
That's why I developed this unique new program for managing your debt.
- [01:47]
OG
It's called don't buy stuff you cannot afford.
- [01:55]
Doug
Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And what was it that P.T. barnum supposedly said? There's a sucker born every minute. Well, if you're buying this new financial product, you're the sucker. What's the product? We'll share in today's headline. And because it's Wild Wednesday here on the show, we'll share a TikTok minute from Stacker Ashley, who found some tax advice on the platform. Is it any good? You think that's all? Of course, there's more. We'll answer a question from Stacker Chim, who thinks we're so cool he wants to work in finance too. How do you break in? And if that doesn't dip your dinghy? Of course, I'm always here on mop up duty to save your soul with some of my heart palpitating trivia. And now here are two guys who think the only thing more volatile than crypto is Joe's mom on a Valentine's Day sugar high. It's Joe and. Oh, J.J. juja G.
- [03:08]
OG
You want to.
- [03:08]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Stay out of her way. We've learned that, Doug, haven't we?
- [03:11]
Doug
Sure have.
- [03:12]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Stay out of her way. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin show. The show where we help you control the controllable and maybe laugh a little at what you can't. So sit back, relax. You found us. You found a me B. Well, maybe C is me. A is the guy across the card table from me. Mr. OG how are you, man?
- [03:33]
OG
Do we have to rank each other? I don't know. I think we're all tied. T1.
- [03:36]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, that's very nice. Yes.
- [03:38]
OG
We all get gold medals.
- [03:39]
Joe Saul-Sehy
We're all holding hands, getting participation trophies at the end of every. Please, God.
- [03:45]
OG
That's all I need.
- [03:46]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It is fantastic. Today we're talking financial product because there's nothing OG you and I like doing better.
- [03:52]
OG
I have a feeling that this is. Are you rage baiting me?
- [03:56]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I am. I'm just hoping to make the next viral TikTok video. We had a good response, man, to the last one when Steve couldn't take his finger off the like, trust us. That was button. Yeah, it was.
- [04:09]
OG
He was on mind my P's and Q's today.
- [04:11]
Doug
Why the people enjoy you losing your.
- [04:15]
OG
Don't lose it. It's like Hulk, I've always gone.
- [04:19]
Doug
It's just permanently lost.
- [04:21]
OG
Like an Avengers. That is like one of my favorite lines in all of the event. Like, I hated the Avengers movies. Right? I know you do too, Joe. Yeah, but when they said, you know, they're like, how do you control it? To Dr. Banner, they're like, how do you control it? And he just kind of fluffs it off the whole movie. And then, you know, the bad guys are coming. The. They're like, now would be the time. And they're like, you ask how I control it. I'm angry all the time. And he just goes and turns it. It's like, yes, that is the answer. Just always be the angry elf all the time.
- [04:51]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But Doug, I'd be happier if he didn't rip his shirt off every time he had a tirade. Like, people don't see that on the.
- [04:56]
OG
Other I've been working out.
- [04:58]
Doug
At least shave your chest before you do it.
- [05:00]
OG
I do. That's what. What do you think all the bottles of Nair are for what we've got.
- [05:05]
Joe Saul-Sehy
We got a great show today. We are going to teach you how to maybe steer clear of some horrible financial products. We're going to help you break into the personal finance industry if that is your goal. Maybe we'll talk some people out of it. I don't know. Might be one of the other. As Doug said, some great trivia today and an amazing TikTok minute that stacker Ashley sent us. Thank you Ashley for this one. Before we get into all that, we have a couple sponsors that make sure this is free and we can keep on keeping on and you don't have to pay a dime for this goodness. So let's hear from them first and then let's talk about some nasty financial products. This episode of Stacking Benjamin is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. At Navy Federal, our mission is to help members of the military, veterans and their families achieve their financial goals. And that's why we offer great savings and investing options like our certificates. Certificates come with sky high rates and some even have the flexibility to have money anytime during your term. Whether you're saving for a home, new car, your future, our options could help you get there certificates. They're just the beginning. Navy Federal also provides financial advisors to help you manage your investment portfolio along with online tools to guide your savings plan. With our support, you'll have everything you need to take charge of your finances. So don't wait. The sooner you start building your financial future with Navy Federal savings and investing options, the better off you could be in the long run. Sign up@navy federal.org Navy Federal Credit Union Our members are the mission Savings products insured by NCUA Investment products are not insured, not obligations to Navy Federal and may lose value. Small business owners State farms there with small business insurance to fit your specific needs. Whether you're starting a new venture or growing an existing one, State Farm helps you choose the right coverage to protect what matters most. Working with a local State Farm agent helps you understand your coverage options. Offering local support to help you achieve your goals. Focus on turning your passion into a thriving business. Knowing your insurance can change as your business grows. State Farm here to help you succeed with your business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Hello darlings.
- [07:20]
OG
And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin's headlines.
- [07:25]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well first there were exchange traded Funds and then there were leveraged exchange traded funds. I feel like this is the like exchange traded fund book of Genesis. On the first day there were exchange traded funds and then there were leveraged exchange traded funds because oh gee, what is life without going 2x or 3x right. If we can get super fancy there. And by the way, but while we're on leverage funds and we'll talk a little bit more about this later, those may not do what you think they do. They're a quick way for people that don't know how they work to lose a bunch of money. Even if they work correctly, you will lose a bunch of money. Then there were active exchange traded funds, which we spent the last couple years warning people about. So what's the new new, new, new, new new thing, OG when it comes to exchange traded funds? Well, the Wall Street Journal reports a couple weeks ago. This is from john syndrome new ETFs. Bet investors are way too careful. Well, I'm not even going to finish that. I'm just going to read the beginning. Irrational exuberant investors, he writes, who lose their shirts get a lot of attention. But there's another way to manage your money poorly. Taking so little risk, you end up with little reward. Enter the Calamos Bitcoin Structured ALT Protection etf.
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OG
What are all those words?
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Doug
The hell did you just say?
- [08:51]
OG
I know.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Start over Coin Structured ALT Protection etf. We got a lot of unpacking to do. Stackers. Let's set that suitcase down and start to see what's inside. It started trading under the CBOJ ticker a couple weeks ago. The fund uses a combination of safe investments and options on other bitcoin vehicles to guarantee that initial backers won't lose any money over the following year, despite investing in one of the most speculative assets in existence. The flip side is. Oh, is there a flip side, OG Is there ever a flip side?
- [09:28]
OG
What flip side is there?
- [09:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
The flip side is it also limits the maximum returns they will receive over this period. At 11.65%, everybody's like, well, that's okay. I could live with that. That's fine. There's always a catch. Since 2016, there have been 23 occasions in which Bitcoin has risen more than that in a single day. Its average annual volatility has been 86%. All right, let's dive into why we think this might not be the thing for you. Oh, gee. First of all, if you're not interested in losing money, why would you invest in an asset class, regardless of protections that has the ability to lose money.
- [10:15]
OG
This sounds like a product that is. What's the phrase? You're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Yes, basically, it doesn't look like tough to a banger. Start with a whopping $40 million raised in the last couple of weeks. That's not A.
- [10:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, 40 million sounds like a lot to you and me. It's a good start.
- [10:35]
OG
Not in the investment space.
- [10:36]
Joe Saul-Sehy
In the investment space, it's nothing.
- [10:37]
OG
Right.
- [10:38]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You're not attracting much money.
- [10:39]
OG
I think broadening this out a little bit in terms of the, you know, there's no such thing as a free lunch concept. And you see this not so much right now because the market's on a tear, but it'll rear its head again when the market goes down. Anything that has the word structured in it. And you see this a lot around annuities or annuity type products where the phraseology sounds a lot like. And you'll see this in the advertisements, you'll hear it from the pit pitch deck. Get the return of X, whatever the index is, get the return of the s and P500 without the risk of the S and P. It sounds wonderful. Who doesn't want all of the upside of a product, all of the upside of the S and P with none of the downside? But the reality is that that just simply can't exist. That's the trade off. The trade off that you get of getting the S and P return is the downside. On occasion that happens. And you've got different investment tools and investment products that span the gamut of very conservative with very conservative returns and very aggressive with very aggressive potential returns. And when you try to mix those things, there's always a catch. And in the annuity space or in this space, the catch is, is that you limit your upside. So when it says get the upside of the S and P, there's an asterisk, right? You go the asterisk. Asterisk is the first three and a half percent is yours. The other amount above that is ours. And you're like, okay, if I'm getting a 3.5% return, why don't I just get the product that has about a three and a half percent return, Right. You know, I don't get it. I don't get the allure of it. Because when you add the layers of protection, you're adding layers of cost. And that's all there is to it. You know, when, when this product from Calmos is when they're buying bitcoin and they're limiting. Well, what are they doing? They're buying options, they're buying futures contracts. They've got a cost structure associated with managing that risk, managing that downside number. And they don't pay it. You pay it. And you pay it in the manner of actual costs, where it's like, your cost for this product is X percent, and here's the disclosure. But then you also pay it in missed opportunity of upside. And in the annuity space, where it's like you. You get the return of the S and p up to 3.5%, your cost is the five and a half that you're not getting. That's the cost. That doesn't mean that there's not a place for these products. But it's just. It doesn't seem like people use them for the intended purpose. We like to bash whole life insurance. We bash annuities or whatever. This product, I don't think there is a place for it, but there is a place for an annuity. There is a scenario where you'd say, okay, an annuity makes sense in the sake of using it as an annuity. Guaranteed lifetime stream of income that never goes away. There is a scenario where whole life or permanent life insurance makes sense. It's like one out of a thousand. But it's there.
- [13:34]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But it does, but it's out there. There's somebody out there.
- [13:37]
OG
There is a reason for it. Where we see. I had a conversation with a client a couple weeks ago, potential client, and she had some money, and she's like, you know, I don't really understand where it is. And it was just, you know, some good, some good protection or something. And so we'll send me the statement. Look at it. It's an annuity product, and on the outside it looks fine, but then you dig into it, just a quick chatgpt, which, by the way, is kind of fun for these things. You go like, add up all the costs of this product, and it's like, oh, you have a mortality and expense fee of 1.3, an internal expense ratio of 0.25, average cost of the product of 1.15, administrative fee of $30, an administrative fee of 25 basis.
- [14:14]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But like, it sounds like the Ticketmaster of financial products.
- [14:18]
OG
Well, it was. And. And it's like, well, what are you trying to do? And that's where I think a lot of this comes from or maybe should start, Joe, is to say, what is the outcome that you're trying to solve for? I can give you an Example for where an annuity makes sense. I've got a client who has a long term care insurance policy, nursing home care, basically. And that premium is three, three thousand dollars a year.
- [14:47]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
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OG
Client says, I just want to make sure that I always pay that, you know, because obviously if you get old, sometimes you forget to pay your bills and if you forget to pay your long term care insurance premium, guess what? You probably need long term care now.
- [15:00]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You guaranteed the thing that you're hoping for, you're hoping you never use it. Well, you're not going to get the opportunity to use it because, yeah, you.
- [15:06]
OG
Forgot to make the payment.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
The policy went bye bye.
- [15:08]
OG
So what could we do? Well, we could take a pool of money. We could say, well, let's take, we can take $40,000 and say to the annuity company, pay this $3,000 every single year for the rest of my life. We knew that the annuity is never going to run out. If I live to be 150, even that $40,000 depletes itself to zero. The annuity still pays. There's a reason. As an example, I'm making this up as an example, but there's an example of what am I trying to solve for. I'm trying to solve for guaranteeing this payment is made for the rest of my life. Okay, an annuity could make sense for that. You take another person who's 45 and they just left their job and they go meet a broker or a financial person and you say, well, what are you trying to solve for? I'm trying to solve for growing this money. I want to invest it for the future. I'm 45, I got 20 years before I retire. I need to take it out of my old plan and I want to have it be in an ira. Cool. Well, let's buy the thing that guarantees your income for the rest of your life. What? That's not what I said. I said I want to grow. You know what I mean? We're square peg, round hole. So start with what are you trying to do? What's the outcome that you're trying to solve for? And then that narrows down the pool of available things.
- [16:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And then they're going to be trying.
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OG
To solve for downside risk.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. They're also going to be things that make sense, things that you are not going to go. Okay, I, I want downside protection because I may need to use this money fairly soon. I want to make sure that the money is safe and stable. Well, bitcoin's not even going to make that list?
- [16:43]
OG
Yeah.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Like it's not even going to be. There's, there's no way in hell you're getting even be introduced to this backwards weird ass thing that I don't understand.
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OG
I just got a big bonus. I got a $50,000 bonus after taxes. I have a sophomore in high school. I'm really concerned about making sure that I pay for their college. What should I do? Well, I have a known outcome, right? Two years from now, I'm writing a check for college tuition. I have resources today. What do I do with it? Downside, Bitcoin, etf. What? No, cash. Cash is the solution, right? This is an easy. You eliminate all those things. Are you willing to lose 50% of your money in the next 12 months? No. Why? Because I need it. I have to write the check. Tuition is due.
- [17:32]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, it's due.
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OG
You don't get to call up, you know, the university and go, listen, can we, can I be good for this in seven years when the market recovers? Because I had this invested. You don't understand. It was like a bitcoin thing. It went down, but I'm good for it as long as it recovers.
- [17:45]
Joe Saul-Sehy
My bad, my bad.
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OG
That's on me, coach. That one's on me.
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Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, I'm sure. As long as Sochi, what's his name, and all the people get together and get bitcoin raised again.
- [17:56]
OG
Yeah, yeah. I mean, this doesn't have to be complicated. And the more you complicate things, the more layers of complication you put in stuff, the more it costs you money and you.
- [18:06]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And you complicate it. And you also get the wrong answer when you don't ask that question first. Like you going beating the drum on ask, what do I need the money for? When am I going to use the dollar? Is 100%, 1000% the only question you should ask first when you're investing, when you know what else I'm going to need? The dollar. Well, let me go through a story that some very nice people I talked to last night. I was just chatting with a couple stackers last night and they're coming into some money and they just pick my brain about, hey, you know, where do I start with this?
- [18:39]
OG
Wasn't much to pick, was it?
- [18:40]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But thank you. And I said, oh, oh, but I started right where you started etf. I started with, okay, what's the money for? And they said, well, we wanted to add to our income. And I said, okay, well, it's $200,000. And so if we just back of the envelope. Use the 4% rule. We're going to use this to create about $8,000 a year. Does that sound good? Is that what you're looking for? And they're like, oh, yes, absolutely. That would be a nice bump up in our lifestyle. And that's exactly what we want. They don't have any specific goal is to just raise the mount every month. They have some medical things. But anyway, yeah, I show them the efficient frontier and show them how, you know, if we're going to solve for maybe a seven, seven and a half percent rate of return, how we kind of turn that into not clockwork. There's no such thing, right, as a free lunch, but turn it into a higher probability that we can create that portfolio. And then one of them says, well, wait a minute, are you saying that then we can't grow that pot of money? And it's the thing og that we all want, we want to grow the pot while we're taking from the pot. Like, can I, can I magically create enough money to live off of and create a, can I create, can I create an income engine and a growth engine at the same time? And I think when people look at products like this, they're, ooh, bitcoin growth, big time growth. And they hear no downside. Nobody's thinking about this cap, right? The fact that there's a cap on the growth, you just can't do it. You can't have both ends of the stick. The answer is, yes, you can have growth. But if you're going to raid all the growth, which is the amount of money you want to live on, getting that alpha means the only way to do that is to go further out on the risk lever, which means more standard deviation. Which means, yeah, yeah, we can try to get it, but the further we go out, the more we're just betting we can do it. We can definitely do it, but the chance that we hit it becomes less and less and less as we get away from this predictable growth engine.
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OG
I was going to say the other thing that it prevents you from doing is choosing a. This is also the solution, I should say, for why do we have a lot of equities all the time? When the universe says, oh, at 50, I should be 50, 50, right? At 60 I should be 50, 40, 60, you know, I should be conservative as I get to retirement. When you look at the time frame and when you need the money, it becomes very obvious, well, no, you're 55, yeah, you need money in 10 years, but you also need money in 20 years and 30 years and 40 years. So that 20, 30, 40 year money, like that's the vast majority of your, of your, of your capital that needs to be invested in 20, 30, 40 year old stuff. It's very simple. Like it. And it takes away all the angst that you have about, oh my God, did you see that? The Nvidia chips are so like, who gives a crap? This is 30 year money. Like, Nvidia might not even be a company. Jeff Bezos has said he doesn't think Amazon's going to be a company in 2040. He's like, someone will overrun us. Like they'll beat us at these things or the government will step in and break it apart or whatever. You know what I mean? That's what capitalism is.
- [21:55]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But the reason these products succeed is, is that people will hear you and go, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. But then John here in this Wall Street Journal piece writes, this exchange traded fund ultimately joins an illustrious tradition of investments that exploit loss aversion. I love his use of the word exploit. Yeah, it exploits the fact that, oh gee, I don't like the feeling of losing money. Like when it comes to, yeah, okay, 30 years from now, that's fine. But if we could get there without me ever losing a dime on paper, that would be way better. Can I, can I do that? Like, whether I need the money today or tomorrow or next week or 30 years from now, we have this aversion as humans to seeing red numbers.
- [22:37]
OG
Well, I don't know what to say about that except get over it. I mean, at the end of the day, you do not make enough money.
- [22:44]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, either get over it or don't. I mean, I mean, that's a little harsh.
- [22:47]
OG
No, you have to get over it. No, there is. No don't. There is no way for you to save enough money in all of the money that you make for all the future needs that you have. With inflation, you have to have return, you have to have compounding returns. You could save all of the money that you've made your entire life from the time that you started working until the time you retire. And you will still run out of money because of inflation.
- [23:13]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I get that. But if you give that away, if you completely 100% give that away and go, you know what? Screw my future. You still should use products that are built for the thing. Right. If your goal is loss aversion, use products that are made for loss aversion. This is why I cash. Yeah. This is why I don't use life insurance as my checking account because the complexity. Can it work? Sure, it can work, but when it doesn't work, it sucks. Like it unravels your entire life when it doesn't work. I, I don't use life insurance as cash. I don't use annuities that invest in the stock market with a downside thing with this ridiculous downside protection. I don't invest in Bitcoin products when I'm trying not to lose money. Yeah, I think John nails it as he goes on. He says, chief among these investments that exploit our loss aversion tendency are the structure products that become wildly popular among individual investors since the 2000s. Principal protected notes. Right. OG makes a zero coupon bond with options that provide upside if some underlying index trades within a certain range. Ridiculous. So many products out there now going, oh, you don't want to lose money. I've got the new answer now. The, the, the answer is put it in FDIC insured bank account. High yield bank account. Don't think about it. Why we keep getting stuck in there might be something for nothing.
- [24:44]
OG
Your checks for free.
- [24:45]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, we just coined that.
- [24:46]
OG
TM Money for nothing.
- [24:48]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Do we have Dire Straits suing us now over that line?
- [24:51]
OG
That would be awesome.
- [24:52]
Joe Saul-Sehy
That would be so awesome. What is his name? Mark Knopfler.
- [24:56]
Doug
Mark Knopfler. Best thing that could ever happen to this podcast is to get sued by anybody.
- [25:02]
Joe Saul-Sehy
By Dire Straits.
- [25:03]
Doug
Headline worthy.
- [25:04]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yes.
- [25:04]
Doug
We don't care who you are. If you're out there listening right now and the world knows your name, sue us. Because that's, that's the best publicity we're ever going to get.
- [25:13]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Please, big company, please, please, please.
- [25:16]
Doug
I say four things an episode that are, you know, litigatable.
- [25:19]
OG
Just litigatable. Litigable.
- [25:23]
Doug
Litigable.
- [25:25]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Time for our TikTok Minute. This TikTok Minute was sent by Stacker Ashley. Actually, Ashley shared this in the basement Facebook group. So maybe our core listeners have seen this before, but do you think this is Doug, this is going to be brilliance or air quotes brilliance that Ashley wants to share with us.
- [25:46]
Doug
Not feeling it today. I, you know, normally I'm all, I put all my chips behind tick tock, education and intelligence. But today, I don't know.
- [25:56]
OG
I don't know.
- [25:57]
Doug
Just not feeling the vibe today. So sorry, Ashley, I'm. I don't think this is going to be the one.
- [26:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, Ashley found some tax advice on a Facebook real OG and let's see if this Facebook real advice is actually real advice. Huh.
- [26:12]
Doug
I see what you did there.
- [26:15]
Ashley
Hey, dad, I'm going to hire you and give you an income, but you won't have to pay any taxes. Me?
- [26:20]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Work for you?
- [26:21]
Ashley
But I'm retired and I don't want to work anymore. Wait, you said no taxes?
- [26:25]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [26:25]
Ashley
I can hire you to work for my business and then pay you $14,600 a year, which is the standard deduction in 2024. And since you're ret and don't make any other income, you won't have to pay any taxes on the income I pay you. That's so smart, son. I'm assuming you won't pay any taxes on the income you pay me, right? Nope. Your income will be a business expense for me, so it'll lower my taxable income, meaning I'll pay less taxes. It's great. Instead of paying taxes to the irs, I get to pay my retired dad a salary. And you won't have to pay any taxes, but you do have to do some legit work, Dad. I guess you can help me with my social media accounts. Okay, that sounds good to me. By the way, how do you even know this? I learned all my money hacks from Josh. That's why you're following?
- [27:08]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, the little slip that in at the end.
- [27:12]
OG
Nice.
- [27:12]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Josh Rincon, if you want to follow. But let's see if this is actually advice that we should be following. OG so if our parent wants to make a little extra money and we're handing money from child to parent. Happens a lot. We support our parents.
- [27:27]
OG
Isn't it great?
- [27:27]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. Should we hire our parents?
- [27:30]
OG
Well, this is more popular, the other direction, actually, where you have. If you're a small business owner, you hire your kids. And honestly, I think that that's probably a harder hurdle to get through. Not a cpa, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express. So, you know, take that for what it's worth, because the biggest piece out of all of this is they have to do, like, legit work. Like, you know, if you're hiring somebody, the IRS is going to look at that and say, if you would have hired somebody else instead of your sibling or your family member or your parent, would you have kept them on board? Like, were they, like, were they doing actual work for you? There's no rule that says what the hourly rate has to be. I mean, it has got to be somewhat in the ballpark of reasonable, I suppose. And you know what that looks like. But the math checks if you're paying your child or you're paying your parent A salary and that dollar amount is less than the standard deduction, then effectively it becomes tax free. It's a fairly simplistic way to look at it because mom and dad probably have Social Security. They might have investment income, they might have pension income or minimum distributions from their ira.
- [28:42]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You got to find out where that line really is for you.
- [28:44]
OG
Yeah. Or where they are. And the worst situation here would be to kick them into a higher category for Medicare premiums. If they're not full retirement age and they're drawing for Social Security and you're paying them, then that affects the Social Security benefits because you know, you get a reduction in your Social Security benefits if you're working and drawing Social Security before full retirement. So there's, there's more to it than just like, you know, I'm going to write that check for 14 grand and call it square. Especially with parents. Kids, on the other hand, probably a little easier. Right? Because you're like, I know my kid doesn't have Social Security. Well, he probably doesn't.
- [29:20]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Right.
- [29:20]
OG
I see their stuff. Right. I know how much their investment income is. I know much. They got their 401k. So if you can legit hire your child, this is a great long term benefit.
- [29:29]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Right.
- [29:29]
OG
If you can hire your child and they are doing legit work for $7,000 a year, you know, that's a Roth IRA contribution. That earlier contribution will compound immensely. So.
- [29:41]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. And to your point, though, it is harder to prove that your child did legit work if for some reason you're audited than it is that a parent did just based their age and experience level.
- [29:50]
OG
Sure.
- [29:51]
Joe Saul-Sehy
The thing that I question with the parent only is this. Again, I also think the math checks out, but is this juice really worth the squeeze? You look at hiring a parent, setting up a payroll situation for them. Now, if you already have existing payroll with other people, maybe that's easy. But if you're setting all this stuff up directly with them, dealing with, you know, all of the rules and regulations around that. And then on top of that, you heard at the beginning of the video this guy Josh, who was playing the part of his dad secretly. I don't know if people could hear that, but. But the very first thing he said was, I don't want to get real.
- [30:26]
OG
Dad to do it.
- [30:26]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Right.
- [30:27]
OG
Just get your real dad to, to play the part of himself.
- [30:29]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Come on.
- [30:30]
Doug
And you could pay him.
- [30:31]
OG
Pay him.
- [30:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, exactly. He could totally have paid him to make this video. Here's the thing though. Dad said at the beginning of that Piece that he didn't want to work. Now I got this mind share of convincing my dad to do the work dealing with training him, doing all this stuff so that at even a minimal level, he's contributing so that this isn't just a tax scam, is it? Truly, like, I would think hiring mom to do any of this stuff would be a gigantic pain in the ass. Be just a huge.
- [31:03]
OG
Well, she'd just flat out say no. She would say no, I wouldn't work for you clowns if it was all the money in the world. Now we're gonna pay a million dollars a year, Ma.
- [31:12]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But I think sometimes we get so excited about the tax quote loophole, this thing that we can do and we don't calculate the ROI ahead of time.
- [31:21]
OG
Yeah.
- [31:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
What's the true ROI to anybody here? I don't know if. If dad gets excited about working with his son to help him make social media stuff. Okay, that could be good. Remember a couple years ago, there was a grandma and a grandson that were doing these viral TikTok videos together? I don't even remember the name of the brand, but this grandma was hilarious media with. With her grandson. Yeah, it can work. But do they. I don't know. I don't know. I would just caution that. Weird.
- [31:49]
Doug
That reel would get fed up to you, Joe. Like in your feed. Like what? What else were you looking at that you're getting? Grandmas and grandma.
- [31:58]
Joe Saul-Sehy
All the grandma stuff comes right to me.
- [32:00]
Doug
Uncomfortable.
- [32:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I. I don't. I don't know. Well, because I got a bunch of comedians and they were very comedic. Yes.
- [32:07]
Doug
Okay.
- [32:08]
Joe Saul-Sehy
All right, on that very awkward note, in the second half of the show, we are going to help a stacker in need figure out how he can switch careers. That's coming up next. But before we get there, let's shine the spotlight on old Dougie. What's going on, man?
- [32:25]
Doug
That's not okay, Doogie, is it, Doogie? Not okay? None of the above. Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom neighbor Doug, and I love that headline about bitcoin and loss aversion. Guys, if you're not careful, these Wall street firms are going to steal your money. Speaking of stealing, there was big news in the art world on today's date. Back in 1994, Edvard Munch's famous painting, the Scream. I just didn't want to say Munch. That's weird.
- [32:57]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I think you nailed the pronunciation of his name.
- [33:00]
Doug
Edvard Munch's famous painting, the Scream, was stolen from Oslo's National Art Museum thieves used a ladder to enter the museum and literally cut the famous painting off the wall. It's kind of like the time Joe's mom caught me allegedly stealing some of her spinach salad from the fridge. Just because it was quote in my hand and I had a quote fork in my other hand proves absolutely nothing. Here's today's priceless trivia corner question. The highest value art heist ever occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum only a few years earlier. In 1990, 13 works were stolen, including a Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, and Manet. Here's the question. How many cumulative brushstrokes were in all of it? No, I'm kidding. That's a totally a Friday trivia question.
- [33:55]
Joe Saul-Sehy
My mind just exploded.
- [33:58]
Doug
The real question I was going to ask is what American city is home to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum? Oh, lay up. Right. I'll be back right after I go grab some Dunkin Donuts. I'm crawling for a crawler, too.
- [34:16]
Joe Saul-Sehy
How high is the interest rate for.
- [34:18]
Doug
The new Laurel Road High Yield Savings account?
- [34:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
This high. The air is really, really thin up here.
- [34:28]
Doug
The Laurel Road Very High Yield Savings.
- [34:31]
OG
Account variable annual percentage yield APY is subject to change at any time. No minimum balance required. Fees may reduce earnings on the account. For full terms and conditions, see LaurelRoad.comSavings. laurelRoad is a brand of KeyBank member FDIC.
- [34:46]
Joe Saul-Sehy
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do. Get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be to be.
- [35:21]
Doug
Hey there, stackers. I'm coffee lover and a guy who's always ready for a Bavarian cream. Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. Today we're celebrating the art world and reliving its tragic moments with trivia about the biggest art theft ever, one that occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The mystery is still unsolved, even though the museum posted a $10 million reward. But the question was, what fine American city is home to this theft riddled museum? Makes it sound like they're just like Every night there's people trying to get in. They're getting Shelled every night by guys with those little black eye masks on.
- [36:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Maybe the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum will sue us.
- [36:05]
Doug
Well, if you thought Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the theft riddled museum. If you thought that was in Charleston, South Carolina, you'd be wrong. But if you said Baston. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. The bell tolls for thee stacker. And now back to the two ding a lings I get to work with every day. Joe and Og.
- [36:28]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I see what you did there. Cheryl visited that museum. Yeah, I was actually giving a talk at Harvard.
- [36:33]
Doug
Oh, for God's sakes, say it.
- [36:35]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Come on.
- [36:36]
Doug
The only reason that you said that was so that you could say I was at Harvard.
- [36:41]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I was. I was giving a talk on podcasting.
- [36:43]
OG
Harvard State University and Technical Institute.
- [36:47]
Doug
Yeah, right, the Michigan of the East.
- [36:51]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh, God.
- [36:53]
Doug
Now I've been to Isabella Gardner Museum as well. It is just go look at the building. I mean, even if you're not into art, it's amazing. It's her old estate or mansion not far from Fenway, and allegedly the top floor was her living quarters and remains untouched. You don't get to see it, so nobody can prove that.
- [37:14]
OG
But trust us, there's not a person living up there right now, right?
- [37:19]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Trust us, we don't have anybody boarded up in there right now.
- [37:21]
Doug
That's what they say.
- [37:23]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Let's help a stacker in need, shall we? Time for us to answer a call from somebody who said, you know what? I better call Saul. See? Hi. And Og, if you've got a question where you'd like to ask OG for help, head to stacking. Benjamins.com voicemail that's the place to go so that you can be every bit as cool as chim. Who has two questions?
- [37:48]
Chim
Hey, guys, I have two questions that are meant for Joe and OG, not Doug, per his recent history. First, did you ever consider calling the 201 newsletter, the 411K? If you ever need a rebrand, that one's free. Second, how would you recommend someone break into the financial planning space that's currently in another career? I've been working in tech consulting for about 11 years. My passion has always been personal finance. I'm definitely okay with talking people face to face about their finances, but don't necessarily want to start with cold calling, emailing, or LinkedIn posting to fish for clients. How does it usually work, getting in with the company? Do you get some certifications and start at the bottom rung doing more clerical work for seasoned advisors and eventually get your shot? Or is the cold calling Inevitable and something I'll need to be okay with jumping from another industry. Thanks, guys.
- [38:37]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Jim. Thank you. And by the way, the 401K 411411. Okay. Sorry. Yes, the 411 brilliance is the quick.
- [38:49]
Doug
Answer to his question. Just start a podcast.
- [38:51]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, just, just, just start a podcast. Gab about money Chip. And you're good. All right, thanks for calling in. We got it. It's a tricky industry OG to get into and if you're not careful, you could end up with one of those big organizations that where you're cold calling or fishbowl leading or posting to LinkedIn. As he said, it's different than it.
- [39:12]
OG
Was 25 years ago, Joe, when you started or 30 years ago, I think when you started and 25 years ago when I started, which was, I mean, it was very heavily sales focused. Now there's different paths. I mean, back then there wasn't even, it wasn't even recognized as an education major. And now there's tons of schools that have financial planning programs where you can graduate from college with all of the education required to sit for the CFP exam. You know, you don't have to take additional education requirements, Joe, like you and I would have had to do. So it's a different world. That being said, it depends on where you want to go. You know, there's I think, a little bit more focus on being able to do the different unique abilities within a financial planning business or within a firm. And there's different sizes of companies too, right? I mean, you can hang out a shingle and be head cook and bottle washer. You can go work for a big broker dealer firm like Edward Jones or Mayor Prize or Merrill lynch or whatever. Or you can work for a big RIA firm like a Mariner or Carson wealth or one of these giant kind of roll up RA fee based firms. Within all of those different organizations, there's different hats that you can wear. I have a friend of mine who was a pretty good advisor but really loved the investments and now he's really, that's his job. He's a chief investment officer for a firm. He doesn't really solicit clients or cold call or, you know, whatever. That's not his job. His job is to manage the firm's investment models. You can work behind the scenes and be a really great financial planner who only does behind the scenes financial planning work. Not in front of clients, not, you know, doing the song and dance, but providing all the back office support. Every bit is important. A lot of it will depend in terms of what's more interesting to you, the traditional career path, so to speak. If you're joining a firm that's not a sales organization, like not Edward Jones, not Merrill lynch, not Ameriprise, a lot of times you'll see somebody will hire somebody in that clerical back office and then, you know, as you go, then maybe you move up. The problem that I have with that is that you're really not working in your unique ability at that time. Right. If you were to hire me and tell me, okay, your first job is going to be to make sure all this paperwork's done correctly. Bad experience. I just, I'm not. That's not. That's not what I'm great at. You know, I would be very bad at that. And so I would get pretty burned out pretty quickly. That wouldn't be for me. So. So I think you got to be wary of that. If you are new to the industry, you can still be new and on an advisor track, if that makes sense. You don't have to be new and be all back office. But more to your question about sales and marketing, ultimately, if you're going to be in an advisor role, part of your job is sales and marketing. It just is. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's cold calling or LinkedIn posts, because having conversations with clients to motivate them to do things that they haven't done yet to reach the goals that they say that they want to do is sales. You know, even the people sitting across the table from you, when you say, look, you need to save 10% in your 401k, not 5, you got to be able to kind of make that sound better than it is because it sucks to have your cash flow go down for the future, you know, and that's sales. It's not necessarily standing in front of a room giving a speech sales, but it's still sales. So that, I think is an important piece of being an advisor. There's a difference between that kind of selling, obviously, and business development, where, yeah, you might be out kind of shaking the bushes and generating new business for the firm. And if that's something that you're good at, there's a place for that too. Right. I know tons of people who are really great business developers, not great financial planners on the back end. They're good. Big picture get you here. Our team is amazing. You're going to love the experience. And then they solicit the business, they put them in the firm, they get the clients in the firm. And then they hand them off to great service advisors who know all the technical stuff and relationship stuff.
- [43:30]
Joe Saul-Sehy
We have a good friend in the business who's great at that. And that's all he does. That's all he wants to do. It's just business development.
- [43:36]
OG
The really cool thing is that there's really a place for anything that you're good at and anything that you want to do. The money is in owning the firm. The money is in business developing.
- [43:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, let's talk about why of that og why the money's there. Because I think if you're new to stacking Benjamin's and you didn't listen to our episodes with Alex Hormozi on January 1st and January 3rd, he really emphasized this. It's the risk takers who are paid the most.
- [44:05]
OG
Yeah.
- [44:06]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And your goal is to gain the skills so it doesn't feel risky to you, it feels risky to everybody else, but doesn't feel risky to you. So when you're focusing on skills to get focus on the skills that will separate you from the pack. And sales is definitely a big area there. So if you're the person that's taking the risk to own the company or the risk to get out there in front of people and have rejection after rejection after rejection, you're going to get paid higher because nobody wants to do that.
- [44:31]
OG
And that's true at every level.
- [44:32]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And not just financial planning. Any, any business.
- [44:35]
OG
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. That's what I meant to say was true at every, in every organization. I was talking to some attorney friends of mine. They were talking about how it didn't seem fair that the big time partners didn't really do law anymore. And I said, well, what's not fair about it? And they said, well, they're all playing golf and going to dinner and stuff like that, and they make millions of dollars. That's ridiculous. And I said, but that's their job now. Their job is bringing in the business to make sure all the firm has business to do. If they didn't exist, if they just said, okay, my job is to write this contract for a thousand an hour instead of getting new business that's going to get us 10 lawyers worth of work for a thousand an hour for an entire year, then they'd have one that they'd pay for themselves, they wouldn't pay for you. So there would be no job without entrepreneurs. There would be no jobs for everybody else. So yeah, that's true in every organization. In his business, he said he's in it, right. It sales or whatever. And there's a person out there whose job it is is to walk into offices and go like, hey, we've got this cool product we think would be helpful for your business. And the guy goes get bent and slams the door in his face and he goes to the next one. Right. That dude, if he's successful, or that gal, if she's successful, slays it, makes a bunch of money. But that money is what makes it so that all the engineers have worked. That's not to say being a backstage CFP isn't lucrative.
- [46:03]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It can be very lucrative.
- [46:04]
OG
You know, that's a six figure job for sure.
- [46:06]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah.
- [46:06]
OG
It's not a seven figure job. All seven figure jobs in my opinion, revolve around sales and marketing or executive leadership.
- [46:15]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. The only lesson that I got out of the whole cold calling thing and I wouldn't advise people to take that route.
- [46:22]
OG
I don't really think it's a thing anymore.
- [46:24]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. I just don't know that. And even if it was, I don't know that you need that type of rejection. But there was an important.
- [46:29]
OG
You don't need your head smashed in that often.
- [46:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yes. But I will say this. I learned very quickly the importance of activity, the importance of setting a high rate of speed. And speed is important in any business, certainly in financial planning. Right. You're helping a bunch of people with their money. And if you can touch a few more people and help a few more people get where they want to go, you're going to get what you want. And the biggest problem that I saw when I was an advisor that I believe still exists today, is when somebody is failing in the industry. It is a speed problem. It's the fact that you haven't set a high enough cadence. You think that because of the fact that this job can be flexible that that means you don't have to work. Flexible means that you're working at 7:30 at night when other people aren't. That's what flexible means.
- [47:14]
OG
There's a CFP board commercial that went all over the waves in this fall and it really peed off a lot of CFP pros because. Because it showed like these kids, you know, and I say kids loosely, 20 year olds, you know, like going, oh, you know, you haven't figured out what you want to do for college, be a cfp. And it's like they're laying on the couch and all this sort of stuff and there's a pretty big uproar of over like, whoa, Whoa, whoa, wait a second. That's not what we do. It's not like you lay on the couch all day, like, what are you talking about? And what they were trying to go for was the flexibility of, hey, during the day you might be able to go have a long lunch, but that's because you're going to be meeting clients from 4 till 7, you know, that's your schedule. But they missed the mark on the advertising. They backtracked pretty quickly. This is a great business and I don't think it's going anywhere anytime soon.
- [48:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, there's tons of, not only that, og there are tons of opportunities right now.
- [48:06]
OG
Yeah. The other thing I would say is the new way of thinking about this, our way, Joe, of doing it was literally cold calling, right? We had some support from American Express, here's some leads, here's some people to call, but a lot of it was on your own. I think that the people that I see that are young and successful now lean into the thing that excites them the most. Jim might say, like, hey, my whole life has been in IT consulting, right? And everybody I talk to screws up their money in IT consulting. Well, guess what, if you're going to go start a financial planning firm, guess who your clients should be, bro? Yeah, be the IT consulting. Like be the insider of how to help IT consulting people between the ages of 27 and 40 who have our, you know what I mean? Like, like all the problems that you have or the issues that you see in your community with money, be that resource. It doesn't take. You're not, you don't necessarily have to build a firm that serves 10,000 people to be successful. You know, you could have a firm that has 50 people or 70 people or 150 people. I mean, some organizations, some big companies have that many people just sitting on one floor of people, you know, like, I'll just get those people as clients. I'm good. Those are all my friends. They'd all hire me, you know what I mean? So the people that I see that are successful really nowadays, really, really, really lean into one specific problem or group of people that they can serve the best.
- [49:31]
Joe Saul-Sehy
They really niche down, they do and.
- [49:33]
OG
And eschew all the rest of it. Like, I know I can go help the 50 year old widow who just had an issue and like I have the expertise to do that, but my people are these people and I'm going to take that person and I'm going to give them a lot of love and I'm going To say, hey, go work with this other firm who works with that.
- [49:51]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Really, in principle, it's the same logic chain as we gave Ashley in the first half of the show with that Facebook reel about hiring your parents. Right, okay, I can hire my parent, but is that truly going to give me the biggest ROI for the time I'm going to spend setting all this thing up? Is it really, really going to help people a bunch?
- [50:10]
OG
So it's doable. The thing I would say from a transition standpoint would be work on the education while you're still employed. Because if you can't, if you're not used to doing 60 hour weeks right now, you're about to. So you might as well spend those other 20 hours studying, work your regular job, get your certifications and the things that you need to do, depending on which direction you go while you have employment, and then recognize your first 3 ish, 5 ish years are not the best years. That's not the, hey, I make a bunch of money and I get to take a bunch of time off. Like those are the sucky years of building the business or getting your foot in the door or whatever the case may be. So account for that and probably also with compensation, by the way. So account for that by making sure that your emergency fund is good, making sure that you've paid off your consumer debt, making sure that your living expenses are in check. And if you need to have extra resources available to fund your lifestyle because you're gonna take two steps back in income, plan for that. Now don't show up at the door and go, hey, I quit my sweet ass tech consulting job where I was making a bunch of money and now I'm gonna be a financial planner, make 30 grand my first year and now I go into debt. Use the resources that you have. If that means, hey, I got to work an extra two years over here to save the money to kind of bridge that gap. That's a powerful position to be in because then that gives you the ability to do that stuff that we're talking about, like be specific. Really make sure that your message is clear. Only work with people that fit your specialty, you know what I mean? Like that sort of thing. And you can do that because you have a safety net of, of living expenses or whatever the case may be.
- [51:46]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So, Jim, good luck. It is a great career to get involved in. As OG mentioned, there is a moat to swim, but you can do it.
- [51:54]
OG
There's not enough people here.
- [51:55]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, need a ton, ton, ton of people. There's a Big wide world of people looking for good advice, so. And if you're a stacker already, we know you like good advice, so there you go. It's already on board. If you've got a question again for OG, head to stacking benjamin.com voicemail. And that is the hookup for us to answer your question on our Wild Wednesday Potpourri episodes. And as we begin winding this up, we always exit the basement, wander out onto the back porch for a little sit on the rocking chairs and watch the sunset on yet another Stacky Benjamin show. Doug, what are we chatting about on the back porch today?
- [52:33]
Doug
Joe, now that we're out on the back porch, we're drinking some cocktails. I want to. No. Are we? Is that not. Why am I the only one drinking?
- [52:41]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You're drinking coffee at 7 o'clock in the morning, man. What are you doing?
- [52:45]
Doug
It's that late in the day. Yeah, drinking.
- [52:48]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It's got. If you're not drunk by 7am, when will you be?
- [52:53]
Doug
You've totally wasted your day. But look, let's talk about a great comment we saw in the basement. Love it when people join in the basement and add to our community.
- [53:02]
Joe Saul-Sehy
That's our Facebook group, by the way. Yeah. If you're on Facebook, just go to put in Stacking Benjamin's basement and we will. We'll have Gertrude approve you.
- [53:10]
Doug
Yeah, don't show up here and scream down into the basement. Your comments, like, throw memes down the stairs at us. We will not have it.
- [53:20]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I think you interpreted that wrong, Stacker.
- [53:22]
Doug
But if you go to the Facebook and joined the basement, you could chime in all you want. And Matthew Jacobs left us a really nice note. He said, I've been listening to the podcast since 2018, when there were only two listeners who didn't learn anything.
- [53:39]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Well, and now, by the way, Matthew is that mysterious third listener we've been looking for for a long time.
- [53:44]
Doug
We figured it out and apparently the podcast was always for the win.
- [53:49]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yes. Growth for the win. Something for the win. Yeah.
- [53:51]
Doug
I don't know where you've been, Matthew. I think Joe said that this week.
- [53:55]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Did I?
- [53:55]
Doug
So, yes, if not this week, then last week. I know you did. Anyway, when I started listening, I had a negative net worth. Not me, Matthew. And one of the most meaningful pieces of advice was OG's advice on saving into a Roth. IRA sway, I believe. Yeah, I believe. He usually talks about how he looks back and asks himself, I didn't have any extra cash to put in. I've implemented that in my life. I probably didn't get the attitude right the way OG says it, but that's the sentiment. I've implemented that in my life by automating my savings bills and church donations. I figured if I rely on memory, I'll forget or something else will come up. In 2025, I plan on attempting Paula's 1% increase each quarter for 401k savings. My advice for any new stackers would be Automate. Automate. Automate. I can't thank all of you enough for the impact you've had on my life. Semper Fi, og.
- [54:50]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh that's great, Matthew. It's funny, it's almost like we planned this and we truly did not. Last Friday, if you missed last Friday's episode, it was all about the importance of automation and how to nail the automation game. So go back and give that a listen because there's a lot of great tips on what to automate, what to think twice before you automate, how to how to make sure you check your math when you're automating, A lot of big stuff there.
- [55:17]
Doug
There was a great trivia about automation. There was.
- [55:21]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yes. And and and how the heck did Paula win? Also, for those of you that are new here, we have some guides. We're about to roll out a text guide. In fact, that's what I spent most of my week working on this week. We'll have an announcement about that soon. So if you're going to be doing your taxes in March or April, we will have a guide for that. But right now we have a guide to your benefits that's out. And the deal with our guides is that we improve these every month. We tweak them, make them more useful, add things in. And for January, we finished this a couple weeks ago, but I forgot to say anything about it. We have five more resources in mom's Monster Resource list so you can dig into learning more about how your different benefits programs work and how important or not important different areas of your benefits are. We've mostly though for January we rearranged sections to make the guide just flow better. It's been a ton of work under the hood, but the result is if you're new to the guide, it just flows better and you're able to get into your benefits, understand what you need to know, get rid of the stuff where you don't need to spend flex dollars or no thank you to these benefits and you're going to be better off. Stacker Mark is an example pointed out that our sections all said at the bottom what you should ask HR at the bottom, this big headline, what you should ask. And Mark's like, do people really need to ask all those questions because you're going to bother the hell out of your HR people. And we went, you know what? So we took this what you should ask and we made it what do you truly need to know? And if you don't, then you need to ask HR about these specific things because these are the important points. So tweaks like that, a ton of them. If you have the guide, you can go back in and download the newest version. If you don't have the guide yet, it's a LifeTime subscription. Stacking Benjamins.com benefits gets you into our benefits guide. So that's what's going on here on the back porch. Doug the last thing, though, where we always finish on the back porch is this big. Thanks to everybody for hanging out with us. Coming up on Friday, I love all the different guests we have on, but Sarah Catherine Gutierrez, who teaches financial planning to people in the Little Rock area right up the road from us here, Sarah Catherine Gutierrez joins Len Penzo and Jesse Kramer talking about Valentine's Day relationships and your money. It's a big Valentine's Day themed episode. And you know what? Even if you're not in a romantic relationship like Sha talked about on Monday, relationship, your money's all about relationships. So we're going to chat about that on Friday. We always end this segment, though, by asking Doug, what are the three biggest things that should be on our to do list today? Man.
- [58:01]
Doug
Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our headline. Is some company or salesperson offering you a product that reduces risk? It's probably better to invest in a straightforward product with a lower risk profile or understand investing a little more volatility can actually work in your favor if you're diversified and looking long term. Second, hiring relatives can work, but there's more to it than you might think. Adding payroll to the mix can be a royal pain. And are they actually doing any real work for you? But the big lesson, it's probably best not to ask Joe's mom if she's a fan of the art world. Let's just say that the words velvet and Elvis coupled with a purring sound have been known to come out of her mouth.
- [58:48]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Gotta make the perk sound.
- [58:52]
OG
Oh boy.
- [58:56]
Doug
This show is the property of SP Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul Sehi. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome team@stacking benjamin.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.
- [59:18]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Oh yeah.
- [59:19]
Doug
And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin show. Sa.
- [60:32]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Welcome to the after show. This is the part of the show that doesn't exist. If you're here for just money talk. That show has. That ship has sailed, as they say. By the way, I got a brand new game that I'm trying out with Cheryl and I called Sail. Look at how pretty that artwork is. It's a two player cooperative trick taking game. I don't know how that works. So we're going to try that out later on this week. Maybe this is our Valentine's Day.
- [61:00]
Doug
Settle down, big fella.
- [61:03]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So romantic. She'll be like, oh, really, Cheryl?
- [61:10]
Doug
I got my silk thong on and I got the board game ready.
- [61:13]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It's like that. Doug, you know Flight of the Conchords? Oh, gee, you know Flight of the Conchords?
- [61:21]
Doug
It's a show and it was a.
- [61:22]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Comedy group from New Zealand masquerading as a musical act. One of their songs is called Business Time. And she says, wait a minute, that's it. And he goes, yeah, baby, I know what you're saying. Yeah, that's it. Just changing the emphasis changes everything. Hey guys, I finally went and saw it. We had trivia about this a week ago about this particular thing. But I finally saw this thing that's been out in movie theaters and is up for a ton of awards. It's two and a half hours long at the theater. Well, I'm going to play the trailer and I think you'll be able to guess.
- [61:59]
Doug
I hope it's all just sound effects.
- [62:00]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And no dialogue like the one last week. Welcome new students to Shiz University.
- [62:10]
OG
Where.
- [62:10]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You can expect the unexpected. You're greedy.
- [62:17]
Doug
I am.
- [62:19]
OG
Ms. Elphaba, you can room with Ms. Glinda. Oh, I saved you some space, by the way. Do you really think this is fair? I do not.
- [62:29]
Doug
I was promised a private suite, but thanks for asking.
- [62:34]
Joe Saul-Sehy
You may have noticed that I am one of the last animal professors here at Shields.
- [62:39]
OG
But there was a time when life.
- [62:41]
Joe Saul-Sehy
In Ars was different.
- [62:44]
OG
Some someone needs to tell the wizard that the animals are in trouble. That's why we have a wizard.
- [62:48]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Because no one, because no one should.
- [62:53]
OG
Be laughed at or scorned or told to keep fight.
- [63:01]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So that is the voice of Elphaba in the movie production of OG's favorite musical play, Wicked, which came out last year. You know what kept me away from this guys two and a half hours. And, and also knowing that it's only the first half, I was like, oh no, it's the first half of anything that's two and a half hours long. And yeah, I'll sit and Doug and I'll binge American Primeval, like four episodes back to back. Four hours of that without even thinking about it. But the difference is I'm not in a movie theater. I love going to the movie theater and I'm not sitting there, you know, and if it's an hour and a half in, I'm, I'm, I'm stuck. So the question I think on my mind, probably on everybody else's mind, is, is that two and a half hours actually fun? Is it worth it? You know what? These performances are fantastic. The woman playing Elphaba, Cynthia Arevo, Ariana Grande, I think was amazing and captured Glinda to the same degree that Kristen Chenoweth did. And I think Kristin Chenoweth was amazing as Glinda, the good witch. Jeff Goldblum playing the same dude, by the way, he always plays Does Jeff.
- [64:11]
Doug
Goldblum's not an act, he's not an actor.
- [64:13]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I don't think he is an actor, but he's. They cast him perfectly. Or he knows how to pick the role because him is the wizard. This quirky dude is great. Michelle. Yo. By the way, it was funny. How long ago was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon if people haven't seen that movie? That is a just a phenomenal, phenomenal movie from her way, way, way, way back. But she's such an amazing actor. Unfortunately they have her sing and Cheryl leans over in the movie theater and goes, they had her because she's such a badass actor. It's almost like Meryl Streep and what's the, what's the ABBA movie?
- [64:49]
Doug
Mamma Mia.
- [64:50]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, they're like, oh, man. Maybe not Peter Dinklagen's movie. The voice of Dr. Dillemon, one of the last remaining animals who are professors there. And by the way, I also have to say Bowen Yang, who I absolutely love on Saturday Night Live. I don't know about you guys. I think he makes so many of the Saturday Night Live skits go from funny to unbelievably funny. He's got kind of a bit part in this movie, but every time he shows up and he says stuff, he's so damn funny. He's so, so, so funny in this. So the parts are all there. Here's the funny thing. I liked it. I'll definitely watch Part two, but I didn't. I found myself bored, and I can't tell you why, because the movie's really pretty. The songs are really well done, the acting's really well done. But at like the hour and a half mark, I'm looking at my watch going, how soon until this is done? And I don't know if it's that I already knew what was coming, but if I'm like, oh, gee. And I like Wicked, and I like Wicked. I don't like it as much as OG does, but I like it enough that I should be looking forward to the rest of the songs and the rest of the stuff, and I'm not. I'm waiting to get out of the movie theater. And this is going to be my hot take was that a year ago, I was on this microphone talking about a movie that was also a musical that not a ton of people went and watched called Wonka. Same beautiful setup, same great acting, same great songs. That movie kind of came and went, right. I think people don't even remember Walker. People don't remember Wonka. I like Wonka better than this. I think Wonka was a better movie than Wicked was. Wonka wasn't up for. I. I don't know if it was up for any Academy Awards, but if I'm going to see one musical, if I'm watching one musical, if I'm really into that, I'm gonna see Wonka before I see Wicked. So that's my take. Have you seen it in the theater? OG do you have any. No desire to see it in the theater?
- [66:50]
OG
No, not really. I think we're going to watch it this weekend because Caroline likes it a lot. So I think we're going to have a little family kind of.
- [66:58]
Joe Saul-Sehy
She's going to watch it at home.
- [66:59]
OG
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's already on Apple TV or whatever. She watched it with my. My mom, but, yeah, she's kind of infatuated with it.
- [67:05]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So we'll.
- [67:06]
OG
We'll watch it.
- [67:07]
Joe Saul-Sehy
But.
- [67:07]
OG
Dang, two and a half hours. I didn't know.
- [67:08]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I know.
- [67:09]
OG
You said it's only half. It's not even the whole story.
- [67:11]
Joe Saul-Sehy
No, no. They end at the intermission and the intermission is where she finds out what's really going on. I don't want to spoil it. And now she is going to become the, quote, Wicked Witch right at the halfway point.
- [67:23]
OG
Does it end on Defying Gravity? It does. That's what ends there. Oh, my.
- [67:27]
Doug
Now I know why I didn't like the stage version. Because it was five hours long.
- [67:32]
OG
It wasn't, though.
- [67:33]
Joe Saul-Sehy
It wasn't.
- [67:34]
Doug
Felt like it.
- [67:34]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. And I asked Cheryl. I'm like, what did they do here that they didn't do in the movie? And just some of the scenes are more expanded than they are, but they really didn't add anything new. They just kind of develop the beauty of it even more. Something you can't do in a play because of the restriction of the stage. They can really make these really lush backgrounds and they can expand upon the scene. So. Yeah. I don't know that it made it better, though. I think sometimes. We had Don Hahn on a number of years ago, and Don was a Disney imagineer who became the producer of shows like Beauty and the Beast and Lion King for Disney. And I really loved what he said, which is sometimes constraints are a good thing.
- [68:17]
OG
Yeah. I was just thinking about that when you said that. I was thinking when you were talking about the backgrounds and that sort of thing. And I thought, well, is that a good thing to have your ability to put so much emphasis on that versus the onstage production? You got to do what you got to do, but you have the constraints. And that puts that much more emphasis on the people, on the actors or actresses and the dialogue and that sort of thing, because you don't have the crutch of the beautiful background to distract you. I don't know, by the way.
- [68:47]
Joe Saul-Sehy
And great cameos. At one point, there's a cameo song with the original stage actors.
- [68:54]
OG
Oh, really?
- [68:54]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Who come out, and it really was fun. I was surprised. I didn't see that coming. And when they came out, I laughed all the way through that song. I was like, this is really cool.
- [69:02]
OG
Yeah.
- [69:02]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah. So Wicked liked it, but. But Wonka was better.
- [69:07]
OG
Can't wait for the second half.
- [69:09]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I can wait.
- [69:10]
OG
Joe will be in line. He'll be in line.
- [69:13]
Joe Saul-Sehy
I can't wait. Apparently, coming out this fall, it'll be at Rope Drop. Oh, hey, you guys know, though, a part two that I almost forgot about, that I did see as one of the previews, by the way, two and a half hours a movie, half an hour, previews beforehand. Right. Which. Which just borders on. That's your favorite amc. Stop telling me three times how awesome you are. Like, there are three commercials for AMC while I'm sitting in an AMC movie theater. Not usually what I do, but I wasn't at home when I saw this, so AMC just really overdid it. Drove me crazy. The preview I saw though, part two of the latest Mission Impossible. I thought that I totally forgot that that ended at the end of part one.
- [69:50]
OG
Yep.
- [69:50]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Part one of the latest Mission Impossible is really good. I can't wait for the part two. That's going to be fun, Doug. You'd like that. Did you see part one of the Mission Impossible latest show?
- [70:00]
Doug
I don't think I've seen any Mission Impossible start to finish.
- [70:04]
Joe Saul-Sehy
So fun. So, so, so good. Highly recommend. And I was the guy that was like, I don't want to see Mission Impossible. And when I saw the first one.
- [70:11]
Doug
I was, maybe I have none of them stuck in my memory. I'll try it.
- [70:15]
Joe Saul-Sehy
Yeah, super stuff.