Teaching Better Money Lessons - Our Back to School/Back to Work episode! (SB1396)

Hey, shake it back, gal. Woo! Shake it back! [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Live from Joe's Mom's Basement, it's The Stacking Benjamin Show. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ I'm Joe's Mom's Neighbor, Doug, and today. We're talking about how to teach kids to be financially responsible with the host of the Art of Allowance podcast, John Lanza. Bonus doesn't necessarily involve increasing their allowance and, you don't have to be a kid to pick up a lesson or two. Before that, we'll share a headline about paying. Does it matter what payment method you use at the store? Turns out, it does. We'll help you choose the right way to pay. Plus, we'll throw out the Haven Lifeline to a Lucky Stacker looking for help. And then, I'll share some hilariously comical trivia. And now, two guys who are emotionally kids at heart, it's Joe and oh, J-J-J-J-G. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Nothing all like being better than the youngest guy my age. Everybody, welcome to the Math Equation that doesn't work for the win podcast. Oh, gee, give me the look there as he's trying to figure that out. I like having a young attitude, man, don't you? It's like being young at heart. I can't hear anything because I'm chewing so fast right to... He's like a 12-year-old. All I hear is myself chewing. Nothing is mouth full of cookies. He's got a mouth full of cookies. It's biscuits. It's biscuits. He's got a mouth full of biscuits. Is that Peppa Pig? That's any British person. Yeah, I just made it up. I was gonna say, that does sound like a little Peppa Pig line. Youngest guy in the room. That's me. I meant, youngest guy. Well, okay. Well, okay. But we're talking about, in all things other than the calendar, because you are absolutely the oldest guy in the room. By far, easily off of the calendar. Easily, what time do you go to bed? Oh, gee, what time do you go to bed? 9.45. People that you let on your lawn. Nobody. Do you read the paper every week and morning? Oh, because it's usually night noon by the time I get up. How many kids on skateboards have you yelled at this week? 17. You're under the defense rest. Yes, the defense of answers. We've got a fantastic show today. Given that juvenile moment, we're gonna have a few more. John Lanza, who's the chief mammal. That is his moniker at his company. He has a fantastic brand that helps credit unions teach kids about money. And obviously a fantastic podcast. And by the way, Doug, you said that, don't be a kid to get lessons. You know what? If you're just somebody starting out, whether you have kids or a kid, doesn't matter. John Lanza always brings some great tips for well, better communication in the family. The basics that you would teach a kid are exactly the basics that you need as an adult. There's a dude named Robert Fulham, who made a boatload of cash on that principle. I don't know who that is, but sounds great. Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten. Remember all the books? Yes. There were like five of those books. That dude is sitting on his own private island right now because of those books. Independently wealthy on the backs of all the people trying to learn stuff from kindergarten. When you could have just picked it up in kindergarten and you would have been fine. I mean, some of us were sleeping. Sounds like he ripped us all off. But actually, you know what's not a rip off? This right here. We hear it's a great funny show on Earth. We know all about fishing scams and how devastating it could be. How many times have we done headlines about this? And just the havoc. Havoc's not even a good enough word. The fact that it can just ruin your life. Hey, everybody. I'm Joe Salcihi here to tell you about delete me protecting yourself from financial risks should absolutely include protecting yourself from online identity theft or fishing scams. In fact, you know, this happened to our friend Shannon Allen. We were talking about this over on the stacking deed show. Shannon had a situation that you can hear in a past episode where she accidentally gave over $50,000 to somebody who was pretending to be part of her mortgage company. They took the title company stuff. They pretended exactly who they were. That is funny. Even on a smaller level, you know, Cheryl gets things and will text me and go, hey, I didn't know that UPS had something coming. And I said, don't open that. She said, why not? Because that is not from UPS. UPS will not text you the way that these people text you. Delete me helps you keep your personal info safe by removing it from hundreds of data broker websites that sell our data online. You tell Delete me exactly what info you want deleted and their privacy experts take it from there. I've done it myself. It takes minutes to set it up. It's really that simple to protect yourself. Delete me makes it easy. So right now for our stacker community, you're going to get 20% off your Delete me plan when you go to join DeleteMe.com slash Benjamin's. And if you use promo code SBS 20, that's SBS 20. The only way to get 20% off is to go to join DeleteMe.com slash Benjamin's and enter code SBS 20. Probably not the way our sponsor wanted us to begin that spot. Why not? We said it wasn't a rip off. It's not a rip off. That's a strong endorsement. It was fantastic. You know what? I'm going to back it up with another one right here. It's the fall. And that means back to school. It means people taking work maybe a smidge more seriously than you've been telling your boss for a while. And it may mean you're going into the office more. You're traveling more. And because of that, well, it might be time that you need a car to get you there. And getting that new car is exciting. And you deserve a hassle-free buying experience. 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The flagship credit card will earn you three times points on travel, plus up to $100 in statement credits toward TSA pre-check, or global entry, and a free-year Amazon Prime. So if you like watching stuff on TV, you like movies, and you like to travel like I do, you have a bonus for all of those. With two times the points that all purchases outside of travel, the rewards don't have to end when your vacation does. For more on Navy Federal's car buying experience and flagship rewards, visit navyfederal.org. Open the Armed Forces, the DOD veterans and their families, credit and collateral subject to approval, Navy Federal's ensured by NCUA. Amazon Prime is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. Visa is a registered service mark of visa used by Navy Federal underlicense. Pow, pow! Yes, one two-pudge, Doug. We're on it. We got OG here. We got Doug here. We've got John Lanza up talking to mom. He is going to give us some tips for beginners, but before that a headline. So let's go. Hello, doggies. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show. Our stacking Benjamin's headlines. Our headline comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. This is written by Amani Moise. Amani. What was that last name? Moise, not moist. Okay. M-O-I-S. That would be a rough way to go through life. I'm moist. Maybe got Amani writes, buyers have more ways to pay for things than ever before. Apple Pay, Venmo. Credit cards, it doesn't have other options. I was Venmoing somebody about half an hour ago. OG, I did not get it. Try again. As much as the purchase itself, each of the different payment methods provides various conveniences, perks, and protections from fraud. Credit cards have long been the default option of choice, but higher interest rates have now raised the cost of carrying a credit card balance. This is something OG that we have uncovered in a long time that actually deciding how you pay actually does matter. Like setting up a cash strategy can be a, well, maybe it might not help you win, but it certainly may stop you from losing. Well, this is something that's just relatively new, you know, over the last, what, maybe five or seven years. Before that, it was just kind of either charged it or you paid cash or some of us wrote checks. Whoa, hey, easy there. Like, where's the checkbook, honey? I need to pay the lawn guy. I actually had a situation where I had to write a check. I had to write a check maybe three months ago, and it did take me 20 minutes to figure out where the checkbook was. I had no idea. You know, I just paid my summer taxes, and I had to write a paper check because any other method, I had to pay like 3% convenience fees. It's like ticket masters running my local city taxes. If I want to pay online or even do a direct poll right out of the checking account, I had to pay extra. Well, that 3% is a big number on your property taxes. You know, so that was restaurants too, by the way, when you use a credit card at a restaurant, more often they're, they're tacking on the 3% fee. We just actually had a stacker talk about that in the basement. Might have even just been a couple of days ago. Oh, did they? She's a small business owner. I think she's in Texarkana. She owns a liquor store in Texarkana. She's got to be your best friend, dude. She's really wrestling with this because, like, I don't know, she talked about something like five or eight years ago, the majority of her business was cash. And now that's flip-flopped. And she's wrestling with, do I raise my prices? Or do I tack it on? Not to change the subject, Doug, but I forgot. You just paid your taxes. Your basement dues are due. As well, your summer basement dues. We have BLR dues. We charge a 3% fee, even for cash. We do. So if you want to be on the Friday episode, you have to get big membership fee. Well, and to your point, OG, listen to how much money transfers are changing. Apps like Venmo and Zell, they write here, processed nearly $900 billion last year. Consumer Finance Protection Bureau expects that number is going to be $1.6 trillion. By 2027. We're clearly changing the way that we pay. And I think maybe we need to think, do we need to be a little bit more careful? Because payment apps, according to this piece, are among the fastest growing sources of fraud reports and losses, according to the FTC. Overall, fraud losses have increased more than fivefold to $1.2 trillion since 2019. Losses tied to payment apps jump from $5 million to $47 million. So wow, $5 million to $47 million of fraud on $900 billion of transactions. Still, you know, that's really not a huge number. But the problem with PayPal, Zell, Venmo, CashApp, there's some others I'm missing them. The problem with those is that it's kind of firing for get. You have sent the money. And if you type the wrong cell phone number in there, you're hoping on the goodwill of the other person to go. Yeah, that's not me. Yeah, I think you meant to send this to someone else. I get to give that money back. Yeah, right. So it's kind of sort of like a wire transfer. Remember, remember years ago, there's a rash, I'm sure it's still going on, but a rash of title fraud. You know, we would remember we had Shannon Allen on the show, The Blogger, who $55,000. Yeah, she wired to a fraudster who was pretending to be her title company. Yeah. And that's kind of instant-ish payment also and kind of sort of firing for get it's gone. You know, you can't get it. We have been long time American Express users. And I will dug to your point about the 3% fee. I'll pay the 3% fee. For me, that's the insurance that this transaction is going to go through the way that I wanted to go through. And I'm going to get the service that I want now. Obviously taxes are a whole different scenario. But you know, you had to example a couple of days ago where you were talking about the knife that you bought and how that kind of went belly up. And thank goodness you made knives. Yeah, knives. Knifes. Good thing you paid with your credit card. And now Venmo, right? Because you've been out. We've had tons of stories, personally, where the product just wasn't delivered as advertised. And you know, it's just easier to fight MX as opposed to somebody else. Let's walk through these different types of payments because they go through the mall. And I think it's a good thing for a stackers. Credit and debit cards that starts off with when you swipe or tap your card or authorize a card transaction online. And the merchants bank communicates with your bank through a card network like MasterCard or Visa or American Express to ask permission to withdraw a certain amount. Your bank then decides whether to approve the transaction based on your available funds or credit and the likelihood the transaction is fraudulent. So you got these banks, OG looking out for you when it comes to credit cards. Debit cards too, but remember debit card only if you process it through the Visa or MasterCard system. If you put your pin number in there, now it's going directly out of your bank account and you could end up not having some of the same protections. Yeah, that's a different way. It says a credit card though can be expensive. If you don't pay the balance in full, higher interest rates now raise the cost of carrying a credit card balance. Paying off a thousand dollar balance in 12 months at the current average annual percentage rate of 22.16 means $103 an interest compared with 77 roughly. It's going to cost you about, what, almost 25 bucks more, 26 bucks more. Debit cards don't offer the same rewards. As credit cards, since their issuers make less money, they do come with similar fraud and payment protection again if you use them that way. Let's look at digital wallets like PayPal or Apple Pay among the safest and easiest ways to pay online, checking out with a wallet typically faster than paying with a credit card directly since you don't have to re-enter billing information shipping address. All the protections and benefits associated with the underlying card are still in effect for wallet transactions. So it's best to connect these wallets to a credit card directly to maximize your protection. I like that advice. I've been using wallets more and more. Have you been using them guys? Yeah, absolutely. Super easy. And I've even started using the Shopify one and I think it's Shopify where if it's offered, it already knows all the stuff. It texts me a code and I type the code in and it fills in all the shipping and the credit card information and all that sort of stuff. It's a lot simpler. Which I think that's why people think that because that's so easy and wallets are easy that peer-to-peer payment apps like Venmo, Cash App and Zell are the same thing. Right. And they're not. They are not. It's a great way to send money to friends and family but they're now used in more settings. They move money more quickly instead of waiting on banks to prove the transaction. It's authorized once the center hits submit. It's almost impossible to get money back once it's been sent. Of course, that's the same for bank transfers and that can be ugly. I like what this gentleman company called BioCatch talks about who works in this area. The slower it is, OG, he says, the slower it is, the greater likelihood you'll be able to get recourse. So just because you can do it fast through Venmo, if you're not sure the transaction, Venmoing somebody money by your billware. Well, that's really the crux of it. If it's a small dollar amount, it's a quick transaction. You're for certain you know who the person is. It's not, you know, life altering some, it's not a big transaction. Use Venmo, use PayPal, Zell, that sort of stuff. You're selling a car and the guy says, well, I'll just Venmo you the cash. Or you know, it's like the bigger the transaction, the more opportunity there is for, you know, something to go wrong. And you want to have some of that protection in there to afford yourself the opportunity to have some recourse if something does go wrong. Coming up next, John Lanza, he's on a mission to help parents raise money smart kids and help families live happier, more fulfilled lives. He's the author of the Art of Allowance, a short practical guide to raising money smart money and power kids, hosted the Art of Allowance podcast, creator of the Art of Allowance project, which features the money mammals, which is a DVD series. He actually got his start in television and in animation. And so the money mammals are a super fun series of books and DVDs for kids to learn about money. But today we've got John on the show and he's gonna help us get back to school. You know OG with your kids going back to school, also a good time for parents kind of to go, okay, our kids have a curriculum at school, but personal finance not in there. How do we add that to our curriculum for our kids? So John's gonna help us with that. John's up next, but Doug, to get there ahead of time, you've got some trivia that actually might be a little bit about some of the stuff John's interested in, animation. Okay, we'll see where it goes. I'm not sure yet. Sometimes I just start talking and we see what comes out. Hey there, stackers hot jokes, Bob's favorite Doug. Today is telling joke day and I've got a great knock, knock joke for you, but you got to start it. So, okay, okay, go, go, knock, knock. I don't know, not, dude, not you. You, God, said you. The listener, we're trying to break the fourth wall. We're letting the listener take part in the show. And your ego just assumes that when I say you, we're talking about OG, that math adds up. Okay, we're gonna try this again, everybody. Okay, shout out your devices. You go first. Okay, who's there? Okay, well, I guess we're probably never gonna know the ending to that one, but not only is it, tell a joke day, but on this day in 1930, the first ever color cartoon with synchronized sound debuted. It was created by cartoonist Ab Iwerks, who, after leaving Disney, started his own company, Iwerks Studio. Ab Iwerks, a guy whose name sounds like the answer to the trivia question, which of these is definitely not a name, created a series called Flip the Frog, starring a character who was a frog named Flip. Huh, there's a fun coincidence. The debut episode of Flip the Frog, remember, it's Frog, Flip. It was titled Fiddlesticks. And for the first time in animation history, audiences, were treated to an animated cartoon with sound and color. So this got me thinking, what was the longest running cartoon in history? Although most people who take in the poll that I ran in my imagination this morning believe that the Simpsons is the longest running cartoon, it's actually Looney Tunes, which ended its most recent series in 2020. The legendary Mel Blank voiced the beloved and mischievous bugs bunny along with other characters. So here's my trivia question, which other characters did Mel voice in the original series? I'll be back with the answer after I see what wacky Marmaduke is up to now. Are you currently enjoying the show on the Stitcher app? Then you need to know Stitcher is going away on August 29th. Yep, going away, as in Kaput, gone, dead. Rest in peace, Stitcher, and thanks for 15 years of service to the podcast community. So switch to another podcast app and follow this show there. Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Hey there, stackers. I'm avid comic strip reader and three time coloring contest winner, Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. That Marmaduke, he's always doing something crazy. Today he caught the dog catcher, which makes him a dog catcher. He's like a dog catcher, dog catcher, unbelievable. Today's trivia question was, in addition to bugs bunny, what other characters did the legendary Mel Blank voice in the original Looney Tunes series? Blank was hired to voice not only bugs bunny, but nearly every other Looney Tunes character as well, including pork pig, daffy duck, Elmer the fun, Elmer the fun, right? Tweety birds, Sylvester the cat, and so many more. So the answer's probably, like whatever you guessed, you were right. At the height of his career, this is the good part, voice acting, earned blank, $20,000 per week. The salary I could easily get used to, and now you'll hear the voice of another man who's making stuff for kids who will grow up to appreciate him even more when their adults, John Lanza. And I'm so happy he's here with us in mom's basement, John Lanza. How are you, man? I'm great, Joe. I'm super excited to finally make the cut and get on stacking measurements. Oh, come on. I'm happy that you said yes, that you would come on him when we met at the relevant conference. Finally, when I saw you, I'm like, I felt like it was my long lost brother who I've never met in real life. Yeah, I felt the same way. It's like watching you facilitate at a conference. It just got me excited. I'm like, oh, I just have to talk to Joe. So I'm glad it's worked out and we're here. Stop, keep going, stop, keep going, stop. Yeah, I bet you're good. Everybody's asking this question. Money mammals, just the coolest name. The chief money mammal is like the best business card. Where did the idea first come from? Oh, complete rip off. So way back in the day, we were in a different life, basically doing some work with Delta Bear and Maxine Clark is the owner of Delta Bear. I got her card and it said on it, chief executive bear. And at the time, I was kind of like a little bit jaded 20, late 20s or early 30 year old, didn't have kids yet. It was like, that is the corneous thing I've ever seen. But I never forgot it. And as soon as I had my own company, I'm like, I can't call myself a CEO because I don't, I'm making this up as I go along. And I just, I thought that chief executive bear was such a great idea and I just went with chief mammal because however cornea I thought it was, it stuck with me and it put a smile on my face and that's the idea behind chief mammal. So hats off to Maxine Clark. But I like that. It's not really a rip off. I mean, I don't know if you've had steel like an artist, Austin Cleans book, but all three of them. You rift on it, you made it your own and you paid homage, you say, hey, this is exactly where we got it from, which is I think the way art is built. What about getting interested in kids of money though, John? I mean, where does your interest in teaching kids about better money habits come from? Yeah, this is just scratching the edge. So it's like when my wife and I had our kids who are now going to college, which is crazy, we just knew that we wanted to raise them money smart so that that was the kind of starting point. And my wife seems to have come out of the womb money smart. I am more like you. I've taken a very meandering path on the way to money smarts. John, you're getting your money's worth from the journey. You know, like I feel like the good golfers on a golf course, like they don't get their money's worth only hitting three or four shots. I take 20 shots. I mean, if you're going to go out and golf, you might as well see the sights, right? Absolutely, yes. I'm a charter member of the Fairway Preservation Society, by the way. Well, if you're going to practice for the masters, you have to make sure you can get out of the rough. Exactly. Anyway, so I saw this kind of meandering path. I came from my back, I worked in animation for a long time. So I saw how powerful media can be and really well-designed characters and interesting characters and interesting storylines. And I thought, well, why don't we take something that's fairly boring on its face? You know, kind of financial literacy. No kids going to want to listen to any lecture on that. Just make it fun. And so we came up with this mantra. We'll share and save and spend smart too. In fact, my brother wrote the songs. This was like some advice from a mentor, my original boss. He said, if you're going to develop any kind of program, he said, be prepared to love it for a decade. And so I knew if I was going to make this work, I wanted to have someone write songs that I knew that I would love down the road, right? So not kind of like kitschy kids songs, but fun songs. And so that was the idea. So we have this idea. The mantra is, we'll share and save and spend smart too. And we realized that this was something, it's something that I think a lot of parents might be interested in is trying to raise money smart kids and do it in kind of a fun way. And that was really the genesis of Joe the Mucky and Clara J. Camel and Marmosette and pigs the bank and the whole money mammals crew. I like the idea though of creating something that you'd love forever. Because I think about like Pharrell singing that song happy that's an earworm. But if I had to sing that song on stage like every night on a like an 80 city tour, I would want to just bash my head in. Well, that's why it's such a good point. And it's why people like Bob Dylan and David Bowie, even though people get frustrated with the fact they wouldn't play the songs that they want to hear. If I were them, it's totally what you would want to do, which is just playing new stuff. I mean, you know, play some of the old stuff, but you've got to reinvent yourself. It seems fairly easy. You could certainly go down that path. So it's nice to try to carve your own path. Let's set the stage here. You know, as we were getting back to school, this is our back to school episode. So while the kids are getting the curriculum at school from their teachers, our child's ultimate teacher and hopefully a good money teacher, what is the thing we should be most focused on? Like let's talk broadly strategically. What kind of environment do we want to create? What type of a mood do we want to set as we're teaching people about money? What's kind of the overarching framework, John? Yeah, I would say open conversation is probably the kind of, that's the overriding point. So you want to start early with your kids. And the reason you want to start early is that one, they're very receptive to it. They're very receptive to you as a parent. The earlier you start versus, as we know, is once you get kind of tweens and teens, they become a little less receptive to your messages. But by starting early, you can start to build good habits with them. And I really think this conversation part is such a key thing. So being prepared from a young age, from their young age, to be open to a conversation, even as young as like two years old. So you're not talking to them about anything complex, like the rule of 72, or not that that's that complex, or compound interest. You're just being prepared for the conversations about money at a young age, because you don't want to shy away from those conversations. And so that also gets at having you as a parent, just getting comfortable with the fact that the mistakes that you've made are actually not bugs in this system. They are features that you can use to help teach your kids. You can realize, one, your kids are mainly going to learn from their own experiences. But two, you can share the experiences that you've had that have not been so positive as a way of saying, one, I'm not, you don't have to hold me up on high with regard to this. And two, I understand that you're going to make mistakes as we go through this process. Does that make sense? Well, I love teaching your kids from an early age that mistakes are a part of the process, and that I make them too. I mean, that open, honest relationship, I think is great versus being the parent who, you know, tries to come across as squeaky clean. Your kids find that later on the mistake. I mean, you know, as they grow, they're going to learn where you mess stuff up. So better for you to teach them to be open about that. I do want to ask about this though, because you bring up a point about these open conversations. So how much do I involve my kids then in the, quote, adult stuff, right? Do I involve them? And so like I advocate this family budget meeting every week. Do we involve them in that 20 minute conversation that Sheryl and I have? Do we involve them in, you know, utility bill is due? Like how far do we go in this open conversation? Those are great questions. I was actually thinking more on the younger side. When you do get older, I think you do need to, I mean, I'll give you one example. So I think it's a great idea to do some kind of periodic budget meeting. We didn't necessarily do that, but one of the things that we did was on lead up to the discussion about college from I think once they were tweens, so somewhere that kind of 10 to 12 range, we showed them how much they had their 529s, right? So they have a sense of, no, there is money being saved for college and college is going to cost money and there is some money there for you, right? That type of thing. So being open and honest about that, there's a camp of kind of radical transparency. I think it's very much a personal decision. I lean towards what Ron Lieber says about this in his book, the opposite of spoiled. It's like once those kids get to become teens and they have a sense of being at other kids' houses, they have a really good sense of how much money you're making, how much money other people are making. And so you don't have to necessarily sit down and say, you know, you're our exact finances, but to your point, it's not a bad idea to certainly talk to them about here utility bills. For example, a great example is if the utility bills go through the roof and listing the family to help bring the utility bill down, that kind of practical discussion I think is worthwhile. So it's engaging with the money conversation and it's going to be different for different families, but engaging with it really matters. But I'm not advocating for, you know, full transparency of, you know, here is every single dollar that we have allocated in our family for whatever use it might be. Well, I think it's tough if you're struggling with money like, I don't know, I want my kids to be educated but I also don't want to worry them that we might be out on the street next week. Yeah, and that comes to age appropriateness, right? So obviously, if you're going through real difficult times, you're not going to sit down and have, you know, a hard to hard conversation with your five-year-old. But, you know, your 10 or 11 or 12-year-old knows if there's been a major change and it's worth engaging with them, not to say, you know, one, to give them some confidence that you are going to figure out how to kind of get past whatever this financial blip might be, but two, just to recognize that you're going through some difficulties. You know, so it's giving them the confidence that you're going to get past the difficulties but recognizing it because they know, I mean, they can feel it, they can feel your stress. So being open to engaging with that and engaging with them is just essential. It's funny, I was just listening to Simon Sinek talk about exactly what you said. It's not just kids, it's just everybody. When you show up and something isn't completely authentic, like people just know, like they just completely know, so just show up to help your kid and give them everything you can. And I think, yeah, the more you hide, the more we're just going to be. You can read me like an open book. If I'm bored in a conversation, like last night, I was at my mom's house, love my mom, but she's talking about a roof for, you know, 20 minutes, the new roof that's going on. And my wife asked where she's like, you didn't say a thing. I was like, I was tired of talking about roofs. I can't hide. I have the same thing. Maybe that's why we get along so well. When an assistant I had, when I was a financial planner, one, a person came up to her, came up to Susan and said, I just don't know what's on Joe's mind. She goes, you kid me, ask him, because he will tell you way more than you want to know, like way more, like just please. And when you ask him, you're going to regret doing it. So, yeah, I love that. You know, when you're talking about 529 plans and about whether you share, you know how much money you've got for retirement, that sort of thing, the details with older kids. Your kids have an PR training. I mean, unless you kind of taught them, but how do you make sure some of that stuff stays in the house instead of all the sudden your neighbors telling you about how their, your kid told their kid about what your credit card debt number is? There's not much we can do. The only thing we can do on that, I think, is modeling, because I really actually don't know. It's actually, it's a really good question. And it's something I think about a lot is, you know, what are these kids talking about? And with regard to the 529, I know they have a sense from their friends. So they've had these discussions. I'm fairly sure with our kids, you know, they're not walking around, crowing about their 529 plan amounts. But I don't know totally, and I think with some of their closer friends, they probably have had kind of more intimate discussions about that, but it's a good question. And I think the only thing you can do, well, not the only thing, one thing you can do is model some modesty and some decorum so that they have a sense of, okay, well, this is not something you don't go out and probably about money in general, because like, you know, if you start crowing about it, there's always a bigger crow. And so it's like, so just the decorum. So that's about all I can offer there is just the modeling side of things. All right, let's get to the elephant in the room. Every person talking to you, I'm sure John wants to talk about this next topic. And a way of getting at this on your podcast, The Art of Allowance, you actually have a mini episode dealing with allowances. So let's listen to you, and this is a clip from The Art of Allowance podcast. I often see folks questioning the value of an allowance, and I'd like to respond with my perspective. When I wrote my book, The Art of Allowance, a short practical guide to raising money smart, money-empowered kids, I thought about trying to coin a clever new phrase to replace allowance because I know some folks bristle at this idea of allowing their kids to have money. Still, allowance is a term that most folks immediately associate with raising money smart kids. So I decided to focus instead on what I call the art of employing an effective and purposeful allowance. I love this idea of the art of the allowance, because obviously there's some, some people have maybe used some signs behind it, but like you, I've noticed on the Art of Allowance podcast, John, you've had different guests on that of some different ideas. So let's talk through this. Let's talk about it. We can, and I'll link to, by the way, this episode of your podcast on the show, so people can dive into that full discussion, but let's have a little bit of that here. So framework around an allowance, how should this work? So the key for the allowance is kind of identifying your why for an allowance. And that is that you are here to help your kids learn to become money smart. You're giving them allowance to get experience with money because we all know that is that experiential learning is the primary way we learn the hard lessons of life. There's two other ways that that could happen. That can happen through modeling, good and bad, and it can also happen through lecturing. And we all know how powerful lecturing can be, particularly with our kids. So the experience is the point of that allowance. It also serves as a catalyst for this conversation that's been kind of the thread of our entire conversation. And so that's the why behind an allowance. And you really want to start it early. You want to start at age five, and then you want to introduce yourself to them this idea of making money smart choices because the reality is every time you're getting some money, you are making choices whether they're conscious or unconscious. And so at allowance time, we'll have three jars, the share, which is for charitable giving, save for longer term items, and then the spend smart. We add the smart so that we're kind of emphasizing this idea of thinking about our spending. And then you just allocate that money into a basic allowance for a five-year-old. It would be five dollars. And the way we did it, again, it's the art. It's going to be different for each family, as we would put $1 into share, $1 into save, and $3 into that spend smart. And the idea is the sharing is telling them where you value charitable giving. The saving is we value the idea of paying yourself first. And then the last one is, this is money that you can go and do whatever you want with. It seems to me on that, do whatever you want with, a lot of parents, I know my parents a long time ago, didn't want me to make mistakes. But I think there's got to be some bravery there, John, where you've got to see a mistake coming as a parent. You know it's a mistake for your kid to spend money on this. And I think you kind of got to let him do it anyway, and have the bravery to circle back later and go a little Dr. Phil on him, like, so how'd that work out for you? I think brave is a great word, because I think that is a leap that we have to take with those kids. And again, it's going to be different for different parents, because certain parents are going to be more brave than others. And if you're a little less brave, you might ramp up your advisory, and other parents are more brave. And they'll be like, okay, I'm just going to let him learn. The other thing is, understand it from the kid's perspective. So I remember one of them buying some play set. It was like, we call it my colorful unicorn, so we're not calling out any actual products. But she bought this $20 play set, and when she bought it, I'm thinking, she's going to be dumb with this in a week or two, right? And she was. But she also got a lot of play out of it. So as much as I look at it and feel like, that seemed like kind of junk, argument can be made in my favor, she got a lot of pleasure out of spending that money on that thing. So her perspective is a little bit different than my perspective. And that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be some things that they buy, and they realize, oh, that I really shouldn't have bought that. And what this does is by giving them control and letting them spend the money, is that you now have a reference point for a conversation. So if you see that this becomes a pattern, and then you say, you go to the store and they're getting their third item, and they're not playing with those other two items, you can say, well, how much time have you spent with these other two things? It seems like you bought them and nothing's happened. You're not playing with them anymore. Now, they may not say, oh, wow, you know, I have an epiphany and say, I don't want this thing. But what you can do at that point is, as a parent of your kind of at your wit's end, you can say, you know what? I'm going to call it time out here. We're going to wait a week. We're going to wait a few days, what we call the waiting period. And then we'll come back. If you still want it, you can then come back and get that item. It's a way of putting guardrails. And that's why I call it the art of allowance because you just have to kind of work within how every kid is going to be different and every scenario is going to be different, every family is going to be different, every kid within each family is going to be different. So it's providing some kind of structure and a framework within which the parent can work with the kids. Does that make sense? Well, yeah, I like teaching those guardrails too because those are guardrails that are great to use when you're an adult, right? You really crave something. You know that it's something that you think that you're going to want, but you also don't want to regret it. So what do you do? You put it in the Amazon shopping cart and you wait a week and you set that timer. And if you still wanted a week from now, then it probably was good. Man, I did that. When Sirius Satellite Radio first came out, XM Sirius, I did that for a year and a half. I just sat and sat because I thought, am I really going to eat a radio subscription? Like, how bad will that be? And when a year and a half later, John, I still wanted it. I was like, okay, I think I'll get it. Now I've been a subscriber forever, and I use the heck out of it because I just like, believe it or not, I like radio. Joe, I did the same thing with my, I have this bag, right? It was a $200 bag, but I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted a standing bag. And when I travel, I wanted to be kind of like my office, right? And I waited six months because it seemed like an outrageous price to pay for the bag. Yeah. Just stupid money. Yeah. But I kept coming back to it, kept coming back to it, kept coming back to it, kept coming back. And finally, I said, I haven't found another bag. And it was a terrific, and really for me was an investment. It's the way I look at it. It's not a traditional investment. I can't sell it for more money. But I went through that process. So I think it's, it is, this gets to that kind of modeling. And my kids saw me go through this process. Well, in that conversation, Evan, this conversation out loud with your kids, they're picking this stuff up. I mean, it's, it's incredible. So I want to ask about kids and jobs then. So kids working versus kids getting, I mean, because obviously working, earning a paycheck, part of learning about finance versus focusing on your schoolwork, getting school done, having the jobs later. Where do you stand on kids and jobs? This is a totally personal decision, because David Owen, who wrote the first national book of dad, you know, he came on my podcast, and he makes the case. He said, their job was to be focused on school, right? That was their gig. Now, it actually turns out that his son was kind of entrepreneurial and engaged in creating some kind of business opportunities. But that was his focus. And then there's the other side of the coin. So we were kind of in both of it. We didn't really emphasize the need to have a job till they became teens. And it's different with each of the different kids. I mean, right now, my younger daughter who's about to go to college is making really good money scooping gelato. And that's terrific. And especially during the summer. You know, we defaulted to the focus being much more on the schoolwork. And the amount of work these kids have to do in school, especially if they're doing any other activities. It's just over the top. So also holding it down a job, I think, is fairly difficult to do. But during the summer, obviously, that's a great time for them to hold down a job. And the other thing I do want to just say is that for the people that have, like, bristle at allowance, then you can just ramp it down. So, like, as they start to, you know, if you're giving them allowance as a teen and now they're starting to make money, then you can just turn the dial down and allowance because now they're making their own money. And I think they should have more control over that money. And then you can encourage them. You know, for example, let's put some money away for taxes or let's put some money into your Roth IRA. Maybe we'll even match that money as an incentive because everything's about incentives. And it's not going to be very exciting for them to put money into a Roth IRA. But it's obviously something that would be who their future selves. And so if there's some way we can incentivize that great. Well, and I love with older kids, you talked about the rule of 72 earlier. If you show them compounding, or you show friend Jean Nitali talks a lot about that, about show them the Roth IRA and how they can become a millionaire and all of a sudden your kid's like, I can become a millionaire, really? It's exciting. You know, it gets at the, I think the toughest thing for all of us to get to understand it, it's unfathomable. Even at my age, the power of compounding can only be experienced through time. And that's one of the most difficult things to get across. So even the best analogies that I've seen, I think don't do it justice to our brains. Because our brains are so now focused. You know, we're so not future focused. And you think about for a kid, even more so, it's really a tough thing to try to, to get across the power of compound interest. You know, it's like we all know that, I was Warren Buffett made 97% of his wealth after age 50. Right. So it's, it's really hard to get our heads around. How powerful that is. So all we can do is help them build the habits that will help them take advantage of that, I think. You and I could talk forever, my friend, but I'm looking at the clock. And if only there were a resource like a podcast where you talked about this all the time. Man, I wish, oh, wait a minute. There might be, there might be one called the Art of Allowance with John Lanza. Tell us what's coming up on the show. I just interviewed Ann Garcia, who has a new book out, how to pay for college. So we'll be talking about that because the, that pain is real. We have two kids in college now. And it's, it's a confusing landscape. And Ann will bring some very good clarity to that. She is really a clear thinker when it comes to how parents should think about this. So we've got that coming up, which I think will be really exciting. So it's fun to talk to people at all different ages, different areas of spectrum, the young kids. And this will be for the older kids, for the parents, the older kids. Of course, you do want to start saving for your kids. As early as possible. And we talk about that with Ann as well. That's fabulous. It's the Art of Allowance podcast, wherever finer podcast are distributed, which I think is pretty much everywhere, John. John, thanks a ton for hanging out with us and helping us raise money smart kids. I really appreciate it. Joe, I really appreciate being on stacking vengeance. This has been a lot of fun. Hi, I'm David Hirsch. And when I'm not hosting the Dad to Dad podcast for the Special Fathers Network, which is a Dad to Dad mentoring program for the Fathers Raising Kids with Special Needs, I'm stacking vegetables. OG, I know we've talked about this a few times on the show about you and your kids in money. But for people that are new to the show, it's a great day for us to go over this again since we're specifically in the title of this episode talking about curriculum. Do you involve your kids in the money discussions around the OG household? It's like you were sitting in the living room of my house yesterday. Oh, it's going high. I wonder what we should talk about on the podcast. We definitely weren't Joe. We were definitely not listening in. Where are we? Oh, not at all. You put a black tape over that red blinking light, didn't you? Just if you look to the left and wave, OG, you'll... So there I was sitting on the couch. My daughter says, Daddy, what are you doing? And I said, these are called scratch offs. I didn't see that coming. How do you do it? And I said, well, you scratch us off. You're a bottle cap. And make you want some money. See, Carol, I'm right after you buy the smokes. I know you guys think that I'm actually kidding, but I decidedly am not. You know, I like some people binge watch Netflix. I've binged scratch offs yesterday. I was like, I was at the store and I was like, I need to get it back into this. This is what's been missing for my financial life. I used to chew tobacco. It smokes a guy. I don't do anything fun anymore. But dammit, I'm getting back into scratchers. I've had scratchers. Way too much wind into my life lately. My money situation's been way too good. Let's see if I can grind that to a halt. Anyways, we went a little overboard on scratchers yesterday, but we had a nice chat about it. About how you're always won. You're always won little wagon wheel scratch away from 100,000. You know, it's always the wagon wheel. You're just waiting down the one, and then you can fill out that bingo card to do it. But as my son said, after he scratched off a couple, dad, these things are rigged. I was like, yes. You think? You think? Right. We just lost like 1,000 listeners right there. John Lanzas could have come back down with a baseball bat. Guys, they're not paying attention. Let's distract everybody and throw out the haven life lad right now and tackle some of the most important questions. Our friends of Haven Life Insurance Agency Doug, they put what you value first. Right now, it's scratch offs. Are you kidding me? How could I have another answer besides that? As soon as we're done, I'm running out to the liquor store. See? Losing is contagious. If my financial advisor is saying, this is what he's doing for his future. You damn well, sure. That's what I'm going to go do. It's your loved ones at your time, and maybe the hilarity of the scratch offer too. It's why they've made buying quality term life insurance. It's actually simple. Head to stackabedjamens.com slash Haven Life now for a free quote. By the time you get that all, that last wagon wheel scratched off, you'll find the application's already done. You've already got an instant coverage decision. You know what the price is going to be, and you can get your life insurance done. Stackabedjamens.com slash Haven Life for a solution to your life insurance that's a guaranteed scratch off winner every time. How about you do you think Matt from Haven Life for like that one? I like it. Today we're going to throw out the Haven Life line to Man. Guy with the nickname. It's not Will with us. It's Big Will. Hey, Big Will. Hey, Doug. Joe. N.O.J. I need to disguise my voice. I don't want anyone to know that I am the one other person that listens to this podcast, and I would hate to be the first person to admit I have learned a few things on the podcast. The other issue is I am in witness protection, but that's another story. So, here is my question. My wife and I are retired. I am a duet myself or handle all the home finances, taxes, etc. We paid a financial advisor to backtest our plan and we are basically set. My only concern is when I pass. My wife who has no interest in finance, taxes, etc. will have issues. I have started the process of her doing things with her. We have started together to balance checkbook, pay bills, having monthly money meetings, and watch me rebalance yearly, etc. The last two items I watch her eyes glaze over and that's even before her ears. So, my main concerns are the investments and taxes. Taxes seem simple just find a tax professional, but the handling of investments seems to be the issue. Because our plan is strong and all our goals are being met, I am not sure of turning our investments over to an advisor is the way to go. Basically, all she would need to do is rebalance yearly and make withdraws as needed. At first, I was thinking a robo advisor, but that doesn't seem to make sense. Now I was now thinking maybe just put all our funds into a low cost 50-50, balanced fund and have a five year in cash and she makes withdraws as needed. Am I being short-sighted? Thanks for any input. Oh, and Doug, I know you've been wanting a t-shirt. On August 3rd, I will be at the sizzler. I will be wearing dark glasses and a copy of El Camino Monthly under my right arm. Leave the cash inside the third stall in the men's room and I will drop the t-shirt off. See ya. Wouldn't be the first deal I've done in that stall in the bathroom. 20 bucks is 20 bucks, right? That's right. The calls just get... At first, I'm like, Doug, stop messing with us and that was not you. I got a hand at that guy because it never even occurred to me to do a robot voice, but guarantee you that's coming. At first, I'm like, crap, but wow, wow. Okay, serious question there, OG, behind all the theatrics. We've got spouse who is bored silly by money management. I mean, I really like what John Lanza said earlier about maybe a weekly meeting versus a monthly, about short, fun, take care of that because monthly might not be often enough, but eyes glaze and over is a difficulty. I think this is the crux of, you know, higher professional or don't hire professional. And sometimes we look at it in purely the dollars and cents standpoint, right? The ubiquitous... Using an advisor as an example, the ubiquitous 1% number, right? And you go, I've got three million bucks, holy crap, that's $30,000. As opposed to considering it from a percentage standpoint and going, it's 1%. It's a portion of the return of the portfolio. It's a portion of the dividends of the portfolio. You know, some of the time when you hire professional, what you're trying to do is to fix a problem, right? You're trying to say, I don't know how to solve this or I've done a poor job at this and the only solution I have is to hire somebody who can do it for me, whether it's taxes or state planning, financial planning, lawn care, it doesn't matter. Sometimes you hire somebody to prevent mistakes that could happen along the way. For example, you might hire an attorney to do all of your state planning because yeah, can you write your will on a notebook paper and stuff it in the cushions of your chair? Yes. Is it legally enforceable? Maybe. Ritha Franklin's family is finding out that maybe it is or maybe it's not. It doesn't mean that's not what she did and it doesn't mean it's not valid. It's just there's a lot of issues with doing it that way. So that's a mistake that you can avoid by just having a professional do it. And then sometimes you hire professional to do things that you don't know exist, right? You have somebody look at your taxes or you have a CPA that does your taxes and they say, oh, did you know that you could take this credit? Let's look back the last couple of years. Oh my goodness, you haven't been taking this credit. We're going to do this from now on and therefore you saved a certain dollar amount of taxes or something like that. When it comes to stuff for a spouse who's not or a partner who's not super excited about money, it's probably not about fixing problems. To this colors point, they said that they went through the financial planning process, you know, kind of did a once over and everything looks great. So they're not trying to fix a problem that exists, right? What we're trying to do is prevent a mistake or find some additional areas of opportunity. Yeah, it could be just as simple as like, well, if I'm dead, the wife takes money out of the account. Well, yeah, but is there a better way to do it than just randomly taking money out of the account? Can we be smarter with taxes in terms of pre-tax withdrawals or aftertax withdrawals or, you know, those sorts of things can we be smarter with distributions in terms of, you know, where do we leave assets if there's kids or grandkids or other places that you care about, charitable strategies and that sort of thing? So I think there's an opportunity to engage a professional at different levels and at different times in your life. And this is probably one of those ones where you could say, is a juice worth the squeeze? Maybe your wife might think so. In terms of, I don't have to think about this and it only cost me a small percentage overall of our net worth every single year deal. How do I sign up? But maybe that's the conversation that you have to have right now. I don't know. But this has got to be, I don't think the planners for him. I think the planner is somebody that can help her be more excited about the process. So really, this is where he's got to kind of take a back seat. And this is a problem that, you know, that I have, when I was a planner in meeting sometimes, was it the guy would want to geek out? I mean, it wasn't always the guy that wanted to geek out, but by and large it was. The guy'd want to geek out and his spouse would sit there asleep while I'm going deep on stuff that she does not care about. And we're losing her. You know what I mean? I'm not even helping her get any closer to her money. I'm actually helping push her away because the engineer and the family won't go back to a one-on-one level and relate this to actually any of our goal attainment. Like we're so in the weeds about little tiny things that the nerds care about that we lose the other person. So I think it has to be somebody that the other spouse interfaces with much more than this person. Yeah, I make no mistake about it. If something happens to you, your spouse will seek counsel from someone, whether it's her girlfriend at church or a colleague at work or a child or a sibling, like there's going to be some counsel from someone because she's been getting it her whole life from you. And so if you want that to have, if you want to have some influence on making sure that that decision process is good, I think you have to start it sooner while you have some influence on that. If you don't, then there is some chance that she makes a decision or goes down a path that you don't think would be the best solution. I'm thinking, you know, I can think of this example very clearly. The widow says, I don't know what to do with all this. She's at the bank and the banker says, oh, well, why don't we just put it all in a nice safe CD? It'll be, you know, it's guaranteed every single year you're going to get some nice interest. It never goes down. You never have to worry about it going up and down, but a boom, but a bang. Okay, cool. Now you just take your whole nest egg out of, you know, the thing that's going to grow and compound with, you know, to offset inflation and all that other sort of stuff. And you just dumped it into a savings account. Like, how much does that worth over the life of the rest of your retirement, your life's retirement, your kids are, you know, the time value of that is worth many multiples of paying an adviser to go, no, don't do that. So she's going to find counsel because she's always had it. So why wouldn't she keep on having it? My issue with the balance fund approach, and I agree that a robot in this situation probably doesn't do anything that he's trying to fix. Although I do like robots for people with money much more than for somebody who's 24 years old and just beginning, I think you're wasting a lot of the cool stuff that a robot approach could do when you have a very small portfolio. But I think that, I guess it's a, you know, it's a big part of the topic that I'm going to talk about at Camp Fy, Texas early next month. And I'm going to talk about Mbally OG, which is that, you know, when you're quote, okay, maybe your goals aren't big enough. Maybe there's another range of goals. And what I'm okay leads to is wasting money with an approach that's really sloppy. And you look at if you paid as much attention to your asset allocation as you paid to the other pieces of your financial plan, you know, your frugality, the way you spend money, your tech strategy, whatever that is. If you were like that with your asset allocation, you could probably find a lot of money there. Or for your spouse, find a strategy that she could be involved in, which really helps bring her along. So I'm not at all a fan of, hey, let's just use the balance 50-50 approach and just let it slide. Yeah. Like that is so sloppy. And it's, it's underachieving. It's underachieving by a long way. Well, and, you know, just against the, well, but I don't want to hire somebody to do it. It's like you'll, you'll underperform and under like all of the stuff that you're trying to solve for will be under, undervalued. I don't even know what the right word is. You know, you'll, you'll under attain all of that stuff by just going, well, I'll just make it easy and go 50-50 as opposed to going, well, why don't I just structure this around working toward the goals that are important to me and have somebody who's on my side who can kind of help shepherd us along the way. Provide advice, provide counsel, prevent mistakes, give us new ideas and be a resource for the people that we care about, you know, on the back end of something happens. So, pennywise pound foolish. We're going to touch on this on our Friday show with Michael Kitz's a little bit. Oh, yeah, that's good. But I really think that this isn't, you know, there's a recent piece in investment news, OG, about advisors who are getting out of just being advisors for everybody and go and go, I'm really helpful in these situations that I'm not helpful in these other ones. Like advisors niching down almost as much for their quality of life. And I think it's got to be that type of approach. I don't think the answer is just go find an advisor and here you go. I think it's got to start with what do I really want? What am I trying to do? Which is education for the spouse? Which is a better asset allocation? Which is when I pass away, how do we make sure that she's got a trusted person to go to? So you've kind of helped her along in that route. So somebody's really on my board of directors already, you know? Somebody's helping me make smarter decisions. I mean, you can already see that there's this laundry list a much more specific questions that you're going to ask this person. So I don't think it's just advisor or not an advisor. I think it's honing in on really what are you after? And then who would be my ideal person I'm trying to add to my family board? Thanks for the question. Big Will. I thought he was going to say, this is anonymous. And we are on to you. It's vacuum benchmarks or what, you know, what's that group? Isn't it anonymous? Yeah. It shows up with the guy Fox mask and all that. But thankfully not. It was much less creepy than that. Hey, coming up on our community calendar, I am going to have Andy Hill on our Instagram. Live. That is tomorrow night Thursday evening, 5 p.m. Eastern 2 p.m. Pacific. Andy is speaking of kids and money. Andy's working hard to help his kids become millionaires at a young age. And that includes helping them learn to save early, helping them learn to earn money. Lots of key takeaways. So Andy and I talking about that tomorrow. Is it kind of a second handsomeist man in person or two? Very, very good looking behind OG. Is that what you're saying? Oh, oh, yeah, that. Well, we're trying to get people to watch the YouTube version of the show, right? Andy Hill, tomorrow, who is very, very, very handsome? Dreamy. Some may say. I can't even think what I'm talking to that guy. Andy, tomorrow coming up Friday, we're talking about the future of advice and we're talking about the science of advice versus practical advice. And which advice you take, which ones you turn down with? One of the top people in the financial advising industry. If you're looking at OG, besides OG, Michael Kitzes joins us for a rocking episode. That's our community calendar coming up. If you're somebody that right now you want to make better decisions with your money. OG and his team are taking clients away to stackabedgments.com slash OG. If you're somebody looking for a person to add to the team. And you did begin those interviewing processes. Stackabedgments.com slash OG. All right. That's it for today. And great show, Gents. Doug, what should we have learned today? So what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from John Lanza and let's all help get kids on track for a lifetime of financial security by teaching them to have financial literacy. And teach them this. If you have a plan, you won't have to panic. Second, do you pay for stuff? Remember, some methods have protection and others don't. Practice safe payments, kids. But the big lesson. I got to start doing silly voices on this show. Maybe that's going to land me that sweet 20 grand a week gig. Check this out, Joe. I'm going to eat, but eat, but eat. Lands all folks. Thanks to John Lanza for joining us today. You can find his podcast, The Art of Allowance, wherever you're listening right now. We'll also include links in our show notes at stackabendgments.com. This show is the property of SB Podcasts LLC Copyright 2023 and is created by Joe Salciha. Our producer is Karen Rebind. 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 an 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 stackabendgments.com slash 201. Tina Eikenberg 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. Want a chat with friends about the show later? Mom's friend Gertrude and Kate Youngkin 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 stackabendgments.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 have a good time. Guys, I haven't done a movie review in a few weeks, and I thought this is a good one to talk about. This is a little known man and a named Tom Cruise, you pronounce a cruise. Our lives are the sum of our choices. And we cannot escape the past. Ethan, the submission of yours is gonna cost you dearly. The world is changing. Truth is finishing. Whoa. He's coming. It's been a long time, family. You have no idea the power represent. It knows your story. And how it ends. And like any mission impossible movie, there is a car chase after car chase. Lots of stuff blowing up OG. Tons of stuff blowing up. You know, the first like two or three mission impossible I avoided because I was like, this just seems stupid. I don't know that I want anything to do with this. And then maybe it was the fourth one. I started watching, but it was it was the one where they climbed the world's biggest building. The what's it called? The Burk Khalifa. Burj Khalifa. Yeah, Burj Khalifa. On the outside. And Tom Cruise does all zone stunts. That was a very, very good movie. I absolutely love that movie. And then I've been addicted since that. So I was super excited when a new mission impossible came out. And this one, what I hate is when I see part one, part one of two, because that's a commitment. And I, you know, what's a Jim Gaffigan joke? I don't have time to go to meetings. Like I just just give me, give me the movie. Let me just watch it in one sitting. And I'll be, I'll be good, which is funny because, you know, Jack Ryan, we talked about before. And I'll sit through plenty of episodes on Netflix. But she's having to show up at a theater twice for a part one, part two. Just kind of drives me crazy. Maybe it's because, you know, Lord of the Rings made us do that. And we waited forever for those things. And I don't know. Something about that that I don't like. That said, this movie has a fine ending. You know that it's going to continue, but it does have a resolution of part one. Sends it into part two, which frankly is going to be a self-contained story. I think you'll be able to watch part two without part one. You can watch part one and go, okay, I've had enough. I don't want to watch part two. The thing I liked about this best guys, you know, mission impossible over the years has been based on what do we fear? What is kind of going on in the zeitgeist? Right now it's this AI thing. And so what we have is we have the, quote, bad guy. It's not a bad guy at all. It's a bad machine. And it's now Ethan Tom Cruise against a machine. And the machines trying to take down, take down a lot of stuff. Sounds like space Odyssey 2000 one with better action. SkyNet. It is so SkyNet. But it's funny. I mean, these, you know, you can't have Simon Pegg in a movie. And I have it be funny. Like the, like the hench people, you get this feeling like I did on Jack Ryan of the team, you know, going at them. You have this new, you have the new character who she's kind of on the team, kind of not on the team. And, you know, she kind of throws in some, throws in some stuff. I, I highly recommend this movie. I know it's been overshadowed by Barbie and Oppenheimer. I'm going to go see Oppenheimer this weekend. I was going to see it last weekend, but I couldn't sit in a theater for three hours. I'm like, I just. Frosty problems. No, I just didn't want to do it. Plus there's, there's more previews than ever before. So it's like three hours and 40 minutes. So, uh, yeah. Oppenheimer, they loved it. I think it'd be great. Nick saw it. My son saw it. Said it was awesome. I can't wait to see it. But I, yeah. So, uh, mission impossible though, kind of overshadowed by those, but a big thumb up. I think you guys would both love it. Already saw it. I've never seen a single one. The day it came out. Did you see the day it came out, OG? Oh, yeah. Yeah, took the boys. Do you agree with that assessment? Did you really like it? That was great. Yeah. I mean, I don't care about the part one, whatever. We did probably, uh, I feel like it's been a couple of mission impossible. A go where we committed to them. You know, it's like, this is coming out. You know, I, you know, I want the boys to come see him with me. So we started over and like watched him in sequence over the course of like, oh, half a month or something kind of got through all of the mission impossible. Oh, cool. So then we could roll into whichever one it was that we ended up seeing at the theater. The first time. So you get all the subplots and black and backstory, which are so important to mission and possible. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. All the, all the Easter eggs. Have they kind of just generally gotten better? I feel like they've gotten better. Absolutely. They've gotten tighter. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this one, this one was a very long movie, also. I thought. Yeah. And you could see why they said, well, we just got to name this one because like every time you go, okay, we're coming to an end. This is going to be, and it's like, oh, no, there's a whole new part here. And then it's like, okay, all right, now we're coming to an end. And no, it just keeps out. There's like always a little, it's like cedar point, you know, you go up, you go down and you're like, that's it. And then you go back up again. Nope. Yeah. And you keep going. But I was on my, that edge of my seat for the whole thing. It did not feel long. It wasn't a movie that fell. I've seen a number of previews, a number of like behind the scenes stuff. Like the most famous one of the course was the motorcycle jumping off the cliff and like how they filmed that and that sort of thing. And the story behind how they did all that. So, you know, so you're watching, they're going, when's he going to get on the motorcycle and how's this going to kind of work? Right. Me too. Yeah. And then he does it, of course. But yeah, I like all the mission and possibilities. They're not, they're popcorn movies, they're not, they're not super stressful. You know, the good guys are eventually going to win probably. There's a lot of twists and turns, a lot of who done it's those are, that, you know, that's kind of interesting to me. I've. Well, I said that I don't like action scenes when there's really no consequences, which is my problem with a lot of Marvel movies, but I'm like, I'm going to watch a 20 minute fight scene. I really don't care. Okay. No one will die. Yeah. If a man dies here, that'd be super cool for me. Like that'd be great. Well, I mean, think about the Marvel movie where Iron Man did die, right, when they like wrote them out. I think it was Iron Man, right? I think it was Iron Man. I think it was Iron Man, right? That was like a big shock. That was like, holy cow, one of them. Sure. Like what? What? Yeah. And then they go and, oh, well, we'll get them back by just going into a parallel universe and then. Yeah. Which you're like, okay. Another thing. Yes. Mission Impossible. Super awesome. Makes a little sports analysis, pop culture, and great interviews, and you've got the Rich Eyes and Show Podcasts. The jets are bracing themselves into doing hard knocks this year. Bracing themselves. Look, the coaches want to control the controllables. They don't want to have a camera crew in the building. You know, I know that they want to lie low. This is what happens when you go and swing for the fences and get out of Rogers. Are you kidding me? The Rich Eyes and Show Podcast, wherever you listen.