Our Top 5 Esoteric Money Strategies That Work (For the Right Person) SB1903

Some financial strategies aren't bad, they're just wildly oversold to people they were never built for. Joe and OG walk through five genuinely legitimate, sometimes powerful tools, cash value life insurance, municipal bonds, qualified longevity annuity contracts, net unrealized appreciation, and complex charitable trusts, and draw a clear line between the tiny slice of people these actually help and the much larger crowd who gets pitched them anyway. If you've ever had someone offer you a "special" financial strategy and wondered whether it was genius or a sales tactic, this episode gives you the framework to tell the difference. What You'll Walk Away With Why cash value life insurance almost never makes sense as a savings vehicle, and the very narrow situations where it actually doesThe real math behind municipal bonds, and why the "tax-free" appeal often costs more in lost growth than it saves in taxesA clear-eyed look at qualified longevity annuity contracts, and why giving up control of your money rarely makes sense at any wealth levelThe single tax strategy on this list that can genuinely save six figures over a lifetime: net unrealized appreciation on employer stockWhy "borrowing against your assets instead of selling them" can be brilliant or disastrous depending entirely on how the economy movesA blunt reality check on 72(t) distributions for early retirees, and why the five-year commitment trips more people up than the strategy itselfWhy "there's no free lunch" is the single question to ask about any complex financial product before you commit to it Why This Matters Now The financial industry has an incentive to make simple problems feel complicated, because complicated problems require expensive solutions. Most people's actual financial life doesn't need any of these five strategies, and that's not a failure, it's just math. But knowing what these tools are, who they're actually built for, and what they cost when misapplied means you can spot the difference between a legitimately smart move and a sales pitch dressed up as sophistication, whether or not you'll ever personally need any of them. From the Basement A Good Neighbor Day detour into Ted Williams's legendary 1941 season, when he refused to sit out the final day to protect a rounded-up .400 batting average, becomes a genuinely moving story about doing things the honest way even when nobody would've noticed otherwise. Resources Mentioned Stacking Benjamins Field Kit https://stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit — the all-in-one budgeting and net worth tracking toolStacking Benjamins Coaching Program https://stackingbenjamins.com/coaching — Joe and OG's new cohort program for financial coaches 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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• 0:32Speaker 01

  My plan is sound, mathematically sound. It cannot fail. It's perfect. Three months from now, I will be worth $50,000, independent for life.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  Live from Joe's Mom's Basement, it's The Stacking Benjamin Show.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  I'm Joe's Moms Neighbor Doug, and as a good neighbor, I gotta share. You ever wonder if you're that outlier who needs a strategy different from the norm? On today's show, Joe and OG dive into their top five strategies they wouldn't recommend most stackers use, but for the right person, it's the perfect fit. And good news for you, you won't have to wait a lifetime for the perfect money trivia to impress your friends, because I'm bringing it to you today. You're welcome. This is a great one. I'll share halfway through this party on this very special holiday. That's right, this weird holiday calendar Joe's Mom got me says it's Good Neighbor Day. So let's party, neighbor. And now, speaking

• 1:52Speaker 03

  of party, here come two guys ready to help you rock a personal finance party, but also who could totally work on being better neighbors themselves. It's Joe and O-J-J-J-J-G.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  Hey there, stackers, and Happy Good Neighbor Day to you. Neighbor Doug, Happy Good Neighbor Day. I think we're great neighbors.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I know you do.

• 2:18Speaker 03

  I'm trying to come up with something good that we did to be very neighborly.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  It takes a minute, doesn't it?

• 2:24Speaker 03

  It's a bad one. We got a great show, though, stackers. You know how we're gonna be a good neighbor today? We are going to dig into all that financial nerdery. I remember early in my career, I'm like, what are some of those cool concepts that work for the right person? Well, OG's got a list of five. I got a list of five. We're gonna dive into those, but we gotta meet the man, the myth, the legend. OG is here in the basement. How are you, brother?

• 2:47Speaker 04

  I am patiently awaiting the next day of rain, which has presently been almost 70 days in Dallas now. The record is 84. In a normal summer, Dallas has 20 100-degree days on a normal summer. So far in the month of September, we've had 17. So it's hot and dry. And I need things cool and wet, baby.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Just, just absolutely waiting.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe don't make that little campfire in your backyard.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Yes, no fires allowed. Even the mere thought of fire is forbidden.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  Right. Don't even think it. Well, we are thinking about great esoteric strategies on today's show.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  Who's gonna have a campfire when it's 106 out anyway? That's something that Joe would do. I was on my porch the other day with my solo stove. It's like, it's 106, Joe. I know, but I really wanted a campfire.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  It goes down to 88 at night. That's chilly.

• 3:44Speaker 03

  I did that once a couple of years ago. It was right after a rain. And I'm like, man, it's not humid. It's kind of nice out. Let's get the solo stove going. My buddy Mike was up for it, comes over. We sat 12 feet from the solo stove, like just, but just having that.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  When you're sweating, it's probably a bad idea.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Probably, probably not great. Well, what is a great idea is that you know when the right time and place are for these esoteric strategies. We're gonna dive into it. If you're a financial nerd, you're gonna love today's episode. Even if you're not a financial nerd, just knowing that these might be out of bounds for a lot of people is going to be a fantastic, fantastic episode. So can't wait to get into it. First, we have a couple sponsors that help us deliver all this goodness to you for the incredible cost of free. We're gonna hear from them. And then OG and I with our top five esoteric strategies that work for the right person. Remember Superman? It's a bird. It's a plane. Superman. Now there's the equivalent for your money. It's a budgeting app, cancel subscriptions, protect

• 4:46Speaker 03

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• 5:05Speaker 02

  Does it wear those sexy briefs, Joe?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  It does. Yes, very tight.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  All right, I'm in.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Well, you may know that 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 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

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• 7:16Speaker 03

  OG, I'm sure you're like me. When you hear a client that comes in and goes, oh, I got this great idea that I saw on TikTok. You immediately go, oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  Well, thankfully, nobody that I know actually takes advice from TikTok.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  OG's weeded them out long ago.

• 7:36Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Except Joe.

• 7:38Speaker 04

  The TikTok, the TikTok crowd really is not, is not our general market.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Not who you're, who you're going after. What is interesting, though, even at FinCon, and as we record this, I just got back from this financial creator conference called FinCon, and this woman I was talking to, nice lady, I said, so what do you do? She goes, oh, I help people learn how to use cash value life insurance instead of a savings account to reach their goals faster. And I immediately went, nope. Click. Just, it can work until it doesn't work. And when it doesn't work, you're gonna wonder, why the heck did I use life insurance to unravel my entire financial situation? So we've got five of those. You're not gonna hear using cash value life insurance on one that works

• 8:25Speaker 03

  in my list. We might hear it in OG's. Steve, play the awesome British announcer guy.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Number five.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  OG, you want to do these like a snake draft? Maybe you go first, and then I'll go first the next one, and we'll go back and forth?

• 8:39Speaker 04

  It's your rodeo, buddy.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  Let's do it. What's your number five?

• 8:43Speaker 04

  I didn't really rank these in order. However, I will say that the first one that I'm, that's on my list is cash value life insurance.

• 8:52Speaker 04

  I thought that was the one we were gonna match on.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Well, it's funny, you might hear cash.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  I would say permanent insurance. I'm gonna change it to permanent.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  You may or may not hear, I don't want to foreshadow, but you may or may not hear cash value life insurance, using it on my list, but using it to replace your savings account, pay off your bills faster. You know, this idea of infinite banking?

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  You probably won't hear that on my list.

• 9:12Speaker 04

  No, definitely not. Doug?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  Hold on. If you've used permanent life insurance or cash value, aren't your troubles over? Like, if you've used that insurance, you're not worried about your financial future?

• 9:25Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  What am I missing here?

• 9:27Speaker 04

  Yes, there's that. I see what Doug's saying, but I also think there's a little interesting side to that also, which is if you actually have this, you probably should be in a situation where all of your financial worries are taken care of because this is so far down the list of places to put money that quite literally everything else is, needs to be covered. I mean, the, the use case for permanent life insurance is.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  As a savings vehicle you're talking about?

• 9:53Speaker 04

  No, I'm saying the use case for permanent insurance, period, which has to be with a cash value, because that's how the permanent insurance works. You're basically pre-investing your premiums. Here's the thing, a 90-year-old who buys a one-year term policy, it costs a certain amount, right? They have, they have the mortality table and they go 90-year-olds have X percent chance of passing away, and therefore the, the insurance cost for a million dollar, one-year term policy for a 90-year-old is X. Also, the cost of insurance in permanent insurance for a 90-year-old for a million dollars is also X. It's the same number. All insurance is the same cost. What happens and why this looks somewhat attractive is because

• 10:38Speaker 04

  early on, when you're 30, you're overpaying it by so much money that it goes into an account, whether that account grows with a fixed rate of return or a variable rate of return, but whatever, you're overpaying so much so that your premiums are flatlined throughout your entire life.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  It's to subsidize those later years.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  It's just basically saying, instead of paying, I'll make up a number, a hundred dollars a month for term insurance at 30, you pay 400 a month at 30 for your permanent. And the reason you pay 400 is because all that extra 300 gets invested for later, so that you're still paying 400 a month when you're 90, not 82,000, because that's how much it would cost to have a 90-year-old buy life insurance, right? So, so it's, it's basically taking the whole math and just flatlining it to a single premium. But the only reason that that makes sense is if you have a, a life-altering event where you can't get coverage anymore. For example, you have term insurance and now you have, you know, heart issue, or

• 11:38Speaker 04

  you have some uninsurable thing and you still need insurance. A lot of times, companies will allow you to convert your term to permanent without proof of insurability. So that's a good use case. And then the other use case is, uh, at the end of your life for estate planning purposes. And now to put this in perspective, you'd have to have a net worth, or you and your spouse, somewhere north of $30 million. And if you had that, then, then you're starting to decide what's worse. Do I want to pay Uncle Sam 55%? Or do I want to pay the insurance company? And a lot of times, the insurance premium is less than Uncle Sam. So you say, well, a 90-year-old go buy a $10 million life insurance policy to cover the, the tax bill, it's gonna cost him $8 million.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Ton of money.

• 12:22Speaker 04

  But that's way better than paying Uncle Sam 30 million.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  So those are the two major use cases. Everything else, pretty much garbage.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is, it is some complex financial planning that you're getting into when you start to look at permanent life insurance policies. You can use a permanent life insurance policy, I think, oh gee, sometimes as a substitute because of the long-term care riders that are attached to those. So for some long-term care issues, maybe you're shrugging.

• 12:51Speaker 04

  No, I mean, a, all it is, is just putting lipstick on that same pig. It's just, once you start layering in other sort of products into other products, it's because the first one wasn't good enough to stand on its own. You know what I mean? Like, it's not a feature for you. Insurance companies are not benevolent. Investment firms are not like, oh my gosh, you know, we should do this for the common good. No, they're all profit motive-driven, period, full stop. That's how it works. So anytime you are, uh, you know, bolting on something to something else, it's because the other thing's just not good enough to hold its own. I can tell you almost unequivocally, anybody who says to you, um, you need to

• 13:33Speaker 04

  get permanent insurance right now because you never know what your insurability is gonna look like in the future, which is a common sales tactic to a 25-year-old couple who just had their first baby. Well, you should get this baby some insurance. You know, you never know. I mean, that is so F-ing slimy. I, if, if, you know, you know, what was that movie where you could do anything you wanted for one day? Like.

• 13:59Speaker 03

  Limitless?

• 14:00Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  No, Limitless was the one where he takes the bill.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  When crime was legal.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, uh, yes.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  So anybody who says that, you know, they've got a special condo laid out for them in the HE double hockey sticks area of, uh, the afterlife.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  They have their own ring. They have like, there's like Dante's Inferno.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they have life insurance.

• 14:24Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Slimy salespeople ring.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  Yes. Please don't do that. And don't fall for it.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  My number five goes a different direction, but you know, there are tax-free benefits to life insurance, which could be attractive for the right person. There are also tax-free benefits for municipal bonds. Municipal bonds are number five on mine, oh gee, because I saw way too many people and still see too many people who go, oh, I got these because they're tax-free. Well, the problem with loaning money, what a municipal bond does is you're loaning money to a municipality, you're loaning money to a city for public works projects, could be the new library, the police station, the fire station. So a lot of good stuff. So you get this feel-good, you're helping the city, could even be paving roads. And

• 15:10Speaker 03

  as an exchange, you get many tax-free benefits of the municipal bond. The problem is, is you're exchanging this tax-free benefit for growth. And what I often saw, oh gee, was people that are buying municipal bonds who seriously need growth in their portfolio, and they're not in a high tax bracket, and they're avoiding a fairly low tax in the big scheme of things. That's not punching up the growth that they could get if they just went with a regular taxable, stock-based, exchange-traded bond or mutual fund, where they have a nice diversified position of owning the economy. So while the tax bite

• 15:51Speaker 03

  sounds attractive, I think this is a much more esoteric product, using municipal bonds in a portfolio than people realize.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  Really works primarily for people that are in a very, very, very high tax bracket with also very high state taxes. And so you have the opportunity to, uh, you know, to remove those. Thankfully, it's not as prevalent as you would think. And obviously, the municipal bond market is huge, but from a retail investor standpoint, I don't see it a bunch.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  That's good.

• 16:20Speaker 04

  At some level, it comes down to the math equation of the tax-free yield versus the taxable yield, you know, because it's not the same. You're not getting 5% in treasuries and 5% in your munis. You get 5% treasuries and 2.7% in your munis. And you gotta do the math to go, is 2.7 tax-free better than 5 taxable?

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is, uh, not a great product for a lot of people.

• 16:44Speaker 04

  And I'll skip to the end. It's about the same.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Number four.

• 16:48Speaker 03

  My number four is an incredibly esoteric product, but when people hear about it, oh gee, they go, oh, this is a thing. This could be something that I could do. It was introduced in 2014 for the person who worries about longevity risk, really worries about longevity, wonders about, uh, taking their money out, and is something that the insurance industry, again, just let's put some bells and whistles on life, and that's a qualified longevity annuity contract. These annuity contracts allow somebody to use their qualified money, turn it into an annuity, and have that last for a long, long, long time. So instead of having the same RMDs they used to have in the past, now they're able to worry much

• 17:32Speaker 03

  more about what happens if I live for a long, long, long time. This is for a person who,

• 17:42Speaker 03

  frankly, I'm not sure who it's for, oh gee, because number one, if you don't have a ton of money, you need growth and you really don't want to give up control to a life insurance company. You're giving up control of your money. And if you have a ton of money, I don't know that you need, you're especially worried about it. It's for this really, really small sliver of people that have enough, but they are conservative enough that they're willing to give up control of their money in exchange for a pension with their qualified money inside of an IRA. It's a messy thing. I just think that when I heard in 2014 about

• 18:24Speaker 03

  this, and increasingly in 2015, 16, 17, 18, I kind of rolled my eyes personally. I'd love to get your take on this, because I'm like, okay, this is a solution for a gigantic subset of people.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Effectively, what you're doing is you're saying, okay, I'm gonna take some of my capital, I'm gonna put it into an account where it's deferred. I, I'm just gonna grow how it grows, right? Maybe I have some selection over that, maybe it's fixed, you know, whatever. And then I'm gonna turn it into an income stream from 85 to end of life, you know? And if I live to be 167 years old, jokes on them. If I live to be 83, or I'm sorry, 87, jokes on me, you know, it's, it's that, right? So if you just take those ages and swap them around and say, would we ever tell a 45-year-old to do this? Hey, you got 20 years before retirement. Let's take 50% of your portfolio. Let's just set it aside.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Let's just set it aside. It's gonna just, you know, just so that it can pay you money when you're 65. Just set this aside. And oh, by the way, when you do turn it into this stream of income at 65, if you die at 66, nobody gets anything else.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  It's done.

• 19:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. And your spouse doesn't get it, you know, your, your family doesn't get it. But great news, if you live to be 95, you know, you've been getting this stream of income for a long time. Well, the big risk is, is obviously the, the, you know, if you get hit by a bus, the second big risk is, well, hold on a second. How am I going to keep up with the rising costs of living over my 30-year retirement at 65, or mine, my spouse's 30-year retirement at 65? If this thing's gonna give me a, you know, guaranteed income that pays my living expenses at 65? And that's really the big question, right? It's like.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Where people get investment allocation, I think wildly incorrect. And I actually heard this the other day. I was just blown away. I thought, I thought I had told everybody this already, but apparently there's somebody that didn't hear it. There's no sense in becoming conservative in your 50s and 60s with your money. Like you need money when you're 60, if you're going to retire and you need money when you're 61, 62, but you also need money, the vast majority of your money is 68 to 98. Right? So why in the heck would you take the only thing that you have that can outpace inflation? Which is the purchasing power growth of owning companies? Why would you take that away at the exact moment that you need to have purchasing power increases with your income?

• 21:02Speaker 04

  It just defies logic.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  Well, this is the problem, OG, is that I just saw a statistic a couple of weeks ago. 40% of millionaires think they don't have enough money for retirement. And while some may not.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  Which is totally fine. So our solution to not having enough money is to have less of it guaranteed?

• 21:21Speaker 03

  No, well, actually, let me go the other way. In this study, they showed that the way that people solve that problem is by just throwing more money at it. When the true way to solve that problem is knowing how much you're going to need and when you're going to need the dollar. And it solves so many problems. And to your point, what we do is because we're freaked out that, oh, I'm not sure. So I might as well buy this annuity contract. That's just going to last for X amount of time. Because I don't want to answer the question, what do I, what do I need the money for? Which is a hard question. It is a difficult question. But I think that when you know how much money you're going to need the next five years, then regardless of your age, you're going to go, you know what? I've got money for six years on that shouldn't be sitting in cash or sitting in a savings account.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  It should be in something longer term. Frustrating, but I think points to the biggest problem we have in retirement, which isn't having enough money. It's that we don't address the question, what do I want my money for? What's your number four?

• 22:21Speaker 04

  Uh, number four for me is borrowing against your assets instead of selling them to fund your living expenses or something special, some big project that you have going on. You're going to buy a lake house or you're gonna do a remodel of your house or something like that. This is basically using the assets that you already have to turn them into additional assets, lever them, so to speak, without creating a tax problem with the distribution or sale of the assets that you, you know, that you otherwise would have to do. Or whether it's a tax problem with taking it out of your IRA or tax problem of taking out of appreciated stock, borrowing it has a much, much lower cost of capital, so to speak, than those things, generally speaking.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  The downside, of course, is that you're levering your portfolio. So you gotta be pretty, pretty conservative and, and have some decent risk matrices, matrices, risk profiles built to, to know what you're getting yourself into. But when used appropriately, it's very, very, very sexy.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember speaking with Josh Dork in the Creator BiggerPockets, talking about how leverage is fantastic for real estate investors until the economy changes. And then his quote was, it becomes a giant flushing sound of all these people as they, the people that took too much risk, OG, get flushed out. So you definitely need to be somebody that understands how the economy could change against you and be prepared for those instances. Cause as an example, right now, there are some even big time real estate people who you're seeing in the news are watching their fortunes go away. They did balloons, balloon payments five years ago

• 24:09Speaker 03

  on real estate, when real estate, when, when the cost of money was very low. And now, five years later, it's hard to come up with the capital to satisfy.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  In reality, in, you know, for most commercial loans are redone every five years anyway. You know, so only, only generally residential loans do you get to have for a long period of time. But even so, those HELOCs or lines of credit adjust with interest rates. And we know a week or so ago, a week and a half ago, interest rates went up. So the cost of borrowing goes up there too. So yeah, leverage is awesome when it works and very, very not awesome in a hurry when it stops working.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Number three.

• 24:51Speaker 04

  All right. So I can see number three. I'm going to say, here's one we haven't seen a bunch of lately, but it happens from time to time. Net unrealized appreciation on employer stock. Just a word salad. Doug's head just exploded. Doug's like, I'm in. That just sounds awesome.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Please.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  We'll take it. If you work for a, a big company, maybe you have a company stock inside your 401k. Sometimes companies will match with their company stock. And that's, you know, what your match is. Obviously post Enron, which for most people, they don't even know what that is anymore. But post Enron, you know, they have to allow you to diversify it. But some people don't. Some people just let that sit there and grow. And they have this 25 year career and they end up with this 401k balance. That is some investments and some company stock. There's a one time opportunity that you have when you retire to, or when you leave that job, to take your company stock out of your 401k at a more favorable tax rate than the rest of it.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Penalty.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  Right. Also without a penalty. So just to kind of give you some real terms here, let's say that you've got a 401k balance that has a million dollars in it. And of that million, 500,000 is in company stock, 500,000 is in ETFs, mutual funds, whatever. Option A is you leave your job, you roll that over to an IRA, you get a million dollar IRA. Okay. Everybody knows how to do that. Option B is you take the 500K that is not company stock, you put that in an IRA. And then the 500,000 that is company stock, you can do what's called net unrealized appreciation. There's a bunch of rules with it, so tread lightly. Make sure you get a professional involved in how to do all of this calculation, especially with the timing. So we get closer to the fourth quarter. But effectively, we can look at the cost basis. So let's say the cost basis on your half a million

• 26:36Speaker 04

  dollar stock is 50K. You know, you've put in 50, it's grown to 500. You can take the 500 out, you pay taxes on the 50. And then the 450 is capital gains.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  No, I'm listening.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  So now you basically have a brokerage account that has half a million dollars of company stock in it with a cost basis of, of 50, you will pay taxes on the 50 when you rolled out. And then an IRA of 500. It just gives you some diversification options, gives you some liquidity options. You're going to stroke a check for $20,000, you know, because you do this, this is a taxable event. But there's no penalty. Uh, so it works really well for early retirees. Works really well for people that have insane, highly appreciated stock. Maybe liquidity issues where all my money is in my 401k, that's all I've been saving in. I've got a big 401k balance, but I want to retire at 53. So how do I, you know, get some money from 53 to 59 and a half? So there's a lot of use cases for it.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  There's also times where we see people wanting to do it, where it doesn't make any sense. If you've been rebalancing your portfolio over time and your company's stock is not a huge gain, then all you're doing is taking call, you know, let's say that the, let's say in this example, your qualified plan stock is $450,000 as a cost basis. You say, well, I want to do this. Well, you're going to pay taxes on 450 grand right now.

• 27:58Speaker 03

  Not a great idea.

• 28:00Speaker 04

  Not awesome. Yeah. And there's a bunch of other rules around like the timing and what else has to happen. It's a one shot opportunity. You can, you get one, one opportunity to do it. So basically the moral of the story is if you have company stock in your 401k and you're leaving your job, just hit pause for a second. Just go, whoa, I might have something else going on here that, that might be attractive.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  This is one of the few strategies that for the right person could save them six figures in taxes.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Yeah. Over your lifetime. Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Could legitimately save just a ton of money. Where my municipal bond one, which was my number five is, I think a good one, but you know, you're going to, uh, well, I guess you'd make up, if you don't do the municipal bond strategy, you'll make up potentially over your lifetime way more than six figures, but even using municipal bonds probably won't give you six figures of tax savings. Could, if somebody's a bajillionaire. My number three is, uh, what we call 72T distributions. And this is again, for an early retiree. If you're somebody that has saved again, all of your money into, uh, your 401k or the majority of your money in your 401k, you want to go before 59 and a half

• 29:16Speaker 03

  or 55, if your plan allows you to get it, the money in your pre-tax accounts by age 55, which applies to some people. If you want to go before then, then you take your money and you turn it into a pension for five years or until 59 and a half, whichever is longer. I see people ask about 72T all the time. And what's frustrating, OG, about 72T isn't at the beginning. It's at the end of the 72T. And this is where the problem comes in and why I have it on my list of esoteric things. Because, you know, you begin this at age 50, let's say. And how many of us have had changes over a five year period that we could not predict?

• 30:00Speaker 03

  And so setting up this pension like distribution at age 50, and by 55, we're going, oh man, I wish I'd done that differently. I think happens a fair amount. So a good way to do this is to do, almost like companies will do minimum viable product. They will, when they first release it, they will make it just barely viable. And then they'll add on to it based on what people buy. I think doing this pension like distribution from your, your retirement plans at age 50, just enough to get by. And then as life changes, deciding if you want to go bigger is the way to do it. But still, I think an esoteric strategy that works for a giant subset of people.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  But for the right person, you want to go early, could be life changing.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. Another one of those complicated tax distribution schemes. And we hear the word scheme and it sounds bad, but it is, you know, it can be bad. Where you need to know all the facts before you go into it. Because, you know, once you start this, you've got to largely keep it. There's some outs, but not very many. And there's some modifications, but not very many. So you have to know what you, know, know what you're getting yourself into for how long.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  You, you and I have talked a lot about, go ahead and mess things up. You're going to learn from it and it's not irrevocable, right? This is irrevocable. This is, this is that thing that you, you 100%.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  I definitely do think it's irrevocable. Yep.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Irrevocable, I think is the word.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Number two.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  My number two is cash value life insurance is a savings vehicle, which we may have heard from you before OG. And I think if you're going to do this, and I'm not going to belabor the points because you made all of them earlier in this piece, except for, I'm going to lay it on a little on this piece. If you have saved everywhere else, you, you've maxed out any Roth IRA that you're eligible for. You've done the pre-tax stuff. You put money in other places. I like loading up a cash value life insurance policy better than putting money into an annuity. I think it's less of a tax trap. I think it's actually easier once you get your arms around it to

• 32:15Speaker 03

  understand. I like the idea of it being tax free money potentially versus tax deferred. But this has to be, I remember one of the few times I used this in my career. This is 15 years ago, gee, and they were making $400,000. So now we're talking about somebody making a million dollars a year, right? A million dollars of income a year. They are stuffing everything as far as they can. All their goals are met. They were fairly frugal people. How do we avoid taxes on this money? Cash value life insurance was right, but think about what a subset of our stackers are hearing this going, oh yeah, that's me.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  So of two sucky choices, it's the less sucky one.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  It's the less sucky of the two.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  And I would say that absent an actual insurance need on top of that, I would just use a regular brokerage account.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:05Speaker 04

  Like I would need to have a really, really, really profound insurance need on top of it to be in the ballpark of, of using it. And then there's another piece to this too. The other piece is if you do use it, you have to go through a low cost provider. Because there is such a, I think Doug would call it a butt load of commissions and fees and charges and stuff that's just stuffed in there. That's really getting after you that again.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Cause the goal, because the goal that you're talking about is to beat the tax rate. The goal is to beat the tax rate. And if the insurance charge, like I don't care who I give the money to. Do I give it to the IRS? Do I give it to the insurance company? I want to do the one that's less. I want to do the one that's less.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  Assuming that the, the liquidity is the same, sure. Assuming that the investment choices and costs are the same, sure. There's more to it than just the insurance cost, in my opinion, but yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  I, this is such a small number of people. The number of people who should be doing it versus the number of people who actually do it is off by an order of magnitude of a 10,000.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Painful. Far more people doing this than should be doing it, which is why it's my number two. Incredibly esoteric, less esoteric than it should be. What's your number two?

• 34:23Speaker 04

  Number two for me is exchange funds for diversified stock purposes. So an exchange fund is, let's say, for example, that you have a million dollars of AMD. And the rest of your portfolio is $100,000 of Vanguard total market. Like you just have one stock, right? And the problem with diversifying it is you just don't feel like writing a check for $250,000 Uncle Sugar to pay your tax bill, right? Cause AMD's gone up and off we go. So an exchange fund is basically a product. There's a handful of companies out there that do them where you can combine your AMD with Doug's

• 35:05Speaker 04

  General Motors and Joe's Apple and OG's Caterpillar. And we all get together and put in all our million dollars of stuff. And we basically create ourselves a diversified mutual fund or diversified ETF. If you want to think of it that way. So my contribution to the ETF is AMD, yours is Nvidia. The other guy's is General Motors. And you could see if we all had different walks of life, we could basically pull this thing together and create diversified ETF. There are some rules around it. The first rule is 20% has to be something that's non-traded. So basically private real estate. Second rule is it's got to be there for seven years.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  And the third rule is, is that there's really not any tax savings to this strategy. You're basically getting diversification strategy or diversification benefits, I should say. At the end of this seven year term, you can keep the fund and you just keep benefiting from the fund as it is. Or you can say, I'm out, give me back my accumulated value. And instead of getting AMD back, you would get your 35 or 40 positions of a diversified portfolio with your original cost basis. So you don't save any money on taxes here. This is just a diversification play. It's fairly locked up for seven years. So there's some issues with that. It's, there is a little bit of a cost structure to it. It's not obscene, but there's some, and of course it's market based.

• 36:32Speaker 04

  So if you say, well, wait a second, in seven years from now, my AMD stock would have made me worth $30 million, but this thing only made me worth 10, you know, what the heck? That's the trade because somebody else's GM would have made them worth zero, but instead they're worth 10. This is the gamble that you're playing is have I built enough net worth that I'm okay with? Just slowly all ships rise in the tide, or do I need to still stay concentrated to, you know, to benefit from that? So exchange funds, again, very subset of people, but cool as hell when you use them.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  But yeah, I was, I was thinking, wow, it's fantastic.

• 37:12Speaker 04

  Double sexy time.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  They can be fantastic, but to your point, every investment has an Achilles heel. And you got to go in knowing what the Achilles heel is. This is, you know, it's almost like selling covered calls. I'm giving up the upside. I'm giving up the upside. If I'm selling covered calls, I get the.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  And you lower your tax basis.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Right, right. Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 04

  Like there's no free lunch, man. Like anybody who'd like thinks that there's a free lunch in any of this stuff, there's not. The question always has to be, how do I die? So how does this end badly for me? Or how do I get pissed off?

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Always.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  There's, there's going to be something in there, like any product, you know, you say, well, that's not true for Vanguard. Sure is.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 37:54Speaker 04

  It's there.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Number one.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  OG, what did you go? You know what? This has got to be at the top of my list.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  Again, I'll say I did not rank any of these. I just, I'm just reading them in the order that I had written them down with some slight modifications to adjust to your cash value life insurance on. My last one is also around diversification of, of highly appreciated stock. And this is using, I wrote charitable remainder trusts. What I think we should just kind of pivot to is using complex estate planning strategies to avoid estate taxes today, avoid estate taxes in the future, avoid income tax or capital gains tax on highly appreciated assets. This is, this is the point one of the point one percent type of stuff. It can make a huge difference. You're, you said earlier about like, some of these things can save like hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  This is another example of that. Using complex charitable strategies around highly appreciated company stock. Even if you're, it's your own company, you know, you can do it is very, very, very attractive. It has an insane amount of costs around it for compliance, record keeping, tax filings, attorney fees, all that stuff. And believe you me, those people are getting their bite of flesh out of this deal. This isn't something you're doing for a $300,000 stock account. This is something that you do for a $22 million stock account when you also have another $22 million stock account next to it.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:23Speaker 04

  I wrote charitable remainder trusts, you know, for highly appreciated stock, but charitable strategies or complex estate.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Charitable remainder trust, by the way, we should define what that is. You're moving your highly appreciated stock over to a charity because.

• 39:37Speaker 04

  A trust account. Yep.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  Partially because of 501(c)(3), which means the IRS qualifies them as a charitable institution. Isn't going to pay any tax on that account. So rather than giving them cash, you are giving them the highly appreciated stock.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, effectively a charitable remainder trust is a trust account. You put your stock inside of a trust account. The trust is then obligated to pay out the remainder, the rest of it to a charity at some date in the future. In the meantime, you get a stream of income off of the portfolio. You set up what that stream is. It's some, there's a factor that the IRS maintains based on the duration and the time. And there's a calculation that they say, okay, you can take out X dollars. For example, let's say that you had $10 million of Nvidia. In addition to a bunch of other money, you could say, well, I'll put 10 million in this charitable remainder trust. It's going to kick out to me $500,000 a year of income. But that'll be taxable to me in small doses.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  And then at the end of this 20 year period, let's say whatever's left in the account is going to go to the charitable.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  And that's where the remainder piece comes in. Yeah.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:42Speaker 03

  Makes it different than putting money in a donor buy one. My number one appeared earlier on your list, and that was the one I thought could for the right person, which is a sub, sub subset. I tried to do these by in order of what's more esoteric and what also saves people money. And that was that unrealized appreciation. When I saw this work with an executive for the first time ever back in the early 2000s, an executive who worked at Pepsi, they had $800,000 of Pepsi stock in their $2 million 401k plan. And we were able to take that $800,000 out of the 401k where a previous advisor had recommended they roll it over. And this guy had been doing it his entire 35-year

• 41:27Speaker 03

  career, been putting money into Pepsi stock. It was so appreciated. There were so much tax that he avoided by taking that money out. And yet, how often did I see it during my entire career? Maybe four times. That unrealized appreciation, only if you've highly appreciated stock, can make a lot of difference. Well, even if that didn't help you today, stackers, I hope you get into the position, because a lot of these are high net worth strategies. I hope at some point you have a high enough net worth where one of these apply to you. But until then, yeah. I know. Me too. Especially when it applies to, especially to the insurance products we talked about.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  A lot of these strategies are sold to people that they really don't apply to. So hopefully you also learned enough today for buyer beware. All right. Normally at the halfway point of every show, we do the financial basics. But you know what? Today, it's later in the show, and I could see Doug pacing in the background. You can sit down Doug, because it's time for Doug's trivia.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Phew, finally. Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And don't you love Good Neighbor Day? Doing little things other people appreciate. Like one time, I returned a rental car with a full tank of premium gasoline. I know, I'm a giver. And speaking of going above and beyond, let's talk about Ted Williams. Because on this date in 1941, Teddy Ballgame entered the final day of the baseball season with a double header ahead of him and a batting average sitting right around 400. And I mean, right around it. Williams was actually batting .39955, which Major League Baseball would have happily

• 43:10Speaker 02

  rounded up to 400. He could have called in sick to work that day to protect that number. No, no, no. Instead, Williams played both games of the doubleheader. He didn't know it at the time, but he was chasing something nobody in Major League Baseball has accomplished since. Hitting 400 for an entire season. So here's your trivia question. Ted Williams came to the plate eight times that day. How many hits did he get? And was it enough to finish the season at 400? I'll be back with the answer right after I donate these three AOL CDs I found to the local library. Somebody's about to score a month, a whole month of free dial up on old Dougy. You're welcome, America.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  Well, you may know that 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 something that's good for you, even when you don't have time. It's ready in two minutes. Whether it's lunch

• 44:40Speaker 03

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• 45:24Speaker 03

  at card games. I use Factor, and you should too. So let's eat real, stackers. Head to factormeals.com/sb50off. Use code SB50OFF. And you know what? You're going to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year while supplies last until December 31st, 2026. That is code SB50OFF at factormeals.com, SB50OFF at factormeals.com. See website for more details.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  There is a financial conversation that's coming to millions of American families, and there's a pretty good chance, nobody wants to be the person who starts it. Inheritance. And here's why that matters. An estimated $124 trillion to heirs in charity is expected to be transferred by Americans over the next 20 years. It's an extraordinary amount of money, but Kiplinger's research found that 51% of adults and their parents, get this, never talk about money. And there's a pretty big disconnect. 47% of parents expect to leave a meaningful inheritance, while only 24% of adult children expect to actually receive one. Nearly 30% of parents don't even have a will in place. Maybe it's time

• 46:40Speaker 03

  we talked. Kiplinger calls it the trillion-dollar talk, a conversation about inheritance, estate planning, wills, and the questions families should be asking before those decisions become urgent. Because knowing what your family wants and having a plan for it can be one of the most important financial conversations you will ever have. Ready to start yours? Visit kiplinger.com to learn more about the trillion-dollar talk, and what this historic wealth transfer could mean for your family.

• 47:12Speaker 03

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• 49:10Speaker 05

  We're looking for the answer and correct spelling. Old McDonald had a what? Farm. E-I-E-I-O.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Hey there, stackers. I'm chronically amazing neighbor and guy who once let someone merge in construction traffic. Still waiting on a thank you note, buddy. I mean, even a little wave, what a... Anyway, it's Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. Baseball season still has a few games left in the regular season this year, but back in 1941, this was the final curtain, the final day of the season. Ted Williams could have protected his 400 average by untying his cleats and opening a beer. But Teddy knew the truth. His average was actually .39955. Baseball would have rounded it up to 400, but apparently Ted Williams wasn't interested in backing into history books on a technicality. So he played

• 50:04Speaker 02

  both games. He came to the plate eight times. I asked you, how many hits did he get? And was it enough to really finish above 400? Well, Teddy Ballgame didn't just protect that average. He went six for eight. That pushed his final batting average all the way up to 406. And more than 80 years later, no baseball player in Major League history has finished a season at 400 since. Wow. What an honest guy. I shouldn't brag, but I'm wired pretty much the same way as Teddy Ballgame. There was this one time I checked out of a Holiday Inn, left a couple of ice cubes in the bucket for the next guest. Didn't leave a note, didn't ask for recognition. I just walked

• 50:45Speaker 02

  away. I'm sure you'll agree, of all my incredible qualities, you'll find humility and service to others at the top of the list. So feel free to share that trivia with your friends. But now let's get back to Joe and OG.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Dude, you are such a giver.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  And you know, I don't even know I'm doing it half the time. It's just, it's the way I'm wired.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Built in, like Mother Teresa.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I let that be a lesson to everybody else. Be like Doug.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  A hundred percent. It is amazing. And I love hearing stories like that, Doug. And I know that all our stackers aren't baseball fans, but this guy knows that, you know what, this truly is not going to be the number. And so he goes out there and goes, nope, we're going to make it the number.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. And you don't, for so many great sports stories, the reason we love them is there's a romanticism to whether it's football or baseball or anything. I personally think baseball's the most romantic sport out there, but it's the, it's the human side of it. And it's knowing that's just how this person was wired. No, we're going to do this. We're going to be real. And whatever it ends up being is what it's going to end up. And I don't, you know, I don't, I'm not doing this just for the number or for the record. I'm here to play baseball and let's get after it. There's a lot of lessons there and there's a lot of heartwarming stuff you can glean from stories like this. And I would recommend reading the full version of the story and kind of the discussion between he and his manager. It's pretty amazing.

• 52:12Speaker 03

  It is funny because the original story was the manager talked, was trying to talk him out of playing that day. However, but yeah, but since then, the manager actually denied that. He goes, I did not, I did not try to talk him out of it. Maybe he didn't want to be on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of that story.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  Exactly. Once he saw how it turned out.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to be on the right side of that. Let's wander out of the back porch because we've got quite a few things. Number one is, you know, OG, I know that, believe it or not, you're not on TikTok, the way that you talk so fondly about TikTok. But I often find, I often find fantastic stuff on TikTok. We talk a lot about problems people have in retirement and about how often we're solving for the wrong things in retirement. On the Huberman Lab podcast, they were recently talking about advice from an 84 year old who was incredibly successful. And this is just a little clip of that.

• 53:10Speaker 06

  James Hollis came on my podcast, 84 years old, surprised the out of me when he said, here's how you have a great life. It involves four things. The first three are shut up. That's the first one. I go, shut up. And he goes, yeah, someone's always got it worse than you. Nobody wants to hear you whine. Have gratitude for what you do have. If you're alive, you've got something to be grateful for. Second is suit up. What is suit up? Suit up is you have a role to fulfill each day for other people and for yourself and for the world. Suit up is get prepared. Shower, organize your room. We've heard this stuff from Jordan and from other people, but get your act together so that you can then do the third thing effectively, which is show up. Go find a role in life and fulfill it. It might not be the role you fulfill

• 53:52Speaker 06

  your entire life, but if it's a summer camp counselor, if it's a babysitter, if it's a nanny, if it's a firefighter, if it's whatever you, you are doing at some point, you like, in order to have confidence and be a healthy, happy person.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  I found that incredible. No matter what you think about Huberman, that this advice from an 84 year old OG, you know, we talked earlier about so many people don't want to talk about what's the meaning of life. And yet, when you serve other people, you find your role, you quit complaining. You talk a lot about your grandfather about this, about your, your grandfather very fondly. It seemed to me being this type of a person.

• 54:29Speaker 04

  It seems that there are some common themes on, you know, these people that live happy lives, right? And maybe if you see the theme repeating itself over and over and over again, maybe you ought to kind of, I don't know, take notes.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  I think it is easier as you get older to go, you know, woe is me and look at me and to focus internally. And I find that every time I focus internally on what suits Joe, the worst thing seemed to get. Like, like we live in the, we live at one of, Joseph Moore, the historian, talked about this. We live at a time, OG, when people are richer than ever. We have more access to fun stuff. We have more access to money. We have more access to the ability to make ourselves happy. And yet, look at the epidemic of people who are chronically depressed today. I think we're, we're in our own head far, far too much. I

• 55:25Speaker 03

  think that that brings up something that is a challenge that I have stackers for all of you. I think that this idea also of community, finding a role and, and, and, and filling it and serving other people. So many people that listen to the stacking Benjamin show are good with money, or at least intentional about money, that my challenge would be get a group of people together in October and chat about your goals for 2027. I think if you in October can get a group of people together, a coffee shop, at somebody's house, wherever it is, begin talking about 2027 right now, you're going to have a much better 2027.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  And I think that's part of shut up, get out of your head, go find a role and fill it. But also find a good group of people together.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  I'll make it even easier. It doesn't even have to be a huge group. Find one person.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  One person.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Find one person that you can say out loud, here's something I want to accomplish in the year. And hopefully it's not somebody who will roll over when you bail on it in February.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  It is so important to say it out loud, at the very least, number one. But number two, to have that person, Doug, that pokes you and goes, what are you doing?

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. You can stop poking me, by the way.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  He's like, it's October. I'm not going to do it. Doug said he was swearing off donuts. Didn't happen.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  Now, you picked the wrong example. Everybody knows by now, I'm not a sweets guy. I'm not a donut guy. But if you said, no more lasagna for you, I'm out.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Bad deal. Last, if you're somebody that cares enough about coaching people that you officially are a coach, or you have thought about becoming a financial coach, OG and I have a new program where we are coaching coaches. And if you want to chat more about how we coach coaches and what that program looks like, we're not looking for a ton of people, but we are opening up the doors. Just go to this link, stackingbenjamins.com/Coaching, stackingbenjamins.com/Coaching. And we will set up a meeting, you and I, to chat more about your coaching program, what you're looking for, and if being a part of our cohort to

• 57:43Speaker 03

  challenge you for a bright 2027 coaching year, I think it's going to be, going to be great. Really looking forward to working with a bunch of coaches. I love the idea, OG, that we're getting the word out, that we're helping these people that want to be people that increase financial literacy in the country. If we can, we can inspire them to go bigger, do more, share with them some of the mistakes you and I made in the past along the way, so that you don't make those same mistakes. I think it's going to be great.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  Well, you can share your mistakes. I don't make any of them.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is an important point. If I share my mistakes and OG's perfection, I think, and that's why we're

• 58:18Speaker 04

  It's a pretty good combo.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's why we're a good team. I make the mistakes. He never does. Speaking of mistake, I often think it's a mistake at the end of the episode, but I still ask it anyway. Doug, what are the things we should have learned?

• 58:33Speaker 02

  Why?

• 58:35Speaker 03

  Maybe I could be a better neighbor. I need to learn to be a better neighbor.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Saw this train rolling at me for like the last 60 seconds. He's going to, he's going to come right down at me like I'm the mistake. Okay, fine.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  You're not the mistake. It's just a mistake to ask. Maybe a mistake. I don't know. What'd you come up with today, Doug? What'd you come up with?

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Well, they're all probably wrong, but let's give it a shot. Well, Joe first, take some advice from you and OG. While it's usually best to stick to the tried and true, there are times when that esoteric strategy is a perfect fit. Hopefully today, you found a few that you can now see can fit in the right situation.

• 59:12Speaker 03

  All right. That's a good one. You're rolling. Oh, that's good.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Thank you. Well, let's see if I can make it two for two. Second, an insurance salesperson telling you that a complex strategy will solve all of your problems? Calculate the ROI carefully before handing over your hard earned money. Whether it's an annuity or life insurance contract, they can work, but far less often than they're sold to unsuspecting investors. How'd I do?

• 59:37Speaker 03

  That's even better.

• 59:38Speaker 02

  All right. Let's see if we can do a little Ted Williams here. But the big lesson, don't wait by the mailbox hoping someone will notice what a great neighbor you've been. These people are all too busy navel gazing to notice the brilliance around them. Check this out. I just gave Joe's mom's other neighbor some grass seed I had left over. Seriously, there must've been like a dozen seeds left. And they said absolutely nothing. Nada. No thank you. Silence. No witty card, no Starbucks gift certificate. Miss manners would be horrified, pal.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  Well, two for three is not bad.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  This show is the property of SB Podcast LLC, copyright 2026, and is created by Joe Saul Sehy. You'll find out about our awesome team at stackingbenjamins.com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. Come say hello. And oh yeah, before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you 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.

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• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  Guys, I went and saw a movie over the weekend, got home from FinCon. Cheryl's like, you want to go see a movie? I'm like, absolutely, because my brain is fried and I just need to be entertained. And the movie we saw was called Runner.

• 1:04:06Speaker 06

  You're Hank, aren't you? You're the delivery man. But this is not a FedEx package. There is a little girl that's very sick. And you're delivering your new liver. If she doesn't get this today, she's not going to make it.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Let me ask you a question. How much does one of those go for in the black market?

• 1:04:30Speaker 06

  A million, maybe.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  A million?

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  Go, go, go!

• 1:04:42Speaker 03

  And at this point, it's a bunch of sound effects, Doug, so I'll stop it right there of people getting beaten up, shot, shots fired, car wrecks, explosions.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  So it's a comedy?

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  Kind of. It is by Angel Studios. If you're not familiar with Angel Studios, I generally don't care what studio makes a movie, except now if it says Angel Studios, I'm much more likely to go see it. Because Angel Studios, initially, I thought that this was either a political or religious agenda where they're like, no, no, no, we're going to make movies that we can all agree on. So a couple Angel Studios movies I've saw recently, I saw Young Washington, which was about the early part of George Washington's career.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  I heard that was really good.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Sensationalized, but really good. My favorite Angel Studios movie was Mother Cabrini, about the Cabrini Order of Nuns.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  That was a while ago, wasn't it?

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  In New York City. Kevin, who's the guy from King of Queens?

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  Kevin Hart.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  Nope. Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart is the short, really funny guy.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  Kevin Bacon.

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Not Kevin Bacon.

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  Kevin O'Leary.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  Kevin. Kevin James was in a romantic comedy recently by them. These movies are all over the place. Of course, the one that I saw that I really loved about the women in Iraq who were going to learn computers, she was teaching them computers, and that was a real story. So it's sometimes real, sometimes not. This was not, this starred, you heard Owen Wilson as this chatty guy who's delivering a liver. And this is the awesome part. The guy who's the star of Reacher, Alan Richson, who plays Reacher, is the runner. And he's the guy that has to deliver the liver and Owen Wilson successfully. And it

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  turns out that the cartel really wants this liver as he's trying to deliver it. This is, man, if you like action movies, this is a fantastic action movie. And I like the fact that the stakes are stakes that I really care about. It's funny with Owen Wilson and Alan Richson.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  That's actually why I asked the question. When I heard Owen Wilson's voice, I immediately thought comedy.

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Having these great back and forths. Owen Wilson has some great lines. The story has some super high stakes in it. The stakes are different, of course, than you think they are going in. If you want a movie that's never going to win an award, but has a ton of stuff blowing up, is still very funny and heartwarming at the same time, Angel Studios did it. I love The Runner. You guys are both going to love The Runner. What a great movie. So go see The Runner.

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  I haven't seen, I don't know if this is an Angel Studios, because I know Angel Studios is pushing their own streaming service. So maybe this is part of their strategy.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  If you don't see them in the theater, it's hard to see them.

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  Right. Because I've been looking for Cabrini ever since you told me about it. And it's just not available on the 11 different streaming services I subscribe to. And I'm not going to pay for another one for the one movie.

• 1:07:42Speaker 03

  My friend Mike has a thing called Plex, which allows you to do all these different things. So he sees Angel Studios movies through Plex. Outside of Plex, I can't find them anywhere, unless you're going to pay for the Angel Studios own deal.

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  Through Plex, does he then still have to, for things that are outside of Plex, does he have to pay the $4.95 to watch Cabrini? Or is it all included? Do you know?

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Cabrini was included. So he ended up watching it for just the Plex fee. The answer to that is, I don't know, because like you, I don't want to look into Plex. I don't want another, I don't want another streaming service.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Well, and it's sort of like Amazon. Well, oftentimes I'll search for a movie you recommend, and it'll initially make it look like it's on Amazon, which I pay for. And then I go there and it's, you got to buy the movie or rent the movie. And I don't know why, that's a small barrier of entry. OG's just shaking his head right now, like, dude, it's $4. You can afford it. It's the principle, honestly.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  Well, as this comes out, I like the theater experience better, just the big screen, and especially for an action movie. It was so fun to watch on the big screen. I think that while it's still there, go catch Runner.