← The Stacking Benjamins Show
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- [00:06]
A
Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And grab your art pencils, or maybe just a regular one, because today we're going to. We're sketching out your retirement with retirement expert Jamie Hopkins. Want to plan for a happier, more fulfilling retirement? We have some tips I'm fairly certain you haven't heard before. In our headline segment, we'll continue the retirement discussion with OG Filling in the gaps so that you can also get advice from the guy who does this every day. And speaking of every day, halfway through, we'll turn it over to the guy who's the trivia expert three days a week.
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B
Me.
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A
I know you'll get today's question right. I mean, maybe there's a chance, right? There's a chance. And now two guys who were right when they said yes. A stock market downturn is coming. It's Joe and. Oh, Juju jj.
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B
Stock market downturn is coming, Doug. Like winter is coming in Game of Thrones. Winter is coming.
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A
It's going to happen, man.
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B
It's going to happen.
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A
We're here.
- [01:21]
B
We predicted it. We've been predicting it this whole time. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Stacking Benjamin Show. Super happy you're here with us on a Wednesday. We do, Doug, have a great show. Jamie Hopkins, your retirement sketchbook. Oh, gee's coming in hot today, by the way. He will be here after the interview.
- [01:39]
A
I think he always comes in hot.
- [01:42]
B
We are. We're going to talk saving, investing, planning, spending your legacy. It's really thorough. Jamie Hopkins back on the show in 2019. It's been a long time since Jamie's been here.
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A
Yeah, I knew the name sounded familiar. 2019, that's six to seven years ago. Are you kidding me?
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B
I know. It's been been way, way, way too long. So if you're somebody that is wondering about what I really need to know about retirement, Jamie has so many lessons. He's a guy who's been there with so many different people. He used to work at the American College, a place where people get their degree in certified financial planning. They help people so much. And now he's the CEO of Bryn Mawr Trust Advisors and he's also the founder of the Finserve foundation and he's joining us. So cannot wait. Today's show, by the way, brought to you by the letter W. W for winning with retirement or for wealth building or even warm weather on the way.
- [02:47]
A
I just saw a muppet like in my mind I just saw a muppet like the. It's like my W. I guess he would be a number with the count. Would do a number.
- [02:59]
B
He would be. Yeah, yeah. So we got to do the letters. We have to do the letters because he did all the numbers. We also announced it at our event last week. By the way, if you missed a couple weeks ago now, jeez, time flies. Our event where we watched the retirement plan movie had a great discussion with Tom and don't. We announced that we're working with the team at array and now Budget simple who help millions of people just like you put your money in the vault stackingbenjamins.com vault they call it the vault. Not only does it lock down your identity, put a wall between you and those lists where they sell your info, dump out unwanted subscriptions, protect your credit. We announced that the vault very soon because of the fine people. Budget simple is now going to be a net worth tracker and budget tracker super sleek. I'm excited to get the word about this one. Stop. Swiss army knife built by pros, not by Doug.
- [03:53]
A
You're lashing out. That was so unnecessary.
- [03:55]
B
Well just, I mean I'm sure you can build a nice app, but I know I've got some friends that have built some apps and yeah, not so much stacking. Benjamins.com vault gets you there. Go today, set up your privacy credit stuff.
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A
I got a circular saw last year. I can build stuff.
- [04:12]
B
He's gonna build the build the app
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A
with his circular saw, some Phillips head screws.
- [04:16]
B
What more do you need to know? Everybody not built by Doug. Coming up, Jamie Hopkins. But first, we actually do have a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We're gonna hear from them so that we can make sure that people like Jamie Hopkins help us with retirement. Jamie and I coming up next. Well, it's the middle of the week. You know how this goes. You're tired, you're hungry and you think, man, I should go out to dinner. But it isn't because of anything healthy. You're not thinking about having a healthy meal yet. Tomorrow we'll thank you if you do have a home cooked healthy meal, which even as I say it sounds so, so, so much better. With hellofresh. Savoring new flavors from around the world isn't just delicious. It's simple and it's wholesome and it's super easy. It makes cooking effortless. You can always look forward to a homemade meal. No two meals are the same. You can choose from 80 plus global recipes every month including Vietnamese, Moroccan, Caribbean and more. I shouldn't be doing this while I'm hungry. This is not the thing for me to be recording right now. Try unique ingredients like lemongrass gocha Jang. It says here I don't even know what gochujang is but I'm starving. Sounds good. And curry paste. Oh that's good. All pre portioned for you. Cravings shouldn't wait for takeout. Get international ingredients sent straight to you. So dinner is always the destination. I've been using HelloFresh I think you're going to absolutely love it. Go to hellofresh right now Stackers and listen to this. If you go to hellofresh.com sb10fm that is get 10 free meals. Hellofresh.com sb10FM you'll get 10 free meals plus free NutriBullet Ultra plus plus a two in one compact kitchen system that's 189.99 value on your third box. Free meal supplied is a discount on the first box. New subscribers only. Varies by plan. Disclaimer must order the third box by May 31, 2026. Hello fresh. Nothing hits like home cooking. Okay, this is the system I've been telling everybody about because I had never heard of what I'm about to tell you about until they asked if they could sponsor stacking Benjamins. And so I tried them out and not only do I love it and I use it all the time, but I talk about it nonstop because whenever I send anybody meeting notes I'm like how bad ass are these? Check these out. It's called granola. And if you're in back to back meetings all day, you already know what the struggle is. You're not along, you're trying to stay present, but in the back of your mind you're secretly stress scrolling your memory for what they just said because you were so plugged into what was coming next or what's the follow up or what Meetings are a massive Granola fixes all of that. Granola is an a powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet. You just take rough notes like you normally would. You can even see it expanding on your notes and taking its own notes as you go because in the background granola is securely transcribing the meeting. Then at the end it turns everything into clean, structured and actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part? It works through your device's audio so it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you're already using. There's no setup, no awkward bots. You don't have to make it connect. It's just normal meetings with superpowers. Now you can actually listen instead of frantic typing every word. Still walk away knowing exactly what was decided, who's doing what, what comes next. I'm telling you, it'll help you focus on what's important. It leaves the rest out. It's fantastic. So if meetings are eating up your day or you're not having these productive meetings that you think you should be having and people don't know what the to do list is at the end and what the big points are, Granola is a no brainer. You can try it totally free by heading to Granola AI sb Go to Granola AI SB and get your time back. Once again, try it for free. Granola AI sp. And I'm super happy we got this gentleman back in mom's basement. Jamie Hopkins is back. It's been too long, man.
- [08:44]
C
Yes. Great to see you, Joe. And yeah, I couldn't believe it's been as long. What'd you say? Six or seven years since I've been on. But it's great to see you.
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B
2019 and it feels like yesterday you and I were talking about mortgages and kind of planning strategies around debt, but I think this is a, this is a bigger thing, Slightly bigger. I saw a stat of yours that over 40% of people never really envision their retirement while they're saving for it, which kind of sounds, Jamie, like we're planning a road trip without picking a destination first. Why do we do that? And is. Is winging it actually as dangerous as it sounds?
- [09:23]
C
I think winging it is as dangerous as it sounds. Part of it though, is not the money part. It's a really interesting thing. I actually see people financially kind of wing it and they just, you know, they're saving in their retirement plans and they, they kind of have enough saved. The part that they really struggle with then is they get to retirement, they have no idea what to do. They don't know how to fill their days. Their meaning came from their job, their community was the people they worked with or the friends of their kids, parents. And all that kind of disappears when you retire. And you see this really interesting dichotomy in retirement is most people in retirement get happier and they actually say, it's the best part of my life ever. But you also have this subset that actually goes into depression and it's mostly tied to. They don't have strong community circles, they don't have purpose or meaning they're not engaged in activities. And actually single individuals, non married individuals, are more likely to fall into that too because you're losing some social connection point. So that's the group that I really worry about. You haven't envisioned the future. You don't know what you're going to do. You don't know where your joy and social connection is going to come from, how you're going to spend your time. And so if you're missing that, right, you are not going to have a happy retirement. We have people with very little money that stay super engaged with charities and their friend circles and they're happy in retirement. They don't have a lot of money, but they're happy. And so I'm always like, that's okay, right? Like I can be broke and happy and that's fine. I don't want to be rich and unhappy.
- [10:49]
B
Right? When do I start envisioning this though, Jamie? Do I start thinking about this? I'm in my 30s and my 40s. Do I begin, you know, 10 days before? Probably not.
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C
Yeah, 10 days before is probably a little too close. But you know, when you're in your 30s, I honestly, I don't think a lot of people can really get a good grasp of what 30 years from today, 40 years from today is going to look like. You could have inclinations of it, but even for me, right, I've been in the retirement planning space for 20 years now. It's hard for me when I think back my mid, early 30s to actually envision what retirement would look like for me. I had some thoughts, but like, AI wasn't a thing then. I thought I was just going to sit around and write books and do artwork and for whatever reason, fast forward 15 years and now AI is apparently going to do that for us. So I got to re envision what that looks like. So I think that's really hard. But the values you want to have later in life, you can spend time on that. I know that I care a lot about the environment and so that notion of like giving back, I pick up trash when I'm in the streets by my house because I don't want to our neighborhood to have trash on the streets. That element of me though is probably not going to change, right? That core caring part about the world, my give back elements for food and hunger and clean water, I don't expect those to change. So I do think about my retirement in the ways that I'm going to give back and be active. And those have Stayed pretty consistent. But, like, where I live or who, you know, hopefully who I'll be with will be similar. I think some of those things on the day to day can be complex. So I usually tell people, if you're further away, think about, like, the values you hold and how you want them to show up in your future. So if you want to be an explorer, and that's part of who you are, that future, you know, it's actually bigger than a goal. It's an aspiration. That aspiration to be an explorer, what does that mean for you? And then how can you take small steps today to be closer to that explorer? That could be a particular vacation or travel trip or road trip like you talked about, without having to fully embrace the explorer mindset.
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B
Almost like we're just thinking about the bigger themes in life rather than the. The granular activity that I'm going to go see. This particular thing you call retirement, you coined this word. I think you coined this word rewirement, which I love, because it isn't about the math. It's about identity, what actually has to be rewired when somebody retires.
- [13:15]
C
Yeah, that was a fun word, too. So that was my first book, and I did trademark that term. I guess that's close to probably 18 years ago or something now. When I trademarked that, I should have
- [13:25]
B
said TM on that then. Jamie.
- [13:27]
C
Yeah, my whole purpose, actually, that I'll do the trademark thing because it's always an interesting story. I just didn't want somebody else to go trademark and then tell me I couldn't use it. Like, I didn't want to run a business off of it, but I just, I didn't want some corporation to grab it and be like, well, you can't. We. We have this now.
- [13:44]
B
Right. So rewirement brought to you by Merrill Lynch.
- [13:46]
C
Right. That's exactly what would have happened. I was actually sitting at a bar eating a cheeseburger with my friend John. And the first version of that book was something about, like, 25 different retirement risks. And I was like, so boring. There's got to be something better. So we just started, like, talking, and he's like. Well, then he started asking me all these questions. Well, like, what really happens in retirement? And I was telling him that you have to, like, change the whole way you view your life. Both the spending, how you spend your time, your mindset about, like, spending is bad, has to go away. You got to figure out how to free up your days. You got to get your paycheck from your work. And it was like, you really have to rewire your brain on how you view money and time and relationships. And so then was like, well, how do we get rewire and retirement? And then it just kind of flew into that. And you know, it was kind of based on some research we were doing back then at American College of Financial Services, which is still ongoing. It's a great research project about retirement income literacy in the United States. And what we see is people who get near retirement actually demonstrate a good deal of, you know, financial literacy. We kind of talk like, America's not financially literate. It's true in mass. But when you look at 65 year olds, they're actually financially literate at that point. Like they do gain this knowledge as they move through their life. But the interesting part is they know nothing about retirement. They're very financially literate. You ask them retirement income questions and their literacy, it falls into the 40s of a test score out of a hundred, like it's abysmal. But the reason is they haven't lived through it yet. So they approach the retirement world just like they did saving, but they're really flipped on their heads, like sequence of returns risk, which I know you talk about on show, many, many doesn't, doesn't really come into play when you're saving for retirement. Like technically it's there, but it's not something you deal with. It's not really a risk. So all these things get flipped on its head when you get to retirement. And that's kind of where that notion of rewirement changing the way we think about retirement comes from.
- [15:40]
B
When I go to these financial independence, retire early events or just financial independence events. You see the breakout sessions, the breakout that's always packed. Jamie, because these are filled with savers. People have saved their whole life. The breakout that's packed is the one about how do I turn myself into a spender? How do I rewire that one little thing? You've been a saver your whole life, now you have to spend. How does somebody make that switch without feeling like they're doing something wrong or feeling this sense of loss?
- [16:10]
C
Yeah, and I have a term I use, sns savings, not spending. And that's what we're taught our entire life is save. And if you just keep saving, you'll be fine eventually. And that's compounding and automation. And it works. And then we get to retirement, we say, just kidding, you don't need to save anymore. You know how to spend.
- [16:26]
B
And it was all a sham. Yeah, you got to spend?
- [16:28]
C
Yeah. We've told you for 45 years that spending is bad and saving is good. You get to retirement and. And then we haven't automated any of it for you either. So not only like is it not automated and there's no framework, but like, you have to figure it out and it really does fall on the individual today. So what you see in the US spending data is that people underspend in retirement. Interestingly enough of people who have saved, right? Like people that don't have the fortune to accumulate wealth, that's a different story. But for people who are savers, they underspend in retirement. And I think there's a couple reasons. One is seeing their portfolios decline feels like a loss. That is a very hard, emotional thing to overcome. Because for 45 years we trained you that if you saw the portfolio go down, it was losing money. Right. The markets were bad or you were taking money out to cover debt, something not good was going on. But in retirement, seeing it come down might be a really good thing. So one of the things I talk about is actually test driving retirement by teaching yourself to spend before you retire. And so that can actually be stopping to save, say three to five years before retirement. And maybe you're putting $15,000 a year away in your 401k. And I actually recommend to people, stop, stop doing that. Take that money and spend it. Buy a car, go on a vacation, do something else. So you get this notion of spending what should be your retirement money earlier on. The reality is the last three to five years of saving 10 or 15 grand more does not move the needle on your retirement portfolio. It just doesn't. Right. Like working six months longer is more important than saving ten grand for five more years. So even if you spend that money and you enjoy yourself a little bit better and maybe you do work six months longer, that's going to have a bigger impact on the longevity of your retirement portfolio. And also it teaches you to spend that money. I even go so far to say maybe a year or two before you actually take some withdrawals from your 401k or IRA just to see what it's like. Now you gotta be careful there because I don't want you to bump up to a new tax bracket and over kind of spend. But sometimes I've even told people you're saving 15 grand a year, you don't need any more in your, you know, your ira. Maybe both spouses are saving, put the money in, but also take an equal amount out to just see what Are withdrawals like, what does it feel like to take money out of these kind of, you know, they're almost like holy grails, right? Like we put them over here and all the rules said don't touch them ever. And then all of a sudden we're allowed to now go play with this thing and just get that experience of taking money out and even getting your 1099 R form. What does that look like now that you have a different tax form you have to deal with? And I think that's useful to do before you lose your whole community and job and other income sources.
- [19:10]
B
Is there ever a time when people feel like, okay, I've successfully made the shift, or should our stackers just be comfortable? Always feeling a little uncomfortable with this.
- [19:20]
C
I think it's healthy to always feel a little bit uncomfortable. I think if you talk to like great performers, if you talk to great athletes and great rock stars and everybody, there should always be a little bit of that healthy anxiety before you get on stage. It shouldn't ever go all the way away because that usually means you don't care anymore. Maybe it's a little bit more of excitement, a little bit of I'm concerned. And for most people, the people listening to this show, there should be a little bit of that there and that's okay. That kind of keeps us in check because, you know, if you don't have that and we took away all those feelings and emotions, right, we could just spend all of it in one year. That's a bad thing. So you should have a little bit of that, but enough to give yourself permission to spend. I'm also a big fan of having some secure income sources, whether it's Social Security, a pension annuity, a bond ladder. Because when you see people with more of a floor, what then they say is like, I can spend that amount. It's some of the benefits of like having long term care insurance. I've never met anybody who was like, I don't want to spend the long term care insurance money. Right. But they will choose not to spend their own savings. It's different. Then giving yourself in both of those cases permission to spend I think is very healthy. But a little bit of anxiety is okay. I think it's healthy for our decision making and structure in life about not overdoing things.
- [20:38]
B
I want to circle back to long term care in a little bit because as you already know, this is kind of the Achilles heel of any retirement. But before we get there, I want to bring up this idea of biases. You know we're biased towards saving, not spending. You point out that our biases are even bigger than that. What's funny is I just interviewed these wonderful researchers for a project they did called Stock Market Maestros, where they were looking at these top investors, these professional investors. And the big thing these investors have to do, Jamie, is they have to guard against their bias. They have to do it. What I love is that you do this on a wider level with retirement. Like, we have these biases when it comes to our retirement. What are some of the common biases that you see that might sabotage a healthy, happy retirement?
- [21:29]
C
Yeah, and I'll walk through a couple of these, and we'll start with one that relates actually to the investor world is home bias. Home bias is an interesting one if people aren't familiar with it. But you tend to overly invest in things near you and things that you're aware of. And across the United States, this plays out. It both plays out on a global scale that US Investors tend to be overweight US Investments, which great for Americans, we've outperformed. So congrats. But this happens in all other countries, too. They tend to overweight to their own economy and companies from their country, which does not always work out well. But in the United States, which has been super interesting, is that east coast people, I don't know what happens in Texas, but East coast people tend. Actually, I do know what happens in Texas. That was a lie. But east coast people tend to overweight financial companies. So when you look at our investments across the board, we're overweighted financial. When you get to the west coast, people tend to overweight tech, which is interesting because for the past 15 years, West coast investors have outperformed east coast investors because tech investments have outperformed financial companies. Now when you get to Texas, in the middle of the country, like Omaha, kind of straight down south, you all tend to overweight energy sector, so you're bigger into oil, gas, etc. You get these home biases on our investing, which does impact our portfolios, which is very interesting.
- [22:53]
B
It's actually funny you say that, Jamie, because I was the Channel 7 money man in Detroit for nine years back when I was a financial planner, everybody had automotive stocks. Like everybody in Detroit had automotive stocks. Even if they didn't work in the industry, they had automotive in their portfolio.
- [23:08]
C
And why is this important for retirement? There's a very interesting thing on this, and we had a. I think, actually David Blanchett, if I get this right, he had some research on this years ago well, the reason that this is an issue for retirees is, one, their portfolios aren't as diversified as they should be. That's number one. Number two is they often still live and retire in the town that they worked in. So, Joe, using your example, you live and work in Detroit, you retire in Detroit, you're overweighted into GM and different motor vehicle companies, and then they have a downturn, and what happens? Your home value drops, your portfolio drops, your enjoyment of life drops, because the quality of the town actually erodes. Now, Detroit's bounced back, but in Pennsylvania, what we had for a long time was all the steel towns and the steel companies went away, and those towns went from these thriving, beautiful mansions where all the wealthiest people in the country lived to run down places where you drive through some of those towns in Pennsylvania now, and it is really like a bygone error that just disappeared. Like, it is amazing because you see these places, and architecturally they're beautiful. And there's nothing left in the town once steel went away. And your houses, your investment, and the quality of life all went away because this was the lifeblood of that town. And so, especially in areas that are very centric to one industry, that is a real retirement risk and bias that you have towards what you know, that you know, diversifying is an important thing from your portfolio and income sources for those different areas. And it's not one that people think about how, like, my investment, my quality of life, and my house and retirement might actually all be correlated in an environment like that.
- [24:53]
B
Speaking of investments, you lay out the different places where we can invest, like our 401ks, our IRAs, HSAs, and begin sketching how these things are going to work together to create this retirement engine for us. You detail some recent changes, Secure 2.0, and how Secure 2.0 has really, you know, it's changed the game a little bit. Jamie, as you point out, like student loan matching as an example is something that we didn't really see much anymore, is becoming more prevalent. What are some other things that Secure 2.0 has done for us that might make our retirement game better?
- [25:26]
C
Well, I'll go back. I'd say a bit of a broader policy conversation that's been going on since probably 2016. And you go to Tax Cut and Job act, secure act 1.0, secure act 2.0, and the big beautiful bill. And one, actually, there's three themes that flow through all that. One is tax cuts across the board. Most of these provisions have been about reducing taxes for about A decade now. Now that's having its own other challenge, right. As we are seeing the deficit grow to levels we've never seen it this year and there's concern about that. But that has been a purposeful policy. You know, we have been cutting taxes for a decade now. That has good and bad to it. That's more of a, I'd say a bit of a political philosophy. The next part is from a retirement savings. One is we did want to broaden out the ability for people to contribute to retirement plans. And so when you look at 2017 to now, we've removed some limitations to contribute for your instances, right. You can get a match from your employer if you're paying off debt for student loans. We also had this, you know, 529 to Roth rollover vehicle, which is another way that could get money to a retirement savings vehicle. We reduced down the costs for startup plans, giving bigger tax credits for small business owners. We gave some really good incentives for the 199 cap, a provision which everyone's going to be like, well, that's a lot of jargon, but it's a small business pass through deduction, which was one of the more powerful features of tax cut and job act. But that shifted a lot of Importance on using 401ks and cash balance plans and some types of pension plans out there back into the market. So we did have a very big encouragement to go save in retirement plans over the last decade. The third part that came out of this was very interesting is we add a lot of ways to take your money out of these plans at the same time. And there was a lot of news, I'd say in the last couple months about how 20, 25 more people took out kind of like pre retirement money out of the retirement plans than ever before. And I was like, well, that's been the policy changes for almost a decade now of giving hardship withdrawals. And what's the disaster relief access points. If you're in a disaster relief area, a natural disaster, you can get access to these. We opened up that door and the reality is that was a policy decision. And so now more money is coming out. But I'm like, that should be expected. If we open up the door and then write the air conditioning goes outside, we say have the air conditioning get outside. You're like, well, you open up the
- [27:59]
B
door, you leave the lid off the cookie jar. Doug's gonna go grab a couple of chocolate chips.
- [28:04]
C
Yeah, yeah. And so that's kind of where we are today. But those have been Three big policy decisions. This one's an interesting one, if you don't mind me adding one thing. It's tangentially related here, but we've also had a policy decision to kind of reduce down charitable giving at the same time. And that's been kind of a counter thing to this is charitable giving right now is about as expensive as it's ever been. You know, for my life and your life, we've got these floors. We've capped the upside of it, you know, at the 35% tax bracket. And that has been a big change too, that we will probably see over the next two years. Fairly significant declines in charitable giving. And we have seen a decline since 2017, like adjusted run rate of charitable giving as we made the number of people that would benefit from giving to charity decline with those rules. But that's again like that's been purposeful policy. It's not by accident. Right. We've tried to move money away from charities to corporations in the last decade. But that's something for retirees to think about to use qualified charitable distributions, which on the flip side are more valuable than they've ever been today. Like that. While we reduce the other ways to give to charity, that one in turn actually became more valuable. So we kind of saw this shift to retirement assets being better charitable devices than ever before.
- [29:26]
B
I want to do just a quick lightning round about some of, I'm going to call them some of your spicy topics in the book. All right, you mentioned home bias already, which I thought was one of the spicy topics. But just very briefly, let's go through these. ESG and sustainable investing. This has gone from hot to controversial. How should a normal investor think about ESG without getting caught up in headlines?
- [29:48]
C
Yeah, I mean, ESG became very politicized in the United States. If you look globally. I mean, this is the first framework for most investing outside of the United States. Even the big companies here, BlackRock, etc. It's done very well elsewhere. I think everybody should care about the sustainability of companies. If you look at performance of companies, it's do they take care of their community, their people and their stakeholders? Companies that do, all three of them perform the best long term. So like, to me, this caring about sustainability is important. It might not be esg. I think that term got destroyed here. It's probably should go away. But value based investing to me is important. What do you care about? There's people who want Christian funds, there's people who want clean energy funds, and those are more aligned with your Values and where you put your money on what you care about. And I think that is important.
- [30:39]
B
Annuities, these might be the most. Whether you love them or you hate them, I think they're the most misunderstood product. Where do they actually fit?
- [30:48]
C
So the challenge with annuities, to your point of being misunderstood, is every company that creates an annuity gives it a new name of Secure plus Universal, you know, and you have no idea what that means. Right? Like, I mean, they all have these funny Secure, Universal, whatever plus or, you know, plus plus. I think there is one that's called like plus plus. And you're like, what is? I don't know what that is. And they come up with these very weird names to try to differentiate in the market. I usually think of annuities, there's like four buckets of them. So you have these RILAs and FIAs that are indexed to mostly S and P and other indexes. Those have been very popular and grown a lot the last couple years. They're kind of rila.
- [31:27]
B
What's a rila?
- [31:28]
C
Yeah, Registered index, Linked Annuity. Those are the fastest growing annuities out there. And essentially you're linking it to an S&P 500 for your performance and kind of putting an equity.
- [31:38]
B
Like just an equity indexed annuity.
- [31:40]
C
Yeah, similar to an equity indexed annuity. Those have really, really grown. What has never really taken off to the way academics thought is our spias and dias, so our actual income annuities. So a single premium income annuity, like this is where all the academics spend all their time on these and they love them. And then like the sales are just like this, like they just never took off and deferred income annuities, I think that's a really hard sell because you're going to drop a money, a bunch of money in, but you're not going to get income for years. When you think about the human condition, we're not great at deferring out right. Benefits into the future. Like, we're really bad at that. So, like, foundationally, that's a hard product to get people to buy into. Academically and functionally, it's an excellent product because of the way mortality tables and like pooled funding for deferred income works. It's a fantastic product. From an economic perspective, it's really hard to get people to buy it. My concern though, with annuities is often the fact I use this phrase is that they're underutilized and oversold. So what I see annuity salespeople doing is selling them as a solution for everything. And they're not. I'm not a big fan of using them as like an equity offset. I think you should be in the markets instead of using that kind of equity gain strategy. I do think annuities are fantastic for providing lifetime income and it can be a way to layer on top of your other resources. But that takes me back to Spias and Dias, which just haven't been that popular. But what they do, when you look at people who buy em, here's the flip side. It's like people who buy annuities and use em for income love em. The satisfaction rate for people using income annuities is like, I mean it's more like than Apple, it's more like than Disney. So you look at all these other products and things out there, but people who use income annuities love em because they get this payment that shows up in the mail and it provides for their basic needs. The other annuity side, I think people buy em and don't really understand em that well and they're not actually as satisfied because when it's sold for everything, you're not really sure how you're supposed to use it or when. But those are actually the ones that sell because they sell them for everything. And then the ones that make a lot of sense don't get utilized enough. So we have this bit of an issue and I've been very critical of the marketing of the annuity world. I've tried to help some companies with their marketing materials in the past and some of their strategies. But one person, you know, I, I've not made a dent in that and I think it's still poorly done.
- [34:07]
B
Today I went to a symposium at MIT on this very topic and they had annuity companies like Lincoln Financial and, and some of the other big boys and then they had regular people and they had media people like people like you, me. And it was interesting to see the huge disconnect, Jamie, the things that the annuity companies were selling versus what the average person was telling them. Like the MIT folks were trying to get everybody to talk. And it was so frustrating because the average person would say I love an income stream. And the annuity salespeople were like, well, but you're going to like all this other crap. We want to, we want to layer on top of it life insurance and retirement. I think a lot of people think, okay, I'm retired, I have enough to live on, I don't need my life insurance anymore. True or false?
- [34:57]
C
Yeah, false. Yeah, you're right. This is probably one of the biggest misunderstood things. Life insurance, even a term might be convertible and you should at least look at it. You might not need it, but you might want to convert it to a permanent policy in retirement. A couple things you can sometimes get cash value which you can use and withdraw from in retirement tax free. Some of them have loan provisions, some of them can be converted to policies. You know, a 1035 exchange over to a policy which is a tax free exchange of an existing policy to a policy with a long term care rider on it, which could be a way for you to get some long term care coverage when you might not be insurable for direct long term care anymore. So that's a good one. I will say when we talk with spouses it's more often the mom, but it's not only the case where the mom wants to leave a certain amount for the kids and liquidity as like, you know, some type of benefit. And this takes that off the table, right? Like you just don't have to worry about like hoarding onto your IRA and 401k to leave some legacy amount for your kids. So if you have a permanent policy, you just know that they're going to get one and a half million dollars and you don't have to worry about, you can spend everything else on yourself than in retirement. So if that becomes a core desired need, it is an efficient way to fund a legacy benefit. It's tax free. It's one of the best ways to fund a legacy, right? It really is the best way to fund a legacy. If that's not a desired. There are times when you should drop your policy, should give it up, you should surrender it for the cash value. And I do always recommend that if you are near retirement and have a policy and maybe it's continued premium payment, you should check the secondary market before you just go back and surrender it. Very few people look at that. It's not always better, but there are times where the secondary market will pay you more for that policy than giving it back to the insurance carrier will pay you for it. And so you should just always be looking like where can I get the most money for this? Somebody used this analogy with me before. It's like buying a house and then only trying to sell it back to the builder versus taking it to the market. And I was like, where do you think you're going to get more money? You'll get more money on the open market. It's not always the case, but it is a good Analogy. Yeah.
- [37:05]
B
The number of times I've seen people let the policy lapse or they take out the cash value versus selling it back without even looking at that. I think that's an important point. I love that you brought up long term care. I said we need to circle back to it. I think, Jamie, now's the time. You know, this is the CFPS conundrum and I think if you're the average person going into retirement, you ask any pro like what do you think about long term care? And they're like, oh man, oh man, how do we begin picking that luck?
- [37:35]
C
I often tell people I don't believe that we are facing a retirement crisis in the United States. Americans are adaptable. We figure out ways to deal with things. I talked about it earlier. Retirees are happier than the general population. So if you call that a crisis, like that's your definition, I don't view happier people as a crisis. The caveat to that is individuals do face crises in retirement. And the biggest one that I worry about from a financial and care standpoint is this long term care issue. It is happening in kind of a couple different ways. The first one is our families have gotten smaller and more dispersed. We have relied historically across the world on family members providing long term care. We don't have great systems of long term care providers across the world or our country. We rely on unpaid relatives, our kids, our spouses, and as our families get smaller, we don't have enough caregivers. And as we get divorced more frequently in post 65, we don't have spouses to take this off. And we have not saved enough money to cover these third party caregivers. Where this is running, you know, $100,000 plus a year, two, three years in long term care and the first spouse has wiped out all of their savings. And this is a very scary thing. There are some states now where the majority of their state budget is Medicaid, which is really our long term care costs. That is scary. Where the majority of a state budget is now going to essentially long term care costs, that is not a good place to be. We don't have products that have caught on and function well for the mass market. So long term care insurance, if you can afford it, you got it, you probably should keep it. It's usually a good, you know, it's been one of those things, you probably should keep it. It's been a good product from that standpoint. A little bit of these hybrid life insurance, long term care. And interestingly enough, that is probably the Best product design out there. From a risk mitigation on both sides, from an actuarial, they kind of offset risks which has been very interesting. But we're still Talking about like 1% of the population that has these in place. So this remains today that biggest unfunded liability for retirement that's out there with no good solutions coming down the door. The federal government's put together long term care commissions before and basically if you look at like the stuff they've put out, they don't have solutions. These are the smartest people and they're like, oh well, like allow for more at home care. Like great, thank you. That's our smartest idea that we have, which is a good idea. But like, you know, this is not going to solve the problem.
- [40:12]
B
It does sound like a little bit of pandering because I don't remember a client relationship relationship I ever had back when I was a planner when somebody's like, you know, I really want the facility over staying at home, like if I could get that facility that would be great. Nobody wants to begin there except for
- [40:25]
C
me, interestingly so My grandfather went through an aging in place one with the long term care. Right. Like the continued care retirement community. And I've told everybody since I watched him go through my grandmother passed away first and then he was in there and I'm like, that's where I want to be. That was the best setup.
- [40:42]
D
That's.
- [40:43]
B
I can imagine the misconceptions people have and I love that they had a TV show recently that brought it out with Ted Danson where he goes into this, you know, as a detective and then he figures out this is a great place. I wanna, I wanna be here. Pretty, pretty awesome. I wanna talk about curveballs in our planning because you bring up a couple interesting nuances with planning our retirement. 54% of people retire at a different time than they expected. Not by Choice, but by 52% of us, just over 1 and 2 are forced into retirement. How do we prepare for something that we can't predict? How do we make sure that the life preservers there when I need it?
- [41:23]
C
Yeah, I usually say this is preparing for the known unknowns. We don't know when this is going to happen, but it's just as likely as not that we're going to be forced into retirement is that we're going to get to pick our own retirement date. And so the point of that is you need a plan for early retirement. When I'm on radio shows like you, you did this forever and I get callers that in and talk to me. It's mostly I was doing great. We had a plan. I got laid off, my husband got laid off three months later and now we don't know how to make it. That is a reality of the world. It's going to happen. And I think with AI and disruption to the market coming, we're going to see more of that in the next couple years. We have to start planning for what that looks like. We don't have a magic time machine that goes back in time says I could have saved more in the past. What that means is we have to think about what part time work could I do if I got laid off, right? How do I cut expenditures if I get laid off and quickly? So I've got to turn off subscriptions month one, right? I can't have seven streaming services. I might just have to deal with it for a bit, right? And read the news and go to Yahoo and walk outside and, you know, do normal things we did before the Internet.
- [42:34]
B
That's crazy talk, Jamie.
- [42:35]
C
I know when you hear that, you're like, well, you can't do that. I need Netflix. You don't need Netflix, right? And if that is a five year thing, you need to give up to save $5,000, you need to do it. And you need to know ahead of time what are the things you're willing to cut back on and do it right away. Because when you let that stuff trickle through that like that expenditure side is what you're going to have more control over. So you have to have a plan for how you will change your lifestyle if you get pushed into early retirement
- [43:04]
B
on the other side, when we can retire whenever we want to. I love this idea. And Christine Benz, who endorsed your book, wonderful woman at Morningstar, she really likes this idea of a phased retirement. And I love that you bring up this idea of a phased retirement. What are the real pros and cons of maybe dipping our foot in the retirement pool before we jump in with both feet?
- [43:28]
C
My favorite thing about phased retirement is the potential to work longer. And so that is actually what you see with phased retirement is as people scale back, they become able to manage that new balance of work and life better. Because when you're just running 100 miles an hour all the time at work, you just feel like, I can't do this anymore at 68. And a lot of people just then go cold turkey. And you're like, there's no in between. I'm going to work to the last day. But when you can phase it out. And often that might be moving to a different role, going part time, changing some of your job duties, quitting and being rehired back into a new role that are retiring and being hired back to a new role. Those are all ways this works. What you see is not very many companies in the United States have formal phased retirement programs in place. So the scary part becomes people don't want to ask their boss, their managers, their companies about this. They don't even broach the conversation. I tell people all the time, go talk to your company, ask them about this. And you could do it earlier so they're not thinking, hey, like, Joe's getting ready to retire next year. Why is he asking me about this? Do it early and understand what have they done in the past for people? I do it all the time with the people who work for, you know, our firm at WSFS and Bryn Mawr Trust. I've got two people retiring this summer and then going part time, and I love that. And if I can keep them around their institutional knowledge and they can, you know, come back. Actually, funny enough, I had somebody who retired last summer, my coo, and he's going to come back and do some stuff again in May because he's bored, wants to be engaged. But I left that open for him. When he said he wanted to retire, I was like, look, see how you feel. And if in six months you want to come back and do something, like reach out. And he did. We got coffee and we're going to figure something out for him in May, I think that's really important. But not every company is going to be like that. There are companies that will not work with you on this, but figure that out ahead of time so you're not fearful of it. When you walk in the room and be like, thinking about retiring and they're like, okay, see you later. We're excited to replace you, but do it. See what other people have done. Does the company have a history of allowing people to have phased retirements? Those are all good markers. Before you jump into it, how is
- [45:38]
B
this whole retirement planning different for single people than for people in a committed relationship or married?
- [45:45]
C
Yeah, the partnership in retirement, whatever you want to call that in today's world, right. Co living and all different types of that. You get to share expenses. And when you share expenses, retirement is less expensive. You think about housing being a big one. And if you both need separate apartments or both need separate houses, you basically double the cost. And that's going to be your Single biggest retirement expense is housing, healthcare and taxes. Those are the three biggest American expenses in retirement. Taxes don't change a whole lot. Right. Healthcare though, back to our other point, if you have somebody with you, you actually can help each other on some of these things that otherwise you might have to fully outso source for long term care, even basic healthcare things. And then housing is a big one. The other thing is when you have people with two income sources, say Social Security, that can be beneficial because you've got two floors now covering some basic expenditures and when one of them passes away and now you're a single widowed individual or widower. Right. You lost one of those two benefits and you probably didn't lose much of the expenses. So what you see is that individual retirement is more expensive on average, more likely to be isolated and depressed and more likely to run out of money. That is the group. And if you looked at in 2025 there was a spike in seniors living in poverty, which we'd had a really nice like decade long decline of that and we had a bit of a jump back up in 2025. But when you dive into that data, it's mostly in the single individuals. It was not couples that moved up, it was majority driven by single individuals moving up. Because you think about inflation costs going up and these other income sources aren't keeping up with that. So you got this widening out where the expenses and not a lot of income and that puts them in a really challenging space. And especially when you talk about long term care, then there's nobody to help out at the home.
- [47:38]
B
Yeah, it's such a different journey for everyone. Part of that's magic, part of it's frustrating. And to go back to the beginning, man, if you're winging it and you're about there, I think it's going to be a difficult transition. But you know what? I think Jamie, today you were able to help our stackers a ton. Thank you so much. Believe it or not, Jamie and co author Bonnie Trichel have written a book on this topic. I know that you guys find that shocking, but. But you have sketched out all of this stuff. In fact, it's funny you call it a retirement sketchbook, but I don't think there's a stone unturned. I mean we've been talking now for 40 minutes, Jamie, and we have barely begun to dive into the stuff that you go into like 125 retirement planning lessons from financial experts. What surprised you when you were writing this book?
- [48:27]
C
That there are more than 125. Yeah. When we outlined it, we ended up, I think, 175 and cut back. The other thing is, the book was written to be kind of like this conversation. Right. We called it snackable, that you could pick it up and choose four or five of them. It's really not written to be read from, you know, page one to whatever it is. 280 pages or something. There are 125 sketches in here. So we drew this out. Most people are visual learners, and almost nothing in our space is visual. It's all been boiled down to spreadsheets and Monte Carlo analysis, but not for how real Americans people learn. So we wanted to make it snackable, a little bit more fun and with drawings, because people are always like, wait, does this book have drawings in it? They always joke about that. I'm like, in fact, it does have 125 drawings. And then they're like, oh, I might like this one then.
- [49:19]
B
Well, and who is your artist? Because I love the drawings.
- [49:22]
C
Yeah. So she was phenomenal. We actually interviewed a bunch of artists, interestingly enough. We tried to. Her name's Grace, and we tried to use AI like, 18 months ago, and it, like, couldn't spell back then. Right. You try to stuff, and it's come a long way. But we also made that decision to make it human, and we wanted an actual artist to do it. I did about 10 of these, and they took me, like, six months. And we were like, we'll never finish this book. So then we had to go get an artist. But Grace was phenomenal. It was also really fun because she doesn't come from the space. She does Hallmark cards. Interestingly enough, we had to explain the concepts to her. So building the drawings was. Does this actually help her understand them? And so, like, it was a great way to do it versus finding somebody that knew the space.
- [50:10]
B
It's like having a. Like having an alpha reader for your book.
- [50:14]
C
Yes.
- [50:14]
B
Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Your retirement sketchbook. And it's available as of last week. Everywhere, right?
- [50:20]
C
Yeah, everywhere.
- [50:22]
B
Jamie, thank you so much for helping us. Man. Retirement. It can be such a fun journey. And I think you hopefully just made it a lot more fun for a lot of our stackers.
- [50:31]
C
Yeah. Well, Joe, thanks for having me on. And stackers, thanks for listening.
- [50:34]
B
We'll see you again. Hopefully not next time, seven years from now. Let's do this again sooner.
- [50:43]
A
Hey there, Stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and it's time for you to hit a home run on today's. Trivia. You got this. It's today's date, but it's back in 1974 and Hank Aaron steps up to Batman that nearly as well as I would have done it. Just saying. Anyway, he drives the ball over the fence. That's right. Between Hank Aaron and me, we've now hit 715 major league homers, breaking the record set long, long before by a guy they said must have been a witch because he cursed a city when he left who had held the longtime record for home runs before Aaron and me. I'll be be back with the answer I'm pulling for you to know right after I go find out what secret sauce turns an IRA into a Roth. Extra butter, maybe? It's probably extra butter. Fixes everything.
- [51:36]
B
I remember when I got my first life insurance policy. Man, was it such a pain. First of all, I knew I needed to do it for a long time, but because I was in the business, which by the way, is another reason why you should know how hard it was. Because I do better and I delayed. But you know why? There was so much that had to be done. And yet when I got it done, it felt so good. It was just a relief that Cheryl and my twins were taken care of if something happened to me. And also then when we got life insurance on her, it was exactly the same. She said she felt exactly the same. Well, the cool thing is it doesn't have to be like it was back forever ago when I did this. And although life insurance isn't a fun topic, it is one you need to think about. So I'm glad that we found out about Ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and easy. It's 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes, and get same day coverage. There's no medical exam. You just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month. As of March 2025, Business Insider named Ethos the number one no medical exam, Instant life insurance provider and Ethos has 4.8 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot with over 3, 000 reviews. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos now by going to ethos.comsb in as little as 10 minutes, you can get your free quote and up to $3 million in coverage at ethos.comsb that's spelled E T H O S.comsb ethos.comsb Application times and rates may vary. 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 skills, 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 higher 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@ 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 Benjamins. Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply. Hiring do it the right way with indeed Del PCs with Intel Insider. Built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't. There for those all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken the times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you. Built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for an outlet and built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work@dell.com Dell PCs built for you.
- [56:34]
A
Hey there, stacker. I'm Roth. Ira lover and guy who's always looking for better saving ideas. Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. It turns out that the secret sauce in a Roth is that you don't claim it as a tax break today. Like a great pie, it's great out of the oven and the equivalent of fat free. Tax free. Okay. I'm seeing the similarity here. You also gotta put it in a container that says Roth. Just ask your brokerage. They'll provide it. Pretty awesome, right? Also awesome is the fact that between Hank Aaron and I, we have 715 home runs. Although he's done the heavy lifting so far, hitting exactly 715 of those. My time is right around the corner. But we jointly. We, emphasis on the. We jointly broke the record for the Most back in 1974. Prior to us, that record had been held for what felt like forever by what iconic baseball player? I'll give you another clue. Not only was the baseball player cursed, but his departure from Boston to New York seemed to place a curse on the whole city of Boston. That player was none other than Babe. And it took Boston 86 years to break that curse. True story. Boston also broke another curse this year. The city has been cursed since its founding without having a Benjamin's After Dark group. A curse finally lifted last month by some intrepid stacker in New England. You can join them tonight if you're near Hannah's Brewing in Melrose at 6pm and now, two guys who are about to help you hit a home run with all this gold from Jamie Hopkins. It's Joe and og.
- [58:17]
B
Big thanks to Jamie for joining us. And you know, this idea, OG, again, that we just can't wing retirement. That may be sketching this out.
- [58:24]
D
Just. Just wing it. It's fine.
- [58:27]
A
Everybody makes such a big deal about it.
- [58:28]
D
I know.
- [58:29]
B
You know, he talked about a few important points, but I want to dig into a couple more from his retirement sketchbook. There's obviously so much here that we need to talk about when it comes to retirement, but one area we didn't do was this idea of paycheck replacement. Crafting your own custom paycheck with all the different income sources. Like, how do you guys help people? Think about that, Og. If you're helping somebody, draw a map of. All right, do I withdraw from this account first? Do I withdraw from this? Do I go ahead and take Social Security early? Like, how do I put all those things together to make a new paycheck
- [59:04]
D
yeah, we wing it.
- [59:06]
A
You know how I, I mean, I've crafted my paychecks with a photocopier, like a really high quality photocopier.
- [59:11]
B
And you put a big number on it, a really big number.
- [59:14]
D
Wasn't that the, the check forger guy in the.
- [59:17]
A
Yeah, Catch me if you can DiCaprio movie?
- [59:19]
D
You know, the interesting thing about cash flow in retirement, or as you're getting close to retirement, is everybody wants to have the exact prescription, but in reality, it changes year to year. It really largely depends on what's going on in the rest of your world and, like, kind of your behavior. Some people, this came up a couple of years ago. Some people feel constrained by getting a check of $10,000 deposited in their account every, the first of every month as a paycheck because they go, well, you know, the first three months we spend in Florida in the wintertime, and then budget's like 12 or 13,000, but in the summertime it's more like 7 or 8. So that's how we make it up. But I feel constrained in January, February, like, why should you? Right? It's all your money. So some people prefer, hey, I'll take all my cash on January 1st, and then I'll choose how to spend it throughout the year. Some people can't be trusted with that amount of money and, like, need to have the constraint of, like, here's your money for January. And they're like, it's the 20th, I'm out. And you go, that's too bad. You know, we'll see you on the first. You have to customize it for who you are, what's going on in your world, and kind of know yourself a little bit. And the other part about, like, Social Security and IRAs and, you know, Roth distributions and stuff, this all matters from a tax standpoint. Year to year, where are you falling in terms, you know, one year you had a bunch of capital gains and dividends. You got to be careful of IRA withdrawals because now that's going to have a bigger impact to potentially Medicare premiums or, you know, your Roth conversion strategy is going to blow up because, you know, you thought you were in the 12% bracket and really you're in the 22% bracket now because you had. And there's always the risk of like, surprise income. And you go, well, surprise income is great, unless you've already planned out your tax strategy pretty close. And then all of a sudden you win a scratch off or you inherit it. You know, you've got an Inherited IRA to deal with.
- [61:12]
A
God, I hate when that happens.
- [61:13]
D
I know. That's so bad.
- [61:15]
B
It is a good problem to have, but man, if you handle that wrong, you could end up, I mean, you
- [61:18]
D
end up forfeiting a bunch taxes instead of 20 just by being off by a digit or two. There is no way to say, okay, I'm 50, this is my retirement income strategy when I'm 65. I think you got to plan out 65 when you're 64 and you have a pretty good idea what 66 and 67 might look like. But remain flexible as those years come up because you don't know what's really going to happen.
- [61:41]
B
It is an important point. You know, those first couple years of retirement like Jamie was talking about, you're really going to set the needle on what your spending looks like. Taking just a little bit more time to be conscious of. Do I value this? Is this really what I want my income stream to be? Because, you know, og, you've been in this situation before. Somebody decides to take a little more, they don't end up spending it, but they get addicted to. Or they do spend it, but they spend it on stupid stuff. They get addicted to this additional spending they don't really care about. And then when bad things happen and they were too close to the quote, safe withdrawal line, right, the point where it looks like they're going to maybe run out of money, man, it's harder to cut back later than it is to set the tone right away.
- [62:20]
D
I think there's two different things here that you're talking about. One is taking money out because you're, you know, using the $10,000 number. It's like, well, that's my budget. That's what the plan says. I'm gonna take 10,000 out. And then you finish the year with 30 grand in your savings account. Well, you really only needed to take 90 out, not 120. And you go, well, what does that matter? It's all my money. Well, what it matters is where those buckets are. So you just converted long term money to short term money or short term money to now money. And you didn't need to. That money could have stayed in those further buckets. And if you compound that over periods of time, it's no different than somebody who's in their 40s that goes, I don't need to deal with my RSUs right now. I mean, it's 500 shares, who cares? And then 10 years later they go, oh crap, I have all this company stock. It's at a low basis. I paid some taxes on some of it, but I can't remember which. And my company's doing really well, and I want to sell some of it, but now I got to pay this big tax bill also. I'm 50, and so they're paying me a bunch of money and giving me more stock. And so all these things compete at the same time. If you don't have a plan for it going into it, or at least, you know, reconciliation, maybe on the back end, you know, you can say, hey, this is my plan for the year, but in September or October, you better look and say, am I going to keep doing this in 2027, or can I knock this down to 8, or do I need to increase it to 12? Because I racked up some credit card bills because I spent more than I thought. The other piece of it was that you were talking about was spending. I mean, spending is fun.
- [63:45]
B
Don't ask, do I value this? Ask, how can I make this valuable?
- [63:50]
D
How can I make it feel valuable in the short run? How do I get the dopamine without the dopamine?
- [63:54]
B
That's right.
- [63:55]
D
And if you understand psychology, a little bit of that. I was talking with a friend of mine about this bike race, right? So we're doing this bike thing. Everybody knows about it by now. One of my friends said, you got to be careful with telling people too much. And I was like, why? It's like accountability. He goes, that's not the issue. The issue is, every time you tell somebody, what do people say? Every time I've said it to you guys, oh, my gosh. Oh, wow. You're amazing. Hey, you're training for that. Wow. I could never do that. You're such an amazing guy. You must be an impeccable physical athlete. Doug's on mute, so we don't have to listen to what he's saying.
- [64:27]
B
No, but, man, he's blabbering away.
- [64:29]
D
You know, he's just running his mouth.
- [64:31]
A
The first thing out of most of our mouths, whether it's to your face based or not, is, dude, you're gonna die.
- [64:35]
D
Well, that's not what people say. But my point is, I think both.
- [64:39]
B
It doesn't have to be either or.
- [64:41]
D
It's.
- [64:41]
B
This is amazing and you're gonna die.
- [64:43]
D
Yeah. So you're getting that excitement, that dopamine hit of the success without having to have the success, you know, because what's the back end? Your brain goes, man, I got a lot of love for not doing anything. Just saying I was Gonna do it. So what. What is it gonna be on the back end? Like, oh, yeah, you did the thing you said. Okay, cool. Well, if I don't do it, what are you gonna say? Ah, okay. You know, there's not as much pain. You gotta be careful.
- [65:05]
A
I knew he wasn't gonna do it. That's what I'm gonna say.
- [65:08]
D
You gotta be careful with the spending piece too, because you get that addiction of, like, I like this. A hack to that is just put it in your shopping cart.
- [65:17]
B
You get the hit.
- [65:18]
D
Putting it in the shopping cart is the same thing in your brain.
- [65:21]
B
I've done that. I used to always buy the funny T shirt when I was way younger. Like in my 20s, I'd buy the funny T shirt.
- [65:27]
D
Now you buy funny bowling shirts.
- [65:29]
B
That's right. And then later on, I buy the fun funny towel at the kitchen store or whatever. Now I take a picture of them because you get the same exact dopamine hit.
- [65:38]
D
That's a great strategy. Yeah, Take a picture of it.
- [65:39]
B
Take a picture of it. Share it with everybody.
- [65:41]
D
Look at this cool thing. Oh, my God, that's really funny, Joe.
- [65:44]
B
Right?
- [65:45]
D
And then you don't have to have a crappy T shirt that's gonna get a hole in it.
- [65:48]
B
Yeah. Or a dish towel that I. That I truly don't need because I
- [65:50]
A
got 5 million your wife will never let you put hanging in your kitchen.
- [65:53]
B
That's right. The one I saw in northwest Arkansas when we did a little weekend jaunt there recently was. I think I chose the wrong data seat. Thought that was pretty damn funny because I feel like that a lot of days. So what I'm hearing you say to wrap this up is, number one, there's know yourself, Do I set a monthly check amount? Or number two, do I give myself a lump and then I spend as it comes? There's a lot of know yourself there. There's also a lot of knowing what's going on your budget, which goes back to what Jamie said, is that you can't really wing it. You gotta. Gotta have a road map of really where you're going, because look at how this affects your withdrawal strategy. And then second, I can see just a really easy spreadsheet of what's the taxability, where all this income's coming from. And look a couple years into the future, what collateral damage might this cause if I do or don't take it out of this pot now? Am I gonna make things harder for myself in the future by taking it from here versus another place? Don't Just think about today. There was one more area I wanted to ask you about, which was this whole thing about if we have a 30 year mortgage and we get to retirement and it's gone, or even less than a 30 year mortgage, and now I'm sitting on all this equity in my house. You think about this OG Jamie writes in his book when use Wisely. Home equity is more than just square footage is financial fuel that can turn a struggling retirement into a thriving one. Where do you look at this? On the Risco meter of going, you know what? I want to stay in my house, but I got all this equity in it. You hear Fran Tarkington talking about reverse mortgages online. Not only did he throw a football,
- [67:29]
D
I was gonna say there's like 2% of our audience that knows who the hell Fran Tarkenton is at this point. I'm like, you got to go. Maybe Joe Montana, Steve Young.
- [67:38]
B
Did they do it too?
- [67:39]
D
Did they Tom Brady?
- [67:40]
B
Did they do reverse mortgage commercials?
- [67:42]
D
No, but they're going to.
- [67:44]
B
Tom Selleck did some, right?
- [67:46]
D
Tom Selleck.
- [67:47]
B
It's in their future, the fonts. Maybe they know Tom Selleck. It's always an old guy.
- [67:50]
D
Yeah, it was Wilford Brimley for a long time.
- [67:54]
A
Diabetes.
- [67:55]
D
The diabetes, you know. So where do. Is your question? Where do reverse mortgages or how to access equity?
- [68:02]
B
I think you really have three choices, right? The way I look at it, you've got smart refinancing, whatever smart might be. So ask about that reverse mortgage. Or, you know, even though I don't want to just bite the bullet and downsize to free up equity.
- [68:17]
D
Yeah. I mean, look, at the end of the day, money is money, right? And if you've got a million bucks in your checking account, a million bucks in your stock account, or a million bucks in equity in your house, your balance sheet says a million dollars. So one side of the equation is the net worth, right. Do you actually have the money to get through your retirement? The other piece is the liquidity of it. I was listening to a podcast episode with. Who was the Shark Tank guy? Kevin. Kevin o'. Leary.
- [68:44]
B
Kevin o'. Leary, Yeah.
- [68:45]
D
A little controversial, a little cocky. Yeah, yeah. But he earned it, right? So Elise allegedly has earned it. I have not verified it independently, but he was on the stage at the Oscars or whatever, so. Or on the red carpet. He does wear two watches, though, which just immediately, like, it just takes a, you know, step down in my book. The whole concept of what he was talking about in the show was about liquidity. And you can have a $5 million net worth in your business, but you don't need cash. You're still broke, right? If you can't raise money, can't pay your bills, who cares what your net worth is? Both of these matter. I think if you look at it objectively, if you have a big net worth but no liquidity, that is pretty crappy. That doesn't get you anything. Like you famously said, Joe many times, you can't carve off a piece of the bathroom to go to the grocery store. So I think the real answer is, where are we at in the liquidity step liquidity process and what's realistic? I don't like the idea of refinancing. First of all, the bank's not going to refinance any of your debt if you don't have any liquidity, you don't have cash flow. They don't give a crap. You could have a $25 billion net worth. If you don't have payments or ability to make payments, they're like, we're not giving you any money, so don't fool yourself into thinking, I'll just get a home equity loan or something like that. If you don't have any cash, I would say that the order. I would prefer you to sell the house. It's cleaner, it's a lower transaction cost. Over time, you're going to get more money out of the deal. And now you have this lump sum of deployable liquidity that you can do with it as you please. If you are absolutely tied to the house, then, you know, the reverse mortgage can be an option, but you just have to go into it eyes wide open. It's a lot less expensive than it used to be because it's more popular. So it used to be really cost prohibitive. Internally, you know, that's. The sales process was easy, but really the nuts and bolts of it was a very expensive product. It's gotten less expensive, it's gotten more regulated. But I still think, look, I think all three of us have moved a family member to a different house. Is that. Is that somewhat true? I think, yeah. The three weeks around the move suck. And then they live at a new place, and it's fine. Shelter has heat and cooling and water and electricity, you know, so I'm probably a really bad consigliere on this because I would look at it very matter of factly.
- [71:16]
B
I know you're very.
- [71:17]
D
Mom out of the house, put her ass in an apartment.
- [71:20]
A
Yep. I've gotten that speech from OG Before.
- [71:23]
D
You know, and she got a million bucks in her bank account. Now she can do. She can go on vacation, do her stuff.
- [71:28]
A
She doesn't want to go. Oh, gee, well, that's what the zip ties are for, Doug. No.
- [71:34]
D
Have you laid her down in a rug and rolled her ass up and thrown her in the back of the Suburban?
- [71:38]
B
So much tenderness.
- [71:39]
D
We're going on a field trip. It comes from a position of love, you know, I'd love for you to have liquidity and be able to go do the stuff you actually want to do or spend money on the things that you want to do. And this goes back to, from an estate planning standpoint, like, what are you doing for the next generation? If that's something that's important to you, you. You're giving them a house. Like, what the hell do they want your house for? They'd rather have you be at their kids game or be able to travel for the holidays and, you know, come down and visit or. If you're going to give me 20 grand, I'd rather you give me the 20 grand a day where I can use it for my kids college versus 30 years from now when I got to like, go through probate to sell your house, take a crappy offer because it's a house that's 50 years old, hasn't been updated.
- [72:21]
B
Yeah. And I know stackers, for a lot of you, this is not an issue that you're dealing with yourself, but you fixing to.
- [72:27]
D
And, and it's a thing. And it's. It's a lot more emotional than I'm making it, obviously. I mean, when we moved mom out of the house into the condo, it was a. It was. It sucked.
- [72:37]
B
That's a hundred percent why I wanted to bring it up now, because it's coming in all of our futures. It is. It is coming.
- [72:42]
D
But she's doing great where she is. That's the other side of that is now I'm four years down the line and she doesn't say, like, my old house ever. She says, I'm at home where she is.
- [72:54]
B
Takes a little while, and then she loves it. Yeah. And it may be the same for you, too. I mean, in your own retirement when you decide that moving is that option. I love what you said about the reverse mortgages, because while they have been better regulated, I think you want to consult some pros.
- [73:09]
D
Yeah. It's not a DIY project.
- [73:11]
B
Not at all.
- [73:12]
D
And definitely not. I'll just call Tom Selleck on the. I got his number. It's 800-852-5-5-52.
- [73:18]
B
Yeah. Hey, Tom.
- [73:19]
D
Hey, Tom, what's up?
- [73:20]
B
Wait to see.
- [73:21]
D
I trust you. You're on Blue Bloods. You're like a police captain.
- [73:25]
B
That means you're an expert in this area.
- [73:27]
C
Yes.
- [73:28]
D
You're commissioner of the nypd, so you would never steer me wrong.
- [73:32]
A
You used to live the high life in Hawaii.
- [73:34]
B
That's right. You drive a Ferrari.
- [73:36]
D
I remember one time I had a client meeting when I was a leader at Ameriprise. I was working with a new advisor. The client had a big, complicated insurance policy through New York Life, and we were simplifying it and replacing it with a 20 year term policy that was way less expensive and obviously because it wasn't permanent and freed up some cash flow to be able to do some IRA contributions, like all this other sort of stuff, all this ancillary. You don't need the $1,000 a month insurance plan that you were sold. Right. So we do this whole pitch, the whole thing, and we get to the end and the client says, wait, do you want me to get rid of the New York Life policy? We're like, yeah. And the client goes, well, but it's New York Life. It's the company you keep. It was literally an LOL moment where I was like, oh, my God, did you just recite the marketing line back to me?
- [74:37]
B
Wow. Did that work?
- [74:38]
D
I guess they put some energy into that, into that branding process. They did a good job.
- [74:42]
B
Yeah, that is pretty good.
- [74:43]
D
It's like somebody going, william Devane said gold is a really good idea. Oh, he did, did he?
- [74:48]
B
Well, it's difficult then OG because you have to then work with them through that because nobody knows. I mean, you say that stuff. You know, these marketing lines, we hear them over and over and over, and you don't hear yourself saying it back. You're like, no, wait a minute. Whoa, whoa. Yeah. Guess. Guess why that's so brilliant. It's because that's what they told you.
- [75:05]
C
Yes.
- [75:07]
B
We will link to Jamie's retirement sketchbook. Such good work. Jamie and Bonnie on the show. Notes. Interesting man in dot com. Yeah. Good stuff. All right, time to venture out onto the back porch. I want to say thank you to everybody who stopped by. Paula. And my first live show at Texas A and M. It was so much fun. Glad that you could be there with us.
- [75:30]
D
Based on the feedback, likely your only live show at Texas A and M. Oh, hey.
- [75:35]
B
Wow. And now the restraining order goes into effect. Should I. I should I say we apologize, Joe. We apologize for all of that.
- [75:45]
D
Kidding, of course. It was amazing.
- [75:47]
B
Doug was hiding in the rafters and having Paula there and Jay Davis and of course, a local credit union. Red River Credit Union underwrites this whole thing. So got to say a big thanks to them for allowing us to do this. And it appears.
- [76:00]
D
Thanks for the invite, by the way. Appreciate it.
- [76:02]
B
Well, here's the deal. Yeah, we had. We had so many people on stage because people asked about you.
- [76:07]
C
You.
- [76:07]
B
I didn't have a chance to tell you this, but having Jay on stage, Paula on stage. So we're not gonna have all those people on stage.
- [76:13]
D
There's only so many. So much space for my big head. So I take up two seats.
- [76:19]
B
Hopefully we do this every quarter. And if you're local or you want to come join us from wherever you are, the next time, hopefully we get OG on the stage with us. Another thing we had, by the way. And Doug, I'm just. I'm just railroading this. I'm taking over your back porch.
- [76:34]
A
All you, man. Yep. Look at me. Hey, I'm the captain.
- [76:37]
B
Now we got some more votes. OG on what your new segment is all about. What the new title should be. Analytics. Anna Lytics.
- [76:48]
D
Okay, I'll put that one down. Potential.
- [76:51]
A
His eyebrows did not raise. There was no sparkle in his eye when you said that.
- [76:55]
B
Joe did not get it.
- [76:56]
A
What's next?
- [76:57]
B
I like analytics. I think that basic training is still my favorite. Still the one. The one that I like the most.
- [77:03]
D
Yeah, we'll. We'll keep working on it. This is a test market. We are testing this for a little while and then we'll have it. I think we'll have it named by season two. If we're invited back for season two, we'll have it named by that.
- [77:13]
B
We do have good news coming up on this, too. This is also going to be a YouTube series. So if you want to revisit those in their entirety by themselves. And we have some great graphics that work you through all of the points that OG and Anna talked about. That's going to be coming soon on our YouTube page. So go to YouTube.compackingbegmans Sign up for our YouTube page. I know that our video last week got a really big response. The one about if you're not getting into debt, you're probably falling behind. That made quite a splash. Speaking of, I got several notes that morning. I'm gonna point to the one from Drew, and Drew said the debt skit on the April 1 show was hilarious. I thought you'd all lost Your minds. And I was in the process of unfollowing the show on iheartrad when Doug revealed the gag. Well played, Drew. In Misawa, Japan. Listening all the way from Japan, I
- [78:08]
D
know that Doug revealed it. Like, what's the. I don't know.
- [78:11]
B
How did Doug reveal. Did you reveal it? Did you give it away, Doug?
- [78:14]
D
Oh, I think he said it, like, in the credits. He said something about it.
- [78:17]
A
I don't remember spoiling the fun.
- [78:20]
D
You did. I. I do remember you saying it. I thought we should have just let this hang for a while longer. Yeah, maybe a day or two. But at the risk of unfollowing, having a bunch of people unfollow us, I
- [78:29]
A
feel like I've done you a service.
- [78:31]
B
Men giving up all the secrets of the universe. Doug, Doug.
- [78:35]
A
I mean, really, Come on. You listen to an episode of anything on April 1st, that's on you, man. If you're going to unsubscribe from anything
- [78:43]
B
you see or hear, especially Drew. We were coming right out of. We were coming right out of the trivia about the roots of April Fool's Day. Like, where that comes from. A lot of fun. And I'm glad that you wrote. And we. We received several others. That was the first one I got though, of many. And it. And it cracked me up, people saying, oh, it was too early for that. And. And I didn't see that at first. And other people just agreeing with me when I told them this was our most important work, maybe of all time. And if you didn't watch all the way to the end to see our outtakes, you definitely want to watch the outtakes because we had trouble keeping it together that whole episode. All right. Last thing I've got before we turn it over to Doug is this. If you're somebody who's here because you really want to know where you stand, on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you stand with your money? Well, OG and his team have created a scorecard. You can go through, answer a few questions, and you'll get your scorecard on exactly how OG's team thinks you're doing. It's stacking. Benjamin.comScorecard gets you that, and then that gives you a good starting spot to see as you're improving over time. How can you do from there? Big thanks for hanging out with us today. I hope that if you know somebody who's getting close to retirement, this whole discussion with Jamie and then with OG later on about some of the really big things you need to think about for your Retirement. Absolutely love those. And some of these tips or places, frankly, I'd never heard before, oh gee, I'd never heard before this. You know that last year, before you retire that money, is it going to be better spent trying to turn yourself a little bit more into a spender and starting to get used to opening up the floodgates a little bit and feeling what it's going to feel like to, instead of a saver, be a spender versus money that you probably, if you've done a good job of saving, will never use if you just lop it in. So if, like me, you know, somebody that hasn't heard stuff like that, they're getting ready to retire, send them the episode. Okay, that's going to do it for today. Doug, what are the big three things on our to do list today?
- [80:40]
A
Well, Joe, first, take some advice from Jamie Hopkins. Spend more time and money experimenting with retirement as as we've reminded you many times, gather as much data as you can and all data is good data. Second, how about more retirement advice winging the what am I going to do part of retirement? By creating a budget, you'll better handle your money and your spending pattern, which can help you avoid unnecessary taxes and plan which investments will best fuel your adventures. So start sketching. But the big lesson Speaking of sketch, Joe's mom has some sketchy retirement dreams. Me fixing the spare bathroom? Yeah, that's a retirement dream for one of us, Ma. Thanks to Jamie Hopkins for joining us today. You'll find his retirement sketchbook wherever books are sold. We'll also include links in our show notes@stackingbenjamins.com this show is the property of SB Podcast, LLC, Copyright 2026 and is created by Joe Salsihai. You'll find out about our awesome team@stackingbenjamins.com along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you 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.