Why "Doing It Yourself" With Money Is Costing You SB1896

Collaboration is celebrated everywhere else. Musicians collaborate. Athletes have training partners. Businesses merge their best ideas together. But mention teaming up on your finances, and suddenly it sounds suspicious, like you're doing something wrong. Joe sits down with Paula Pant, Jesse Cramer, and OG to ask why personal finance is the one area where going it alone gets treated as a virtue, and what exactly gets left on the table when nobody's allowed to help. What You'll Walk Away With Why financial blind spots are nearly impossible to see on your own, no matter how much you already knowA real story about a stranger who handed over his entire real estate renovation system, no strings attached, simply because that's how a good community worksSpecific, practical answers for who to actually collaborate with on earning more, spending less, saving more, and investing betterWhy "the best collaborator" is sometimes the person most willing to tell you you're wrongA surprisingly effective incentive system for getting family members genuinely invested in cutting shared expensesWhy competitors can make some of the most valuable collaborators of all, if you're willing to see them that way Why This Matters Now There's a quiet assumption in a lot of financial advice that asking for help is a sign of weakness, that a truly capable person should be able to figure it all out solo. But nobody expects a musician, an athlete, or a business to succeed in total isolation, and money isn't actually any different. The people who make the fastest progress usually aren't the ones with the most willpower. They're the ones surrounded by others willing to share a system, question an assumption, or simply say "that seems like a lot of money for fish." From the Basement A fiercely competitive year-long trivia race gets even tighter with a question about the Volkswagen Beetle's original 1949 price tag, complete with a brand-new (and delightfully cheap) trophy that finally dethrones the old one. Resources Mentioned Afford Anything podcast https://affordanything.com — Paula Pant's show, referenced episode featuring 9/11 survivor Michael HingsonPersonal Finance for Long-Term Investors podcast https://bestinterest.blog/personal-finance-for-long-term-investors/ — Jesse Cramer's showStacking Benjamins on OG's calendar https://stackingbenjamins.com/og — for financial planning help 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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• 0:15Speaker 01

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

• 0:39Speaker 02

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

• 0:54Speaker 02

  I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and on today's show, if your boss tells you you're a great collaborator, that's a win, right? And if you work together on projects in your community or with your family, that's also a win. So how come it's so frowned upon with your money? Today we'll talk collaboration and your cash. What are you losing by keeping your financial controls to yourself? But that's not all. I'll take the controls halfway through today's show. Oh, thank goodness there's an adult in the room, am I right? And we'll see who's scoring a point in our year-long trivia contest. And now a guy who just flew in from Minneapolis, and boy are his arms tired, it's Joe Saul Sehy.

• 1:43Speaker 02

  Hey there, stackers. And yes, I am just back from Minneapolis, Camp Fy. Had a great time, got a little bit of a scratchy voice, but the good news is I've got some great contributors hanging out here with me. First of all, the guy across the card table from me, Mr. OG is here. How are you, man?

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Joe.

• 2:02Speaker 02

  It is good. First time caller, longtime fan, I know. So glad you could be a part of this. You and I have had a collab that some would say has worked on and off for maybe a few years.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It's worked out really well for you.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  I pinch myself every day. And another one of my collaborators in Manhattan, I get to collaborate with her on the Afford Anything Show, Paula Pant is here. How are you?

• 2:31Speaker 04

  I am great, and those are fun shows, the Q and A episodes.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Those are fun shows, and I'm sure you pinch yourself that I'm on your show as much as I pinch myself about getting to work with OG. I'm sure Paula.

• 2:42Speaker 04

  Constantly. Pinch.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  And the guy who we're all pinching ourselves because we get to work with him nearly every Friday, from Personal Finance for Long-Term Investors, Mr. Jesse Cramer is here. How are you, man?

• 2:54Speaker 05

  This is a pinch friendly environment. We're very pinchy here. What's going on with all this pinching?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's a little creepy, isn't it? It's not good.

• 3:03Speaker 05

  I don't know if it's creepy, it's just pinchy. It's very pinchy.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Collaboration, though, is a lot of fun, isn't it, Jesse? I mean, I've had so much fun.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  Speaking of pinching.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:12Speaker 05

  Collaboration. It is fun. It is fun.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  I've had so much fun working with all you guys. And what's interesting is, is that I was reading this piece in Fast Company. This is where this came from. It was about the Gap. You guys remember this, this company, The Gap? And The Gap went through this valley of death where it got to this point a couple of years ago where it wasn't an outcast brand. I loved what one media outlet said, they weren't an outcast brand. It was just that nobody cared anymore. It wasn't negative, it wasn't positive, just nobody cared. This piece in Fast Company was how Gap got brand new leadership. They actually brought in the CEO who brought back Barbie. They did all these interesting things. They brought back the same way they brought Barbie back.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  With Barbie, as you know, if you saw the Barbie movie, they collaborated with some of the best people who make movies, the best, some of the, one of the best directors in Hollywood, some of the best actors, the best people, and they made a movie that was up for an Oscar. When it came to other collabs, Barbie collabed her way back into the zeitgeist. And now The Gap, according to Fast Company, it has been the same. And it just struck me that collaboration, as Doug, you said earlier, it's celebrated every place, like businesses collaborate, scientists collaborate, musicians collaborate, athletes have training partners, right? If work, Doug, you said this, if somebody says you're a great collaborator, that's

• 4:43Speaker 02

  like a huge compliment if everybody wants to work with you. But then we get to personal finance and suddenly it's whoa, whoa, whoa, you can do this by yourself.

• 4:53Speaker 02

  Figure it out. And for God's sake, don't pay anybody, right? I mean, forget about asking friends, neighbors, whatever. If you pay somebody, that's horrible. So I started wondering, why is collaboration a strength everywhere else but treated like a weakness with money? And what are we missing out on? So that's the topic today. We're going to ask Jesse, Paula and OG their thoughts on this. But first, we have a couple of sponsors who help us give this to you for the premium price of, wait for it, zero. Oh my goodness, are you sitting down? We're going to hear from them right now, and then we're going to talk about collaboration and your wallet. Well, you may know that chaos is the name of the game here in mom's basement, what

• 5:35Speaker 02

  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 something that's good for you, even when you don't have time. It's ready in two minutes, whether it's lunch between meetings or dinner after holiday shopping.

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• 6:59Speaker 02

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• 7:34Speaker 02

  I like the YouTube name of this, using somebody else's brains to get rich, how to get rich with our people's brains, which really is, I think, what collaboration is because everybody is lifting each other up and getting ahead. Paula Pant, is there a financial cost to this obsession we have in personal finance of doing it yourself?

• 7:54Speaker 04

  There is, yes. There's a few reasons behind it. Number one, money is often kept private. People don't like discussing money, even inside of their own household with their own family members. People often don't like talking about money and are more comfortable talking about other, other salacious subjects before they would discuss money. But to your question, what are we missing? Just like every example that you listed, like if an athlete didn't have a training partner, they might not train as hard or reach their full athletic potential. If a musician didn't collaborate with another musician, they might not cross audiences and, and might not be discovered by as many people. And so in that same way, like if you're not collaborating with other people on all of

• 8:38Speaker 04

  the questions of personal finance and financial planning and financial management, you have unknown unknowns, you have blind spots, and in general, you're not progressing to the maximum of what you could be doing.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  I had this class on short story writing, Jesse, in my junior year of college. And what we did was you would bring your story and you'd share it with the class. Somebody else would have to read it out loud, not you, because you would give inflection. They wanted it as written, like if, if OG was going to read the story and Paula wrote it, he's just going to read what's on the page, not what Paula intended, right? And so it was really interesting because we all got better by giving each other feedback and by hearing our own work being discussed by other people. Imagine, Jesse, what would happen if we did that with each other's budgets? Like, how good would your budget be if we had to discuss it in a group setting?

• 9:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, my mom was an English teacher. So as you're telling this story, Joe, about your, your short story, your writing class, I think like, what if we approached the, you know, the English language, just like DIY it, just, you know? And it is, it's kind of funny because you're like, well, if you read a bunch of well-written books and you choose to expose yourself to smarter people who speak the language really well, like I suppose you could, you know, through osmosis, get a pretty good grasp of the English language. But I was listening a couple of days ago, Joe, to an interview with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Not familiar with that guy. No idea.

• 10:13Speaker 05

  How about this, here's a crazy stat, and then I'll bring it back. Atomic Habits is like the, somewhere like, it's about the 75th best-selling book of all time. It's currently getting beat by books like The Bible and Harry Potter. It's 75th, amazing book, best-selling book. But he was talking about how for many years, James Clear wrote all of his own blog posts himself, just the one man band. But then for the book, especially for the editing process, there was like eight full-time professionals who did nothing but help him finalize and edit and rethink some of the chapters for like a two-month period of time. And he talked about how much of a better end product it was because of that outside expertise, the fresh set of eyes, you can't see the picture if you're standing inside the frame.

• 10:55Speaker 05

  You gotta believe that something similar applies to us and our finances because it is, it can be such an emotional topic and, and not to mention, there's some difficult objective parts about financial planning. So I would think that outside help, collaboration can only be a positive thing.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I'm only laughing because I had that same team. So James Clear's editing team was my, was, was, was my editing team. Well, it would be scoreboard if mine was the ninth most read book of all time, or 25th, heck, 25,000 most, most read book.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  You're probably in the top half, Joe.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Well, you're cracking some funnies, OG. You know, we talked about avoiding mistakes, but what opportunities are you missing out by not having somebody look at your work or collaborating with other people?

• 11:45Speaker 03

  I was just thinking about your chat about like having somebody go through your budget. Like, oh my goodness. But you know, it's personal. So what I spend my money on is maybe different than what you guys do. Doesn't make mine right or wrong. When I think about financial planning or all the ancillary things that come off of financial planning, I think that the biggest thing that we can do for clients is help them identify the second and third order effects of decisions. That just comes through practice and, you know, some skill and understanding of how all those different areas of the financial planning world work together. So if you're only looking at one particular thing and you don't have the skillset or you

• 12:27Speaker 03

  don't have the expertise, or you don't have the resource group, people, whatever, to help explore those other things, you're obviously going to be leaving money on the table. Where just like a perfect example is, you know, somebody who says, oh, I heard somebody say that a Roth 401k is better than a traditional one, so I should do that. Maybe they're maxing out their 401ks. So you got 24,000 bucks that's going into pre-tax. All of a sudden you've got two people that are doing, you know, basically $50,000 that's into the Roth. Sounds great. Except now all of a sudden there's a 12, 16, $20,000 tax bill that's due because of that decision. It doesn't make it a wrong decision, but not knowing that that's coming or not understanding that that is going to have some secondary effects, I think is a big miss.

• 13:11Speaker 03

  So I think even, even for us, like Jesse and I in particular, like are in this 24/7/365. There's still stuff that you just go, wait a second, there's something here I need to ask about. You know, try to find somebody that has a little bit better special skillset specialization in that one particular thing.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  It is so exciting when a different set of eyes comes to any problem. I remember Paula, you and I had a breakfast that you don't remember in New Orleans that changed the course of this podcast when you decided that we were all going to be called stackers.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  And you're like, hey, we should call everybody stackers. And, and Paula's like, wow, I did that? I do not remember that.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Based on what you've told me, I think I remember parts of the conversation. The reason that that was such a helpful conversation is what was happening in the moment was that you were getting, you were getting lots of advice from a lot of different voices, but those voices were giving you generalized advice that wasn't necessarily a fit for you. And so at that particular point in time, there was a lot of, of push towards like designing a, a brand that was really for the algorithm and

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Funnel.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was like a funnel, like something that was really funnel based and systematized and algorithm driven. And I was like, Joe, that's not what you're building. What you're building is a community, you know, you're building the stacking Benjamins community and

• 14:42Speaker 02

  I think you call it like a rock and roll brand.

• 14:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And that's a very different thing than building like some algorithm driven funnel, you know? And so, and that's where the whole concept of, you know, call them stackers.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  And have it be somebody that knows you though, somebody that knows the brand, knows who you are.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Instead of this, you know, Jesse was talking about, um, you know, you can read books and get access now to some of the greatest minds. You can watch their TikTok videos, but you're still to be able to have that back and forth with people is huge. I'm going to stick with you for a second, Paula. What is one money win from your own life that wouldn't have happened without somebody else?

• 15:19Speaker 04

  When I started investing in real estate, there were a handful of people that I met who were just tremendously helpful. So one is Jay Scott. He actually doesn't do, to my knowledge, doesn't do rental properties. He's a flipper, so he flips houses, residential construction. Uh, we were both in the Atlanta area. He would take me on a tour through something that he was renovating as a flip. And he was really instrumental in teaching me how systematized it all needed to be, you know? And he had like these inventory sheets, his specs, where he would walk through his house and be like, all right, I need two of those, two of those, three of those, one of those, two of those, one of those, three of those.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  His inventory sheet was like manufacturer description, SKU code, you know? So all he would have to do is fill in the quantity and that was it. And then he was done. And he actually gave me some of his sheets.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  That is just such an incredible level of like, here, here is this system that I have developed, have it, just take it.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  That's incredible. And I want to put a pin in this because I want to come back to it later, but I love the fact that he was in a related field, but not the same field. I feel like often we think we got to go to somebody who's doing exactly what we're doing. And in this case, it wasn't somebody doing exactly what you're doing. OG, how about for you? What's a financial win that wouldn't have happened or happened as quickly without another person?

• 16:44Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, I can just point to the whole stacking Benjamins community and the stacking Benjamin show. I mean, you and I have had obviously a lot of years doing this, but before that, I don't even know what kicked off the fact that we got to know each other. And you look at that domino effect of, you know, what's happened in, at least I can speak for myself, in my business and my life and my relationship with other people that are because of the fact that we knew each other or because we got introduced to what, you know, like however that started in like 2003 or whatever.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  It's really wild to think about all of the things that had to collapse, had to come to fruition at the exact right moment for all of those dominos to fall. I just read an article, completely unrelated, but I just read an article about like people who are choosing to not have either purposefully or for whatever reason, not having children. And there's a lot of emotion that goes with that, obviously. Like it said, like, think about all the, all the like sequence of events that had to have happened for you to get to this spot. Like how many generations and generations and generations of like, you didn't get botulism, you know? Like that great, great, great, great, great grandpa didn't die in that war, you know, or whatever, like, like how many things had to transpire? It's just

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Remember we had Mary Kate, General Mary Kate Eater on the show. Remember her? And because her grandmother, uh, it wasn't her, it was one of the women who was up for an Emmy gave a speech where her grandmother was going to be shot and killed by the Nazis. And because her grandmother stepped out of line and ran for the woods, she actually was up there giving a speech. Had her grandmother not done that, she would have never, yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, just to, you, you never know what's happening, like why people are where they are. You know, I mean, I just got done doing another bike race a couple of weeks ago. And the only reason I even thought about doing that was because of a relationship that I had through flying. How does flying have anything to do with cycling?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Bicycles. Yeah. Yeah. It's so wild. Jesse, how about you? What's a money win from your life that wouldn't happen or would have happened as quickly?

• 19:03Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, first I was thinking about this story, this anecdote comes to mind. About 23,000 years ago, UG UG collaborated with this wooden club to kill a saber tooth tiger. And if not for that, I wouldn't be here. So we're going to, you know, OG's great, great grandfather collabed with penicillin. And, and that's why OG is here. And so anyway, shout out to UG UG.

• 19:31Speaker 05

  Sorry, a little facetious.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  I'm trying to take it, be serious, Jesse. And that is about as deep as I could get, by the way, of, of gratefulness.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  OG has one, I love you sincere moment and Jesse just make sure he will, he will never hear it again on the show.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. Well, I remember this one time my grandpa told me this story about a saber tooth tiger.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  I will say the, no, okay, being serious, the ripple effect. I mean, yeah, I think if more of us pause a little more often to think about the ripple effect, the butterfly effect into our past. And just like you said, OG, whether it's just the relationships you formed in your own life and, and the cascading effects of where they've gotten you. Or, I mean, I'm sure we all have some pretty interesting stories of what our ancestors did or didn't do that led us to where we are today. But some collaborations that I think of would be like, when I was first kind of learning the ropes early, early on, what was I doing? I was, I was reading websites, like the afford anything website. And I was tuning into podcasts like this one. And so I just remember thinking like, well, there's some pretty good content out there

• 20:38Speaker 05

  of experts who are doing stuff and educating the public. Let me go, that was kind of my collaboration, right? It was the one sided collaboration that maybe some of our audience members right now feel like they're participating in. And that was really helpful and influential for me.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  I still don't think of that as a collab though. I really think it takes the next step, Jesse.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  Maybe, maybe.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  I mean, that's an influence.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  I think that's a great influence, but I don't think that it's a collab. Is there somebody along the way who said, hey, hey, you know, well, okay. So let me ask you one very personal question then. You went from engineering to financial planning.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Was there somebody that you collaborated with who, because that was a huge money change in your life?

• 21:20Speaker 05

  Sure. I'll, a quick 30 second anecdote, shout out to Dave. I've told this story a few different times on a few different podcasts, but he wasn't a finance guy. He was just a guy I went to college with who, after grad school, he could have gotten like a pretty highfalutin engineering job, but instead he decided to start his own company like from scratch and it ended up being a wild success for him. I asked him, I was like, hey, how did you think about the risk of like not going and getting a corporate job and instead diving into entrepreneurship? And he was like, well, if the entrepreneurship fails, I still have my master's degree in biomedical engineering and a bunch of places are going to hire me. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense that his downside risk wasn't really that bad. And that thought process is exactly what I leaned on and, and helped me leave my engineering job and become a financial planner.

• 22:04Speaker 05

  Cause if I fail at being a financial planner, it still could happen. I think I can go back and get a job as an aerospace engineer and be okay. Is that an okay collab?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, it still isn't 100% a collab because of the fact that it, I mean, you asked his opinion, he influenced you, but he, there was really nothing in it for him. I mean, as an example, let's shift to Paula for a second. Paula, what was in it for him to give you that tour? Why would he give you that tour? How does he win in that collab?

• 22:34Speaker 04

  So that was part of a broader community of people, Atlanta real estate investors who would all meet up and tour one another's homes.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  As a group, not necessarily in the one-to-one context, but as a collective, everyone would routinely meet up and discuss issues related to real estate investing. And then we would always meet up, usually in the middle of a renovation. They would do a walkthrough and we would see like, oh, cool. We're, we're standing on subfloor right now. So we just got the benefit of like seeing example after example after example across different neighborhoods throughout the Atlanta area. And then just talking broadly to like a whole community of investors.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  He's sharing his expertise. He knows you're going to share yours. Somebody else is going to share theirs. So there's this, there's this back and forth. By the way, a lot of collabs, Jesse, as you brought up, often start with just somebody who helps influence a decision. If it's somebody who shared what they earned, I remember Bullis Akumbi on the show talking about how when somebody, a coworker, told her how much they were earning versus how much she was earning, doing the exact same job, like that was huge influence. Maybe not a complete collab, but the person had to be open to do it. Somebody who recommended a job, showed you a better way to invest, introduced you to somebody, split an expense, challenged their spending. I know as creators, we try to introduce people to people that we think might be good guests

• 24:02Speaker 02

  on our show, or people that might be good people to know in the business of podcasting, all kinds of good stuff. Let's do this. I'd like to throw out a few different financial goals. And what I'd like to do is ask you guys, what type of person would you collaborate with to make this easier? Think about our average stacker. Like, you know, it could be, oh, you know, I talked to my friends about this, talked to my neighbor, talked to my coworker, talked to my cousin, talked to people in different industries, somebody 20 years older than me, younger than me, whoever it might be. Let's walk through a few of these. OG, if we wanted to earn, if you wanted to earn $20,000 more next year, and you're the average person listening to this,

• 24:45Speaker 02

  who's a good likely person to collaborate with on that?

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Oh, um, off the top of my head, I would say probably the person that employs you. If you're self-employed, maybe your top five clients, your top five customers. Find out, you know, what really moves the needle for them. I think a lot of it boils down to can you create a lot of value for somebody or some other thing to get what you need out of it? So if you want a $20,000 raise, so you, you know, you work for a regular company, then you got to put in the work. So who best to ask for what work do you have to do than the person who's in charge of your day-to-day work-life stuff?

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  So, hey, this is what I'd like to do. How do I get it done? What do you have to see for me to make this happen?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  All right, Paul, OG, check the boss box off or the your top client boss. If you're self-employed, who else do we collaborate with?

• 25:39Speaker 04

  So I would, actually, this is a conversation that I'm having with someone right now, but I've been talking to someone about us doing a joint workshop together. This person is also in the personal finance space, but has more of an investing focus, like more of a markets investing focus. It would be a true collaboration where I, I bring my audience. He brings his knowledge. You know, we cross pollinate audiences. The focus would be much more on like more markets investing, which is not like I'm, I'm stronger on real estate and I'm more of an index fund person. He's much better at like stock analysis. And so it would be that.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  So somebody who has similar skills, but not the same. Like you're looking at your skillset and looking at how can I supplement those to earn more money?

• 26:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. And it's like, you could refer to this person as quote unquote, a competitor, but why not just turn your competitors into your collaborators?

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Well, and especially if they have a focus that's a little different than yours.

• 26:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  I think that makes both of it. It brings something to his audience, bring something to your audience that are way different.

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 26:47Speaker 02

  All right. So we took your biggest competitors off, Jesse. I saved the hardest one for you.

• 26:55Speaker 05

  How about a coach of some sort? Is, would that be a collaboration or is that not, I'm not sure.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  It could be like a coach on what do I need to do to make more money?

• 27:05Speaker 05

  Correct. Cause what I'm thinking, and not, not necessarily a money coach. I guess I'm thinking from my point of view, which is like, I feel like I have certain strengths. I also feel like I have some weaknesses. And sometimes from a business point of view, it's like, okay, do I double down on my strengths? Or are some of my weaknesses actually these like bottlenecks? That no matter how strong my strengths are, that bottleneck is always going to choke down my capacity. I could see myself kind of maybe collaborating with someone who can be that outside expert to help me through that. And I think that would potentially unlock some earning potential that right now I haven't tapped into.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love how it took you being the third person to get to a person that we pay. But I think this is an important person that we could pay because we can get in the right room with the exact right person who maybe knows us, knows the marketplace. And you already know, based on the results they've had for other people, whether they're going to work or not. That's a pretty powerful thing. We're going to continue this. Who would you collaborate with on some other areas? Such as if you want to save more money, if you want to invest better, if you want to maybe cut back on your spending? We'll talk about things like that in the second half of today's show. But at the halfway point of our Friday episodes,

• 28:22Speaker 02

  we have a year-long trivia competition and it is heating up now. And let's take a quick look at the scoreboard. It appears that it's getting much closer. OG has 10, Jesse has eight, and this must be a typo, but I think Paula has seven. Is Paula one point out of second place?

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  And is Paula only three points out of first?

• 28:46Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  What is going on here? OG started off the year hot, Jesse and Paula have been reeling him in. So let's see what's, Paula?

• 28:57Speaker 04

  I was going to say, have we unveiled the trophy?

• 29:02Speaker 02

  I totally, it's in the other room.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  It's still right here.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, no, no, Paula has a different one now.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  It just says Jesse's name on it.

• 29:08Speaker 05

  Where's my trophy?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  It's right here, buddy.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  You can see very clear, if you're with us on YouTube, can you hold it close to the camera? So you can see how clearly it says Jesse?

• 29:16Speaker 03

  It's just said OG in like permanent ink. It was hard to write over it, but it says Jesse.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  Yes, one, one, one Paula Pant submitted a new trophy, which in some ways is better, in some ways it's worse. It is in a lot of ways dumber, which is perfect. Which is absolutely perfect. I gotta remember to do that next week. I am so sorry that's in the, that's in the other room. I didn't think about it. And I've been sitting on it for how long, Paula? Like three months?

• 29:43Speaker 04

  Something like that, yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, we do have a new trophy this year, which makes this even more epic. But we can't have an epic year-long competition that's heating up without a question. Doug, what do you got?

• 29:58Speaker 06

  Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And on this day in 1963, a little band from Liverpool, England called The Beatles, released their very first album, Please Please Me. You may have heard of it. 14 songs that helped launch one of the biggest bands in music history. And because I'm a highly trained trivia professional, can't even say it. I am a highly trained trivia professional. I've spent literally minutes searching for a smooth transition from Beatles to Beatles. Couldn't find one, so let's talk Volkswagen's. 14 years before John, Paul, George and Ringo started the British invasion,

• 30:39Speaker 06

  a funny little German car had already begun its own invasion of America. In 1949, the first Volkswagen Type 1S, what we'd eventually know as the Beetle, went on sale in the United States. And America responded by buying, well, almost none of them. We'll get to just how few in a minute. But Volkswagen was trying to sell Americans a tiny 25 horsepower German car at a time when Detroit's basic design philosophy was like, what if the hood were the size of a regulation pickleball court? So here's today's question. When the Volkswagen Beetle first went on sale in the United States in 1949, how much did a brand new one cost?

• 31:23Speaker 06

  I'll be back right after I ask Ringo if he knows how to change a fan belt.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  OG, you are first. We're going back to 1949. The Volkswagen Beetle arrives on the shores of America.

• 31:36Speaker 03

  Just to clarify, you said that their goal was to, it was less than the normal car? Is that what, what was that?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Their goal was to sell a car that was a 25 horsepower car to an American public that had Detroit.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  More steel.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  I thought you said something about it being less expensive than a normal car. Okay.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yes. No, no, no. Their goal was to make it inexpensive. Absolutely. A hundred percent.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  I see. Okay. You said, so that was read in the question.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  I do not know, but I will give you that.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  Oh, I, I was kind of listening to Doug. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I just kind of tune out the whole storyline until I get to the question. Okay. So 1949 Volkswagen bug. I mean, it doesn't matter what I pick because unless I hit it right on the number, somebody's gonna F me over.

• 32:29Speaker 03

  I'm going to say they wanted to sell for $1,199.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  1,199.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  No, I'm going to change my mind. I'm going to make that $999.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  1,900.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  No, no, just 999.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Just 990, a three digit number.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Right. Jesse Cramer.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Okay. This isn't hard, guys. 1,099.

• 32:57Speaker 05

  No. It's not fun. It's not fun. I was doing some inflation math in my head, trying to think, you know, what it's for 1949 to today, 77 years.

• 33:09Speaker 05

  Pick up inflation rate, use rule of 72 to figure out how many times. So I'm going to say inflation, I'm going to say it was like a 12x, 12x factor from then till now.

• 33:22Speaker 05

  Does that sound right? So a gallon of milk, instead of being four bucks, was 30 cents? Maybe. And if a Volkswagen today, maybe a new one costs 18, I'll go with $1,400.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  $1,400.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Look at Jesse playing nice. Paula, Pant, you're not nice. Come on.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Oh dear. Now I have some choices to make.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  Oh, wait a minute. Let me guess what the choices are.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  I mean, the first choice is do I play inside of that zone? Or do I take the upper or lower bounds? And if I do play inside of that zone, do I play squarely in the middle? Or do I hug a corner? It's a lot of, a lot of choices here.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  And I'm historically not that good with that.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Jesse, your answer was what? 1,400?

• 34:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, 1,400.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  I'm going to go 1,399.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Ooh, there she goes. Taking the middle. 1,399. We got 999, 1,400, 1,399. Who's right? We're going to find out in just a moment. We'll be right back.

• 34:35Speaker 02

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• 35:15Speaker 02

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• 35:56Speaker 02

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• 36:31Speaker 02

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• 37:16Speaker 02

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• 37:48Speaker 02

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• 39:14Speaker 02

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• 39:47Speaker 02

  All right, OG, you opened at 999 expecting the 998 and 1,000 onslaught, but instead your competitors decided Paula decided to go after your competitor. You feeling good?

• 39:59Speaker 03

  No, I'm not feeling good.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Jesse, you still have everything over 1,400. You feeling good?

• 40:05Speaker 05

  My very initial guess before OG said anything was 800 bucks. But once he went low to 1,000, I didn't feel like kind of limiting my window of opportunity. So that's why I went high. So I don't know how to feel.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Paula?

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Well, I don't know. 1,400 seems a little high, especially if they wanted it to be an inexpensive car. But I also have a fairly narrow band. So I don't know. I have mixed feelings.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Well, let's see if Paula's going to get a point. Is she going to move a new tie for second? Is Jesse going to move one closer to OG? Is OG going to pull away? Doug, you've got the answer.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Hey there stackers. I'm the guy who's ASC certified and imaginary European auto repair and who just found out Ringo charges 180 bucks an hour, like he's worth it. Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. The Volkswagen Beetle eventually became one of the most successful cars ever built. But that first year in America Volkswagen sold two, not 2002 cars. That's less of a nationwide dealer network and more like somebody losing track of a couple cars at the port. But spoiler, things did eventually improve. By 1968, the Beetle's

• 41:31Speaker 02

  biggest US sales year, Americans bought 399,674 of them, which is especially impressive for a car whose 1949 version had 25 horsepower and a top speed of 62 miles an hour, and it took you 42 seconds to get there. 42 seconds. You didn't merge onto the freeway in a 1949 Beetle. You mailed the freeway a letter of intent. But what we're looking for is the price of one of those first Beetles when it arrived in America in 1949. Well, when the Volkswagen Beetle first went on sale in America, you could drive one home for just

• 42:12Speaker 02

  $1,280, making Paula our winner. Damn.

• 42:18Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Barely.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  I almost nailed it on the go. I had it.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  OG had it and took it back.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Changed my mind.

• 42:27Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  OG had it and took it back.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  Well, OG, what'd you, you said 1,200, didn't you?

• 42:34Speaker 03

  I said 1,250.

• 42:35Speaker 05

  You said 1199.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  No, I said 1,250.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. His, his first one was 1,250, then he went 1199. Then he said, no, 999.

• 42:42Speaker 05

  I mean, if you would've gone 1,250, Paula would've said 1,251.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  She probably would've. You're probably right.

• 42:48Speaker 05

  Congrats Paula.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Nice job Paula Pant.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  Oh, what, does this mean I'm tied for second?

• 42:53Speaker 02

  It does.

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  How does it feel up here in the upper stratosphere of second place?

• 42:59Speaker 04

  This rarefied air.

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Of being in, one of two people in second place out of three.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Too late for me to margin call just to give Paula an extra point. Give her the momentum, you know? You take nine, I'll go back.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Just go, just go. Yeah, maybe next week. Who knows, man? We are now two points between first and third as we round the corner into the Q4. Wow. It's getting closer. All right. What's very close though, is the second half of today's show. In fact, it's going to start right now. How about that? We were talking about these different collabs, guys. If you want to collab with somebody on earning more, we talked about that. You guys had great suggestions. Let's go with if you want to collab on spending less. Let's say that you want to spend less money. I'm not going to OG first.

• 43:49Speaker 03

  Terrible idea.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Well, but it could be on a specific thing. Like, let's say OG, you want to spend less on a car. You want to spend less on a house. You know, it doesn't have to be on Woodford or, or I don't know, the family Amazon account. Jesse, let's start with you this time, since you went third last time. So if you want to spend less, who's a good person to collaborate with?

• 44:13Speaker 05

  Potentially your spouse or significant other, maybe your kids. That's probably where I would start because assuming you share your finances in some way, it's got to be a team effort to spend less money.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  I do like that. It always drove me crazy when I was a financial planner, seeing people that were on separate pages. One was, well, let's go spend more money. And the other one was frustrated. But man, when those teams got working together, it could be super exciting. And when you get the kids involved, Jesse, it gets even better.

• 44:42Speaker 05

  We're trying to get our older one involved. She's just not on the program. So if any parents out there want to chime in, I'm all ears.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  At the ripe old age of?

• 44:51Speaker 05

  Two, two and three months.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  I can't believe she's not on the budget yet.

• 44:55Speaker 05

  Applesauce is a huge budget item. It's ridiculous.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  My son was a big fan of blueberries. That was, oh my goodness. Blueberries, I might as well refinance my house. OG, let's talk to you. You want to spend less on some item?

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Spending less, spending less. You know, I will say that, you know, Jesse said, you know, spouse, partner, whatever. I do think it's interesting in my relationship with my family, how my kids are a little different and how, you know, my wife is a little bit different. So William, my middle kid, is a lot like me, right? Just like, whatever. Like, there's always money in the banana stand, right? Alex, on the other hand, is like, yeah, I went to Costco and I'm not sure that I want to spend $15 on chicken today. So I just, I just got whatever, like frozen chicken instead for five bucks.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  He's got ramen, right?

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, or whatever. And he's very cognizant of that, even when it's not his money, which I think is very respectful. You know what I mean? Like, he knows that we're covering his college costs, which is including his grocery bill, but he's very respectful of it, which I appreciate. I do have a strong emotion around wasting money and resources. And so maybe this is a better way for me to think about it as opposed to like spending less, but just being, you know,

• 46:23Speaker 02

  Less wasteful.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  Not wasting it. It does drive me crazy when, when I see stuff getting thrown out of the refrigerator. You know, it's like, what, what did we buy a whole drawer full of vegetables for if we're going to just let them all turn to goo, you know, and throw them out six months later? Like, that's not awesome, you know? Like, before we went on vacation this year.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Six months?

• 46:43Speaker 04

  I was just thinking that too.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  No, no, let me tell you something. I'm telling, let me tell you this from this, I'm just going to tell you this from this summer. I was home because I went to the race and then I came home and Lisa and Caroline were gone. And then we were all going to be gone for a couple of weeks. So I was like, all right, I'm just going to go through the fridge and through the pantry to make sure there's no surprises when we get home. There was a sweet potato. I absolutely despise sweet potatoes. I think they should, we should, you know, how they're trying to figure out how to kill mosquitoes to like never breed again, whatever. Like, it would not hurt my feelings if they're like, well, there's no more sweet potatoes. We, they're extinct. They're like, okay, oh well, shucks. You know, they're awful. Terrible food. But my wife likes them. So she gets what she wants. This thing was still in the bag and I swear to God, when I picked the bag up, it was bubbling.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  It was, it was like literally like, it was doing something. There was some chemical reaction going on in real time as I went to take this bag out to the trash.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  So is the answer to collaborate with your science teacher?

• 47:44Speaker 03

  My message here on not wasting is, I wasn't upset about the fact that it was bubbling. I was upset about the fact that that thing probably costs like four bucks and it sat there and nobody touched it for God knows how. How long does it take a sweet potato? Like literally the thing that lasts all, like, like you could buy one today and eat it next Christmas and it's probably still fine? It's just like, why, why are we buying this stuff?

• 48:09Speaker 02

  I was very inspired by Brian Suddeth when he was on the show, talking about food waste and gamifying that. And Cheryl and I, since that episode, OG, like you guys, I mean, we've been on this tear of let's eat all of the leftovers in the fridge. Let's eat all the leftovers.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Frasier, like eat whatever, whatever's frozen. Yeah, we went through that. So like those sorts of things where it's like obvious wasteful laziness maybe is a good way to put it. You know, it's just like, I don't know.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Well, so your collaboration partner then would be Mrs. OG?

• 48:40Speaker 03

  That was, that was the question.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, the partner would be Mrs. OG. So maybe we got to go with roommate or?

• 48:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, that or business partners. Again, like back to like wasting money or like being smart about it.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  You and I have gone through that a few times.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, I was thinking about my business in particular, the planning side, because now that you're bringing this up, I'm able to like put some things together here. By putting other people in charge of it, it removes my, my emotional piece of it. You know what I mean? Like when I, I tell everybody, hey, if you find a subscription that we don't need anymore in the business and we cancel it because, you know, whatever, it's useless. Like, I'll just split the annual cost with you. Like, I'll just give you a bonus of, you know, hey, we just saved $3,000 on that subscription. Cool. Here's 1,500 bucks. That's a win-win, right? Like, we don't need the subscription. We save money. They, they found it. So people are actively looking for that. We're doing that with William for college right now. He applied to a bunch of colleges. Our standard is like, here's what A and M

• 49:38Speaker 03

  costs, public in-state tuition. If you go to a school that costs less than that, I'll split the difference. Like, if you get a better scholarship, whatever. I don't know, I'm kind of, like you said, gamifying it a little bit. Like, to me, that makes a lot of sense. Like, people have some buy-in there. So if you're looking for, it's really anybody, if you're trying to save money, I guess it's, it's really anybody that touches your money, right? You have a business, it's all your business people, it's all your customers, it's your shareholders, it's your family members.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  No, I really like that. Paula, how about for you?

• 50:10Speaker 05

  Stream of consciousness for like eight minutes. Sorry.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  It is so good, by the way. It takes him like four minutes just to roll into it, but once he gets going, baby, it's fine.

• 50:19Speaker 05

  Like, cut the cord, Chatty Cathy.

• 50:22Speaker 04

  In terms of saving money, so I'll, I'll take this in the totally opposite direction and go to strangers on the internet. The tips, the advice that you find is incredibly creative. And of course, obviously use your judgment. Is this right for your life or not? But some of the tips and advice that you find online is of stuff you never would have thought about on your own.

• 50:49Speaker 02

  But how can you talk to those people? I really want this to be collabs. So how do we, how do we make it that a collab though?

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Well, I mean, forum threads, I don't know if you would consider that to be a collab, but a forum thread is an example of, of lots of people coming together to, you know, discuss a thing.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  I think it could be if you started a post like at the, you know, the afford anything community or here, like at the stack and Benjamin's community. And you said, Hey, I want to put together a challenge of people that are gonna spend less every month. Who's in?

• 51:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Fantastic.

• 51:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. Every year we do a 52 tweets.

• 51:21Speaker 03

  I have another idea. After you get through Jesse, I don't want to steal one in case Jesse's gonna take it because then he'll be screwed.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Jesse, did you do something on this?

• 51:30Speaker 05

  No, no, no, go, go right ahead. Go right ahead. Steal away.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I think this is a great use case for AI. Again, it's data, right? You know, AI chat, Claude, whatever perplexity, love spreadsheets, love digging into that sort of thing. And you could just dump your, you could do your bank statements, maybe your AMEX statement, whatever. It should be like, what's going on here? Talk to me like you would a small child. You know? It's like, it's like, what's happening? You know, and it's like, we don't know what sea smoke is, but you spend a lot of money at it. So you should probably, you should probably go there less or do that less or whatever that is. Because there's no emotional attachment to it, right? They're just reporting the facts.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like AI, but for this episode, I'm really looking for collaborations with others.

• 52:20Speaker 03

  Damn, I thought I had a good answer.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  No, I think it is a good answer and.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  No, no, you don't have to placate me. It was a bad answer. Just say it, just say it sucked.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  No, I'm gonna pretend I'm chat GPT. That was the best answer ever, way better than the way we were going with this episode. I like how you reframe that. Cause now it isn't just about collaborations, colon. It's about even bigger things.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  It's not this, it's that.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 52:46Speaker 03

  Marcus AI slop.

• 52:47Speaker 05

  I think we can play off what OG just said and like, I could sit down with a friend and be like, Hey, here's what I spent in the last quarter and no judgment, like feel free to criticize me. I won't take it personally. What do you see here that you're just like, that's kind of a dumb thing to spend money on? Something like that, or like what jumps off the page is like, oh, you spent how much at, what was it called? Sea smoke OG?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Jesse, I'm glad you brought this up because I think, and I know OG, how you are about, listen, no judgment about your budget. And I feel the same way. But back when I was a financial planner, I had clients that would walk into my office and go, our goal is to trim some costs. That's what we want to do. You see people's budget every day. Can you help us? And they would hand me stuff. I think whoever your financial pro is in your corner, asking them, I remember one couple, I don't even remember what the number was, but I'm like, I know you love fish, but I've never seen anybody spend this much money on fish ever, ever.

• 53:44Speaker 05

  Like pets or food?

• 53:46Speaker 02

  Food. They ate a lot of fresh fish. And so it actually started this great conversation because I didn't say, cut the fish. I just said, this is one of the areas where that number jumps off the page. They started discussing how they were gonna buy their fresh fish in the future.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  My mind immediately went to, you know, like the 20 years later scene of like the husband and wife, like lying in the hospital bed with like coronary heart disease because they've switched over to like low end beef because Joe 20 years ago made them stop the Mediterranean diet where they're like, they're drinking like olive oil, fresh pressed olive oil and like perfectly seared halibut every day and their arteries are nice and clear. And then Joe comes in, it's like, we gotta cut the, we gotta cut the fat. No more fish. They're like, okay, we'll just have bacon. It's nice and cheap. Joe's killing old people one right after another.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Bacon's a cheap, it's the other white meat.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  I didn't say they had to cut it. But I, but I do think that professionals that see a lot of.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Have you tried broiling pork belly? It's every bit is good.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  How about a different collab? Let's go with a different collab. Paula, what do we do if we want to save more? Who do you collaborate with?

• 55:07Speaker 04

  Again, so we talked about strangers on the internet. I would also say if you've got some friends, like, okay, let's say that you have a group of friends with whom you have a habit of like going out, I don't know, to a restaurant every Friday night or whatever. If you wanted to save money, like, hey, everyone, like, how about I host? You know, we, we hang out at my place this time. And it's like, your friends, especially if you are friends who spend money together, they would then have to be collaborators in coming along on that ride.

• 55:39Speaker 02

  Oh, by saving money, I didn't mean spend less money like we were just talking about. I'm not actually getting money saved. Like you have a fine budget, but it never seems to reach your bank account, right? But I do like friends still, Paula, because I think that's an innocuous question going, hey, guys, I'm trying to increase my savings rate. What do you guys do?

• 55:56Speaker 04

  Hmm, right.

• 55:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's actually a decent bar night conversation for money nerds.

• 56:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Jesse, how about you?

• 56:06Speaker 05

  Ah, da, da, da, da. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm still stuck on the whole fish story. I don't know. I was up over here looking up the cost of Gortons. You know, did you, is that what you did, Joe? Did you introduce them to Gortons by chance?

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Fish sticks, frozen fish sticks. Have you guys tried to take your fish and bread it and then deep fry it? It's so much more filling.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  I would not, I would not subject my family to Gortons. We are Mrs. Paul's family.

• 56:35Speaker 05

  Obviously.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Period.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  I see. You're pandering to the audio, you're pandering to the current crowd.

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Gosh, that's so funny. I see if there's a couple, hundreds of them.

• 56:44Speaker 05

  I know it's Paula, not Paul, but still there's, there's that name recognition there where I think Paula just heard that was like, this is, you know?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  She doesn't even know there's Mrs. Paul's fish sticks.

• 56:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I had no idea. Is that, I assume a brand of frozen breaded fish?

• 56:59Speaker 03

  Sticks, first sticks.

• 57:00Speaker 04

  In, in, yes, in vertical form.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Yes. Can we talk about who you collaborate with about saving more money there, Jesse?

• 57:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, we totally can. I mean, do you mind, Joe? Cue me up with a question again and I'll, I'll run with it.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just wondering who else we might collaborate with when it comes to.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  Your local grocer? Uh, no, just kidding. I don't know. Um, yeah, so I guess, okay, how do I think about this? How do I invert this like Charlie Munger and think about the ways that we spend money and therefore the things that we can do? Can you think of things like, okay, how do you spend less money on your car? Do you carpool more? Do you collaborate with some people and form a little bike group going to work? Maybe that's one way. We definitely all spend a lot of money on food. I love Paula's idea of, hey, instead of us all going out, what if we do a potluck and do more eating like that?

• 57:50Speaker 02

  But this is about increasing your savings rate. So let me ask this a different way. Do you think that having an accountability partner works in this area?

• 57:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're gonna have to lead a horse to water. You're gonna have to lead me to water on that one.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  That's what I want you to say. Repeat after me, Jesse.

• 58:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or is, or is automation just, just better?

• 58:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. It feels to me, Joe, like you're asking about accountability partners. Is that fair to say?

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Am I?

• 58:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'll tell you what, on the personal health point of view, I have thought and, and even enacted many, many a time, some form of accountability partner in order to improve my personal health habits. And I just think there's so much overlap between health and wealth. I mean, maybe they're different muscles and, and some of us can be perfectly successful in one arena and yet struggle in the other. But I think that having that kind of accountability partner, as long as you're both in, you're both into it and you're both, you both feel kind of invigorated by the idea of holding one another accountable. It's a free and easy way of improving your savings rate.

• 58:54Speaker 02

  I've got a couple just rapid fires here before we say goodbye. Let's talk about investing together, just briefly, just want a very quick, one sentence or maybe one word, your choice, one sentence answer. Four friends decide they're gonna become better investors together. Great idea or absolutely terrifying to you, OG?

• 59:15Speaker 03

  Hmm. Usually that means like, we're gonna go put our money together and go do something really dumb with it. So I say kind of terrifying, but if it's in the sense of, um, see, cause, cause you already, you already said the accountability thing. So it seems like the return, we're gonna say that twice now. But if it's in the sense of like, trying to see who can save the most money or, you know, whatever, I think that's a good idea.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Paula?

• 59:42Speaker 04

  I would need more detail. Does this mean we are all Boglehead index fund investors and we want to make sure that we're all asset allocating properly? Or does this mean the four of us are all gonna go in on an apartment complex together?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Jesse?

• 1:00:01Speaker 05

  I, I think it's a great idea. I, I think it can only help, in my opinion. If, if you have a couple of people in your corner who can talk you down off of stupid ledges, I think it's a great idea.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, even as I was putting these questions together, I thought this could either be the best idea or the worst idea. Like this could end up horrible, almost like OG was talking about. Here's another quick rapid fire. Is the best collaborator sometimes the person who thinks that you're completely wrong? Paula?

• 1:00:31Speaker 04

  Yes. Because you need somebody who will question your assumptions, point out your flaws. Like you need somebody who will challenge you.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Is there anybody OG that you should never talk to about money?

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  And get advice from? Oh, it's really hard to get advice from broke people.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  Really hard.

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Jesse, we're going to end this with you. Should you collaborate with people who are more like you or less like you?

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  That's a really good question. I'm going to go with less like you. And I'm going to invoke that wisdom of Jim Rome, maybe about the five people that you surround yourself with, less likely you want to collaborate with people who you feel like are better than you in specific arenas and collaborate with them so that you can raise yourself to their level.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  Guys, I love this topic so much. I'm so happy that you guys collaborated with me to make this, to make this.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Sometimes you were pulling us along though, Joe, so.

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  I had to there at the end when you got hung up on fish sticks. I think we had to.

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  I'm very hungry, so I could put down, Jesse, how many fish sticks can you put down in a sitting?

• 1:01:45Speaker 05

  I'm good for eight to 10.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I bet. Are you, do you just raw dog it or do you ketchup and?

• 1:01:52Speaker 05

  I ketchup it. I ketchup it. Yeah.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  My kids do ranch.

• 1:01:56Speaker 05

  That's solid.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Seems like a.

• 1:01:57Speaker 05

  Tartar and ketchup are the kind of the go-tos.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  That seems like the normal go-to.

• 1:02:01Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  See Paula, they even collaborate on fish stick recipes and best uses.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  Have you guys seen like Lady and the Tramp with the spaghetti thing? Jesse and I do that with fish sticks.

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  This is jumping the shark, pun intended.

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  And on that note, I think it is time to end. Thank you, everyone, for collaborating, really, to make this episode. And I know how difficult it is. And on a day like nine 11, when we are reminded how much we need each other and how much we are a community. On this type of a day, I thought it was a great topic for us to contemplate this idea of collaboration. All right, let's find out what's going on where all of you are. Oh gee, what are you doing this, this fine weekend?

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Ooh, a little after school activity on Saturday. Just finished some after school activity yesterday. Double dip of after school activity this week, and then I'm going to California to a little conference called Future Proof where I get to see Jesse Cramer talk to me about marketing. So that ought to be fun.

• 1:03:04Speaker 02

  That's exciting. Jesse, we know what you're doing this weekend.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Are you playing golf with us, Jesse?

• 1:03:10Speaker 05

  I wasn't.

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  On Sunday?

• 1:03:12Speaker 05

  I'm not flying out till Monday anyway. I'm sure my invite got lost in the mail, though. My invite got lost in the mail.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Well, I'm inviting you right now. Like, come out on Sunday, take the early flight, and then you can golf with us on Sunday.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  I appreciate that. I'm not, I'll be out there Monday. I'll be out there Monday, hanging out with the family this weekend.

• 1:03:28Speaker 03

  I was kidding. We weren't inviting you.

• 1:03:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, you needed a caddy, didn't you? Is that what that was? Here's my bag. Here's some fish sticks. Here's my bag. But yeah, so I'm flying out to Future Proof and then I'm driving from Future Proof to FinCon in Palm Springs. Jazzed for both of them. And I'm just, I'm really.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  That's what I wasn't invited to.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  Wow. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:50Speaker 05

  Come on out.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Moving on from that, what's coming up, Jesse, on Personal Finance for Long Term Investors?

• 1:03:55Speaker 05

  So I recently had a couple of cool episodes that I'm jazzed about. One of them has to do with kind of this gray area of passive investing and how that deals with benchmarking. So I think it's kind of a nerdy investing episode that some people might like. And then I had a big announcement on a recent episode, depending on when it actually comes out. So I don't want to bury the lead too much, but just see if it's come out yet. There could be a big fun announcement that I've recently made.

• 1:04:20Speaker 02

  Oh, awesome. Can't wait to hear that. Paula Pant, what's happening at the Afford Anything Show?

• 1:04:29Speaker 04

  Michael Hingson was on the 78th floor of the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, 2001. I flew out to Victorville, California and sat down with him and he recounts the events of the day. Question that you might ask is, why did I go to California to talk to him when I live in New York City? It is because Michael Hingson is a bit different than most of the other people who escaped the building on that day.

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  He is, in his words, not light dependent, meaning he is blind. And with the help of his guide dog, Rozelle, his guide dog led him down 78 flights of stairs. And in the process, provided a great deal of comfort to the thousands of other people who were also in the stairwell on that day. And so that interview is on the Afford Anything podcast today.

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  That is so powerful. It's a story that needs to be told and it doesn't sound like you're passionate about it either at all, Paula.

• 1:05:33Speaker 04

  It's such a powerful story.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's on the Afford Anything Show today.

• 1:05:39Speaker 04

  Yes, that's on the Afford Anything Podcast today. You can listen on every major podcast player. And then if you go to our YouTube channel, you can actually watch the video we, we recorded from Michael's living room.

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Well, thanks to all of you who hung out with us today on YouTube. We're here most Mondays on YouTube at around 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time. Do the math where you are. I'd love to have you come and hang out and watch the show being made. Thanks to all of our contributors. Doug's going to take it from here. Doug, what should we have learned today?

• 1:06:14Speaker 06

  Well, Joe, first, take some advice from our team. Collaboration, we don't do it nearly enough. You'll get answers more quickly by finding collaborators who know your learning style and what you're really asking. Second, collaboration has more benefits. It's more fun to work with someone who has synergistic goals. By working together, you both may be able to go further, faster, and also in a way you both enjoy. Had the big lesson?

• 1:06:43Speaker 06

  When talking to Joe's mom about the beetle, reminder that it's a Volkswagen. She continually reminds me that there was no beetle named Volkswagen, only Ringo, George, John, and Paul. That is commitment to misunderstanding the point right there, ma.

• 1:06:59Speaker 06

  Thanks to the Jesse Kramer for joining us today. You'll find his podcast, Personal Finance for Long Term Investors, wherever you're listening to us right now. 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 fabulous podcast, Afford Anything, wherever you listen to finer podcasts. And thanks also to OG for joining us today. 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 Sehi. You'll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube

• 1:07:44Speaker 06

  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.

• 1:08:13Speaker 06

  What was that? It's called the medium sketch. The medium sketch? Yeah, it wasn't rare and it certainly wasn't well done.