Better–and Funnier–Flights (with Betty Thesky) REWIND

Pre-recorded from Joe's mom's basement, welcome to another greatest hits rewind episode of the stacking Benjamin Show. Hey everyone, I'm Griffin the Intern, but because we're all friends here, just call me the Fintern. I don't know about you, but I learned a lot from Bola on Monday. Today, since we've all been thinking about our next vacation, I took out my suitcase and then the bottom found a zip drive with a fun show from 2016. It features flight attendant Betty Thesski. This host of one of our favorite all time podcasts, Betty in the sky with a suitcase, joins us to chat about flights, vacations, and money. It's a good precursor to next week when the guys get back, because Joe just took another adventure to Spain that I'm sure we'll hear far more about than we probably want. Did you know Joe went to Spain? If not, you will next week. And as I mentioned earlier, this episode is from 2016, so ignore any mention of current events. Remember the show? Fintern out. Your flight home's been canceled. Instead you're spending it listening to the stacking Benjamin Show. And today's high flying podcast from hit podcast Betty in the sky with a suitcase, Betty Thesski. In headlines, should aging parents get long term care coverage? Plus the Quotacy Hotline, your letters, some aircraft related trivia, and more. Now because their ship came in and these guys were at the airport, Joe and... That's just our look. The ship comes in, we're stuck in here. Of course. We've been waiting here for hours, dude. We have been here for hours. And still nothing. And all those times you walk up to the gate and you're like, excuse me, excuse me? I'm looking for my shit. I was just wondering, you're at the wrong place, Mr. OG. Hey everybody, you were at the right place. I'm Joe Salsi. I average Joe money on Twitter across the card table here in the basement. This fine Wednesday morning is the one and only OG. It's delightful. It's about to rain. Why did you do that? Why did you do that? The second you even started to do it, I'm like, really? It just came out. Garbage. Oh man. You know something that gets rid of the garbage? Those garbage check-in counts you have OG. The garbage savings accounts. The one and only StachyBedgiments.com forward slash magnify money link. Because when you use that link, you know what? The average person saves $450 by cleaning away the horrible check-in. Like a fruit ticket. That's a free flight somewhere. That is awesome. It's awesome in a box. StachyBedgiments.com forward slash magnify money. Change up your debt products to better ones. Why are you in love with your bank? Your bank's not in love with you. I'm excited because we just talked to Nick and he's going to be coming back on the show, talking credit cards in the next couple of weeks. And if there's anybody who knows all the horrible stuff that goes on there, that's going to be a fun episode. But something else is fun. StachyBedgiments.com forward slash sofai. I got to quit it, man. Nice. It just got to quit it. Well done, sir. 100 bucks in it for you, that'll add to that ticket. That'll help you supersize that ticket. OG might get to fly up in the front of the plane for that kind of money. Might get to sit next to OG. That kind of cheddar. That's right. You sit next to a guy with a bag over his head, you'll know it's the one and only OG. They don't really. They don't really appreciate that at the airport, by the way. Just for the record. When you walk in and you're like, prepare for the flight. Like, sir, we need your identification. It's just like a picture of me just drawing a picture. Will this work? There you go, sir. This is my identification. It's like a stick drawing. Step off to the side. What's happened to this episode already, OG? We are off the rails. We're off the flight plan. We are on it, man. Betty Thesski coming down. That's not her name, by the way, because if you spell out Thesski, you know what that is? Thesski, right? Yeah. Betty, an anonymous flight attendant. I'm so excited because Betty is my favorite podcaster. I'm going to tell you, I tell Cheryl, like, Jill Schlesinger from CBS is coming on. Oh, that's neat. And Slott's coming on. Oh, that's cool. Jane Bryan Quinn's coming on. On neat. She doesn't care. I told her that Betty's coming on from Betty in the sky with a suitcase. She's like, that's awesome. That's incredible. She is way more excited about Betty being here than she was about any of those people. So I'm excited about people that are using fake names. You are. You guys really like this. We got as many if she uses a stick drawing too for her flight attendant ID when she goes through a precheck, right? They're like a class above. How do you get that one? You figure out how to get that one, man. It'd be a pilot for a flight attendant. It's pretty self-explanatory. You're up for it. Where are we going? I know we're going. If you own a small business, you know the value of time. 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If you're somebody who likes intelligent conversations like stacking vegiments, but you have kids and you want to get them interested in the world around them, who's who's smarted? Which is by the way the best name for a podcast for kids. And this is great. Who's smart is the world's funniest educational podcast for families? From history to science to pop culture? They make learning fun for the whole family. It's beloved by homeschool families and classroom teachers for its ability to spark conversations and natural curiosity. It's a perfect link for car rides and fun educational breaks during the day. They have more than 300 original episodes. Everyone under 20 minutes impact with great stories and real facts from, get with their amazing voice, their trusty narrator. You've got to listen to this guy. It is such a great show. I've been addicted myself and here's the deal. My kids are 28 now. So I can't make the excuse that I'm listening for other people. I'm listening for me. So listen to the most recent episode, just the titles. What's the biggest fish in the ocean? Our chickens, third cousins to T-Rex. By the way, of course the answer is going to be different than you might think it is. How do invasive species invade? Is a Pacific garbage patch a floating island of trash? How do countries pick their national symbol? It's all over the place. And by the way, how did Loosen Clark become famous American explorers? My favorite board games, Loosen Clark. And they cover all of this with intelligence, but very fun and very appropriate for the whole family. So if you want to be a smart parent, look cool for your kids. Make sure your kids have fun learning who's smarted, available wherever you're listening to us now. Just search for who's smarted. Where are you listening to us now? We're headed to the headlines. Hello, doggings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show. Our stacking Benjamin's headlines. First article today comes to us from Fox Business. This is a timely one that people never want to talk about OG. Talking about flights. Way more fun than talking about this. How did your aging parents get long-term care insurance? This is by Laura Lee. No one likes to talk about it, but it's a reality for many families. An aging parent gets sick, loses the ability to take care of himself or herself and needs home care or nursing home care. While you may think it won't happen in your family, it's estimated 70% of people over the age of 65 are going to need some sort of long-term care assistance. That is a big, big number OG. Here's an even bigger number. If you're 65 today, when do you need long-term care today or in 20, 30-odd years from now? Probably 15, 20, 25 years. A while from now, right? Hopefully. So hopefully the future. I mean, hopefully not. It's a tough thing, right? Right. But the big number isn't the 70%. I don't think it's the 6% increase on the cost of that in today's dollars, which is about, depending on where you live, call about $75,000. It might be a smidge high on the average number. If you run that out 30 years for somebody who's 60 right now, that ends up being almost $190,000 per year per person for assisted care at age 90. That is the shocking number. It's funny. People don't address long-term care because of the fact that it's expensive. Yeah, it's those expensive things in life. Like, you have to turn that on its head, right? If something's going to be an expensive event, that's when you want insurance to maybe come in, at least you should be looking at it. I've always learned on the insurance side, there's two components to the cost of insurance to the benefit of insurance. It's probability of it happening and magnitude of the event happens. Right. And this explains completely why it costs more money for you to ensure your car, probably, than it does to ensure your home. Hopefully your house is worth more than your car. Yeah. The probability of an event at your house is a lot smaller, but the probability of your car getting wrecked is much higher at a lower volume, which is why your car insurance costs more than your home, because it's the probability and the magnitude of the event. You look at long-term care insurance, and this study says 70%. 70% better than one in two, right? Need some care later on in life. And what's the magnitude of the event? And today's dollars call it 60, $70,000. Monster number. So if you knew that there was a 50% chance or better that by flipping a coin, you know, you're going to flip a coin. If it lands on heads, you get 60 grand. It lands on tails. You get zero. They talk about the cost of long-term care in this article. And I think their numbers OG are even bigger than yours to get a sense of the cost nursing home care for a semi- That's possible. First one. You keep telling this is OG that, don't you? It's bigger numbers than me. For a semi-private room in the US adds up to $80,300 a year. Okay. I believe that. That's semi-private. For a private room, the price jumps to more than $91,000. You know, there's a great study for this. I don't know what source they're referencing, but Genworth is now an upside-down insurance carrier, frankly, but they do a really great cost of care analysis every year. It's called the Genworth long-term care costs of care analysis. And every year you can Google it. It kind of breaks it down by state. It breaks it down by region, that sort of thing in terms of costs and probability and that sort of stuff. One of the problems with long-term care, and you remember this from your career, is that it was priced very inefficiently early on when it kind of came in vogue, like in the 90s and early 2000s. It was very inexpensive. And I think what that has led to, of course, the interest rates being low hasn't helped. But now these companies are coming back to their share, their policy holders rather, and saying, yeah, we said it was 100 a month. We really meant to say it's 150. And that's happening across the industry. And then you're seeing a lot of consolidation where companies are saying, we don't want this risk anymore. This is outrageous. And if insurance companies are running from money, what does that tell you about the likelihood of this pending tsunami? Probably going to happen to you and you need a plan. And by the way, that plan doesn't have to be insurance, right? I think there's three things you can do. I think you can try to self-insure, but that means you take money and you set aside this bag of money that you'll never spend. Hopefully, you'll never spend on anything except for long-term care. Hopefully you're that one in four that doesn't use it, you know, the 30% that doesn't use it. Or you give the risk completely to an insurance company or you do what some families do, which is a combination of both. Yeah, you say I'll cover the first 2,500 a month of costs in my financial plan. But if all of a sudden I need 5,000 a month of cost, I want to transfer that risk. You do that with your current insurance right now. It's called a deductible, right? You say, I'll take the first 1,000 of risk at my car. But if I, you know, explode on the highway, I need somebody else to write me a check for the difference. What age should you be to be looking at this, OG? You know, I say that the rule of thumb is 50s. I really kind of agree with that. I think before that, you're probably throwing money away. Although there's plenty of stories of 40 year olds who have stories, right? You know, versus the care of the summer, you know, all of a sudden they have some brain injury or something. But really I think economically you're in your 55 to 60 range. This is also a good time to start thinking about it. As you're approaching retirement, there are some policies out there that even offer you the ability to pay it off in 10 years. So one of the things that you could do is you could say, okay, I'm going to take the last 10 years of working or I'm going to kind of pre-pay this, so to speak. A lot of companies have different bells and whistles to do and investigate them and work with the insurance broker that can kind of explain the differences between policy, A, B and C. But I would say if you are north of 50, you can start thinking about it. Once you get to 55, I would be taking action. And if you're retired and you haven't, you're going to find that transferring some of that risk is going to be very, very, very costly. Sure. They give some tips for buying long-term care insurance. Also talk about the Medicaid safety net, which is kind of a misnomer, but we will link to that on our show notes, stacconvegiments.com. A lot more to talk about there, but it's time for us to move on. The next article comes to us from nappa.net, this headline, five ways pension funds are taking action. Turns out, OG, that while pensions have had a lot of challenges lately, they're not taking things lying down. They're actually making some big changes. They say board training and education is the focus for pensions in 2016, according to a recent survey by State Street Corporation, big money management firm. Nearly 92% of responding funds are planning to upgrade their governance model, and roughly half are planning to increase training and education opportunities for board members. Point seems late in the game for that, doesn't it? Saying, maybe our board that manages this needs to be better educated. Yeah, I'd say so. After what? Fifty years of pension management at this point? Yeah. It's like Elvis has left the building. But I do like some of these things, under pressure to cut costs, pension funds are turning to asset pooling now. Six out of 10 funds feel pressure to reduce cost, and 80% of the plans out there plan to merge retirement plans with others to boost efficiency and oversight. That sounds like a good idea to me, you know, for some of these pension funds? Well, you're seeing a lot of pension funds also start offering buyouts. They're looking at their risk and saying, when we've set this up for Mr. and Mrs. Baby Boomer in 1970, we thought that they would have the life expectancy of somebody from 1970. And now here we are 50 years later, and we're seeing that this person's now projected to live where their family's going to live. Someone in their household is going to live 30 years into retirement. We didn't plan for that. So let's instead cut them a check for $500,000 and see if they'll bite. And our hands are washed. Yep, good luck. We are now. You are out of here. Yeah. Great news. It's a little late and coming for some of these. It says pension plans face stark choices around risk. The survey found that appetite for risk is essentially split down the middle for pension funds. 36% of pensions say they're ready to take more risk while 45% are actively looking for ways to decrease the amount of risk in their portfolios. Well, again, risk is different. People think of the terminology risk differently, right? They think risk means volatility. Volatility is volatility. Risk is opportunity for loss. If you're a steward of capital and you've got money in places that have an opportunity for loss, I would be certainly looking at an educational approach to figure out what in the heck you're doing to have such risky by the true debt. Well, I think part of that split might be based on looking at the ages of the people that are in the fund too, right? Because if a fund has people closer to retirement, certainly you're looking at reducing the risk. But if you've got a fund, one of the few funds out there maybe that might have younger workers, why not notch it up with the market being as well. Well, at least it is right now. Good stuff there. I think the lessons here. Number one is if you have a pension, if you want a few people listening to have a pension, well, guess what? Looks like there might be some more change on the way. I think most of that, my opinion is most of that for the good. But the bigger, I think, takeaway from our headlines today, should your aging parents get long-term care insurance? Maybe maybe not OG, but at the very least, I think they need a plan. I do the math on it for sure. What a great idea. How about this for an idea? Take a tape recorder with you when you're working flights and ask flight attendants to tell the wildest stories of stuff that's happening to them on airplanes. I'm going to do that with financial advisors. I think that would be a great podcast too, wasn't it? Talking about their best stories. Tell me the greatest story of working with clients and being completely stupid with money. I haven't listened to your podcast. I've got to be honest. I'm going to now though. But does she have stories in there about ambient and alcohol? Yes. And you know what? From what I gather, I've never taken ambient. I might have taken alcohol before, but I've never merged those two. I've got to tell you, I asked her about that. Ten bucks says that when she comes down the stairs here, we won't be able to hear it because those stories show up on her show. You're going to listen to her show. You've got to beware. Some of these stories get a little racy. I wouldn't call it rated R, but it certainly is a very hard PG-13. It's a herd just people. They'll just wake up naked. Yeah. Yeah. I think we'll have her tell those stories in the green room. Some of the ones about that one and a club. A certain club people try to join. I might ask her about that one for the green room also, but you know what? There's plenty of others. Let's say, hi. Betty Stesky isn't a real name. Betty in the sky of the suitcase is her show. I only get to say this once. This is my favorite podcast of all. She takes a recorder with her whenever she travels, interviews flight to Tennessee, tell their stories to her. Some of the wacky things to go on to the sky. I can't wait. Let's welcome Betty Stesky to the basement. Betty joins us in the basement. We just got back from Amsterdam. How was that? Amsterdam was great. I actually got hit by lightning for the very first time. I think once is enough. In the airplane, I actually always wanted to be hit by lightning because I've heard so many stories and so many of them are really fun. They're like, oh, this light went all the way through the cabin and it was so pretty and it was like a special effect. I was standing up behind the cockpit and we were just about to land. I'm tired. I'm like taking my heels off, putting my apron away. It was the end of the day and all of a sudden there was this really loud noise, a flash of light and then a burning smell. The first thing that went through my mind, it wasn't even storming. I thought, oh my God, it was an explosion. And then the other girl who was standing near me, she said, I think someone's shooting at us. Oh, no. And you know, you think, well, they didn't teach us what to do. Someone's shooting at you and training. So when did you realize you've been hit by lightning? Well, at that point, I still hadn't. The phone actually jumped out of the side of the plane. It's on the wall. You know, it's an old fashioned airplane phone. It's kind of like an old phone. It jumped out of its cradle out at me and I was very shaken and I got on the phone to call it Captain and I wasn't sure what I was going to say. Like either we have an explosion or someone shooting at us, which both sound crazy to say. And as soon as I picked up the phone, he said, I'll make a PA in a minute. And I was like, oh, well, that sounds good. You know, that doesn't sound scary. Oh, good. Sound upset. And the other flight attendant came running up because she said, oh my God, the lightning hit right where you were standing. So that's why it was so loud. And she had actually seen the light because I was right behind the clock that she saw the light go through the cabin. And then the pilots called the PA and said it was lightning. But boy, that'll wake you up. I bet you weren't tired after that, were you? Boy, I was white. It's like that also so much stuff's in the news, you know, so when there's that loud noise, which I've never heard before, and the light and, you know, all of a sudden you think, oh, you know, this is like real. I was flying over Arizona one time and we had the most gorgeous lightning storm alongside the plane. We weren't in it. You know, that is beautiful. I loved it. I mean, literally it's like watching fireworks. It's really one of the prettiest things you can see from the air. Yeah, that's got to be a fun sideline of your job is just watching the weather around you. Yeah, like the Northern Lights. I love all that stuff. Oh, I've never seen that. I think that would be fantastic. So otherworldly. Yeah, is it really like giants along the, you know, just across the bend? Well, to me, it seems like proof there's something else. I don't know because it's just like, so it just seems like a special effect in a movie, you know, it doesn't seem like it's real. How long has Betty in the sky with the suitcase been around? 10 years. I started in 2005. So you were one of the early people on because I'm thinking I started listening to podcast, maybe just before that, maybe 2004. And there weren't a ton of podcasts. You were one of the early people, Betty. Actually, I'm like a pod father. Right. That's right. We should have played the music when you came down here to the basement. Right. Yeah. So, you know, there were very few. I was really at the beginning of it. And actually that's one of the things that excited me because it was a new medium. But what made you think I should do a podcast? What was it? Had you listened to podcast before? Did you say, you know what? I have all these stories. I hear all the time we should make it. Well, what was it? No, I didn't even have an iPod when I started a podcast. There was a pilot and he had a podcast. And I actually, as talking about Benjamin, I have a lot of interest and I was getting the MIT magazine. And I'd like to look at different magazines to get like stock picks. You know, like I would look up things whenever there's like a new technology. So I was very aware of this new medium. And then when I flew with a pilot who had a podcast, I was very impressed because, you know, it was such a new thing. And he actually had one and he had a recorder and a microphone. And I was so excited that right after the work was done coming, I was going Maui to Los Angeles. I went up to the cockpit, knocked on it. And I told stories on his podcast where like an hour, I probably should have been working. But anyway, his podcast. So he encouraged me to start a podcast. And I would have never done it if I hadn't run into him. So that was all very fortunate. Do you have to go up to people and ask them for stories? Or now do they kind of see you coming and they save their stories for you? Oh, you know, it's so difficult. Literally, sometimes I'm putting together stuff with spit and glue because you might have run into a few cranky flight attendants in your travels. But if you're with crews who aren't funny, it's difficult. And also I have very little time, a very small window to get stories because we work a lot on those international flights. So it's also so difficult because I basically am approaching people. They don't know anything about me having a podcast or anything. Most of the time I've never worked with them before. And here I am. We just finished the beverage service. You know, we have like 20 minutes before we have to start getting ready for landing. And I'm like, so you have any funny stories? And they always look at me like, what? What? I'm like, you know what? I have a podcast. It's like a radio show on the internet and people listen on their iPods and on their phones and anything funny. And then I have to like hurry up and throw out a bunch of subjects as they never can think of anything. Like anything about puke or celebrities or weird flight attendants or crazy passengers. And it's difficult. It's rare that I actually find someone who then says, yes, I have a story. And so when something happens, like the lightning, I'm like, oh, thank heavens. Yeah. Talk about that on the podcast. Yeah, thank goodness there's a story there. Holy cow. I have to understand something happens. I know it sounds crazy. I'm the only one probably the only flight attendant who's happy when somebody's peeing or they're not supposed to or taking their clothes off or acting crazy because I'm thinking, oh, yeah, it's a story. Thank goodness I have a material for next month. Exactly right. Right. Well, I have to ask you this because you're the only flight attendant I know and I know that I don't know you. But I feel like I know you because I've loved the show for so long. I read one of these Yahoo stories recently that talked about getting better service from your flight attendant. And one of the suggestions that he was giving them baked goods. And could you ever imagine getting baked goods from a passenger and saying thank you? Oh, that's great. I have a story almost anything you bring up. I'll have a story just so you know. We like anything that passengers give us. It doesn't matter what it is or how much cost like a bag of M&M's is exciting. It's not even the thing. It's just kind of that they're actually thought about us. And we always bend over backwards for someone who actually brings something a pen pens. Someone's given us a little flashlights, but they bake goods. What's funny about that? There's a famous story where it was an employee. So they were writing standby had brought brownies for the crew. And I know this is going to sound crazy, but she had two sets of brownies and one of the sets were pot brownies. And she mixed them up and gave the crew the pot brownies and they ate them. And they even the pilots, I know it's going to sound crazy or scary or whatever, but it was on landing and the one pilot said to the other pilot, how are you feeling? And he's like, I feel really good. He's like, yeah, we have a problem. They did some investigating. They actually told the company, which I think if it was the flight attendants, they would not have, but they told the company and the company made them stay in Hawaii for a week until it got out of their system. A week. Yeah. Well, they actually got a vacation. So the lesson there is, lesson there is do the pot brownie. Well, and actually, Betty, that's the problem I thought about is you don't know where the passenger's been, what they've done. Like, that's why I thought baked goods I didn't get. You know, the M&M's thing I get because it's packaged, but I still can't imagine homemade things. You're getting a little risky. Yeah. And I can't imagine seeing you on a flight and I just picture you as this super nice flight attendant. And I can't imagine me just casually saying, Hey, I got you some M&M's. Like, I don't know. I have to admit, I remember somebody brought homemade sushi and I ate it. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah. There's something fishy about that story. I'm not going to jump up. Right. Right. What are some ways, though, to get on your flight attendants good side besides giving them, you know, whatever it might be? You know, it doesn't take anything. We're cheap dates. We're so used to in this day and age, you know, so many people dread flying or they pay no attention to us whatsoever, even when you're like jumping up and down in front of them, because you got the headphones on, you know, they don't want to take them off. So anytime anyone's nice, it doesn't take anything. And then we'll be very nice back to you. I mean, really, it's so easy. It's ridiculous. It's got to be easy, though, to get on your bad side, I would think. There's got to be some people that just make you want to, I don't know, knock your head against the wall. Well, like the dismissive ones, those are bad. What's that all about? Well, there are some people, I fly international. So there are some countries where people are used to having multiple servants. So if you're used to having multiple servants, they think of us as a servant and then they feel free to yell or expect crazy things of things of us, you know, there was a story and I won't go into this one, but about somebody who did they want you to take their baby? They wanted somebody to take care of their baby for them. Yes. And well, there's a famous story at my airline that Indian family and they were probably used to having multiple servants, extremely wealthy. And they're also not used to changing their own baby's diaper. So they said to this male flight and then changed the baby. And he was like, oh, we don't change diapers. You know, we're here for your safety and food and beverage. And they're like, change the baby. And he's like, we don't change diapers. We're still trying to be so nice and they're like pushing the baby at him, change the baby. And they were finally he said, fine. So he went to another family about the different race and said, would you mind holding this baby? And he said, I'd like to take your baby and show the other flight attendants because your baby is just so good looking. And then he took that baby and went back to the Indian couple and said, here, I changed your baby. Ta-da. And actually got suspended for a week. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking. Right. It was a great joke with unpaid leave at the end of it. Now, OG and I fight about something. I always ride coach and he will never ride coach Betty. For him, it's up front or nothing. For me, I just can't justify the price difference. You can't imagine justifying the price difference because it's really astronomical, especially international. But for me, like I fly standby, I will go from the East Coast to Seattle to go to Paris if I can get business class. All right. I will go so far out of my way. It's ridiculous. It is that much better. Well, to me, because you're going to be so much less tired and it's actually fun. You get to have nice wines and good food and you can actually sleep. It's like I feel wealthy. If I'm sitting in business class with my own little pod going to Japan or wherever because I travel all the time. And I feel like, well, I've made it. Right. Is there ever a way anymore with all the programs that they have? I mean, it's funny because when I'm waiting to board a plane now, you know, they have platinum, double platinum, diamond, double diamond, Ruby and Cheryl and I, my spouse and I always joke that we're waiting because we're right after sandstone, right? They're going to go sandstone class. Okay. Now, Joe and Cheryl can get on. But with all those different people, is there really any opportunity for the average person who isn't part of those programs to get upgraded? It's almost impossible. I know people always want to know the secrets. The only thing I can say is if you're in the military, you can wear your uniform because that works sometimes. We are very fond of the military and if there is an empty seat and actually we don't even do it, it would be like the gate agents might do it. That or actually it's almost impossible because there's no empty seat. Right. Right. Well, we have to talk stocks because you were talking earlier about your interest in stocks and ostensibly this isn't. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Our favorite topic. So you've gotten stock picks from passengers. Now, I found out this was many, many years ago that the airplane is actually a very good environment for gathering information because you have people from all walks of life, every business, they all have different expertise. And I find that men, especially, it's mainly men, there's so many more men on the plane, especially in first class or business class, men like to talk about stocks and investing. And if they have money, they like to talk about money and they also like, this is going to sound bad, but men do like to sound knowledgeable. So they are more than happy to tell me all. You know, it doesn't hurt. Of course, it doesn't hurt them. I've yet to run into someone who when I said, oh, so what are you investing in? Especially if I see them looking at an app like a stock app like on the ground or lots of times I'm sitting next to them as a passenger because I also commute to work and I have like a 30 minute flight. And usually they will talk, we'll talk for the whole 30 minutes and I write down notes and what they say, because you don't just take people at their word, I write down and then I research what they said and I have gotten actually very good stock tips from passengers. I was going to ask you, what's the best stock pick you've ever had from a passenger? Well, actually, this was not from a passenger. This was from another flight attendant. He looked smart. I know this is going to sound like really bad stock advice. Well, he looked smart. He looked really smart and we were coming back from Africa on an all night flight and he talked for all the downtime we had about, and now this is like a ridiculously risky stock, but it was so much fun for me because he was talking about Fannie Mae, the mortgage company. Right, right. It was 23 cents and he kept talking about, well, you know, at our pay grade, how often do you have a chance to buy billion dollar companies for 23 cents? And he made a lot of sense and plus since it was 23 cents, it was such a low risk. If you're playing with money that you're willing to risk, I went home about 20,000 shares and because you can when it's that price. And I sold a lot of it, like $6 and it was so much fun because like when it was going up from the 23 cents, it was going up lots of times like 25 cents a day and it was like 20,000 quarters coming out of a slot machine every day. So I was at home and my computer going, go Fannie. Now, what's the opposite of that though, Betty? There has to be a real stinker that you thought, you know, this person makes a lot of sense. I did my research on it and then you bought it and it was horrible. You know, I can't say I've had that many, especially because, you know, you know that the stock market goes up and down. So there have been some things that haven't been as good. I think, oh, I know that's terrible. I can't really come up with a bad one. Well, that's good. That's fantastic. You should be on the show every time. Well, I've had people because I do have an interest in the stock market and investing and a lot of women that I work with don't seem, they always are like, oh, I don't understand it or people seem to think it's like it's more complicated than it really is. Right. And so I've had quite a few flight attendants ask me to manage their 401ks, which of course I'm not going to do because I have no training. I've never taken a class. I'm not going to risk, you know, someone else's money. But I have done very well for someone who doesn't have a financial background. That's fantastic. I love that that's kind of the top of your filtering system is listening to people on the plane. It makes sense. People in first class, they got there somehow, you know, and then go home and do your own homework and go from there. Yeah. And last time I'll be sitting in first class. And so I'm sitting next to someone. And like I said, people love to share information. Right. Well, I don't get to say this, Betty, to anybody else. Your podcast is my favorite show. So tell everyone how to find it. Yeah. I'm at beddyinascai.com and you can find it in iTunes. That's where most people get it or any podcast app or anywhere. It's all out there. And you can even just put Betty in the sky and Google and there I am. And we'll have links on the show notes at stackinvegetments.com. It comes out once a month, which right? I initially was going to try to do it more often, but I have a job to travel. And it's also I think it's hard. I think it'd be hard to do it more often than that. But I really was too much if it was becoming a chore. And I never wanted it to be that because it's really just a hobby sort of. So if it's not fun, it wouldn't be worth doing. That's fantastic. Thanks for hanging out. Thank you so much. It was fun. Hey, trivia fans, Joe's mom's neighbor Doug here. And I thought to myself, maybe it'd be a great time to go join Betty in the sky. I've got a suitcase. I've got a personality. Oh, have I got a personality? I could make it as a flight attendant, which got me thinking about a trivia question. How much does a new flight attendant make per year? I'll be back with the answer shortly. We're all juggling life, a career and trying to build a little bit of wealth. The Brown Ambition Podcast with host Mandy and Tiffany the budget needs to can help. How can I protect myself from identity theft? I think the first thing is to be aware of what phishing attempts look like. So check that email address. But now it's like coming to your text. You guys phishing text now? Girl, yes. Talking about this virus. I'm like, girl, so you text now? With your lack of funding. Brown Ambition. Wherever you listen. Hey, trivia fans, Joe's mom's neighbor Doug. And before you pack your suitcase to go join Mandy as a flight attendant, let's talk about the numbers. Exactly. How much does a new flight attendant make? According to a recent Mashable story, the average new flight attendant makes between $18,000 and $20,000 per year. While the average attendant makes around $40,000, new hires start much lower. It gets even worse. Flight attendants are only paid for their time working, even though they often have to commute via plane to their first work flight, and also are required to stay away from home many nights to work early flights out of distant cities on the return leg. All of that's unpaid. Maybe flight attendant life ain't so glamorous after all. See ya. You're a little high on that one, man. Get it? A little high. Flight attendant. Way up on the air. That's great. But you thought $28,000. $28,000? $20,000? Okay. Whatever it takes. Yeah, I'm in the ballpark. I was right in between new hires and seasoned vets. Right. You were. All right. And today it's Krim on the phone. Hi guys. You can call me OOG, the other other guy. And I had a question for you. I'm 39, married with two small children. And I have five individual stocks that are about 30 to 50 percent down. I was curious if I should just sell them now and transfer the money into index funds with dollar cost averaging and take the loss as a tax credit. Or should I hold on to them and just do a buy and hold technique since I don't necessarily need the money now? By the way, I've never learned anything from you guys ever. Thanks again. Bye. Way to go, Krim or OOG. Thank you for the court of seagull. It's a boog. If you want to pronounce that correctly, what say you, Mr. O.G? Well, I say, well, I would take a look at the future. I would get out my crystal ball and shake it up a little bit. See, what does the future hold? And you're laughing because you think I'm full of crap, but I'm really serious. Well, but here's what I mean by that. These stocks that you own, I'm glad you didn't say what they were because it doesn't matter. You bought them hopefully based on sound analysis at the time. So now you have to look and say, is the fundamentals of the company still sound? So is this just price change in the value the company is still there? Or were my fundamentals incorrect and I bought maybe a little recklessly or whatever? This is a really good time for stark honesty in your soul. You don't have to tell anybody this. You could just feel it yourself. So if this is, hey, I bought these companies. I'm like Warren Buffett. I'm going to hold these things for 100 years. And I still believe in the company. I still believe in the management. I still believe in the growth of the organization. It just so happens that they're on sale today. They're down 30%. If that's the case, why would you not want to buy more of it? If it was a great price, if it was a great deal when you bought it at 20 bucks a share and I was trading at 12, why would you not want to buy as much of it as you could possibly afford? Now, if maybe you said, I might have gotten over my head or I bought these because my buddy at work said that they were good and I listened to some guy go, tell, tell, tell. You know, and maybe that's what you decided to go with. And you really didn't put a lot of time into it. And you realize that you're not really the stock picking genius that you thought you might be, then you have to look into the future and say, where's this best position if I invested it from scratch? If I had this sum of capital, where would it best help my family? And if you look at it in your soul, you say, it's really not going to be in the best interest in my family and my long-term financial future to be in these five companies, then it goes in, you know, diversified portfolio. We like lower cost type stuff. So index funds or whatever. It's fine. I would not dollar cost to average it. Just put them on the end. Just do it. It's already invested. That's true. Just there's no value in dollar cost averaging at this point. So I would say that it really boils down to two sides of the equation. If you believe in what you decided in the past, and it's still good, organization is still good companies, still good prospects, all this sort of stuff, and you did the research and you believe it, back the truck up, man. You want to, the grocery store, you think you're buying tuna fish for a dollar a can and it's 50 cents a can. Time to load up on tuna fish. If it's the other way and you go, I just kind of threw some darts at a dart board. I really got over my head. Don't know what I'm doing. We don't have any interest in this after all, but that sort of thing. Sell them. Put the money in a diversified portfolio tomorrow and then don't ever think about it again. Let's explain for people just briefly when dollar cost averaging actually makes sense. Because that's a part that you said there's no benefit because the money's already invested. When does it make sense to dollar cost average? Dollar cost averaging works only when you don't have a sum of capital upfront to invest. If you have a normal job and you have $100 a month to invest in your future, that's when you dollar cost average. If you win a scratch off and it says that you won a million dollars, you invest the money tomorrow. I mean, if you think about it in the grander scheme, true tomorrow afternoon, the market could start going down and go down 20%. But and you'd say, well, I should have dollar cost average, but you got to use the law of averages, right? Stock market goes up 70% of the time. So if you're going to dollar cost average, you're admitting that you're hoping that the stock market doesn't do well. Does that make sense? Like you're saying, I understand that it probably always goes up on average, but I hope it doesn't because I can't invest all of my money right now upfront. My recommendation would be you win a scratch off for a million bucks. Graham and said, you inherit $20,000 from grandma on dollar cost average. You put it in. The only reason you dollar cost average is because you don't have the sum of capital today to invest. Yeah, good stuff. So the question, Mr. Oh, oh gee, let's go to the letters. Doug brought down the mail. First letter comes to us from Chris. He'd like to see some more info on helping people with kids stack those benchmarks. That's a good idea, Chris. I think families juggling stuff. We're going to talk about that in the summer. Of course, coming up just over a month, though, Gee, we've got our annual visit from Mr. theme park insider himself. And it's funny because I'm saying he's coming on and I haven't even asked him if he's coming. He's just come on every year. So we're going to talk about family holidays. We'll talk about stuff with the kids. Lots of activities to do with the kids for people with kids. Is it different stacking bedrooms with kids and it is stacking bedrooms without kids? Well, I think you could be asking it one of two ways. How do I get my kids involved in this? Is what he could mean by that? And we'll definitely have more on that. Yeah, or he could be saying, how do I manage to do this when I have kids? Because I've got all these competing priorities, college, private school, retirement, you know, all this other sort of stuff. If you go to stacking, Benjamin's dot com, go to the right hand side where he can search the site and look for a build Dwight or bills riding on his bike right now, listening to this and he's fallen off his bike because we're giving him a little free shout out here. But anyway, anytime Bill Dwight from fam zoos, been on, we've been talking about kids and money. So if you just look up Bill Dwight, you'll find a couple episodes with Bill there. What about Shannon? Yeah, Shannon Ryan, the heavy purse dot com. Shannon covers that type of stuff. So when we have done our live from FinCon episodes, we've talked a lot about new products that are out and there's always been products with kids. So if you look at our live from FinCon episodes, remember those OG? I don't remember exactly what we talked about. Exactly what the products were off the top of my head. But there were games. One was like a T-roll price game. Remember that one? Yeah. And some other piggy bank. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So look up those episodes and you'll find it. So search FinCon search, Bill Dwight, and you'll find those episodes. And Shannon Ryan is just the heavy purse dot com. All right. Next question comes to us from Kevin. Kevin says, hey, Joe, Kathleen and OG, I've been into the Stacking Benjamin's web page a couple of times. But I made the list and show while driving. What I love the most about you guys is when you take the time to explain more of the basics of finance, I'm a millennial and I'm just now starting to get an education on how investing works and all the lingo. I know you guys cater to a wider market, but as much as possible, can you break down some of the core concepts? It would be awesome. Thanks for the great time and for helping the world get financially stable one basement dweller at a time. Thanks for the question, Kevin. You know, and that's hard OG, isn't it? Hard to talk around jargon. You know, sometimes we even talk about like, I remember early on, I wanted an investment. And my father-in-law said, well, I think you want an IRA. Turns out what I really needed was a cash reserve and less debt. But he said I wanted an IRA. So he said, well, I have this IRA and I have this annuity. And I thought an IRA and annuity were like competing products. So he sends me to this broker. I talked to the broker and I said, so I think I want either an IRA or an annuity. And I'm talking about I want either an orange or a baseball. And I'm not really sure which one I want. And man, you know, I mean, for us, we kind of take it for granted. But we really do. We kind of just assume that everybody has the same knowledge that we do. But the reality is, is that it does get complicated. Yeah. But you know what we should do? I'm looking at my bookshelf here. And you see, you have all games. I have books just to kind of show the stark difference between our halves of the basement. Cerebral side of the organization and the play side. But what's Adam smelling? Anyway. Awesomeness. Liquid testosterone. Right. Oh, I'm pretty much out of that. But I was going to say we should do like a summer reading list or something. Oh, that's good. Here's a list of like from smallest to largest types of books. I know we've got like the thing on the website where like here's all the resource. Recourse. But, you know, I probably have read a thousand books in this business in my lifetime. You probably read at least five or six. So between the two of us, we should be able to come up with a list of sounds like a top five coming 12 or top five. That'd be good. Yeah, that might be it because we probably end up with seven or eight, right? We're brainstorming show ideas. No, relax out. Good stuff. Thanks. Thanks for the question. Kevin. Next one comes to us from Ryan. Ryan says, Hey, Joe, I've been proudly drinking my morning coffee from my stacky Benjamin's mug. He's got the stacky Benjamin swag going on. Oh, gee, that's cool. He has a question for us. He says he's not getting freaked out by the market right now, but he's seen his IRA go down about him getting freaked out about the market. I'm not getting freaked out, but here's a freak out question. I see my IRA go down about 15,000 the past few weeks down from around 145,000. So 145 to 130. I'm using an asset allocation model based on Rick Edelman's free GPS tool and he's using Vanguard funds. He's not looking to take any money out. He's actually wanting to put more in to take advantage of the sale going on now. However, he's wondering if for the time being, he should change his allocation to limit his losses, maybe going from zero to around 10 to 15% in a Vanguard bond fund. Is this a good strategy or is this a knee jerk reaction? Thanks for the great show. Telo G. I'd like a shout out from him. So oh, gee, Ryan, you're about to get your shout out from OG right now. Do I have to? Well, you're about to answer his question. Isn't that a shout out? I'm just, do you? Sup, Ryan. And you and I are drinking coffee out of our, out of our, our Texas mugs. Yeah, that we both got at the Texas state capital. Isn't that a cool place, by the way? You may all go to hell. Yes. Davie Crockett, you may all go to hell and I'll go to Texas. So complete knee jerk reaction. This is the way that I think about this stuff. You got to put it in context of averages and outcomes. So historically top to bottom in any calendar year, historically the market goes down how much up and down, right? The stock market goes up and down 70% time goes up finishes up for the S.R.S.A.K. but there's ups and downs within the year. What is the average up to down in any calendar year? What say you, Mr. Joe? I think it's 14%. 14.2% is the correct answer. Nice job. And if you had a $145,000 account and it's gone down 15 grand, by my math, that's just a slightly above 10%. Right? So that decline is not even an average annual decline in an equity portfolio. So making an allocation change at this point is so out of the range or out of the realm of prudent investor ideas that it shouldn't even occur to you. What you want to think of is dump the money in. If you see price inefficiencies like this and it's down 10%, down 20%, whatever the number is, put the money in. Look at history. I'll tell you where a part of the problem comes from. As people accumulate more money, I know this from my own life. As you accumulate more money and the number gets bigger, right? The fluctuation appears to be bigger because it's not percentages. It's dollars. I mean, you know, when Ryan had $100,000 invested to lose 10%, he would have lost 10 grand. Now he loses 15 grand when it goes down the same percentage. If he had $5,000 invested, he lost 500 bucks. Big deal. Exactly. So I think if you look at the history of the stock market, if you look at the history of average declines, average bear markets, all of these sorts of things, you come to the realization that whatever's happening right now has no material impact on 30 years from now. If you're investing this money for a 30-year time horizon, why in the world do you care what happens in the first 25 trading days of January or the first 35 trading days of the year? It has so little outcome. In fact, if you look at the historical averages of the stock market and if you take yourself out of the stock market for just even five days out of a lifetime, your return goes down by 10%. You know, and you've seen those charts. We've all seen those. You can look these up on the internet. What happens if I'm out of the market for five days, 10 days? I just saw a chart the other day that said, if you've been fully invested in the S&P since 1970 and you missed the best five days since 1970, 44 years of history, right, or 45 years of history and you missed five trading days, your return went from $90,000 to $80,000. That is unbelievable. If you missed 25 days, which means you're out of the market for one month out of 44 years, your return goes from $90,000 to $21,000. Big numbers. Don't make any changes. Yeah, don't have a trigger. Itchy trigger finger. Itchy trigger finger. Yeah. Hey, thanks. St. Halo here. St. Halo. Thanks for the question, Ryan. If you've got a question for us, number one place to go is stackingbajamins.com forward slash voicemail or if you want to have a little bit of a slower response, but you don't want to hear yourself on the line. Joe at stackingbajamins.com, send me your letter there. We're about to do another live show, another live version of stacking 101 Benjamin's. That's going to fire up May 18th. So you don't want to do the online course. You want to do the live version. May 18th is the first one. The second is going to be June 8th. Stackingbajamins.com forward slash live. That's stackingbajamins.com forward slash L-I-V-E for the live course firing up the spring. That's it, man. I'm excited. Another one downrange. I said earlier in the show that Cheryl got excited when Betty was here. It was like talking to an old friend talking to Betty. It's like how people should feel when they talk to us. That's right. We're your creepy friend. Well, you are. If they ever meet you in person, it'd be like, yeah, he's not the friendly guy I thought he was. He's not bag over his head. It's kind of weird. Creepy. So lessons from the show OG, I think we'll let all Betty's lessons be. I think that was good as is. But from the rest of the show, I think the big lesson for this show really was. That going back to what Kevin said about explaining some of the big words, the big word we were really talking about there, we didn't reference it, but it's called standard deviation. And standard deviation is the amount that markets go up and down just on a regular basis. And the more you know what the bumpiness of the flight's going to be, OG, the easier it is to respond. And if you know the bumpiness is 14, then you know that when it gets below 14, then maybe then we're in a little different territory. Volatility and risk are two different things. We talk about this all the time. Risk is yet there's a chance of loss. Volatility is just the ups and downs. And at the end of the day, you have to be okay with the ups and downs to be an equity investor. What's your big takeaway from today's biggest lesson on today's show? Long-term care. Oh, that's my favorite. I love talking about long-term care. It's so awesome. It's the best. It's the best way to get a table at a restaurant. Exactly. You're getting left alone on an airplane. What do you do? What do you do? Ah, you're dressed pretty well. What do you do? I help people protect against long-term care. Have you had your risks evaluated? I got my calculator right here if you got to. Sir, sir. I guess he's asleep. Huh, that's weird. Isn't that great? Now I have a four-hour flight and nobody I need to talk to. All right. That's going to do it for today. Coming up on Friday, another awesome roundtable, and then we are in the next week. So next week, by the way, from the US Department of Treasury, Mark Every coming down to the basement, senior advisor to the secretary and deputy assistant secretary for retirement and health policy. How's that for a... He's like a sandwich sign for his business card. He's had people walk around with the sandwich sign that he hands out to people. No, no, you continue that on the back. Like the print goes off one side. There's a little arrow. Yeah, flip that around. Mark's coming down to talk about tax opportunities for savers. What's out there? If you're a saver, it's going to talk about the savers tax credit available for some people, tips for people filing their taxes this year. We're going to ask him about the IRA, which is the controversial retirement plan. We'll ask him some questions about that. Who's that plan actually for? What's it all about? That'll be an interesting time. It's pretty cool though. Government official coming down. And without handcuffs too, that's a first. All right. We'll see everybody. Thank you. I'm Friday Stack and Bedjamins. This show is the property of the free financial advisor LLC, copyright 2016. The show is created by Joe Salcihai, co-written by Brent Sellens, edited by Isabella Villaca and engineered by the one and only Steve Stewart. And thanks to Betty for appearing on the show. You'll find her show, Betty in the Sky with a suitcase, at iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Joe's Mom's neighbor Doug, and I just brought this podcast in for a landing, and I'm feeling hashtag epic. The people responsible for this show have been sacked. By sexting politics with exclusive interviews, commentary and humor, useful idiots with Katie Halper and Erin Mate. I really don't like sharks, and I think we live in a very shark-again, this sick world. One thing to keep in mind is sharks are not out there trying to eat surfers and swimmers. They'd much rather eat fish, but in many cases they mistake us for their actual prey. When they do bite, they usually move on. That's supposed to make us feel better. All idiots, wherever you listen. Thanks for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. for watching. Welcome to the Aftershow, part of the show that doesn't exist. Oh gee, do you follow the NFL Combine? I absolutely do not. I don't either. And I don't get how the NFL network puts that stuff on TV. And people actually watch this thing. For those people who don't follow sports, the NFL Combine is where they have a bunch of athletes come out, they have them run, they have them lift some weights, right? They have them do some different things. And they compare them to the other athletes. And now the last few years, they even ask them questions so that you don't end up with the Johnny Menzel on your team for people who don't follow sports. We've been doing that under like tests for a long time. Oh, have they been? But do they ask them in public? Don't they ask them like in front of groups of people? No? No, the wonder like test is to written tests. You have like 10 minutes to do 50 questions. It's actually pretty intense. Like so get to go boom, boom, boom, boom. You have to go pretty quick to get through it. Yeah. Well, so you're watching the NFL. I didn't watch the Combine, but I saw this online afterwards. This is Chris Jones from Mississippi State doing his 40 yard dash. Very surprised Chris Jones came out this year. He really highly recruited three. Get ready to go. 6, 6, 3, 10. There he goes. He's a little high hip. You can see how long like he is. He's a little stiff in the hips. The boy is he stout again. Ooh. That hurt. He's laughing. All right. The trainer's there. Let's take a look, but it looks like he's all right. So Chris Jones is running his 40 yard dash. O G didn't make it all the way. Big guy didn't make it all the way. Made it about 25 yards and that he fell face down. No, he fell face down on purpose. Believe it or not, because about 10 yards in, you start to see Chris Jones is having a problem with his shorts and there is something that is escaping down the leg of his shorts. And then about, I'm going to say maybe 18 or 19, maybe 20 yards down, it escapes. And Chris Jones is running in front of the camera with a part of him hanging out that. That's funny. So what's funny about that, actually, I'm going to play it again now that you know what's going on and listen to the commentators. Now again, now that you know what's going on. Very surprised Chris Jones came out this year. He really highly recruited kid. He's almost 6, 6, 3, 10. He's a little high hip. He can say how long leg it is. He's a little stiff in the hips, but boy, he's stout. Ooh, that hurt. He's laughing. Yeah, he's laughing. All right, the trainer's there. Let's take a look, but it looks like he's all right. Now the guys still don't know what's going on. Doubt against the run. High school hoops player. Wow. Listen to these comments. Slide is now illegal immediately baseball. He tries that. He's in the face. Okay. That's just everybody stay upright people because these guys, if they fall, they fall down hard and long. You almost. Cretched eyes. Do you think you do that when he said that? They fall down hard and long. That's pretty funny. Yeah. I'm sure he's going to get razzed in the NFL. You know, because they all said the hazing of the rookies, you know, are they timed to the goal post or something like that effort night or something? I bet they're going to. Team picks him up is going to have a how awkward his mom must be so proud. Like the one thing you want to do before you're on national TV, make sure your shorts fit. Yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. I don't understand the physics of that. And I'm not going to slow it down to like check it out. Me either. No interest in that. I thought it was funny. All right, everybody. next time.