Your Money Problems Aren't Math Problems (They're People Problems) SB1751

Summary

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The Stacking Benjamins Show

Episode: Your Money Problems Aren't Math Problems (They're People Problems) SB1751
Release Date: October 22, 2025
Featured Guest: Carl Richards – NYT columnist, financial planner, creator of “The Behavior Gap”

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Episode Overview

This episode takes a deep dive into why financial challenges are rarely pure math problems but are usually deeply rooted in human behavior, emotion, and relationships. Joe Saul-Sehy and OG are joined by Carl Richards (“Mr. Behavior Gap”) for a candid, wide-ranging, and philosophical discussion on the nature of money, how our stories and perspectives shape our finances, and practical ways to create more meaningful, resilient financial plans. The show’s signature friendly, witty tone makes this episode both insightful and entertaining, striking that “fun and functional” balance.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Money Isn’t Just Math—It’s Stories, Emotions, and Lenses

Starts ~09:55

• Carl Richards shares that despite his “very big calculator,” he realized after a decade in finance that math isn’t what derails us with money—emotions and stories are:

  “If money is a math problem, how come I end up in a fight?...two plus two always equals four, but two plus two never equals envy.” (10:25 – Carl Richards)

• Money is a “series of stories” and conversations about it can be like “an electric fence you didn’t know was electric.” (11:38 – Carl Richards)
• Everyone sees the same “cube” (situation), but from different sides—shaped by unique histories and beliefs.
• Example: Carl’s wife once shifted his perspective by simply asking:

  “What if it was fun and easy?”
  This stunned Carl, who had never considered money-making could be anything but hard. (12:07–14:13)

2. The Power of Perspective & Conversation

Starts ~14:13

• Money, like politics, is often filtered through such varied lenses that people experience “different realities.”
• The antidote is layered, nuanced talk—sharing stories and being genuinely curious about others’ views and money memories.

“What if we just started learning to talk about money in a layered and nuanced way?” (15:47 – Carl Richards)

• Strategy: Start close in, at home or among immediate circles, with questions like, “What’s your first memory of money?”
• Even industry veterans (Joe or guest Josh Brown) struggled when first asked this—most listeners never ask or answer these with partners, family, or friends. (17:51–20:34)
• Tactical Tip: Begin gentle, non-judgmental conversation about formative financial experiences to foster understanding and empathy.

3. Turning Stories Into Lessons, Not Shame

Starts ~23:12

• The real work in effective financial planning is often psychological—recognizing that shame serves no purpose.

• "Responsibility says, 'That was a dumb idea.' Shame says, 'I am dumb.' There's a very big difference." (37:43 – Carl Richards)

• Trauma from money mistakes can linger for years and impact future choices. The key is to reframe losses as lessons and move forward.

4. The Role of the Financial Advisor: From Technician to Guide

Starts ~23:12

• The best planners today act more as behavioral coaches or “money psychologists,” not just technical experts.

• “The job, the calculator side of the job is incredibly important as a technical skill… and it's worthless in the long term if we don’t know where we’re going.” (26:46 – Carl Richards)

• Humans add value by offering presence, curiosity, and empathy—skills AI won’t replicate.

5. Regaining Control Through Organization (The Maxine Story)

Starts ~27:45

• Carl tells the story of Maxine, a widow overwhelmed with financial paperwork. By organizing it into a binder, Carl helps her regain a sense of control.

• "I said, hey, could I carry that box? Could I carry that weight for you?... And when she came back, this three ring binder… the sense of relief.” (28:12–30:51)

• For anyone overwhelmed, a small act—organizing paperwork, weeding a garden, cleaning a desk—can expand control and prompt more proactive engagement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On divergent views:

  "You're standing shoulder to shoulder at a car accident and police reports are so different you wonder if you watched the same event." (13:31 – Carl Richards)

• On planning vs. chasing products:

  "We spend a lot of time talking about ladders and walls…but not if they're leaning against the wrong wall." (16:13 – Carl Richards)

• On the emotional load in financial documents:

  “That balance sheet is a non fictional document woven with fictional stories…every line…has a story.” (36:56 – Carl Richards)

• On moving on from regret:

  "You can’t hedge yesterday." (35:42 – Joe Saul-Sehy recalling Carl’s new book)

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Practical Takeaways & Tactics

• Have “money story” conversations: Ask your partner/parents/kids about their earliest money memories and what those meant.
• Root discussions in understanding, not solutions:

  "What did that feel like?" is a more powerful question than, “Why did you do that?”

• Reduce shame, foster responsibility: Reframe past mistakes into lessons for growth.
• Organize to regain agency: When overwhelmed, tidy a small area of your financial life (or literal workspace) to trigger broader momentum.
• Planners: prioritize purpose: Technical skills matter, but understanding clients’ emotional lives and motivations distinguishes great advisors.

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Related Segment: Options as a Hedge (Joe & OG)

Starts ~47:15 (Headline Segment)

A separate section of the episode focuses on options trading as a strategy for managing concentrated stock positions—a topic of growing interest as big winners like Nvidia dominate investors’ portfolios.

• Options 101 Recap:
  OG and Joe discuss using put and call options as “insurance policies” on existing stocks—e.g., if you want to protect Nvidia gains, you buy a put at a price you’re comfortable with.
• Key Point: The costs of options (premiums) often outweigh their practical benefits for most investors, especially those with limited portfolios.

  "Most people don't have the appetite for the amount of money it's going to cost..." (55:42 – Joe Saul-Sehy)

• OG’s Core Argument:
  Diversification trumps complex insurance-based strategies for long-term investors. Volatility is not the enemy; it’s also the source of investment growth.
• Options are for advanced investors:
  For most, an overreliance on options adds complexity for little or no long-term outcome improvement.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 09:55 – Carl Richards joins the basement
• 10:25 – “If money is a math problem….why do we fight about it?” (Carl)
• 15:47 – “Start close in. What if we just started learning to talk about money in a layered and nuanced way?” (Carl)
• 17:51 – Money memory exercise (“What’s your first memory of money?”)
• 28:12 – Maxine’s story: The power of organizing the overwhelming
• 35:42 – “You can’t hedge yesterday.” (from Carl’s book)
• 47:15 – Discussion of options as a hedge in investments
• 55:42 – “Most people don’t have the appetite for the amount of money it’s gonna cost you.” (Joe)

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Conclusion

• Simplify and humanize financial planning: Strip away unnecessary complexity; focus on core questions and gentle self-inquiry.
• Talk about money early and often: Your financial well-being is less “calculator” and more “kitchen table.”
• Professional tools are only half the answer: Emotional awareness and thoughtful conversations drive real success.

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Further Listening and Resources

• Check show notes at stackingbenjamins.com for book links and additional resources from Carl Richards.
• Carl's Book: Your Money: Reimagining Wealth in 101 Simple Sketches

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"All options end at the end of their term at zero. Everything…is all volatility and speculation…you can't get rid of volatility—it's what gives you upside."
— OG (59:36)

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“When I feel nervous…I'm just going to try and rewire my response. And my response can go from shame to responsibility…I'm not going to try to resist the stimulus…we're going to just try and rewire the response.”
— Carl Richards (40:38)

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Transcript

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This Friday, the NBA on prime tips off with their debut doubleheader. First up, Boston brings the action to the Garden as the Celtics face the New York Knicks. Then out west, it's a battle of the superpowers as the Lakers try to go against the relentless pace of of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Celtics, Knicks, Timberwolves, Lakers. Coverage starts Friday at 7 o' clock Eastern only on Prime.

[Carl Richards]

All right, here we go.

[OG]

Hold your ears, folks.

[Joe Salsi]

It's showtime.

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And today we simplify saving, investing and financial planning with a legend in the space. New York Times columnist and financial planner Carl Richards joins us for a wide ranging discussion about how to manage your money, goals and life in a simple and effective way. In our headline segment, advisors are wondering about options. How exactly do options work? Should you add them to your strategy? We'll chime in and you know it. I'm also going to swoop in halfway through the show with my mind bending trivia that you can totally show off to all your friends or both of them like me. And now two guys who are the best friends your money could have. It's Joe and.

[OG]

Oh.

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

J.J. juju G.

[Joe Salsi]

That's right. Welcome to your money mentors show. I am Joe Salsi. I'm so happy that you're here. It's another Wednesday and that means. Oh, geez on the mic. How are you, buddy?

[OG]

I'm live in living color.

[Joe Salsi]

It is a fantastic day here in Texas. We got beautiful blue skies, late fall.

[OG]

Or as we call it, summer.

[Joe Salsi]

I am about to head out for the beauty of West Virginia and I think we might have missed the peak of fall color there, but I can't wait to a little bit.

[OG]

I mean, it's close. I bet you're close.

[Joe Salsi]

New River Gorge, Dollywood. We're gonna go to Dollywood. Obviously gonna go visit a coal mine. We'll actually go see some of the old coal mines in the national park.

[OG]

You drive around, you see them looking.

[Joe Salsi]

Forward to all of that.

[OG]

But today, cool state, not a cool border. You go, really? That's the design. That's what the map guy decided.

[Joe Salsi]

That's it. The squiggly line. Like he was drunk when he made West Virginia.

[OG]

Like, like a little point at the very top. Like, what's the point thing for?

[Joe Salsi]

Well, his hand got all. Oh, sorry, Marilyn. We had to do.

[OG]

My bad.

[Joe Salsi]

Had to take part of that. We get a great show today. You know why? Because the guest talking upstairs. Oh, gee, you walk right by him. I don't know if you recognize him. Carl Richards is here. Oh, the Carl Richards, Mr. Behavior Gap. The guy.

[OG]

Oh, there's a guy that does draw and all that stuff.

[Joe Salsi]

That's right. For many, many years I didn't notice him.

[OG]

I thought he was a. I thought he, I thought we commissioned him on a project.

[Joe Salsi]

We for so many years all got to have the fun of. You'd open up the New York Times and there was Carl Richards, the sketch guy. And once a week he had a column in the New York Times. But here he's with us. We went all tactical on Monday when Anna was here. If you didn't have a chance to listen to that, we answered a bunch of great stacker questions. Well, today we're going to get much more philosophical with Carl because that's Carl. Carl talks about, you know what, there's all this math og all this math. And yet it's not the math that usually trips us up.

[OG]

It's not the math.

[Joe Salsi]

How far into your career were you when you realized that becoming like a psychologist, a money psychologist was a big part of your role?

[OG]

I was today years old. I, I can't answer that. I mean, a lot of people would look at the time frame when I started this work, late 90s, and say, oh my gosh, what a terrible time. You got the peak of the bull market in the late 90s and then just immediately into the crash for the next 11 years. And I think that because of that we learned so much about expectations and communication and staying the course and all, all those things during that 10, 11 year period at the beginning of my career, that anytime the market's down now, you know, like 20%, child, you know, been there, but. And I actually am kind of worried about the investor of today that has not seen anything but 15, basically 15, 17 years of the market going straight up and you know, there's been the occasional blip and obviously Covid and that sort of deal. But I don't think the average investor right now is equipped with the memory of how sometimes it goes for an extended period of time. And so you gotta be ready for that.

[Joe Salsi]

Well, I worry about, for the same reason I worry about the young advisor.

[OG]

Yeah, advisor or investor. Absolutely.

[Joe Salsi]

Yeah. You're trying to help other people control their emotion. It truly is all about controlling your emotions. What I love about Carl Richards is his ability to take these math problems and talk about what truly is the jumble of emotions we have around money and dissect them and really take these complex arguments and these complex things and go, you know what? It's not as complex as we make it. Which is why he was able to very simply put things into sketch form for so many years. So today we're diving in with Carl Richards on what promises to be, I can assure you, a wide ranging discussion about your money, about your emotions, about your relationships and man, get ready to take some notes. But before Carl comes down to the basement, we got a couple sponsors to make sure we can keep on keeping on. You don't pay any money for any of this goodness. So we're going to hear from them and then Carl Richards coming down to mom's basement. This episode is sponsored by Navy Federal Credit Union. Buying a car could be like a long road trip. There's negotiating prices, lots of fees and a difficult process. But with the auto loan from Navy Federal, you're on the highway to higher savings. We want our members to save more on their next auto purchase. That's why we offer great rates, military discounts and pre approvals that are good for 90 days. Plus we offer most decisions in seconds. You could even get 200 when you refinance your auto loans from another lender with us. So if you want to save more on your next auto purchase, learn more and apply for an auto loan@navy federal.org auto loans. Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA Credit and collateral subject to approval. Terms and conditions apply for military discounts. Refinance loan must be at least $5,000 to be eligible for the $200. Terms and conditions apply. Visit navy federal.org autoloans for details.

[NBA on Prime Announcer]

This Friday, the NBA on Prime Tips off with their debut doubleheader. First up, Boston brings the action to the Garden as the Celtics face the New York Knicks. Then out west, it's a battle of the superpowers as the Lakers try to poster the relentless pace of the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Celtics and Knicks. Who has the Most hustle and defense. This game will come down to who wants it more. And the Timberwolves and the Lakers. It's two Western Conference heavyweights going toe to toe. Buckle up, folks. This one's gonna be electric. Celtics, Knicks, T. Wolves and Lakers. Coverage starts Friday, 7 o' clock Eastern only on.

[Joe Salsi]

So happy we have this gentleman back in Mom's basement. We got to get him, like, a frequent visitor card. Carl Richards. That has been a while, Carl.

[Carl Richards]

It h. I would not even like to figure out how long it's been, because I'm always. I'm like, it's been a decade. It feels like yesterday.

[Joe Salsi]

I know, I know. And yet when I said hello to you, just while we were upstairs talking to mom, it was like three days have passed since we talked. I always feel like three days have passed since we spoke.

[Carl Richards]

Exactly right. I. I have this unrealistic expectation that everybody's my best friend and it gets me in trouble a lot, but it often serves me really well. So it's. That's good. I felt the same way.

[Joe Salsi]

I do like the idea, though, and this is a whole different podcast of beginning with people are inherently good versus people are inherently bad. Like, just going in and thinking they're going to be my buddy.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah, for sure. I guess I don't care whether it's true or not. In the inherent question. I have an opinion, but I don't even care. I would much rather live as it was true that people are inherently good.

[Joe Salsi]

100%.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah.

[Joe Salsi]

You write as. I think all of our stackers know about the intersection of behavior and finance. Finance, at its heart, is a math problem, and yet we try to fix these problems with calculators. And you've been doing this for a long time. I've been doing this for a long time. Why do we keep trying to solve these emotional issues with calculators, Carl?

[Carl Richards]

Yeah, it's funny, Joe. I mean, I have a very big calculator and I know how to use it.

[Joe Salsi]

You don't want to brag, but.

[Carl Richards]

No, I'm bragging. I have the biggest calculator and I know how to use it. And yet this took me a decade or so. I mean, I'm 25 years into this, and for the first decade, I thought that calculator would solve everything. And here's the dilemma I kept running into. If money is a math problem, how come I end up in a fight? Like, two plus two always equals four, but two plus two never equals envy. And how come I'd end up in a fight with A spouse, a partner, a child, a friend. Over money. If it's a math problem, and it turns out that indeed it probably should be a math problem, maybe in our most enlightened relationship with money, money is purely neutral and it's a tool because it is like, it's a zero and one in a cloud. But between here and enlightenment, it turns out money is just a series of stories. And so I think the reason we keep getting hung up by this is money. And money conversations end up being like an electric fence that you didn't expect or didn't know was electric. You thought it was just a fence, and then you touch it, and suddenly there's all this energy. And that energy comes from the stories we've layered on top of it.

[Joe Salsi]

Well, and it's interesting because when you talk about the stories, you know, you also like to point out that two of us can look at the same story. We can look at the same. It's funny, I have this friend who taught me that a negotiation's like a cube or discussions like a cube. I'm looking at a cube. You're looking at a cube, but you're looking at one side of the cube. I'm looking at the other side of the cube. I feel like, Carl, money's also a cube. How can we have the same thing? And you look at it completely differently than I do.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah, it's astonishing. I remember coming home one day from a tough day of work in the coal mines. I was feeling that way, sort of like beast of burden. And I walked in. I'm sure I was using this voice and making this face, and I was like, oh, it's so hard. And I'm sure I groaned a few times, and my wife was like. I mean, there was a little bit of like, get over yourself in her voice, which I appreciate, but there was also this, like, she said this crazy thing, and it was astonishing to me. And I love this language around, like, this thought had never crossed my mind because I was like, making money is so hard. It's so tough. And she was like, hey, what if it was fun and easy? And I remember this is a hundred percent metaphor. But I remember wanting, like, actually, I won't even use the metaphor, but I just remember being angry, sort of like, what? What do you mean? Because that thought had never crossed my mind. And she was viewing it from a completely different perspective. At least in that moment, she was viewing it from a completely different perspective. She was thinking something that had never even occurred to me. Not only do I not Know how to think that way. I didn't even know you were allowed to think that way. That, to me is such an important piece. That's why travel is important. It's why conversations. We were talking about regional differences. It's why hearing from people who are different from you, who bring different perspectives, different traditions, like some of the stories, I mean, I've traveled all over the world. We lived in New Zealand for four years, in London for a year. And some of the stories you hear from people about their relationship with money, you're suddenly like, whoa, there's a different way of thinking about this. I think that's how it all happens. I mean, we get into the science of standing at the corner and seeing a car accident. You're standing shoulder to shoulder with somebody and you have police reports taken. And the police reports, you're just like, I don't even know what that guy was watching. I mean, you could go to a movie with your spouse, come out of the movie, see your best friends, you hear your spouse describe the movie, and you're like, you were in a different movie.

[Joe Salsi]

You see this right now online with politics.

[Carl Richards]

Oh, don't even. Yeah, we can't.

[Joe Salsi]

You know what I mean? No, we won't. But I know it's a hundred percent. What you see you and another person looking at the same exact thing, and you're like, what the hell are you looking at? Are you kidding me?

[Carl Richards]

No, it's clear that I think politics is a really good lens for this. Because there are people in my life that I have conversations with that it's become very apparent they live in a different world. And like, I'm not saying that metaphorically, they actually live in a different reality than me. And I'm not saying it's bad or good in any way. I'm just saying we both live in different realities because of the stories and mainly the lens through which we're viewing the world. And that absolutely applies to money. I mean, scarcity and abundance. Hard or easy. Like, we go through the whole list. Fear or greed, There's a whole list of lenses through which we're viewing the world that mean that. I mean, I think you and I live in closer realities, but they're definitely different.

[Joe Salsi]

I love how we opened this conversation with strategic talk, right? This high level stuff of money is emotion. Calculators are good, but if it was just a calculator problem, then we'd all be on the same page. And yet we can look at things from these, these different aspects. I want to get a Little tactical for a second. Like, how do we start to bridge these gaps with people? Like, what's the point here? Because what I heard was probably travel more, talk to more people. Is it be open more about having these money conversations? What's the tactic?

[Carl Richards]

Yeah, let's get, like, super tactical on a very, like. Like a close level. I love the idea of starting. There's a great David White poem called Start Close In. Like, Start Close in. Because it's fun to think about, you know, the things we've already mentioned. Travel. But what's even closer. And what's even closer is the person you're sitting next to at dinner or a client or a colleague or a child or a friend. What if we just started learning to talk about money in a layered and nuanced way? Let's use Stephen Covey's statement about, like, the last thing you'd want to do. I'm paraphrasing. Last thing you'd want to do is spend your whole life climbing a ladder only to find out it's leaning against the wrong wall. And we spend a lot of time talking about ladders and walls, like which investment, which budgeting app, which credit card. Those conversations are useful and good, but not if they're leaning against the wrong wall. Not if we haven't had a. Like, one more terrible analogy. Like, if we're gonna go on a trip, the way we approach personal finance right now feels to me like an endless debate, and again, valuable. An endless debate about whether to take a plane, a train, or an automobile on a trip. If we've decided to take a car. Which car? What type of car? What's the gas mileage? But what I'm saying is, could we have some conversation about where we're going, or at least in conjunction with what form of transportation you want to take on your trip? Could we get clear about where you want to go first and also realizing that where you want to go will change mid journey, mid trip, you might see a store you want to stop at or a mountain you want to climb or a river you want to swim in. And so start by having these conversations close at home. Like, here's one I've been having with everybody I can corner. What's your first memory of. In fact, Joe, I'm actually curious about this. What's your first memory of money?

[Joe Salsi]

My first memory of money.

[Carl Richards]

Let me just pause while you're thinking about this. Everybody listening. This is shocking, and it's not shocking to me anymore. You talk about this for a living?

[OG]

Yeah.

[Joe Salsi]

Over 30 years between the time I was a financial planner and now financial media.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah. And your listeners would be familiar with. Josh Brown talks more than anybody about money. I asked him same response.

[Joe Salsi]

We had a great time with Josh on the show. This would be a fun three person discussion by the way.

[Carl Richards]

But the fact that you haven't ever been asked or thought about. So now what is it?

[Joe Salsi]

Yeah. So I can't think of the earliest one but the one that strikes me is the first time where I got the difference. Where I started to figure out value was actually kind of late, Carl. It was in eighth grade. In eighth grade I was working in this cornfield job doing this job called detasseling. You take the tops off of corn. And I remember I spent the entire time I was out there dreaming about this 12 speed bicycle I wanted to buy. And, and it was this amazing bicycle. I was going to start training to travel across the United States when I was older. And I could do it. I always saw these rides across America. You know, I thought it was really cool. So I saved the entire time that I'm out there, I save up some ridiculous to me at the time amount of money, I think like $450, right. And I, and I go to the store, my mom takes me to the store and with my own money I buy this 12 speed bike. And the second week I had it, I'm riding very quickly. I hit the wrong brake, which was the front brake instead of the back brake. My back wheel comes across the front. I go down in a heap, blood all over the place. But it snapped off the gear shifter and I didn't have the money to get it replaced. And then I realized then that I spent my whole summer like for the next six, seven, eight months when I didn't have time to work because my, my mom said I need to focus on school. School became my job, focus on, you know, all the other stuff. Didn't have time or money to replace it. The thing sat. And I remember thinking about was that the right use of money at that time if I hadn't thought through the ability to be able to maintain the bike, to actually have the like the ability. I'd even thought through the fact that I probably wouldn't be able to write it much during the school year.

[Carl Richards]

You know, see, I would be tempted to hijack that. It's all that I can do to not hijack this entire show and ask you more about that. What did that feel like? And then the next question I would so too.

[Joe Salsi]

Or if Carl Richardson.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah. The next question I would want to ask, like, how many of your listeners couldn't answer that question for their spouse or partner of 10, 20, 30 years?

[Joe Salsi]

I would think if I had trouble with it and Josh Brown had trouble with it. Yeah, I bet 95% of us have problems with that.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah, Josh had no problem with the story. But I asked him, I'm like, how come you've ever talked about that? He's like, I haven't talked about that in 25 years or 30 years. How come you haven't? He's like, no one ever asked, which is amazing. So tactically, I didn't know that about my wife of 27 years at the time. When I asked her publicly on the show, I didn't know the answer. I've been having that conversation with my kids. Here's another interesting one. Sort of like what I would have asked you at the end, because that's such a great story. I would have loved to have said, like, what do you make of that now? I would have loved to have said like, hey, can you go back there for a minute? Like, what did that feel like when you had that realization that you spent your whole summer? What was the feel? I would be really curious about the feeling. And then I'd probably move on to like, hey, in junior high, were you one of the rich kids or the poor kids? And then you would probably tell me some story and then I'd remember to ask and you'd say something like, oh, we didn't have a lot. People say that all the time. Oh, we were middle class or oh, we didn't have a lot of favorite question there. And again, this is all tactical. Start close in. These are the kind of conversations. This isn't about a budgeting app. Is my favorite question around anybody saying something like, we didn't have a lot, but we were fine, or any statement favorite question is to say, hey, how did you know? And then you get to this super. Like one day I was at school and I didn't realize it, but I only had one pair of tough skin jeans and I was at. This is a real story for my friend Aaron. I was at school and there was this girl I really liked and she was showing some interest in me, you know, like teenage sort of stuff. We were playing football after school and I got grass stains on my jeans and I didn't even think about it. I wore it the next day and this girl was from a more well to do family and she said, why didn't you wash your jeans? And I told her I only had one pair, and she never talked to me again. And you're like, come on. How is that informing? Josh's story is informing Josh's life. His story about losing $100 at sleepaway camp, you know, my friend Aaron's story. I could go on and on, but that tactically, that's what I'm talking about. What if we had some of those conversations gently, with deep empathy, just to understand, not to teach anybody anything, but just to. I mean, I get so excited, like, I could barely contain myself about how badly I want to ask you more questions. So it becomes an addiction of giving people space. That, to me, is how we solve this problem.

[Joe Salsi]

Do you think that. This was not on my sheet either? So you guys were throwing out my prep sheet, but do you think this is an issue in financial planning? Is that. I feel like the financial planners who really get it realize how much they are having to become much more of a psychologist, maybe even a sociologist, and how important that is to really connecting with your client and helping to guide them toward better decisions. I feel like there's this gulf right now in the financial planning world between the people who are becoming Taylor Swift's agent, you know, where your client is a badass, and your job is to understand their feelings, their needs, the things going on, to sometimes be the tough person going, no, you know what, Taylor, get back out on that damn stage. This is what you do. Taylor gets back on the stage and goes, oh, yeah, I love it. You know what I mean? I'm not. I'm fighting with Taylor for Taylor's own good. Yeah, but our client is rock star. And then we still have the world of people that think that they have some control over the financial markets or they're the wizard of Oz. You come to me, Carl, and I'm going to put together this portfolio. You can't get down the street, which is a bunch of bull. Or I'm going to. I feel like there's bigger gulf than ever between the haves and the have nots in the financial planning space.

[Carl Richards]

I completely agree. I think there's also a gulf between even the. I'm going to use this word in an old definitional sense, not in a layered cultural sense. Even the privilege of having these sorts of conversations. Like, there's a little bit of time and space that's required to even have the. You're just like, I don't know what you're on about, bro. I'm trying to pay my bills. I get that. But even at that level because I've had those conversations with people who are just like, I don't even know what you're talking. Even at that level. There's some idea of like, why, like, what's it for? What's the, like even to be seen and heard in a spot where you're like, I don't even have time for that. I'm paying my bills. Oh my gosh, I can make room for that. And you're right about the planning piece. And I've been really thinking a lot about what is uniquely human because AI is really good at doing. Humans have the potential of being really good at being. And I think what we're talking about here is the need for more presence, the need for more listening, the need for more curiosity at all levels of income and financial struggles. Like, I mean if I'm barely scraping by and I'm angry about it, which is reasonable just to have somebody go, yeah man, there's a reason you're feeling that way. There's a reason you're barely. There's a systematic reason. It's not just you. There's a systemic reason you're feeling that way. And let's get it out and let's throw some things in the backyard and let's do whatever. And then when it's time, let's think about like, are there some things we could do? And I think planners are becoming more and more aware of this. The job, the calculator side of the job is incredibly important as a technical skill, but it's also. And you can. And this, it's incredibly important and it's worthless in the long term if we don't know where we're going. And so both of those become true. And last analogy, I was in a self driving car recently and I'm a huge fan of self driving money. I can't wait for it. In that waymo ride. I'll tell you, it felt much safer than the Uber ride right before it.

[Joe Salsi]

Really?

[Carl Richards]

Oh, honestly, I was like, this is the most amazing cool. Felt much. I rode a couple different times and I would ride Ubers in between. Like one time we went down this alley and there was a dumpster in the way and like the whole thing was incredible. Self driving cars felt safer than a human driven car. But I still had to tell it where I wanted to go. And I also had to tell it more importantly mid journey. If I was like, oh that's wait, I want to stop there. And that to me requires a level of curiosity and presence that isn't going to ever be built in to the self driving car and it's also never going to be built into the self driving money.

[Joe Salsi]

But I think that clarity is what we have trouble getting to because we're this jumble of feelings, emotions. I got to pay the bills, right? I'm trying to get ahead. My neighbor's doing this thing. I want to keep up with them. Like I've got this jumble of stuff. I love a story that you tell in your new project about this woman, Maxine. I don't know if you remember Maxine's story, but just this power of order. Can we talk about Maxine for a moment?

[Carl Richards]

Yeah. It's such a real story because there's this huge metaphor. Maxine got referred to me when I was running my financial planning firm. Her husband had recently passed away. It had been weeks, right? They had taken care of all the stuff you do. And she was coming out of the really intense mourning phase and saying, okay, I got some stuff I got to deal with. And some of the stuff was this pile of mail that had arrived. And in Maxine's relationship, her husband was the one that took care of most of the financial matters because she took care of a bunch of other stuff, incredibly important stuff. So Maxine didn't know much about the money, as often is the case with one spouse or the other. And she came in with this literally like a banker's box. Like it looked heavy when she walked in. There was opened mail and half open mail and then a whole bunch of completely unopened mail. And I remember the emotional but the very real physical feeling of saying, hey, could I carry that box? Could I carry that weight for you? And we sat down and I said, hey, what if we just took this meeting and talk about, we talked and then I said, hey, would it be okay if between now and the next meeting I'll go through all this mail? I won't throw anything away, but I'll open it all, I'll organize it in a binder and I'll put the stuff I think you should throw away in the back and we'll just go through it. And she was like, yeah, of course. And I remember when she came back, it was a, you know, a half inch three ring binder, you know, that whole box, that entire weight, a nicely organized half inch, three ring binder, everything hole punched, no more envelopes. And we went through it together. And both the sense when I first took the box, took is not even really the word I like when I first was able to help her with the box, the sense of relief. And then when she came back, this three ring binder just. And what that points to me is like there's a very specific application. But I think the broader application too is like anytime I'm worried or stressed or weighed down with anything but financial. Like for instance, if I've been reading the news lately, which is just not a good idea, and I feel overwhelmed, I found it helps a lot to organize the garage or weed the garden. This isn't some woo woo goofball thing. It's not some California drum circle idea.

[OG]

It's.

[Carl Richards]

You go from feeling out of control, right? The news, the markets, the concern, your budget. Like, you go from feeling out of control to getting some small sense of control. If I just organize my desk, I feel a little better. And then what happens is that sense of control expands just a little bit. And again, we're back to where we started. The start close in. What's the next smallest thing I can expand my sense. And then suddenly I'm like calling the bank or I'm doing the thing I've been avoiding and suddenly you're like, why? Well, because this sense of control grew. That's the Maxine's story.

[Joe Salsi]

What resonated with me from my old job of financial planning, Carl, was that my favorite part of the financial plan was setting up these milestones toward the big goal. And so we would meet every six months. My client would come in with the news, the economy, all this stuff going on. I wonder what policy is there going to be? What's going to happen with the tax code, what's going to, inflation is, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What's the market going to do? It looks difficult. And I would go to, okay, in your financial plan right here, it says on the milestone, we need to be at $65,000 today. And let's take a look at where we're at. And my client goes from all this stuff to, oh, look, we're $2,000 ahead. So we have some choices now, Carl. We can either slow down saving for this and have some fun today. We can keep the gas on and do more, or we can speed up the goal and do this sooner. Which one would you rather do? And all of a sudden, guess what happens? All this control outside BS just evaporated. And it was, it was so phenomenal just seeing the power of a little organization. And, and I think this also speaks to the idea of getting out. I know that. I think it's you, you, you like having these conversations where people come. Is it a retreat at your house or at some place? Just the idea of getting on a plane and getting out of your current mess by itself just puts you at 30,000ft. And it's so good for your life to do that from time to time, I think.

[Carl Richards]

Totally. Two things I really want to point out. One of my favorite things to do is to take these things that feel. I hinted earlier, I'm a big fan of California.

[OG]

Right.

[Carl Richards]

But I hinted earlier about, like, the drums. Like, it feels ethereal. I think it's part of my job to take things that feel complex and crazy and ethereal and reduce them down. Because what you're talking about with your client story, there's a framework for that. And I just think it's so helpful when people understand what's going on in their minds. The framework is at the top of a pyramid. If you imagine products, like if we had a pyramid, you imagine products or the foundation of a house. The very, very, very, very top is this product idea. And in product, you could put news, market, economy, investments, you know, credit card budgeting out, like, whatever, tactical product. And your concerns are almost always at that level. And when you're talking about concerns at that level, you're way out in the branches of the tree. So your idea of, like, you know, it feels crazy. Yeah. There's a storm blowing, and the branches move a lot. And all you're doing is saying, look, you had intuitively figured out that if I could pull them back to the roots of the tree. And that roots is plan. And I think there's one root foundation underneath plan, which is purpose, a sense of purpose. But I think largely we're all thinking embedded in the plan is a sense of purpose. If we can get out of those branches. I would just start to set up habitually. If you feel like you're. Whoa. Unmoored, concerned, worried, to your point, you don't even have to get on a plane. I love getting on a plane. But you don't even have to get on a plane. Go on a walk. And if you can rewire your brain that way so that when you feel that way and you can start noticing, like, I promise you, you will feel that way every time. Right now you read the news. When you feel that way, you think, go someplace higher. And I like the higher metaphor. Like, even if you're in, like, the. Wherever the you are. I had a buddy, and I think he was in Iowa, and he was like, yeah, it's a bridge. Like, just somewhere where you get perspective Suddenly you feel a little bit like, oh man, get outside, get your hands in the dirt, touch a tree. And again, not woo woo. It's just like it has this ability to go, oh, oh, I was out in the branches of the tree. I'm here now. Guess what? What you were dealing with out in the branches didn't go away. Right. Like that decision about which credit card or which investment or what to do is still there. You just have a different perspective when you're looking at it now.

[Joe Salsi]

Well, there's another facet of this that people would worry about my office all the time too. And I know when you were working with people that was the same, I'm sure for you, Carl, which is coming in and regretting the past. You've got this wonderful line in your new project that says, you can't hedge yesterday. I'm like, we should all get that tattoo because, yeah, how much time have I wasted? Just. And I'm a guy that I think knows better going, oh, I effed that up. I shouldn't have done that.

[Carl Richards]

Yeah. One of my new favorite lines that will be in the next project, whenever that is, is there will never be enough money to pay for all your fears. I think we have both sides of now. We got the past. You can't hedge yesterday. And I think a lot of shame and blame shows up from yesterday and you can't pay off for all your fears in the future. And that's like worrying about problems that aren't even problems yet. Right. Like, was that Mark Twain? I can't remember what it was, but it was something like, I've had a million problems and some of them happened. And a few of them happened.

[Joe Salsi]

I think we were joking a couple weeks ago about Robert Kiyosaki, about how he's called 47 of the last two downturns.

[Carl Richards]

A broken clock will be right twice a day. Yeah, I love that. So I do think one of the very core, most important things you can do in the never ending process of making good decisions with money that we often call financial planning is get really clear about where you are today. It's kind of the first step. I used to think that should be easy because it's just facts, right? They're just numbers on a page. It's just a balance sheet. But it turns out that balance sheet is a non fictional document woven with fictional stories. Like, I wish I would have bought more of that. I told you that was a dumb idea. Like just every line on the balance sheet's got a story. Sometimes they're good stories, sometimes they're bad. And even the good stories are often like, we should have done twice as much.

[Joe Salsi]

I told you.

[Carl Richards]

Like, especially when there's a spouse or partner involved. And what often comes up is shame or blame. And you just have to remember that responsibility says, that was a dumb idea. Shame says, I am dumb. There's a very big difference. And so shame serves no useful purpose. There's no useful purpose for shame, responsibility. Yeah, sure. And maybe even guilt. Okay. So if we can transform those a bit to turn them into like, instead of losses, we turn them into lessons, then we can start to move on. And sometimes that process of healing from that involves some. Some process, some yelling, some throwing things around, some running really hard in the mountains. Like, whatever it is for you, get that all out. Find somebody who's there for it. Some of you can take it. You probably have to pay them. They're called a therapist. Right. And then you can move on to turning it into a lesson. I've got so many of those. I'm sure you do, too. There's a piece of property we drive by a couple times a week that we had an offer in for something like, I can't remember what the number was, but it was like $90,000, which was a lot of money. It's still a lot of money, but it was a lot of money back then for us. We backed out of the offer because we didn't. It wasn't. We weren't able to do it. Like, we went and looked at our budget and we were like, we can't do it. Well, that piece of property just sold for a million four.

[Joe Salsi]

Oh, my.

[Carl Richards]

Right.

[OG]

Yeah.

[Carl Richards]

But I'm at the response to that.

[Joe Salsi]

By the way, is.

[Carl Richards]

That's exactly right. As I was just going to point to. I'm at the point now where I don't do that anymore.

[Joe Salsi]

Right.

[Carl Richards]

To me. But I was 10 years of that.

[Joe Salsi]

Yeah.

[Carl Richards]

And guess what? The kids soccer field backed up to that property. So I was there. I got the chance to do what you just did to myself for 10 years a couple times a week. And I did it every time. I was like, gosh, I can't believe. Because it sold three different times between now and then. And I've seen each one. The first one was like 750. Now I can honestly say I feel it a little bit, a teeny bit. But I largely feel, hey, that was a good decision, you know, quote unquote. I don't even know if I call it a bad. I used to say it was a good decision with a bad outcome. I'm not even sure it's a bad outcome anymore because the overall outcome of our lives has been fine. But man, the first tendency is exactly what you felt. Yeah, and I felt for 10 plus years. And I've got fresher ones that I'm still working through, you know, where I'm.

[Joe Salsi]

Like, gosh, again, yeah, that's interesting because you know, I have two reactions. Number one is, look at your life without that property. Big frickin deal, it doesn't matter. The second one is, I heard this wisdom when I was maybe in my 20s and I try to remind myself all the time, but it's still hard, Carl. I mean, still, I'm 57 years old, it's still hard. I keep reminding myself the past does not equal the future, which is just a way to think about, hey, that happened yesterday. I can't do anything about it. The future is what I'm doing right now and I can't. Yeah.

[Carl Richards]

So far this entire conversation has been largely about kind of rewiring our response to certain stimulus. Just learning that, okay, great. When I feel nervous, I'm not going to try to stop feeling nervous because by the way, that which you resist persists. So if I try not thinking about a beautiful ice cream cone right now, right? Like it just, it's called the white bear problem in psychology. Like there's no way, if I tell you to not think pink elephant, right? Purple elephant, whatever, it's there. So I'm not going to try and resist the stimulus, the news, the nervous, this conversation. I'm just going to try and rewire my response. And my response can go from shame to responsibility. My response can go, my response could go from shame to a great gratitude, like you did. Like, look at your life now. So my response to feeling nervous about the markets instead of like trying to figure out which stock I should trade, I'm going to say, oh, that's interesting. I'm feeling that. I'm going to say, hey, what does my plan say? We're not trying to get rid of the stimulus because there's things we can do, but it's largely impossible in the world we live in. We're going to just try and rewire the response.

[Joe Salsi]

If only somebody had written a book which kind of encapsulated all this stuff, which took these wild, disparate, not desperate, disparate ideas and built them together in a simple way. If only someone had done that. And it turns out that you were able to do this. It Is called your money Reimagining wealth in 10 Simple Sketches 101. What's that?

[Carl Richards]

101 simple sketches.

[Joe Salsi]

I said 10, didn't I?

[Carl Richards]

That's just the first chapter. But wait.

[Joe Salsi]

But wait, there's. You forgot I was going to do the. But wait, there's more.

[Carl Richards]

Oh, sorry.

[Joe Salsi]

Like the old K tel records days.

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

Yes.

[Joe Salsi]

I'll tell you what, if you buy 10, Carl's going to throw in 91 more for free.

[Carl Richards]

Exactly.

[Joe Salsi]

Are you sitting down? 101 simple sketches. By the way, I feel like you and another friend of mine are kind of blood brothers who don't know each other. I look at your work and our friend Austin Kleon, who's been on the show a few times, he very similarly when he talks about the creative process. Do you know Austin at all?

[Carl Richards]

Yeah, I interviewed Austin for 50 fires. But I. I stole like an artist from Austin because the physical frame of this book, there's supposed to be an acknowledgment of that. It didn't get in the first printing, which they're already doing the second printing, so it'll be in there. But yeah, his books are six by six and these are seven by seven and they're matte finish. Austin's had a huge impact on me despite just having one conversation with him.

[Joe Salsi]

Monster impact on me as well. And just both of you have. And thank you so much for mentoring our stackers today, Carl. I appreciate it so much.

[Carl Richards]

Cheers, Joe. That was so fun. Thanks for doing it.

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and I love how Carl Richards is able to take what seems complicated and boil it down to the core, don't you? Well, let's take a page out of Carl's book and do the same with today's Trivia. Back in 1938, on today's date, two men, Chester F. Carlson and Otto Corney, figured out how to move a message from a glass slide to a sheet of wax paper. Corny was not impressed with the results and left the partnership. Ten years later to the day, Carlson revealed the invention to the world. He approached IBM, who passed on the technology, finally selling it to the Haloid company. Here's today's question. What is the name? You and I know the Haloid company as today. I'll be back right after I go simplify the idea of Joe's mom making dinner for all of us. It's really easy. You just triple the portion size ma for the rest of the crew and then double it again for me.

[WhatsApp Advertiser]

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[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

Hey there stackers. I'm Copylover and the guy who whose third grade teacher called an original Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. The term xerography is from the Greek words xeros meaning dry and graphene meaning writing. That's the technology that Carlson and Corni invented on today's date back in 1938 and is why the Haloid company who bought the technology renamed themselves Xerox. And now two guys who bought copy all my best dance moves. It's Joe and Og.

[OG]

Hey, this is John in Seattle. And when I'm not telling terrible dad.

[Joe Salsi]

Jokes to anyone who will listen, I'm stacking Benjamins. Big thanks to Carl again for spending time in the basement. And it's funny. Oh gee, like Carl said, we treat money like it's a math problem. So we bring out the calculator. And yet we really need to just. We need to check our our emotions at the door. So, so important. Let's do a headline.

[OG]

Hello darlings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show. Our stacking Benjamin's Headlines Our headline today.

[Joe Salsi]

Comes to us from Investment News. I found this really a compelling discussion on investment news. And for those of you that don't know investment news, which is most people, I'm sure this is a resource for advisors. It's an industry rag, as they call it. So I love when we do a headline from Investment News because of the fact that it's life on the other side of the table. And they had this discussion on investment News. I won't link to it in the Show Notes page. Advisors weighing in on the benefits of options as a hedge against concentrated stock risk. And it is interesting. We've had a market that's gone up great. In fact, this piece starts off by saying shares of Nvidia are up 1,250% over the past five years. So if somebody was fortunate enough to have purchased Nvidia five years ago, at that time, OG it wasn't a concentrated position in your portfolio, right? And now because of the market run, it truly could be a problem in your portfolio. Because your portfolio now, if you haven't sold any off, it's going to go where Nvidia goes. Well, you have a couple choices. You can, number one, you can sell it right now, or number two is you could maybe use an option strategy to hedge against the risk that it wrecks your portfolio. Clearly, if Nvidia goes up, a lot of people would want a piece of that, which is why you might have an option to sell instead of selling it. So the way this works, Stackers, is that instead of selling off your Nvidia or a piece of your Nvidia, you instead do an option to sell. And that option to sell says, I'm going to sell it at a predetermined price. And in this case it would be the price that is trading at right now. And instead of selling it, I'll wait and see if it goes up or down. If it goes down, I'll just sell the option and get the price it's at today. If it continues to go up, then, heck, then the option expires. I paid a little bit for this quote insurance policy and then I'm good. But what do you think about using options instead of selling off a piece of your portfolio that might be too concentrated? OG Instead of using options to mitigate some of the risk in the portfolio.

[OG]

I think we have to talk about the difference between like, use the right terminology here because I think a lot of people will confuse this or could confuse this with part of your compensation, right? So you'll say, well, I get options for my pay. I get, you know, I get restricted options for my bonus, or I get non qualified options for my bonus. It works somewhat similarly in that, you know, you have this grant that has a specific exercise price, but this is a little different. The way that an option contract works on a stock that you already own is just like you talked about. You're making a promise in exchange for either a premium that you're gonna receive or some cash today or a premium that you're going to pay to fulfill the obligation. So Nvidia is at $180 a share. And you say, I'm okay with the bouncing around because that's what stocks do. But I don't want it to go below 150. And so you can buy insurance at 150 and say, you know, if it dips below 150 between now and the end of March next year, then I get to get out at 150. So if it goes down to 160, then nothing happens. If it goes to 151, nothing happens. If it goes to 132, I've got this piece of paper here that says, whoa, whoa, whoa, says here I get to sell at 150. I'm going to exercise it now. I'm going to use my option to get out at 150. And you can do it the other way too. You can say, you know, it's at $180 and if it ever went to 225, I would sell that thing like a hotcake. And in exchange for that promise, you can get some money today. So you can say, well, how strongly do you feel about that? I feel real strongly. If that hits 225 between now and March, I would 100% get out, guaranteed. Put your money where your mouth is, write it down on a piece of paper and say, I promise to do it. In exchange for that promise, they'll give you some cash today. So you can do both sides of this transaction and you can do it with or without owning the stock, which makes it even more, more risky on top of it, ultimately, from an investment standpoint, let's talk about it that way. So you've got the stock, you've got a thousand shares. It's $180,000 of your portfolio. It's 85% of your portfolio. And you go, I feel like I should. The right answer is to diversify, right? Oh, gee, Joe, like that's the right answer. But man, I just don't Want to. Because if I do and this thing goes from 180 to 360, I just lost out on 180 grand. I need you to take that out of your mind. You have to evaluate your investment decision based on what it is today. The information that you have today. If you have $180,000 of Nvidia stock and you have a $200,000 investment portfolio, it's overweighted. And you have to diversify that if you want to be smart from an investment perspective. That doesn't mean it's not going to go up. That doesn't mean you say, well, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to keep it concentrated and it doesn't go up 10x from here. And you say, I told you so. I knew. I was glad I didn't diversify that. Now I've got a million dollars. This is a way better deal. Absolutely, that could happen. But the thing that happens with diversification is you trade away the opportunity to make a killing in exchange for never getting killed. That's the trade. I can't tell you what's going to happen with any individual stock, nor can anyone. Which is why buying an ETF or buying a diversified portfolio of big companies and small companies and US based ones and non US based ones makes a lot of sense to me. Because it's way easier to say, what is the overall economy going to do over the next 30 years of my life? It's going to grow. That's what I believe in my soul. I'm not smart enough to say which AI chip manufacturer is going to pull out ahead, which raindrop is going to hit the bottom of the, of the windowsill, the first, the fastest. I'm not smart enough to pick that.

[Joe Salsi]

People who are new to options may be thinking right now, they're like, wait, I heard options are this risky thing. And to your point, especially when you talked about trading options without the underlying money, that's incredibly risky.

[OG]

Without the underlying stock. Yeah, yeah.

[Joe Salsi]

Without the underlying stock. This thing we're talking about is not risky at all because you're willing to give up.

[OG]

I disagree with that.

[Joe Salsi]

Well, you're willing to give up the position, number one. Number two is you also covered up the risk of if it goes down by buying the option to sell it today. So where is, where is my risk then?

[OG]

Well, there's two things. First, it's the cost structure. So I, I use the example of Nvidia being at $180 a share today, and you're saying, hey, I'll take the first 30 bucks, right? I'll go to 150. It will cost you today as the day we record it, about $8 per share to insure that at 150. So number one, if you have a thousand shares, $8, that's eight grand of insurance premiums. All you guys out there shaking your head, going, going, I can't buy whole life insurance. It's ridiculous. And you're going to spend $8,000 on Nvidia options. Nvidia insurance.

[Joe Salsi]

Basically, I want to bring you something up for the new stackers who aren't familiar with the greatest money show on Earth Circus and how we put this together. OG doesn't see these pieces before we go live. He doesn't see any of it. The very first thing any advisor says, OG in this piece, that is the wellspring from where I thought we'd have the great discussion that we're having. The very first advisor said, most people see this strategy of, hey, I'll just place an option. And they think, oh, great, yeah, why the hell wouldn't I do that? Let's do it, he said. But then they see the cost of this insurance because that's what it is. It's an insurance policy. They see the cost. Most people. The guy uses the word appetite. Most people don't have the appetite for the amount of money it's gonna cost you. You are just. You're paying so much money to try to stay even that you're not staying even. You're not staying anywhere close to even because you're spending so much money on this insurance policy. That's the option.

[OG]

I mean, so if the stock is 180 and you want to insure it for 150. So A, you're taking a $30 per share loss to get your insurance to pay out, right? And then it costs you eight bucks for the next, what, five months. So $8 on 180 is 5%, a little bit less than 5% of the. Like, you have to make so much money just to offset the premium of the insurance, the option cost that it's really hard. So I think one of the risks is this 8,000 bucks. You could be doing other things with it. The second thing is, is that it ignores the volatility and the fact that generally speaking, the market goes up. And I can't talk about Nvidia saying, I know it's going to go up today could be the high price, the highest price it ever has. There was a day where Kodak was at an all time high and then it went down from there and ceases to exist today. That's happened and it's happened for Pan Am and it's happened for thousands and thousands of other companies. Which is why buying an ETF that's largely diversified is such a great idea. Because you don't have to play the game of which one of these tech companies is going to be great tomorrow. Like, who cares? You just own everything. And it's self cleaning. When something just doesn't do well, it falls off and it's replaced by the thing that is. So it's totally fine. But if you look at this purely from a volatility standpoint, so there's some chance the stock's at 180 right now. I got my piece of paper that says I can get out at 150 and it goes to 148 and you go, ha, ha, ha, ha ha. I'm out at 150. And three days later it's back to 180. Now what happened? You lost 30 bucks a share to save $2 a share to save yourself from the volatility. That is the very thing that gets you the upside that you're looking for. This is the thing that people have to wrap their head around. Volatility is both sides. When you see a stock goes, oh my gosh, this stock goes up, you know, it's up 10x in the last five years. That's one side of volatility. It's the good side, it's the side we like. It's the fun part. But it can work the other way just as easily. And so when the Stock goes from 120 to 180, what was the most recent one that went crazy? AMD or something. So I think it was AMD just skyrocketed one day. The people who had those other side of the options, they thought they were, hey, we got this free money, we can get these. You know, they had a huge risk there too. So there's no such thing as a free lunch here. This is the biggest piece. If you're worried about over concentration in your portfolio because of a stock, you have to do one of two things. You have to either sell the stock and diversify it or build more money around that the stock that you have.

[Joe Salsi]

So if you say lower percentage of.

[OG]

Your portfolio, then yeah, if you look at your brokerage account and you go, man, I got lucky. I bought a thousand shares of Nvidia five years ago and now that stuff's worth 200 grand in my account. Then the rest of your money needs to not be tech. You know what I mean? Like, your 401k needs to be in small companies and international, and your Roth needs to be in small companies and international because largely a large company fund is going to be heavy tax. So you have to just offset that. Or the smart thing is you just say, okay, I did well. I made a killing on this stock. I got lucky. Admit it and just go, I need to take some of this off the table. Take some of these profits off the table, Diversify it. Pay your capital gains tax and move on with life. And if this money is in a qualified account, there's no tax issues. Shame on you.

[Joe Salsi]

You should be diversified, I think, for an advanced investor. So we, you know, we've got kind of different levels of stackers. We got people that are bricklayers. You're just building your foundation. Throw any idea of building your foundation out of options out the window, because, no, there is no foundation. I mean, this is a three little pig story, right? Build the house a brick. Options are not.

[OG]

Options are a financial instrument whose intrinsic value, the end value, the terminal value of the option contract, is zero. All options end at the end of their term at zero. Everything else between zero and whatever you pay for it and what you sell it for is all volatility and speculation. Doesn't mean you can't make money. There's plenty of go on Wall street bets on Reddit, and you'll see somebody tomorrow that goes to. Do you see what I put a hundred bucks in this made 47,000 in three minutes. It happens. Absolutely it does.

[Joe Salsi]

I think for the advanced Benjamin Builder, that you've built up a sizable portfolio. And it's almost like somebody who's a good fisherman. I've been going fishing a little more lately with my buddy Todd. Todd is a great fisherman. Goes out all the time. Oh, gee. He knows exactly what lure to use in each situation. He knows exactly. He. He knows the bait, he knows the depth, he knows the part of the lake. And for those people that are much more of a surgeon, knowing where to use an option can be a valuable part of your risk strategy. But the thing I want to highlight that you said earlier, is that the biggest mistake I see, and I see this 95% of the time with options, when people are just starting out, is that they're using it to get rid of the volatility in the position. You set your option way too close, way, way, way too close to the point that it's at now and you end up neutering your portfolio. I think what I we really need to highlight stackers is you need that volatility. You have to have that volatility because the volatility on the upside is the only thing that's going to make it so you don't need to save dollar for dollar every piece of your retirement. You want your money to do it. And using options willy nilly, as mom says, to control risk in your portfolio is just going to be a disaster. Just an absolute unmitigated disaster. So that's, that's frankly why I don't use them. I think they can be good, but I think you really got to be an expert fisherman and go, oh, guess what? I've got this one little case. People hear covered call strategies. Not going to get into what a covered call strategy is, but when you first heard about covered calls and somebody og explained covered calls to you, I was like, why the hell wouldn't I do that every second of every day, free money.

[OG]

This is just money glitch.

[Joe Salsi]

So much sense. And then you get in, you start looking at the call options and you see where the pros are pricing these things. It is a ton of work for almost no juice because these people aren't stupid. The algorithms they're using aren't stupid. They, these people have this stuff priced so professionally that you've got a man spend a ton of time to eek out just a few drips. And I don't know, after playing the covered call game a little bit myself, I go, why would I waste my time doing this?

[OG]

It works when it works and then when it stops working, it stops working in a very, very fast hurry, very, very quickly.

[Joe Salsi]

So love the idea of option stackers. I've seen options a lot in the market and I think that's because we've had so much talk lately of volatility. People go start going, oh, volatility, how.

[Carl Richards]

Do I, how do I control all time high?

[Joe Salsi]

How do I control side risk?

[OG]

Congratulations.

[Joe Salsi]

I'm going to use options. I'll link to this piece on our show notes@Stacky Benjamin.com One thing it does talk about, oh gee, that I worry about. There's some guy throwing shade here going, you know, sometimes advisors don't want to use options just because your advisor doesn't understand options. When you read that, you'll read that in the Wall Street Journal, right? Somebody just throwing shade. What do you think about that? When somebody says, well, is the problem that you don't understand Options. That's why you don't want to use them.

[OG]

I always think it's interesting when I go to my semiannual physical and I will have recently read or listened to Peter Attia or somebody about something, and I'll spout out something to my physician, who's a really great doctor. He's a great bedside manner and is very forward thinking. And I'll say, well, statistically, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he'll just go, huh, yeah, okay. And. Or if he's feeling a little sporty, he'll kind of hit me back with, you know, the kind of 201 of that or the 301 of whatever I just said. And then I look like I got hit by a bus because I don't know any of those words. There's so many syllables in the doctor words that I don't know. It's not that he didn't know to talk to me about it. He just had already decided that it was so not important that he wasn't going to spend any amount of the time with me to talk about the thing that he didn't need to tell me how smart he was to say. Well, just so you know, I did all this research on this thing that has no material importance to you whatsoever. And. But it's, you know, you don't need to know about it. So there's a lot of that. Sometimes when you are working with a professional, they have already thought about that and they've already decided that they're not going to talk about that because it's not appropriate. It's not that they don't know. It's just that they don't have any value in bringing that up.

[Joe Salsi]

I found when I was an advisor, I loved working with engineers, but engineers were most likely the person that was going to do my office exactly what you just said. And so I would have to go deep with them first to cure the fear that I didn't know what I was talking about. And then I could say to them, but you know what? This doesn't matter because you haven't saved any money. If I had said you hadn't, you haven't saved any money, at first they would have thought it was a smokescreen, right? But once I went down the rabbit hole, like your doctor doing the 201 language. 201, 301 doctorate level language. And then he says, yeah, but, oh, gee, look at what you're shoving in your pie hole.

[OG]

Yeah, my doctor's favorite phrase the other day. This is so great. We were talking about blood pressure and, you know, whatever. And he goes, I said, do you think I should. You know, the guidance says these numbers and I'm kind of right, Adam, and do you think I should take a pill for it? He goes, no, you should eat more. Less. And I was like, what? He's like, you know how when you're like, I should eat more? Yeah, do that. Less. A lot less, actually. Eat more. Less. Way less than you do now.

[Joe Salsi]

Oh, that's great. We will, as I mentioned, link to this piece in the show Notes.

[OG]

Get all your option [e-mail] optionstrading for the win. Subscribe to our option trading course. No, don't.

[Joe Salsi]

No, there will never be.

[OG]

We will never have that.

[Joe Salsi]

We'll have some guides you can meet with OG Yeah, there's so many things you can do.

[OG]

A lot of good stuff or. Or yolo your entire life savings into Nvidia options.

[Joe Salsi]

You know, if I was going to do that, I'd just go to Vegas.

[OG]

Actually, I think Vegas would be more fun.

[Joe Salsi]

Have the whirlwind weekend, get it over with. So much more fun than watching it slowly circle the drain.

[OG]

I mean, it slowly circles the drain in Vegas too. But there's a lot of hope when you're pulling that wheel of fortune arm and it's like. And then you press the button, you're like, come on, hit the thousand. And it's like $20.

[Joe Salsi]

And there it is. Or I'd lost another 20 and then another.

[OG]

Or so I've been told. I don't know.

[Joe Salsi]

Rumor has it.

[OG]

Rumor has it. That's how that sounds and goes foreign.

[Joe Salsi]

Let's mosey out on the back porch. Just a few things for you stackers. If you'd like to help us make episodes, we take your questions. We had a great question episode on Monday. Also, by the way, if you love the Q A on YouTube, we have an entire channel of our YouTube page, which is just your questions. So to ask your questions, head to stacky benjamin.com voicemail and if you love that, just dive into our YouTube YouTube.com Stacky Benjamins. We also hang out on Instagram on TikTok increasingly where OG is a big star. 188,000 people and counting watched OG lately. I'm going to begin doing some tik tok lives, I think. Just never catch me bro over there. Nope, you won't see OG there.

[OG]

But I'm just saying, you'll never catch me. Oh, I've got such a lead on this.

[Joe Salsi]

I'M so yeah, I think my biggest TikTok is maybe 1500 in yours. I know, right? I love the discussions that we have on Spotify. I try to put up polls from time to time, so feel free to say hi to us and chat up the episode on Spotify as well. And if you want to just join the conversation, we have local meetup groups right now in Seattle and in the Twin Cities. And we have our basement Facebook group. So if we don't have one where you live, just go to Facebook and put in Stacking Benjamin's basement. In Facebook you'll get to join other Stackers chatting not just about the show, but people ask questions and generally hang out. So lots of ways to get involved in the Stacking Benjamin's community. All right, that's going to do it for today. Doug. Man, you got it from here. What are the three things we should learn from today's show?

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

So what's stacked up on our to do list for today? First, take some advice from Carl Richards. Does your financial plan seem complicated? Have a bias towards simplifying. Not only will your life feel better, your financial plan will also probably be better. Second, take some advice from our headline options not necessary because again, that complicates the plan. But the big lesson explaining options to Joe's mom is futile. She prefers Carl Richards. Keep it simple approach. The only option she talks about is quote whether to buy an option to trade us to the neighbors.

[Carl Richards]

Wait, what?

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

Thanks to Carl Richards for joining us today. We'll also include links in our show notes@stacking benjamins.com this show is the property of SB Podcasts, LLC, Copyright 2025 and is created by Josal Sehive. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You'll find out about our awesome [e-mail] along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello.

[Joe Salsi]

Oh yeah.

[Doug (Joe's mom's neighbor)]

And before I go, not only should should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.

[Joe Salsi]

So I have this problem, which is.

[OG]

That there's a pill for that.

[Joe Salsi]

Well, maybe not for this one. I'm headed to Dollywood, which is a theme park. I never thought that I wanted to go to my lovely Spouse. Because we're headed to the national park in West Virginia. My lovely spouse said we have a little bit of extra time before my daughter and her boyfriend join us on Friday. Let's just see what we could do. We're gonna have most of the day on Thursday. Well, what can we do while we're in the Smoky Mountains? We've already gone to Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We've dun Blue Ridge Parkway, Shenandoah National Park. All those places are beautiful. OG and all of a sudden, out of the blue, my wife, who does not love theme parks, goes, why don't we go to Dollywood? So I find out that this park. So I start doing all this research. The number one thing to do at Dollywood is eat the cinnamon bread. Apparently, there's this bread that's cinnamon and icing. And I saw a video of a dude who. He's already eaten all the cinnamon bread, and he shows the bottom of the little tin. It comes in, and it's still hot. Of course, it's piping hot when you get it. And this loaf, all of the cinnamon sugar and the icing coagulate at the bottom.

[OG]

Okay, go on.

[Joe Salsi]

And he's got his face in the tin, and he looks at the camera for a second, goes, stop judging me, and then shoves his head back in the 10. I'm trying so hard to control my weight and my impulses. Talk about what your doctor said. This is. This is why I thought of this.

[OG]

Eat more or less.

[Joe Salsi]

Stop doing the thing. Stop doing that. I don't know how the hell I'm gonna keep myself from buying, like, 10 loaves of cinnamon bread.

[OG]

No, you just do it once. You know, you have. You can have one day. This is the big myth about there is no perfection. So just. That's your day off. Just have one day. Now, what you can't do is you can't eat two loaves. Buy three, eat them on the road, then take one home and eat it later. You know, if you're gonna put down five loaves, put down five loaves in one day, bro. Like, get it. Get after it. That's it.

[Joe Salsi]

You know, your doctor told you that. Your doctor said, here's what you get it.

[OG]

That's what he said. There's a guy that I follow on Instagram that is a golf person. His name is Manolo, and some people are familiar with Manolo. But recently he talked about getting in shape, and this might be applicable to you.

[Joe Salsi]

This is advice for me. Okay.

[Carl Richards]

Hello, everyone, and happy Christopher Columbus Day.

[Gym Trainer]

Although he was not a very nice guy. He was a courageous pero. And it takes courage to do some courageous like getting into the shape. Did you wear your shirt all summer even though you said this was the summer that you were gonna get so nasty and so fit and you are gonna get ripped up and you were gonna have more packages than FedEx in your abdomen? You didn't do it. That's because it starts in October of the previous year. If you want to be a nasty federal princessa and be fit, a fantastic seat, he's about to train somebody and that is what the gymnasium looks like. A lot of you don't know what.

[Carl Richards]

A gym looks like.

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

You should.

[Carl Richards]

So I'm going to start putting out.

[Gym Trainer]

That I'm going to be doing nasty.

[Carl Richards]

Shit all the way until the end.

[Gym Trainer]

Of the year so I can make sure that the Tanki topic comes off for the full next year. It starts right now. This is not a story. This is a legit post. Watch it over and over again. Do some courageous Change your life. Change your golf game. Change your fitness. It starts with your new boyfriend, Jim.

[OG]

That's it starts with your new boyfriend, Jim Joe.