5 Exercises To Improve Your Money Life with Suzanne Lucas (REWIND) ep 1406

I just learned to discover credit cards, do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cashback that you've earned. That's right, everything you earned doubled. All the cashback from eating your favorite soup dumpling restaurant? Doubled. All the cashback from the trip where you is, or to learn to snowboard? Also doubled. And the best part, you don't have to do anything ridiculous to get it. Nope, discover does it automatically. Seriously, though, see terms and check it out for yourself at Discover.com slash match. Hey, there's tackers. It's me, Joe Salcihi. And this is normally our rewind greatest hits week. And we didn't do that on Monday. We didn't do that on Wednesday. But you know what? We are going to do it today. We have an episode from three years ago that is so evergreen. This is from August 21st, 2020. And you know why I want to replay this one? It's because of the fact that going into the fall, it's time people are restarting the exercise regime. We're restarting our financial calendar. In fact, it's funny. This time of year, back when I was a financial planner, was the time when my business would really pick up. People are thinking about improving their money life. And we have a frequent contributor who appears on this episode. Suzanne Lucas joins us to also talk about some HR goodness. Our special guest on this episode is our friend, Natalie Torres Haddad. She is amazing. She co-hosted the Plutus Awards with me a couple of years ago. And it was so fun getting to work with Natalie. And it was a great time with Natalie, Paula Pan and our own OG recording this episode. So remember, this is from August 21st, 2020. So if we talk about any current events, we talk about any giveaways. Those are long, long over. But besides that, it's going to be a phenomenal ride down greatest it's memory lane. So let's hit the play button. Here we go. What? You did it. Congratulations. World's best cup of coffee. Great job, everybody. It's great to meet you. Hi. Come over here, boy. Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the Stacking Benjamin Show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and you've been through leg day, arm day, and cardio. And now it's time for exercises to make your money grow. To help you grow your stack. Today we welcome the financially savvy Latina herself. It's Natalie Torres Hadadad, and you may have heard of him before. The guy who lives by the phrase, suns out, guns out, it's, oh, you've got to be kidding me. Did you write this yourself? That is ridiculous, OG. Anyway, you may have heard of him before. And finally, the guy building the biggest financial doom and gloom empire on earth from Len Penzo.com, it's Len Penzo. And if that's not enough, how about growing your vacations? The evil HR lady, Suzanne Lucas is back with some fantastic advice on how to think about your co-workers vacations and your own. Plus, we'll magnify Kelvin's money who wants to find a way to get over the mental hurdle to enjoy his money more today. And of course, I'll delight you with some of my incredible trivia. And now, the guy whose definition of arm day involves lifting one pint at a time, it's Joe Salciha. Well, now that I'm here in Vermont, it's more like three pints at a time. Hey there, everybody. Welcome to Friday. I am Joe Salciha. Hi, I'm Joe Money on Twitter, and we have a fantastic end of the week for you today. First of all, because sitting across the table from me, as usual, it's my friend OG. It's a long, long drive over here to the Vermont basement every week, just so you know. Yeah, but you got to love it, though. All the beer. Come on. Six, 16 ounce curls. This brewery right around the corner, the alchemist has this beer called Hophead, which everybody says is the quote, greatest beer on earth. Oh, boy. I have to ask you, how can I not try it? Right? Oh, greatest beer on earth. I'll pass. No, thank you. So it's like the world's greatest cup of coffee for mouth. I don't remember it. You don't remember that scene where he takes, he takes the date to the place as the world's greatest cup of coffee and he blindfolds her and she says, he says, what do you think? And she says, it tastes like a crappy cup of coffee. He says, no, it's the world's greatest coffee. Is that was the marketing slogan or whatever? Because he just believes whatever he reads. Yeah. Well, we'll see about the alchemist. And here are deep under Los Angeles, the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Sandwich survey himself, Mr. Len Penzo. How are you, Joe? I'm doing great. I love it here in Vermont. It's a nice place this time of year. Have you been here before? Oh, yes. I happened to Vermont. Let's see. What are we at here? We're pushing September, aren't we? It's almost there. So leaves should, color should be changing here very soon, isn't that crazy to think? It's 100 degrees as if you can Texas. There's no, there is no like leaf changing ever. It's, yeah, same where I live. Alive and dead. Brown gone. It's exactly. Well, we have droughts here in LA, so it's like always brown. Well, there you go. Wait a minute. You can't go yet. We haven't introduced you yet, Natalie. Hold on. She's so excited. But I do have to say that Ethan Allen, we went to Ethan Allen's house, the great American Patriot and the historian said, it's going to say that's a furniture store, right? I tried to stay out of Ethan Allen. Mochot and arrow. Goal now is to stay out of there, right? The goal then was to have Ethan Allen is your buddy, because man at Fort Ticonder, Roga, that guy and the Green Mountain men were fantastic, but Ethan Allen flexing all your American history knowledge that you just learned 45 minutes ago. Oh, I did that. Hey, I've known that there's no way you knew that more than a week ago off me. I'm just brilliant with the American history. But the historian said he goes, he goes, you know, way back then the growing season was short, because winner was only about 11 and a half months here in Vermont. Yeah. Exactly. And here, the woman jumping the gun, she wouldn't even let us introduce her from the well, she's not from. She is the financially savvy Latina herself, Natalie Torres Hadad joins us. Well, thank you for having me. I'm just super excited. Of course. How are you guys? She's like, I finally get to talk, because one thing we do know about Natalie, I've known Natalie for a while. She doesn't like to talk at all. Not at all. That's such a trait right now. You talk to lots of groups of young people, well, not just young people, to all kinds of different people and teach them to do better with their money. Yeah, absolutely. Mostly college grads and early 40s, so yeah, it's interesting. And yes, definitely. I'd like to talk and, hey, if I get paid to talk, why not? I know, right? How great is that? And you also have joined us in the past. How long has the podcast been around now about a year, 18 months maybe? Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. That's almost been two years. Yeah. Tell everybody about the show. The show is basically talking about financial literacy and being able to connect people with what you do after college, balancing money and trying to balance your life. And I get to talk to a lot of self-made millionaires, so that always helps, and yeah, it's a lot of fun. Well, the cool thing about your show, which is called Financially Savvy in 20 Minutes, is that it is the antithesis of this show. It actually is 20 minutes long. Right. You know, they say millennials, Jannex, they want the short stuff. They want to grow. We always set out for 20 minutes and it ends up 70, Natalie. So, so here we go on that note, by the way, we got a fantastic show today, guys. We got Natalie here. We've got Len here. We've got OG. We're going to talk about exercises for your money. Everybody's not exercising all day long. How about exercising some good habits? We'll jump on that right now. I just learned to discover credit cards. Do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cashback that you've earned. That's right. Everything you earned doubled. All the cashback from eating your favorite soup dumpling restaurant doubled. All the cashback from the trip where you is, so we're going to learn to snowboard. Also doubled. And the best part, you don't have to do anything ridiculous to get it. Nope, discover does it automatically. Seriously, though, see terms and check it out for yourself at discover.com slash match. Did you know that discover is more than a credit card with discovers online savings account? You can earn five times more interest than the national savings average. Five times. There's no monthly fees, no minimum deposit, no monthly balance requirements. It's FDIC insured up to the maximum allowed by law. Learn more at discover.com and start saving with confidence today. Discover bank member FDIC. All right, our headline today comes from the Beyond Your Hammock blog. It's written by Eric Robayers. And you know what? Kaley Robayers is going to read it for us today. Eric and Kaley make up the Beyond Your Hammock financial planning team. And also they have a fantastic podcast. But here to read today's piece, Kaley Robayers. Improve your finances. Five exercises to use to build better money habits. Wouldn't it be nice to finally be someone that other people look at and say, wow, you really are great with money. I'm impressed. Do you constantly find yourself wishing you had better money habits? But you just can't seem to change your day-to-day actions. Here's the good news. You can absolutely transform your current habits and become that person. People aren't inherently good or bad with money. But we do have good and bad habits around our finances. And this is what usually makes a difference between someone who seems to manage money well and someone who tends to consistently struggle. Instead of feeling like you have to change who you are or beating yourself up for what you feel are weaknesses or shortcomings, you can simply focus on building better money habits. Good money habits do take time and effort to build and it's not necessarily easy to change your behavior, but it is possible. So if you're interested in learning how to build better money habits in 2020, try some of these activities and exercises that can help you improve how you handle your money and run your financial life. Number one, honestly assess your recent transactions. It's really hard to build better money habits when the necessary actions to do seem like no fun at all. Take budgeting, for example, or spending less. Budging is a way of tracking and managing your money and can help with achieving the goal of spending less. But most people associate these two habits with being deprived, losing out on something, are not getting enough of what they want. If you feel that way about a habit, there's no much motivation there to develop it. That's why we often share this exercise with clients to help them mindfully manage their money without feeling deprived or like they can't spend all what they want. Here's how to do it. Pull up your bank credit card transactions from the last three months and go through every single line item. Then highlight and green all the spending that you value or that makes you feel good. Highlight and yellow things that you somewhat value, but you don't feel extremely excited about. Then highlight and read anything that looking back at it leaves you feeling a little negative or regretful. Now identify all the purchases that you highlighted in red. These are the things to stop spending on immediately since they don't bring you value or might have been things that you regret buying. It's an easy way to eliminate what isn't worth the cost. Next take a look at what you highlighted in yellow. These transactions are a little harder to grapple with because they might be important to you, but they're probably not the most important line items in your spending. This is why doing this exercise every three to six months can help you get a better understanding of not just your spending habits, but where and how you spend that makes you happy or fulfilled. As you do this consistently, you might get more clarity on what items in the yellow category could be pushed down into the red and you might also solidify your understanding of what your priorities are, which can help you make better money decisions moving forward. Finally, doing this even once is a great way to bring more awareness to your spending and awareness is a key step in building better money habits. Number two, don't try and willpower your way to success. There are a lot of areas in life that require discipline in order to reach a cycle or accomplishment. Building better money habits is certainly one such area. The people who do succeed in establishing new and approved habits are not necessarily the ones who resist the temptations that would cause them to veer off course. The people who are most disciplined tend to be the same people who simply don't have as many distractions or temptations to deal with along the way. It's not that they're better at turning down a dessert when they're trying to lose weight. It's that they don't put themselves in a situation to say no dessert in the first place. Maybe by not buying ice cream to keep them a freezer, for example, so there's nothing to tempt them. It's not that they're better at forcing themselves to get through a hard workout at 5 a.m. when they're trying to get stronger. It's that they remove as much friction from the process of they get up and go to the gym as possible and automate what they can. Maybe by laying out their gym clothes the night before or even sleeping in their gym clothes they can literally get up and just go before they have to think about it. It's not that they're better at naturally spending less and saving more, either. It's that they are not frequently in a position of having to turn down impulsive buys or say no to things they would really like in the moment. Perhaps by unsubscribing to retail email newsletters and unfollowing social media influencers who often post about products. We tend to think we can just will our way through hard things, but the reality is that willpower only gets us so far because everyone has a limited amount of it, and you can exhaust yours. Instead of relying on willpower try to engineer your environment, your schedule, and your routine so they don't have to engage directly with so many distractions that can lead you astray. It's not about learning to say no more or somehow push yourself to work harder, although a little bit of that can be helpful. It's more about not putting yourself in that position in the first place. 3. Make better money habits visible and hard to forget We usually keep our gym shoes by the hot organizer in our entryway. Why? Because we see them every time we walk out the door and it reminds us of our goal to incorporate a lot of movement into our lives. Whether that's a gym workout or an hour skating at the local ice rink, taking a really long walk or a hike, doing some active yoga, some stretching, we have a visual cue to remind us that we want to maintain an exercise habit. You can do the same thing to help build better money habits. Provide yourself with a visual cue that either reminds you of your goals or your intentions, or makes it really hard to forget the habit you want it to build. For us, the biggest visual cue is a shared budget that we maintain in Google Sheets. We like to track our spending manually and we log every purchase that we make when we make it. That might sound tedious and it does take some time and effort, but the payoff is that we both frequently consistently look at our budget and our spending in real time. We're very much aware of how much we've spent, what we've bought, and how much money is left to use throughout the month. It's a visual cue that helps us think more critically about our money decisions and supports our efforts to spend in a way that aligns our values and our goals. Here are some other ideas of what you might do to make the money habit you want to build, more visual and easier to remember. Get a piece of paper and write down the goal you're currently working on, and how much you need to save on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to achieve it. Stick it somewhere you can see it. Bonus points if it's in a place that could prevent you from engaging in a bad habit instead of the actions that will help you accomplish what you want. For example, you might stick your note on your computer screen, so you can see it when you're tempted to do some online shopping. Or you could fold the note into your purse or wallet so that every time you take out your credit card, you're reminded of what you're working toward. If you're more visual, find an image that represents what you want instead of writing out the numbers. You can even make a complete vision board to capture all the details of the things that you want to accomplish and how you're going to get there. Number four, go through a no-spend week or month. This is a good exercise to try as a pattern interrupt. If you don't actually think twice about your daily spending, try not spending anything at all. Do it for a day, then a week. See how many days in a row you cannot spend. If you want to take it to the next level, see if you can go for an entire month without spending on anything. Beyond the essentials are your fixed expenses like bills, mortgage or rent and groceries. While some people take this to an extreme and do hardcore no-spend weeks for the exclusive purpose of saving as much money as possible, I think the most important thing here is the idea of breaking the mindless habit, which is spending whenever and whatever you want, and replacing it with a more conscientious decision making around how and why you part with your hard earned dollars. A no-spend week or alternatives like shopping bands on certain items or categories of goods is a good way to practice planning, discipline, mindfulness and commitment to a goal, which are all necessary ingredients to building better money habits in general. Number five, automate it. The reason so many people struggle with building better money habits or any kind of behavior change, even when the change tends to lead to beneficial or positive results, is because we're human. We're not perfect. We don't live like robots. We're making completely rational best for us decisions every second of every day is not realistic. Often that's because we're asked to choose what's best for us on a broad overall long-term scale, but we have to choose that in the moment when we'd really much rather prefer something that's best for us right that second. That's why we choose to sleep in rather than get up and early and exercise, or why we select the cheeseburger over the salad, or why we spend what we want now, rather than saving for the lifestyle we want in the future. Real decisions are hard to make in moment-to-moment situations, which often prevents us from building better money habits that we say we want. Knowing this, there's a pretty straightforward solution, make less decisions, automate instead. Any time you can pre-commit to an action, like having 401k contributions automatically withheld from your paycheck, or automated decision, like putting a thousand dollars per month into your long-term savings or investment account, be an automated transfer that goes through after your direct deposit hits, you may get much easier to stick to the beneficial habit that you want to maintain. Look for ways to build an automation into your financial life. So the burden isn't 100% on you to make great decisions 24-7. Hey, guys. I want to dive into these individually, but before we do that, by the way, big thanks to Kelly Roberge for joining us. Kelly and her husband, Eric Run, a heck of a practice. You can find their blog, by the way, at beyond your hammock.com. You'll also find their podcast where they sit and talk about all things finance on the same place where you're listening to this one, and it's called Beyond Finances. So you'll find Kelly and Eric over there. We'll link to them in the show notes page at StackingBedgments.com. But let's start off with these. Let's take them in order. Honestly, assess your recent transactions. I don't know about you guys. I've done this before. And actually, I think Natalie, we'll start with you. Have you ever gone through like your recent transactions and just written them all down or gone through and looked at them line by line and said, why the hell did I do that? Why did I do that? Why did I do that? Yeah, that's like every month. I actually don't write them down. I go through my actual statements to like my credit card statement, and I have two different pen colors. So I highlight what it's for. Like if it's food, take out, which are my big expenses, especially in LA, everything's like deliverable postmates. So that's a big one. And so every month, I'm like, oh, we're going to cut down. We're going to spend less. And I think that's the hard part. But yeah, I think that's really helpful to be able to see it every single month because then you can really track what your habits are really. And for us, it's dinner. We hate cooking dinner. Or it just takes time. And even now with the COVID, it's like, this is something that we still have to work on. But I think it's necessary to see it and monthly, if possible. Yeah, I want to ask you about that exercise. Do you try to do that the first day of every month or maybe the first Saturday of every month? Is there a set schedule? No, not a set schedule, per se, but I do it twice a month. So I do it halfway through. And then when I get my bill statement, so I keep an eye on my statements anyways online. But I actually get the hard copy when I'm paying my bill. So I have to make sure because vendors make mistake all the time. Sometimes there's, you know, they're over tipping or, you know, I always check my receipts. So twice a month, I think is more than, than doable for most people. For me, it is. And it just, one, I just don't want to be identity theft or be stuck in, you know, having someone pay for their meal. So, yeah, just kind of, I call it setting a date with myself. But that's great. And if you found it, change your habits. Oh, absolutely. It was actually scary the first few times doing it. I tell people, it kind of gets a little easier. But I also know, like, the summers used to be our really expensive months because we're out and about making traveling and doing things. And right now, it's been a little bit different, obviously, with everything that's going on. But I always tell people, like, brace yourself the first few times and be like, why am I doing this? Right? It's important to be able to go through those statements. And especially if you're married, too, if you have other people that live with you because you start to see, oh my gosh, they're spending more on these days or, you know, maybe they prefer lunch over dinner or maybe they're buying those extra drinks that, hey, we just have water at home. It's cheaper. So, yeah, it's a little scary sometimes. Does that cause fights, though? A little bit, but not really because, well, on my, on our experience, like, I like to cook, but right now with my lovely broken hand wrist, I can't do that. So it's kind of like a nice treat for ourselves, but we also have to be honest with ourselves and say, you know, we have to budget. So there's at least one or two meals for sure. Like breakfast, we always have at home. So we know we're not spending there. But in the beginning, it was kind of like us talking to each other, saying, we need to come back on some of these meals because it does add up. Yeah. I know you go through the credit card statement regularly because I get texts from you going, man, why did you spend money on this? It's weird because I only go through your credit card receipts and never go through any of mine. So, so, you know, just trying to be a good steward of the, uh, all the podcast revenue that we get. If you look at your, uh, spending, and I'm a big believer of, you know, just kind of trying to save what you need to save and then being okay, we're spending the rest, like if you can accomplish that goal, then it really doesn't matter. But if you're looking at your budget and you say, oh, my budget's $3,000 a month. And then this month, you go, but this month was four because we had this one thing. And then next month, you go, but this month, it was four because we had this one thing. This one, this month, it was four because we had this one thing. Guess what? Your budget is in 3000. It's 4,000. You just have a whole bunch of $1,000 extras. And it's okay to have, you know, the month or, you know, the couple of week period where you got a little crazy holiday season or whatever. But if it happens over and over and over again, you just have to recognize that's not a one off. That is just how you are now. I think a lot of times people look at their spending from the standpoint of like, was it some recurring stuff? Well, my water bills, this, my electric bills, that H.C. is this or whatever. But then don't count for the fact that every so often I'm going to spend $5,000 on vacation. Well, guess what? That's $400 a month. That's a budget item. It's like, well, once in a while now you do it every year. It's a budget item. You have to kind of count all of that stuff. Yeah. And this is a key 2oG that people might be listening to this and they hear Natalie talk about tracking expenses and they go, well, I do that too. That's a budget. That's not a budget. That's just what you did. What you did in a budget or two, I mean, don't get me wrong. They're both important. But this is not a budget that Eric's talking about. Yeah. If you have a plan that you have for the day, then reconciling that is the activity that he's talking about here, which is going through and saying, did your budget match the outcome? And sometimes that's not true. Len, I wanted to come to you last on purpose because, and if you noticed, I did this in order of age, but the reason, the reason isn't so I can get an old guy, a lens story. It's because from conversations you and I have had in the past, you've done really well with your money. And I think part of it was that you used to do this. I'm fairly certain that you don't do this anymore, but I think you used to do this all the time. Yeah. Correct. I don't do it anymore. I don't need to. But what I used to do in the beginning, what I was evaluating, because I really didn't I'll be honest with you. There was very few things I paid for when I was younger that I didn't feel regretful for. I was very careful with my money, but what I did monitor for was was I saving enough. So when I first started out and I was earning money, I wasn't putting in the max to my 401K and I wasn't saving enough for our saving as much as I do now, no, I'm maxed out on everything. I mean, every last penny that's that I can, I still put towards my retirement. But back when I was younger, I didn't, I was because I didn't make as much money. So I would go through, I would review what I was spending and I was saying, did I really need that? Is there somewhere I could cut and live with putting more towards my future retirement instead of taking, you know, instead of going out for that extra meal that month, maybe instead of two meals a month out at a restaurant, I would do one meal a month or, you know, in fact, then it was actually going to the bar and drinking, right? And hanging out, right? So maybe cut my bar tab by half every weekend or something like that. That's what I was evaluating for. I really didn't have anything I ever felt regretful for. I was just, but I was measuring against, hey, could I be saving more? And if I could, would this be an area where I could pull from here and put in towards savings? Yeah, Natalie, you're nodding. Yeah, I, unfortunately, I've had many regrets. And I think it's, and I think it's maybe starting out, kind of like in college and right out of college, it was like the norm to socialize at networking event, especially if you wanted to move up at work. And so I, there's moments where I'm like, why is happy hour so expensive or why was, you know, he just said, I like, I'll have to look at my tab. And it's kind of like you feel like you're forced to socialize because he knows it for, for your work. But yeah, those are some of the regrets I'm, fortunately, I've had too many. Man, I would remember those days, though, and I was first on my own. And I'm like, okay, either the bar's got to go or the restaurant. I'm like, okay, looks like the restaurant's gone because I got to keep going to the bar. But if I could find a bar that had popcorn or had, you know, back then would have peanuts. Hey, that's fantastic. I get all my, all my basic food groups, the, the barley, the hops and the peanuts. Second on here, it's, it's funny because Eric has this as an exercise. But I think this is more like the anti exercise. I remember when I first went into running doing some stretches and then finding out later from professional trainers going, yeah, that's just, you're, you're really just stretching out ligaments. You're not, there's no, there's no muscle being worked out there. So don't do this. So when he says, don't try to willpower your way to success. I think too often, Natalie, people think, hey, I can just muscle through this. And he's saying, there's no way you can just muscle through it. You have to have systems. Absolutely. I think that's one of the hardest part is getting past that denial of it, right? It's kind of that I could do it all on my own. It's like, no, I have to enlist some of my friends. I have to enlist those people and I'm probably spending more money with. And I think it's kind of that whole, you're implementing something completely new, right? So, yeah, yeah, I think that's kind of a, a difficult thing not to say. Because you talk about that, Len, kind of about, in some ways, I think when I read your blog, I think that you talk about the importance of willpower, but really, it often comes down to logic much more than willpower that you're talking about. Yeah, it's knowing where you're at and in knowing adjusting to reach a goal that you're looking for, right? Because let's think about it. Probably half of everybody out there, there's no way they could probably willpower because they're just naturally, they're just natural spenders. They don't have that natural desire to put controls on themselves so much. So yes, that willpower can be guided as discipline. It's just discipline, you know, know your income, know your out go, know where you're spending your money and then figure out, you know, where you have to cut to stay within your, live within your means. And of course that also includes part of that spending includes your savings, right? So no, you know, you have to set that aside too. So you're right. It's knowing where you're at and that overpowers the willpower. Yeah, having an actual dashboard, it sounds like, yep, yeah. Oh, gee, I want to go to the number three on Eric's list here with you. Make better money habits, visible and hard to forget. We've joked a lot about the time that I actually was staying at your house, but you very visibly in your bedroom, like in a spot where you almost trip over. It's the Peloton and I feel like you put the Peloton there. So you walk by at a number of times sooner or later, you're going to get on that thing. Yeah. And I think when it comes to anything to do with money or systems or process or whatever and making things, like you said, kind of hard to forget, it's not about the perfection side of things. It's just about doing the first step. You know, I don't ever ride my Peloton ever. I just put the shoes on, like that's my only goal. Put on shoes, sit on bike. That's it. Like if I do those things, then there's a really good chance I'll move my legs or maybe I'll click the thing, but there honestly has been a time where I've sat there for like 10 minutes and gone, yes, not happening. And that's okay. You know, you're just like not feeling it for whatever reason. We've done the thermometers, you know, where you're trying to save money for our house down payment when we first bought our house a long time ago. I remember we had the big, the little thing that you had to fill up, you know, trying to save the $10,000 and a lot of that stuff is mind over matter type of thing. I mean, you're just, you're just trying to trick yourself. That's all it is. You're just trying to trick yourself, play the game and set it up to win. But the studies have shown Natalie when it comes to tricking yourself, having that vision board in front of you really works. Have you done that with goals? Absolutely. I actually do it every year in November. I'm that nerd that I have my vision board. I'm actually, I could see it from here, but I actually used to put it on my dashboard of my car visor, especially in LA, we drive everywhere. And just seeing that picture, especially when I had a lot of student debt. I was, I don't want to, I, there's days that I didn't want to work. Cause I was like, I'm going to have to work to pay off more debt. But then I'd see that picture. I'm like, hold on. My point was because I wanted to travel and I had a picture of that next destination. So that was actually really helpful. It's kind of like the thermometer like, like Joshua St. But it's like, I think for me, it was seeing that visual. Like it's going to get there. And then when I accomplished it, I put it, you know, on the side, it was awesome. What can I ask you since you can see it right now? What one thing is on your vision board right now? Yes. So I'm not big on shoes, but there's these boots that are artistically designed. So I have to actually get them made. And so, you know, you know, designers usually that they ask you a few, a few months. So my goal is some cute loops. They're just like all over it. And yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That's so funny. You say that because Lens got some cute boots on his vision board too. Now, no, I've got some pink leotards though. Perfect. Dancer here. Number four, I was wondering Lens sticking with you. Kelly talked about going through a no spend week or a month. Have you tried one of these before, you know, lately the last few months, it's almost been so easy to not have to, I mean, honest again, it's just the restaurant bills alone. I mean, we used to go out once a week to, you know, have a nice restaurant meal. And that's gone. And I was just talking to the honeybeam about this, you know, we're probably saving $400 a month just because there's nowhere to go. It's kind of sad. I have been sad since we've been here that we haven't been able to do a meetup. And we're not going to do one with all the stuff going on. I have a people from Vermont write me and say, Hey, let's get together. And that's just not going to happen with this stuff. But we did when we went to Burlington, we sat outside at this wine bar. And to your point, Len, Sheryl and I both had one glass of rosé. We had two appetizers. One was a really good butter that you put on sliced radishes that were fresh. They were really fresh. And then the other one, I love OG's look like a rad, you lost me at radishes. And then, and then we, the radishes that my grandma's house all the time, pickled radishes. Like, I cut them like the worst, the worst tree ever. Like, Hey, who's hungry? Like, Oh, we got cookies, grandma. No pickled radishes. Like, oh, nobody's hungry. Isn't that weird? And then the last thing that we got was a little cheese tray with three different cheeses. So three cheeses, radishes and butter, two drinks. What do you think the bill was, Len? Uh, let's say it again, radishes, two drinks. And what else were the radishes and butter, two drinks and the three cheese tray? Oh my God, I bet you they're trying to make up for loss. So I would say the drinks were, these are alcoholic drinks, right? They were rosé's. Okay. So I'll say two girl drinks, basically, I'm going to say $55. 60 bucks. Yeah. Yeah, that's without tip without tip without tip. Yeah. Right. Yeah. She was known for at least to be in a five percenter. Right. Right. That was another $3. It came out as $63.50 because she was nice to me, OG through in the extra 50. No, that's hormone quarters, too, didn't you? But it's wild that you go back to a restaurant one a few times you go and you're like, man, to your point, it is so, so, so expensive. Uh, Natalie, have you done one of these no spend weeks or months? Yes, we actually did a week. We tried the month and within the week we already had broken it. And it's the avocado toast or something that we really like at brunch. Um, we were that cliche, but it was, you know, what it was, I think after a couple of weeks, it was just, we felt so limited and I think we just had to decide like, where do we need to cut back on other areas to make it a little bit easier? But it's definitely not easy when you're going out. And now that we're home, it's, we're becoming a little pickier because we have a lot more options. Yeah, but these no spend challenges really are fun. Even when they don't work out, I mean, I'm sure until that happened, you still saved a bunch of money in terms of priorities. Yeah, even just a few days like that. So I was like, we tried it, like I said, the second week, it just wasn't working. We're like, can we do it two, three days out of the week, made a big difference. And the last one on here, OJ, I think we'll go to you partly because you and I talk about how this is magic so often, but automate it, automate it. How big is this one? Yeah, I mean, again, it's just back to that whole thing about trying to trick yourself. If you can figure out a way to set the game up to win, you're more likely to win it. And this is increasing your 401k contributions by 1% every six months. It's unnoticeable to your paycheck. You will not notice it. It's been another six months since the last time you did it, you should do it again. It's making sure that the money gets taken out of your check and goes into your HSA or goes into your savings account or your investment account before it goes to your checking. Because all that stuff is just our lives are going to expand into the money that's there. And if you can trick yourself along the way and use technology to help it, it'll be better off for it. Let's do our takeaways from this piece and money exercises in general. And Natalie is the guest. We'll give you the last word. So Len, you want to kick it off? What's our takeaway here? Oh gosh, on this one, I guess I'd say there's a lot of tricks out there for you to help yourself if you're having trouble with your finances. It's just you've got to look at things differently, but you know, don't give up hope. There's lots of ideas out there. Oh, gee, trick yourself. That's, I think he said it 47 times now. Yeah. I think if you think about this like a game and think about it like how would you cheat to win? That's what you want to do. Cheat to win. Spoken like an OG. Natalie, you've got the last word. Ah, making it visible, just making it visible, having that like whether it is the vision board or taking out a few, you know, cut the cost up going out once a week or something, but yeah, make it visible. Normally, this is where we have a Friday Fintech segment. If you're new to the show, that's where we take a look at some new cool thing that may appear on your phone or on your computer that can help you reach your financial goals more successfully than maybe you could without it. But from time to time, we talk about health with our friend, Angelo Poli from MetPro or, and this is what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about the world of work and our friend, Suzanne Lucas, the evil HR lady joining us. You'll find her blog at evilharlady.org. You'll also find her writing at Inc, which is where we found her today. We were very curious about a piece that she just wrote about vacations and about taking vacations. And she lives now in Switzerland. And so we want to get the scoop on that. We, we cut up with Suzanne just before we started recording today's show. And she's out and about. And so let's see on dead shortwave where Suzanne Lucas is right now. But I'll bet it isn't at home in front of the computer. Suzanne Lucas, evil HR lady, let's say hi. And on my dead shortwave from an undisclosed location where she's on her portable shortwave radio in Switzerland. It's our good friend, the evil HR lady, Suzanne Lucas is back. How are you? I am great. And my undisclosed location is next to sheep. So how much better can you get? Well, if this gets boring, you know, just having a sheep blot every once in a while, I think that really spices up the show. Well, yeah, absolutely. What more can you want, my life? Hey, I got to ask you something that is very funny. I follow you on social media. It is so fun following you, but you, you had this Swiss candy. I think it was that had just the worst name, but I don't remember the name. It was something like barfi. Yeah, it was barfi, barfi sweets, and it's not Swiss. It's Indian, but there is in my town, an area called barfusser plots, which means their foot place. It was where monks used to live. There's an old church there. And next to it, there is a cafe called Cafe Barfi. And I don't care how good its reviews are. Some things he's saying gets lost in translation there. Yeah, yeah, I think it's everybody speaks English. So they should know better, but there you go. Speaking of something that gets lost in translation, when it comes to different cultures, different cultures take vacations differently. You wrote a great piece at Ink recently. That's about vacations and about how Europeans take vacations to describe to me that vacation culture is in. Well, it's so different from the US. First of all, because people have a lot more vacation time than in the US. I mean, by law here in Switzerland, you have a minimum of four weeks of vacation, plus holidays, and a lot of people have five and six weeks of vacation. So you can take the time to go somewhere big or do something. And this summer, you know, people aren't going as far afield of course, because can't. But people are still taking their three, four week summer vacations, whether they're just sitting home or they're going somewhere, people go. And that's pretty much European culture. And a lot of places things just shut down in August. They just completely shut down there. They just completely shut down. You know, small businesses, this is the craziest thing to me. I will see like a restaurant. They'll be like, we're closed. They're like, this is high tourist season, but that's their vacation time too. So off to go. Well, but this is a good look, because what I thought, and the reason I wanted to talk to you about this, is that often, especially if we're somebody working with coworkers or we own a business, we tend to have this idea. We get a little judgey of other people, right? Why aren't they more like us? And I think your piece here makes a really good point that maybe somebody's culture is a little different than yours. And maybe we need to sit back and look at, maybe this is actually a good thing. I think it's an excellent thing. And not just because I love vacation and love to travel, which I do. But you really can get a break. I mean, so much of American culture is, I'm on vacation, but I'll be checking my email every morning and I'll call into any meetings. And I will stay caught up. And while my kids are playing in the pool, I'm sitting on the side with my laptop. And European, and we'll call it that Europe is a huge diverse place. But European culture is far more, I'm on vacation, I'll see you in a moment. Bye, let it. And off to go. And people are accepting of that, which is amazing. And I think a big aha there is that when you look at companies, though, you don't see people actually lose a lot of productivity because of that Suzanne. It seems to me like telling your employees to just go and get away, actually helps them be more useful when they're there. I absolutely think that's true because you have this ability to step back and to refresh and one of the things that we really saw during the shutdown is that everybody was working from home, which sounds fabulous. But if you're not used to that, you don't have good boundaries. And people were just working all of the time because they couldn't get away from it and they were burning out. And it's far, far better to be like, I'm done and now I'm going and go on your vacation, it relax. I mean, here's the thing. It's not as important as you think it is. And businesses continue to exist even without everybody there all the time. It is one thing for you to say that. And for me to hear it, it's another thing for me working for a boss to tell my boss, hey, I probably don't need to be checking my email all the way through my vacation, even though I know my boss thinks that's what I need to do. As an HR person, how would you propose that somebody listening to this Suzanne Bridges that gap? If I've got a boss that wants me to check in constantly during my vacation, is there a right way to tell them that I probably don't want to do that? Well, the thing is, for some bosses, there's never going to be a right way. And I wish I could say that there was, but there's just some bosses that will never accept that. And that's just all you can do. And in that case, it's time to find a new boss if this is something that's important to you. Might be amenable to it. You can talk about a couple of different things of the benefits of taking the long vacation. One is like we've talked about is it's this huge relaxation thing. And when you come back, you're not stressed out and you're ready to go. You've had true time off. Another thing, which is not necessarily something that your boss, but you can get the HR lady to bring up is that having people go and be disconnected from the company for a week or two at a time is a huge fraud prevention activity because most fraud requires you to monitor it. Constantly. And if you're not checking your email, you're not logging into any of your systems and somebody else is taking over your responsibilities, it's going to prevent fraud or catch it if you're doing it. That's not really a good thing to say to your boss, like, Hey, you have my co-op vacation. I'm less likely to get fraud. But that's a great idea for your HR department. That's awesome. Don't say that. Yeah, yeah, not if you like your job. Please, please, please don't say that. I want to ask you a different question, Suzanne, about something else that you wrote about at the evil HR lady, because there's taking a vacation and how cathartic that is. But there are also still our companies. In fact, we did a story recently on our money with Friendshow about the number of restaurants that shut down because of COVID that have permanently now shut down. If you think that you're going to lose your job that you might be laid off, you got this great question about, should you quit before a layoff? And I was wondering, we've got more people listening to this that might be in that situation than ever before. What do you tell somebody about quitting versus being laid off? Here's the deal with that you don't want to quit until you have a new job. And some people, depending on whether you're going to get severance or not, and severance is not legally required in the United States except in some specific cases, like a union contract or they're shutting the whole thing down with less than 60 days notice. But in most cases, the US isn't required to give severance. So you may want to hold out for severance if they're going to give it, but then you have to start looking for a job immediately. Anyway, my advice is always the same, which is keep going and look at it for your job at the same time. Best case scenario is you find a new job that starts the day after the official layoff and you get a severance package and a new job and then you get a boat. You pay down your phone long. A lot of that. So that's the best thing to do. You don't want to quit. A lot of people will say to you, oh, it's far better to have a resignation and a termination on your record. And there is a little bit of a trick to that, but especially in this climate, with so many people have been laid off for COVID reasons, nobody's going to bat an eyelash about you having been laid off. And then the other thing is if you quit without another job lined up, they're still going to ask you, why did you leave your job without another job lined up? It doesn't make you look spectacular that you did that. Sometimes it can make you look a little bit slaky. So definitely do not think that you owe the company that you're with a long service period, just, you know, it's been so good to me. I'm going to stay till the bitter end. If you find something else, leave, they don't care about you. I'm sorry to say, but they don't. And as soon as you're not valuable to them, you're gone. So soon as they're not valuable to you, you need to go to. So looks for the new job. Hopefully you'll be able to find one. And because if you wait until you've actually lost the job, it's going to also take longer to find it. Cluster competing against your co-workers that have also been laid off. This seems like a great time. I mean, don't get me wrong. Every time it's a great time to keep your resume and your LinkedIn profile up today. But Mansus and this seems like if there ever was a time to make sure your LinkedIn profile is up today, it's flippin' now. It's flippin' now. And the other thing that's really good to do is to bump up that networking before your desperate for a job. Because people don't like it as much when you're like, Hey, Bob, haven't seen you in seven years. Are you hiring? They'd much prefer you say, Hey, I was thinking about you today. And then in a month, you're like, Hey, you know, I suddenly found myself without work or I've decided to change paths. I mean, I'm always going to help my friends out with jobs in my former co-workers if I possibly can, but some people aren't as nice as I am. Well, Suzanne, I have to say great advice is always that's number one. But number two is we also know it's great advice because we didn't have to go to the sheep, which, which means it was a successful segment was. And they didn't make any noise. So there you go. See, they're boring anyway. So people can find you at evilharlady.org. And you've got another fun piece about if you've 80 internship candidates and not one's good enough, you're the problem. I would say that might be true too. That's a good one. Go read that one. Well, Suzanne, I'm glad that we could catch up with you while you're out and about in Switzerland. I feel so bad that you're, you know, eating a beautiful barfi candidate. Yeah, my barfi candy. Have a great day. Thanks for hanging out with us anytime. Hey trivia fans. I'm Joe's mom's very tired, very pissed off neighbor duck. So get this stackers. How am I supposed to know that the freedom and unity state is Vermont? Who knows that? Of course, Joe just throws all the blame on me. Hey, Doug, why'd you drive all the way to Texas, Georgia, in North Carolina? You should have just texted me, Doug. I would have told you, Doug, that we've moved to Vermont, Doug. Well, Joe, I'll tell you that I found a new friend who told me straight out what the freedom and unity state is. And her name is we key pedea. I think that's how you pronounce it. I need to just go back on the road and keep driving to cool down. Yeah, I think I'm recording in Kentucky or some place right now. They got the best fried chicken here. But before I get back to the road, here's today's trivia question. We'll just move along. Did you know the Mona Lisa was stolen on this date in 1911? Of course, it was recovered, but this raises a good question back in 1962. The Mona Lisa was valued so that they could put an insurance on it. So the question is this in today's dollars, how much was the Mona Lisa valued back in 1962? I'll be back with your answer faster than you can tell a friend not to drive to Texas. Still not my problem, Doug. Dude, never listens to the team meetings. Just just saying it's not even there. It's just incredible. So for those of you new to this show, we every week have a competition on Fridays between our three competitors. And Paula today, you're playing on behalf of our friend Paula Pant. And the score after the last two weeks and not knowing what the score is, Karen, our producers finally done moving. So we finally got an update on the score because you can't trust us with it. And the official score right now is OG 11, Len 10 and Paula 10. So we kind of thought it was different than that. But we're going with the official scorekeeper. What can't argue? It's science. What Karen had. So Natalie, you're the guest, which means because you and Leonard tied, you're going to get to decide do you want to take a crack at this first in the middle or last? Last. She wants to go last. Len, would you like to try the middle or do you want to get this thing over with and go first? No, we're going to put OG on the spot here. We're going to make him commit to some number here. By the way, is it weird OG before you do your guess that this thing was stolen in 2011, took him 51 years to go, you know, maybe we should get insurance on this. Yeah. It's like 11, 11. Nothing is what you mean, but yeah, did I say 2011? Yeah, whatever. Same same little different, let's say a little slightly. Yeah, maybe they just didn't make insurance for paintings of people who are quite absurdly when you look at them. Yes, very, very, very stoic, not too happy. It's not necessarily sad. Yeah, you're right. Melancholy. Have you been there, by the way, Natalie? Have you been to see the Mona Lisa? I actually have. I've lived in France, smoke lia for a while. So I got to see them. Well, they said it's the real thing inside the Lou, but yeah, what would be cool? Yeah, but what was your first thought? Because I'll tell you my first thought after I hear yours. I thought the frame was too small. I was expecting like this whole wall. I was kind of like, oh, that's it. That was that was exactly mine too. It was my initial. Yeah, you go down that long last hallway. It's way in the back and you get down to the end of that and you turn and here's this little tiny postage stamp picture on this big white wall. And it's covered by plastic too, right? Like another straight behind in front of it. So yeah, it wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. No, not at all. And I had to stay away back because there were crowds of people. Just crowds and crowds of people. So anyway, oh gee, back to you, man. All right, so let me just understand this. So this is what is the today value based on 1964's value? Correct. But not the value of it today, nor the value. Okay. So in today's dollars, but in 1962. Yes, applying 1962 basic inflation from 1962. Got it. So 1962 till now has been at least 20 years, 30, 40, 50 issues. Well, you were born in about 1962, right, Joe? So it makes you almost 60 years. So just regular inflation doubles that number twice. Give or take maybe a little more than. But it's not the value of it today. It's the value of what they thought it was worth in 1962. That's right. Plus inflation. So what was a lot of money in 1962? So like five million dollars in 1962. Because it's now probably worth like a hundred million or something. Five hundred millions. Well, let's put it this way. A millionaire was actually impressive back in 1962. Wait, it's not impressive now. Not that impressive. Whomp, whomp, whomp. Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Nope. Not that one. Hold on. It's going to say I've got that little button too. I can push it. All right. Let me think about this. So I'm going to say it was worth a lot of money. I'm going to say that in today's dollars adjusted for inflation. I'm going to say 31 and a half million, 31 and a half million dollars today. Today. Len, what do you think, a man? I have no freaking clue none whatsoever. Wasn't that steel rabbit? What was that artist name? He made that steel rabbit that sold for I think was the biggest art piece. There was the biggest selling art piece ever. That was when I classed here. Do you know what I'm talking about? What's that guy's name? You know, the big like a titanium rabbit looks like a balloon. Jeff Coons. Jeff Coons. Jeff Coons. Yeah, remember that and what let's see what the heck did that thing sell for? I thought that was like a hundred and twenty five million dollars or something. So that's today roughly now is the Mona Lisa more valuable than that. I would say absolutely. I'm going to say 750 million dollars. 750 million. So just a slight difference from what OG had there. Yeah. Yes. So Natalie, you've got a wide range there between Len and OG. What do you think? I wish I was more into arts to be like, yes, that's exactly how much I'd pay. But you know, I hear it so referenced in so many movies and books. And since 1962, I think that would definitely bring up that value. So I'm going to go with 250 million. Yeah, let's go with that 250 million dollars in today's value. All right, we'd love to tell you exactly who's closest, but of course we have to make you wait. So we will tell you in just a minute. All right, OG, you kicked off things with 31 and a half million dollars based on what Natalie and Len said. You may be you may be slightly low here, buddy. Just a bit outside. Yeah, maybe and Natalie. I'll be right on the number or you'll be Natalie. You're at 250 million. You feeling at all confident about that? Not at all. And and Len, you are the complete other side up there at 750 million dollars. What do you think? I have I really have no idea. I mean, this is I'm going to learn something today. By the way, well, you know what? I'm going to save it. Let's call dug up and because he's the guy with the answer. The service isn't just what Navy Federal Credit Union does. It's who they are. 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I just might have to start rooting for Ohio State after this week that Joe's put me through. Never can't do it. I've put about a million miles on the El Camino this week. How's it supposed to hold its value, Joe? Now that I have only 12 hours left on my trek across the continental United States. Let's get you today's trivia answer. Question was in today's dollars, how much was the Mona Lisa valued at back in 1962? Well, back in 62, the Mona Lisa assessed the highest ever insurance value for a painting, a whopping 100 million dollars in today's dollars after inflation. That'd be 850 million. That's a nice little chunk of change for a lady. It doesn't even actually know how to smile on that note. It's time to force a smile through the rest of this road trip. I'm pretty frosted here, Joe. Yes. Kacho G. Yeah, 100 million dollars for a little teeny tiny picture. I'm in the wrong business. I mean, how big is that thing for really? You said I was small. I was like, what do you think? Because I've never seen it. I always pictured it as being a huge picture. 30 by 20, Len. 30 by 20. That's nothing. Yeah, it is truly small. And the fact, the fact Natalie, they have it by itself on that huge wall as well, makes it even look smaller. Right. And you're so far away because you probably have at least 100 people in front of you too. And I don't know about you. I didn't feel like pushing and shoving to get up closer. I was like, okay. I was like, moving on. Exactly. Yeah. So Len takes the day, moves into a tie and the battles heating up here. So we get ready for fall. Very, very interesting. So big congratulations to Mr. Penzo. Can't wait to see where this game goes next week. But for now, guys, let's take out the magnifying glass and help somebody do better with their money. Today's hotline call comes to us courtesy of magnify money.com. Natalie, Noah happens when you had to stack your measurements.com for slash magnify money. What happened? Get this. You find out that those financial products people use at the brick and mortar bank, nowhere near the best in class. There's so many online banks and products out there. Over 92% of them all online rated head to head against each other at magnify money. I like the fact, by the way, that regardless of whether they're affiliated with magnify money or not, they rate them all. And you can see the four point rating system they use. It's very straightforward. You can make great decisions. You can also see online reviews. So whether it's a checking account, savings account, credit cards, consolidation loans, student loans, whatever it might be, head to stack and measurements.com for slash magnify money. Today, we're going to help our new friend Kelvin. Magnify his money. Say hi, Kelvin. Hello, Joan OG. My wife and I are very blessed and have with great poet, Biggie Smalls, called a mo money, mo problems type problem. We're at 36 on our own home. Don't have any debt. Make an excess of 200 a year max on our 401ks, saving for college, have a large cash balance and regularly contribute to our broker account. And we still save every month per financial planner. We are well on our way to early retirement if we choose to do so. So my question is this, when you reach a point financially where you feel secure, what do people do with their money? How do I get over the mental hurdle of spending money and enjoying it more? No, OG, this is not a flex. I'll do that once I get my medium t-shirt. Say hi to mom and the rest of the bridge company. Thanks. Thanks for that, Kelvin. And OG, just to be clear, it's not a flex, not a flex. Yeah. What do I do with all my money? Yeah, but it is. I love the fact, like he said, it's a great problem to have. So congratulations, Kelvin, on being there and being able to do that. But now it's the other hurdle. It's the hurdle that frustrated me when I was a financial planner. Natalie, what would you tell Kelvin? A good problem to have indeed, but just kind of like maybe setting up some new goals, right? Just having a daily, I like gratitude journals, I like writing down kind of those things. What is it that I want to do, spend the next type of money? And if he's not coming from a place to sacrifice anymore, that's a great thing to have. But I think that's kind of the big, the next set that he could start looking at is more like what are the new goals? What are the new things that they want to set out to do? And just being grateful for what they do have now, which he sounds like he is. Well, that's what that was my question. Do you think that having that journal would help him be more grateful? Absolutely. I think many of us hit plate toes when at the beginning, maybe when we did have debt and then when we don't, it's kind of all of a sudden you don't know what to do next. And I think kind of having that reminder every single day, like, can you list five things that that you have now that you didn't have before? And then also maybe start to maybe write in two things down that you want to accomplish. You know, with the next certain amount of money, maybe you will hopefully he wants to keep growing, which is sounds like he does. And so I think that's extremely helpful, and especially if you ever come across those moments where you're kind of like, all right, what next, right? We want to have more, more, more, more many more problems as he said it. Well, OG, I want to turn to you next because this is why I used to tell people that the getting out of debt wasn't a goal because every time somebody would get out of debt, they'd have no idea what to do next. So what they do is go buy something big and they were back in debt again, right? But there's one thing there's got to be some real goal there. I was going to say because that's the one thing that you know how to do well. I need to get out of debt. So if I get myself back in, I can get back out, speaking of flex, right? Watch this. The the challenge with once, you know, you start checking off financial goals and you go, I'm on track for retirement, I'm on track for college savings, I'm on track for debt payoff. You know, and you go, well, and I still have money. Now what now I just aimlessly put it into a brokerage account. Yes and no, I think you have to have a purpose for it. So make the goal a little bit more challenging. If you're on track for early retirement, Lodi Da, so what is that? 50, try to retire by 45. Now what do you have to do? Well, it's a little bit more challenging. You're able to pay for your kids college is wonderful. Pay for your niece's college as well. If you have something that's important to you, think about ways that you can help that organization or those organizations, whether financially or through your time or or energy or efforts. So like start thinking about a legacy. Yeah, there's always ways to expand that goal, but you have to have the next thing long before you get the first thing done. Because otherwise you're right. You get to the point where you're like, all right, I did all that. And especially for people that are achievers, you know, who are successful in life and business and their careers and their families and stuff. You're always kind of looking for the next thing and there's that phrase. The idle hands are a devil's workshop and you're bored with money. You start buying things like vacation houses and motorcycles. So it's always important to have the next thing that you're working on after this goal is done. Well, not that there's anything wrong with the vacation house of the motorcycle. If it's in the list. Yeah, if that's your goal, if it's on Natalie's vision board, that she wants the hardly next, she goes and gets it. Exactly. Yeah, hardly hardly doesn't appear on their Natalie. No, but I think I'm going to add it now when I have when I have those problems. I'm like, you know, what I have extra money. I'm way too much money. What else can I buy? I'll buy you guys a heart. She's already here first. She's going to get the cute boots first and the Harley second and then the Harley. Yes, that's the deal. I wanted to come to you last specifically on this because I feel like you're at a similar inflection point, not the same one that Kelvin's at, but you're at this point where the goals are kind of changing, right? I mean, everything's changing because you're talking about retirement now. So what advice would you have for Kelvin to keep moving in the right direction? Well, it sounds like he's got all his ducks in a row. I mean, if you think you're ready to spend money, you know, that just you have free money. I mean, make a mad money account if you're worried and let it build up. And whenever you see something you want, the rule is whatever's in that mad money account, there's no guilt. There's no rules. There's no restrictions. There's no anything. That's your mad money and the rule is if you want to spend it, you can spend it. And that's what we've done too. We have, you know, we'll have a mad money account in addition to other specialized accounts on this, you know, off to the side. But yeah, just make a mad money account. If you're worried that you're not going to be able to spend it or you're afraid to spend some of the fruits of your labor. Yeah, just make that mad money account and the rule is there's no guilt. It's your money. It's mad money. You've earned it. And what is life if you can't spend money, right? I mean, that's why part of life here, right? I mean, I mean, a lot of people get in that hole. They get in that that rut where I've got to save. I've got to, you know, I've got to keep myself. I mean, life is meant to be lived. So I mean, you've earned it. So enjoy congratulations, by the way. Well, that's kind of to Len's point, Natalie. That's what you're doing with the money for the boots, right? You're saving up for that. But how are you doing that in a guilt-free way? Is it, do you feel bad the boots versus retirement? I think you have to have a balance. I do feel a little guilty and I think it's part of where, because it's just a conditioning behind it. You know, you get to a place where you're before it used to be like, nope, I can't have this because I have to deal with that. But yeah, I think it's, it's still a challenge, but I feel less guilty when I realize, oh, you know what, it's having a balance between all of it. Thanks for the question, Kelvin. If you've got a question for us, it's really easy. We had to stack you bechements.com forward slash voicemail. And you know what, there's just a recorder right there. You hit the record button as long as your device has a microphone. You're all set. No special set up required stack you bechements.com forward slash voicemail. And our friend Gertrude, because you're brave, will send you a greatest money show on earth t-shirt. Maybe like Kelvin where it's a medium and then he gets to flex or, or whatever. I love how everybody tells us the size. Even though we really don't care, we just send you code. They're rounding, I'm sure. Yeah, that's right. Well, he really means small. He really wants it to be a small. So those guns look just huge. That's going to do it for today, everybody. We're going to let our guest of honor go last. Oh, gee, what do you got coming up this weekend, man? Oh, we just finished the first partial week of school for my kids. So, so COVID's on his way to your house. No, we don't believe in it. So it doesn't happen to us. You're one. So it's thankfully not a thing anymore. I don't know if you knew that. So, oh, anyways, it's just just another week. It's like a school weekend now. We have nothing to do as get ready for the school week. Nothing here. It is. Yeah, and all those early football games. You're watching all those, right? Yeah. Oh, wait. Oh, wait, what are football going on? Maybe, maybe not. What's going on at lendpenso.com, Mr. Penzo? We're not going to believe this is. We've always got the deep stuff at lendpenso.com. And this week, I've posed to my readers. I gave them a bill, a restaurant bill. We were kind of touching on this earlier. It was a, it was a restaurant bill. And I asked the readers to calculate the tip for the bill. So it's, are you smarter than a fifth grader? And there's about 90 responses so far. And you'd be interested to see. I don't think there's two, two tips that are the same. So it's just very interesting to see how people would tip a specific bill. How much is the bill? I can't remember right off the, you want me to, I can't remember what it was. All right. Don't ask me these hard questions. I was going to tell you the right answer. So you could, I don't know, do you have the answer key already? Or did you need me to tell to you? Well, I'm not, I'm not going to give it away. You're going to have to stop on by. I give the, you know, I say, hey, the service was good. And but everything's there, the, all the different things. There's a little deal in there where you had to send something back and you got comped something. So I mean, it's not just a bill with a lot of variables here. And obviously people are going to all come up with a different number. So it's, it's very interesting actually. So stop on by Len Penzer.com or its sister. The person persistent it. Don't go to the persistent it's just go to Len Penzer. I like, I like the look. I like the look on Natalie's face of the persistent edge. Natalie, thanks for saving the show. I appreciate it. My pleasure, my pleasure. So, so what's happening at the financially savvy Latina? And on the podcast, by the way, a lot of September's just around the corner. So our game is coming out. It's a lot that he has like a bingo, but in Spanish with financial literacy. So I'm going to get together virtually with a few other financially savvy people. And so it'll be fun. Something new to try. That's awesome. You're playing financially savvy, uh, bingo in Spanish. It's yeah, we call it Latina, which is like lottery basically, but it's bingo. Yeah, so what do you win is love how you say that? I love how you say that, Natalie. Say it one more time. Lataria. You know, it's the ours that make it. What do you win? Well, some free financial literacy that you're going to learn. And I don't know, I have to think about a fun giveaway. I like that you're making me think about that now. So I'll have to get back to you on that. You're welcome. That's why I'm here, Natalie. That's why we're friends. I learned, I learned Natalie. Natalie, I got to say this too. I told the honey bee, you know, she missed her call and she should have trademarked the financially savvy Latina, my wife. So, but you beat her to the punch. So, uh, well, I'd like to get to know her either well. Either way. Well, you're in LA. We're not far apart. So, okay. That's how we connect. Thanks Joe. Absolutely. See me. I'm a connector. That's this old thing. All right. We're going to let you guys connect later though. We're out of here. Doug, you've got it from here, man. What should we have learned today? Mona Lisa Mona Lisa. Yeah, sure thing, Joe. Yep. I'll tell everybody what they should have learned first. Take a lesson from our round table. The best way to exercise your money habits. Keep Adam. Review what you spend. Make plans for the future. Do these actively and you'll be winning with money before you know it. Second, take a lesson from the evil HR lady, Suzanne Lucas. Vacations versus working more. Clifes a marathon and you'll need breaks to keep going if you're going to win. Embrace the breaks and stop thinking about the work all the time. But the big takeaway. Joe just told me that they're only in Vermont like another week. What the hell? Don't leave before I get there, guys. I got to get some of that Vermont beer. Special thanks to Natalie for joining us on the round table today. You can find her podcast financially savvy in 20 minutes anywhere you find your finer podcasts, which pretty much means everywhere else besides where we are. Also, we'll have a link to her website on our show notes page at stacking Benjamin's dot com. Also thanks to evil HR lady Suzanne Lucas for joining us again to discuss how it really is good to take a vacation. Yeah, she didn't say anything about an unending road trip, Joe. Len Penzo appears courtesy of Len Penzo dot com and the Angel of Darkness dot com. This show is created by Joe Salcihi produced by Karen Rapin and engineered by the amazing Steve Stewart online. Visit us on Twitter at S Benjamin's cast or on our Facebook page. Time Joe's mom's neighbor dying. It appears I fall in and I can't get up. SB podcast may receive payment on the show from sponsors and guests in the form of books, giveaway items, discounts or other remunerations. That's a big word. There's no way you take advice from these dorks, but like Joe's mom always says, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only and before making any financial decisions, consult with a real financial advisor. I was late to meet Len to record the sandwich survey. And I had the most BS reason why I was late. I felt so lame. I'm like, Hey, I really shouldn't tell you why I'm late for this recording. I got stuck in a long line at Ben Jerry's headquarters, get nice cream. I think that's the best. Hey, that's a great excuse, manage. Like I'm a chunky monkey lover. So, you know, I would have done the same thing. They don't have they don't have it open for tours, but they do have open to get ice cream. So, I got the New York Super Fudge chunk. I was going to say New York Super Fudge chunk. That's yours too. Yes. That's a cherry garcia. That's a good one too. You like cherry Garcia. You know, last week was the anniversary of the death of Jerry Garcia. By the way, Len. Is that right? We don't have Paula here, so we could ask her. She knows who knows who Jerry Garcia was. Yes, Natalie. Did you watch any of the PGA championship and all the outros on the commercials? We're all like all the music from San Francisco, from like the 50s through the 80s. Oh, my God, but that'd be cool. And they're like, they're like, whoa. And like all those guys are just jamming on like, this is just a greatest, Janice Chaplin song ever. And people are like, yeah, dude, you're super old. It was really good. It was cool like they had, I think grateful. It was grateful dads out of San Francisco. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, sure. Natalie, what's your favorite Ben and Jerry's flavor? Oh, you know, I like the classics. The Rocky Road man ship. The funny one is a peanut butter. Oh, I can't remember the name of it, but they're also good. And I did go to Vermont and I remember going to their headquarters like the best anything. It's it's going to be a problem, Natalie, because it's like five miles down the road. So I told I took a problem to me. Oh, well, I told Len, you have to support. I know helping the economy. My mom says on your vacation, if you don't come back a little heavier, that means you didn't have a good time eating good food. Well, that's bad when I'm living here for a month, that's not good. Between that shout out to Ben and Jerry, they still maintain a pint, right? They still have a pint ice cream. They don't cut it down to 15 ounces or whatever. Yeah, they're not sissy's like the rest of them. Hey, like talking about it. Yeah, stop up and do the pint. Come on. It's all about the money. And of course, whenever I get a pint at the grocery store, I think to myself, I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to have half of this. One serving. Half gallons for blue bell. You get no, they are. They're still half gallon ice creams. Yeah, but you get down with the whole half gallon of what's the great divide? My favorite blue bell. Yeah, you get down with a half gallon of that at one sitting. You're just full of shame. Just just. I don't think you need a half gallon ice cream at one sitting, can you? Just a bad man. You can. Hey, I'm not a quitter, man. I am not a couple. By the way, between that, it must get really damn cold here because also the amount of beer they have here. It's ice cream and beer like every place. It's ice cream and beer like I craft beer every two miles down the road. I think every person who lives here, like to get in the state, you have to brew your own craft beer. Like you got to show the fact that, hey, can you brew beer? I'm sorry, you can't get in. I don't know. Yes. I remember I remember them having like the best sandwiches, just the little delis. But yeah, you're in and they're shopping. That was like the big, especially in Vermont. So you're in for a good month, at least so keep yourself busy. I will keep myself busy, but I might also be super duper fat and broke.