What Lucky People Do Differently With Money (SB1749)

Summary

The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode SB1749: What Lucky People Do Differently With Money

Release Date: October 17, 2025
Hosts: Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, Paula Pant, Doug
Guest Contributor: Chris Luger (Heavy Metal Money)

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Episode Overview

This engaging roundtable episode explores the myth and mechanics of “luck” in the world of personal finance. Joe and OG, joined by Paula Pant (Afford Anything) and Chris Luger (Heavy Metal Money), use a recent Kate Hall Substack post as their jumping-off point. The discussion weaves together practical financial advice, psychological perspectives, and personal anecdotes to illuminate what “lucky” people actually do to help chance favor them—especially with money.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Redefining Luck: It’s Not Just Chance—It’s Surface Area

• Luck & Probability

  • Paula Pant introduces the core concept: luck increases with the number of attempts you make. More tries mean a higher probability of a positive outcome.

  • “Luck is a function of the number of times that you've tried... it's just probability.” (11:21)

• Taking At-Bats, But with Thought

  • Chris Luger adds that while more tries increase the odds, the context and quality of tries matter. Networking, learning, and skill acquisition often set the stage for “luck.”

  • “You increase your luck by... learning new skills, networking, and meeting the people around you. Taking a risk: that's the number one thing.” (12:24)

• Risk Management

  • Joe and Chris debate if better awareness of probabilities (teaching statistics) might make people more (or less) willing to take good risks. (13:11–13:50)

• Systems > Luck

  • OG pivots to the power of systems in personal finance—suggesting disciplined, automated investing (e.g., rebalancing, consistent contributions) leads to good results that appear “lucky” to outsiders.

  • “I think it's less luck, and I think it's more discipline.” (15:40)

2. Curiosity: The Engine of Serendipity

• Curiosity Expands Opportunity

  • Joe highlights Kate Hall’s suggestion that being curious draws more opportunities toward you, setting you up for luck.
  • Chris agrees, noting his own natural curiosity led to skills and relationships key to his success—but emphasizes that action must follow curiosity.

  • “You can be curious... but you also have to be able to take action on the things you've learned.” (25:33)

• Beyond the Transactional

  • Paula and Joe discuss the importance of non-transactional, long-term relationship-building as a source of unpredictable but powerful opportunities—contrasting short-term payoff-seeking with deeper curiosity.

  • “Transactional approaches can only take you so far. But developing relationships, that's where you reap these long-term rewards.” (27:37)

• Who, Not How

  • Referencing the business book “Who Not How,” the group discusses how expanding your social circles and focusing on connections can spark “lucky breaks” through referrals and new ideas. (29:06)

3. Systems, Disciplined Experimentation, and the Infinite Game

• When to Experiment & When Not to

  • The panel notes that while experimenting and “more tries” work in some domains (career, skill-building), too much experimentation with core financial systems (like investing) can backfire.
  • OG advocates for simplifying decisions:

    • “When it comes to money and goal attainment... maybe [making] fewer decisions actually is the better way to do it.” (16:07)

• Budgeting & All-or-Nothing Thinking

  • Paula and Joe discuss “budgeting doesn’t work for me” thinking, pushing back with the idea that small tweaks (not abandoning a system) and flexibility, much like in diet and exercise, are crucial to sticking with good habits. (18:51–20:47)

  • “People develop an all or nothing approach to [diets], and because of that if there's an element that doesn't work, people will often just give up the whole thing.” (19:24)

• Diversification vs. Perfection

  • OG chides clients (and listeners) who obsess over the minutiae of asset allocation, arguing that simply being consistently invested matters more than picking the “perfect” allocation.

  • “The fact that you are investing matters. The fact that you're saving money matters.” (24:39)

4. Giving Before Getting: How Generosity Breeds “Good Luck”

• The Giver’s Edge

  • Chris and Paula discuss how a “giving” approach leads to a network that’s warmer and more eager to return favors—expanding one’s surface area for luck through generosity.

  • “The more generous you are, the more it comes back to you in a variety of ways.” (49:13)

• Ben Franklin Effect

  • Paula introduces the concept that, paradoxically, people like others more after they themselves have done them a small favor.

  • “People will like you more if you reach out to them and ask them for small bits of help occasionally.” (49:39)

• When Giving Goes Too Far

  • OG warns of generosity without boundaries—like supporting adult children excessively—cautioning listeners to balance their giving with responsibility. (51:10)

5. Success, Focus, and “Manifesting”

• Luck & Manifestation: Two Sides of Focus
  • The panel expresses skepticism toward the “manifestation” movement, preferring a focus-driven view: success comes when you pay conscious attention to goals and act persistently on achieving them.

  • “You succeed at what you focus on, and if you're focusing on that, then that's what'll happen.” (55:12)

6. Planning for the Uncertain Future: Discipline with Flexibility

• Goals Can Change

  • Paula and Chris illustrate, with anecdotes about saving for years toward homeownership or maintaining family endowments, that it’s okay to change course—and that flexibility is vital.

  • “She has the discipline to save the money. She also has the flexibility to at all times reconsider whether or not her initial goal… is the correct one.” (61:25)

• For Young Listeners

  • OG and Chris advise young adults not to worry about “perfect clarity.” Instead, set targets 6–12 months out, review regularly, and be gentle with yourself as you build up a vision for your future.

  • “If you can pull something that's six months away, that's great. If you can pull something that's a year away, that's great.” (58:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Mathematics of Luck:
  • “Luck equals math.” – Joe Saul-Sehy (11:44)
• On Systems Over Screwing With It:
  • “The people who just pick an asset allocation, make a decision once a year to rebalance… they wake up going, huh, I don't even know how I got 2 million bucks. It's because you didn't screw with the system.” – OG (16:52)
• On Taking Action:
  • “You can be curious, but you gotta take action.” – Chris Luger (26:51)
• On Relationships & Asking ‘Who, Not How’:
  • “We are an interdisciplinary species, interdependent species. Right. Rely on other people to rely on that interdependence.” – Paula Pant (29:23)
• On Infinite Game in Finance:
  • “Just play the infinite game.” – Steel off tees (Listener via chat, 62:06)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [11:21] – Probability, luck, and the number of attempts (Paula)
• [12:24–13:39] – Risks, action, and learning new skills (Chris)
• [15:40–16:52] – Systems vs. luck in financial planning (OG)
• [25:33–26:51] – Curiosity and taking action (Joe & Chris)
• [27:37–29:23] – Relationships, transactional vs. non-transactional, “Who Not How” (Paula & Joe)
• [49:13–50:16] – Giving before getting, Ben Franklin effect (Chris & Paula)
• [55:12] – Manifesting vs. hard focus and work (OG & Chris)
• [58:31] – Flexible goal-setting for young adults (OG & Chris)
• [61:25] – Flexibility in goals and discipline (Paula)

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Section: Trivia Interlude

Midway, Doug challenges the panel with a quirky trivia question: How many imperial gallons equal a “buttload” of wine?

• Answer: 126 imperial gallons (48:03)
• OG wins this week’s trivia round, pulling closer to the yearly championship lead.

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Takeaway Lessons (as summarized by Doug, 68:40):

1. Be Curious, Not Judgmental.
   Curiosity (paired with action) expands your opportunities and helps you stumble onto “luck.”
2. Persistence and Flexibility Beat All-or-Nothing Thinking.
   Long-term systems with room for change (rather than rigid, short-term plans) win the infinite game.
3. Generosity Supercharges Luck.
   Givers, not takers, seem to get more “lucky” breaks—from genuine relationships and a spirit of abundance, not mere transactions.

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Episode Tone

• Light-hearted yet thoughtful
• Playfully irreverent (occasional gentle roasting among hosts)
• Encouraging, focused on empowering listeners regardless of where they are on their financial journey

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Links & Further Resources

• Heavy Metal Money podcast and YouTube
• Afford Anything podcast
• [Kate Hall’s Useful Fiction Substack: “How to increase your surface area for luck”] (linked via show notes)
• Stacking Benjamins Twin Cities Meetup Group (Facebook)

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For listeners and new stackers:
“Luck” with money isn’t magic. It’s about showing up often, being curious, fostering real relationships, taking strategic risks, and sticking with good systems—while remaining flexible and generous along the way.

Transcript

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

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[OG]

Spider pig Spider pig does whatever a spider pig does can he swing from a web? No he can't He's a pig. Look how he is a spider pig.

[Doug]

Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it's the the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug and this Friday let's help you find more luck with your money. Sound impossible? We'll share tactics, strategies and philosophical ideas on today's roundtable discussion with our money geek friends. Plus, at the halfway point of today's show, we'll see which of these money nerds is gonna score point in our year long stacker trivia contest. And now a guy who's always feeling lucky because he gets to work with this guy. It's Joe Saul. Sei.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, nothing more fun Doug, than working with you. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Stacky Benjamin Show. Super happy that you're here. Welcome to our Friday recording. Doug, good to see you my friend.

[Doug]

Good to be seen Joe. Good to be seen.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Let's meet the other people that are going to be joining us. Of course we got the gentleman across the card table from me right now. Mr. OG joins us. How are you brother?

[OG]

Just living the dream.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It is fantastic the chaos of the.

[OG]

You know, right before Halloween. And, you know, it's just all the stuff. It's all the stuff of the thing.

[Doug]

PSL season.

[OG]

Fall break coming.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I have not had any pumpkin spice anything yet. I feel like I'm. I don't know what's going on. Don't know. Why not?

[OG]

Yeah, I don't. I didn't ask for that. Nope. Don't need any 1200 calorie drinks. I just need a fall break.

[Chris Luger]

Just need a break.

[Doug]

I think most schools, it's happening like this week or next week. A lot of colleges are right here in mid October.

[OG]

What I'm talking.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What's going on with this show?

[OG]

Why don't we have a fall break?

[Doug]

Oh, that's what you're talking about.

[OG]

I want a fall break. Doug.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Me.

[OG]

This is about me.

[Chris Luger]

I don't know.

[OG]

This will come as a shock to you, but on occasion I like to talk about me.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

He's just hitting about what we should be doing, you know, we should be doing. We should be introducing the other people joining us on this show, the woman in Manhattan who, I don't know, does she love a 1200 calorie drink? Paula Pant is here. Pumpkin spice latte for the win. Paula?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, you know, I'm. I'm not like an enthusiast, but if I'm offered one, I will absolutely take it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

If you're buying.

[Doug]

I'm accepting enthusiast.

[Paula Pant]

I wouldn't go seek one out, but if I happen to be drinking one, I enjoy it.

[OG]

You're walking down the subway stairs and there was one sitting there, like on the stairs next to you. You're like, hey, that's a pumpkin spice latte. Somebody didn't finish.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I might as well finish that. Look at, there's a good quarter of it left.

[Paula Pant]

I found this in the dumpster.

[OG]

Like all the free freaking gum underneath all the railings, just like an elf.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, that sounds like a heavy metal intro, doesn't it? Like at a heavy metal show, like, people would do that. They get all crazy, which is great because we got the guy who does that from heavy metal money. Frank, Chris Luger's here. How are you, man?

[Chris Luger]

Hey, I'm doing well.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I'm doing well.

[Chris Luger]

I. I am an absolute pumpkin spice fanatic.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And I take the pumpkin spice latte to the heavy metal show. Like, is that a. Or do they laugh at you?

[Chris Luger]

If it was available, I'd have it. I eat and drink all of the pumpkin spice everything.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's hard to air guitar, though, Chris, when you've. When you Got a pumpkin spice in your hand.

[Chris Luger]

You know, I just went to our Minnesota zoo, has this Jack o Lantern trail. There's like 5,000 Jack O Lanterns. You can walk this trail. It's pretty cool. And I bought one of their special holiday hot chocolates with like, you know, cinnamon and a pumpkin flavored marshmallows. It was $13 for a cup of hot cocoa.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And you enjoyed every second of it, did you?

[Chris Luger]

It was fancy. I mean, like you said, it's like 1400 calories. But it is. But, you know.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But you were at the fair, right? If you're at the fair, it's fab free.

[Chris Luger]

Yeah, that's right, man.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Tell the three people that are new to Stacking Benjamin's Land what goes on a Heavy Metal Money. Because I think you just had like this phenomenal interview a few weeks ago that was just amazing.

[Chris Luger]

Yeah. So people can find my podcast, my blog. Over at Heavy Metal Money, we talk about spending, saving, investing. All turned up to 11, this whole show.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Heavy metal money goes up to 11. Are you excited about the new. Speaking of 11, the new Spinal Tap coming.

[Chris Luger]

Spinal Tap 2, the end continues. Yeah, absolutely.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Great. Does Paul even know what Spinal Tap is?

[Paula Pant]

I don't.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

She has no. No, no clue.

[OG]

It's not a fun medical procedure.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

We got a great show today because Chris is here, Paula's here, OG's here, Doug and I and I found this great sub stack about luck. And we often, you know, how often have you seen somebody who's wealthy and you go, oh, they're just lucky. Oh, they're just. I remember, let's be nice.

[OG]

That's the phrase.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah. When I was with American Express, I remember there was this top advisor out in Seattle and they go, oh, you know what? Her dad works for Boeing. It was. She just got lucky that she was in the family. And it was later on that I learned how hard this woman worked. And don't get me wrong, she had opportunity, but it wasn't luck. She took opportunity and she had to run with it. And so we're going to talk about luck and increasing your chance of luck on today's show. But before we get to that, we got a couple sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on. You don't pay a dime for any of this goodness. So grab some paper, think about luck in your life, and we're going to talk about luck and your financial plan and maybe being lucky at work. Introducing your new Dell PC with the Intel Core Ultra processor. It helps you handle a lot, especially when your Holiday to Do list gets to be. Well, a lot like organizing your holiday shopping and searching for great holiday deals and customer questions and customers requesting custom things. Plus planning the perfect holiday dinner for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians and Uncle Mike's Carnivore diet. Luckily you can get a PC with all day battery life to help you get it all done. That's the power of a Dell PC with Intel inside backed by Dell's Price Match guarantee. Get yours [e-mail] deals terms condition supply. See dell.com for details. Stackers I love to keep my days busy, which is why often my diet's like a yo yo. In fact, this is scary. My phone recently told me, you know how it tells you how close you are to your house? It told me how close I was to Firehouse. Like it literally said at noon, hey, Firehouse is only X amount away. Which made me realize I might have a problem. But I've been offsetting that problem with exercise with maybe not going to Firehouse quite so much. And with AG1. AG1 helps me get started right first thing in the morning. And because I don't always have the healthiest diet on those busy days, it makes it hard for my body to get the key nutrients that it needs. It's super easy to use first thing in the morning. The original formula works great for me first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, just some cold water and a deliciously simple scoop of ag1. The health benefits I could feel right away. Number 1. From gut health to energy to making sure I get those daily nutrients that I need and to immune support. They're all there with AG1. And now AG1's clinically backed formula is flavor packed with new delicious flavors like tropical berry citrus in addition to my favorite, just the straight on original. In an industry where not everybody invests heavily in research, they go to great lengths to continually invest in rigorous, peer reviewed clinical trials. AG1 replaces the need for a multivitamin for probiotics and for less than $3 per day with a subscription, you're getting more than $7 worth of daily nutritional support. So with AG1, it's vitamins, minerals, probiotics, prebiotics, greens and superfoods, antioxidants and digestive enzymes. I use AG1. I think you should too. So head to drink ag1.com SB that's drink ag1.com SB stackers and you're going to get a free welcome kit including a bottle of vitamin D and free AG1 travel packs. When you first subscribe. That's drink ag1.comSB our piece today comes from the sub stack of and it's funny, you'd think that I would have after all these years, I would learn that you should probably have the piece up before you start introducing things. Kate hall wrote this on her substack, useful fiction, and it's called how to increase your surface area for luck. And Paula, I don't think I'm alone here. You know, you often hear people say, oh, they just got lucky with their investments. Or look at how if I could just get luckier with my investments, if I weren't so unlucky with my investments, man, my life would be completely different.

[Paula Pant]

Well, she makes a great point in her piece where she talks about how luck is a function of the number of times that you've tried. Because if you try, like you've got two people, one person has fewer tries and the other person has more tries to the person with more tries, assuming that those tries don't wipe you out, is likely to have luck. Just that it's just math. Like it's just probability.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That's funny. Luck equals math. I think she makes that comment, doesn't she?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, exactly. It's really just probabilistic thinking.

[Doug]

If you had any idea how often I tried to get lucky in college, you'd know I proved that theorem wrong. It's not just about trying to get lucky.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It was so fun. I even thought what I said before the sponsor spots, when I said being luckier at work, Doug was like, oh.

[Doug]

I'm just like, I got to work it in. I got to find a way I.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Could tell the 12 year old was like right there. But Chris, getting back to maybe the point of the piece, call me crazy, but if we talk about luck to you, is it velocity like Paul is talking about and Kate's talking about just the speed of your decision making?

[Chris Luger]

You know, I think that you, you need a number of at bats, right? Like you said that the number of tries. Like you said, Paula, it's just math. But I also feel as though it's more about the people that are around you. I mean, people used to always talk about, if I mentioned that, hey, I retired at 50, a lot of people say, oh, you're lucky, you're lucky that that happened. And I believe that there's always like you're in the right place at the right time for certain things to happen. But I also feel as though you increase your luck by doing certain things, whether you're learning new skills Networking and meeting the people around you. Taking a risk, I think that's the number one thing. Don't be afraid to take a risk and learn new things. I think that really is a way that you can increase your luck.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But is there though, Chris, this idea of risk meets like probability management? Because I see some people take these crazy ass risks without really thinking through the probable chance that this risk could bear fruit. I feel like, and I'm thinking back to when we had Ted Denter Smith talking about education early this summer and he's talking about how, you know, if we knew statistics better, if we taught, if we taught statistics better in high school to kids, kids might make some better decisions about even career choices in the future.

[Chris Luger]

Well, don't you think maybe they would be more afraid to make some of those choices or take those risks and then therefore not be lucky? You know what I'm saying?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I don't know. I think OG let's bring you into the discussion. If we think about velocity, it seems like we all agree that making more decisions works. But if we've got then three decisions in front of us and we're going to keep making decisions at a certain speed, we got three of them. Like thinking through probabilities going to help you make better ones.

[OG]

What is the context of this luck discussion? Are we thinking about luck in terms of investment choices, luck in terms of saving, luck in terms of spouse outcome or career choice? I think all of those are going to be different. I mean, I certainly. You don't want to go through like a bunch of spouse choices before you get to the one that you want to sit on. You know what I mean? It's like that one I don't think works.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I tried this nine times and finally it's working.

[OG]

Finally. Oh my gosh.

[Chris Luger]

Isn't there some math about when you're hiring somebody too, you don't want to interview too many people, you got to have the seventh person be the one. Right. Something like that.

[Paula Pant]

It's called the secretary problem and it's a mathematical equation that lays out the optimal number of people that you interview before you have interviewed enough such that you can make a good decision, but not so many that you are wasting your time. So I don't fully understand the math of it, but some greater mathematician than I.

[OG]

Somebody figured it out.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. Yeah. So it's referred to as the secretary problem.

[Chris Luger]

Would you do that trying to find your spouse?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. So people do apply that to the mathematics of love. There's actually a book on my bookshelf Back there called the Mathematics of Love. I just haven't read it yet.

[OG]

You took the joke, Paula. We all had it ready.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I read it.

[Chris Luger]

I actually have.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But I guess, OG Back to your point, I mean, I mean, let's talk about in your financial plan, right? Can experimenting, too much experimenting in your financial plan really ruin your chance of a good result?

[OG]

It's a great joke about Doug and experimenting. They're also in college, but college do anything once in college. I mean, ultimately, I think it's less luck, and I think it's more discipline. I think people think, like, luck is this thing that just favors you. And like Paula said, when you make more decisions, when you have more at bats, I was thinking, Doug's wearing a base. Are you wearing a tiger's hat? Is that what you got on Doug? I think it's baseball.

[Doug]

Darn right I am.

[OG]

So, you know, you're going to hit more home runs if you have more at bats. That's just eventually going to work out. Now, that number might just be one, you might just get one, but you're going to have a better chance than somebody who just steps up to the plate one time. And so I think in some cases, as it relates to career choices or learning, as you're developing yourself, the speed at which you can do that when it comes to money and goal attainment. When we think about financial planning, I think it's more about systems and trying to make fewer decisions actually maybe is the better way to do it, because the more times you have an opportunity to look at your stock portfolio, the more choices you have to go, am I doing the right thing?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I'm going to mess it up.

[OG]

But the people who just pick an asset allocation make a decision once a year to rebalance it, keep putting in 23,500 in their 401. They wake up going, huh, I don't even know how I got 2 million bucks. It's because you didn't screw with the system. And then you say, well, you got lucky. It's like, well, there's other factors there, Right. You know, I have a career that allows me to save the money, or I have a significant other that helps with the bills, or I have a low cost of living or whatever the case may be.

[Chris Luger]

But OG Someone may still call you lucky for doing that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Okay.

[Chris Luger]

Right.

[OG]

I don't know how to think about this in a way that's not systems related. There's certainly things that are lucky. We're lucky that we live in the country that we live in. In the time in which we live. My grandfather was born in 1919. He at the time also thought he was probably pretty lucky that he didn't live in the 1800s. We're in a good spot. Compared to having to forage for our food every single day, that's pretty fortunate. I mean, just thinking about how many people had to stay alive for you to show up on this planet throughout the couple dozen generations or however far back you want to go, it's like, that's pretty lucky. Yeah, I'm at a million bucks, my 401k. That's not luck, that's just.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No, but still, I was wondering where the intersection might be here. OG Because I do think that, that you're right on. When it comes to trying to learn a new skill, you see the statistics all the time. People give up just as they're about to learn something, right? They're just about there. They're just to the spot where it's just starting to take effect and they stop. People don't see the job till the end. But when it comes to your money, I thought, yeah, I guess you are right, that leaving your hands off, it doesn't work. But Chris, think about this. How many times have you seen people go, well, you know what, Budgeting works for other people, but it doesn't work for me. I try to budget and the budget, the budget just this whole budgeting thing just totally just doesn't work for me. Which, you know, is probably the wrong answer.

[Chris Luger]

Yeah, all the time. Yeah, you hear it all the time.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's incredibly frustrating when maybe that budget didn't work. And I'll give you an example. Like my, I've got this 20 minute budgeting system that works for me every week for Cheryl and I. And I would teach it to my clients. And you know, what was funny was out of the box. We tweaked it just a little bit so it would work with them versus throwing it away. It worked. I mean, we see this all the time with diets and exercise, right, Paula? I mean, people go, well, you know, that whole dieting thing or this whole, you know, spin class. Oh, that was. I tried that twice and it was horrible. I got all sore, so I gave it up.

[Paula Pant]

Right? And it's funny because, you know, a lot of times diets or there are all of these different philosophies. There's Whole 30, there's keto, there's this, there's that. There are a lot of ways to eat that are very black and white in the way. In which they're taught. And because of that black and white teaching style, a lot of people will develop an all or nothing approach to it. Because of that all or nothing approach, if there's an element that doesn't work, people will often just give up the whole thing. So last January, myself and a group of friends, we were all on WhatsApp, doing it together. Doing this like dry January coupled with sort of like a whole 30 sort of a thing together. Oh God, yeah, Gross.

[OG]

You know how hammered you have to be on December 31st.

[Doug]

We thought we would torture ourselves.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I tried, by the way, Wet January, like that one a ton better. So much more fun.

[OG]

Let's space it out more.

[Paula Pant]

And I remember like, I remember one guy, I think we got to like the 17th of the month and he was like, oops, I had a glass of wine, I'm out. And we're like, dude, it's fine, you know, if you drop the all or nothing thinking and just give yourself a little bit of grace, you know. And for me, like, I found that giving up part of that was we were supposed to also give up caffeine. I was like, I stuck with that for about 10 days and then I was like, no, no, no, no. Caffeine is coming back. That one is a non negotiable wow.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But I like that though, when you try something, you go, you know what it is for you, it is the right thing. You know, less caffeine in your life is the right thing. But you know what? For me right now, I'm gonn to go a different way. I love the fact that I have a budget. I have a budgeting system that works. And there's still times when Cheryl and I decide Paula to go the the other way. Like forget the budget. I'm doing this instead. Yeah, not bad. Another Paula hanging out with us says budgeting doesn't work. Translation, I really want to spend more money than I make. That is, that is a hundred percent. But when it comes to your portfolio, you know, OG people talk about like different ways to do asset allocation, different ways to diversify. Buying individual stocks versus holding on to mutual funds or exchange traded funds. How much of that is the diversification is important versus how much of that is learning the right thing to do. And okay, I made a mistake getting back in the game. You know, I panicked and I sold when it was low and then I learned my lesson. So I didn't, didn't do it that time. So again, trying again and trying again and trying again. So is it diversification that's important, or is it getting back in the ring?

[OG]

Well, I think you're talking about two different things. One is around, how do I take the money that I have and make sure it's in the right buckets or the buckets that I think that are right. There is no wrong or right answer because everybody's a little bit different. And this is going to come as a shock to a lot of people. Nobody can predict what the future is going to be. At the beginning of January this year, if we said, hey, you should probably have 30% of your money in international stocks, people are like, that's crazy. International's awful. It hasn't done anything in 15 years. Why in the heck would I want to have any my money there? Well, guess what? By the summertime, it was beating the pants off of the US Market by a considerable margin. Is it that I knew that was going to happen? Is that why we said that? No. Is it that I could prove to you that it was going to happen? No. It just makes sense to me that you want to own one of everything, just easier. So I think philosophically understanding big picture stuff is more important than. Than spending a lot of time and energy on the little idiosyncrasies. I don't remember this exact number, but I believe that somebody somewhere.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, what?

[Chris Luger]

That's credible?

[OG]

I might have said, this is what we call a primary source. Somebody somewhere said, no, I don't remember what study this was. Somebody knows, but that asset allocation, or merely being invested is 91% of the return. The other nine is the market timing the exact asset allocation. Did you buy in on the right day or the wrong day? You know, did you get lucky? Did you put your money in on the right day? There's somebody who invested a bunch of money. It was like kind of a rollover, you know, so it was already invested, but in their mind, it was new money, and they invested it on April 8 this year. And so when they look at their investment account, they go, my goodness, look at how, look at how smart I am.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I'm a genius.

[OG]

I'm a genius. I got out on March 31st when my rollover check went in the mail, and I got it back in on April 8th. Holy moly. I would argue that's not skill. That was pure 1,000% luck. You know, so in that context, that's just good fortune to be able to say I got out on the right day and got back in on the right day, not because I was trying to do it, but because that's just when the checks were in the mail.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Sure, luck looks great in that scenario over the short run. But 30 years from now, the difference between picking that day versus picking the quote wrong day a week earlier, it's going to be infinitesimally small in 30 years.

[OG]

Absolutely incredibly small. And that's the point. It's the same thing as, do I have 8% of my portfolio in small cap value or nine and a half, or do I have 25% international or 27% in it? It's like none of this matters. The fact that you are investing matters. The fact that you're saving money matters.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

What I really like, OG when you were talking about international stocks, I like that because really, that first question and this idea of luck is kind of the framing of the entire place. But the place Kate starts in, this I find incredibly fascinating. And that is the idea of being curious, right? She starts off as, you are going to be luckier if you find yourself more curious. And it kind of strikes me, Chris, that when I'm listening to OG talk, he's like, of course you don't international. Well, how do you know? Well, you get curious enough to read back through all the statistics and do some research on what successfully has made an investor. I feel like this is a strong suit being a friend of yours for a while, Chris, of yours, like, you seem to be naturally curious about the world around you. Was that something you were born with or is that something that you developed as an education, a way to educate yourself over time?

[Chris Luger]

No, I was always kind of like, wanted to know why and how things worked. And then it just kind of me moving up into my career and being an enterprise engineer, I just. That's the way I learn. But I think it's only part of the story. You know, you can be curious, right, like she mentions in the article, but you also have to be, you know, you gotta be able to take action on the things you've learned. You gotta be able to actually do something because, you know, you can just be overly, you know, educating, soaking up all this stuff. But, man, if you're not actually taking action and taking the risk, again, I just, for some reason, I just, I always feel cringy when people talk about luck because I just feel as though there is always something you can do to alter that, whether it's more lucky or less lucky, right? Like, I mean, if somebody says, you know what, oh, you're so lucky because, you know, you got that job or whatever, well, you could be unlucky by not keeping appointments, sleeping late, not going to the interview, whatever. Or you could network, meet the right people. That person introduces you to somebody else that recommends you for the job, and now you got the job. So you can again increase or decrease your luck, so to speak, by the actions you take. So you can be curious, but you gotta take action.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's like the harder I work, the luckier I get.

[Chris Luger]

Exactly.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah.

[OG]

TM trademark that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, I just thought of that right now. Just like last week, I thought of this whole idea of you can afford anything, but not everything. The brilliance that is me is incredible. Another thing I like about what Kate says here, and I know our stackers don't have it in front of them, but I think this is really important. She really makes a big deal about the fact it shouldn't be transactional. And I feel like in life now everything is transactional. When I, when I go online, they're like, hey, if you just spend five minutes doing this one thing, the transaction is that'll make your life a ton better. And I feel like Kate's saying you just have to be willing to explore, you have to be willing to just get out there and eff it up, I guess.

[Paula Pant]

Well, transactional approaches is short term thinking, right? With a transactional approach, you might get a coffee meeting, you might get, depending on what industry you're in, maybe you'll, you'll sell some small widget. Transactional approaches can only take you so far. But developing relationships, that's where you reap these long term rewards that you don't even know at the beginning of that, that relationship, what that's going to unfold into 5, 10, 20 years into the future. And maybe it won't develop, quote, unquote, develop into anything other than you just had a great friendship and there's immense value in that too. Relationships are far more valuable for the long term. But so many people approach strangers with this transactional thinking.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I think so transactionally. And I didn't realize this until we interviewed Sheman near Muhammad a couple weeks ago. Shemin actually talked about the difference when she lived in France about just being in America. We think, well, I gotta trade time for money. I have to get back to my desk and I have to do more processes. And the French will often spend 90 minutes at lunch. But then they come up with the answer to the question much quicker, Paula, because they're asking who, not how. Right? Because they have so many who's in their life that can very quickly answer these questions that we are all pounding the keyboard, trying to find on YouTube that the relationship ends up being the answer. So I love what you're saying about relationships.

[Paula Pant]

Right. And the notion of asking who, not how, I mean, for me, that's a new aha. That's something that I've only learned recently and that I'm still trying to incorporate into my life. In fact, I just downloaded the audiobook, the who not how audiobook. Literally downloaded that in the last week.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's such a great lesson.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, yeah. That is a critically important lesson. One that I'm only in the very beginning stages of learning and incorporating. But it truly is, you know, especially as people, people become increasingly specialized. It makes no sense to try to take on too much on your own. Like we are an interdisciplinary species, interdependent species. Right. Rely on other people to rely on that interdependence.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And the better we know people, the less transactional we are about it. Just we have this deeper knowledge of the people around us, the easier it's going to be to know who our who's are.

[Paula Pant]

Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Oh, gee. You know, when you're an advisor, you naturally have to be curious about what your client wants, right? To be a good team member and help them get what they want. But I'm wondering how our stackers can use that same curiosity to build a better financial plan. Like, how do we think more curiously about our lives to be able to make our financial plan more robust?

[OG]

There's something that Paula said earlier, and I don't remember exactly how you phrased it, Paula, but I was thinking in my head that in order to go fast, you've got to slow down. And so many times we want to rush through whatever we're trying to do or whatever the case may be. And I don't know if that's just culturally. And that's the difference between. Joe, your example of France and America, the lunch thing, very often when you give yourself space to do other things. Steve Jobs, for example, very famously would only do conversations while walking around a. Because it move people along. They would like, oh, is this your building? Okay, good. Off you go.

[Chris Luger]

See ya.

[OG]

You know, like you could get out of it. But also, you know, there's just something about being in the shower and having your thought going like, oh, that's the idea to that problem. Like when you, when you just give yourself space to think about stuff and materialized. And so from a planning perspective, when we were thinking about like long term financial goals, it sounds really silly, but I would, I would spend 99% of the time Thinking about that, like, if I'm doing this for myself, I'm thinking about what do I want my life to look like, what do I want my family situation to look like, what do I want my health to look like, my spirituality to look like. That's what I want to spend all my time and energy on. And the rest of it's like, okay, cool, now how does the money fit into that? How do I do that? Disney famously said, when your values are clear, your decisions are easy.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Right?

[OG]

That's one of his famous quotes. You know, when you're struggling with. Somebody said if you don't want to budget, it's because you want to spend all your money. Well, that's because we don't have really clear values for people that have a really clear understanding of what the future looks like. The savings, investing, the decision making around that. That's not about sacrifice. It's about like, this is the progress I make to get to the thing that's important to me. It's not about going like, oh, woe is me. I need to, you know, I can't do this because I have to. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like I'm choosing to put money in my retirement plan and not go on vacation right now or, or whatever the case may be so that I can have the life that I really want. So going a lot slower I think is super important. And spending a bunch of time on the stuff that's not money related, the dollars and cents spend all your time on who do I want to be like, what do I want my life to look like? And then the money just kind of fits in there.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Part of what I don't like about changes in financial planning are I liked way back when I was an advisor, just the idea of getting people out of their house, in their natural habitat and coming into an office that is not a part of their life on a daily basis. Because I found that it was so much easier when we didn't have all these distractions. I think it's hard to get to that spot where you dream bigger and you get more curious when you're surrounded by the daily living stuff still, you know, the chaos that's going on in your life. Part of the fun for me of Strategic Coach was always just the fact that I go to Chicago and it was on the plane there and on the plane back that I do some of my best thinking just because I wasn't surrounded. I think it's, it's hard to be curious when you're in the grind. I think it's, it's very, very curious.

[Chris Luger]

And that's why Joe, sometimes like we have our leadership meetings off site for a day. Right. Just because we're in that different environment, we can think bigger. You know, we're not in that day to day operational thinking.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And maybe Chris, I mean, you know, you and I have had fun together at Camp Fi.

[Chris Luger]

Right.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Campfire I think is all about that. You're just at a, you're at this retreat center way out of your daily life. So yeah, great stuff. Well, she's only begun. We've got two or three more areas of Kate's piece that I'll link to in our show. Notes that we're going to dive into about the idea of luck and increasing your chance of luck. But at the halfway point of each Stacking Benjamin show, we have this amazing trivia competition on Friday. It's between our three usual contributors, OG Paula. And normally it's Jesse Kramer. Today, Chris, you get to play the part of Jesse Kramer. And as member of Team Jesse Kramer, well, I've got some good news and some bad news for you, my friend. Which one would you like first?

[Chris Luger]

I was like the bad news first.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Well, the bad news is actually the good news which is that you are in the lead if you're part of team Jesse Kramer, which was not the case until just a couple of weeks ago. But Doug, what's our score so far in this competition as we slide into man getting into the heat of the.

[Doug]

Fourth quarter presently Joe, Jesse, slash Chris is leading with 12 and a half points. Our usual and still reigning champion OG has just 11 points. And Paula, she's just hanging out in the back with 8 1/2 points. Just like doing her whole 30 being dry October.

[Paula Pant]

It's sober October.

[Doug]

Sober October. Yes. That's why doesn't have enough of a buzz to get the trivia thing.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No, she thought we were talking dry as in can't get the answer right. Oh, it was alcohol. I thought it was trivia answers that.

[Paula Pant]

I wasn't supposed to.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, exact. Wait, what we're supposed to. Oh, I see. All right, so that is the score. Chris, you're going to guess first. Oh, geez. Going to guess second. Paula gets to guess third, which you would think would be an advantage, but after all these years I'm starting to wonder.

[Chris Luger]

It's not over yet. Come on.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But every week. Doug, you've got this week's question. What are we talking about today?

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's. Neighbor. And today, we celebrate the day a cheater was arrested. Don't worry, OG's not in handcuffs yet. But if you've ever golfed with him, you'd know his use of the unplayable lie rule is rather liberal. No, instead, I'm talking about Charles Van Doren, a popular contestant on an early TV quiz show from the 50s and 60s called 21, when he was accused of perjury for lies to a grand jury that he had not been given the answers ahead of time in order to boost ratings. Former champion Herb Stemple was told by producers to give intentionally wrong answers, while Van Doren was made to look incredible. I can assure everyone out there that when it comes to the stacking Benjamin's trivia, we have buttloads of integrity. Our contestants have zero idea what the answers to the question questions are going to be. And even if they did, they'd still get the answer incorrect. Right? Right, Paula?

[OG]

Right, Paula, this sounds a lot like the talking to that I got about always kicking everybody's butt at trivia. So go on, tell me more about this real life story of me being told to throw it on purpose.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

To.

[OG]

Make it more interesting, even.

[Doug]

I have no idea what the answers to these questions are going to gonna be, because, like Ron Burgundy, I just read what's in front of me, and I have no idea what I just said. Oh, I. Yeah, I see what you did there, Joe. Okay. But Van Doren, before he was caught, won a buttload of money. $129,000, to be exact. Or the equivalent of over $1.1 million today. I mean, that's a buttload of money, am I right?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Stop saying buttload like just. It's just a lot.

[Doug]

No, I'm not gonna stop saying buttload, because that's today's actual trivia question. Turns out that a buttload. I'm gonna squeeze as many of these as I can. Is an actual unit of measure. The term buttload. There's another one. Originates from medieval liquid measurements, specifically butts, which equate to two hogsheads. I mean, who didn't know that? So, stackers. How many imperial gallons equal a buttload of wine? I'll be back right after I go watch the video to see how Joe's mom keeps beating me at rummy. I'm sure that woman's channeling her inner Van Doren. All right, listen, I'm going to jump in here. All of you people watching us tape this, do not go Google it and put answers in the chat Right now, no matter how much you want to help out Paul.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Paul is wondering if you keep saying buttlobe because you have a colonoscopy scheduled soon.

[Doug]

Hey, those are great.

[Chris Luger]

Local.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, yeah. Don't talk about Doug's idea of a good time. Chris. A buttload of wine. How many imperial gallons of wine would that be, my friend?

[Chris Luger]

A buttload. I knew it was an actual measurement, but I had no idea if it was like a liquid measurement. Is it like, how do you measure dry goods? I don't know. So we're talking about gallons, huh?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Gallons. Imperial gallons.

[Chris Luger]

I think a buttload is nine gallons.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Nine gallons. Oh, gee, you think that's high or low?

[OG]

My original thought was five and a half, but I gotta make. Paula, make a decision here. So I'm thinking of like a barrel of wine. And medieval times. Would they have a barrel of wine? I don't know. So I'm going to say a barrel of wine is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 55 gallons. So I'm going to say 55 gallons is a buttload of wine.

[Chris Luger]

Wow.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So wait, your first guess was going to be five and a half, and then you go up to.

[OG]

Yeah, but it was just largely contingent on what Chris said. So since he said nine, I can't say 10 because Paul will say eight. And so I'm going to give her a number that she has to kind of really fiddle with, depending on what she thinks. Maybe she thinks it's 500 and she's like, oh, you idiots are way off.

[Chris Luger]

I don't know. Oh, gee. That seemed like you were using, like, data and smarts to figure that out. That's pretty. You did a pretty good job there.

[OG]

We'll see.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Like, wait, what? All right, Paula, you've got them. Chris has nine. Oh, gee, has 55.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. So my first question is, is this a base 10 measurement or a base 12 measurement? I feel like it would have to be a number divided.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's a buttload. It's all about the base and sheepsheads. Hogsheads.

[Doug]

Hogsheads.

[Paula Pant]

So, yeah, I believe that the number would be divisible by either threes and fours or twos and fives.

[OG]

Threes and fours. Yeah.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. So that it can be thirded or quartered. Ah. So we're talking the olden days when it was harder to transport things. So a 55 gallon drum of something would actually be a buttload. Yeah, like, it would be heavy enough that you could roll. You could turn it on its side and roll it without it gathering too much momentum down a steep hill.

[Doug]

What is happening right now?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Where is this going?

[Paula Pant]

You know, you could, you could take a 55 gallon drum and you can turn it on its side and roll it. And that would be an, a relatively reasonable method of transportation even if you did not have some alternate transportation. Right? Because imagine loading like a 55 gallon drum onto a, a wagon.

[Doug]

But if you cut that drum into thirds, it gets a lot lighter.

[OG]

It's like a third of a buttload.

[Doug]

Because all the liquid comes out.

[Chris Luger]

I love how overthinking Paula is. It's so great.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Don't they measure buttloads and halves?

[Paula Pant]

Possibly, possibly like right and left.

[Doug]

You cleave it.

[Paula Pant]

I'm going to take the, I'm gonna take the under a 55. So we'll go with 54.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

54. All right, so Paula with 54, OG with 55, Chris with nine. Who's right? We're gonna find out. Just a minute. This episode is sponsored by Navy Federal Credit Union. Buying a car could be like a long road trip. There's negotiating prices, lots of fees and a difficult process. But with the auto loan from Navy Federal, you're on the highway to higher savings. We want our members to save more on their next auto purchase. That's why we offer great rates, military discounts and pre approvals that are good for 90 days. Plus we offer most decisions in seconds. You could even get $200 when you refinance your auto loans from another lender with us. So if you want to save more on your next auto purchase, learn more and apply for an auto loan@navy federal.org Autoloans Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Credit and collateral subject to approval terms and conditions apply for military discounts. Refinance loan must be at least $5,000 to be eligible for the $200. Terms and conditions apply. Visit Navy federal.org autoloans for details.

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[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Chris, you opened this up with nine gallons, and OG went big to see which way Paula would go. She took the middle. You feeling good? You've got nine up somewhere into the mid-20s.

[Chris Luger]

I am not feeling good.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Not feeling good?

[Chris Luger]

No, I'm not.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

OG how about you? 55 gallons. Did your trick work?

[OG]

We'll find out. I was trying to figure out how big a hog's head would be. I've seen hogs. I've seen their heads, and then they don't seem like they would hold a lot.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

55 gallons doesn't seem.

[OG]

Yeah, but anyways, maybe that was just a phrase a. Of some kind. I don't know. But I wanted to give Paul a big enough number that she had to, like, make a choice. I honestly thought she wouldn't say 54, 56, or 10. I thought she'd say 27 or something.

[Chris Luger]

There is a brand of beer called Hogshead, isn't there?

[OG]

Yes. Yeah, I do recall that now that you say that. And all of a sudden, I'm super thirsty.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And OG make sure he has one and wet January every year. So Paul and you took 54. Feeling good.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, you know, I'm feeling mid because the. The issue is now OG has the entire upper range.

[OG]

I have all of infinity.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

He's got blue sky, Right?

[Paula Pant]

Exactly.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Blue sky.

[Paula Pant]

But I might have just seeded too much ground.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You know, for all the stackers that didn't hear it, we did put a joke in the question, which is that Paula convinced me to use a new social media app a couple weeks ago called. What's it called? Be Real.

[Paula Pant]

Be Real?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, be Real. Where you take a picture. So I took a picture that I was getting ready for the show last week, and Paula writes me and goes, hey, I can see the trivia in your. I can see the trivia in your thing. I know it's about Spiro Agnew, and I know it's about some date in October.

[Paula Pant]

I was very honest.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yes. And I was talking to Doug about it, and Doug's like, well, should we change it? I'm like, no, it's Paula. And sure enough, Paula still didn't.

[Paula Pant]

I still lost.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

She knew exactly where we were going last week with the trivia. Still did not win.

[Paula Pant]

I still lost, but I intentionally did not Google that or look that up. So I still lost.

[Chris Luger]

Yes, you lost with integrity, Paula.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, thank you.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Absolutely. Well, let's see which two of you are going to lose with integrity this week. Doug, what's our answer, man?

[Doug]

Hey there, Stackers. I'm trivia host and guy who apparently gets beat at cards fair and square. Says you, master. Joe's mom's neighbor died. While it turns out that I can drum up zero evidence of Joe's mom cheating, today we are celebrating the day a cheater was caught. Telling you, OG the sand trap rake cannot be used as a club length. Also, quiz show contestant Charles Van Doren, I remarked that he'd already pocketed a buttload of money. When Joe protested, Duff protested, I might add, that I shouldn't use such language. Unbeknownst to him, I actually looked up this week's trivia, and it turns out buttload is a true term of measurement. Now, I wasn't using it correctly, so we'll award Joe a couple of points because a buttload is a unit of measure for certain liquids. Not for Benjamin's. While a buttload of ale is 108 imperial gallons. That's for Alex. I asked how many imperial gallons make up a buttload of wine? Which isn't the same, of course. Duh. The correct answer is. Well, I'll say this. It's 117 more than what Chris guessed. It's 72 more than what Paula guessed and just 71 more than what OG guessed. Because the correct answer is a hundred and twenty six imperial gallons. Making golf cheater. OG our winner.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

OG sprinting back toward the front now.

[Doug]

Only a half back up. Just a half point back.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Half point back. We're. Jesse's had his coming in. And now, Paula, if you win the next five in a row, you'll be up there too, man.

[Paula Pant]

And 100. I. I wasn't even. The base 10, base 12 thing doesn't even work with that. 126 can be divided by three, but not by four.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But the whole idea of two hogsheads, like, oh, gee, you said this earlier, like a hogshead doesn't hold that much, which made me think Chris would be right in that one. Okay, nine gallons maybe, but 120something. Wow. All right, let's jump back into luck. And obviously it. I. I think we can apply luck to whoever wins our trivia each week, but we really don't want to Apply luck to our portfolio. And we started off this conversation by defining the argument to talking about how curiosity can make you luckier. But a second area, Chris, and we'll start with you. She points to this idea of if you look to give before you get, you're going to be luckier if I live to give. Did that resonate with you? It did.

[Chris Luger]

There's a lot of studies and science out there that the more generous you are, the more it comes back to you in a variety of ways. Right. It could be somebody helping you. It could doesn't have to be like monetary.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Right.

[Chris Luger]

And so I am a true believer of that. So that's definitely something that struck me for sure.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

It's interesting, Paula, because, you know, at the end of the first half, we were talking about who, not how. It seems you can build a network of who's easier if you're a giver.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, people like people who are generous in spirit. But it's also the case there's this thing called the Ben Franklin effect that people will like you more if you reach out to them and ask them for small bits of help occasionally. Nothing too onerous. But people generally, they like to both help and be helped, and that's part of building relationships. So the Ben Franklin effect comes from an observation that Ben Franklin made in which he noticed that if he asked somebody if he could just borrow a book, so a very simple request, then that person was a little bit more invested in him.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I've tried to start doing this by practice lately, putting things in my calendar to reach out to people and just ask about them and not make it transactional. Just look through my list of friends and try to be much more intentional curiosity. Because I have to tell you, I've noticed lately, the last several years, the last five years, I've spent a lot more time noticing that the people I like the best are just these people that are naturally curious, that are naturally givers, especially the more I get involved in my local community and you see it's the same group of people. It's a powerful thing. I do feel like, though, og, you know, as the professional here, when it comes to generosity, you know, you've said throughout this conversation, well, we got to draw a line somewhere. I think that some people are so generous they could take an advantage of like, do you see that sometimes with people in their financial plan that they get further ahead if they were such a damn giver?

[OG]

No, no. I think there's, I mean, when you say taken advantage of, I'm thinking about the person who is, you know, maybe too helpful to family or something.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Maybe, yeah, maybe.

[OG]

My kids need a car and it's like, well, they don't need a brand new Lexus. Like, your kids will be fine. You know, if your kid really needs a car. I get that you want to help, but it doesn't have to be, you know, $100,000 Mercedes. It could be a $25,000 Toyota. That will accomplish the goal of transportation as well. I don't know if that falls in the category of taking advantage, but I will say that people who, you said invest in people, people who spend a lot of time thinking about being intentional around any giving strategies, it seems to me that those people are the ones that are entrusted more to do more stuff with more stuff. It's like, you know, whether that's the universe, it's a spiritual being that you believe in. It's, you know, there's some sort of life force, I think, that says, hey, you've done good with what we've given you so far. Here's a little more. Let's see what you do with this. You know what I mean? Like, there just seems to be that and, and whether. I don't think that falls in the category of luck so much as it's. It's just being a good steward and you're just more responsible. Like people see other people's success, you know, and say, hey, that person's being very successful, being a very, you know, a good person by our standards of what that is. And so therefore, you know, here's more responsibility. They get lucky, you know, what are you going to say?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

They're just lucky. Just lucky because I was trustworthy in the past and because I give more away. That's quote, luck. Chris, did you ever see this, this book? I think it was an Oprah book read that was really controversial along maybe back in the, what, 90s, early 2000s. The secretary, you remember the secret?

[Chris Luger]

I know of it, yeah.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

This idea of money, karma, right? The idea that wealth flows back to people who contribute, they manifest. They manifest more. They manifest money. Do you think there's any truth to this secret that I ask the universe and then I become a giver and then money flows back to me.

[Chris Luger]

I am not really like a woo woo type person. Right. But I do feel as though I learned something very similar through Brian Tracy. Some of his books. You know, he has one called no Excuses, the Power of Self Discipline. And even in that book he talks about, you know, being charitable, being able to Give not only your time, but your money. And the more you give, the more people will give back to you in terms of whether it's money, whether it's time, whether it's help with something. So, like I said, I don't know. Like, my daughter's really big about manifesting, so she uses that term a lot, but it's just not my. My jam.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Paula. You think so?

[Paula Pant]

Manifesting, there's such a hippie connotation to it.

[Chris Luger]

It's not, have you met my daughter?

[Paula Pant]

Yeah. If I look past the terminology, to the root idea, the notion that what you want, what you strive for, you are more likely to get. Sure. But there's something. It's different words kind of either attract people or repel people. And there's something about manifesting that just. It's not me.

[OG]

It rubs you the wrong way. I was going to say, I don't like the phrase so much either because it feels like you didn't earn it. Maybe we're all achievers here, people that have been successful because we work really hard. But I think about it in the sense of attention. When you really focus your attention on one particular thing, then all of your energy and all of your mental bandwidth goes to how to solve this thing. Some people might say, I'm manifesting it, or you could just say, I'm paying a whole bunch. I'm manifesting healthy living. It's like. But if all I think about is eating healthy, eating healthy, eating healthy, working out, eating healthy, working out, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to eat healthy and I'm going to work out. And guess what? Then I'm going to look skinny and be jacked and tan. Okay. Is it because I manifested it or because that was in my brain the whole time and that's what I put all my energy on?

[Chris Luger]

You succeed at what you focus on, and if you're focusing on that, then that's what. That's what'll happen.

[OG]

You manifested it through hard freaking work. Although over the course of two decades.

[Chris Luger]

I also know people that'll burn this particular type of candle that's supposed to bring money, stuff like that. So who knows?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You don't do that, Chris.

[Chris Luger]

I do not do that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

No.

[Doug]

Burn something.

[OG]

I think Doug burns something to manifest stuff. He has all sorts of visions of sugar. Fun.

[Chris Luger]

I used to have a money tree, like an actual money tree. And it was back. Oh, you got one.

[Paula Pant]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

There it is.

[Paula Pant]

This right here. Money tree.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Mine died.

[OG]

Well, that explains a lot.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But it's funny, Chris, when you were talking and we talk about manifesting and OG you spoke about manifesting about really what we focus on. I think a lot of times our young stackers, that's the first thing they wonder is what, what should I be focused on? Right? And Kate addresses this at the bottom of her piece, which I also love talking about. The path often starts with this feeling of being lost. I go, gee, what do you say to our young stackers who are like, I'm not really sure what to focus on. Like, you know, you just said international. I should have stayed in. But how do I know to focus more on international? Like, what do you say to people that are looking to be, quote, a little lucky by figuring out what the real path is?

[OG]

But none of those things are things that you should spend any time on. I didn't say that you should spend time focusing on international or any of that sort of stuff. I said you should spend time focusing on the things that are important to you about what you want to do or be or become as you continue on your path. And if you're 25 years old and you have no idea what 65 looks like, I don't blame you because Joe's almost 65 and he has no idea what 65 looks like, you know, so it's a common thing.

[Doug]

Dude, that one was good. I applaud you for that one.

[OG]

Slow clap every episode. Bravo, sir.

[Doug]

That was a good one.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

That was better than most of them every episode.

[OG]

But I bet you could look at your, you know, the next five years of your work career and say, you know, I can see the people that are above me. I can see the career path. This is what I'd like to have my life look like. Or, you know, I'm in a relationship. I think I would like to have some children sometime, if that happens. That would be cool. And in 20 years I'm have to pay for college so I can spend some energy thinking about what that looks like or I want to buy a house or, you know, whatever it is. That's not that 30 year goal. It's. I mean, that's important. You got to have something way down the line. But you've talked about this a million times, Joe, that the fun part is planning the vacation. It's necessarily always being on the vacation. You know what I mean? It's like that's why you have one scheduled right now. You have something to look forward to. George Burns said that he's booked on his hundredth birthday because he had something to look forward to. So just have something out there to look forward to. It's not going to matter how much international stuff you have. And if that's the message you got, I apologize. That's not what I meant to say.

[Chris Luger]

Og, I like where you were going with that. And if we're looking at the younger stackers, how do we get those younger stackers to truly start looking at their future selves? They're doing this now for their future selves. I have a 25 year old and he can't look past next Tuesday. How do you start to do that?

[OG]

Well, I'm not sure that you can. I just think that you have to get out of whatever it is that's directly in front of you. And if you can pull something that's six months away, that's great. If you can pull something that's a year away, that's great. The reality is, Chris, to your point, 25 year olds only have 25 years of experience. They don't have experience of thinking about the next 25 years because they've only been in this first 25 years. So it's not really reasonable to assume that they're going to be able to project this thing out there for half a generation. But I do believe that if you get away from the day to day stuff and say, if I could draw this the way that I want and maybe that's the answer, if I could draw this the way that I want, what would I do? What would I keep that I have, what would I do a little differently.

[Chris Luger]

Got it.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I think that goes back to just getting out of home base because to be able to, you got to get out of your surroundings, I think, to be able to think that way. And I also think, Paula, that what OG's talking about is a combination of two things it seems to me, discipline and flexibility. I mean, on one hand being flexible because you know, he mentioned three things. He mentioned college. Well, how many people that are 18 are sitting on three different college choices? They don't know what they're going to be 12 months from now. Like you don't know if any of those are going to happen. Children. Well, who knows if that's going to happen. You know what's going to happen there. And then buying a house. You and I on afford anything. Talk to somebody who's like, I can afford a house and I don't want to move from my area. Like should I just plan on not having a house? How do we stay flexible so that as the world Tells us that these things aren't going to happen. We're flexible around that, but we still have the discipline to continue on building that stack.

[Paula Pant]

The person that you and I spoke to on Afford Anything, I think she's actually a really good example of someone, you know, she has spent the last eight years saving up for a down payment. And then she called us to say, hey, this is what prices look like in the area where I live. This is what prices look like in this other area. But it would be a two hour commute to get to work. And given the amount of money that I have, given the set of prices, given my goal of eventually, like she was from Australia, she was like, given my goal of eventually leaving Australia and living overseas for a while and then eventually coming back and retiring, she was like, given all of the circumstances and parameters, should I, even though I've been saving for this for eight years, should I do something else with this money? Should I just invest it and put it in the market and put it towards just market based portfolio growth? And what I see there is that combination of discipline and flexibility. So she has the discipline to save the money. She also has the flexibility to at all times reconsider whether or not her initial goal for that bucket of money is the correct one.

[Chris Luger]

Yeah, the goals changed after eight years or whatever. I mean, your goals can totally change.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're going through this right now with. My parents have a charitable endowment and we're rewriting the, the name and the mission statement of the endowment because the types of charities that they want to fund now is very different than the types of charities that they wanted to fund at the time that they started it. Right. And so that involves really restructuring and even renaming, going as far as to rename the whole thing. So again, it's that combination of structure, discipline, whatever you want to call it, with being able to have the flexibility to respond to changing times and shifting priorities.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I love the idea. I saw Christina Tosi, the famous creator of Milk Bar, I saw a video with her last week and she said that she would love to be able to ask people in interviews if they were a distance runner. And it was only because of the fact that she thought that Paul's like, I'm out.

[Paula Pant]

Yeah, I'm out.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

But distance runners like the infinite game, you're not, you're not a distance runner because you're looking to win something. You're out there because you like this infinite game of just being out there in nature running. And you could say the same for Hikers or people doing whatever. But she said it translates well into the kitchen. And I kind of think here as we wrap this up that what you're all kind of talking about is the infinite game of just saving and flexibility and being curious versus applying them to new goals as you have new things that come along. Steel off tees is hanging out with us and had something I thought that was really good here for our younger stackers. And they say, I'd say a 25 year old really only has like two to three years of experience. I think back to younger 20s. I struggled to see past a couple years ahead, much like Chris was talking about earlier. Now almost 40, it's easier to see potentialities over 20 years. So give yourself the grace to have time and just play the infinite game. I think over the short run, I love this idea of being curious. I think that is great. I like being comfortable being lost. I think that is cool. And then also the idea of giving before you get to increase your surface area for more luck in your life and with your money. I think that's a great place to leave it. Guys, I want to find out what's going on with all of you before we say goodbye. Oh, gee, this fine mid October weekend on tap. What do you got coming up, brother?

[OG]

Oh, this is my fall break I was telling you guys about. What you were supposed to say is, don't you have a fall break coming up?

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Don't you have a fall break coming up?

[OG]

Sorry, I'm in the middle of it right now. This is our annual golf tournament that I play with my cousin who is fantastic golfer and fun to play with. So he's. He's hanging out right now. And Doug, have you played golf with.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

OG's brother one time? I have.

[Doug]

It was memorable.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You'd accuse him of cheating too.

[Doug]

What does that mean? There actually was an incident that day. We almost came to fisticuffs.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Wow.

[OG]

Wow. What are you talking about? Well, this is not my brother. This is. This is my cousin who's playing who is not a cheater. And I think, Doug, you have played with my cousin too. Maybe I have not.

[Doug]

I have not played with your cousin. But there was a day with you and Steak. I think it was steak, brother. And. And Jim.

[OG]

Yeah, you may recall I vaguely remember the finishing hole, but I don't remember anything else about the round. Anyway, so we're playing golf for four days. Just having a great time and happy to. Happy to be able to do that.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Awesome. Paula, what's going on at the Afford Anything podcast here mid October.

[Paula Pant]

Oh, on the Afford Anything podcast. So we've got an interview with Doug and Heather Bonaparte. Doug is famous for his. Sorry, yeah, for his hair, for his hilarious Twitter feed. But he's basically a jokester. He has very, very funny tweets about money, but in a more serious realm. He and his wife Heather wrote a book about being a married couple trying to figure out money and life together in the context of a family and in the context of a couple. And so that is what we're talking about. We've also got Q and A episodes. Roughly every other episode is a Q and A with you, Joe. So you and I answer audience submitted.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Questions with Douglas and Heather. I know a lot of people have told us as we've gone around the country that people like listening to our interviews because they're kind of a good a B. I'll be talking to Douglas and Heather as well. But we, we're saving them for Halloween week where we talk about relationship and money horror stories. Oh, with the Bonapartes. Yes.

[Paula Pant]

Nice.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So, and again, Paul and I talking to the same people about different things. So I think it's a good one, two punch. Speaking of the guy, that's a one, two punch. Whenever we come to a heavy metal concert, I don't even. That doesn't make any sense. But Chris, than for hanging out, man, what's coming up at Heavy Metal Money?

[Chris Luger]

Yeah, so just recently dropped the Extreme Personal Finance show with Lauren Almond, a friend of mine, that she was able to hit a millionaire status by the age of 31. She was able to retire by the age of 33. She has a portfolio of short term and long term rentals as well as portfolio investments. So that was really cool. I just recently recorded an episode with Sean Mulaney. We're going to talk all about taxes, but also more importantly all about charitable giving. So we're going to talk about donor advised funds, QCDs, tax implications, stuff like that. So that'll be really cool. And then I have another episode coming up by someone that we're going to talk about how to get ahead and have a professional career without even a college diploma. So getting your ged, you didn't get a college degree, but you're still able to keep moving forward and build a great career and family with that. So I'm excited. We got some good stuff coming up.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

And that's in the Extreme Personal Finance show, wherever you get it.

[Chris Luger]

And on YouTube.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Yeah, the YouTube stuff is fun as well for the Extreme Personal Finance show and by the way you and I have a project we do together. If you're in the Twin Cities, you want to come hang out with Chris and our buddies Veronica, Mike, and some other people?

[Chris Luger]

Absolutely. Yeah. So the third Wednesday of every month, we meet in person here in the Twin Cities area and we talk about all sorts of different money topics. We have Q and A and trivia with a great group of people. And it's super fun to get in real.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

In real life.

[Chris Luger]

Getting together with people is awesome.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

You get to hang out with Heavy Metal Chris and other stackers in the Twin Cities. So you just look up stacking Benjamin's Twin Cities on Facebook and there's. We have a private Facebook group there, and it's super fun. But I can't wait. I'll be back up there next summer to party with you guys as well. But you've got a great holiday party coming up. I know you're gonna throw axes, which for a bunch of money nerds, I'm not sure that's advisable.

[Chris Luger]

We did the last holiday and it was so much fun. Oh, my gosh, it was a blast.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

So, so fun. All right, guys, that's gonna do it. Thanks for hanging out, everybody, on YouTube. If you want to join us on YouTube, we do this on Monday. I love celebrating Fridays on Mondays. Talking about what are we doing for the weekend on Monday. So come join us. It's in the afternoon on Mondays. And if you get the 201 newsletter, we'll send you an email that will tell you that we're what time we're we're going live and it's either 3:30 Eastern or 5:00pm Eastern. Check the week that we're doing it, but it's usually one of those two times. If you go to our YouTube page and subscribe, you'll be able to find it there. All right, Doug's got it from here. Doug, what are the three big takeaways we should have had after today's show?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, here's what's stacked up on our to do list for today. First, take some advice from Chris Luger. Want to find more luck? Be curious, not judgmental. If you're curious, maybe you'd have asked him questions. Questions like, have you played a lot of darts, Chris? To which he would have answered, yes, sir, every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age 10 until I was 16. Somebody listening will get that reference.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

Don't worry.

[Doug]

Second, I got it.

[OG]

Got it.

[Doug]

Learn from.

[Joe Saul-Sehy]

I got no idea.

[Chris Luger]

Paula.

[Paula Pant]

Nope.

[Chris Luger]

No.

[Paula Pant]

No clue. No clue.

[Doug]

Second learn from Paula's mistake Mistakes don't try to combine dry January with Whole 30 unless it's court ordered and you're being watched by your parole officer. But the big lesson? Don't even try to explain to Joe's mom that a buttload is a unit of measure. So she'll ask you just how many bars of soap a buttload equals for your mouth. Thanks to Chris Luger for joining us today. You'll find Chris's Heavy metal money on YouTube or wherever you're listening. Listening to us right now. You'll also find him leading a Stacking Benjamin's meetup in the Twin Cities each month. Come by and say hello. We'll also include links in our show [e-mail] thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You'll find her fabulous podcast Afford Anything wherever you listen to Finer Podcasts. And finally, thanks also to OG for joining us today. Looking for good Finer financial planning help? Head to stackingbenjamins.comog for his calendar. This show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025 and is created by Joe Saul Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media media spots. Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.