What a Bad Boss Is Actually Costing You (SB1881)

Most people measure a bad boss in bad days: the meeting that went sideways, the credit that got stolen, the comment that stung longer than it should have. Money Mentor Mel Abraham, along with Paula Pant and the crew, argues that's the wrong unit of measurement entirely. A toxic work situation has a real, compounding financial cost, in stalled raises, atrophied skills, drained energy, and years quietly lost to a job that was never going to get better. Today's episode puts a number on it, and gives you the exact steps to build your way out. What You'll Walk Away With Why a bad boss almost always means you're being underpaid too, and the compounding effect that has on your entire careerA simple "stay, fix it, or go" framework for evaluating your specific work situation, tested against real scenariosWhy waiting for the "right time" to leave a toxic job often means waiting far too longThe financial prep work worth doing now, even if your job is fine today, so you're ready to move fast if it isn't tomorrowWhy your skills and confidence can quietly atrophy under a bad boss, even if your paycheck stays the sameHow to separate your relationships with great coworkers from your relationship with a bad workplaceA practical first-week plan for anyone who gets laid off or walks away suddenly, starting with what actually needs to be true immediatelyWhy This Matters Now A difficult boss or a dead-end job rarely shows up as one dramatic moment. It shows up as a slow leak: a raise you didn't ask for, a skill you didn't build, an idea you didn't pitch because you'd stopped believing it mattered. That slow leak is expensive, and it's also fixable. Building financial and career readiness before you need it, savings, low fixed costs, a sharpened skill set, means the decision to leave becomes a choice you're making on your own terms, not a scramble you're forced into. From the Basement The crew's trivia detour into Philippe Petit's famous 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers turns into a surprisingly close four-way guessing game, complete with hometown bragging rights and a mid-season trivia standings shakeup that's still anyone's game. Resources Mentioned Building Your Money Machine by Mel Abraham https://melabraham.com/yourmoneymachinebook — Mel's USA Today bestseller on building financial freedomBuilding Your Money Machine podcast https://melabraham.com/show — Mel's weekly show on wealth-building and financial freedomAfford Anything podcast https://affordanything.com — Paula Pant's show, referenced episode: "Should We Retire in Our 40s with $4 Million?"Granola https://granola.ai/sb — AI-powered meeting notes tool mentioned in the sponsor break See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:03Speaker 02

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

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and just exactly how much money is that bad boss costing you? Today, we'll quantify that and share strategies to take control of the financial half of your career. But that's not all. Halfway through today's job freedom extravaganza, we'll take a break from my always topical and thrilling trivia question. Will Paula continue to tighten this race? Will OG get back to his winning ways? Or will Team Jesse make the definitive move to defend his title? And now, a guy whose title around here is Mr. Friday Show Host, trust me, Joe, that's not what we call you. It's Joe Saul Sehaj.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Hey there, stackers, and happy Friday to you. I am Joe Saul Sehaj, and man, are we super happy to do this. I love this topic. As a guy who became an entrepreneur, partly because I had some pretty crappy bosses, we're going to be talking about just how much money is that bad boss costing you? And we're going to start with a guy who may or may not have had one or two bad bosses during his long esteemed career, neighbor Doug. How are you, man?

• 2:50Speaker 03

  I'm fine. Just trying to keep it in the fairway today, Joe. Just, just trying to stay out of trouble.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Is that what you used to tell your bosses when you'd still find a way to get into trouble back in the day?

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, because I can't keep my mouth shut. So.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Who, you? You, wait a minute, what? I can't believe it.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  This unfiltered mouth and corporate America didn't mesh nicely.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  That is strange. Do you believe that, OG? That, that Doug, of all people, would have had some problems fitting in corporate America?

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Doug has problems fitting in everywhere, so it's not surprising.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  He took it to another level.

• 3:25Speaker 00

  There's the hot take. And we were just going to start with the Kanye Jetler show, but we're going there. How are you today, OG?

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Uh, pretty busy. Yep. Life is good. It's good to be busy. Good to have busyness thrust upon you.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Now, let's be clear, you haven't had many bosses, really, though, during your career, right? Did you have a, you have a boss when you're delivering papers? Was that your grandpa?

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Nope, nope. I don't believe in bosses. I think they, they all suck, including when I'm the boss. So I suck at being a boss. I suck at having bosses. So this ought to be a pretty good chat. Looking forward to it.

• 4:01Speaker 00

  It should be a great chat.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Basically, it's just OG sucks. That's going to be the moral of the story as a boss and employee.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  And the show is over. Thanks for showing up, everybody. Glad that you could be here. Actually, you and I did have some pretty wild management teams that we worked with when we were at American Express together. You gotta admit, there were some, there were some wild ones, OG.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  I don't know. I got along with everybody. Maybe, maybe I was just nicer than you.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Probably. Well, everybody thinks that already, but the nicest person on earth is here with us. Paula Pant joins us from Afford Anything. How are you?

• 4:34Speaker 05

  I am fantastic. How are you, Joe?

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Good. Did you get into entrepreneurship because of bad bosses?

• 4:41Speaker 05

  That is not the reason I got into entrepreneurship. Actually, I loved the boss that I had at the time that I worked at the newspaper, but I'm kind of like OG. I've had a limited experience with bosses. I basically had one full-time job in between, not basically, I did have one full-time job in between when I graduated from college, one job, and then I went into entrepreneurship from there. But when I was in high school and college, the summer jobs, I had some bad bosses there. The summer jobs, yeah.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  You were training to be in the workforce and your bosses were training how not to do their job.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  Yes. Well, I thought about this topic, by the way, because it was a piece in Fast Company about what bad bosses, turnover because of bad bosses, right? And this was written about, listen, you got to be a better boss to keep good employees. But ultimately, companies are trying to build a money machine, and we're all trying to build money machines. And this guy, who I thought of immediately when I thought of this topic, he goes around the country, helping audiences of entrepreneurs, people working for, quote, "the man," build their money machine. I thought, you know what? This is the perfect topic for my good friend Mel Abraham. How are you, Mel?

• 5:57Speaker 06

  Joe, I am awesome. Just trying to stay cool. I'm out here in Vegas. It's 115 degrees.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  Is it cool by the slot machine? You know, I gotta say, Paula usually does this like in the ba, in the, not basement, in the first floor, right, Paula, of your building?

• 6:12Speaker 05

  Not usually, but I certainly have a handful of times.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  I gotta say, I'm a little disappointed, Mel, that you didn't do this from like the casino floor.

• 6:20Speaker 06

  You know what? We had internet problems here, and they actually said, if you come down to the first floor, you got the best internet in the place. I said, yeah, but then I got the casino in the background, which might have been okay.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Do you think it's a ploy? Maybe they're just looking to increase their monthly number by getting everybody to go to the floor of the casino, maybe gamble a little?

• 6:40Speaker 06

  Well, just so everyone knows, maybe TMI, but this morning, a pipe broke evidently in this hotel, and there were no showers or toilets, and they told us all to go down to the spa and use the spa. So.

• 6:54Speaker 00

  Oh, hey.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Probably wasn't much of a spa after everybody got done using it, though, huh?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Like a bathtub in the Old West.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Little hole in the ground and some murky water that everybody's showering in. That's, that's awesome.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  Well, we're going to definitely try to make some clarity. We're going to shower this topic. How do I, where do I go with this, Doug? I have no idea. We're going to, we're going to clean this up. We're going to clean up your problem with bad bosses. What is it costing you to stay with a boss that's toxic? We're going to start off with stories of bad bosses from each of our contributors. But before all that, we have a couple sponsors who help us keep on keeping on. We're going to hear from them. And then Mel, OG, Paula, Doug and I, we're going to dive into what are bad bosses costing you? How many meetings a day do you take notes in? Or how many different just events where you have to jot something down? Here's a hill I will die on.

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• 11:05Speaker 00

  All right, Paula, you promised a great story, so I gotta go to you first. Let's share some bad boss stories. What's the bad boss?

• 11:13Speaker 05

  When I was, it was a summer in between my sophomore and junior year of college. I was, for that summer, living out on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.

• 11:23Speaker 00

  That's tough.

• 11:23Speaker 05

  It was, yeah, exactly. Tough place to live, but someone's gotta do it. I had this job that was supposed to be a really fun summer job as a kayaking guide. So you would do these two hour little like local kayaking tours where I would take groups of tourists and we'd point out the wildlife, like, look, there's an egret, there's a blue heron, that kind of a thing. We had the procedures that we would go through where we would line everybody up, we would give them the safety talk, tell them how to buckle a safety vest, show them how to turn a paddle, that sort of a thing. So this boss, I remember this one particular time, one of the guys in my group, one of the tourists, was in the porta potty. I'm fully aware of this and I mentally, I am planning around this.

• 12:08Speaker 05

  So I, I've got the group organized and I'm starting to make remarks to the group, but I'm in my head thinking, all right, I'm gonna make sure that I just make introductory remarks and I don't say anything that is, you know, I wait until the guy comes back from the porta potty before I say all of the, the important stuff.

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Just keep everybody engaged.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  Exactly. So I'm in the process of just kind of keeping them engaged. Well, my boss looks over, doesn't realize that that's what I'm doing, assumes that I have not modulated accordingly and starts yelling at me in front of this entire group, yelling at me in front of the customers. Epic bad boss.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Unbelievable.

• 12:48Speaker 05

  And the customers felt awkward. You could see it in their faces, like they, they looked uncomfortable.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Did you get big tips that day?

• 12:57Speaker 05

  I think I got average tips that day.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  I was gonna say, those are the days when, you know, you see some conflict between boss and employee, you give some, I tipped the employee a little bit heavier that day. That is absolutely horrible. Like, why does, why do they think fear is the thing that will help you win? Mel, you've, you've never had a bad boss, I'm sure.

• 13:17Speaker 06

  Never. I'm probably the worst boss for myself.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  Well, we gotta put you and OG in a match together, apparently, as two guys being bad bosses.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I have not had a lot of jobs other than on my own for a couple of decades, but when I was starting out, I was working at one of the big consulting firms in downtown Los Angeles. I was in the valuation department and I had a great boss at first, but they transferred him out and left me behind and then put this, this new boss in. And I'm, I'm new. I'm new probably at the company for three years and in that department for a year. And I'm doing valuations and I don't know much about valuations. She asked me to write a report. So I do my very first valuation report and I thought it was a work of art. And I handed it in on a Friday. I come back in on Monday, expecting to have some, you know, comments and, and everything.

• 14:10Speaker 06

  But I said, so did you get a chance to read the report? And she says, yes. She takes my report and she literally throws it at me and said, this is a piece of crap. She says, go buy Strunk and White's book, Elements of Style, learn the how to write, because this could have been done by a four-year-old.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Oh, my God.

• 14:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  There's so many ways to tell an employee that too, Mel. You know what I mean? Like this, this Strunk and White thing's not bad advice. It's a good book.

• 14:36Speaker 06

  It is.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  But to throw it at you and just put you down.

• 14:39Speaker 06

  She proved why her nickname at the office was Dragon Lady.

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Just yelled at people. Oh, horrible.

• 14:45Speaker 06

  She did, she did. No coaching, no explanation. It was pretty much humiliation and criticism is, it was her method.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Oh gee, humiliation and criticism. You said you're a bad boss. Are those two tactics you use, those in your tool belt?

• 14:57Speaker 04

  Well, I was gonna say Dragon Lady, that was Doug's nickname in college.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  That's what we call him. He said that they don't call me Friday show host, they call me something else. Yeah.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  You know, my worst boss story, like you said, not too many of them. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but there was a time where I was training to be a detective on the police force. You know, so it's kind of like a recruiting situation. I've got this new boss I'm trying to impress. It was just kind of one of those weird vibes, right? Where you're like, something's just not right with this dude. And I realized very quickly, he was not interested in training me. He was just testing me, you know, testing whether or not I could do the job or whether or not I would just do whatever he said I would do. And, you know, every time I questioned something, it was like, it was my problem, you know, but I was inexperienced. I didn't know how this world worked of being kind of an undercover police officer.

• 15:50Speaker 04

  And, you know, at one point in time, he pressures me into taking drugs. Then I'm like, well, this isn't right. He's like, well, what are you gonna do? You're a druggie. Now I'll just turn you in. And then we go to like a friend's house, like I thought it was his friend, and turns out it was like a big setup situation. There's money everywhere. People are getting shot. It's, this is a crazy scenario. I'm like, what is happening with this whole situation? What, Doug, you don't like my story?

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Well, I just, I didn't know that you worked for Denzel Washington at one point.

• 16:19Speaker 04

  They made a story about my, my story. They, they made a movie about it. You guys might've seen it.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Did Ethan Hawke play you?

• 16:28Speaker 04

  Yes, he did.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. I hope you got some residuals from that.

• 16:32Speaker 04

  In Training Day. No, I mean, look.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  Wait a minute, before you go into your, your actual story, I love that, just the look on Paula's face the entire time. I think you had her until the drugs.

• 16:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  And then you got into.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, I believed you right up until.

• 16:46Speaker 04

  Shot this dude in the chest with a shotgun. It was a whole day. Let me tell you, it was a training day. Anyways, I had to turn my boss in and, yeah, it was a whole thing. But, um, no, I mean, look, at the end of the day, if you're a boss or you're aspiring to be a boss or, you know, and cause you're all, even if you don't have the title of being a boss, like if you're not manager or vice president, as soon as you're not like the newest person around, you're setting an example for people. I was having this discussion with somebody about parenting and because we had the pleasure of being at, you know, at the family cottage for a couple of weeks in Michigan, like we are able to do sometimes in the summertime. And you see all these different dynamics of family members who have kids or your mom

• 17:31Speaker 04

  and dad, and you know, you just kind of see this all laid out in front of you. And I think parenting, the job of a, of a parent or as, as you grow to be a parent, is to think about all of the things that worked with you, right? Like, oh, you know what? That, that example that dad gave or that lesson that I learned and how he taught it, that was, that landed pretty good. I'm gonna do that. And then there's probably a few lessons that you're like, that was a really bad way to teach that lesson. I'm definitely not gonna do that to my kids. This is true, I think, when you're, you know, working in your career, you're just kind of moving up in your career. You see good things and you see not so good things. You see how to interact with customers and clients and how to interact with team members. And, and your job as you kind of move up the, the rank, so to speak, is to say, you know what? That was a good lesson.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  That was an interesting way to deliver that lesson. I'm gonna use that. I'm gonna put that in the repertoire. Or, you know, crumpling up the paper and telling me I'm a worthless POS and go, you know, that was, maybe didn't land, you know? I'm probably not gonna do that one.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Well, that's interesting because for the people that are bosses out there, I mean, this is what this Fast Company piece is all about, not the focus for us today, but I'll link to it in the show notes. Mel, how much longer did you stay with that person as a boss? Were you already mentally checked out and ready to leave?

• 18:45Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was ready. I was ready to leave. The bottom line is what I ended up doing is planning my escape, is I looked at it and said, what do I need to acquire here from a skill set to prepare me to find something better? Because I, there was no way that we were gonna get along, because I lost respect for her as a boss. And so I was there just about a year before I ended up leaving.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Just about a year longer, but definitely longer than six more months.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Right, Paula?

• 19:14Speaker 05

  Duh.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  Sorry.

• 19:17Speaker 05

  It took, it took me a moment to figure out what Joe was referencing.

• 19:20Speaker 06

  I see where he's going.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  On the Afford Anything podcast, you will hear, you will hear what Joe was referencing and it was our.

• 19:28Speaker 00

  You'll hear us disagree. Paula's like, take the jump now. I was like, no, take six months and plan it. But, but seriously, Paula, how, how much longer did you have that job? Did you have that boss before you were doing something different?

• 19:40Speaker 05

  Ah, I, I stayed with that kayaking company through the summer, but it was one of those deals where every morning you would call him to see if he had enough work for you, because whether or not he had enough work for all of the guides depended on how many people booked tours. So I kind of gradually started tapering off, cause I was cobbling together other summer work as well. So I kind of gradually started tapering off, doing fewer and fewer shifts per week there and more and more shifts per week at some of my other jobs.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  You got to work at the Salty Dog, right?

• 20:11Speaker 05

  I did. I was the Salty Dog.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  She was the Salty Dog.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  I put on a dog mascot costume and danced around $25 an hour. I was the mascot.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  That's, that's pretty good. Paula was a dancer? Do you tell people that sometimes? Like, yes, I've been a dancer in my. But. Hot. You could say, oh, I was a hot dancer.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  It was, it was super hot.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  Costume.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. In South Carolina in the summer.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  It was so hot, so hot. You know, there's some situations that you have with your boss and the first thing we can do, although we all admit that this part of the discussion, not our expertise, but we've also been around lots of bosses. We've interviewed some of the smartest people on earth about these same things. So it's not like we haven't studied this a ton. Give me your opinion of these scenarios in which you're going to do one of three things. You're either going to stay, or you're going to fix it, or you're going to go. All right. So I'm going to give you a scenario. You tell me whether you're staying, fix it, or go. OG, boss takes credit for everything. You stay, fix it, or go. They're taking credit for all your work product.

• 21:23Speaker 04

  Can I have a fourth option? Malicious compliance?

• 21:28Speaker 00

  What does that mean?

• 21:29Speaker 04

  Oh, they're going to take credit for everything. You make sure that maybe the credit they take isn't so great.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 21:36Speaker 06

  Sabotage, you mean?

• 21:39Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 21:39Speaker 04

  You know, a little, just a little repartee, as they say.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Who needs to quit when you can get fired?

• 21:46Speaker 03

  Or it's the kid who got grounded and they took the car keys away. So they just make sure that they have a lot of things that require being driven. So it just hoses the parents because they have to drive the kid everywhere. There is that like, all right, fine.

• 21:58Speaker 04

  You know, there's the report that the boss takes and says, this is my work. And then the bigger boss is asking questions about the report and you can tell they're, you know, he's kind of deflecting to you. And you just go, you know, I'm not really sure about that one, Doug. What, what did you think about that? When you analyze the inventory, what did you, what did you come up with?

• 22:17Speaker 00

  You could tell by that answer, just how little time OG spent in corporate America.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  Did you analyze inventory, Doug?

• 22:22Speaker 03

  You only get to do that once, OG.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Yes, do it once and make it really, really good. Paula, stay, fix it, or go when the boss is taking credit for all the work product.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  I mean, my, my default answer to pretty much any question you ask is going to be go. I'm trying to think of how you could fix it. If otherwise, it's the situation is great, and that's the only thing, then it's probably fixable. But if there are other, you know, if that is like one of many symptoms, then it's not.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Mel?

• 22:55Speaker 06

  I see. Here's, my thinking is that I'm probably not the only person they're taking credit for. And that means that it's known that they do that. And I'm going to get comfortable with it. And the job becomes a stepping stone to getting out, but I want to learn what I can from it. So I'm not going to try and fix it because it's probably part of their behavior on an ongoing basis. I might try to make them aware of it and see what it does. But I'll probably live with it until I know that I've got something better or I've got a plan in place.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Much like you said earlier, plot your escape. You start plotting your escape. Yeah, let's stick with you. Boss is a huge micromanager.

• 23:35Speaker 06

  Oh, man. I can't deal with that. Give me some space to operate. So I probably would go in that case.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Paula?

• 23:44Speaker 05

  I would definitely go. I would last for zero minutes.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  OG?

• 23:49Speaker 04

  Oh, just to be contrarian, fix it. I mean, if you've got an opportunity to, you can manage up too, right? Can't you?

• 23:57Speaker 00

  Well, let me ask you about this one, because this is an interesting one. Let's say that you love your boss, but it's a dying company.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  In love, love?

• 24:04Speaker 00

  You could, no, no.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Like more than a friend?

• 24:06Speaker 03

  It seems like a love your boss, not just love your boss.

• 24:09Speaker 04

  Like more than a friend?

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Not the relationship you got to report to HR.

• 24:13Speaker 06

  Like at a concert, you mean?

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Okay. Like the Nicole Kidman movie? Like that kind of love or not?

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Exactly. No, not that kind of love. Just, you've got a fantastic boss, but you can see the writing on the wall. The company is dying. Stay because of the great boss?

• 24:28Speaker 04

  I mean, again, malicious compliance? I don't know. Like, yeah, I mean, I'd probably hang out and see what's, because I think the thing with work is that a lot of it is about relationship. You know, it's about trying to make sure that the people you hang out with, because you're there eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours a day, right? You know, four, five, six, seven days a week. You kind of want to like the people you hang out with. So if you've got somebody that you like hanging out with, and everybody gets along, you know, you got to keep your network going, right? So it's like, it's doing that little number, you know, you don't want to bail and then get blacklisted. So you just kind of hang out and maybe the boss will drag you along to the next deal.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Is that what you do, Paula? Great boss, dying company?

• 25:14Speaker 05

  I'd stay. Yeah. There's research that shows that your, the probability of which you like or dislike your work is very like, highly correlated with your opinion of your boss. So even if the company is dying, if you, if you love the boss, you're probably really enjoying that work.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  It's like your boss and the five people, the five people around you, your little team is corporate culture. Mel?

• 25:37Speaker 06

  I think, I think I'd fight side by side with the boss to try and turn it around, see what I could do. I'm loyal to a fault. So I'd probably stick around and do what I can.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  How about this one? Let's swap that completely. Mel, you have a rotten boss. The dragon lady is your boss, but you've got the highest salary of anybody in your department. You're the highest paid employee. And you're at the top of, you go to Glass Door, you go to Glass Door, right? To compare salaries and you're at the top of your area.

• 26:07Speaker 06

  So you're asking if I can be bought?

• 26:11Speaker 00

  I didn't think about it that way, but yes, probably is.

• 26:14Speaker 06

  You know, I'd probably stay for a little longer than I should. There comes a time where you start to say, the quality of my life, the quality of my experiences, as OG was saying, that you're spending so much time there, matters. But I know for a fact that I've kept clients longer than I should have. I've stayed in places and relationships longer than I should have, because there was some benefit that I was getting. But at some point, that train runs its course.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  What if your boss is horrible, but your coworkers are awesome? Like you love the other people that you work with?

• 26:47Speaker 06

  Take them with you.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Oh, there we go.

• 26:51Speaker 06

  You can separate the relationship with the colleagues, separate and apart from the, the business part, the, the career part. And I think that, that I would try to keep those relationships separate, that they're not conditioned on the fact that we work in the same place.

• 27:05Speaker 00

  I like that. It's what Tom Peters calls brand you, right? And you're surrounding yourself with great people. Paula, back to the first one, you've got the highest salary that you can imagine having, but your boss just sucks.

• 27:16Speaker 05

  I, I feel like you're describing a lot of people in the fire movement right now. A lot of them are high income, but dissatisfied at work.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 05

  And so I think the approach there is pick a goal, pick an end date. And maybe it's a literally a date, maybe it's a net worth, maybe it's a level of savings, but pick a number. Make that your number. And then when you hit that number, time to go.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Then get that cut. Would you say that's probably longer than six months? No, I'm kidding. People got to go.

• 27:46Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. You got to listen to this debate between Joe and myself.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  People got to go listen to that episode.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  On the Afford Anything Podcast.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  OG, you know, it strikes me, there's so many things like, you know, like Mel said, I, I may stay longer than I should because of the salary, or because I have the great boss, whatever the thing might be. But having a bad boss, we don't think enough about what that costs you. What are some of the costs that you think of as a money guy that play into it when you have a bad boss for too long?

• 28:20Speaker 04

  It doesn't seem to me that you would have a bad boss that pays you appropriately. That doesn't seem like a normal scenario unless.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Well, then raises too then, right?

• 28:29Speaker 04

  Well, that's what I'm saying. Like you're asking about total cost. I'm saying like, if you have a crappy boss, you're probably being, taken advantage of from a comp standpoint in some way, shape or form. So certainly the compound effect of compensation. And I wouldn't even think about that as being the biggest thing. You know, you only have so much energy on a daily basis, right? And if you're fighting this battle of trying to get your, you know what, to work because it sucks the life out of you, you're not going to have time or energy to do the other things that do provide excitement or joy in your life, like workout, or eat healthy, or have a great relationship at home, or all the other stuff that has to go on to make your life fulfilling. I think it's a

• 29:13Speaker 04

  bigger issue than just monetary cost. I think it would just kind of leach into all the other areas of your life and make it just kind of crappy overall, you know? It's like, if you don't fuel correctly when you work out, right? And Joe, you know this, like, if you're on a training run, right? Let's say you're training for another marathon, you get all of your [BLEEP] fixed in your body and you can do another marathon, right?

• 29:37Speaker 04

  Bionic everything. You're ready to rock and roll.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  And so you're out on a training run, you just do your 13 mile run, right? You know, you got to fuel your body appropriately, or else what happens? You make it through, you don't perform very well. And then you get home and you eat everything in sight. You have 17 bananas, 47 Oreos, two peanut butter sandwiches. And then you go, I don't understand why I'm not losing any weight. I'm working my ass off. It's because, you know, you didn't fuel yourself correctly. So if you're at work and you're not getting fueled correctly with great work or great relationships or whatever, you're going to, you know, on the other side of that, be destructive in the other areas of your life, whether it's just relationships or health, or whatever the case would be.

• 30:14Speaker 00

  That's interesting. Yeah.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  I mean, that's my take anyway. I don't know that it's, that's not based on any

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Well, no.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  OG science. That's just, well, I guess it is OG science. It doesn't make it real science. It's just OG science.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  But I don't think we think about that. You know, we think about separation of work and home. And yet I'm rereading this classic management book, The Goal, that I've read several times. And during this book, it spills over. The bad things that happen at work all spill over at home. It all spills over. I got to imagine, Paula, that's also networking, right? It spills over into your networking, spills over into your confidence. What does all that cost?

• 30:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, there are high costs. It's a two-way street. Problems at home spill over into work, problems at work spill over into home. It's hard having a 360 degree life.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  I'm thinking your skills might even atrophy a little bit because you're not, you're not thinking about it. Like, you know, the only reason, Mel, that you're picking up the, the strunk and white book is, is because your boss told you to. It's not because you're trying to get better at your job. So your skills might not be what they should be.

• 31:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, it affects everything and things that we don't see. And I think OG was the one that was saying some of this too, is that yeah, your skills start to atrophy, your confidence starts to wane because all of a sudden you don't think you're worth that. You don't own your value. So you're not negotiating your raises. You're not taking a strong position because you're coming from a place of, I'm not worthy. So this is all I can get. So you stay in a job longer than you should and you take less than you should and you take more abuse than you should. And now all of a sudden you've spent years, and I know someone in particular, who literally spent 30 years unappreciated in a job and unvalued in a job, thinking that they could never go to another place until they finally did

• 31:59Speaker 06

  in the last six years and saw, wow, what a difference.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 32:03Speaker 06

  It's like that splinter you have that's festering and you don't realize how much it's painting you. And I think that it will can really cost you if it is eroding the quality of your life and confidence from a salary and career standpoint.

• 32:20Speaker 00

  And I love that point because now Mel, you've burned that unrenewable resource, time. We could always get more money. We can't get more time. Well, you know what? In the first half of this, I wanted to go over bad bosses and really what it's costing you and the thoughts around how to get away from bad bosses. To begin stackers, if you're in this position, or someday you may be in this position, to be able to begin to navigate. We're going to ramp this up in the second half. What our money geeks are phenomenal at is helping you on the financial side, build your plan. We're going to talk about all the things you need to think about before you hit the escape hatch. But we have at the halfway point of every Friday

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Stack Your Benjamin show, this amazing, and amazing has a lot of different, different definitions, amazing trivia competition between Paula OG and Jesse Kramer. And Mel, today you're playing on Team Jesse Kramer. And that means there's some good news and some bad news, my friends. You want the good news or the bad news?

• 33:21Speaker 06

  I'm probably going first.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Actually, even though Jesse's the defending champ, he is going second because OG got out in front and it's been a game of catch up for both Jesse and Paula. So for you today, we need to know the score to find out where you're going. So what's the score so far, Doug?

• 33:40Speaker 03

  Well, Mel, today you're in the pursuit vehicle in OG's Training Day movie that we're all in right now, because OG has 10 points. You're in second place with eight points and Paula's not giving up. She's got six points. So it is still anybody's game this year.

• 33:59Speaker 00

  And imagine what it could be after. Well, no matter what, what it's going to be after today.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  So many storylines with just, what? Now we're coming up on four months to go, four and a half months to go. All right. OG's going to go first. Mel's going to go second. Paula gets to go third. I would call that a huge advantage, but it hasn't been so far. So who knows? But we need a question. Doug, what are we talking about this week?

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Well, hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. August 7th marks probably the second craziest stunt in modern history. The first is doing a podcast live on YouTube, something I wouldn't recommend trying at home. After all, I'm a trained professional. But in a close second place was this. In 1974, French high wire artist Philippe Petit illegally stretched a steel cable between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center and then walked across it. He walked across it. Now, look, I'm not going to lie, even though I'm a pro at podcasting live, something that is very, very dangerous, I assure you, just getting halfway between those twin towers would have been enough for me. Then I'd probably turn around, walk right back to where I came from. I

• 35:12Speaker 03

  mean, walking all the way across, that's just a bridge too far. I'll admit it. I get nervous climbing the ladder to clean Joe's mom's gutter. Last year, I made it to the third rung and decided to update my will. In case you're wondering, no, you can't have the El Camino. I bequeathed that to the valet at the Sizzler. Pettit made a pretty big show of his antics up there. He spent nearly 45 minutes on that wire, performing for the crowd below and the police officers waiting to arrest him when he finally came down. So here's today's trivia question. How many times did Philippe Petit cross between the twin towers that morning? I'll be back right after I see if my life insurance covers extremely avoidable decisions.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  I can't wait to see what he comes back with. All right. Oh, I accidentally put Mel in the hot seat. We got to put OG in the hot seat. So how many times did Mr. Pettit, Daredevil man, go back and forth between the twin towers?

• 36:16Speaker 04

  And for clarity purposes, this was the singular event that he did. This was not spanning multiple events. You're talking about the

• 36:23Speaker 00

  One day, one time.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  One day he

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Correct. Happened August 7th, 1974.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  Is one, coming back is two.

• 36:30Speaker 00

  Is two.

• 36:31Speaker 04

  There's three, there's four, et cetera, et cetera. Okay.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, you guys, I know everybody's going to laugh about this, but interestingly enough, this guy's from my hometown. So, and I do think it's a little unfair because also Paula's in New York. So there's a little bit of, she probably knows this also. But Pettit, we called him Andy. I don't know what his first name really was, but we called him, we called him Andy. Andy made a big deal of this. It was quite a show. And then when he got older, he talked about it, you know, did little, he would like do it like in the park. Anyways, everybody knows he went five times because he went and then he came back and then he went again. And then he came back and then he went again and was like, okay, I'm good. That's five.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  Is that what five times mean? They're back, they're back.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  They're back, they're back there.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  I'm glad you defined.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Well, like as you said, he was performing and then he was like, okay, the cops are over there. The funny story was he was actually, he was actually like trying to get the cops to move. Like he'd be like, I'm over here. And then he'd run back to the other side. Like, oh, sorry, come over here. And then finally, the New York cops were like, wait a second, we'll just put people on both sides. And then after that, he was like, okay, cool. So.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  I'm sure Doug will verify that that's a true story.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  It was five.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Mel, OG says five. What do you think about that number?

• 37:48Speaker 06

  I'm guessing now. I'm saying 250, 300 feet between the towers, 45 minutes up there. I'm doing math. You know, there's probably a wind. I, you know, it was probably four times.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Four times. All right, Paula, we got four, we got five.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  Wow. There are two ways I could take this. So on one hand.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  Are you going to mansplain above and below to us?

• 38:17Speaker 04

  There's a four and a five, guys. So I could either pick six or three.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  It would have been different trivia if it was four and a half.

• 38:26Speaker 04

  I don't know if you guys know this or not, but six is greater than five and three is less than four.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Joe, she's not mansplaining. She's she elaborating.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  She elaborating.

• 38:36Speaker 04

  She elaborating.

• 38:39Speaker 05

  Well, Doug, when you first asked your question, I imagined that he walked out to the middle and then just performed a show from the middle, which would mean he would cross only one time.

• 38:52Speaker 03

  Possibly.

• 38:52Speaker 05

  Right? So, so when you first asked the question, I was like, well, this has got to be a trick question because.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  That's still on the table. That, that's not, that is a possibility of how things unfolded.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Unless you believe OG.

• 39:06Speaker 05

  So that is one possibility. On the other hand, if I took the over, I would capture so much more upside.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Including 1700 trips where he had to like just run nonstop for 45 minutes.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  Man, I'm going to take the over. I'm going to take the over. So six.

• 39:25Speaker 00

  Six times. That's the way it works. Four, five and six. Who's got this? We're going to find out in just a minute. Well, you may know the chaos is the name of the game here in mom's basement. What with guests coming in and out, Cooper the cat getting in the way, Doug being, well, being Doug. The holidays make it even worse because it's all about food and big meals. And the problem is prepping for those takes forever. But what about those between meals, right? The meals between those huge, huge, huge bookends. Well, that's where factor comes in. Factor is made with high quality ingredients that you recognize and trust with over 175 banned ingredients. You always know you're eating

• 40:08Speaker 00

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• 40:51Speaker 00

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• 41:29Speaker 00

  All right, OG, you opened up with five and I don't think they actually meant to sandwich you, but that's the end product of what happened. You feeling good with five?

• 41:38Speaker 04

  It's a life goal for a lot of people, actually, but.

• 41:44Speaker 03

  You cannot tee it up for him like that, Joe.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  You would be surprised at how many solicitations I get on a weekly basis. Out of curiosity, Paula, because I was toying with the idea of six, just to play the game. Would you have taken seven if I picked six?

• 42:00Speaker 05

  Honestly, I was hoping that Mel would go higher than you because I was angling. I, there is a part of me that really thinks the answer is one.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 05

  And that this is a trick question.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:11Speaker 05

  So if Mel had gone over, then I would have taken the under. But then with him taking four, then I was like, well, if I did take the under, I'm really boxing myself into a tiny number.

• 42:23Speaker 06

  Which is exactly why I took the under.

• 42:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Was to try to get one?

• 42:27Speaker 06

  Too small of a gap, but I could capture one if it was just one.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Yeah. Right, yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  I thought about one also, just to put everybody on tilt, but then it's either one or none, right?

• 42:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  He fell to his death. The answer is zero times.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Too soon?

• 42:45Speaker 06

  Nah.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Well, we're not playing a Price is Right rule, so depending on how close they got to you. But yeah, if you anchored them at one, then it was going to be difficult. Let's see who's right. Is it Mel taking the downside, four below? OG with five on the nose, or Paula, anything above six? Who's got it, Doug?

• 43:04Speaker 03

  Hey there, stackers. I'm world famous podcasting daredevil and guy who has his insurance agent on speed dial, Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. Before the break, I asked you how many times Philippe, sorry, Andy Pettit crossed between the Twin Towers. Now, here's the crazy part. He didn't just walk across. He laid down, he danced, he knelt to admire the view. He even saluted the police who were waiting to arrest him. See, that's where he lost me. The first crossing, yeah, amazing. The second, still pretty incredible, but eventually you're not doing it for personal growth, self-actualization and enlightenment anymore, dude. You're intention hound. You're like, hey, look at me. I can walk like 9,000 feet in the air. Come on, man. Just go to the community pool and show off your back hair like the

• 43:49Speaker 03

  rest of us. I mean, after a while, even the pigeons had to be saying, buddy, we get it. Let's move this along. So how many times did old Philippe walk back and forth between the Twin Towers? Well, the correct answer was four more times than what Mel guessed, three more times than what OG guessed, just two more times than what Paula guessed, making Paula today's winner because the correct answer is eight crossings. Unbelievable.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  What is going on here, Doug? What is going on with this mid-season surge from Paula Pant?

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Nuts. She's on a run.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  No idea. And we can't blame it like we were early on. Like we had Sarah Catherine Gutierrez and she got you two points at the start of the year. So we did blame it for a while and you had some great people who filled in, but you've been doing this all on your own.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  Right? It only took a few years, but I'm, I'm starting to catch on.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  She's finally figured, hey, this, uh, this whole thing is actually, I can do this.

• 44:44Speaker 05

  Little bit of a late bloomer, but I get there.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  Gaining confidence. And you know why you have confidence? It's because you don't, you don't have a bad boss. Because you don't have a bad boss.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  Look at that segue.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Paula, let's help people build their escape plan. Your boss isn't changing. Your company ain't changing. What should a stacker begin doing today to get that exit plan Mel was talking about?

• 45:06Speaker 05

  Pay off any high interest debt. That means anything with a double-digit interest rate. Save, I know this is cliche advice, but save cash reserves, like six months' worth of your spending at minimum. Keep your fixed costs as low as possible. So for example, if you're a renter, when you go to renew your lease, if you're living in a place that's kind of expensive, downsize, get a much cheaper place. If you've got a car payment, get rid of it and buy a clunker that has no payment associated with it, that you can just buy in cash. All of that's going to give you the bandwidth to be able to leap.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Mel, what do you add to that?

• 45:44Speaker 06

  I totally agree with everything she said, having the margin and all that. I think there's a couple of things to prepare if you can, and that is first off, what skills do you need to be more valuable in the marketplace to start creating something to build skills and value? The second thing, I think this is something that every employee or everyone should be thinking about is, is that start to think of yourself as a personal brand. And what kind of reputation can you build that precedes you? The, the things you do and how you do things. And all of that allows you to be more marketable for the, the next opportunity and entitled to a larger compensation. So I think beyond the financial elements that Paula just said, start to look at your

• 46:28Speaker 06

  skillsets, the value in the marketplace, the things that people are paying for. What things can you get done while you're still employed on their dime, if you will? So you're more qualified and more valuable to get in the marketplace. You'll get your job faster and you get paid more.

• 46:42Speaker 00

  That's interesting. So if HR allows you to, let's say, courses at a local college or university, and they will subsidize that training, you're saying, go for that first?

• 46:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Uh, OG, what else you add into that?

• 46:57Speaker 04

  My biggest one is not necessarily preparation, but just actually doing something, taking action. If you're working at a company, unless it's some very specialized work that you do and your environment sucks, friggin', like, put your application somewhere else. Like, what are you doing? Like, why are we wasting any time? I'm not saying you need to quit your job tomorrow, but probably unless you're like super high up, although I don't know the, I don't know this to be true, I just think it is, you're probably not getting a bunch of like recruiting phone calls along the way. You have to go actively do something to facilitate the change. And I think preparation's a really good idea, but you can prepare till the cows come home.

• 47:42Speaker 04

  You still have to like brush up your resume and post that thing on a job site. You know, I mean, you still need to hire a recruiter and get out there and start shopping jobs. Now, if you transition to being an entrepreneur, that's maybe a little different. I, I mean, obviously different circumstances, I get all that, but my goodness, just do something different. Put a stake in the ground and friggin' go.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  And this is interesting because as Mel was talking about, you know what? Look at what skills in the marketplace are. I feel like even if you have a good boss right now, shouldn't we be doing those things today?

• 48:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think we should.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  It just to me makes a, makes a bunch of sense that my boss changes tomorrow. I need to, it's almost like Paula, we talk about having a go-bag, right?

• 48:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  What is your go-bag? Well, maybe, you know, let's call it career insurance. Let's say that your job's fine now, but you might get a new boss tomorrow. What are some of the things you should be doing today as career insurance to make sure that you're more ready to go when the bell rings?

• 48:42Speaker 05

  I think it's everything that we've just discussed. It's high savings, low debt, and keep building your skillset.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  How much do you think mentors play into this?

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Mentors are important, but often mentorship isn't something, real mentorship isn't something that's formalized. It isn't some program that a company or a professional organization starts. For a true mentorship to form, it has to be an organic bond. And it often happens almost unconsciously, like, I think there's a very innate human drive to teach and to learn. And so if you're connected to a handful of people and they, they see you kind of as a younger version of themselves and, you know, you recognize that they've got something to teach and they recognize that you are a worthy protege, I think that sort of happens naturally.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  It is interesting though, because I feel like we start thinking about that stuff and we start thinking about changing careers and doing it sooner is probably a great idea. Mel, I want to shine a light on something that you do, which I have always admired about you, my friend, which is that you obviously already work for yourself. You're always looking though, for business opportunities. And I think that when we talk about brand, you, to me, you espouse a lot of that. I get a text from Mel maybe once every three months. Let's put it this way, I get a text from Mel often enough to know it isn't luck and it's not happenstance. You know, salespeople call it the Rolodex. They might call it now the CRM, right? The, the customer relationship management. Mel, can you give us a little bit of that secret sauce?

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Cause you're not looking for a new boss, but you're certainly always looking for a new opportunity.

• 50:20Speaker 06

  I'm always looking for an opportunity to serve because that's kind of like my love language, if, if you want to call it that. It's just to matter. And so one practice I have, every single morning, I, I take my dogs for a four-mile walk. And on that four-mile walk, my time is spent thinking about the things I'm grateful for, but also the people that are in my life or around that I want to connect more with. And I literally will send a text or a video or an audio to them from that walk. And I do that as a practice, probably three to four times a week, uh, to different people that I want to keep good contact with, because it's so easy to allow the, the text or, or

• 51:05Speaker 06

  the distance, the tyranny of distance to get between that relationship. And you and I, we had some time to, to chat before and I go, we can go along our path and continue to have a friendship or a, a relationship, not with any idea of some transaction down the road, but just by virtue of enriching my life with other people and me hopefully being able to enrich their life and staying in contact and, and deepening that. And so I, I made it a practice to do that on a regular basis. And I have that time and space in my day, because of the way my day is structured, to make that happen. I know some people that will do something similar and they'll just pick one day out of the week and they'll pick one or two people on that day to make sure that they're going to contact.

• 51:50Speaker 06

  Not going through a Rolodex for transactions, but to go through a, if there's such a thing anymore, a phone book or a contact list for a relationship. Because when something happens and you need to make a change or you want to make a change, then you, you might say, hey, man, do you know of anyone? And they're going to be more apt to help because it's not that they owe you, it's because they care about you and you've got that relationship.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  It is interesting because if you did do it when you needed something, then it is, then it feels transactional. You know what I mean?

• 52:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  It is completely, and it's only at times like these that we're talking about today that a lot of the time, people will reach out is because of the fact like, oh, I, I finally need something. So it's better to have that parachute ahead of time. Oh gee, when somebody, let's say a stacker got laid off yesterday, we talked about the things that they needed to do to get ready to leave. What are the things we need to do right after we leave the company?

• 52:51Speaker 04

  Well, if it's a sudden change, and you said laid off, I think the initial instinct is to like burn everything to the ground. Like, oh my God, I gotta cancel everything. I gotta, you know, and I think the, the reality is, is probably you can go just a skosh slower than that. Take a breath, slow down on your decision-making. It doesn't mean you don't have to make any changes, but I think you've got just a smidge more time than you gotta do everything by nightfall. But I think it does make sense to kind of inventory everything. When we talk about budgeting, you know, it seems like everybody's got like things that are in the budget that are unmovable. The proverbial sacred cows that were, you know, I can't, you know, I can't do that. I gotta have the, you know, whatever. And when you

• 53:33Speaker 04

  have radical change, you know, everything needs to be on the table. Everything needs to be built up from scratch, from the bottom. And you start with housing and food and, you know, you're like shelter, really food and utilities, you know, water and electricity, basically. And you start building it around there. And as you're able, you can add those so-called luxuries back in. But when you stop looking at things and saying, I have to have my car, instead say, I need transportation to work. That changes the mental image a little bit of, well, that's a little different. That could be, you know, a bus. That could be subway, right? You know, Paula, you don't have a car. You live in New York City. It's

• 54:15Speaker 04

  not unheard of to not have a car. In fact, it's probably more obnoxious to have a car, right?

• 54:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  And so

• 54:21Speaker 05

  Especially in Manhattan. Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. Scoreboard. So if you're like, okay, if you, you, I don't have the money for the subway. Well, then you're walking or you're gonna bicycle. You know, like there's a lot of ways to get around, you know, it would be different in the suburbs of Dallas, obviously than in New York City. So I think the biggest thing is recognizing that A, you've got a few minutes to take a breath, and then B, as you're building life back up, you can have to start everything from scratch and evaluate everything piece by piece.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  There is a tendency though, having been through this with a lot of clients back in the day, Paula, for people to kind of panic. And I love what OG said, take your time. Don't do rash things. But to Mel's point, you also might not have the skillset that you hope that you have. Now's a great time for training. Let's say you have that emergency fund in place, that great six months emergency fund, but you realize, man, if I had these skills, if I had XYZ skills, I would be more marketable. Is it more important to preserve your ability to eat another day or to gain those skills? So do you take the class and pay the fee? Or do you not take the class, hope that you can get hired

• 55:35Speaker 00

  someplace to begin bringing money in and instead preserve your liquidity?

• 55:41Speaker 05

  Well, I would start with the question, is the class necessary to gain the skill? There are certain skills that you can gain by either YouTube University, by teaching yourself, by doing, by working as an assistant or an intern for somebody else. Like there are a whole bunch of skills that you can learn either for free or learn by doing. And depending on what skill it is, I would start by asking the question, is this something that I can learn on my own in one of those other ways?

• 56:14Speaker 00

  It's interesting, Mel, because I think this is what you do with your CPA background too, is what OG and Paula both talked about was a little bit of challenging assumptions. It sounds like challenging assumptions should be a big part of what you're, what you're doing now that you're laid off.

• 56:29Speaker 06

  Absolutely. I heard someone talk. It was a really interesting idea of this realization of what we've done because of the internet. Because the internet puts the most popular things at the top of the list when you do a search. Doesn't mean that they're right. But what it's doing is the internet, if it's gonna list out all the most popular search results based on a question you ask, and you don't ask a, a challenging question, you're gonna get the most popular answers, which basically means that it's confirmation bias to begin with. And if we're not gonna challenge assumptions or start critically thinking and saying, what's a better way? And I love what OG said. He said, if we were gonna rebuild this from the ground up, zero base, I need transportation. It doesn't mean

• 57:14Speaker 06

  that it's a car. It could be the bus. It could be walking, that we start to look at the things that are in our life that we are taken for granted and believing that that's the only way. And when we start to challenge it, we might see that there's a better way to do things, and it's actually better for us, and it's gonna move us even further. So I think that critical thinking and assumption challenges are huge, especially when you have these life-changing events that get you to start thinking differently about, well, where do I want to go and why?

• 57:48Speaker 00

  That's an interesting answer, Mel, especially with your CPA background. You know, CPAs challenge the math, but challenging the assumptions gives you much, much better. Like, do we need to do the math in the first place? What math should we truly be doing? I'd love that. And I think that's a great place to end. Let's find out what's going on where all of you are. Not only is Mel on stages, like I said at the start of the show, and has a book called Building Your Money Machine, but he also has a podcast where he talks about building your money machine. So what's coming up on the Building Your Money Machine podcast?

• 58:18Speaker 06

  Well, we've got a couple of episodes coming up, challenging assumptions about

• 58:22Speaker 00

  Excellent.

• 58:23Speaker 06

  The fact that retirement isn't an asset game. It's a cash flow game. And if we don't understand how that dynamic plays out, then we're not ready to retire.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  Free cash flow is everything, right?

• 58:35Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 58:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. OG, what do you got going on this weekend, my friend?

• 58:39Speaker 04

  It is the final weekend before everybody goes back to school.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  Party weekend at the OG house then.

• 58:45Speaker 04

  It is a little bit of chaos. And then a week from now is Alex goes back to A&M. So we go back to a two kid household instead of a three in a week.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  It goes too fast though, doesn't it?

• 59:01Speaker 04

  We'll see.

• 59:02Speaker 00

  Spoken like a dad. Paula Pant, besides you and I arguing over whether it's one month or six months, what's coming up on the Afford Anything Show?

• 59:11Speaker 05

  Well, that actually, I would direct everyone to that episode. So the title of that episode is, Should We Retire in Our 40s with $4 Million? But the question where Joe and I really like go to blows is not that question. It's the middle question of the episode. A caller named Olivia has a side hustle. She's got proof of concept. She's been growing the side hustle for a while. She's got a six-month emergency fund. Should she quit her job? Joe and I like, so this is the first like rough and tangle that we've done in a while.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Wow, we've had a few, but this is the first one in a long time. And it's one of those rare episodes where you can hear Paula Pant be wrong. It's really cool.

• 59:54Speaker 00

  And that's at the Afford Anything Podcast.

• 59:56Speaker 06

  What if you were both wrong?

• 59:57Speaker 00

  Oh, come on, Mel.

• 59:59Speaker 06

  I'm just saying, I mean, you challenge assumptions, right?

• 1:00:04Speaker 00

  That is, that is a good point. Well, go listen to it, Mel, and tell me, write me.

• 1:00:08Speaker 06

  I will.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  That's your next time walking your dog. That's your mission. All right. Hey, thanks to you stackers for hanging out with us. All of you who hung out with us today and made the show on YouTube. We're generally here Mondays at 3:30 Eastern Time. Do the math on when you are in wherever, whatever part of the country or the world that you're in. We'd love to have you. We'd love seeing some of the comments and we'd love helping people live as they watch the show. But if you know somebody who is, either has a bad boss, or man, they are looking for the exit, give them this episode as well. All right. That's gonna do it for today, except this. Doug, you're bringing it home, man. What should we have learned on today's episode?

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  Well, Joe first takes some advice from our special panelist, Mel Abraham. You should always be looking for ways to create your own personal brand. What's different about both your skillset and how you do your work that makes you more marketable? Second, if you're in an untenable position with your boss or job, don't forget Paula's advice on what to do to prepare yourself for quitting. Start reducing expenses and focus on any debt that has a double-digit interest rate. But the big lesson, don't let Joe's mom hear that you only made it to the third rung of the ladder while cleaning gutters last year. Now she knows the gutters never got cleaned and she'll double dog dare you to get to rung number four. It's a double dog dare. I mean, what am I gonna do? I gotta

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  take her up on it.

• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  Thanks to Mel Abraham for joining us today. You'll find Mel's book, Building Your Money Machine, wherever books are sold. We'll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins.com. Thanks to Paula Pant for hanging out with us today. You'll find her San Fran tabulous podcast, Afford Anything, wherever you listen to finer podcasts. And finally, thanks also to OG for joining us. Looking for good financial planning help? Head to stackingbenjamins.com/OG for his calendar. This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul Sehig. You'll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a 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.