Should You Max Out a 401(k) You Don't Even Like? SB1882

Three Stackers call into the basement today with three very different problems, but they all boil down to the same uncomfortable question: what do you do when the "obviously right" financial move doesn't feel right? A generous employer match paired with fund choices you're not thrilled about. A tax bracket so low it seems wasteful not to convert. A life that just took a turn nobody expected, and a whole new set of financial tools nobody teaches you about until you need them. Joe, OG, and Anna Allen tackle all three with real, usable answers. What You'll Walk Away With Why turning down a five-figure employer match over fund quality concerns is almost always the wrong move, and the workaround that fixes it anywayThe real difference between an actively managed fund and a passive one, and why "active" isn't automatically a red flagA little-known 401k feature that can give you far more investment control without giving up your matchHow to think through a Roth conversion when your income, your future tax bracket, and even the state you'll retire in are all still unknownThe single mistake that quietly wastes a Roth contribution opportunity for good, since you can never get that calendar year backWhat an ABLE account is, and how it's different from a 529 in a way that matters enormously for a family navigating a new diagnosisWhy a special needs trust often gets layered on top of an existing estate plan rather than replacing it, and the questions worth asking an attorney before that meetingWhy This Matters Now Good financial advice usually comes with fine print that nobody mentions: what to do when the textbook answer doesn't quite fit your actual life. A workplace retirement plan with mediocre fund choices, a temporary low-income window that might not last, a family circumstance nobody could have planned for. The goal isn't finding a perfect answer; it's understanding the real trade-offs well enough to make a confident decision and adjust as life changes. That's true whether the stakes are a few hundred dollars in fees or a lifetime of care for someone you love. From the Basement A Financial Action Month detour into meal planning turns into a genuinely useful AI-assisted grocery hack, plus a spirited debate over Aldi loyalty and the eternal question of what actually counts as a proper turnover pastry. Some debates never get resolved in the basement, and that's exactly as it should be. Resources Mentioned Stacking Benjamins Field Kit https://stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit — the all-in-one budgeting, net worth, and subscription tracking toolStacko Financial Action Month board https://stackingbenjamins.com/stacko — the interactive game with a money move for each squareThree Money Buckets video https://youtube.com/stackingbenjamins — Stacking Benjamins' YouTube Financial Basics courseYell Down the Stairs https://stackingbenjamins.com/yelldownstairs — submit a question for a future episode 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

  Maybe it's time 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.

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• 1:02Speaker 02

  I mean, you're living in your mother's basement writing a blog on finance? Really, you should stay off the computer, son, and get a job. Seriously.

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug, and on today's show, let's move the spotlight off me because baby, today it's on you. We're answering your questions on dumping your 401k, setting up money for special needs situations, and converting your money toward Roth IRAs. And if that weren't enough, we're pulling another idea off the Stacko game card to help you win during Financial Action Month. And speaking of action, halfway through this festival, I'll spring into action with some mind-bending financial trivia, sure to impress your friends, neighbors, and colleagues. You're gonna be famous. And now, two people

• 2:10Speaker 00

  who famously one time found themselves starting a financial podcast, and a third person who's here to save it, it's Joe, OG, and Anna Alalalalal.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  Hey there, stackers. Happy Monday to you. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. I know that I did. And I know these people are already at the microphone. First of all, gentleman across the card table from me, Mr. OG is here, ready to do another week, man?

• 2:42Speaker 03

  Ready to do another week, man. Yep.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  We have...

• 2:47Speaker 04

  That's the spirit.

• 2:50Speaker 05

  It's week with two Es, right?

• 2:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  He's like, E-E-E-A, who's counting? Who knows? And of course, the other voice you hear.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I was told to be nice today.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  And we can really sense the change in attitude.

• 3:05Speaker 03

  This is me being nice.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  We tell you that every day, and it never works. Want to go from 15% to 18% today, because it's gonna be good. Anna Alom's here. How are you, Anna?

• 3:15Speaker 04

  I'm good, Joe. How are you doing?

• 3:17Speaker 00

  I am better now that you're here with us. You ready to answer some listener questions?

• 3:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's hear them.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  We got some stackers that have some great questions. By the way, if you want to leave your questions for us, head to stackingbenjamins.com/yelledownsstairs, and you can yell your question down the steps to the basement, and we'll be happy to answer them on a future show. And some of you did today. And man, Doug, as you mentioned, we've got some great ones today.

• 3:42Speaker 05

  We do. Yeah, I'm looking forward to these. I'm waiting for the person who literally yells down the basement, "Hey, ma, me loaf!"

• 3:50Speaker 00

  That's all you gotta do. That's all you gotta do. We've got a couple sponsors who help us make sure we can keep on keeping on. We're gonna hear from a couple of them now, and then we're gonna hear from a couple while you're contemplating Doug's cleverly worded trivia halfway through today's extravaganza Monday festival here on the podcast. We're gonna hear from a couple of them now, and then Anna, OG, Doug, and I tackling your questions. Let's do it. Well, I love the fact that I can finally say these words, stackers. The Field Kit is ready. So if you have always wondered, what's a place where I can combine all these financial apps into one simple place? My budgeting app, my net worth tracking

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  app, my privacy protection app, my subscription app, and the app that I use to make sure that my credit is not being stolen, all in one place. Field Kit does all that. You want to spend your time exploring, stackers, not worrying about your money. Field Kit takes care of all that. stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit. And if you get the 201, our newsletter, you'll also find out. We're gonna be doing some walkthroughs, so you can take a look at it. Head to stackingbenjamins.com/fieldkit for more. 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

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  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, Factor requires zero prep, cleanup, or effort from you or mom, so you can focus on everything else in your day. Factor even has heart-smart

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  options like the Green Goddess Baramundi with tomato, rice, peas, kale, and green beans, or the enchilada-style chicken and sweet potatoes. Those are so good. They're crafted with lean proteins, fiber-packed fruit and veggies, and healthy fats. Try those out. Your heart and your taste buds will thank you. For Cheryl and I, Factor has been a great way for us to stay busy and focus on family life and beating mom 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 gonna get 50% off

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• 7:09Speaker 00

  We got stackers lined up, ready to ask some questions. Let's start off with our good friend Shane. Hey Shane, what's going on, man?

• 7:20Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm calling because my wife and I aren't satisfied with the investment options in her 401k. I understand the traditional advice in this situation is to at least invest the minimum to get the match, and then just put the rest in your brokerage. However, my wife is very well compensated, and contributing the minimum to get the match actually maxes out the 401k. Match ends up being around $20,000, which is great, but then we have to find somewhere to actually invest all this money. My 401k is through T-Roll Price. It's not the fees that give us pause, but the prevalence of active funds without broad diversification, and with turnover rates generally greater than 50%, including one with a whopping 230. The index offerings are all Spartan Index pools, which I understand

• 8:02Speaker 06

  are collective investment trusts. I found it hard to find information about their holdings, and I can't speak to the bonds because we're 100% equities. So my question is, at the 401k, Prospectus offers a self-directed brokerage through a Schwab Personal Choice Retirement Account. I'm a bit unnerved, because this sounds like exactly what I'm looking for. It says they're gonna charge about 50 bucks a year, but is that gonna be the only fee? If I stick to something simple like ETFs, and I can't find a list of the investments available in this type of account, but the Prospectus does say that the plan may limit the investment alternatives we may purchase in the brokerage account, but provides no further details. Is this oddly what I'm looking for? Thanks.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Shane, thanks so much for the question, and congratulations, by the way, on having a 401k that you can actually use, although it sounds OG like he's not in love with the choices. But let's go through some of this, because T-Roll Price, a responsible company, he said fees are, you know, he's not that worried about the fees, but he is worried about the fact that they're active funds, and he's worried about the turnover. Can we talk, first of all, about the turnover? Because frankly, I don't think turnover really matters inside a 401k, does it?

• 9:18Speaker 03

  I thought he was talking about like, apple or cherry turnovers. And I would 100% agree that the turnover matters when you're talking about fruit.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Wait a minute. Hold on, hold on.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  I'm okay with either apple or cherry.

• 9:34Speaker 05

  No.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  I've never had a peach one, but I'm kind of a fan of peaches. So I was told to be nice, Doug. Don't shake your head back and forth because if I actually talk about what I want to talk about, I'll get yelled at for being mean.

• 9:47Speaker 05

  Your fruit choices are wrong. There's only one kind of turnover. It's an apple turnover. None of the others are allowed.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  And why is that, Doug?

• 9:56Speaker 05

  Because it's the only one that's good. The rest of them are just imposters. There's no cherry turnover.

• 10:01Speaker 00

  In this case, let's talk about what turnover actually means, which is something completely different. A turnover is the number of times that a manager will sell a position. If turnover is a hundred percent, that means that a hundred percent of the slate gets wiped clean. They're buying all different stuff, which means that if you're in a taxable brokerage account, that, you know, your tax obligation on that might be, could be potentially hefty. But inside of a 401k turnover isn't something that we generally pay a lot of attention to because of the fact that there's no friction, there's no tax friction on, on this position.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  This whole idea of active versus passive thing, I think goes to an extreme. It's just not a hill that I want to die on. We get saved here because of the PCRA account, which I'm sure Anna can talk about, but to entertain the idea of not getting, did he say he gets a $28,000 match?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  He gets a $20,000.

• 11:02Speaker 04

  He doesn't get anything. His sugar mama gets it. Let me just clarify there.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Okay. So to entertain the idea of giving up $20,000 because I'm not enamored with, you know, the fun choices, I think is absolutely insanity.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  Well, he's still going to do it. He's just looking at the self-directed brokerage, which we'll get into.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  No, I'm saying like, I know, but that's why we get saved by that. But it sounded like at the beginning, it was, you know, the question was like, I might not do this because, you know, I don't like the options, you know, and he said, well, usually it's just get the match, but the match in our case would be 20K. The other thing that I think might be worth exploring here is it sounds like the missus here is fairly highly compensated, maybe high up in the organization, maybe has a little weight behind an email or two to the HR department and go like, hey, we don't love these choices. Like, what are we getting out of this deal? Can we, you know, can we entertain another proposal? And maybe the company's big enough to entertain a couple of other proposals from some other companies as

• 12:06Speaker 03

  well. So that would be something, you know, like a longer term process, you know, if you're so hell bent on getting rid of T-Roll Price. Active management, passive management, this is a 5% solution thing, right? Like this is the thing that matters like that much in the overall outcome of your lifetime goal. So don't get hung up on that. Don't get hung up on the fees, although, you know, they can be pricey in a retirement plan. There was another question that I saw that somebody asked about. Look, these things cost money to maintain. You know, there's actuaries, there's tax forms that have to get filed timely. There's people that literally are signing off on it with the threat of jail time,

• 12:47Speaker 03

  saying, hey, if this isn't right, you are subject to, you know, criminal prosecution. So there's a lot of liability associated with making sure that these plans are designed correctly and executed correctly on an annual basis. Somebody's got to write the check for that. And when you're in a small organization, a lot of times that gets passed on to the participants because the owner has a choice of, do we have this tool and we all kind of collectively pay for it? Or do we just not have the tool? Cause I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars on my own to do this.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Which means then rightly so, people like Shane, then let's say that it was high fee. And I understand Shane, that we're not talking about you here because you said the fees are not an issue. And I would generally T-Roll.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  T-Roll Price is reasonable. Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. But for people that have that, I think it's right for them to think, well, what if I don't invest here? Let's go elsewhere. However, when we look at two things, when we look at the cost of not putting money in a 401k, your options outside of there, OG, not phenomenal. And then number two.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Taxes.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  In terms of taxes, not phenomenal. And then what's the benefit like in terms of real dollars that you get from that? But second, also the behavior, right?

• 13:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  It's just so much damn easier to put money in your 401k.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  The reality is, is that the vast majority of people would not save a penny if it wasn't automatically taken out of their accounts on a frequent basis. So the fact that it comes out of your paycheck before you get it is for a lot of people, and I'm not saying that this is true for Shane and his family, but for some people, like that's the only savings that's happening is because it's coming out automatically, you know, before I get that net paycheck. Uh, if you are going to play that game of like, this is too expensive and I'm, I'm just going to invest a little bit and save the rest elsewhere. Make sure you're actually doing the saving elsewhere because statistically you won't do it, you know, because life happens. Anna, do you want to talk about PCRA option?

• 14:39Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  And what that looks like in, in this guy's case, or anybody's case for that matter?

• 14:44Speaker 04

  I think it's a great option that you have that as a, as a savings tool instead of just the straight 401k option. So I think some of the questions along with that, basically some 401ks, and you have to check with your plan to see if you have this as an option, will offer you a separate account where you can basically take the money and you might have to keep some money in the regular 401k bucket, but you can take some money and put it into this brokerage account. It's still your 401k, but you manage it. You have a lot more options, if not almost unlimited options in what you want to invest. So I think that answers one of Shane's questions. Like they typically

• 15:28Speaker 04

  aren't going to give you a list because the list would be massive.

• 15:31Speaker 03

  It's everything. Yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  It's everything. They just might limit you on like some alternatives and other things like that.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  And when they say they limit you, Anna, historically, what they limit you on isn't the vanilla choices, like a straight up ETF. They're not, they might not let you do the wisdom tree, 3X.

• 15:49Speaker 04

  Leverage.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Leverage thingy, you know, where you're really betting more than investing.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. So you're going to be able to find the Vanguard or Fidelity funds that you want to invest in that will, that's not going to be a problem, which sounds like what he's looking for. You might have to keep some money within the actual 401k into the funds that you don't like, but hopefully OG made that feel a little bit better. And then you can take a portion of that and put it over into the brokerage account. Now, along with the fees, you should call them and ask, what are their trading fees involved with this? Obviously you've already found out that there's some sort of platform fee involved. There's going to be an expense ratio within the ETFs, but again, you probably already understand that. But other than that, you could just call them and ask like, what fees are involved in using this brokerage?

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Generally speaking, in the past, Anna, to me, it's been that $50 fee to use it. And then the expense of the investment, there it is.

• 16:43Speaker 04

  Yeah. Especially if you're working with Schwab, more than likely, that's really all you're going to see.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Super, super easy. I do have a question, Anna, for you about these, uh, cause he's, he's had the Spartan indexes, which are more collectives and he can't find them on Morningstar as easily. But my understanding about these indexes are, cause he said, you know, I, I really don't know what I'm looking at. If it's a Spartan S and P 500, you have the S and P, you have the Spartan S and P 500.

• 17:10Speaker 04

  They're just not showing you all of the details within Morningstar. Like it's not going to be on there. You might be able to find it on their website a little bit more clearly. That might be a good option. But again, like if you go the self-directed route, and it sounds like Shane understands the basics of how this functions, I don't think you're, like, I don't think it should be a scary endeavor to go down.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And for the PCRA account, super easy to set up and manage if you've got some capacity there and understanding of Schwab's platform. And maybe you have to leave some money in the other side. You know, there's some ratio there perhaps. The other thing I would add is this is a great use case for AI. If you don't know what's in a fund or how it works or whatever, put that into chat and be like, give me a primer. Doug's not even listening.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I am. Well done. Well done.

• 18:01Speaker 03

  I just feel dirty saying it that way. On what this is about, like, you know, how, how do I know what's in here? My goal is to be low cost passive, market based. Like, does this accomplish the goal? What asset allocation could I use with this, these tools? You know, whatever. It's a great use case for getting some research, some kind of deep research behind there to find out what it is exactly that you are buying, uh, if you do have questions. But at least I'm glad Shane's still putting money in this. Shane's wife is still putting money in her 401k, getting 20 grand of matching contributions. Whoo, that's a lot of cash.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  It is a lot of cash and it's great that he is able to get that money invested fairly, fairly easily.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  And 45,000 a year.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  It's nice.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  Cha-ching.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  The self-direct directed account is great. I think a great point too is if you don't have that available, I wouldn't be afraid of those Spartan funds.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  I wouldn't be afraid of any of them. Yeah. T-Roll Price is a great company. I think the thin universe of obsessive Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagramming, probably not as much there, has just bashed this to the point where it's like, oh my God, you're going to the seventh layer of hell if you happen to buy a fund that's, you know, it's like, come on, you're fine. These are all great people who are investing well and probably have a pretty decent track record, honestly.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. T-Roll Price funds generally very highly rated funds. You can look them up in Morningstar.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  We could talk about this for hours, but people say the thing that they don't mean to say, and then treat it as gospel. What they say is you can't beat the market, therefore I have to go passive. And the reality is, is that no, people do beat the market. It's not predictable in advance and it costs some money to do, hence the little bit higher fee. So statistically, it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay the extra money to try to beat the market. But every day, somebody beats the market. You look at the stock market tomorrow and whatever it does, you could look at your own account and be like, you either did better than it or worse than it. Rarely did you peg it exactly on the number. So guess what? On the day you did better, congratulations. You're an active manager. You did better than the market. Whoa, stop the presses.

• 20:14Speaker 03

  It's doable. We just don't believe that it's worth paying for trying to do it. That doesn't mean that it can't be done. So, you know, if your options are T-Ro Price or Fidelity, by the way, plenty of active funds at Fidelity, Schwab, plenty of active funds at Schwab.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Active funds at Vanguard.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Vanguard, all of their bond funds are active. Who knew? Like, oh, wait, wait, wait. What are you talking about? Yeah. Surprise, everybody.

• 20:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. Great question, Shane. Thank you so much for that.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  How did I do on being nice? Is that okay?

• 20:44Speaker 00

  I thought Anna, he did pretty well. He was pretty nice on that one.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Plenty of velvet.

• 20:47Speaker 05

  It's not as entertaining, but it's certainly better for the listener.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Okay. All right. I'll try to strike the better balance for you, Doug.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Let's see if he can do even better as we chat with Kyle. Hey, Kyle, what's on your mind?

• 21:03Speaker 07

  Hi, Joe and OG. My wife has been in the military for 20 years and we are stationed overseas. She is 41 and I am 44. We do not have a job right now, so our taxable income for federal taxes is in the 12% tax bracket. We are Nevada state residents, so we do not pay any state income tax. We are overseas for the next two to three years and my wife may go the full 30 years in the military. I currently have about $120,000 in a traditional IRA that I moved from a work 401k last year and have been thinking, maybe I should convert that into a Roth IRA the next few years to the cap of the 12% tax bracket.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  I have money in savings to pay for the conversion, but my question is, would I be better served investing that money that I was going to use to pay the taxes for the conversion into my Roth IRA? Or would I be smarter going with the conversion? We do not know where and when we will eventually settle down and it may be into an income tax heavy state. With military pension, social security and possible funds from a second career, I am wary of a big jump in taxes and then healthcare costs when we turn 65 from the transition to Medicare from TRICARE. Thanks for your help. Appreciate it.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Hey, Kyle. Thanks for the call and thank you to your wife for her service. Anna, this is an interesting question because he's got this money sitting in savings. He's looking at the fact that he's in a really low tax bracket right now. So this says Roth conversion time may be written all over it because you're going to pay the tax this year. People don't know how this works. You're going to pay the tax right now on that Roth conversion. There'll be no penalty, which is really cool that the government lets you do that. Is he better served to just put that money in a new Roth or to use it for the tax to convert money into Roth?

• 22:59Speaker 04

  This is really hard because I, I don't think Kyle can go wrong with either direction he goes in. Like you said, this is-

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Well, that's the great answer, right? Is that they're both great.

• 23:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's also because we don't know what the future looks like. We don't even know what his future looks like. Like he's saying, second source of income, are they moving back to the States? And he's going to get a job at that time. Like his future is probably a little bit unknown too. And on top of that, tax rates are also completely unknown for the future. So there's a lot that you can do right now and it could be more beneficial to do the conversion. It could be more beneficial to invest it. If you have to pick one, I would probably go down the route of converting. If you have the mindset of in the future, I'm going to have extra cash flow and we are going to be able to do additional savings.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  But if you keep it in the pre-tax bucket and then you invest that, I also don't think that's a bad idea because then you'll have those buckets. You're going to have the bucket system. I don't know if you've listened to OG and I talk about how it's important to kind of think about entering into retirement with these different buckets of savings. So you have your pre-tax, your 401k, your IRA, then you have your after-tax, tax-free, which is your Roth, and then also your brokerage account. It's not bad if we enter into retirement and you have some money sitting in that pre-tax bucket,

• 24:30Speaker 04

  but let's kind of shift our focus over to maybe the Roth at this point, if we're not doing that conversion. So again, I don't think you can go wrong.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, we talk about-

• 24:39Speaker 04

  OG, do you feel differently?

• 24:41Speaker 00

  Before we go to OG, we talk about the three money buckets on our YouTube channel. If you just go to youtube.com/stackingbenjamins, you'll find it under the Financial Basic course. You'll see a three money buckets video that you can watch where we dive into that. But OG, how do you feel about this one? Cause I have a little different take than Anna does.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Well, I think that there's two things with Roth conversions, just kind of big picture. Number one is you're trying to decide whether or not the tax rate in the future is going to be less than what you're paying taxes on right now. So if you have a hundred thousand dollars in your IRA, I think that's about what he said. And you can convert part of that and pay 12% taxes on that versus what that will grow to in the future and what the tax rates might be in the future with all of your income. That's the evaluation that you're doing and you're gambling and saying, you know, I think in the future, tax rates are going to be higher than what I'm paying right now, which I think at 12% is pretty rational to say, especially when you forecast out, well, I'll probably get some social security, you know, wife will have some pension, you know,

• 25:43Speaker 03

  and then at some point in time we'll have required minimum distributions and, you know, you can kind of run a spreadsheet and think about what that looks like. So I think at 12% is a pretty attractive conversion number. The only thing that have given me a little bit of pause is that the benefit of every calendar year is that every year anew, you get 7,000 bucks you can put in your, in your Roth. And the downside is, is that on December 31 or when the taxes are due, I guess, maybe April 15th, your, your 2026 in this case is over. You don't get to go back and say, you know, I finally have enough money to put money in my Roth again. So I'm going to backdate and do the last, you know, get my 10 years worth of Roth contributions in that I didn't have the savings for.

• 26:27Speaker 03

  So my concern with the skipping the contribution component is you never get to re-contribute that money. And it's the same math, whether you're putting 7,000 bucks in or you're converting 7,000 bucks. Both are in tax-free buckets. In order to contribute $7,000, you had to have made 8,500 bucks to pay taxes on the, you know, $8,500 at 12% to have 7,000 left over to put in your account. Or you convert 8,500 bucks, make 8,500, right by your conversion and then you pay tax, you know what I mean? Like in my book, it's the same math. I, my, my take on this would be to look at it a different way. Can you stretch and do both?

• 27:10Speaker 03

  You know, can you go like, you know what? This is the one time where we are in this like ultra-low tax bracket. We've got some money on hand. There are some tax benefits from being in the military and working overseas. You know, potentially depending on where you're located and that sort of stuff, you get some, you know, can I overdo all of this right now? Really stretch and say, this is a three-year opportunity to dump 14,000 bucks in my, my wife's Roth and do a conversion. Can we just tighten it a little bit to make this work? And I don't know that that's the case. I mean, in the military, it's not like these guys are getting paid like, you know, hand surgeons. But I might turn this around just a little bit and look at the problem a different way and say, can I do both? Or whatever. But I'm ultimately with Anna, tomato, tomato.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  You'll be happy that you have a bunch of Roth money in 20 years from now. Make it so.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's why I said I had a little bit different take because I kind of felt the same way that I would bias toward, I would bias toward the new money if possible, and then with whatever money there still is, if there's money left, then convert as much as I possibly can because of that ticking clock.

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. Could you be okay with, let's say, for example, that you've got a cash reserve of $30,000? Well, the most you can put in the Roth right now is 14, right? Between, you know, husband and wife, you can do 7,000 each, right? So that still leaves you, whatever that number is, $16,000 left for taxes. Can you burn the cash reserve down to kind of bare bones for the next two years? You know, can you do all of this and just say, yeah, we're going to look a little tighter on paper than we should? Because you can always get your Roth money if you need it, right? You can always do a loan from your TSP. That's a terrible idea, but it's, you know, there's money still around. That's my point. I think people look at these silos, just like Shane earlier. Looks at these decisions in like one, one decision tree.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  It's like, this is my 401k decision. Well, no, all of this is your money. It all counts.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  It all dovetails together. Anna, when you're talking to a young investor, you know, Kyle put the money in as a traditional 401k originally. Maybe that's all he had available and now he wants to make it a Roth. But a lot of people now, when they get out of college, they're looking at, hey, I've got the Roth available right away. Which one do you like better for a young investor? Do you like go Roth 100% if possible?

• 29:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. If you are young and you're starting out and

• 29:32Speaker 04

  you have the ability to save into a Roth and you're educated enough to know what that is, because that's the other big thing. If you're investing into a 401k, it's your first corporate job, you might not even know that Roth is an option. But if you do, get it into the Roth now because there are times where we have conversations with clients when they're in too, well into their career a little bit more, or they're approaching retirement age. They have that hefty Roth bucket and we actually need to start switching them over to pre-tax or just start to do a combination of the two a little bit, just because their taxes are so heavy. They need some extra cash flow because, you know, they got daycare costs or whatever is coming through college expenses.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  We need to open up some cash flow. So we start shifting over to the pre-tax bucket if we can. So it just gives you some of that flexibility in the future to then switch over to pre-tax so that you're still saving, but you get a little bit more cash flow opened up with reduced taxes.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. The Roth IRA is such a horrible name. I actually like the way the Canadians do it here with tax-free savings account. If it said tax-free 401k, that'd be, that'd be so much better. Would love that. Kyle, thank you so much for the question. Love to hear what you decided. By the way, I would love to also hear Shane from you. If you want to call back and tell us how you handled the 401k, what you did. We love hearing success stories from people as they solve these questions that they have. All right. We're going to take a quick break right now because Doug is like, hey, when's it my turn? So we're going to give Doug the turn right now in the driver's seat.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  And I go to him right as he fills his mouth with food, which is exactly what we do here.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  And we'll be back. We've got another question from Kat. Kat wonders about some special accounts for a member of her family, and I can't wait to dive into what she asks. And for all those of you playing our stacko game here for Financial Action Month, Anna's going to pick a square, and she's going to help you work through that. All right, that's coming up in the second half. But Doug, what do we got, man?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Hey there, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And you might not have known this, but on this wacky calendar Joe's mom got me, it says it's National Lazy Day. So I was thinking about having you, now hear me out here, write your own damn trivia question for once. Then Joe's mom told me to remember my manners. So today, we'll let you be lazy again, and I'll do the heavy lifting again. Here's the question. On today's date in American history, President James K. Hulk, yes, there was a president with that name, signed an act creating the Smithsonian Institution, proving again just how much Americans love free stuff. But here's the bigger question.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  The Smithsonian sprang from a gift from Englishman James Smithson, a scientist who left his fortune to the United States. How many times did Smithson visit the USA before leaving his money to us? I'll be back right after I go ask Joe's mom how much she's leaving me in her will after coming down to the basement about 15 times a day. Seriously, some people are ladder climbers. She's like a stair descender.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  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,

• 33:46Speaker 00

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• 34:24Speaker 00

  for us to stay busy and focus on family life and beating mom 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. There is a financial conversation that's coming to millions of American families, and

• 35:06Speaker 00

  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 and 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 we talked. Kiplinger calls it the

• 35:50Speaker 00

  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.

• 36:19Speaker 00

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• 38:22Speaker 00

  Hey there, stackers. I'm your golden trivia voice and guy who starts every trip to Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum because it's just so cool, Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. It was on today's date in history that the Smithsonian came to be, donated by James Smithson, an English scientist who left his fortune to the USA. True story, the IRS demands that each of us leave a portion of our fortunes as well every April 15th, though that money doesn't go in a museum. Why not? That's another trivia question right there. For today, we want to know how many times did Smithson visit the USA before gifting us all his cash? The answer?

• 39:05Speaker 00

  Zero. Which is why I feel comfortable saying yes to this prince in Africa. I don't need to go to Africa to understand that he needs financial help for his friends, which apparently will somehow also make me rich as well. Bonus. You ever think about that, about just randomly gifting money to some country that you've never visited, someplace you've never visited? That's on your mind all the time, I'm sure.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  Yep, definitely.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  You know what? Norway. I'm thinking about leaving all the Anna Allen money.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  I've been there, though.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Oh, you've been to Norway? Oh, so you couldn't go?

• 39:43Speaker 04

  It wouldn't count.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  No. All right. Well, how about, have you been to Taiwan? How about Taiwan?

• 39:49Speaker 04

  No.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Oh, well, there you go. Anna's going to leave all her money to Taiwan. You heard it here first.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  It's in her will.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Today, she's like, hold your breath. It's going to happen right now. What we're not going to hold our breath for is the next call, because we know it comes from Kat. Hey, Kat, what's going on?

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Hi, guys. This is Kat from Ohio. I sent an email that you addressed on the show back in November of 2024. At the time, I was excited to be expecting our second child and completing our family. A lot has happened since then, as we found out a few months after our son was born, that he has an ultra rare genetic condition that affects neurodevelopment. I think a realistic outcome for him would be a diagnosis of mild intellectual disability, autism, delayed functional speech, and possibly the ability to work in a structured setting someday. This has presented some financial concerns I did not have previously. By the way, I want to put in a quick plug here that having grown my HSA over previous years has been invaluable. While paying out of pocket and saving receipts for 30 years sounds like great fun, using it for its intended purpose has helped to alleviate a lot of stress in a year that has proven to be the hardest of our lives.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  My real question is fairly broad, however, what can you tell me about special needs trusts and any other relevant accounts? I have a meeting with our lawyer later this month to set up the special needs trust as we already have a revocable trust in place. Anything I should be aware of going into this meeting? Questions to ask? We received a monetary gift from a family member last year equalling $30,000 that we decided to put in a high-yield savings account for our son until we understood we're best to place the money for him based on his likely future abilities. Our four-year-old neurotypical daughter already has roughly $70,529 account. We basically tsunamied her savings so we wouldn't need to contribute more in the future. Can I trademark that term? Anyways, we'd like to do something similar for him. Any advice on what to do with it? Thanks for all you do.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Wow, Kat, that is a tsunami. She should be able to trademark that.

• 41:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll look into that. I'll look into that, Joe. The other thing I just want to point out before I let Anna and OG dive into this is she is going through an incredibly challenging time. How positive and upbeat does Kat sound? Like, I am so impressed with, I want to be, I want to be like a sinking ship with her because she's going to be like, look, we got this. It's all good. She's amazing. Listen to her voice.

• 42:06Speaker 00

  She's doing so many things well. $70,000 in the 529 plan, money in the high-yield savings account, the HSA. And OG, let's start there. You know, a lot of people go, oh, I can max out the HSA and just use it way, way, way later. But to Kat's point, HSA using it now for its intended purpose can be quite a boon.

• 42:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you don't have anything to use your HSA money on, it's fantastic to save the receipts for 30 years and, you know, so on, so forth. I absolutely love the fact that when we go to the doctor or whatever, like you just use H, it doesn't like affect your budget. You know what I mean? Like it's, like it could, right? You could have a year where it does affect your budget. But, um, you know, I've talked to, on the show before about being able to pay cash instead of running it through the insurance because the insurance costs a little bit more to do a something and, and the cash price is always markedly less. And having that HSA, you know, cash buffer that, you know, just 200 bucks.

• 43:08Speaker 04

  OG, do you know what girl math is?

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  This sounds like girl math. It's free money.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  Well, it's not free money, except for the fact that-

• 43:19Speaker 00

  We don't call it girl math here. We call it OG math.

• 43:22Speaker 04

  OG math equals girl math.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, but like to Kat's point, it's like, if you've got 50 grand in your HSA and the market's up 10% this year, you know, that's $5,000 of free healthcare. Plus you're already putting, you know, if you're maxing out the HSA, that's another $8,500 that's going in. So that $8,000 is spent regardless, right? Whether you're going to spend it on healthcare or you're going to save it, like that's in your budget, right? You're saying, okay, I've got this money set aside for healthcare. So it's like that 8,500 bucks, if you're maxing it out. And if, if you have 50 grand and the market goes up another five, like you have $13,000 to spend on healthcare this year before you get into the 50 or you get into your cash

• 44:05Speaker 03

  flow or you get into, you know, so when you have the ability to save money, friggin' save it. Like this is a lesson that, you know, her story is, um, you know, is drumming home, right? It's like, I was able to save money, max out my kids, or not max it out, but like really front load my kids 529. That's done. 70 grand for a four-year-old? You're good, bro.

• 44:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're good.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  We're gonna do-

• 44:32Speaker 03

  We're not gonna have to worry about money no more. I'm vested in a fruit company. Mama said, we don't have to worry about money no more. You good.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  We're going to do two things for you, Kat. Number one, we're going to handle this from a financial planner standpoint first. And then we're also going to ask attorney Tim Semerall about this one as well. But let's dive into this, Anna.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  Tim's in Ireland. How are you asking Tim?

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Magically. We're going to click our heels together three times. We're not asking today. I'm saying on our big week coming up where we're going to do contracts.

• 45:04Speaker 03

  I see.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  So we're going to talk to him on our annual estate planning-

• 45:08Speaker 03

  Who decided to invite him back?

• 45:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  Tim just like popped in.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Wouldn't that be great? From Ireland, live from Ireland right now. No, not today, but we will answer it today from a financial planning perspective. So there is a lot that she needs to be aware of, Anna.

• 45:25Speaker 04

  There is a lot. And as a mom of a kid who also has some medical stuff going on too, we have a good amount of, our family has a good amount of experience with navigating this life. And so I understand where you are right now. Like it is a lot to take in, a lot to process. And one of the biggest things, this is not a question that you had, but something that I would encourage you to start doing if you haven't already is like talking to the clinic that you're going to be working with, who specializes in this. And talking to their social worker, they should have a social worker who can help you with a lot of the financial stuff. And these social workers have seen everything and they know your state specifically.

• 46:10Speaker 04

  And the state that I'm in has the genetic condition that my child has. It qualifies that condition to children and adults with it, get access to Medicaid. So from a financial aspect, all of our medical decisions do not revolve around money. And, you know, if we go down this route and get this procedure done or this medication done, like we don't think about any of that ever. So maybe that's something that you should look into with your baby. And if you guys aren't tied to that state, finding, I know a lot of people in our community move to states that have access to, especially where I live, like we're really close to state borders. And so people who live in one state might come over to our state just so that they can

• 46:53Speaker 04

  get access to this and then their child gets access to these super expensive medications and treatments and all of that kind of stuff. So that's one big thing that I think a lot of people who are first navigating this are starting to figure out is like, what, what kind of financial resources do we have for the actual medical treatments of my kid? So those social workers are really, really great. The other piece of this is, do we want to talk about like special needs trust and able accounts and all that?

• 47:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was thinking, maybe we talk able accounts first.

• 47:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Because this is a big thing that I think a lot of people also don't know about is a resource.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, so an able account is, you can think of it similarly to a 529, but there's a lot more flexibility in what you can use it for. You can use it for anything that's going to support your child and their development. So if they need housing, if they need, like this could be something that you're saving for now so that when you are older and you want them to start exploring independent living and things like that, they have this financial resource that they can tap into and it shouldn't affect their other government support. So that's the big thing with special needs trusts and able accounts is these accounts

• 48:16Speaker 04

  are put in place so that if they're getting disability income, if they're getting Medicaid, any sort of government support around them because of their diagnosis, you can put these accounts in place so that the government can't actually look at that and say, oh, you're disqualified because of this account or because of these assets that you have.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  Really important to understand how that works and to look into that because that's a huge relief when people understand able accounts, Anna, to be able to use that and put that in place. When you've looked at special needs trusts though with people, what are some of the considerations she should be talking to her attorney about?

• 48:56Speaker 04

  Since you already have a revocable trust in place, now your attorney's going to be able to tell you exactly what you should be doing. But more than likely, you're going to layer like a special needs trust on top of the existing revocable trust. And then there's two ways that they're going to basically activate this special needs trust. It might be activated now and it's sitting as an actual trust today, or it might be activated upon you and your spouse's passing so that that child, their proceeds from their inheritance sit into that special needs trust as opposed to sitting in a revocable trust where it's then going to be distributed out to them where it's going to impact again all of these other government supports.

• 49:42Speaker 04

  So really, the big thing with the special needs trust is having them explain to you like how all of this is going to work. Number one, if your child does not have any sort of government support, they don't have to activate the special needs trust upon your passing. They'll make that decision to say, is this going to be beneficial for them if we utilize this? Because you don't have to utilize it in that moment. And then what is it protecting them from? So if we do activate this, we put money in here, what are they going to be protected from? From their benefits, like past benefits, future benefits, all of that? How is this going to protect them in that moment? So it's really just understanding that picture for the child.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  I think an important piece just of a trust, and I think becomes even more important, Anna, is just thinking about the people that are going to be involved if you can't be there. And maybe that changes. Somebody that is great with one child may not be great with another child. And having a child with special needs may mean that you change who the custodian of your children would be.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  And changing, like, this also flows into guardianship, too. Like, maybe if you did have two neurotypical children, like, you would pick your sister. But in this situation, there's more complexity, and there's more time that's needed and more support. And the other thing I thought about with this question was insurance needs. Calculating insurance needs is a little bit different with you than it would be with another family. So that's another thing to think about, like, what does this child need in terms of support? And what kind of life do you? And that's going to change as you see how they develop and they grow up. And so it's just kind of like relooking at this picture over and over again, as they change, and figuring out what, what needs they need.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  I think that that's where I would begin is just what do you want to have happen? If you're not there, what would you like to make sure happens? And to your point earlier about flexibility, what do I want to make sure doesn't happen, right? That's, that's the other, what do I want to guard against? Kat, thank you so much for the call. I'd love to hear how it goes with the attorney as well, if you would like to call back and tell us how that meeting was. Was it a smooth meeting? Was it a bumpy meeting? Were there things you should have known that you didn't know? Were there questions that you should have asked? I would love to hear about that. Stackyourbenjamins.com/ yelledownsstairs for any of the people that called in today, or anybody, if any of you have questions for us. We're going to be doing these a little bit more often in the

• 52:12Speaker 00

  fall, as we've got some juggling going on. It's a great time for us to help you, so you can help us make some shows, and at the same time, we can answer a lot of your questions this fall.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  This is Rebecca from Connecticut. Instead of stacking Hamiltons and Jacksons, I'd much rather be stacking Benjamins. It is Financial Action Month here. You know, we have Financial Literacy Month, but what is learning worth if you don't put it into action? So here in Mom's Basement, we're all about action and making sure we do the right things. And if you're not yet playing our Stacko Bingo game, head to stackyourbenjamins.com/stacko and download your bingo game. And let's see if you can fill up your bingo card with some great actions. And last week, oh gee, you talked about the subscriptions box. Anna, you've got our Stacko board in front of you. Which one we going to help our stackers do today?

• 53:10Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm choosing meal plan and shop with a list.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 53:17Speaker 04

  As a mama who's meal planning every three days, it feels like.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Wait a minute, are those two different boxes? I don't have it open.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  No.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  I should have it open.

• 53:24Speaker 04

  It's number, it's number 22, meal plan and shop with a list.

• 53:28Speaker 00

  Yep, I got it here now. Okay. Well, let's talk about meal planning. How do you meal plan?

• 53:33Speaker 04

  I'm sure, like, everyone who's listening uses Pinterest or Google just to search different meal ideas. I also have like a list of just basic meals that are super, super easy, like your BLTs. I have another, like, egg roll in a bowl one. That's just so, like, you know, it's just those simple ones. You got to add those in. I also use chat, and I have a specific project within chat. You know, in the instructions, it says, I need to make a dinner in under 30 minutes, like, under 20 minutes, really. This is what my daughter likes. This is what I like to try to feed her. If you can try to incorporate that into the meals. I don't like raw red onions. Like, it has those kinds of things in it, like, specific stuff, so that when it gives me a recipe, I'm not having to read through it to be like, is this going to include stuff that we don't really

• 54:18Speaker 04

  eat? It saves me so much time. So that's what I've been doing recently on top of my, you know, Pinterest board or whatever. It makes it so much quicker, and I'm in and out of the store pretty quick.

• 54:32Speaker 00

  Ever since we interviewed Brian Suddith, what, a year and a half ago, he's Mr. Anti-Food Waste. They got down to the point that they saved, that they only threw away, I believe, a dollar and 85 cents worth of food one year. Like,

• 54:47Speaker 04

  That's really impressive.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  I know. They ate everything in the fridge. Cheryl and I are not that militant, but I love meal planning from that standpoint, too. Like, what's in my fridge that's going to go bad if I don't use it today? And how do I round out that meal to make sure that I don't have much food waste? And I'll tell you, the amount of money we spent on groceries has gone down by a full 20% because of the fact that we're just eating everything that's in the fridge.

• 55:14Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think the other thing is, don't be afraid to try out a grocery store that might be like a discount one. I grew up going to one grocery store and always did that. And everything is expensive there, because it's a really nice experience. And my husband encouraged me to go to this other grocery store. You have to put a quarter in to get your cart. You got to bring your own bag. Yeah, I didn't want to shout him out, but

• 55:37Speaker 00

  That's fine.

• 55:38Speaker 04

  Free, free advertising.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  We've got an Aldi here. I never went to one. We had one, Doug, when I lived by you in Detroit. We had one there. I never went. I never went. People would call, it would tell us about Aldi all the time. I never went. We got one here. I went immediately. That place is awesome.

• 55:53Speaker 04

  It's amazing, not just for the savings, but the time savings. You are in and out of that store in 13 minutes. Like, it is so quick. You don't have options. So you might need to stop at the other store, but

• 56:07Speaker 03

  Well, we were going to have burger, but I guess we're having pork loin.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  You got to be flexible, okay?

• 56:13Speaker 03

  No carrots, parsnips, though, so we're going to go with that.

• 56:17Speaker 04

  It's not that bad. It's not that bad.

• 56:19Speaker 00

  They call it hamburger helper, but it works fine on its own, Clark.

• 56:22Speaker 04

  It's just if you need the fire roasted tomatoes, you ain't getting that at Aldi. You know what I mean? But you're going to get like,

• 56:29Speaker 00

  But it depends. You're, you're rolling the dice on what discounted products they have that week.

• 56:35Speaker 04

  But don't be afraid to try it, because I did. And for the last couple of years, we've been going there, and it's amazing.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  My friend Mike, who knows that from time to time, you'll have people over there. Heck, they're the people in our, in our community that have a swimming pool. And as you know, OG, as the people with the swimming pool, like, you got to have people knocking on your door going, hey. And so Mike always has people over with the swimming pool in Texas.

• 56:58Speaker 05

  Do you really think OG has a lot of just pop in visitors? Do you think he's giving out that warm vibe, like, yeah, everybody's welcome? Sure, come on over and hang out in my pool?

• 57:08Speaker 00

  With that swimming pool of his? If I was his neighbor, I'd be there whether he wanted me or not. Like, I would be knocking on his door constantly. But just a beautiful pool at the OG residence. So anyway, so Mike at Aldi has made a list of wines, Anna, like, the wines that don't suck for $7 at Aldi.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  Our Aldi doesn't sell alcohol. I didn't even know that they did that. That's cool.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Not the wines that are good, because you're not going to find that at Aldi, but the wines that if you have friends over and it's just a random Friday night, you're out by the pool, like, how can we make this not break the bank and be a lot of fun? So

• 57:43Speaker 05

  Anna, they're in Texas. There's no rules there.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  No.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 57:46Speaker 04

  We're much more restricted in the north.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  The other thing we started doing, too, and I don't know if you do this, Anna, but spices, like our spice rack, and we'll buy these different spices or different vinegars and stuff, like, I'll put that into ChatGPT. I'm like, what goes well so I can use this, so it doesn't sit and go bad?

• 58:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, we do that. I've been doing that with my sauces, too. Like, all of a sudden, I have these, like, chicken tikka masala sauces. And I'm like, all right, what do you want me to do with this? Or like, some Thai sauce? And I'll do the same thing with chat. I'm like, send a picture and give me a recipe for this.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  OG, you and I talked about this. We did the Clean Out the Freezer Challenge just over a year ago. I thought that was going to be like, maybe three weeks. It took us a good two months of cleaning out the freeze, all the different things in the freezer before we went and bought new meats. I was surprised by that. I got to do that one again, because that's starting to add up. All right, there, we helped you fill in another square stackers. How did you do on that one? And if you want to share what squares you're working on, go to our Facebook group, The Basement, and share. Stackyourbenjamins.com/basement is the quick way to get there, or just put Stack Your Benjamins Basement into your Facebook browser, and you'll find us. Big thanks to everybody who called in today. Thank you for helping us make today's show. And thanks for the

• 59:05Speaker 00

  great questions, just nice, diverse questions, and showing our stackers doing a lot of cool things. And all over the world, Kyle and his family overseas, didn't say where they are, but people listen to the Stack Your Benjamin Show in 48 different countries, and Kyle and his family's in one of those. If you know somebody that has any of those issues that we talked about today, please pass this on to them. I've got a bunch of books that I need to get off the shelves here, so I don't want you to give us a review in exchange for a book. But if you do give us a review, please write to me and tell me that you reviewed our show, and help me get some books off my shelf. Because as people send me books, either trying to be on the show, or people that,

• 59:49Speaker 00

  that we've had on as mentors on the show that have sent me books to prep for the show, I'd be happy to help you increase your financial literacy as well for you and in your community. Read the book, pass it around. Just send that to me, [email protected]. All right, we're going to turn this over to Doug. Doug, what should be on our list of takeaways after today's show?

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  Well, Joe, I struggled today a little bit. I was kind of down after today, listening through today's episode of questions. I struggled to come up with the top three things, because it just, I mean, yeah, the questions that our listeners asked were good questions, but it was the way they asked them I didn't love, Joe.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Why is that, Doug?

• 1:00:30Speaker 05

  Because every single one of them said, hey, Joe and OG. And not a single one of them said, hey, Joe, OG, and Doug, or my question is for Doug. There's no Doug mentioned anywhere. Like, I'm just not even here. So why should I even give, like, the top three things we talked about?

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  They didn't say Anna either.

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  Also a crime.

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  By the way, thanks to Anna before we say goodbye. Thank you so much, Anna, for hanging out with us today again.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm happy to be here. It's okay if they don't give me any recognition. I get it.

• 1:00:59Speaker 05

  Would it kill them to say Joe and Anna and Doug and maybe OG? Would that be so hard? Little love for Anna and Doug, a little bit.

• 1:01:08Speaker 04

  Doug, you need to take a walk, take a lap.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Wow. Yeah.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Would you like Anna to read the, what should we have done today?

• 1:01:17Speaker 05

  Let's see what Anna's got for the top three things we should have learned today.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  That's not my job.

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  She just gets to speak off the top of her head. She has all that knowledge she's got shoved in there.

• 1:01:28Speaker 05

  All right, here we go. Well, Joe first, take some advice from our answers today to your questions that never mentioned Anna or Doug. That 401k at work, maybe there are advantages just to using the workplace plan. And more good news, there's little need to get fancy about how you use it. Second, special needs? Yeah, those deserve special treatment. Look into special needs trusts and ABLE accounts early, as Kat is, and you'll tsunami your way toward better Benjamin stacking and preservation. But the big lesson?

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  Don't propose to Joe's mom that you start your own Doug-sonian. First, I don't think laughing should have been on the card of acceptable answers, mom. And B, she apparently won't be investing in the infrastructure required anytime soon, according to her strongly worded certified letter she sent me.

• 1:02:27Speaker 05

  First off, sure, Kat, I'll grant you that trademark on tsunami savings. And yes, I have the authority. You can pay me the $50 filing fee on your way out.

• 1:02:38Speaker 05

  Thanks to Shane, Kyle, and Kat, and everyone else for submitting questions. Want to help us create a future show? Head to stackingbenjamins.com/ yelldownsstairs and leave your own question for the show. We'll be happy to help and you'll help us make a show. There's a win-win. And thanks to Anna Alum for hanging out with us today to answer your questions. Want to learn more about Anna and OG, they're taking clients, head to stackingbenjamins.com/OG for their 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

• 1:03:21Speaker 05

  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.