What to Do With Your Money When the Market Is Scaring Everyone Else (SB1822)

Summary

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Episode Overview

Title: What to Do With Your Money When the Market Is Scaring Everyone Else
Podcast: The Stacking Benjamins Show (Ep. 1822)
Release Date: March 30, 2026
Main Theme:
How to handle your money—and your emotions—when the market gets fearful, volatility is high, and everyone seems to be panicking. Hosts Joe Saul-Sehy and OG provide practical strategies, rules-based thinking, and behavioral hacks to keep your investing on track, supported by expert insights. The episode also features an in-depth segment on building a personalized emergency fund.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Do Investors Panic in Down Markets?

(08:31–16:11)

• Pressures of Modern Investing:
  Joe and OG discuss how easy access to information has made it more tempting for investors to act emotionally during market downturns.
  • "If you aren't selling your stock today, who gives a crap what the stock price is worth? It's complete noise..." — OG (10:58)
• Media and Action Bias:
  Media's role is to keep you watching, not to help you invest wisely. Seeing prices update constantly creates an impulse to do something, even when doing nothing is often the best choice.
  • "Their purpose is to sell advertising...If CNBC would tell you what you needed to do, the channel would run about seven minutes a day." — OG (11:44)

2. Understanding Market Volatility—The Statistical Perspective

(14:19–18:50)

• Average Market Declines:
  Statistics show intra-year drops in the S&P 500 average 14%. Most years still end positive, and over 10- and 20-year periods, odds of positive returns are overwhelming.
  • "If, on average, you could look at your statement and be down 14%...75% of the years you finish positive..." — OG (15:35)
• "Down 5% Shouldn’t Even Register"
  A 5% drop is nowhere near abnormal—perspective and patience are key.
  • "We’re not even to average yet." — OG (16:17)

3. How to Know When to Act vs. When to Hold Steady

(18:50–24:11)

• Rules-Based Approaches:
  Rather than react emotionally, set fixed rules:
  • Only review portfolio on predetermined dates (e.g., twice a year).
  • Automate investments between those reviews.
  • Rebalance only when a set threshold is exceeded (e.g., market down more than 14%).
  • "Rule number one is I'm only going to look at this two days a year..." — Joe (17:43)
• Investment Policy Statement:
  Write your personalized rules down—including when you’ll review, triggers for action, and your asset allocation. This minimizes emotion-driven mistakes.

4. Behavior and Motivation: Protecting Against “Dumb Mistakes”

(24:30–28:01)

• Guard Against “This Time Is Different”:
  It's easy to make short-term exceptions, but history proves time and again that sticking to your system out-performs emotional action.
• Look Back to Move Forward:
  Review your financial journey (e.g., past tax returns, retirement balances) for perspective on your compounding success.
  • "I love witnessing this in real time. And you can only do it if you keep track of stuff and you look backwards." — OG (25:21)
• Buffett/Munger Wisdom:
  Your job is to “not get in the way of compounding.”

5. Building an Emergency Fund: A Scientific (and Personal) Approach

(32:28–40:24) – With Anna, the Show’s Financial Expert

• Rejecting the Usual “3-6 Months” Rule:
  The team considers this traditional advice "stupid"—not tailored for individual circumstances.
  • "The three to six month rule of thumb is stupid. Very ultra stupid." — OG (32:59)
• Four-Factor Framework for Emergency Funds:
  1. Income Concentration: Single vs. dual income? Multiple jobs? (Add 0-2x monthly expenses)
  2. Income Stability: Salary vs. variable/commission/entrepreneur/investment-based? (Add 0-2x)
  3. Re-Employment Risk: How easy is it for you to get a job if you lose yours? (Add 0-2x)
  4. Expense Flexibility: Can you cut costs easily if needed? (Add 0-2x)
• Practical Example:
  OG calculates his own emergency fund multiplier live, showing how high-risk scenarios may require up to nine months—or more—of expenses.
  • "Very easy for somebody to sit down and figure this out, right?" — OG (39:24)

6. Community Connection & Listener Call-Out

(28:01–29:08)(40:24–43:31)

• Listeners are invited to share their own experiences with financial policy statements and avoiding mistakes via voicemail for an upcoming episode.
• Announcements about upcoming meetup events and community engagement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Market Noise:
  "If you paid attention to it every week or God forbid, every day...you were freaking out. But by the end of April it was pretty much a non-event. And by May, everybody was back to even again." — OG (22:00)

• On Discipline:
  "The stock market is one of the few things where when we don't take action, we're doing the right thing." — Joe (13:06)

• On Setting Guardrails:
  "If the market goes outside a band, there's no reason not to rebalance your portfolio. So now we put a new rule in..." — Joe (23:04)

• On Personal History:
  "Go look at your tax return from your first job…See the money you've made over your career…The only way to measure that stuff is by looking backward." — OG (25:25)

• On Emergency Fund Rules:
  "You should never have less than 3x expenses...then add for risk." — Anna (34:33, 38:33)
  "The least you get is 3x. The most you get to is 11x [monthly expenses]." — OG (40:11)

• On Avoiding Mistakes:
  "The biggest thing that you're trying to protect against…is interrupting this magical process of compounding." — OG (25:51)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |--------------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 08:31–14:19 | Why do individual investors sell at the wrong time? | | 14:19–18:50 | Understanding typical market declines and action bias | | 17:43–24:11 | Crafting investment rules & policy statements | | 24:30–28:01 | Behavioral tips & historical perspective on progress | | 32:28–40:24 | Emergency fund deep dive with Anna and OG | | 40:24–43:42 | Community meetup announcements & listener engagement |

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Takeaways & Practical Steps

• Automate and Schedule: Only review investment statements on predetermined dates—not in reaction to headlines.
• Write Your Rules (Investment Policy Statement): Specify when you'll review, when you'll rebalance, and your asset allocation ahead of time.
• Tune Out the Noise: Daily swings are part of the process; “do nothing” is often the right move.
• Personalize Your Emergency Fund: Move beyond generic advice—use the four-factor framework.
• Reflect and Celebrate Progress: Look at your financial trajectory for motivation.

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Final Thoughts

The episode encourages listeners to resist emotional reactions, ignore daily market drama, and adopt disciplined, rules-based investing—while redefining how to personalize an emergency fund. The team’s trademark banter and friendly tone make a sometimes scary topic approachable and actionable.

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For Further Engagement

• Want your investing questions answered on air? Submit at stackingbenjamins.com/voicemail
• Curious about your investment strategy score? Try the show’s scorecard: stackingbenjamin.com/scorecard

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Best Quote of the Episode:
"Your job is to not get in the way of the compounding." — OG (paraphrasing Buffett/Munger, 25:51)

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Transcript

[Joe]

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[OG]

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[Anna]

Zootopia has a secret reptile population.

[Joe]

You can watch the record breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2 now available on Disney. Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney and hulu for just 4.99amonth for three months with a special limited time offer. Ends March 24th. After three months, Plan Auto renews at $12.99 a month. Terms apply.

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[Joe]

Happy Monday, Stackers. We begin this Monday like we begin every Monday, with our shout out to some people doing amazing work in the Middle east and around the world. Here's to our troops. On behalf of the men and women, make a podcast in Mom's basement. And the men and women who are hanging out with us. Here's to our troops. Let's all go stacks benchmarks together now, shall we?

[Doug]

Thanks everybody.

[OG]

At some point far in the future, historians will probably ask, what was daily life like in the early 21st century? Well, one thing we know for sure, nobody will ever point to these two clowns and say, this was how you should have been stacking Benjamins.

[Doug]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we've hoped that cooler heads would prevail. But nope. Time for us to address the elephant in the room. This stock market. How do you protect your money when good times go bad? We've got ideas, strategies and tactics, so grab some paper. We'll also share the latest guidance on financial planning basics from Og and Anna. And of course, I'd never leave you without first bestowing upon you a sliver of my delectable homemade money themed trivia. And now two guys who took the dress like your parents theme a little too far. It's Jo and O. Jaja Jaja G.

[Joe]

And Happy Monday to you. And you know what? My dad was a snappy Dresser, I'm sure, OG Your dad was a snappy dresser as well.

[OG]

He had snaps on his dresses. That's right.

[Joe]

Was perfect. Welcome to a Monday show of the Snacking Benjamin Show. And you know what? Today is a big day, OG because last week we talked to a couple phenomenal researchers about the. The stock market and how great stock market investors work. And today what I wanted to do is dive further into that because of the fact it is a time when a lot of investors generally do dumb things. As of the time that we're recording this, the s and P500 is down about five and a half percent. And so this is not the time when we see people doing excellent things we start seeing bubbling up on social media. What do I do now? How do I not look at my statement every day? How do I stop hitting refresh on the news? All of these things we're going to dive into how to do that on today's show. And oh, gee, I know that this is something that you do daily in your financial planning practice.

[OG]

Should be easy for me to rage against the machine is what you're saying. Got it.

[Joe]

It should be easy, but it took you a while to get to that point. And I know stackers, if you're feeling all these emotions about the market and about your money, you know what? It takes you a while to think the opposite, which is this is the time to lock into your system.

[OG]

Back the truck up. That's your favorite phrase.

[Joe]

Maybe not even back the truck up. Back the truck up either.

[OG]

She created a list. Doug. Earmuffs. Joe. Earmuffs. Doug, you and I should create a list of things that Joe hates to say or hear and just have an entire episode of us just doing that. Okay, you can, you can listen again,

[Joe]

Joe, this, this is going downhill fast. So we're gonna do that in just a moment with an introduction from maybe our favorite columnist. Doug, you mentioned this during our prep for this episode, Jason's week. He should just get co host credit, I think, is what you said.

[Doug]

I mean, I guess when you're good, you're good. The guy produces great stuff and we like to reference them because it's quality.

[Joe]

We're going to dive into how to react, how to respond, how to make your moves when the markets are a shaken. But first we have a couple sponsors to help us keep on keeping on. We're going to hear from them and then OG Doug and I going to get into helping you maybe make some better investment decisions. Del. PCs with intel inside are built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't there for those all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken the times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you, built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for an outlet and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you [e-mail] Dell PCs built for you I had a breakfast mentoring meeting yesterday with a young woman who was just amazing. She is graduating from college with a degree in wealth management and she reached out hoping for some pointers. And listen, if somebody's in Texarkana and wants to go into this beautiful field of personal finance and helping people get their money together, that is incredible. But even more incredible is how she reached out, how she was trying to network and I was having a discussion that finding the right person and avoiding the wrong person for a role, that's what can make or break an organization. And we just don't see that many qualified people. So how do you find them? Well, Indeed Sponsored Jobs is a boost whenever you need to find quality talent. If you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. You can stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites you'll match with quality candidates with Indeed. Sponsored Jobs. Get matched with and higher quality candidates who can drive the results you need. Reach candidates who meet your specific criteria like skill, certifications or location. Drives me crazy when I'm matched with all kinds of people who aren't a fit. I don't have that kind of time. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now in the minute I've been talking to you. Companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed data worldwide, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non. Sponsored jobs. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed. Sponsored Job and here's what's cool. Stackers. You're going to get $75 in sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support Stacking Benjamins by saying you heard about Indeed right here at stacking Benjamin's and Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring. Do it the right way with Indeed.

[OG]

Hello, darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin's Headlines.

[Joe]

Our headline today comes to us from Jason's wig. A couple weeks ago, OG we were talking about private equity. And around that time was when I read this piece by Jason. Smart money, dumb money. It's all just money. And he was diving into why we don't want to invest, like the 1%, why we don't want to maybe get into investments that lock us up. But he mentioned this in that piece. With markets in turmoil over the war in Iran, who's going to bail at the bottom? Conventional wisdom has the answer. Individual investors, of course, which is sadly OG the case. Because like we heard last week when we were talking about stock market maestros, the maestros don't make these mistakes. The pros don't make these mistakes. The pros make a lot of mistakes, as they mentioned, but they don't make the mistake of bailing at the bottom. Why is it so easy for the individual investor to bail at the wrong time?

[OG]

I think some of this just has to go back to access and really, I think back to a lesson that I learned years and years and years ago. Joe, I think you might remember this guy's name. Do you remember Don Connolly from Putnam?

[Joe]

I do remember Don Connolly.

[OG]

He used to make the Don Connolly tapes. He was the sales manager for Putnam. And you'd get the cassette tapes. He had a great story one time about the history of pricing stocks and more specifically, around the access of those prices. Cause what used to happen, right, is you'd say, I want to buy 100 shares of Ford. You'd go to the broker, you'd give them some money. Some days later, you'd get a thing in the mail that had your stock certificate, and you'd file that away at the bank or in your safety deposit box or in your safe. And then sometime in the future, you'd say, I need to sell this. And you'd go back to the broker and give them the certificate. Some days later, somebody would send you a check. It wasn't like, instantaneous. What the powers that be decided was that it would be a benefit to redeeming shareholders to post stock prices in the newspaper. So the Wall Street Journal started posting the closing prices of stocks as a courtesy to redeeming shareholders, right? Hey, if you sold today, you probably don't even know what you sold it for because you literally dropped the paper off and waited. And, you know but here. Here's a rough idea of what this was. And so you can see how that was. You know, and that's in the 40s and 50s, right? That's a long time ago. But you can see how that's changed to. Not only is it a courtesy to redeeming shareholders, it's also a discourtesy to people who aren't redeeming. Because the reality is, is that if you aren't selling your stock today, who gives a crap what the stock price is worth? It's complete noise in the whole picture of everything because you're not doing anything with that information. And we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. When you get inundated with information, your natural instinct is, I want to do something with that information. And if you think about. Put your tinfoil hat on for just a second and you go to CNBC or Fox Business or whatever, your jam is, Wall Street Journal even, and go, what's their purpose? Is their purpose to be helpful, educate, provide information? Hell, no. Their purpose is to sell advertising. That's it. That's all they're trying to do, is to get people to buy the stuff or stay long enough to watch the ads, because that's how they make money. They don't make money from anything else. Not. Not a lot anyway. So if I'm a newscast producer for one of these channels, or I'm a newspaper person, or I'm a blogger, or I'm some sort of person that's tied into this, I want you to do something so that you're staying with this information. I don't remember who said this. It might have been Warren Buffett. Somebody said something along the lines of, if CNBC would tell you what you needed to do, the channel would run about seven minutes a day and just go, yep, still the same thing as yesterday. Buy really good stuff, hold it forever. That's all, folks. We'll see. We'll see you again tomorrow. So when you see the stock prices on a daily basis, or, God forbid, something more frequently than on a daily basis, your brain's instinct is, I gotta.

[Joe]

I gotta go.

[OG]

I'm supposed to do something with this information.

[Joe]

I gotta move.

[OG]

There's something there. They wouldn't be feeding me this if they didn't want me to do something, right? And it's just that panic, fear, you know, whatever those activating emotions are around, like, I need to do something. And it works both ways, right? We see it on the upside, too. You think you have to do something. But today we're talking about downside.

[Joe]

I think all that's compounded as well, OG by our bias as humans toward action. Like if we don't take action, right? People are lazy when they don't take action. They are complacent when they don't take action. And so we identify those traits with all kinds of behaviors. And yet the stock market is one of the few things where when we don't take action, we're doing the right thing. I mean, there's that old quote that's been attributed to many different people. I may have even attributed to different people just that I've failed more often than the average person has tried is the quote. And I'm sure we've all heard that you think, okay, I just fail forward. There's another one, fail forward, right? Yet with stocks, we have a bias toward action. It is incredibly, incredibly difficult. That doesn't mean that we don't take action, that we never take action. So I think maybe we need to pull back OG and to think about, well, when do we take action? When is the right time for us to take action? If you and I are sitting here saying now might not be the right time to take action, maybe we're saying that, maybe we're not, I'll ask you that too. How do we determine when the right time is to take action? And what's the foundation of that action that we take?

[OG]

I think first you want to look at what are we talking about in terms of reality. JP Morgan does a great research report on a monthly basis. They update a lot of data and a lot of slides. It's called J.P. morgan's Guide to the Markets. And you can go online and you can Google this and flip through all these slides, but usually somewhere in the first 10 or 12 slides they have a slide called that's about the average range, returns and inter year declines on this, this quarter or this month. It's on slide 16. And what it does is it charts out for the last basically 40 years. Here's the returns of the S and P. And as you can imagine, it's a bar chart and it's got some good years and some crappy years and lots of really good years and lots of middle years and so on, so forth. And it just goes across from 1980 till present. And then it also shows that the intra year decline and just to kind of define what that looks like, it's basically where was the high water mark of the year. And then, you know, we know that the stock market goes up and down but you know, sometimes it goes down, but it still can go down and finish up for the year. Right. You could be up 10 from January through December, but in June be down 5. Right. Like right now you said the S and P is down five and a half for the year. We could finish the year up 10. It's just right now we're down 5.

[Joe]

Right.

[OG]

So that's the intra year decline. So the average intra year decline of the s and P500 is 14%. And so if, if, if we know that on average an average year, you could look at your statement and be down 14%. Let's say you invest all in the S and P. That's average. And you know that 75% of the years you finish positive. And you know, 99% of the 10 year times you're positive and 100% of the 20 year times you're positive, 5% shouldn't even register. It's not even a part at which we're to average yet. Does that make sense?

[Joe]

Yeah, we're just over a third of the way down on an average year down.

[OG]

Yeah, because it goes up and down every day and sometimes it goes down for consecutive days in a row. And okay, we're not even to average yet. So should we be doing something with the minus 5 or minus tens or minus 15s? The answer is yeah, maybe, maybe it's a good time to rebalance. Maybe it's a good time to tax loss, harvest. Maybe it's a good time to deploy more money. I said back up the truck. That's your favorite phrase as it relates to investing. If you have a chance. If you're like, I'm sitting on some cash and I was thinking about investing it either on April 1 or March 30 and the market is down, just put the money in. You know, it doesn't mean that it's going to not go lower from here. But it's already 5% cheaper than it was January 1st. And you thought it was a good idea on January 1st to put your money in.

[Joe]

I'm trying to listen as a beginner to all this OG and I still think that a lot of this we just need to guard against, we need to guard against any, back the truck up any. I put money in at random times, I don't think about it, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like I, I kind of think I need to guard against all that, which is why I think maybe, and tell me if I'm wrong here. The first rule of an investment policy statement, which is what we call it in the industry. But if you're brand new to this, what an investment policy statement is is a series of rules that you're creating for yourself. Rule number one is I'm only going to look at this two days a year and I schedule those two days ahead of time. I schedule them at a time when I have no idea when the market's going to be up, no idea when the market's going to be down. Their arbitrary days on purpose so that I don't back the truck up, so to speak, which can be dangerous if I choose, you know, whatever data to make that move or I'm going to pull the money out on X days. I'm not going to make those moves. I'm going to look at it twice a year. I'm going to look at it on arbitrary days. And that is, and that is it. Those are the days when I'm going to make my moves is only during the those times other than those two days. Maybe I'm completely automated, meaning I'm still investing, but my investing is automated. Besides those two days, what do you think about that for a brand new person just starting out? Because I feel like then we avoid market timing. We're beginning to get the idea of a rules based approach versus an emotional approach. We can feel the emotion but go no, it's not July 18th yet. And that's the day I don't do anything till July 18th. Like I feel like we start to put these guardrails on ourselves to begin getting out of this emotional game that a lot of us play.

[OG]

There's no statistical evidence to suggest that rebalancing anything more frequently than once a year provides any additional benefit. I think you can make the case that if you were aware that the market was down 10% and you could do a tax loss swap between one fund and another to capitalize some of that loss. Perhaps I think you can make a case for why that would be beneficial to know or to do. But I like the idea of having pre prescribed dates in mind of here's when I look at it with the asterisk of if anything. This is kind of like my philosophy around the news. Because if you ever watch the news, there's never good stuff. The last thing is always about puppies. But everything between you know, the opening headline and last thing the is all garbage. Like even if the weather's like 75 and sunny, you know, it's beautiful day. They're like we haven't had rain in forever.

[Joe]

You know, so we're all gonna.

[OG]

You're like, but it's 75. It's like, can we just have a nice day? You know, like.

[Joe]

Or there's rain on the horizon. Either we haven't had rain in forever, or get it while you can, because we only got 36 hours of this.

[OG]

Yeah, yeah. The pattern is changing and, you know, the northwest low is gonna cripple the, the south corner of the, you know, whatever. It's stupid, but my philosophy on the news is that generally speaking, if anything major happens, you're going to find out about it in other contexts. Like, you could be completely off everything and you would still know there's stuff going down in the Middle east right now. Right. Like, it would just come up in conversation. You know, there was an airplane accident in LaGuardia. As we record this, it was yesterday. But, you know, as you're listening to this is a week ago, I don't watch the news. I found out because somebody asked me about it and I went, hm, let me look. And I looked and I was like, interesting. You don't need to be plugged into this stuff all the time. So if the market's down 20, if you're like, well, I know, but what if I miss the fact that the market's down 20%? Could tax. Trust me, you'll hear about it, you'll know, somebody will mention it. And then if you go, okay, I can look in the context of being productive, but if it's set to auto refresh on your desktop or. You know what I mean, like, gross.

[Doug]

Well, that's a case where if somebody mentions it to you, like, hey, it was down 20 the other day. Be glad that you're. You have a big lag time between when it happened because then you're less likely to react to it. It might have responded recovered by then.

[Joe]

That's a good point, Doug. You're like, it's already four days old or three days old or even two days old. You're like, oh, it's too late. Even though it was too late out the gate. You know what I mean? Your brain actually goes, well, I don't have, you know, there's nothing to do here.

[OG]

Yeah, I mean, this is very real. This, this actually happened last year. If all you did was look at your statements on March 31st of 2025, April 30th of 2025, and May 31st of 2025, if that's all you knew were just those three statements and the dollar amounts of your portfolio, you'd go, huh, Looks Like April was kind of a meh month. That's all you would have gotten out of that.

[Joe]

Would have never seen the check knife.

[OG]

If you, if you, if you paid attention to it every week or God forbid, every day on April 7, you were freaking out. You're like, oh my God, the economy's crashing and the tariffs are going to take all our money. And you know, but by the end of April was nothing. It was, it was pretty much a non event. And by May, everybody was back to even again.

[Joe]

You know, the thing that the maestros said, or the maestro researchers told us last week, Claire and Lee, was that these maestros start out with an idea and then instead of making moves, they work on the machine and the machine makes better moves. So I really like what you did with what I said there. Oh, gee. Which was, let's say that I only look at it twice a year. Then the first thing you said was, well, there's no evidence to show that looking at it twice a year is going to give you any efficacy. Just looking at it once a year is, is good. So now that I've got the twice a year in my brain, well, do I make it once a year? We can tweak the machine and see if that's a better approach. And then the second thing that you said was, well, also if we go outside of this is what I heard, not exactly what you said, but if the market goes outside a band, there's no reason not to rebalance your portfolio. So now we put a new rule in that says, hey, I, I set up these triggers online that will alert me. And it's easy now to do this with AI. It's easy to do it in a lot of the, the brokerage account places. I set up this trigger that if it goes beyond, let's say 14%, the number goes beyond 15%, I will rebalance my portfolio. And we can talk about what that means for beginners here in a minute. Now, I've got another rule. So instead of just rebalancing once, I'm setting up these rules that go, nope, I'm only looking at it once a year. And unless it goes beyond 15% down, in which case I rebalance to my original strategy. And then the next question I ask is, what is my original strategy? And what's that, what's that based on? And I once again write all that down. I think this might be a great place to begin an investment policy statement to get away from this. What's the market going to do tomorrow? Fed going to Change things. OG what's going to go on?

[OG]

What is Fed? I don't.

[Joe]

Who is Fed?

[OG]

Fred. You mean Fred. Is Fred going to change things? I'm not sure.

[Joe]

Yeah, that damn Fred.

[OG]

Fred. It's like the Fed's version of Doug. They just call him Fred.

[Doug]

The friendly face of a tough organization, just like us. The analogy is perfect, pretty much.

[Joe]

But I think that would substantially change the game Stackers if we started off with the set rules and then worked backwards from there to. What are my exceptions? Because I feel like. OG we spend our days as individual investors making exceptions. Well, right. How many times have you heard this in online forums this time or in meetings? This time is different, though. This isn't like all those other times. This time is different. When then a year later we find out, you know what? It was different, but it was exactly 100% the same thing.

[OG]

As I think about a lot of this stuff, I really kind of think about it from the concept of behavior and how to put yourself in a position to make really good decisions. You've talked about it before, Joe, around health and running. It's like half the battle is just putting your running shoes on. You're not committing to running. You're just like, I'll just put socks and shoes on and just see what happens after that. I'm there with the cycling right now. I'm on week five or something. There's 15 weeks to go and I'm like, I just have to like literally put my clothes on and. And just go stand in the garage and maybe, just maybe, I will get on that damn thing and ride it for four hours or whatever to do for the day. The interesting thing around behavior and your money and I've. I love witnessing this in real time. And you can only do it if you keep track of stuff and you look backwards. But I would encourage. This is a great time to do this. Everybody's looking at their taxes right now. People are filing or kind of elbow deep in that. Go find your tax return. If you're old enough to do this, go find your tax return from 2010. Go find your tax return from your first job. Or go on the Social Security website. You know, you're supposed to do this anyway. SSA.gov, right? Check your earnings history, make sure it's up to date and that sort of thing. Go take a look at that and see the money that you made over your career and just spend a few moments in that and like watching how that number changed. And some of you may be like, oh, those are the glory days. But probably for most of you, it's like, oh, yeah, I remember that year. I remember 2003 when I made 40 grand and I felt like king of the world. I had so much money, it was insane. And now you make 140,000, right, or 240,000 or whatever the number is. And the only way to measure that stuff is by looking backward. When you do it in the context of your financial plan, it puts a real big perspective on progress. And that's really the biggest thing that you're trying to protect against when you're making decisions around your money is interrupting this magical process of compounding. I think Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger said that's your job, is to not get in the way of the compounding. And if you can set up the guardrails like you're talking about or the motivation, which is maybe what I'm leaning on right now to say, I just have to stay out of the way and this will work. Just don't do anything dumb. Avoid the dumb mistake of getting out or doing, you know, stopping my contributions or whatever the case may be. And the way that you prove yourself, prove it to yourself rather, is to go look at your financial plan from before. Go look at your 401k balance in 20. You know, 2009, when you were putting in 3200 bucks a year and the account balance was 11,000, and you went, there's no way we'll ever get to a million. And now you've got a million two, and you're putting in 25,000 and your spouse is putting in 25,000. You're like, this is amazing progress. Don't screw it up now. You're doing great. Trick yourself, Stackers.

[Joe]

How do you avoid making the dumb mistakes? We'd love to hear from you about doing that. What struggles have you had on your investment policy statement? We're about to do another full episode answering your questions with Anna. That's coming up in about three weeks. So stackybenjamins.com voicemail a lot of Anna lately is much better than us, man. Much better than us. We have Anna coming up in just a moment, but give us your take. Stack benjamin.com voicemail and we'd love to feature you. And how do you have you set up your investment policy statement? How do you avoid mistakes or what mistakes are you struggling with that? Maybe our stackers can help. The hive mind can help you think about. And then also just your questions in general. We need those for an upcoming episode stacky benjamin.com/voicemail. Every episode at the halfway point, we have money themed trivia so you can show your friends just how smart you are around the water cooler. And guess what? That's up right now with mom's neighbor Doug.

[Doug]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And a big happy birthday to singer songwriter Tracy Chapman, who famous famously penned a song called Fast Car. I don't mean to brag, but I also have a fast car. Tracy. My El camino goes from zero to sexy in less than three seconds. Oh, the phrase is zero to 60. Yeah, that takes a little bit longer. But let's speed toward today's trivia question. If you've got a fast car and you get pulled over by your local sheriff, Buford T. Justice, it's probably gonna eat into your stack of Benjamins. What do you call the fee you pay to an insurance policy that probably is gonna go up now that you have some traffic points on your record? I'll be right back with your answer. After I go text Sergeant Simpson down at Texarkana police headquarters and tell him how much his service is appreciated.

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[Joe]

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[Joe]

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[Doug]

Hey there stackers. I'm law abiding citizen and guy who probably is gonna get a ticket for trivia that's too good. Joe's mobs neighbor Doug. Well, I texted Sergeant Simpson and there's good news and bad news. Turns out good news first. He thanked me for the kind text. The bad news, he's not letting me out of my ticket that I got yesterday for driving 15 miles under the speed limit. I mean you can't be too safe. Simpson. Jeez, let's do Better than try. With today's trivia, let's nail this one. You got it. The question was, if you receive a traffic ticket and your insurance finds out, what's the name of the money you pay toward your policy that will probably increase the answer. While some of us refer to this money for insurance as complete bullsh, the technical term is the premium. They make it sound so nice. Did you get it? Of course you did. Now you can brag to your friends around the water course cooler about your trivia acumen. And now let's hand it over to Anna and Og, who are going to give you the scientific approach to figuring out how much to put into your emergency fund.

[OG]

You know, it seems that I only get sick on weekdays.

[Anna]

I'm so over this.

[OG]

I must have a weekend immune system.

[Anna]

You're speaking my language right now.

[OG]

You got the sniffles.

[Anna]

I got the sniffles.

[OG]

Get the sniffles. What do you have, like a little monster running around?

[Anna]

I have a little germ monster coming into my house every day.

[Joe]

Every day.

[OG]

Slobbers on everything and gives you lots of kisses and puts her hand in her mouth and then in yours.

[Anna]

It's so fun. Yeah. Drinks my water bottle.

[OG]

Oh, that's so fun. Yeah, it's kind of like an emergency.

[Anna]

Feels like it.

[OG]

It's like the vitamin C they call emergency. We are talking today about emergency funds. Not f u n s but f u n d s. Fund. Fund. Our perspective on emergency funds is that the three to six month rule of thumb is stupid. Very ultra stupid. And we don't believe in that.

[Anna]

So stupid I can't even believe that people believe in it.

[OG]

We do something way different.

[Anna]

So different it's going to blow your mind.

[OG]

Okay, so at the end of today, what we want to figure out is exactly how you can think through exactly how much cash reserve you need, exactly how much emergency fund you need for you based on what's going on in your life. So last week we talked about your expense number. We said, okay, this is the number that kind of everything else works from. And the first thing that it starts with is your emergency fund. Remind us again, just expenses. We're using that plus debt, right?

[Anna]

Yep. You're gonna look at that living expense number on a monthly basis plus the debt payments you have.

[OG]

Okay, so let's just use me as an example because this will just be easy to kind of walk through the math. So $8,000 a month of living expenses. I got $3,000 a month of debt expenses. So step one is I got 11k. That I have to send out. So now we have a four step framework of how to go through exactly how much you need. Let's just work through it and we'll use me as an example. So I've got 11k. What's the first thing that we're doing?

[Anna]

So first thing is the baseline.

[OG]

Okay.

[Anna]

If you answer all the following questions and you're in really great shape, you should never have less than 3x expenses. Obviously, if you have to tap into it, then it's going to go down, but that's where we're going to start.

[OG]

All right, so we're starting with 3x. So for me, that's 33k. And now let's work through the questions. First question is as it relates to income concentration. So step one is how much income

[Anna]

sources do you have?

[OG]

Yeah, and the big ones are two income, household.

[Anna]

Yeah. So if you're single income, household, two people working, or if one person has multiple jobs.

[OG]

So we have three different components here. Dual income or, you know, two jobs. Basically it's okay if one person's working two jobs, but basically dual income and either one of those jobs covers the living expense. We're going to add zero to our three numbers. We're starting with three baseline. We're going to add zero. If both people are working, or we have two jobs and both incomes are required, we want to add one. And if one person is working, obviously then one person's job is required. So we want to add two. So the most points you can get in section one is two, one or zero, and you're adding that to the three. So in my case, I'm single income. I have multiple jobs but only one income. We could talk about the glorious pay that is podcasting later, but in my case single income, I would add two. So I'm at five now. So three plus two is five. Right. Okay, what's the second one?

[Anna]

Next step, how predictable is your income? How stable is it? Do you know that your next paycheck is definitely coming?

[OG]

Okay, what are the categories or what are the three questions for income stability?

[Anna]

Number one, how stable is your income? Do you know you're going to get your next paycheck? You know that you're going to be employed, you are going to add zero to that number you previously had. If you have a little bit of variability, so you have a bonus that's kind of unknown, you may have a little bit of variable compensation that comes through, but for the most part, like you have a base that you can rely on and pay Your expenses for the most part. Then just add one.

[OG]

Okay.

[Anna]

Then if you have very variable income, you are a business owner or you are very comp based, performance based, sales job, something like that, or you rely on a lot of equity income to come in. Then I would add two.

[OG]

Okay. So we've got income stability, income concentration. So zero, one or two. I was a two single income on income stability. I'm a business owner so I would add two again. So I got two and four. So now I'm at four. Third area is reemployment risk. You're highly reemployable, you're a nurse, you're going to find work, that's zero. You have specialized jobs but it's somewhat portable. That would be one. And if it's highly specialized or you're very niche based or you're an entrepreneur or something like that, that would be 2. So 0, 1 or 2 in re employment risk. I'm an entrepreneur, I'm going to give myself two for that. So I've maxed out, I'm winning. I max out everything. 2, 4, 6. And the last area is subject to interpretation I think a little bit right around expense flexibility. What's your, what's your vibe on OG having expense flexibility?

[Anna]

Yeah, I think we all need to be really honest with ourselves when we answer this question. If you look at your expenses and you can say yes, I can peel back a lot of these expenses and I am just spending a lot of money on fun things that I don't necessarily need. Travel. Yeah. Like expensive fun little gifts or wine, watches, whatever. All the things that I spend money on.

[OG]

Exactly.

[Anna]

Then you can add zero to this

[OG]

if it's super flexible zero, somewhat flexible one. Highly fixed income or highly fixed expense lifestyle. So debt payments, tuition. Most of my expenses are food, insurance, whatever the case may be. Then I'm going to add two so four categories. The most I can get is two in each category. So 246. I'd say that we're a zero here. We have a lot of flexible spending. We have some fixed spending but a lot of flexible spending. So I'm gonna give myself a zero there. So I got 2, 4, 6. The baseline is 3. So 3 plus 6 is 9. So I need 9x my salary in emergency fund based on this risk based emergency fund framework. So very easy for somebody to sit down and figure this out, right?

[Anna]

Yeah. Just answer a couple of questions. It'll take you five minutes.

[OG]

All right, so let's just wrap it up real quick, work through this one more time, income concentration. So this is basically dual income, single income, household income stability. Is your comp salary, base base income or do you get a bunch of variable compensation and kind of that scale. So you got to decide on that. Step three is how re employable are you. So if you lose your job, are you going to find one right away or is it really specialized? Going to take you a little bit small, medium, large there if you want to think of it that way. And then the last one is on expense flexibility. How flexible are the expenses that you are counting in that, in my case, 11K. So you add those up. Start with a base level of 3x. You're going to add 2, 4, 6, 8 or whatever the number is. The most you get to is 11x. The least you get is 3x. So somewhere between there and then that's, that's unique to you.

[Anna]

Yep, there you have it.

[Joe]

And now you know how to set up your emergency fund. Nice job OG Great work Anna. Thank you so much. Doug lets me enter onto the back porch because we've got a bunch going on around the country with our meetup groups. If you're new here, man, we've got some cool stuff happening in different cities. What, what's on tap?

[Doug]

Yeah, there is a lot going on. We're gonna have to get through this quickly because we could spend a lot of time talking about each one of these, I think. First, coming up on the calendar on April 7, isn't Paula doing a live record? Longtime contributor to Stacking Benjamin's regular on our Friday shows, she's doing a live recording at Texas A M which will could potentially be like a little meetup for Texas folk. Is that right?

[Joe]

We're gonna do a live special episode of Stacking Benjamins and afford anything at Texas A and M Cana. So if you are anywhere between Little Rock, Dallas, Shreveport, Texarkana, if you're in this part of the country, we are going to be doing this very special event, by the way, the night before at my house. If you email me, we're doing a special event like a meet and greet. Write me though, email me joe stacky benjamin.com and I'll tell you how to get here, tell you the details on that. So if you happen to be in the area the evening before and then that day we're going to be live at the university with university students in the community answering student questions.

[Doug]

Here's your chance to party at Joe's house. I hear it's okay to throw your beer cans and Peanut shells on the floor at Joe's house. It's a Texas thing, apparently. I mean, that's worth traveling for.

[Joe]

Not sure that ever occurred. Imagine Cheryl. That's what I do with that one. Who is generally the nicest person alive.

[Doug]

Maybe that's why Cheryl gives me a little cold shoulder when I get to your house. I've always done that.

[Joe]

Might not, might not be that pleased with that. It's going to be a great time. Stacking benjamins.com meetup to tell us that you're coming in to get details on the Texas A M Texarkana Live recording. Hope you can make it.

[Doug]

That's enough detail about that. We got to move on, Joe, because we got all this other stuff happening in Boston.

[Joe]

But how often have we had. We've had these things all around the nation. How often have we had one in Texarkana?

[Doug]

No, that's your fault.

[Joe]

How often? Once. Once. Which was just the beginning of the book tour.

[Doug]

The very next night, Wednesday, April 8th, at 6 o', clock, the Boston Benjamin's After Dark group is meeting at Hannah's Brewing. Then the night after that in Seattle. Man, I'm going to be on a lot of airplanes in Seattle. Thursday, April 9, 5 to 7 at the Berliner Publishing. And then at the end of the month, April 22, Southern Minnesota, Mankato, Minnesota is having their meetup 6:30 to 8:00 clock at their usual joint, which is the Maverick Innovation Gateway. So lots going on. We understand Twin Cities may also be having a meetup, but we are still awaiting their details. So just about every group is getting together in the month of April. Tucson, we.

[Joe]

Yeah, I was gonna say we have, we have another one. Tucson is also coming up in April and we'll have details on that maybe on Wednesday's show. Pretty exciting stacking benjamins.com meetup or if you just want to join the group, stacking Benjamins.com bad Benjamin's after dark. It gets you, gets you there. That's going to do it for today. Hey, thanks for hanging out today. If you know somebody who really gets emotional about their investing, maybe this is the episode that you send their way. It's also a great follow up to our Maestros episode from last Wednesday. If you missed the stock market Maestro's case study last Wednesday with Claire and Lee, who studied this stuff professionally, you're going to want to go back and listen to that. At the very least get your investment policy statement. Moving Stackers. But before we ask Doug to bring this home, if you're wondering how am I doing with my investment strategy overall with my cash on hand with my investments? OG and his team have a scorecard where you can rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, how well you're doing versus how well you probably should be doing. It's stacking benjamin.com scorecard. That's stacking benjamin.com scoreCard gets you to the link into figuring out, you know what. Here's where I'm at today, and here's what I can do better. Doug, you've got it from here, my friend. What should we have learned on today's show?

[Doug]

Well, Joe, first, take some advice from today's headline, the smart money that could be you. You're smart if you ignore the noise, focus on your end game, and work from a written strategy. Second, when you're figuring out how much to put in your emergency fund, begin by thinking about the risks you're taking in life. More risk, risks, more cash. But the big lesson, whenever you can celebrate Tracy Chapman's birthday with Joe's mom, she sure can share interesting stories about people with fast cars. Listen to this. She knows this one woman who had a fast machine and she kept her motor clean. She says this lady was the best damn woman she'd ever seen. Great story, Ma. This show is the property of SB Podcast, LLC, Copyright 2026, and is created by Josal Sehai. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh, yeah, 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 rat. 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.

[Joe]

Sa. Oh, gee. I was telling Cheryl the inspiring story of you signing up for an event. And what I love about anytime, that people are trying to get in shape. Well, people, let's be honest. Me, whatever. I'm trying to get in shape, I. Go sign up for the event first. Just sign up for the event because it gives me a direction. Make sure that I'm on the straight and narrow. But our stackers might not know that you have committed to an event which. Which we call suicide here on the show. You don't know it yet.

[Doug]

It's performative torture, right?

[Joe]

You're Going to be bicycling in the mountains. Yeah.

[OG]

It's a bike ride called the triple Bypass, and it goes from just outside Denver to basically Beaver Creek, Avon area. In the summertime, it's super popular, so if anybody's a cyclist, they probably already know it. In fact, I got the side eye because I, you know, they send you a free shirt. They're like, you know, here, wear this shirt. So I was, you know, I'm wearing my cool shirt, you know, and somebody came up to me. They're like, whoa, man, how is Triple Web has. I'm like, well, I'll let you know in a couple months. He's like, oh, I haven't done it yet. And he, like, pedals away. Mike. Sorry, hold on. Apparently I'm not supposed to wear the shirt until actually I've done it. Maybe. I don't know.

[Doug]

I mean, I can get a free T shirt just by signing up and then I don't have to do the ride.

[OG]

Well, it's included and it's a great hack cycling shirt. So it would look a little weird walking around your neighborhood in that tidy,

[Doug]

that little bit of belly hanging out underneath.

[OG]

Although it does have little pockets in the back so you could have, like, snacks and stuff back there. There.

[Joe]

Yeah.

[OG]

You're like, like, you know, people wear these to ride. Ride bikes for 50 miles, right? Water bottles. You're like, oh, no, I got like,

[Doug]

Doritos and I keep my sugar cookies.

[Joe]

Everybody else has their energy chews. He's pulling out his. His Fritos.

[OG]

Got like a little flask, you know, this is great for hunting. What are you guys talking about? It's fantastic.

[Joe]

One thing we were talking about, you know, in town, we have this half marathon, run the line. And one thing, our announcer and I, because I play the music and, and take care of the agenda for the day and make sure that, like, the sponsors get mentions and blah, blah, blah. So I found myself standing next to him a lot. The unforced arrogy. You want to make sure you don't make. I don't know, Doug, about wearing the shirt before you've done the event. I don't know there. But the number one thing you do not do, do not wear the shirt to the event. Yeah. That's a rookie move.

[OG]

Oh, okay.

[Joe]

You see people show up and you're like, oh, it's your first time doing this type of thing.

[OG]

What if I. What if I got, like, shirts from a couple years ago?

[Doug]

That's cool.

[Joe]

That's retro.

[Doug]

Yeah, I don't Know that's changing, because even.

[OG]

But also, I didn't do it a couple of years ago. So is that, like, fraud? Well,

[Doug]

that's what ebay is for.

[Joe]

I don't. I don't know about that. I don't know how people feel about that. I like to be like, you've got

[OG]

the shirt from 2020, and you're. You can't make it up the first hill. Like, what's wrong with you, bro?

[Joe]

If you want to do, like, a retro thing, do a different ride. You know that you have, like, your kids walk around the block.

[OG]

Yeah, I'm gonna make my own. There's companies that you can make your own shirts. It's gonna be fun. I got a couple of friends that are doing it with me. I've talked to a couple of people who have done it, and it's not a race, so it's not about, like, trying to finish. Although, obviously somebody's gonna finish first. It ain't gonna be me.

[Joe]

It is about trying to finish, but not first.

[OG]

Yeah, but it's finishing. And so all the training. Got a great coach who is putting me through the paces, as they say.

[Joe]

The reason we thought about this OG Was I was in northwest Arkansas this weekend. I just love that area so much. Back at Crystal Bridges, some great. We went to a fantastic speakeasy, by the way. But, you know, you're up there, and there's these. There's the Ozarks, and I'm thinking around, oh, gee, he doesn't even have the Ozarks, and you're about to do the Rockies. Like, how are you getting any hill work for what's ultimately going to be the biggest hill you've ever pedaled up?

[OG]

Really not. There is some evidence to suggest that heat adaptation is similar to altitude. So that will have some help, maybe a little bit. But no, I've got a couple trips planned out west to go get a few miles going, a few reps, see what that's like.

[Joe]

Yeah, good. That's cool. Go schedule the thing. Stackers, I think. Doug, go schedule it. I see on your calendar here, it just says another dozen donuts.

[Doug]

Well, that's because there's room in the back of my new shirt for the dozen donuts.