Thrill on a Budget: Save Big and Have a Blast at Theme Parks

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.com slash match. Super excited gents because this week kicks off our summer of fun. Robert Niles is going to be here today. And I think for that reason, we need to say, hoorah to our troops who hopefully get discounts at all these theme parks we're going to talk about today. I should. I hope they do. 100% they don't. Five finger discount. Hey, Cedar Fair, university. They sneak it in, probably not. Now, they just wear camouflage. Nobody sees them. Right. That's it there. I thought I saw somebody, but not sure. Hey, on behalf of the men and women making podcast and moms basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union. Here's to our troops. Hope you have a great summer. Let's help you kick it off. They're dogs and they're playing poker. Live from Joe's mom's basement, it's the stacking Benjamin show. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And it's that time of year. Not only is it speedo season for old Doug, we're kicking off the summer fun by helping you plan the perfect theme park trip with reformed math geek and theme park insider, Robert Niles. For our TikTok minute, getting ready for summer road trips, we'll talk about what some say is the proper way to buy a car. In our headline, banking crisis, one big bank CEO has a solution to this whole problem. We'll share. Plus, we'll throw out the Haven Lifeline to lucky stacking Benjamin's listener, Katie, who wants to know if her decision to lower her Rothboro and K contributions to 2% was the right move. And then I'll share some retro trivia. And now, two guys who will turn this car around if you don't start listening, it's Joe and oh, Joo Joo Joo Joo Joo Jee. Happy Monday, stackers, and let me be the first to welcome you to our summer of fun, which officially every year kicks off today. If your brand new here, Robert Niles brings in the summer season for us with his focus on theme parks, a nice open dug. By the way, Doug, why did the chicken cross the road? To escape the Chick-fil-A? I don't know. To see the ugly guy. Okay, knock, knock. Who's there? The chicken. Oh, come on. Yeah, I had so much energy and papp doing that intro and he just decided, yeah, you just decided to crush me with the big old wooden mallet. And it's God. Hey, did I say that Robert Niles is here? Robert Niles from the park insider joins us. Oh, gee, how are you, man? You ready to ride the roller coaster of a podcast episode today? The roller coaster of life. I haven't been to a theme park. I mean, Disney. Does that count? But like a roller coaster park, Cedar Point, Six Flags in a very long time. So this summer, we are going to Cedar Point. That's super exciting. Well, you definitely want to listen to Robert because as always, he's going to take us around the nation, see how we can save money. And if he can't save money, at least get your money's worth because you'll see these families at the theme park. It's 4.30 in the afternoon. The kids are crying. The parents look miserable. Let's go. We have to ride Millennium Force. Okay. This is fun. We're all having fun. Okay. Mom's like, uh, honey, we're out of money. We can't do anymore. We'll continue until morale improves. Do you know what? All the fun should start with this. This is where the fun should begin. 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I don't know about you, but on a holiday week like this week, I'm stocking up because I want to be the host with the most. And I know that we're concerned with stacking bedroom. We're also concerned with making sure we get a great value. And we are able on a key weekend like this coming weekend to stack great experiences with our friends and family. And for that reason, there's always something new to try it. Total wine and more. Nobody's got a better selection of Italian wine, the total wine and more. The new St. Giorgio Tuscan wines from the Castellani family are now available to total wine and more for 120 years. The Castellani family has been dedicated to the craft of traditional Italian wine making, producing top quality wines for incredible value. Bottlestar at $9.99. Many rated over 90. Vino Nobel rated at 96. Chiante classical reserva rating in 96. Oh my goodness, Italian food and the Chiante classical. And it's a Skana IGT super tusk and sign me up rating of 97 with the lowest prices for over 30 years. Drink responsibly. B21. That gives you a couple of minutes to get the fun meter going, doesn't it? Yes, it's a jazz. All the fantastic stuff. Robert Niles is here. But first a headline the TikTok minutes, so we gotta go. Hello, doggings. And now it's time for your favorite part of the show. Our stacking Benjamin's headlines. Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal, Jamie Diamond in the news. He's the head of JP Morgan. Oh, gee, listen to this one. This is written by Hannah Meow. JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Diamond says regulators should look at, wait for it, short selling a bank stocks. He thinks we shouldn't be allowed to short sell bank stocks anymore. So listen, if our industry is sucking and the people at the top are like taking out all the assets before our bank goes under, we can't have the traders clean the system. We've got to, we've got to protect these bankers so that they can, they can do their own rating. Options are still good. I mean, so that the solvency is still up there. Jamie Diamond is a smart guy, but in this one, this is an headline, everybody that you got to read and go, wow, you can tell where his bread's buttered. Yeah, 100%. I mean, this is the whole value of capitalism, right? Which is, it's self-cleaning. Yes. You blow your stuff up, people are going to take their capital elsewhere. And the result of that is you don't get to be entrusted with people's capital anymore. It's your business gets to go away. And the vultures, the vultures come in, which is the short sellers and they make sure that it's done. What's that? I said, I'm sure they like that analogy. The vultures. Making those short sellers have been called vultures forever. I mean, that's not a new one, but how about short? They have feelings too. Do you think we got to have protests now about the emphasis on the word short? Like why are we picking on short? Like that's not, we shouldn't be picking on short. Short sellers? It's not inclusive enough. How about sea lampreys? They are like self cleaners, right? They clean the big nasty whale when it gets covered with, yeah. Carp? How about carp? Bottom feeders, yeah. It's funny, we used to be able to talk about short and not have it like be a thing. But imagine, remember the guy that did, you got a friend in me, you know, the Toy Story song? Randy Newman. Randy Newman, yeah. One of all kinds of awards. Remember in the 1970s he had this song. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ at sometime in the future. And so you think about it as completely the opposite of buying now and selling later. Now you're just doing the transaction backwards and saying, I want to sell now, and I'm going to buy it sometime in the future. And if you sell it today at a hundred, the only way that you make money is if you buy it at 90, right? And so you have the opportunity to do that. There's a lot of restrictions around it in terms of type of account you have to have and equity position in your accountant, those sorts of things. Yeah, and rightfully so because there's unlimited risk potential. Like when you buy, quote, long, you'll just go up with the stock or down with the stock and you can only lose, you know, whatever the value of the stock is at 50 and it goes to zero, you can only lose the 50. No, he was 50 a share. That's right. But if a stock's at 50 and you short it thinking it is going to go to zero, you're downside risk that if it goes to a thousand is huge. Infinity, yeah, because of the theory of stock, you know, could go up forever. These ancillary bets in the market always confuse me when I was a new investor, you know, like six months ago. But I just assumed the only thing that you could do to make money in the stock market was what you guys just said. You buy it at 90 and you hope it goes to 91. It's isn't it a little bit like the obvious bet is on a football game is who's going to win? But then you could also bet on, is it going to be heads or tails on the coin flip? Like there's all of this side action that you can bet on. Isn't that essentially what betting short is an example of? Well, I mean, I was going to say you're thinking about it like from a gambling standpoint and maybe short selling and option trading is about as close to gambling as you can get in the market. But I don't want to put those two things together because I don't think buying Apple stock at 150 hoping it goes to 160 is gambling. I think that's, you know, that's investing. It would be more like in your example, Doug, betting on the team that you think's going to lose. I think that this team is going to lose, which would be a weird way to do it. Yeah. I think for our average listener, short selling is incredibly dangerous. I wouldn't get involved in it. I do know that there's some companies, some CFOs out there, especially, you know, OG, you were talking about taking the family to Cedar Point. Cedar Point will use futures and options in case the weather's bad. They will mitigate their risk by betting on weather patterns. And it's not actually quote betting. I use the word betting. That's, that's wrong. They will use these derivatives as insurance to make sure that if they have a bad season, because the weather is foul all summer long, that they at least keep the motor run in on the company. Oh, it's not any different than crop insurance, right? Right. You know, when you plant your crop in March, you don't have an idea of it's going to be a wet spring or a dry spring or a wet summer or a dry summer or a hot summer, whatever. And so you, you know, you forego a little bit of that yield to offset the chance of having the whole thing go, go badly. So that's hedging. That's insurance. That's a different thing than short selling. Short selling, you are 100% assuming that the stock is going to go down and you want to profit on the way it down. That's that. And that's different, I think, than saying, well, I have Apple at 150. I'm concerned that it might go to 140 and I would lose $10. That's different. And you can have a selling strategy of, you know, I'll put a stop loss there. I'll make sure that, you know, I'm going to sell out at 140 to limit my downside, you know, so it's an option maybe. Yeah. So there's a different ways to ensure it in terms of the, you know, that kind of range of returns. But if you look at a company and you say, I don't think that this company is going to do well in the future. Therefore, I want to profit. I want to put my money where my mouth is. I think this is a bad deal. And I think I want to profit from it. There's a great book. It's old now, probably written in the early 2000s called fooling some of the people all of the time. This is the second time I've talked about this book in the last week. Yeah. I was next to you at a meetup where you were talking about this book. So the book is written by a hedge fund manager named David Einhorn. And it goes into how he uncovered this fraud of a company and wanted to sell it short. He wanted to profit from the fact that he found this fraud. And all of the things the SEC was doing, all the things the government, all the things that company was doing against him to say, you're the fraud, you're the one that screwing your customers and like all this big campaign and shocking, you know, since there's a book about it, he ended up being right. But an interesting, an interesting behind the scenes look at how, how when that stuff is uncovered, the lengths and and breadth of fraud that people will continue to perpetrate to keep it covered up. So that's the other side of it too. I mean, if you're trying to do something on, you know, I'm going to short 10 shares of Walmart today, you know, the Walmart people aren't coming after you. But if you have some big conviction that such and such a thing is bad, and you're going to write a book about it, or you're going to take your entire portfolio and do it, you might get, you might get a phone call. What do you, what do you know that nobody else knows? Why, why are you so anti this, you know, and then God forbid you're actually right. Because then it's like, how do you prove to somebody that you didn't know illegally that this was going to blow up? How do you prove that negative in the same way on the upside, I suppose. And when it comes to banks and Jamie Diamond not liking it, when there's a lot of short interest on a stock, it drags down the returns on the stock, makes it easier for the company to to see a falling share price, falling share price. A lot of companies they have debt based on the amount of shares that they have outstanding. And then they get into a world of hurt their books get into a world of hurt when the share price begins to sink. So Jamie's like, we need banking enough that we shouldn't let people do this. And I would say to Jamie, we need bankers to responsibly run banks is what we, what I think we truly need. Hey, time for our TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we shine the light on a Tiktoker, either lighten things up with some brilliance or maybe some hashtag brilliance. Today we're actually going to be, Oh, Jim, and come to you because we're not going to Tiktok Mike sent this to us. This is a Facebook reel. We're going to do Facebook reel today. What do you think genius or air quotes genius? It's on social man air quotes always. All right. This is some, this is some genius around buying a car. This is actually talking about how you're taught to buy a car. You can either pay cash or finance. That's how you want to finance a car for $30,000. That immediately puts you in debt when you take out a car loan and you spend the next five to eight years paying off that debt. And after the interest, you're paying around $40,000, which is approximately $637 a month. So now you're back at zero, your car is paid off and you're debt free. But you permanently transferred $40,000 away from you that you'll never get back. So here's an alternative. See what that same $30,000 but in a whole life insurance account that's growing at 6% interest. And all you do is ask the insurance company for a loan for $30,000 and they'll happily give it to you and hold your initial $30,000 as collateral, but still give you that 6% interest. Since it's a risk-free loan for them, they're not going to ask you how, if or when you want to pay the loan back, that's all up to you. But you take that loan of $30,000 and use that to buy the car. And the same way you're going to pay the bank $637 a month, you just start paying yourself back $637 a month. But here's the best part. Every single payment you make back to yourself, you can read access tomorrow. If you made $10,000. I feel like it's a shell game. Like, you know, you're on the streets of Manhattan, this guy's like, hey, I got this. Look at the the balls on or one of these three things. Just keep up with this. See if I just take this and I take a loan for myself. Let me let me just summarize what he said. You should save the money that you want to buy a car with. You should pay that car off with the money that you've saved. And then in the time after you've paid the car off, you should put the car payment that you would have had back into your savings account. But then wait, but then you don't give you can do 600 layers of that and buy a life insurance policy and then try to borrow it from yourself, but not because it's your money, but it's not your money and then they're going to pay you, but then you don't have to pay it back, but you might have to pay it back and then you could pay it back. And if you did pay it back, then you can actually have some money back if you wanted to buy other stuff, I guess. If you have $30,000 and you put it into an account and then you borrow $30,000 from that account, the net effect is you have $0. I love the flaw of that thinking, by the way, don't take out a loan for 30,000. Just take 30,000, you've saved up and put it in a product. Well, hold on. Did he actually say that? Or are you guys saying that because you know how life insurance works? Because I don't remember him explicitly saying he did say, I think he's just saying you take out a $30,000 life in the whole life policy and take 30,000 out of the whole life. Yes, of exactly what he said. He did say to put $30,000 dug into a whole life policy and take it out. Does it cost you 30,000 to? So that's the part I missed was I thought he's like, buy the $30,000 policy, but that doesn't cost you 30,000, right? That's that's not at all what he said. I mean, he said, he said very quickly, take $30,000 and put it into a policy and borrow it all immediately. Okay. Which also you couldn't do. Yeah. Yeah. The life insurance company's not going to let you do that. Right. So dumb. They'll take your 30 to buy 300,000 of life insurance or whatever number. Then you go, well, I want my 30 back. They go cool. You can have eight. Right. The part that you can't see too, is this was a side by side video with another guy in a hat who is vigorously nodding about how smart this strategy is. And it's like pointing to his head like, this is a maniac. It's amazing. Those people on social are the sea lampreys of social because they don't actually produce anything themselves. At least the first guy made some content. It was really effed up and wrong, but at least he made something. The other guy is just sitting there nodding his head. He doesn't even know what that guy's saying. He's like, I want to be that guy. Yeah, I want to be that kid. That's who I want to be. I wonder if people are going to start doing that to our show soon. If you want to watch the entire video, you know what, we will dive deeper into this in our newsletter, the 201. In fact, we'll dive deeper into short selling and how all that works and trading strategies that won't upset the apple cart when it comes to your portfolio. And we're also dive even more into our guest. In his topic today, Robert Niles was a one time math geek and he was also a Disney worker when he was young. He was a jungle cruise skipper at one point. Robert Niles, he was in the news business. Now he's in the news of teaching you about theme parks. One of the, if not the biggest theme park website online theme park insider, he runs and manages. And he has won tons of awards for theme park insider. But every year, we invite him down to the basement to help you plan a better trip to the theme park. Hopefully less expensive or at the very least you get your money's worth. We'll go around the country with him in a second. But Doug, what's our trivia question today? Well, Joe, here's the trivia question. Hey, stackers. I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug. And I am pumped for theme park season. Did you know Super Nintendo World recently opened at Universal Studios Hollywood at the opening Universal Parks and Resorts Chairman and CEO Mark Woodbury announced Super Nintendo World is also coming to Orlando. Nintendo and Super Mario Brothers are among the most iconic games to hit the US. So it makes sense they're becoming attractions, which brings me to my trivia. On this day in 1980, Namco first installed another iconic arcade game in Shibuya, Tokyo. Here in the US, we know this game as Pac-Man. But that wasn't its name in Tokyo. It was changed in the US out of fear that it would be modified in arcades to, let's just say, an R-rated version. Now, what Nair do well would do that? Certainly not me in my youth. No. There's no video footage. My trivia question is, what was the original name of Pac-Man? I'll be back right after I do some hand stretches. Really trying to build up my hand strength. It's for video games. I play a lot. Did you know that Discover is more than a credit card with Discover's online savings account? You can earn five times more interest than the national savings average. Five times, there's no monthly fees, no minimum deposit, no monthly balance requirements. It's FDIC insured up to the maximum allowed by law. Learn more at discover.com and start saving with confidence today. Discover Bank, member FDIC. 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. In the best part, you don't have to do anything ridiculous to get it. Nope, Discover does it automatically. Seriously though, see terms and check it out for yourself at discover.com slash match. Hey there stackers, I'm Maize Blazer and Ghost Killer Joe's mom's neighbor dug in. I know you're chopping to answer my trivia. I'm talking about the OG of arcade games where you attempt to eat as many dots as possible while trying to escape pinky, blinky, inky and clied hot on your tail. I think there was a little bit of acid going around that creative team. Anyway, so what was the original name of Pac-Man? It was initially released by Namco as Buckman. You probably didn't get it. This one was plucking impossible. And now here to teach us how to bring our A game to theme park planning, Robert Niles. And you know, just like in the northern climates when you see the first Robins, you see the Canadian geese flying overhead or it's Memorial Day week in America. You know, Robert Niles is back on the Stacky Bedroom and show. How are you, brother? I am doing very well. Nice to see you. It's great to see. I can't believe it's been a year, by the way. It's just every year. It's so, so well. It goes quick. Let's do the thing. Last year, I think I led with, I think we're back. You said, I think we are. We are clearly back now. We are clearly, everybody seems open for business. I'm just going to put this by you. The United States is a heat map. Where's the heat app for theme parks right now on the heat map? Well, I think it's back to normal. The big heat map is in Southern California and Central Florida with little dots throughout the Midwest as well. Everyone is operating on full cylinders at this point. There is one exception to this and I'll get to that in a little bit. But Disney is celebrating its 100th anniversary corporate wide this year. So they've got lots of stuff happening at Disneyland. Brand new roller coaster at Walt Disney World in Florida. Universal isn't going to let that take that line down. So they're matching with a lot of new stuff. The big one, the one we've been waiting for, Super Nintendo World, is now open at Universal Studios Hollywood with plans to bring it to Florida in a couple years. And Florida is doing a new attraction this year too with another Despicable Mimi themed attraction that they're putting into their park in Orlando there. So lots of fun stuff happening with Disney and Universal. SeaWorld's got new roller coasters coming up across the country. Hershey Park's about to do a big new coaster that's throwback to one of their originals. Lots of fun stuff to do for people who want to get out on a fun summer vacation this year. I ask you this question every year, but obviously we have new stackers every year, Robert. Saving money at theme parks, incredibly difficult. But if I'm going to try to save a few dollars, what are your some of your best tips? Find the parks you want to go to and follow them on social media because they will announce on their social media when they've got sales going on. A lot of them are selling discount passes here at the beginning of the season. These are going to be the lowest prices of the year that you can get on annual passes. Now you might be thinking, I'm only going to go once or twice. I might not need an annual pass. Hey, I'm telling you the benefits that you can get on some of these passes pay for themselves. If you go ahead and you buy that rather than a single day ticket, sometimes you can get free parking. You can get discounts inside of the park on food or on merchandise, sometimes on hotel stays with affiliated hotels. So always look at an annual or seasonal pass option before you go buying a single day or worse, several single day tickets to a theme park. So you can get a lot of deals that are available out there that way. It's funny, Robert, because the one thing that you've drilled into my head over the last several years is really that you don't allow areas to your life, doing a little bit of research goes a long way. But it's exponential for the theme park game. Just exponential. I mean, after I started talking to you, my trips to regional theme parks into Disney have been so much better just because I go on theme park insider, I'd listen to some podcast. I do some of these tips that you gave us like following people on social media. And all the sudden I know how to make my just how to organize your day better can turn a bad day into a good day. Parks have gotten exponentially more complicated as they've added more pricing options. That gives you a great deal of power. You've got a lot of flexibility that you didn't have before when it was just one price, one size fits all. The price can vary by the day of the week that you go to some theme parks. That can be a bad thing, but that could be something that works to your advantage if you've got some flexibility. So as they've added all of these upcharges, all of these variable pricing, it really does pay to do the research to make sure that you're getting the best deal for you and your family, the one that works out where you're not just paying the less. Maybe you're paying a little bit more, but you're getting a lot more for your money by making sure that you do the research and you come as an informed consumer. Let's take a trip around the nation. Let's start off with the East Coast because I saw a TikTok video yesterday, Robert. It's from a six flags that is just east of Philadelphia. I'm missing the name, but you'll probably know the name. I'm sorry, great adventure. Sorry. Great adventure. Yep. In New Jersey. And there was a roller coaster that maybe won a throw up. Is this thing due? Is this a or by just because I don't live on the East Coast? They're supposed to be bringing back their El Toro roller coaster, which we had as our top ranked roller coaster in the world there for a little while. It's had some problems recently, but they've been working on fixing that and that's supposed to come back this summer. So that's the big thing at great adventure. That's got to be the reason I saw the video. I'll tell you, a coaster that could make you a little bit queasy and we just put up a video on our YouTube channel of this is actually coming to Cedar Point in San Dusky, Ohio, a huge favorite with roller coaster fans. They've got a new Wild Mass roller coaster. This is a spinning coaster from a manufacturer called Zimperela. The video you see, it's early season. It's just one guy riding alone. But when they say this one spins, they're not kidding. It spins a lot. So this is one that if you're into that type of thing, this is going to be great. You got to get to Cedar Point. You got to ride this this summer. If you're not into that type of experience, well, Cedar Point's got a lot of other great experiences that are available to you there as well. Well, while we're on Cedar Point, they have problems with one of their rides, a top thrill dragster, where this ride would just go for people that don't know. It would just launch you very quickly up this massive hill. You'd pause, you'd slow way down at the top and then you'd run back down. They had a huge problem with the ride. But it looks like my son was telling me yesterday because he knew you and I were talking. So this comes from my son Nick. He's like, what's going on with this? Because it looks like they're changing the track around. It looks like there's some movement happening at Cedar Point. What's going on there? They haven't announced officially all the specs that's going to be that ride is going to be closed for this season. It's not going to be there. And what they're doing is that they're putting in a new launch mechanism because that's really where the problems that we're having with it. I mean, you think about it. You're talking about this is a machinery here. You think about these as rides. You think about magic. You think about all this. And this is all machinery. And this is machinery that had to take a train full of people. That's heavy. And launch that thing up over 100 miles an hour and basically no time at all. You think about the force that's going to require to do that. And for those of us who took physics or maybe some engineering, you put force on that type of mass over time. Things are going to wear. That's a lot of maintenance work you got to do. That's a lot of energy expense to do all of that. Since that ride opened, I think the industry has gotten a lot more efficient at designing launch mechanisms that don't put that type of pressure. Don't put that type of wear on a train. So they're going to go with a new type of launch system. And they're also going to mess around with the track a little bit because they want to get some records back. When that launched, it was the fastest tallest roller coaster in the world. Those records have been claimed by other rides. And I think Cedar Point might want those back. So we will see when they make an announcement later this season on specifically what we've got. We're expecting that coaster to be back in some form next summer. Let's shift our attention over to the West Coast where places I'm thinking like Magic Mountain, which has a ton of, you know, you talk Cedar Point, I talk, I would think, who else has lots of roller coasters? Oh, Magic Mountain. Anything new, exciting on the West Coast? I tell you, well, the number one thing new and exciting on the West Coast for me has been Super Nintendo World that opened back up in the beginning part of the year at Super Universal Studios Hollywood. You think about Super Mario, that is the number one franchise in the world right now. Number one IP, it's the number one movie of the year. It's the number one new theme park attraction in America at this point. You get to go on a real life Mario cart ride. It's a dark ride where you get to, you know, you're drifting around, you're controlling, you know, throwing shells and racking up points and all of that. Lots of just practical fun stuff to do with the game where you're just punching question blocks. Real life question blocks throughout the land itself. So that has been wildly popular for people at Universal Studios Hollywood. And it's going to be coming to the new Epic Universe theme park at Universal Orlando in 2025 as well. Disneyland has opened its version of Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway in an expanded Toon Town. So they're not taking the competition from Universal lying down. You can go play at Super Nintendo World. You can go play in Disneyland's new Toon Town, a couple of options for people out in Southern California. And then SeaWorld San Diego is bringing out a new kind of snowmobile themed roller coaster called Arctic Rescue that we're expecting to open a little bit later on this summer too. Notzbury Farm has redone their Fiesta Village that they're going to be bringing out a new version of their old Montezuma's Looping Coaster. Oh yeah, that's a classic. So lots of stuff happening on the West Coast right now. I said the one thing where the one chain that is still kind of not up to full speed, I would say at this point has been Six Flags. Their financials have been pretty disappointing recently. And as a result, we're not seeing really aggressive announcements about new attractions coming to a lot of Six Flags parks that we are seeing from Cedar Fair and from SeaWorld parks and from Disney and Universal. But Magic Mountain still got an incredibly impressive coaster lineup. They added a really fun single rail coaster to that themed Wonder Woman last year. So for a lot of people who haven't seen that, yeah, they will more than fill your day if you head up to Valencia, North of Los Angeles for Six Flags, Magic Mountain. Two questions about Southern California. First one is is on Notzbury Farm. I have been to Notzbury Farm twice, but it has been a good 20, 25 years. But that was a wonderful overshadowed park that I feel like a lot of people forget about. Is that still a wonderful overshadowed park? Oh, I think it's a favorite of a lot of locals, especially in Orange County around here, particularly as Disneyland has had such amazing success, that they've kind of become a victim of their own success in some ways. The annual passes are not cheap, not always available. So for a lot of families who maybe feel like Disneyland's has stretched, Notzbury Farm is an amazing, affordable alternative for them that just delivers the same type of Disney's designers, they're called Imagineers. You can find them all the time at Notzbury Farm, crib and ideas from that place. They freely admit that they take inspiration from the stuff that's been happening at Notzbury Farm of the year. So they do wonderful food festivals there. They just wrapped up their annual Boys and Berry Festival. They're going to have their summer nights coming back up with Ghost Town Alive, which is this wonderful kind of interactive thing where you can go into their Ghost Town section and pretend like you're an old-timey pioneer and interact with all of the actors that they've got there. Just a really true, unique experience that they have there. And they've got some great rides for the Thrill Fan in your family as well. You and I have spent a lot of time talking about our mutual love affair of Bush Gardens Williamsburg for their theming. But man, I think on the West Coast, Notzbury Farm, I mean, just a Boys and Berry Festival, like not a Blackberry. I mean, it's a Boys and Berry Festival. That's their Berry. That's the Berry that made Notzbury Farm. Yeah, that's one of those hidden gem parks that if people, you start to sweat when you look at the top line, non-discounted cost of going to a Disney World or a Universal Orlando. Now you can certainly get discounts down those. Those can be affordable if you work it. But if you're looking something where you don't have to do a whole lot of research, you could just roll up and have a great time. Notzbury Farm. That's a great park. Bush Gardens Williamsburg. And we should talk about their new coaster in a moment too. Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. Love that park. Great hospitality there. And my favorite hidden gem in this country, Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. You got to drive about an hour west a little, it'll get to it. But you will be rewarded by meeting up with some of the greatest coaster fans in the country that you'll find there at Holiday World. I've had so many stackers contact me, Robert, and say that because of your appearance here and then theme park insider that they discovered Holiday World. That is a great family-owned park that doesn't nickel and dime you. It's free soft drinks, free sunscreen, free parking. You come in and you're like, where's the booth? Where's the toll booth? You're just parking me? What? It's just that way. You're getting value for your money because they don't have the big corporate overhead. Just a good, fun time there. I love the wing coaster that they put in there a few years ago. Just absolutely wonderful experience. But yeah, Push Gardens, Williamsburg, I don't want to go away without mentioning that. Yeah, let's do that. Dark coaster. If you are a fan of that park, you've been there. You remember the old Curse of Dark Castle, Dark Ride that was in there that they took away? Yeah. And you wanted it to come back. It's coming back in roller coaster form this summer. It's called Dark Coaster. It is indoor kind of snowmobile type coaster. It looks like it's just going to be great fun and opening up in the middle of May in Push Gardens, Williamsburg. Big news. Let's go to the south. Big news in Texas with Universal announcing some big stuff coming to the Dallas area. Well, it's big news for a small thing kind of. They are getting into kind of the regional family, baby even Kitty Park business, you might say, going after what has been Legoland's bread and butter full long time. They've announced a new theme park that they're going to be opening up in the Dallas area. Haven't given us much detail beyond that besides some concept art, which we had up on themeparkinsider.com, that sure looks like it's going to be a lot of dream works franchises in there. And this is aimed at families with small children. It's not a big huge Universal Studios type theme park. It's going to be something much smaller, more intimate designed for toddlers and their parents to get around. And this is not something that we've seen from Disney or Universal in the past getting into this marketplace. But Universal is showing that they're willing to be aggressive and go after new markets in the United States in a way that Disney hasn't been willing to do since the whole Disney quest thing that happened in 1990s. So that didn't end up working out for Disney by think Universal thinks that and they're also putting in a new kind of haunted, a Hornights themed attraction in Area 15 at Las Vegas at that expansion. So they are getting into regional out of home entertainment in a way that's I think really exciting to see how that's going to pan out for NBC Universal. For people here in my area, Northern Texas, the Mid-South, Robert, you know, we have Six Flags. I'm not a huge fan of the Six Flags in Arlington. I've been there a couple times and just I just I don't love it. But I noticed in Hot Springs when I was there last time there's this little theme park there that I'd never never never new existed. Are there any gems around the Mid-South if you're living where I do that we should be looking into? I think the one in the middle of the country that gets a lot of people, this is a little bit north of you, but if you head up to Branson, Missouri, Silver Dollar City, that's the sister park of Dollywood and they've got some great, great attractions. I think they probably might even be better than Dollywood on thrill rides or variety of thrill rides. That's a fight that a lot of theme park fans will get into, but that's a great, great, great attraction that a lot of people really appreciate up there. But I think the thing that Texas is more known for than theme parks really has been with water parks. Just the success that the Slitterbond Parks now some of them are owned by Cedar Fair, which is the Cedar Points parent company now. And that's Berry Farm as well, right? And it's been a great market for that. I mean, I'm in Southern California. This is not really a big water park market here, just because of the nature of the difference of the weather between Southern California and Texas. We're all about wetsuits here. We have cold water at our beaches, but lots of fun stuff to do. But like I said, I'm really excited to see what Universal brings to the table and if that opens up the Texas market for some of the bigger theme park operators to come in and take a second look at and say, hey, you know, maybe we don't need to just leave this to six flags and we can come in and do some interesting things here too. It is the rumor mill I've seen just lately after that announcement. All right, let's go to fun in the sun. We got to go to Florida. Absolutely. Let's talk about that new roller coaster you mentioned that Disney has. Tell me about this. Tron light cycle run at the Magic Kingdom. This is kind of a duplicate of the coaster that they debuted at Shanghai Disneyland back in 2016. That was the absolute runaway hit of that park. If you are of my generation and a fan of the original Tron movie, you know, the first time you saw that you're like, I want to ride a light cycle. Now you can do it. Go to Walt Disney World at the Magic Kingdom and you can ride a light cycle on Tron light cycle run. It is you're hunched over. It's like a motorcycle style roller coaster riding in pairs of two and it is an absolutely phenomenal launch out of that building up under that lit canopy and then into the grid itself. A lot of great lighting effects that they've put into the interior portion of that ride. Absolute wonderful thrill. If you're on themeparkinsire.com and you just search for Tron light cycle run, you can see the on ride video of me on that one. And I'm just out in the time of my life. I absolutely love that coaster. And it's right next to Space Mountain as well. So if you're a coaster fan head into Disney World, you can get that one, two punch. Speaking of that, last year you recommended that I ride the new ride at Epcot, the Guardians of the Galaxy ride and oh my Robert, that was fantastic. I absolutely love what they did with that attraction because to call it a roller coaster, I think it's selling in a little bit short. I mean it's Disney. They've taken it to a different level. This is really, it's a Guardians of the Galaxy adventure and you're right in the middle of it. And it's got all of that humor, all of that one and the pop songs. They play a different pop song. I was singing all the way through it. I was singing all the way through it. I was singing all the way through it. I was singing the whole way. Again, and keep getting different songs on it as well. So it is just you come off of that feeling, wow, I like you are a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy. And there is a, I won't spoil it, but there is a very long kind of pre-show that leads up to this. Like you're going through this almost world's fair type exhibit about the planet of Zandar. And there are several pre-show moments, including one that will absolutely take your breath away. You just have to see it to believe it. That's a wonderful attraction. I'm glad you liked it and I hope a lot of your allow your fans give it a try as well. Oh, they totally should. By the way, you're also a person who said, listen, if you don't go to the restaurants at some of these various places, you're missing out. Disney has really more of a reputation than they play sales for restaurants. But I wonder this year, I've never asked you this question, I'm thinking as a former Jungle Cruise skipper that Skipper Canteen would be your favorite. But what's your favorite restaurant on property? I was just at Skipper Canteen about a month ago with Viva. Were you really? Last time I was down at Disney World and I still love it. Absolutely. Wonderful, wonderful. I think that's the best restaurant in the Magic Kingdom easily. And one of my favorites at the Walt Disney World Resort. I tell you the one that's really kind of making all the headlines in the theme park world this year is Toadstool Cafe at Super Nintendo World in Hollywood. Oh, you've got Chef Toad from Mario is the cook there. They've got all these wonderful animated screens throughout the restaurant. So you can see Toad and everyone else back in the kitchen making up your lunch and stuff like that. And that is a tough get right now. You need to get there. First thing in the morning, get down there, make a reservation online. They've got a QR code that you can scan when you're in the park. And those reservations for the entire day go within the first few minutes of the park opening. But a lot of really whimsical kind of nods to Mario and Luigi and the whole crew there. And great food too. Absolutely love the experience. Disney's reported, well not reported, but there's all kinds of signs that attendance is down at the Disney parks. You rolled your eyes when I said that. Is that true? Not true. It's because that's the way they've managed it. When the pandemic happened and the lockdowns started to lift and everybody was under capacity restrictions, you had to make reservations to get into pretty much any theme park anywhere. Almost everyone has gotten rid of that at this point, except Disney. Disney has maintained the need to make advanced reservations in order to get into the theme parks because they're using it as capacity control. They decided that the parks had just gotten too crowded before the pandemic shut everything down. They didn't want to go back to that experience. Yes, obviously they're adding new attractions like Tronlight cycle run and trying to expand their capacity. But at the same time, they don't want it overrun. So they are limiting the capacity in their parks. So even though the attendance is down from where it was in 2019, it's still at what their new capacity is. And there are a lot of dates that you might want to get into that you're not going to be able to get into because they're essentially sold out for the day. So another big advice to people when we were talking earlier about advanced planning at Disney, it's absolutely essential because if you don't advance plan, if you just walk up, you're going to see a big sign saying no reservations available for today and you're not going to be able to get into the park. So you need to make those reservations when you can, which is usually about two to three months in advance. Well, I'm glad we talked about that because if somebody reads some of these half headlines, you know, they might think they can just walk up and go. Yeah, if they all attendance down, it's going to be real easy. I just rolled off and walk right in. Nope. Nope. It's all because they've put in really strict capacity controls this time. Now, meanwhile, their friends down the street at Universal, they don't have the capacity restrictions and they are doing big, big attendance. Those parts are packed. Let me tell you. In fact, actually, this is something that if you want to see a company doing a good business move, Universal, they started selling early admission to Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Hollywood. So you can get in one hour before the park opens to everybody else. Usually priced around like 20, 30 dollars. It can vary sometimes. I don't have the specific number right in front of me. Usually when people start offering these upgrades, when companies do that, fans push back. There's been zero pushback on this one. Everyone loves that deal. There are also throwing in a front of the line pass into the studio tour before 10 a.m. So after you do your hour in Super Nintendo World where you can get in, you can make that toad stool cafe reservation and be sure to get it. You can get on Mario Kart with minimal weight. You can do all of the little games inside the land with no weight. Then you can go front of the line and do their famous studio tour and have that all wrapped up before like 11 in the morning. People are going, that's a great example of an upcharge that we will accept and people are going for. Boy, and that brings up, by the way, a great piece of advice you gave me a few years ago, which is where on a different vacation you might sleep in, roll out of bed, instead use theme park days to take a break in the middle of the day. Absolutely. 99% sure you're the one that told me that. Yeah, particularly in central Florida where it gets so hot and humid in the middle of the day, if you're visiting there in the summer. But get there immediately when it opens to get stuff. I'll tell you what, Florida, the best moments of the day are very first thing, crack a dawn, and then right as the park is closing at midnight, that's when the weather's nice during the summer. So you want to be out there enjoying those moments because most people don't do that. They're there in the middle of the day when the lines are the worst. And that's the opportunity where you take the nap or you hit the air conditioned restaurant for the nice leisurely late lunch. That's the great way to do it. Hit one of the water parks or back to the hotel to the pool, whatever you want to do. You're even just kind of some of the high capacity air conditioned theater shows that people don't go to like American Adventure or a Country Bear Jamboree that never really have a wait. Do all that stuff in the middle of the afternoon because prime time is when that park opens. And you want to take advantage of that and get as much done as you can when the lines are short? I wish there was a website people could go to. If somebody created a website where like all this knowledge was bottled up. Wow. Now that you mention it. Yeah, I've just got a theme park insider.com and click on our visitor's guide links. We've got visitors guides to over 30 major theme parks around the world, including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, Disneyland, Universal Hollywood. We've also got parks around the world as well. In fact, a big new park that we're going to be covering in Abu Dhabi Sea World is expanding overseas. This is the first of their new kind of generation of theme parks. It's almost all indoors. No orcas, no whales moving away from that. This is really more about kind of an educational experience along with some roller coasters and kids rides as well. And then just some really fabulous multimedia entertainment they're putting out there. So we're going to have a lot of coverage for people to look and see what kind of the next generation of a sea world park might look like from the folks who brought us the award-winning Warner Brothers World Abu Dhabi and Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, which by the way, has that world's fastest roller coaster that Cedar Point doesn't have anymore. I was going to ask, did you get that video? You got that video personally? Of the formula rosa? Of the formula rosa? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my ride on that, baby. That was a holy cow. Absolutely love. World's fastest roller coaster. It's just literally face melting. They make you wear goggles because this one does launch out of the park outside. And it's Abu Dhabi, not at Arab Emirates. There's a bit of sand out there. They don't want sand blowing into your eye at 140 miles an hour. So they make you wear goggles on it and it's absolutely wonderful. Like I said, they just signed up Jason Momoa as their celebrity spokesperson for the park. And there's a great video of Momoa on the roller coaster now too. He's just going to be brave and everything. And he's just start screaming like a little child. And then they showed a little child next to him. It was like, dude, laughing. Man up, come on, what's the thing? So they now have a promoter over there. They're doing well. Oh, God, Robert, I wish you had a fun job. If only you had a fun job. It's such a dream. We will link to theme park insider and obviously tomorrow, Kevin Bailey with our 201 newsletter scam, some fun because we do deep dives into all the topics we talk about here. So Kevin is licking his chops to dive even more into this. Robert, great seeing you again. Have a roller coaster summer, my friend. It is always great to kick off the summer this way. And I hope we all have a really great one. So thanks for having me and have a great time to everyone out there. Hi, I'm Derek. And when I'm not working on the hook for Joe's mom's next greatest rap album, I'm stacking Benjamin's baby. Oh, so many thanks to Robert for stopping by. Oh, gee, you're gonna ride that new coaster in Cedar Point. Twisted and twisted in the night away, man. You're gonna be twisting all over the place. I was well given a whirl. I still got it. So much goodness. And once again, Kevin Bailey will dive into tons and tons of theme park links. I know Kevin's chomping at the bit for this one going back to our, our puk man. Imagine, by the way, the arcade game that said puk man and some kid with just a little, little thing to take out the middle of that. That's all it would take, Joe, huh? You thought about that immediately. It didn't even occur to me that that would be the most efficient way to change the P to an F. I was like, how? Oh, that'd be funny. Oh, any racer. I'm actually a little bit disturbed that you mentioned tilt of, you know, tilting whirling and Cedar Point because my memory as a kid of Cedar Point was being on that thing. You get in the middle of it. It's like a big cylinder and it spins really fast. They called it the rotor. Yes. And the floor drops away. It doesn't really tilt, but the floor drops away and you stick to the wall, right? And that's the hope. Yeah. Somebody directly across from me hurled. No, no, no, no, no, no. But the great thing about physics, I saw it coming. I saw it like I saw the all of the convulsions and I saw the look on the face and I was prepared. I was about to get drenched. But the great thing about physics and I didn't understand when I was 11 was that it just pasted it all right to her face. Just it went right back on her and like on the cushions to her left and her right. It was it was really quite a scientific lesson for me. It was a breakthrough for me in my physics class later. So bad for her too. So bad for her. But I guess if you're going to be the perpetrator better than it's on you, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Anybody else? Oh, yeah. So, yeah, she'd been very embarrassed. But as it stands, she's not embarrassed at all, right? Walking out of the roto with a face full of barf. My she's good and smelling great too. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Fresh as a daisy. Sickening. Man, we got to get off that topic. Let's throw out the even lifeline. We were all over it today. What do we do with a even lifeline? What happens here? We you ask a question. Oh, yeah. This is where we tackle the witty answer. We tackle some of life most important questions. I'm so just that was so disturbed. I just can't get the visual out of my head. Our friends, even life insurance agency, Doug, they put what you value first. We don't value that story. It's been a really long cold winter. And so, you know, it's time to get outside. I think I value a really good hoe. Just a good, effective hoe. God, no. Just turns things over. No, no, yeah. Or a shovel to keep digging your hoe. A hoe is the tool for the job right now. Just keep digging. It's your loved ones in your time. That's why they may buy and quality term life insurance actually. Simply go to stackybenchman.com slash Haven Life Now for a free quote. Love what they're doing at Haven Life because it gets us off of Doug's topic. I don't think Haven Life's going to help me plant my sunflowers. They're committed offering a modern way to buy life insurance though. Doug, their prices are affordable. All policies issued by the parent company Mass Mutual, more than 160 year old insurer. I've actually heard some Mass Mutual commercials on the radio about that recently. Today, we're going to throw out the Lifeline to Katie. Hi guys, this is Katie from Wisconsin and I've gotten permission to contact you despite some recent actions that due to Midwest Nice will not be discussed. So I contribute to a Roth 401k at work. I recently went down to 2% because I need to book up my emergency fund. However, I'm wondering if I should remain at that level even after the short term need is met. My employer match air quotes is 10% of 2%. So 10 cents on the dollar up to 2% of my contributions, hence why I just went down to 2%. Outside of the 401k, I contribute to an HSA and Roth IRA through Fidelity up to the max and I've been taking advantage of the recent higher rates on I bonds and short term CDs. Normally, I would think of the classic investing order of operations as first get the match at the 401k, then max out the HSA and IRA, then hop back over to max the 401k and in theory, then a regular brokerage account with anything left. I've yet to reach the final step, but I'm wondering if due to the specifics of my company's contribution, I should swap my last two steps, keep my 401k at 2% and do the brokerage prior to maxing out the 401k. I like the idea of having investments that can be touched prior to traditional retirement age. Is there anything I'm overlooking as to why I should prioritize the 401k over a brokerage? And just to be clear, I am seeking validation for a decision that I've already made, but I'd love to hear the thoughts you have. Thanks in advance. Do we just say Katie, it's awesome. Katie, you're awesome. Good job. Katie's awesome because she overlooked Doug's recent nefariousness toward the state of Wisconsin or truth-telling. We thank you for that, Katie. Oh, gee, take it from here, man. It's Katie missing something. Well, the only thing that I would think about, I don't know that I necessarily agree that the HSA is as early as she has it in that hierarchy of where to start saving because in theory, that's just prepaid healthcare expenses. That's kind of like what you're doing with that. But I think the thing that we're overlooking here is the tax deferral and tax-free nature of the Roth 401k. You're contributing 2%. You can do a higher... Well, I'm guessing that that 2% is not the 22, 2000. I'm guessing you're not maximizing the total contribution, which is 22.5 this year, based on a 2% contribution, that would mean that Katie's making a million bucks a year, which maybe she is. The difference between tax deferral and tax-free withdrawals and taxable accounts is profound over long periods of time because you have to assume that there's going to be capital gains and dividends paid to your investments. You're going to have to pay taxes on that, even at a relatively preferential rate of 15 or 20%. You could be at zero, depending on your tax bracket for dividends. But I think we've got to recognize that there's an opportunity to save a bunch of money on taxes now and in the future. Then the one thing that she did say at the end was, I want to have money available prior to the traditional retirement agent. I don't know how many times we have to say this, but the IRS doesn't care when you retire. They are trying to prevent you from using your retirement money before you retire. That's why there's penalties and these ages and all this other sort of stuff. You can access your retirement funds once you retire. At any age, you could be retired at 30 and there's a provision for you to take money out of your retirement accounts at 30. The IRS is indifferent when you retire, but to prevent you from using your 401k money or your IRA money to buy a boat when you're 30. When you should be saving for retirement, they hit you with some penalties. If you're using it for retirement, they're okay. Yeah, that's a 401k will probably give you more flexibility because the 401k rules are a little bit different than IRA rules. IRA rules, if you're taking it at 30, you're going to be a little more owners. Well, but here's the deal. If you put money in a Roth 401k and you also have a Roth IRA, what do we know about distributions from Roth IRAs? You can take the principal out any time after five years, right? Sure. So when you take the money out of your Roth, you're taking principal out first. So fast forward till you're 50 and you've contributed a whole bunch of money to your Roth 401k and now you can roll that over to your Roth IRA that's been in place for over five years. You have access to all those contributions also without doing anything special. And then if you need to have access to the money, that's the growth, you have to fill a little extra tax form to get access to this money without a penalty if you're at the part where you need to get gains, which frankly, if you're 52 and you're taking the gains out of your portfolio already, you probably don't have enough money to retire anyway. So you're not doing that. So I think there's too much emphasis put on, well, I need to access to the money. You have access to it. You always have access to it. And maybe there's a little hoop to jump through because the IRS doesn't want you to take your money out of your retirement account before you're ready to retire, because of obvious reasons. But if you're retiring, you've socked away boatloads of cash and it's all in your workplace plan, let me put it this way. If you had $50 million in your IRA and you wanted to retire at 35, does the IRS go, no, sorry, got to work till 60? No, they're like, all right, cool, good job. Awesome. Oh, by the way, fill out this form here real quick just to let us know that you're retired. It's not complicated. I mean, there's some stuff to it. But we get wrapped up about, I need all this accessibility. You have it. It's there. Take the tax-free money, cut the IRS out of it. I do like flexibility though. My emphasis though still, this is work. I think Katie gets it right, oh gee. A bias toward flexibility, I think, is good. Too many people are locking in optimized strategies that bite them in the butt later, completely 100% optimized on the way that I feel today. So having my bias toward more flexibility, I don't think it's a bad thing. Okay. And there you go. Yes. I mean, how many times have we argued the other side? We're like, yeah, now you're in a box and you can't get out of that box because you're saying specifically on the Roth side, you have all the flexibility you need. Yes. I'm just saying overall for everybody else listening, because what I'm hearing as a tertiary argument, it's not the argument you're making, but what a lot of people might hear here is they're hearing, okay, well, I can take advantage of every single tax loophole. And then you're like, okay, how do I unwind this now that I need the cash? In this case, you can do what Katie's talking about, but in other cases, you might not be able to. Well, and I think also to your point here is the difference between the marginal difference between saving in a brokerage account and saving in a Roth 401k as it relates to tax savings is not going to be the deciding factor whether or not you get to retire early. It's not like, Oh, thank God, I saved, you know, 20 cents on the dollar in taxes that's deferred. And you know, that, you know, that delta is not going to be the difference between retiring early. Now it's going to be, did I save a boatload of money? Right? Like you can retire early wherever you put the money is as long as you literally put it somewhere. You know, you, you know, brokerage account 401k IRAs, Roth, HSA, who gives a crap? You need to save a whole bunch of money in order to fund an earliest retirement, right? So you're just trying to optimize, like you said, at the very end. And that's important. Save more. Who cares? We put it. Katie, thanks so much for the call. We're going to send you some Stacke Benjamin's Haven Life Greatest Money Show on her swag, very comfortable shirt. If you've got a question like Katie does, and you're brave enough to call our voicemail, which is actually pretty fun. Head to stackebajmans.com voicemail. And we'd love to answer your question. By the way, let's jump into this. A tertiary tertiary is the third is the third. It's the third argument. I'm saying it's not the first argument or the second argument. I'm saying it's the third thing. You're not even, you're not even thinking this far out. It's so out there. And that's what they're thinking. So yes, I did use it correctly. Doug and I are aware of what the word is meant to me. What everybody heard, Joe, and what I'm totally locked in on, and I didn't hear a damn thing you said after that, was your pronunciation of the word. Tertiary doesn't exist anywhere in a romantic based language or a Germanic based language. It does. It's a soft tea, damn it. No, no. You speak for a living. Just do it right. Joe Soto is a language of Joe Soto. Oh my God. Tertiary. Hey, we've got a little bit of community calendar stuff for everyone. I'm super excited tonight. If you're listening on Monday, the day this is released, Alison Baggerley joining me on Instagram. You heard Alison on the show about six weeks ago. If you've got questions about your budget, Alison on her inspired budget channel answers all kinds of questions. And I said, Alison, would you do that for our stackers? Just they bring you their budget questions. They bring you their budget. And she said, heck yeah, I'll do it. So Alison's going to join us 5 p.m. Eastern 2 p.m. Pacific this afternoon. Super excited to have Alison back with us. That is on the calendar for today. If you'd like to know all the places where you can get more financial help from us, head to stackybejmans.com slash welcome. That's our guide with all the different channels where we are. We're in so many different places, Instagram, we have a great Facebook group of stackers called the basement. Of course, our 201 newsletter and much, much more stackybejmans.com slash welcome. If you're not here because you want to hang out with Alison and me this afternoon, you're here because you're worried about all the gyrations in the market that happen this time of year. And you think it's time to have a better team in your corner. OG and his team are taking clients. So I just stackybejmans.com slash OG. That's the link to his calendar gets you a meeting with OG and his team so that they can help you make better financial decisions. All right, that's our community calendar for today. I think it's time to wrap this baby up so much stuff. But Doug, what are our top three today? Well, Joe first, take some advice from Robert Niles and plan ahead to get the most out of your next theme park trip for the least amount of money. Second, from our TikTok minute, maybe, just maybe, you should just buy the car instead of saving up 30 grand, putting it into a life insurance policy, asking the life insurance company for a loan only to find out they won't loan you the whole 30k and then paying interest to yourself. Here's a better way, save 30k, buy the car, you know, just slightly, slightly cleaner process. But the big lesson? Apparently, some people don't think my Daisy Duke sweat pant shorts are family friendly at a theme park. When a rush of roller coaster air catches them, just right, people can see my speedo, which I didn't think was offensive, but anyway. Thanks to Robert Niles for joining us today. You can find all his news about where to go this summer at themeparkinsider.com. We'll also include links in our show notes at stackingbenjamins.com. This show is the property of SB Podcasts LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Salcihut. 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 stackingbenjamins.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 stackingbenjamins.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. Tertiary. Tertiary. Tertiary. Tertiary. Tertiary. Tertiary. Tertiary. I may have told this story before but... Sweet. Can't wait to hear it again. I know it'll get better probably, but Caltech and MIT have been playing practical jokes on each other for years, which I just think is great nerd humor. They're so elaborate. They are. And this one I thought was fantastic. Caltech went to campus at MIT on I'm going to call it like parents weekend. They set up in some kind of mall area, you know, big grassy area, along a sidewalk, set up a tent, set MIT all over the tent. And on the table, they had T-shirts folded that on the like gray T-shirts and on the front said MIT and then the coffee mugs and they're giving them away. Coffee mugs that say MIT, T-shirts that say MIT, everybody takes them. When you put the T-shirt on, the part of it says just classic, you know, university font MIT, but the back says, because not everybody can get into Caltech. And what's better is the coffee mug says MIT on it, but when you pour hot coffee in it, the letters change to say Caltech, like they incorporate the M the I and the T into Caltech, which I think is just fantastic because even if people realized they got punked on the T-shirt right there like outside, they're still think they're going home with an MIT mug. And then, you know, days later, I love it. So awesome. Oh, G you had an after show story for us. So my mom is coming to visit us for a couple of weeks, my end of the school thing, eighth grade graduation. It's just a story where you got to hurry up and move. You have to hurry up and move this week. Well, you know, she got this thing about like not taking Uber. And so she had two flights to choose from and one got in at 10 o'clock at night. And I said, I don't want to go to the airport. It's like it's a weekday. It's a Wednesday. I can't, I can't just get home at midnight because you took the late flight like there's a thousand other flights to Dallas. So I thought we settled it. Called her last night. When did your flight land? 540. And I'm like, now it's rush out. Like, I want to drive to the airport during rush hour and home. That's like doubly bad. I said, just Uber. Can we schedule a sometime between noon and 1 30 in the afternoon? Before my manager window window is 945 to 11, mom, or one and three. Otherwise, don't call schedule is like civilized people, mom Uber. So we're just like just mom, you're gonna have to Uber. It just is what it is. And she's belly icking about it. So I said, okay, fine, I'll figure something out. So I said to the boys, I said, I need somebody to come with me to the airport tomorrow to pick up grandma. I'm out, dad. I'm out, dad. No, I'm busy. I'm busy. And I said, well, we're going to have a sign that says welcome home from prison grandma. And my son goes, I'm in, dad. I'm in. Yes. I'd be so there. Congrats on your rehab, grandma. Becoming a member at Navy Federal Credit Union could help you earn more and save more. Their certificate options earn you more than standard savings accounts with competitive rates. Not all financial institutions offer you as many choices for savings options as Navy Federal does. For example, you can start your savings journey with a low minimum deposit, like $50 for an easy start certificate, add money at any time and watch your savings grow. Thanks to flexible terms, you can use Navy Federal savings options for all kinds of goals, short or long term. 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