Leadership Lessons To Help Your Career Take Flight (with Oscar Munoz)

Time to get innovative businesses see every day as an opportunity to create something new. Dell Technologies Advisors are here with tools and expertise to help you do incredible things. Because Dell Technologies believes there's an innovator in all of us, learn more about smart PCs powered by the Intel VPro platform that's built for business. Find tech that's right for you by calling a Dell Technologies advisor today at 877-ASK-DEL. The Rust.og, we've been away for a week and we start off every episode with a salute to our troops. So why don't we raise our glasses? I got my M22 mug from Northern Michigan. Yours is. What do you got there? Mine says losers make money, winners make excuses or the other way around. I think it's the other way around. It might be. On behalf of the men and women making podcasts to mom's basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit you need a big salute to our troops. It kept us safe while we had our nice relaxing off week. What's relaxing? Thank you for that. Thank you so much. Let's go stack some vegments together now, shall we? Here's a song that we'd like to do for all the younger set of people, the teenagers and what have you. This one's called Vacation Zoop. Vacation's over, it's over, it's over. Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the stacking Benjamin show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Duggan. What does it take to be a great leader? Today we welcome a guy who taught his team to soar in the clouds, former CEO of United Airlines Oscar Munoz. Big news today in our headline segment, mortgage fees are changing and you're seeing stories about it all over the place. Some of them are even true. Well, what is the truth? We'll share the good, the bad and the ugly. Plus, we'll throw out the Haven Lifeline to Luke who wants to know what are his best investment options for a 10 to 12 year time horizon. And don't worry, I'll be sure to share a really thirsty trivia question that you can reshare later. And not quote me. And now, two guys who are leading by example, you know, like when it's convenient for him, Joe and oh, Juh Juh Juh Juh Jee. And it's always convenient here on the podcast. Hey everybody, I am Joe Salci. I ever Joe Money on Twitter. Happy Monday. Happy back to the show. Man, we had a great, greatest hits week last week. Oh gee. One of my favorite podcasters, Betty Thesski, if you missed it, Betty and the sky with the suitcase, we replayed that one. Boles a come be lots of that one. Great stuff. Wow, we were away. However, we are back. And if you're new to the show, let me be the first to welcome you. This is the way to ease into your money situation. Begin to take control. If you want the serious stuff, we follow that up with a great newsletter with fantastic videos. But we generally have a good time having some relaxed money talk and oh gee, the guy relaxing more than most of us sitting right across the car table from me. I'm always relaxing. Chilling in the car, I spent all day waxing. Hey, we got a great show. Oscar Munoz. Gonna hit us up with some fantastic advice on how to be a good leader, how to be a better listener. Oscar is the former CEO of United Airlines. And he's got some wonderful advice. Of course, when he took over United, I remember these days, oh gee, it was dark days there. And Oscar came in and turned the airline around. We'll take over a couple other airlines here in the not too distant future if he places cards, right? There's a couple of them that aren't too too too excitable right now. Excited, I guess I should say Southwest might be looking for some help. Oscar, maybe we'll talk to him about that. Maybe not. But we got that. We got a huge headline that happened while we were gone. So lots to do. We need to get moving. But I think we really need OG. Have a seat. We really, really need to talk about this. May is military appreciation month and man. Are we so appreciative of the work that our armed forces do here in the basement? Of course, we're surrounded by lots of people who are either active or former military. Of course, so she was in the Marines as was my brother-in-law Eric. My dad was in the Navy. His brothers were both in the Army. Two of them, of course, my dad and his brother served in Vietnam and my uncle served in the Korean War. And on top of that, my daughter's boyfriend is also a Marine serving in Japan among many other people. And man, do we have a lot of appreciation this month. Navy Federal Credit Union also wants to thank the men and women in the US military for their important commitment to our country. For more than 90 years, Navy Federal Credit Union has made it their mission to help people in the military community. Navy Federal Credit Union is open to all branches of the military veterans and their families. And Navy Federal's employees are veterans and military spouses, which makes them a part of the community they serve. They understand their members better than anyone. Members could enjoy earnings and savings of $349 per year, a regular savings rate four times higher than the industry average, an average credit card APR that's 5% lower than the industry average, award-winning 24-7 stateside member service over 350 branches worldwide, a quarter percentage discounted rate on VA loans, show your own support for our troops with hashtag Mission Military Thanks. You'll see that we're doing that both me personally and on the stacking vegiments Twitter feed and our Instagram. We're going to be doing that all month long. Learn more about how Navy Federal's celebrating the commitment that connects them to their members at NavyFederal.com slash celebrate. Navy Federal's insured by NCUA dollar value shown represents the results of the 2021 Navy Federal Member Giveback Study. Credit Card value claim based on 2021 internal average APR assigned to members compared to advertised industry APR average published on creditcards.com and FCE reserves the right to change your discontinued promotions and rates at any time without notice. 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 sort of learned a 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 dot com slash match. Wasn't that important? Keeping the lights on in the basement so we could podcast and component always important. Oscar Munoz from United Airlines coming up. But first, made a big headline. Hello, doggings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show. Our stacking Benjamin's headlines. This headline OG, we're going to start with the TikTok minute because I had this sent to me by multiple people. But I want to play the TikTok that Zach sent me as a way of introducing this. This is a Peter St. Ange PhD on TikTok talking about a new mortgage rule. Let's listen. A new Biden housing rule is coming May 1st that amounts to a $14,000 tax on good credit home buyers and threatens to replay the entire 2008 financial crisis in double time. It's as dumb as it is ugly. Obama's F.A. Chade director called it quote unprecedented adding quote, my email is full from mortgage CEOs telling me how unbelievably shocked they are by this move. The new rule means anybody with a credit score over 680. That's about half the population or who makes a meaningful down payment will pay $14,000 more on a house while anybody with low credit gets subsidized. This is from a risk perspective bonkers. It is paying people to take on loans they can't afford. It's paying banks to crank out systemic risk all while literally hitting people with a $14,000 fine for paying their bills on time and for saving up for a down payment in the first place. It is raw vote buying using a social credit system that punishes people for doing the right thing. Moreover, it threatens to replay the 2008 crisis because we've already seen this movie and it ended badly. Going back to the early 2000s, the financial crisis was kicked off by intentional policies that pushed banks to make bad loans. Policies, the banks were happy to game since they got all the profits, but they dodged all the risks. This gentleman continues to go on. We're only about halfway down, but I think you get the gist here. Oh gee, new mortgage rules took effect on May 1st. They changed the game. We are hearing like we did in this video from many sources, about a third of this story. It depends on your political view. Yeah. What piece of the story you're actually hearing? I don't know. Have you seen a lot on the way new mortgage loans are being calculated? I did some looking into this because you and I talked about this a couple of three weeks ago and you're like, have you heard about this? And I hadn't. Not surprisingly based on some of the thoughts here that this guy has talked about. Not really a thing you want to really advertise. I think a lot of this is going to come down to how you interpret the new rules. You can make it very political on either side. You can turn it into a very like thereafter us or we stuck it to him or whatever. He's using these dollar terms like a $14,000 fine. That's not exactly what's happening. You're not getting fined $14,000 near as I can tell the most middle of the road explanation on this is that there's a feed when you get a mortgage because banks take your mortgage if it's a conventional regular run of the mill, 80%, mortgage, 20% down thing. So banks generally take your loan and they package it with a whole bunch of other loans and then they sell it to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. They remove that off their balance sheet. And in order to process that, the banks get paid a fee to do that. Fannie Mae says, you guys do all the paperwork. Send us the fine. And there's fees associated with that. And near as I can tell what's happening is that they're raising the fees for certain credit score demographics and lowering the fees for other credit score demographics, which is being spun, maybe rightly so in a you're charging me more to charge them less. Ergo, I'm paying for that person. If that's exactly how it is, I'm not sure it doesn't seem like it. Let's walk through it because I had to go to about 15 sources to get this because that's kind of where I gave up to. I was just kind of like, there's like a paragraph of meat in every one of the stories, right? All the rest is sensationalism, depending on where you're finding reading the story. And then there's like one paragraph of like, here's what happened. So frustrating. And it actually is fairly straightforward. Fees change from time to time. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, who to your point, buy a bunch of these loans from banks. So you won't know if your loan is going to Fannie or Freddie when you take out the loan, you can ask and maybe they know ahead of time. And it may not. I mean, our first house loan stayed with the credit union. That was an in-house loan. Our current one is at JP Morgan, whether or not Freddie has it or not, or Fannie, I don't know, but JP is servicing it. When they back it, right? Yeah. Like it really depends on their risk metrics. Right. Even if your loan is serviced by somebody, Freddie or Fannie might be in the background. What happened is there's always been this fee that you're talking about. And to your point, they've changed the fee structure across the board fees are changing. Now, let me give you the good news that Mr. St. Ange didn't say people with higher credit still are going to pay a lower fee than people with low credit period. Yeah. People with higher credit are going to pay less than people low credit. However, it's higher than it was. So it is higher than it was for people with good credit. And the fee rising went up less for people with low credit. And according to Freddie and Fannie officials, that was to help people without means and without a lot of support to be able to afford more housing and obviously being quasi-government officials, that's what set off the rhetoric of this is subsidization. Right. We are subsidizing this by changing things. And also OG, just to counteract, I don't know where Mr. St. Ange got his $14,000 number. According to ABC news on a $300,000 mortgage, a credit score of 659 would save $3,750 over the way things were the old way. While credit score of 740 plus will spend $375 more. That's on a 300,000. Now, and everybody says they said it's really complicated because it's a matrix. It's like think about the biggest Excel spreadsheet ever, right? And it depends on how big a loan you have, how much money you put down. Like there's all kinds of factors. So maybe on the top end, if you've got a million dollar mortgage and you've got a 659 credit score versus somebody with a 740 credit score, maybe those people's $14,000 is going to be the difference. I don't know. But the difference is $375 of quote subsidization. And by the way, I do see it. So let's talk about this a little bit. I do see this as subsidization. I do feel it. It does seem like if you're changing the rules where people with better credit are going to pay a higher amount so that people with lower credit pay a lower amount. Well, then I don't, I don't think the word subsidization is truly out of turn Wall Street Journal in their editorial called it subsidization. I'm not sure that they're wrong. I don't understand. I thought that we had gone through this. And the one thing that I do agree with the video that you played there was the housing crisis. And there's a lot of people right now who don't remember that or remember it because they were kids, right? I mean, like it was 15 years ago now. So if you're 25, you were 10. You were in college if you're 40, right? It was at the end of your college. You're like, Oh, yeah, the housing market, I guess sucks. But then there were those of us who bought houses right before it and watched the value of our house go down by 50% in the span of 18 months. And that was a really big thing. And obviously, it caused the biggest recession since since the Great Depression. And a lot of people have suggested that part of that was because of the lending ease. It was very simple to get money. It was very I mean, our first I've told everybody this, our first mortgage was interest only. We moved after 10 years and we had paid down 7,000 of principal on a $430,000 house after $3,000 a month payments for 10 years. And I hand to God, this is exactly how this went. I was standing on my mom's porch. I remember being there and the in the lone guy called me and said, so I'm just going through your loan and application. You guys you guys pulling down about 12k a month. And I was like, what? Good God. No. He goes, let me rephrase. You're pulling down 12k a month, right? And I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, all in. Sure. And he goes, okay, cool. Loan's approved. Congratulations to the new house. I mean, it was like, and I'm not exaggerating that in one bit. That is exactly how that went down. And I had no business buying that house. And so I wonder if there's not some truth to that part of like, if we start kind of bending the rules around things that we know to be true, right? Like if you just haven't been good paying your bills, and that's going to be reflected in your credit score, they've already gotten rid of medical debt, which was a huge, you know, huge burden for a lot of credit score issues, right? Which I completely agree with. If you have a medical issue and you're dealing with trying to pay that off, whatever, that's cool. But if you've got a bad credit score, it's probably because you don't pay your bills on time or you are high utilization. I mean, there's a very known factor on how this is done. So why do we want to like jam houses down people's throats who don't necessarily fit the category for like being responsible money people right now? It's in a credit score. It's not a life sentence, right? I mean, my credit score was freaking in the 500s once. Oh, mine was horrible in the 90s. Yeah, I don't know what the lowest is. I mean, but I'm sure I was there. It's like, it's a two year sentence, right? You can fix your credit score from the worst imaginable to 750 in two years. Well, let's talk first. Let's acknowledge some of the stuff before we get emails. Let's acknowledge some of the systemic stuff, right? People grow up in some neighborhoods and some demographic groups have it easier because they're born into families where it's an easier task to figure out the financial system. In fact, I had a great email from a listener named Jonathan who sent me a white paper about credit card rewards. And it showed that people with financial savvy do very well with credit card rewards on the backs of people that grew up and have never been taught any of these habits. Don't understand how the system works. Pay their credit cards off, sub optimally do a horrible job, right? So a credit score, when you first start off, you can get a leg up by being born into the right zip code into the right area into the right demographic. However, even if you're in the right or wrong demographic, I totally agree with you, OG. If I have a low credit score, if our goal is to build a legacy of wealth, which is what we all are trying to do, if our goal is to build a legacy, the last thing I want to do when I have a low flipping credit score is go by a house I can't afford. Like that's going to help sink you. It's not going to help you. So well, and remember too, that at best, it's a two year sentence on whatever your number is today. But on the, you know, silver spoon kind of born that way type of deal, it also only takes one miss payment to crater it to mess it up. So you may start with a leg up, but you still have to demonstrate good behavior all the time. You can't take one 30 day period off of going like, well, this month, I'm just not going to pay my credit card on time. You know, because one time, one time your score traders and it's screws you for two years. And now whether or not that's right or wrong, I don't know either, but they're really smart people who are really good at algorithms here that have figured out that there's a profound difference between somebody who has a 660 credit score and a 760 score as it relates to their propensity to pay back the debt in a reasonable time period at the predetermined pace. They know that we should take that seriously. If I've got a 660, I should take that seriously that I am not a different that you know what, they've done this work and I need to prove it to myself more than anything. I need to prove it to myself that I'm ready before I go do that. Yeah. One of the strategies that you and I have both implemented over the years as it relates to, you know, hey, I want to buy a house or hey, I want to buy, you know, this new thing or you know, I want to get a vacation house or you know, whatever, like whatever the next financial goal is. One of the things that you and I have both you successfully is cool. Start writing that check today. So you think that in six months from now, you're ready to buy a house. Well, let's do it. Let's start paying that mortgage payment right now. Let's dry run this when there's nothing online. You don't have to worry about like, trying to choose, you know, do I pay this or pay this or whatever? Like, let's make that mortgage payment and to your point, prove to yourself that you're ready to do it, that you have the wherewithal to do it. I was talking to mortgage payment, by the way, before you get off this for people wondering that mortgage payment goes into a savings account that you can take the money back if you're over your head right away. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. You're paying the mortgage payment to yourself in advance, like getting ready for, can I do this? Can I, can I cash flow this, right? Because it's not usually as simple as, as you think it, I was talking to a family member who's trying to buy a car. It was awful. The rate was awful. And I said, well, did you get a pay raise? No. Are you working extra hours? No. Did you get another job? No. Did your spouse have any of those things happen? No. Well, where the heck are you coming up with 750 a month then? Maybe you should try saving the 750 a month for the next year to keep the car that you got, the beater that you got paid the 750 a month into a savings account, then you won't get the crappy rate because you have a nice down payment. Oh, no, I need the car now. It's like, well, what's changing? You know what I mean? Like, you know, if you're going to add an expense on the, on the income statement, but not add any revenue on the top line, it's got to come from savings or it's got to come from another expense. It's that simple. It's a zero-sum game when it comes to your income statement, right? So if you haven't built up a reserve to draw that excess from, or you don't have some excess in your spending that you can move around, what's going to happen? It's going to go to debt. You're going to accumulate credit card debt. And that's what, I think that's what ends up happening, right? Is that we go down this path of going like, well, I can do this, or, you know, I need to have a house or I need to have a car, I need to have whatever. And then all of a sudden in the background, we got a medical bill that doesn't get paid, or in the background, we've got a credit card balance that just kind of, it's, it's leaking up. It was a thousand and now it's three thousand. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, two years goes by and I'm wondering, how come I don't have any money? And I got $11,000 in credit card debt, practice it in advance. I think that's probably the best way to do it. And I, and I think is you, if you're going down this path of homeownership or you're going to buy a car, you're going to do whatever it involves debt, you have to know what your credit score is. You have to know it. And I think also recognizing what those factors are, learning about what those factors are that, that influence that, it may seem like a long time. If you get kind of a crappy number, I'm telling you, it's inside of two years. Do the right thing for two years and your score will be just fine. Mr. St. Ange says that this could lead to another banking collapse. Obviously last week, we saw a first republic bite the dust, another one bite the dust, OG. You think that this, this mortgage fee change is going to be the domino that breaks the camel's back. No, I don't think so either. I think it's big time hyperbole. And by the way, when I like stackers about where OG and I left this, forget what the banks are doing. Forget what the banks are doing. If you've got a low credit score, build that muscle, build the credit score, prove to yourself that you can do it. Who cares? What's going on in zany world plan? Yeah, doesn't matter what matters. I think it's what you do. We're going to dive into this much deeper in our newsletter, the 201, where the day after our Monday and Wednesday shows, Kevin Bailey, who has worked both for Vanguard and TIA dives deeper into curated links that we've come up with to help you get more financially literate. The good news is you can dive into the pieces that you're interested in stackabedgments.com slash 201 coming up next talk about somebody who's dynamic, charismatic Oscar Munoz was the CEO of United Airlines from 2015 when United was just having a horrible time. And for people who fly united or Delta American a lot and others people out there going, oh, they're not much better now. Oh, but oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Statistically, when you look at industry patterns from 2015 to 2020, Oscar and his team definitely did quite a turnaround at United. He's here to talk about not just that turnaround, but about working with people about leadership and whether you're leading a family at home, you're leading a group of friends, you're leading a group of people at work. Oscar's got a lot to say, but to get there, we've got some trivia on a related topic, don't we, Doug? Hey, there stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. Today in history, the very first Coca-Cola was sold. It was May 8th, 1886 when Dr. John Pemberton sold the first Coca-Cola at Jacob's pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia. Little did he know that one red labeled Coca-Cola would become an iconic drink worldwide. Speaking of the well known and worldly at Coke, that leads me to my trivia question. Let's connect this trivia question with today's guest, Oscar Munoz, who was the first Latino CEO at not just United Airlines, but any major airline. Working his way up the corporate ladder at Coca-Cola from a bilingual engineer who came to the United States with only get this $40 in his pocket, what man became the first Cuban-born CEO at the iconic soft drink company. I'll be back right after I go taste my feelings. That doesn't roll off the tongue as much as when you see it on TV. 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 IRS. I'm like, girl, so you texting now? Or what? With your lack of funding? Brown Ambition. Wherever you listen. Stackers, this is so funny. 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 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 or 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, got with their amazing voice, their trusty narrator. You've got to listen to this guy and what 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 Loose and Clark become famous American explorers? My favorite board games, Loose and 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 wherever you're listening to us now. Hey there, stackers. I'm leading man and first trap, Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. In celebration, both of today's guest, Oscar Munoz, the first Latino to run a major airline and today being the anniversary of world best-selling soft drink Coca Cola. How about this one? Who was the first Cuban-born CEO of Coca Cola going from a net worth of 40 bucks to a leader of a company worth more than 200 billion? If you answered Roberto Goizetta, you would have won a Coke. You know, if Joe would have listened to my hospitable idea of giving trivia winners an icy soft drink, think of the word of mouth sales, Joe. But good news, if you got it right, you can patch yourself on the back and go buy yourself a Coke. Or perhaps you really it's your money. Do what you want. And now let's dive into leadership and communication with the guy who led United Airlines, Oscar Munoz. And I'm so happy this gentleman's coming down to mom's basement to talk about leadership with us. Oscar Munoz is here. How are you? Well, you know, as I tell people in my new chapter of life, I am busy. I am healthy and I am happy. That encompasses a whole broad spectrum of things that usually takes care of a good conversation. So I'm all of those, Joe, and I'm delighted to be here with you. And I love the concept of your show. I love the concept of simplification of us, you know, somewhat arcane things for the normal person is just a real passion of mine, just from the perspective, especially in the financial planning world. And people like to use so many big words and concepts and kind of show you how smart they are. And it's like, dude, I don't need to figure out how smart does a key just help me. I was just looking at a do I do a CD? Do I do this? And then breaking it down in simple terms. And I was with, I don't know if I can mention this name, but a prominent economist at a big event. Everybody's asking him big prominent economic questions. And I raise my hand sort of like this and say, you know, this may be the stupidest question or the hardest questions you've ever been asked. But I work with a lot of people that are kind of frontline essential workers. Honestly, over the many years that I've been working, you struggle, they struggle to understand what the hell all this means. So quantitative easing, economic theory, money policies, all of those things. It's like, how do you talk to the person who just works for a living blue collar? And you know, his truck is more expensive as mortgage is rent all with his stuff. What is, you know, what does he have to do? What can he do? And the funny part about is that the background, the folks, the people they were serving us, security people on this, there was a very august group gathered for the thing. There was literally clapping in Hooten and Holler, people in the background. So yeah, of course he went on for five minutes of arcane economic stuff. So we didn't solve anything there. We changed this into English, right? I'm going to ask about that because storytelling figures prominently, not just in your book, but in your everyday work, you have to be able to tell a story that resonates with people. But before we get to that, I just want to ask you one current events question, which is you see the videos as often as I do, if I'm going through TikTok, so I'm sending stuff to the Chinese or I'm going through Facebook reels or YouTube shorts. There is an altercation daily now it feels like Oscar on a plane somewhere. And it feels like over the last few years, it is definitely escalated. What's going on in our skies? Because I feel horrible for our flight attendants today with all of the misery at 20,000 feet. Well, first of all, thank you for saying the magic words, which, you know, we have other humans that are just trying to do their job. They're not paid to manage idiots and jerks and people mouthing off. And we try to train folks in the airline space that the anger that you feel from the person in front of you, a customer, is usually not directed at you personally. Something is going on in their lives. So your question about what's going on lately, why it is such a broader psychological question, because I think our people stress divided, feel like no one's listening. I don't know, but they seem to take it out. And I'm involved in a lot of those things. I travel quite a bit. And I'll always walk into a cabin and you'll see the tension, because people kind of know who you are. They expect you to kind of deal with it and take care of it. But emotions run high. All I ever say to people is one of the facts. And it's like, would you be willing to do this or that? You try to help out. But oftentimes, when people are so irate and they keep it going through the entire flight. Yeah. And I always say, what's the guide point that you would give to people? You're the biggest lesson or awareness point that you would make for folks. I said, you know what? It's just care about others. It's like, just for a little second, have a little empathy that everyone is going somewhere that matters. Everyone's got the thing to do. It's like, it's not just you. And so that begs to your question. It's like, what's changed in America that we've now become self-absorbed. And it's only us that matters. And any slight becomes a big altercation. And people are angry and upset. And that's a worry some issue. There's an old saying, really old saying that all great civilizations first fall apart from within. And I have always worried about that because just as, you know, we just, we're getting to a point where we just don't really care for each other or just for a second, even so. I want to ask you a chicken to the egg question about your career. And then I want to get into day 37 of your time as CEO, which was a little bit bigger day than you plan for it to be Oscar, which came first for you. You came from trains to flight. Was it a love of transportation that has brought you to this industry during your career? Was it a love of leadership and management? And it just happened to be in transportation. You talk a lot about leadership on your show and we always ask you, gee, how do I get to be where you are? Yeah, which is such a broad question. There's so many answers for that. But for me, no, I never envisioned myself being certainly the CEO of industry, like in airlines or at the railroad. It's just you always focus yourself on the things that you do best, collaborating and working with others, making the people around you successful, smiling, making it, you know, the thousand little things that you do to get people together and make better decisions and actually own those decisions so that there's a better objective. And so I have followed that general principle of my own leadership. And of course, it's developed and it's been improved by many people along the way. And then it just led to things. You know, one second, you're doing something great. And then something comes up and say, Hey, would you like to do this? And it's like, wow, okay. And then you become for a while, the youngest to do all these things until you're not, which eventually happens. But no, there was no particular passion for any of those things. I don't want to say happenstance because I think there's a broader plan for us out there somehow. But no, I mean, the rail space, and I talk about it in the book as to how I chose to go there. It's just something that I was, you know, somebody found me and said, Hey, would you like to join the board? And it's like, great. So I was on the board for a long period of time. And then something happened. And they said, gee, we like you as a board member, we might like you as a CEO. And so, so you develop a passion for the things that you do. Over time. But no, I, I wish I had had this vision from day one that I was going to be this, but it doesn't always work that way for people. And I don't like it when people say, you know, follow your passion and go get it. There's a lot of hard work involved. Well, if I'm trying to design a career, though, you write in this piece that one of the reasons that they wanted you at United during their time of crisis was that you were a quote operations guy, right? You weren't somebody who was a talking head or a financial person. You were somebody that could get in the dirt and kind of knew how the machine operated. If I'm trying to design my careers, 20 to 25, that kind of spoke to me about what type of opportunities I might want to pursue. Maybe it's not a linear path, Oscar. Maybe it's a, it's a zigzag. I think zigzag is probably understated, right? I mean, there's just so many. There's a lot of angst every day about it. You know, what I'm doing with my career, where am I headed? You know, we all go to school for something usually and you focus on something because that's what was available. That doesn't have to limit you. I think if you apply those broader leadership lessons that we briefly spoke about, you will find that people around you will get to know you for your intellect, for your capacity, for not only IQ, but IQ, for ability to get things done. And that tends to elevate you over the course of time. I grew up as a finance person, so that was my training. And I did that for quite a long time. But over time, I really quickly learned that the Nance and its concepts was lost on a lot of my operational peers because they just didn't have that training. And honestly, it's a very important question. They didn't understand the why. Hey, they say, listen, I need more things to make this business work. And a finance person comes in and says, well, you know, you need to fill out this form and you need to do ROIs and IRRs and MPVs and all foreign concepts to them. It's like, well, whatever, I just need my stuff. And over time as a finance person, I really taught my organization and myself to be truly listening to folks. It's like, well, don't tell me why you need this. Tell me how much you need and why and what's your background for it. Let us do the work and then we'll do the math behind it. And so what that led is a more operationally based CFO was my sort of label, which when somebody decided to replace a cheap operating officer, it's like, well, why don't we take a chance on this guy? You know, he's he understands some of it. But I'll tell you one thing that one of the greatest lessons in my life was when I moved from a CFO role to a COO role running a large, you know, railroad company with a huge amount of assets and safety orientation and labor and all those sorts of things. A lot of my, you know, wise college learnings and such became a little silly to me sometimes, right? Because it's like, okay, I'm sitting in a room with 500 men and women who, you know, just work for a living and they want to know why something is happening. So I learned to tell people here's the why in simple terms. You know, how do you talk about business results and why they're important and why the streets important? They don't care, right? And so that simplicity and communication is a key thing that I would ask for people. And whenever you can, if indeed you can get an operational role of some sort, that is always helpful and meaningful because it will change how you look at things when you're actually responsible for a P&L, let's say, or results. It's interesting how in a personal financial plan, you know, the money is not the object and some people don't like it because they think money's the object. It's having more life where, to your point, the money piece, if it follows operations, it makes the world better for everybody instead of more frustrate. You told a story later in your book about a quality program that was there before you got there. And when you were on your listening tour, people were complaining about it everywhere you went. And to your point, nobody knew the why behind it. I want to though, not focus on that. I really, what I really want to do is go to the beginning of your book because you tell this great story, Oscar, about taking off your headphones when you walk through an airport, you walk in through a hair, and you see all these stories all around you. And already today, I'm sure our stacker community can see how important it is to be a storyteller and to tell good stories if you're a leader. The whole aspect of storytelling, you compare to a symphony. Can you talk a little bit about how to construct good stories that resonate with a larger group of people? You have to start with the comfort about who you are as a person and why you do what you do. Because that genuine nature allows you to tell stories because you get stories to tell. Every story I tell is based on, enruded in a personal communication with another individual or another set of individuals. I think it resonates. So I tried, again, we talked about simplicity, which is one thing. It's like, you don't bore people with a lot of details. You make it funny, you make it relevant, you bring yourself down to it. I think especially at our CEO levels and such, we're just so used to, there's this level of idolatry that follows us around. It's like, you walk into a room and you're instantly funny and you're the better looking guy. That's all this sorts of stuff. I had worked for a man. I mean, Roberto Goizweira way back in my Coca-Cola days. And he was the most soft-spoken, quiet, unassuming man possible. And he would just pull you over quietly and said, it would look rising. What do you see? And he taught me to always have an opinion about everything. But he also taught me an important thing. All of these people think they are really, really important because of the job title they hold at this particular company. And what's true about all of this, or what's not true, is that that doesn't make you, right? It's that old saying, that's what I do, but that's not who I am. Now, it's important to have achieved things in your life to be able to tell stories from. Because you see a lot of people who just want to talk a lot about everything. Well, I was getting to my Uber today and the guy was this and we had this conversation. Oh, please shut up. Please shut up. Right. And so, that's probably the final point is just brevity, be in concise, and then be in a tune to the attorney audience. Make sure that they're actually listening. So there's no secret recipe for these things. You tell a fantastic and very personal story that weaves its way all the way through this project. But it starts on day 37 of your career as CEO. Can you describe that morning? You are supposed to be going to, what are your biggest meetings so far in 37 days? You're headed to interview a great CFO candidate. But tell me how that morning started off for you and what happened. Yeah. So I think the keynote there, as you mentioned, it's 37 days into my job. And I've been on this listening tour, which is where a lot of my stories come from back to the previous conversation. I'm learning a lot about our business. I'm getting told a lot of things by a lot of folks. And I'm now heading back into Chicago, where I have this important interview with a potential candidate for my CFO role. I also have a summit with all the labor leaders. Because I've been talking with a lot of union people in the audience, but the labor leaders are like, hey, we're important here. We're the ones that lead these folks. You need to talk to us. So they're all trying to set up individual meetings. And my point is like, you know what, why don't we all talk together? Because for me, I was getting quickly understanding that one of the issues we had in United, that we weren't in effect United. We had so many different divisions and departments and organizations. And everybody up and down their own little silo was working, including our unions. So this is just my gentle way. I said, why don't we all get together and talk? So two big meetings that day. And I am off my morning run, as I usually do. I was vegan. I had just raced in 100 mile bike race, like two weeks prior. So, you know, a weekend athlete for sure. But no history of any disease, you know, all my, but I'm at morning, my phone buzzed across the room. And when I went to go get it, I felt, for lack of a better term, weird. You know, I was a little lightheaded, a little clammy. And my legs were kind of just sort of not feeling like they don't really know. I hadn't run that hard. So it wasn't that. And so as I move towards my phone, my legs gave out. And I sort of fell to my knees. And I tell the story of, in part of my training for triathlons and for these bike races, I have a really close friend who happens to be a cardiologist. And he's always telling the stories from the OR, including dramatic stories like you'd be surprised at how relatively young and fit some of the people are that die on my operating table. And you know, and you guys, in our collective group that does all this stuff together, you should always think about if you ever feel anything weird, you know, call 911. Just, you know, reach out, call. The worst that you can be is embarrassed that it's indigestion or something. But you know your body, you know what's, what's right. And you know, what's not, what's maybe strange. So as I fell to my knees, my phone keeps buzzing. And those words came back to me. It's like, okay, I kind of feel weird. And so as I crawl to my phone, I also see my landline. Some of your listeners may not know what a landline is. When you're on the 50th floor of a Chicago apartment building, my immediate thought is, hey, because one of the one of the things that my friend said, when he said immediately caught 911, he added this point, like, and make sure you tell them where you are, which makes sense. And then he added, because you may not make it past the phone call. And I remember, I remember exactly where I was sitting when he said those words. And I remember thinking, that's a little dramatic, right? It's like, Oh, okay. But fast forward a couple of years, this, this event's coming up to uncla-, I'm crawling to my phone. I caught 911 and I immediately tell them I want the 50th floor of it. I still had enough ability to communicate at this point. And that's what I told them. And then I realized that my door, my only door to the apartment was locked. I somehow crawled back, fell, that was bloodied in the face after I woke up from all of this. So I clearly fell into something. But I remember opening the door and two EMTs coming in. And that's the last thing I remember for quite some time since I went into a medical-induced coma. But the concept behind all this is, be aware, communicate with someone about these things. Now, I had no history that I knew of. I was an athlete. I was a vegan. So from my concept of, you know, all the different rules, there was nothing there other than I had this brilliant life-saving thought that I had from one of my friends. And I tell this story everywhere and everywhere I can, especially guys, we tend to kind of like, you know, I'll find. I'll just lay down. I jump in the shower. And again, as my friend Mark says, you may not make it past that phone call. So a long story from that, you know, I was the EMTs that found me, had just been coming around the corner and got the call. Wow, lucky. Cash, my door man at the place is somebody, again, I'm always friendly in talking with something. He knew who I was. And he realized they were coming to my room. So he kind of locked the elevator so no one could use it. He got me up in time. And within, it was 37 days into the job. 37 minutes from when they, what I called, I was in a hospital on something called ECMO, which is a heart and lung machine where they bypassed my entire... That's how serious it was. And one of the funny stories that was told later is one of the doctors that saw me first. He said, I kept saying something. So as he leaned over to hear what I was saying, I kept saying, I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this, which is so unbrand for me, right? Like, I have these two big important meetings. And somehow I got the number of my wife who just happened to be there. So there's just so many nuances there. So I am blessed to be here. It's a miracle. And I'm happy to have made it through. But for all of your listeners, I hope that story resonates. I'll help you tell it to someone because it is a meaningful thing that certainly saved my life. And apparently has helped others as well. As I was reading it, Oscar, the fact that you remembered it the last second before you blacked out to drag yourself over to the door and unlock it. Is there any one thing, by the way, that we should be doing? Because you've just a little snippet in the book where you go, medicine's advanced since then some. There might be some stuff that you can do. So if you don't think you're a risk where average person maybe does? Yeah. So two things. Preventative medicine in America is probably in the early stages. We just don't do enough of that to test people for things like heart disease early on. Because it's just preventative thing. It just doesn't pay. It appears. There's some reticence in the medical community. And that's not a shot at the medical community because they saved my life. But importantly, what's evolved now is that there's a lot of new drugs certainly. And as a company, I'm personally involved with called Clearly that does diagnostic imaging, but that runs it past artificial intelligence and machine learning concepts with hundreds of thousands of patients that have suffered the same things. And the image can fold into this data rich environment and come back to you as a practitioner and as a patient and kind of give you a sense of how your heart looks. Do you have blockage? And if you do, what type is it? And if you do have, whether it's this type, what degree is it? And then even importantly now, we can tell you which of the medicines that are out there that actually will resolve that particular issue. Because for a while, if you present to a medical professional with heart disease, they'll give you this array of medicine, including nitroglycerin, which is the little pill that none of that necessarily may be something you need. And I'm telling you, if you take that many pills in the first two or three days, your life goes to poo. You're just, you don't know which ways up and you don't need any of that stuff necessarily. And so there's much more new technology. So do your question. What can you do? Remember this story, certainly. Take care of yourself. But if you have any history of this, just literally force your doctors to say, is there anything else I can do besides the EKG, which really doesn't do anything. Unfortunately, most of the stuff is invasive, but just be aware of your own situation and be aware of the story and demand from your medical practitioners that you get something more potentially. It's a hard one. There are three themes that I would love to get to. I just want to tell our stacker community that resonate throughout this book. And I'm going to ask you about one of them. But I want to make sure everybody's aware you talk about the importance of listening and back to your storytelling. Stories are better. If they're relevant, you know your audience and you can simplify it. Number two is effectively merging teams is another theme with the merger with you and another airline that didn't go as well as it probably should have when you show up. But the one I do want to ask you about is this. You come into this house completely divided Oscar and you've got all these different places you can look. You can focus on the end user, which is who you want to take care of. The passenger who depends on your airline to get from point A to point B. You can focus on the investor. You've got one big investor who is climbing down your throat from the minute that you get there and you tell a longer story about that. And then there's the employees. And you decide that of all these groups that the employees as a leader, that is where that needs to be the tip of the spear. Can you talk about making that decision and then about that beginning of building trust with employees that implicitly the day you get there don't trust you? Yeah, it's part of its experience and this is a key leadership lesson that I try to provide for folks because turnarounds are just that. The concept of a turnaround is that it's broken and it's broken in many, many places. So the lesson I try to teach is however you best do it as an individual leader, you need to find what the one thing you're going to start with because again, everything's broken. You just mentioned customer service was crap. Financial results were lagging the industry. Employee relations, labor negotiations were off the charts. And people just didn't like us. And we had this amazing global network that everybody had the greatest promise. And so if you think about all those spectrum, any one of those things could have been things strategically, how we fly to different places, and my experience, my heritage, all of that has always taught me. And in this concept of good that we talked about before, going from a CFO to a CO and that learning that I had myself, the learning I had is, wow, you know what? If I just sat down with my operational counterparts and truly listened, visited with them, went out on the field and saw the actual results that they were seeing and their job that wasn't being able to get done effectively because they didn't have some of these assets in use, that concept would have really given me a much better viewpoint on how I would have handled the requests for money, which is for me, which requests, oh my god, this is a lot of money, we have to do the analysis. And so you're talking about you just need to open the communication line so you have better intel. Well, and again, it's not even open. It's open your own darn communication line because, hey, I'm smart, I control all this money. I'm see if you can take that sort of lofty somewhat arrogant attitude. And of course, nobody doubts that you have a job to do, but there's a more effective way of doing it. If you truly, in the concept that I have is listen, learn and only then can you really lead. So I learned that when I went to my COO role. So I had lots of issues there. And so I just went out in the field and I just started listening to people and it proved to be so instrumental in what we did for two reasons. One, I actually got some really good ideas and nobody else was thinking about and B, you begin to win the hearts and minds of human beings who at the end of the day, the human dynamic is I will do something for someone who I respect, I trust, I believe in, or I understand and all those things. We think of ourselves and look around people that influence our life and why do we do that? Say, I love my parents, I trust my parents. So even though I don't always like what they say, I know that they have the best interest. So it's a silly analogy, but it's the same thing. So how do you build that with 100,000 workforce that's disenfranchised, disengaged? And so my list of activities when I first arrived at United was broad and great consultants reports, all my senior leader reports, our boards views, certainly the analysts and our shareholders views. And as I went through all of that, that instinct came back and it came from my first visit to the field. And when I went there, and the reception that I had from people was ridiculously nice. I mean, it's like they were very happy to have someone new. I had written a letter beforehand saying that I was going to listen to them. And then what I would notice in all these conversations is that somebody would come and say hello, and they would just linger just a little long. They would hold on to your coat, leave just a little long, they held your gaze for a little bit. Like, reading, I need to tell you something. I don't know how. Please make it easy for me is what I interpreted. And so we went on this listening tour. And I know it's not without its consequences, because when our first earnings call when I'm there, they're like, all right, there's new guys here, what's he going to do? And they're looking for strategic financial, you know, shareholder concept, customer concept. I'm going to spend the next 90 days, I said, and I'm going to go listen and learn from my folks to truly get a sense. And when I come back, I'm going to come back with the one thing we're going to do first and build upon the storm that resulted from that commentary, right? Okay, this guy doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know these industries. He has to get taught. We eventually come back with a employee first strategy that we communicate. And we had the same level of rancor and excitement from all those communities. Because what do you mean you're going to put employees first, right? Isn't the customer first? Isn't your shareholders first? And building of trust and genuine hearing and connection with your doesn't compute on a spreadsheet, right? So it's hard for a financial analyst to actually put that. It's like, oh, I like what he's doing. But how that sounds like it's going to cost more money. What's the ROI? Right, right. And as we proved time and time again over my tenure, how that trust and connection with our flying employees made that every bit of difference. Airline industries are what we call fragmented, right? You don't have a factory floor where the seal can stand up up there and say, hey, guys, this is what we're going to do tomorrow. To this day, if I see two or three people together as I walk in through a terminal, that's a crowd in our industry. So you had to get the message out and away. And there's listening concept. You get all that. Plus, you also get a sense of people feel like they're part of it. And I'd always tell people, it's like, I hear you, I heard your points, and I'm telling you right now, I don't know that we're going to implement your very thought. But I understand the thought. And so I reserve the right to accumulate all this data, figure out the right thing. I'll always remember your thought. But because I don't do exactly what you tell me, you'll think I haven't followed. And that's why a lot of people don't like to go out and listening is like, oh, aren't you in effect promising everyone something? No, you're not. Again, if you have a genuine human conversation with somebody, you know, again, back to the silly example of a parent, right? Parents are always going to do what they think is the right thing for you. And you may not always agree, but you feel part of it. And so this concept of listen, learn, really learn, not just like nod your head, oh, yeah, got it, got it. But come back to people, here's what I've heard, run it past a lot of folks. And then lead makes for a really powerful message. And it may seem like it takes a long time, but I'm telling you, you always have time to go back and do it right. The second time is what people say. And this is this couldn't be true, or at least from my leadership perspective. The book has turned around time, United Kingdom airline and its employees and the friendly skies. Oscar Munoz, such a pleasure meeting you. Thank you for the stories for the listening. And, you know, I saw the Rolling Stones in concert. And Keith Richards said, hey, it's good to see all of you. And he goes, no, really, at this point in my life, it's good to see anybody. And I kind of feel like it's the same. It's the same for you. After that horrible story. Oh, you know, the stones are one of my favorite bands. And I've had a great chance to see them in many different places around the world. And it's been quite the journey. But, you know, as they say, you can't always get what you want. But if you try it really hard, you get what you need. And I feel blessed to have gotten what I need. Hi, I'm David Hirsch. And when I'm not hosting the dad to dad podcast for the special father's network, which is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising kids with special needs, I'm stacking vegiments. Big thanks to Oscar for joining us. Oh, gee, this idea not lost on me that the best leaders come in listening first. Listen, what's that? Sorry, I'm not paying attention. What you think is going on might not be exactly what is going on. It might be something completely different. Also, by the way, Doug, Oscar also spent time at Coca Cola and Pepsi. So we got a, we got another trivia connection there between Oscar and Coca Cola. Hey, let's throw out the haven lifeline and tackle some of life's most important questions. Our friends at Haven Life Insurance Agency, OG, they put what you value first. Oh, left over birthday cake for my wife's birthday last weekend. Yeah, I'm going to stay away from the leftover birthday cake. I'm going to lose some weight. I am we just kind of have a sequence here. We had, we had my sons two weeks ago, lissas, and then Carolines is in a couple weeks, we got a confirmation in between, I mean, like, it's cake cake cake cake cake cake cake. Sugar frosting sugar frosting sugar. I don't like frosting though. So I just I only eat the frosting. I prefer the frosting where all the frosting went. I just leave it in a bowl. Frosting in a bowl way better. Just get rid of that cakey part. You're good. You know, I went on a trip for about 18 days and we didn't know anything about it. I went off my MetPro diet and man am I feeling it. Time to get back before Jesse at MetPro yells at me too much. It says here, they put what you value first, which is your loved ones and your time. And that's why they may buy in quality term life insurance actually simple. You go to stackabedgments.com slash Haven Life now to get a free quote. Their application is simple online. You get an instant coverage decision. They don't even ask you how much cake you ate yesterday on that application, which is always good. Prices are affordable. All policies issued by their parent company mass mutual more than 160 years old. Get this done. Get your life insurance done, people stackabedgments.com slash Haven Life. Today we're going to throw the Haven Lifeline out to Luke. How's it going Luke? Hey, Joe and OG. This is Luke from California. I wanted to reach out with a quick question regarding investments. My wife and I are in our late thirties and we've been pretty heavily focused on saving for retirement since we got married 11 and a half years ago. And that savings rate is now around 50%. It's been a combination of frugality and resisting lifestyle creep. Anyways, we just realized a year or so ago that we're a bit closer to retirement than we had originally planned. And we're now thinking we could be retired around age 50. Because we hadn't really been planning on retiring early until recently, most of our retirement savings are in 401k and IRA accounts along with some investment real estate. While the investment real estate will provide income and early retirement, we're thinking we need to now focus on investments that we can start withdrawing from at an early retirement age. Could you give us an overview of the various investment vehicles, types of accounts, etc. And investment classes most appropriate for different time horizons, especially considering those that would be best suited for a 10 to 12 year timeframe. Thank you. And looking forward to rocking my stacking Benjamin shirt at the beach this summer. Oh, yeah. And Doug, give me a call so we can discuss the earth shade delivery. I'm not sure what he's talking about there, OG. And Doug, no, Doug, easy. Keep him away for the microphone. You dump them. Got to mute the emergency muted Doug's mic Luke right there. By the way, this is super cool. I want to focus on this first. Big high five to Luke, because OG 50% savings rate, but the fact that he grew into that didn't start at 50. Just avoided lifestyle creep, stayed frugal. And as he got pay raises, his life changed. He just made sure that extra money went in the bucket. It's a great way to go. It's a good way to kind of get used to this lifestyle instead of, you know, some people, I think it's so excited about saving money. They save a ton of money. They do it for about six weeks and then they abandon it because they went too far. So I want to say first, nice job there. Pretty sweet. I don't know why everybody's so frustrated with putting money in workplace plans, 401ks, IRAs and that sort of thing. And then planning on retiring early, the IRS has a path for you. The only issue with taking money out of a retirement plan before 59 and a half is if you're not retired. The government doesn't care if you take money out of your retirement plan and you're retired. They care if you take it out to buy a Ferrari or something and you're not retired. If you're retired and you want to buy a Ferrari with your retirement account, you can. There's a path for that. So there's ways to do that. But I think you want to make sure that you've got some flexibility for no other reason than just a tax standpoint. You know, we know that if you put money in your 401k pre-tax, it's going to sit there. You get a tax break today. It's going to grow tax deferred. So whatever it does, you don't pay taxes on while it sits there. And then when you go to take it out, you're going to have to pay taxes. And that tax rate is going to be just like your ordinary income rate, right? You take 100 grand out of your 401k. It's just like you made $100,000 in your job. So you pay that those federal taxes, those state taxes, whatever. A Roth IRA or if you use the Roth 401k operates a little differently. You don't get any tax break up front. You've already paid taxes on the money. It goes in. It's invested in grows, tax deferred. So you don't pay any taxes while it grows. And then when you take it out, there's no taxes due. Those are like the two kind of opposite ends of the spectrum, right? I'm going to be fully taxed or I'm going to be no taxed. And then there's kind of the third area, which is money that you've already been taxed on and money you get taxed along the way on, right? And we're talking about your regular investment account, what we would say a non-qualified account or a regular brokerage account. And that money is going to go in. You've already paid taxes on it. It grows. It does its thing. It may pay dividends, may have capital gains. You're going to pay taxes on those along the way. And then when you take the money out, you only pay taxes on the gains that you've made from your original investment. So it's kind of partially taxable. We call that the tax control triangle. But we want to make sure that you've got some opportunity to withdraw money from any one of those buckets because throughout your life, and frankly, from from, you know, you kind of fast forward, if you're 35 right now, what are tax laws going to look like when you're 45? What are they going to look like when you're 65 or 95? We don't have any clue at all. But what we know is, is that we'll probably want to pay some taxes. We'll probably want to have some money be tax-free and probably have some money be partially taxable so that we can control our tax bill in retirement. Listen, if you got $40 million in your IRA, I don't think you give a crap if you're going to pay a little tax along the way. But for the majority of us who kind of don't have profound amount of wealth, this is going to matter. Right? If you retire with $2 million in an IRA, that's really a million dollars, right? Because a million is going to go to the government and millions going to go to you. So having the flexibility there, what I would focus on is, and the additional savings is building up that third bucket. You know, let's make sure that you've got some Roth money. Let's make sure you've got some brokerage account money to give you flexibility when you get to that retirement thing. The other thing Luke that you asked about was investment time horizons. This is a big issue for most people. Most people are far too conservative. With their money. And for some reason, we've got this thing in our brain that says, well, I'm going to retire in five years. Therefore I should, you know, my money needs to be conservative. That is the absolute worst thing that you can do from an investment standpoint. You need money in five years. Like if you're going to retire in five years, you need the, you need one years of money in five years. But you need money in 45 years also and 44 years and 43 years and 42 years. So the preponderance of your wealth needs to be invested for that time horizon, which is forever basically. And if you're doing it the right way and really kind of thinking in the direction that you should from a wealth transfer standpoint, wealth growth standpoint, why would you ever have any money that's not invested long term for long term time horizons? I get it. If you need money tomorrow, that money can't be invested long term time horizon, right? You can't have tomorrow's money dependent on what the stock market does today. That's a bad mix. But anything beyond five or seven years, that needs to be 100% invested all the time for you and for every other generation beyond you too many people, you know, get kind of sucked into these awful target date funds whose goal it is is to zero you out basically at retirement day. So you pick the 2035 fund and their goal is by the time you get to 2035, you're mostly conservative. And by the way, that slope down starts in 2020. And so the time when you should be growing your wealth the most is the time where it's starting to get more and more conservative, which is taking the opportunity for you to have that growth off the table, which is really silly. And then you get to 65 and it's really conservative and you go, I got another 40 years. And my kids have 100 years behind that. My grandkids have 150 years behind that. So why would you have your money be invested? Your momentum is all gone. It's all gone. If you're thinking about this the right way and you're going, I'm going to, I'm saving so much money that I will never run out. Isn't that everybody's goal that I will never run out? Now, for some people, that means I'm not going to run out and I'm going to have a dollar left on my 100th birthday. You know, you check the box, you didn't run out. Okay, cool. But most people don't want to play it that tight. Most people go, no, I want my portfolio value to increase. If not, you know, maybe it flatlines a little bit, you know, kind of plateau is maybe some better way to use, but me, it's plateau is. And if you're thinking that way, you're going to die with some money. And who's it going to go to? Your kids and your grandkids, the charities that you care about, the people and places that are important to you? Why do you want to take all the own thought of it? You know, well, I'm 65. I have to be conservative now. Hogwash, man. Hammer down. You got 30 years. Plus your kids have 40 years beyond that. But his point, OG, is that he's going to spend the money in 10 years or he's anticipating spending the money in 10 years of he's doing that. I'm still with you spending one year in 10 years, but then he's spending one year and 11, one year in 12. So he's got to look at how much money he needs for that year and position that for that year 10 in seven years from now or five years from now. Yes, you should probably be thinking about that, but you don't need to think about any of that right now. I think he does in one way. And it is because on the asset allocation guide, there are two things that historically have beaten the pants off of inflation and it stocks in real estate. And the only problem with real estate there, I have no problem with real estate is a long term investment, but real estate, if you're going to try to sell it, is a bear. So I would use real estate for an income stream for a long sell it whenever. But if I want something that's liquid, I'm going to equities for that 10 year money. I'm not, I'm taking real estate off the table. But your asset allocation for that long term money might say real estate on it. If I'm looking at, if I'm looking at 10 years out now, to your point, OG, he might already have other money invested right now that's in equities, that's enough money in stocks that he can get at that money. So he could just invest in real estate that and he'll be, he'll be fine. Grow that. Yeah. So stocks in real estate are the only places that beat inflation over long periods of time, which is the only thing that matters, by the way, that's the only thing that matters. Because if you can't beat inflation, you will lose. But you can also have enough money that the income from your portfolio pays you enough money, right? The dividend rate. I just sent this out to all of our clients, the dividend rate of the S&P 500 has increased 11 times in the last 50 years. Not that it's increased 11 times, that it's increased 11 acts. It was $6. Now it's $66. It's gone up 11 fold is a better way to put that. And even last year, when the market went down, dividends went up. And so you could have a portfolio that's 100% equities, back to our time horizon of like, when do I need this money? You could have a portfolio that's 100% equities that kicks off enough dividend income that you never have to be conservative. You never have to go, well, what am I going to do? I need money in like five years from now. The dividends from your portfolio could be enough money that you don't have to say, well, I had to take a little bit off the table now. You know what I mean? Like, if you're going to live on 100 grand, you could figure that out and say, how much money do I need in an investment account between, in his case, real estate and whatever to fund my lifestyle. Because dividends increase with inflation more than, and so does rental property income, right? So you got some rental properties. You're going to raise the rates higher than inflation. So it's a fun problem to have. Luke, thanks for that question. And if people got lost a little bit on the different taxation of investments, we do have a resource that you can get for free. Just go to stackybejamins.com slash tax triangle. Stackybejamins.com slash tax triangle. That will lead you to a very simple drawing, which will show you exactly what this tax control is. Is that your grand one that you did? It is. It's a magic marker. It is. It is wonderful. Stackybejamins.com slash tax triangle. Of course, Kevin will go deeper into tax control in the 201 as well, our newsletter. All right. That's going to do it for today. Man, a lot going on in the community this week. Oh, gee, I'm super excited to be back. We this week are talking a lot about divorce. If you're somebody who doesn't know where your money is or you feel like you might not be able to trust your partner or you can trust your partner now, but you just want to make sure that you what's that sunsue from the art of war, the best battles, the one that's never fought. Tonight, Tracy Conan, who is a forensic accountant, aka a money detective joins us on Instagram live. She's going to be talking about her new divorce summit called when your divorce. And if you go to stackybejamins.com slash divorce summit, you will see that that's taking place on Thursday. I'll be on a panel. Not just with with Tracy, but also with Jill Schlesinger, of course, from Jill on money and CBS news. And Jen Hemphill will be there who coaches a lot of people in our armed forces on how to manage their money. So financial coach, CFP and me, all together on a panel on Thursday. But on Monday, if you'd like to just hang out with Tracy and I, that's 5 p.m. tonight on Instagram, it's 5 p.m. Eastern 2 p.m. Pacific. Coming up also later this week, Tracy, we'll be our guest right here on Wednesday on the show, along with Sarah Jacobs talking about divorce. That's a topic. Oh, gee, we have not. I can't think of a time where we've had a show where our main guest or focus specifically on divorce. And so we're going to do that on Wednesday. I mean, not cool, but cool. No, not cool. But yeah, but if if you're a stacker, but not cool. Yeah, I mean, being prepared for anything, right is cool. But I'm with you, the divorce. Situation not cool. All right. That's what's coming up on the community calendar. But if you're not here for that, you're not here for the community thing. You're worried about what we talked about in our headline about the latest bank rumblings, about weirdness in the economy, about maybe a recession. I saw another TikTok video about, man, we might have a recession. What this guy called it a recession non recession, but whatever, if you are anxious to make some moves with your finances, I'd like you to do this instead. Check out this free guide from OG and his team. They put it together to help you plan more and panic less no matter what the market does. Has some great questions to ask yourself so that you make financial decisions your future self will thank you for head to stackybajamins.com slash guide to get that free guide from OG, the stackybajamins.com slash guide. All right, that is what's going on here. Doug, and we had a lot of takeaways today, OG, but Doug, why don't you give us our top three? What should we have learned today? So what should we have learned today? First, from Oscar Munoz, lead with empathy and communication. If you listen first and speak later, you're much more likely to make good decisions. Second, new mortgage fees, maybe not as ugly as you thought, if you actually read the slanted story, but the big lesson turns out Coke floats aren't what you think. Coke does not float. Thanks to Oscar Munoz for joining us today. You'll find his new book Turn Around Time, Wherever Books Are Sold. You know what? We'll also include links in our show notes at stackingbajamins.com. Just thank me later. This show is the property of SB Podcasts LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Salciha. Our producer is Karen Reibine. This show was written by Lacey Langford, who's also the host of the Military Money Show, with help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest Podcast. Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called The 201. You'll find the 411 on All Things Money at The 201. Just visit stackingbajamins.com slash 201. Tina Eichenberg makes the video version of this show. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now. Why don't you out with friends about the show later? Mom's friend Gertrude and Kate Yunken are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement. So say hello when you see us posting online. To join all the Basement fun with other stackers, type stackingbajamins.com slash basement. Not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don't take advice from people you don't know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I'm Joe's Mom's neighbor, Doug, and we'll see you next time back here at The Stacking Benjamin Show. you you You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You You Oh, G. I've told you recently. Well, I've told you over the last many years. There's movies that you're gonna like that I saw. This is truly a movie that not only Do I think you're going to like I think you actually will see it. John Wick 4. John Wick 4. Please show me John Wick 4. Nope. This is a movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal and it is Guy Richie's The Covenant. Oh, yeah. I saw the previous for this. John, you have tellings approaching? You still don't remember a thing. I don't remember any of it. I only remember the interpreter. Why he wants his job? I need the money. Don't disappoint. Turn out to be a pain in the ass. No, not me, sir. Money isn't the reason he wants his job. It's Alabama. Kill this son. Stop the vehicle, Sergeant. We don't want to go down this road. You're out of your bounds, Ahmed. You're here translate. Actually, I'm here to interpret. John, you have tellings approaching? Well, I don't know. And while you can't see in our audio of the trailer, what's going on? You hear the shoot, no G? Lots of shooting. This is a story that's a composite of a lot of different stories that people had with their interpreters, their translators during the time that the United States was in Afghanistan. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the leader of a group that is trying to find facilities that are making IEDs, these explosives that killed so many people, and they're trying to take them out and stop their bomb making production of the Taliban. And at the beginning of the movie, he's incredibly frustrated because they're not finding much. He gets a new interpreter, a gentleman named Ahmed, played brilliantly by this guy, a Dar Salim. And what I like about Dar's performance, OG, he's a lot like Tom Hardy, where he doesn't have to say a lot. You just look at his face and you know what he's thinking. And of course, Jake Gyllenhaal, how many great movies has this guy been in? It's been in so, so much good stuff. The thing that I read about this that frustrated a lot of people was it didn't have to be fiction. It didn't have to be fiction. No, you're right. There's so many stories like this that could have been a story that actually happened that I think a lot of people felt frustrated that they didn't just pick one of the hundreds of probably good stories that are already there. You know, it's funny. I'm going to come out on the other side of that. Cheryl knows this. I don't know if I've ever told you this, but I prefer the story to be fiction because I feel like we can tell more truth with fiction. We can say, you know, I don't got to stick to the storyline. I can tell the story that I want to tell. And at the end, where I think he pays homage to these relationships, while the credits are rolling, they're showing all these people and their interpreters, all these service members and their interpreters as they go, showing that what Richie's done is taken an amalgamation, you know, a composite of all these different relationships. And crafted a story that while fiction encompasses a lot of different truths. So we're able to get this, this, this great story. I mean, I think it makes it easier to just create a cohesive story without a lot of downtime and also a lot of explanation about, well, I know this person had this problem. This person is a problem, which by the way, they do Ahmed is not a perfect citizen, which is why Jake Gyllenhaal does not trust him at the beginning. It turns out that his imperfections are what made him the perfect interpreter for this mission because of the fact that he was able to get some information that other people weren't able to, and in a particular hatred, which you heard from the trailer. If you listen closely, you hear them say, this guy hates the Taliban because they killed his son. And so he definitely has an agenda. Man, just, just, I was, it was a long movie. I don't know how long the movie was. I should probably look that up. But regardless, I was on, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time, oh gee, there was no downtime. No downtime. Cool. Danger around every corner. Lots of guns blazing, different than, you know, you love action movies. I love action movies with a great story. If it's got a great story to support the action, I'm great. But nothing I hate more than sitting there for 10 minutes watching crap blow up and I don't care. I'm like, why do I care about this crap blown up? But if there's high stakes behind the crap blown up, it makes it far better. And the covenant is a huge thumb up. I've seen there. There've been so many good movies lately. It's sad to see Hollywood now going to strike and they're going to. I was going to say, I was going to kind of pivot to that real quick. What's your least favorite contemporary James Bond movie? I did not like the entire Pierce Brosnan era era, which is funny because I thought Pierce Brosnan should have been a great bond. And when he got picked, I was like, oh, that's great. Yeah. What about your least favorite Daniel Craig Bond? Oh. I'll just tell it to you. Yeah, it's got to be quantum of solace. And the reason I just read this today, because you're talking about the strike, the reason it was so awful was because the writers strike right in the middle of it. And so Daniel Craig had to write the ending. And like write his own stuff. He's like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think any movie compares is any Bond movie compares favorably against Daniel Craig's first one about Casino Royale. I think Casino Royale is the best Bond movie. Skyfall was so amazing. Skyfall was incredible. Remember when we did the special Skyfall episode? Maybe we need to. Yeah, we did a whole episode. I'm in to do it again. That movie and then the other two, because there were two more after that, right? The two after that were great too. I mean, the last one is fantastic. They were great. But the reason that I like Casino Royale so much is it's the first time that we got to see the depth of character that Daniel Craig was going to bring to this, the immense sorrow that he had about, you know, about the people around him dying. And the conflicting emotions that he had. Like, you know, Roger Moore was my favorite. I'm going to get about to hate mail for that because I love Roger Moore, but Roger Moore had, you know, no depth. It was funny as all get out and had these great one-liners and just fantastic, but the depth that Daniel Craig brought to. So good. Ready for another James Bond movie. That's what I'm ready for. I think you should go watch the Covenant. I think you're going to love this movie. Good stuff. Okay. 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. Useful idiots. Wherever you listen.