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Episode transcript

 Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.

I am Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. And it’s almost time for the Super Bowl. Wait, we can’t, we can’t say that. Uh, the big game. And you know what that means? Time to take out my football shaped snack ball. I learned my lesson not to wait until OG reaches for the tortilla chips. Today we’ve got an even better snack for you.

Our top five ways to win your super, uh, big game of personal finance in our headlines. How are your insurances looking? Costs are expected to skyrocket in 2023. So we brought on Eric Sorenson from Minnesota Insurance Brokers to help you plan better coverages. Plus, we’ll throw out the Haven Lifeline to Alex who’s curious about Roundup investing such as with Acorns.

And then we’ll share some super trivia. And now two guys who are the national champions of helping you stack Benjamins. It’s Joe and Oh,

hey there, stackers. Welcome to the Stacky Benjamins pre-up bowl party. I’m Joe Sulci. I average Joe money on Twitter, and I’ve got not just the cool ranch Doritos next to me. And Dr. Pepper, but I also have the one and only Mr. OG product placement for the wind. Dude. Product placement sponsored by Athletic Greens.

What is that? Is so green, by the way. That is athletic. Gross green. Look at how gross that is. Gross green, is that what they call it on the box? Is that their, their marketing Dude, try the gross green flavor. Well, they’ll never be on our show. Uh, sorry. I bet it tastes great though. Yeah, less filling. We are gearing up for the Super Bowl.

And you know what, whether you follow the game or not, you obviously are interested at winning when it comes to your personal financial situation. We got you covered today because as Doug said earlier, we’ve got, uh, we got some money saving tips, some motivational tips. We’re gonna be much better than the coach at halftime with the team down by seven.

We’re bringing it today. But before all that, I think you know what they do just before they start the game at the Super Bowl. What’s that? They always do this. Well, of course they do that throughout the game too, don’t they? And they’re commercials not nearly as entertaining as ours. We’ve got Eric Sorenson from Insurance Brokers of Minnesota on tap and our Top Five Ways to Win Your Personal Finance big games.

So let’s get moving. Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines. Our headline today comes to us from Website Gear Junkie. This is not good news. og, your 2023 car insurance premiums likely to go up by a lot. Now there’s a lot and that’s for most people.

And then there’s a lot, lot, lot which is for the OG family. Yeah, I was just gonna say like it doesn’t matter what everybody else is gonna do. Yeah, you saw car wreck two cars in uh, six weeks. You saw it coming ahead of time. You’re like, Hey, as long as insurance premiums are going up anyway, I. Why don’t we just get this outta the way.

Yeah. Make sure. Yep. I thought this was a good opportunity to actually dive into auto and homeowners like we did with estate planning on Monday with Elisa Marie Presley estate situation. I thought that, uh, you know, we should, we should really talk about auto and home because what most people do is they just take out that sheet of paper that has all their coverages.

They call up a different agent, they don’t have any long talk with ’em. And I know because I just went through this, they don’t have any really long talk with ’em. They have no idea what any of these line items meet og. And because of that we didn’t really make a good insurance decision. We’d Amy Fickle Stein from MIT on the other day, and the number of emails I got about how enlightening it was when people started getting the aha about how insurance really works.

Maybe it’s time that we plan better. And I’ll tell you this, when I was a financial planner. And we’d look into this a little bit. We wouldn’t spend a ton of time here ’cause you’re not gonna make a ton of money. However, we would spend a little time, and I’d say there were so many times where we would get rid of duplicate coverages.

We would shop insurance companies. We do some different things and we would, we, we usually save some money and get better coverage. Not either or. We could often do both. I had this exact same thing happen to me probably about three years ago. I had, I actually got a letter in the mail, old school mail marketing from an insurance company and, and, um, just so happened that I had just gotten my house renewal, insurance renewal.

So I was like, all right, I’ll call. And what you’re talking about is what we did. So we went through the whole kit and caboodle and it was, it was interesting for somebody who’s, you know, kind of in this business, the money business to be so far off on the insurance side for auto and home. And the person that I went through or was talking to, he did such a great job of going, all right, well if you look at this coverage, this is what this means.

And you know, it says that your house is covered for this, but with the rising costs of lumber and material and like if your house burned to the ground, how much would it cost to rebuild? And we talked about it. He is like, well, your coverage is for this and you’re telling me that it’s worth that. So why do you have that insurance?

You’re covering 70% of your house. That’s, you know, foolish. So we went through a lot of those things and I don’t know that it saved any money, but it certainly got better coverage, you know? Yeah. Well that’s the thing is even if you don’t save money, if you just put the coverage levels where they should be and the price remains the same, like that’s, yeah.

That’s way better. That is way often. I remember when I was a planner, we would often save people money in one area and add umbrella liability to some of these professionals that were, you know, should really have an umbrella liability coverage. But putting the coverages in the right place made it affordable to add this coverage that they, that they didn’t have.

Yeah. It was you telling me that story initially that. Made me excited to do a live event with a guy named Eric Sorenson, who’s executive vice president over at Insurance Brokers in Minnesota. He was on, uh, fireside and YouTube with us. By the way, we do these quite a bit. If you wanna know all the places where we do this type of thing, just download our welcome guide, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash welcome, and you can sign up and then get alerted whenever we do these live events.

We had him walk us through car insurance and homeowners, and I just wanna play a little bit of this ’cause it’s really, really good stuff. Let’s start off with car insurance. On the auto insurance side, you’re gonna start with your liability. That’s what the, the state is requiring us to have if we’re on the roads.

Uh, uh, most states, I think there’s a couple states that New Hampshire or somebody like that, that doesn’t require auto insurance, which is crazy to me, but, um, just buckles up, man. Be safe. Yeah. So, so liability is your, um, that’s your liability to others. So you hit and injure somebody. You do damage to somebody else’s car.

Sometimes property damage is built into that. Sometimes property damage has its own separate limit. But um, that’s the first big line item. That’s where the state is requiring you to carry a limit on that. The next line is typically your uninsured and underinsured motors, the coverage that we just talked about.

And typically on those, you’re gonna see two limits on both the liability. On the uninsured, you’re gonna see a first limit, which is your each person limit, and the next limit is per accident limit. And some people have what’s called combined single limit, where you just have one limit that’s all tied into, to both of those things.

So, so when you’re looking at your policy, that first limit is what we’re gonna pay out. If you injure one person, the next limit is the total limit that we’ll pay out no matter how many people are injured in your accident. So are there some guidelines about what we should have for those numbers? Yeah. So I’m gonna tot having an agent real quick here and not buying your insurance online.

That’s where we come into play. I, I think it’s important to sit down with an advisor, have them look at, you know, your assets and what your insured’s portfolio looks like and where you should be at those limits. But, um, you know, I, I’m, I start at a minimum of 250,000, 500,000. That’s kind of the minimum I start at with people.

Uh, we have a company policy that we won’t do less than a hundred thousand, 300,000. Unfortunately, we’ve had to turn some people away for that. But we just feel like it’s so important that you have limits that are adequate, adequate coverage. He continues on OG looking at, uh, some of the ancillary coverages you have.

He finds often that people will have roadside assistance through an organization like aaa, but they’ll also have roadside assistance on their policy. They will also take out unnecessary insurance on rental cars. He cautions you to look first at your coverage. Often your primary auto coverage will cover a rental car as well if you have a problem.

So then you can deny the Avis Hertz budget, dollar, whatever, coverages as well. But I think it’s, I think there’s two things that are interesting. Look at how he’s raised those numbers, right? He’s like, we won’t even work with you if you go with the cut rate numbers, because we believe strongly you have. I don’t think that’s the insurance agent.

Th this guy’s been around long enough, og. I mean, obviously we’ve vet our guest. This guy’s been wrong long enough that, that, that he doesn’t have to make a couple extra bucks selling a $500,000 number versus a $300,000 number. This is just in your best interest as inflation through the roof prices go up, hospitals charging more like these, these numbers are not small.

Having spent, um, Christmas Eve in the hospital with my daughter for, um, thankfully pretty minor thing and having some friends that are. In and outta the hospital here recently, I can tell you that, um, any sort of injury, uh, accident on the road that involves medical care is gonna get up there pretty quick.

I mean, I think I rode in the ambulance for like, it was like 1.8 miles or something. They like track it and it was 1700 or something stupid like that. And that wasn’t even lights a blazing. That was just, we’re just taking this idiot to the hospital type of thing. So it can get pretty expensive. Don’t skimp on the liability coverage.

And I think also, like you were talking about the underinsured and uninsured. Yeah. You think often like, oh well their insurance will cover it. And it’s like it does if they have it, you know, if they don’t have it or if it expired yesterday or they don’t have enough, they have the 2040, they’ve got the cut rate coverage type stuff and you have this major issue.

Well you know, they only pay the 20 grand and you need 200. Who’s gonna come up with that other money? The rental car stuff I found very interesting. Before I knew some of that, I often felt exposed by declining coverages. I’m like, do I know? I think I read the fine print on my credit card that I’m using.

And certainly that covers a lot of it on many credit cards. However, the fact that your primary auto coverage may also jump in, I think is a spot that a lot of people don’t know anything about. On the credit card versus personal insurance, I would a hundred percent use the credit card. There’s lots of stories about this.

You can kind of Google, you know, which card you have and and what benefits are available to you. But there’s lots of stories about this, how you don’t wanna be involved in the process of the claim on a rental. You know, you just think about, you’re on vacation in Orlando, you get a car, you go to Disney, the garbage truck backs into it, but you live in Nebraska and so now you’re, you know, you’re trying to deal with this issue.

Even if it’s on the phone or online, it’s still an issue in a different state with different rules. And you know, if you have the opportunity to have the credit card coverage be primary, that’s definitely what you wanted to go with. Even if it costs just a smidge more. But like he said, you certainly don’t want to double pay for it if you know you already have coverage one way or the other, whether it’s on your personal insurance or or on the credit card.

We didn’t stop there og Uh, we moved into homeowners coverage. But before we get to that, Eric also tackled some of these, you know, there’s some of these marketing things that companies do that we’re hearing about. And, uh, Eric cautions you against some of the gimmicks. Let’s, uh, let’s listen into this. You know, some of this accident, forgiveness and, and minor violation, forgiveness, stuff that’s being toted all over the commercials, there’s a cost built into that.

Typically you don’t see that cost. I can see it on my end. And so, um, I lay that out for clients and most of the time they don’t wanna pay the extra cost. Well, and I think that’s an important thing and I, the light bulb as you hear that it goes on when we were live, but it also goes on hopefully for a lot of people here today, og.

It’s the same with annuities, with life insurance policies, whatever it is that you buy. If it’s through an insurance company and they’re gonna throw in a little something extra that sounds really good, that add-on, it isn’t free. There always is going to be a cost affiliated with the ADD-on. It’s included.

It’s included. Yeah. It’s not free. And so I like the way that Eric said he lays it out right here it is with accident forgiveness. The one OG should probably take, and then here’s the one for everybody else that they should probably take. We, we then dove into homeowner too soon, bro. Sorry about that. We then, uh, dove into, uh, homeowner’s coverage, and here’s where Eric went there.

The biggest one is, uh, that’s, that we start with is your dwelling. That coverage a amount, that’s the structure itself. You have your personal property limit, which is your belongings inside there. And so depending on what those limits look like, uh, again, we’re running replacement cost estimators right now.

That’s, I just read, uh, recently that they said about two thirds of American homes are inadequately insured. Uh, or they couldn’t rebuild the home for the amount that they have on the replacement. It was, it was a combination of that and other items built into the policy with some of the stuff that’s going on with matching of siding and roofs.

So that’s a big issue here in Minnesota. But yeah, that’s what it was kind of outlining. So one of the big things that we’re doing and, and a lot of agents are doing and the companies are doing is running updated replacement costs and trying to get a. The home’s insured to the correct value. Um, because obviously the, the market’s gone crazy.

Labor costs are up. Everything, everything’s up, unfortunately. So, sure, yeah. That’s an important area that we see. And then your liability also there. So very similar to your auto liability, that’s, you know, somebody gets hurt on your premises. A big thing is liquor liability. That’s where we see some big claims come in.

Um, you serve somebody at your house, they leave your house, you know, you might never think that they’re gonna sue you, but their spouse might, or, you know, depending on what happens. So that’s a big one that we see too. So the liability limit. Most policies start there at a hundred thousand. Same thing there.

Honestly, to go to 300 or 500,000, call your agent or go online, however you do your insurance, it’s probably 10, 15 bucks to bump up to half a million. So just simple little things that are a good bang for your buck. Those are, I think, important things. You know, people don’t think about, especially with the Super Bowl weekend coming up, somebody just, you don’t know how much, how much somebody drank that came over to your house.

You got no idea how they are. They look fine, you know, they jump behind the wheel. Something happens. And now, now you’re in a world of hurt. Yeah. Didn’t think about that one. You’re not invited. The, the home structures. The home structures thing too. I was frustrated on the other side with my house and, and I could not figure out why the agent was talking about so much money to replace my house.

And you know, what Eric said that I didn’t consider was the demolition of anything left of the existing structure. He said, that’s what you’re not considering. Of course we can build your house for, you know, X amount of money that I had on it. He’s like, but they can’t build it and demolish what might still be there.

Yeah. And match it to the interior or exterior finishes that you have. And, and in Texas we a lot of, well, I mean a lot of places have hardwood floors and it’s continuous. Right. It’s like run through your entire house. There’s no breaks in our house. Everything is wood except for the, the two bedrooms. And we had a friend who’s, who had a pipe burst during the last freeze and they have to replace all of their wood floors, all of them, because, you know, it has to match.

It’s a continuous thing. You can’t just take out a couple of boards and put a couple of new boards in. They’re not gonna be weathered the same. They’re not gonna be staying the same. It’s gonna, you’re gonna be able to notice it. So maybe that’s, if you’re talking, I’m thinking that’s my house. Maybe that’s overkill.

Maybe you don’t need to do that, but, um, I would want my house to look like it was, right? Sure. I would want it to look back to the condition it was. Sure. So to do that, they have to replace all the wood floors, not just the six boards that were damaged in the flood. It’s weird. We talked about the little things here as well.

Uh, number one was, uh, endorsements for jewelry or things that are excluded. Generally, there’s a two to $3,000 number where the insurance company will take your word for it. After that, you’re gonna have to have things appraised and have a separate, uh, endorsement. So jewelry, high price, things in your house, maybe nice artwork.

Make sure that’s appraised. Get it on as a separate endorsement on the policy. Make sure that you have video. Of everything in your house. You know, when my house got robbed, I was surprised that they also wanted serial numbers of the electronics. That helps ’em catch the thieves, but it also helps them verify that this, you know, expensive computer that I had is, you know, whatever, whatever the, the model is that helps ’em verify that I actually own this thing.

Yeah. So I was very surprised. I didn’t have any, I didn’t have any serial numbers for anything, and that was a problem, uh, for me. You’re like, I like Raisin brand. You, you could also raise your, you could raise your deductibles, but only do that if you have. A good emergency fund in place. If you got that cash reserve, then certainly raise your deductible and take some of that risk yourself.

But then he, he also covered og um, renter’s insurance. And this was a big surprising thing to me. For a lot of you that rent out there, if you combine that with your auto coverage, you will generally get a big enough discount on your auto coverage. Get this, Eric said it will pay for the entire rental policy.

You may not have to pay a dime. Right. That was a aha. And the number of times that I was renting that, uh, maybe I could have used, I could have used a policy. Well, and and there’s just more stuff that’s not in your control there, right. I mean Right. Agreed condition of the building. And the building is insured by the owner of the building.

Your stuff isn’t. When we had a, uh, rental property, we had a pipe leak and it leaked into a unit and kind of damaged some clothing of a tenant. He was, uh, he was trying to withhold rent because, you know, we had to pay him for his clothes. I was like, I’m sorry that this happened. Our, our obligation is to fix the premises, you know, in the building, renter’s insurance has to cover the rest.

Your obligation is to have renter insurance says right in your right in your lease agreement. So just file a claim with your renter. Renter’s insurance, I don’t have any. Oh, well, so then you wanna be evicted because you didn’t follow the lease agreement. Yuck. All the way around. Yuck. Get your renter’s insurance, especially if it’s free for crying out loud.

Uh, 45 minutes. We hung out with Eric on this and we really dove in. If you wanna see this, it’s on our YouTube channel. Just to scroll our YouTube channel and find auto and homeowners insurance coverage. We, of course include all the rental, uh, stuff that we discussed, uh, both, uh, renter’s insurance and insurance for rental cars.

What we did it even much, much deeper. But I think the takeaway is good timing this week to, uh, maybe take out your coverages, go back through this segment that we just did, or go over to the YouTube channel. Take your coverages out and see how yours line up and where you might wanna shore things up. It’d be cool if you can save some money, but I think it’s even cooler if you’ve got the right coverage.

That’s, that I think is the way to go. Coming up next, OG and I are gonna dive into the top five ways we think you can win with your financial plan. Uh, this is gonna be part tactical, part motivational speech part, let’s go team part. Uh, here’s, uh, who we need to block, where the problems are gonna be. It’s gonna be a great run through using, uh, the Super Bowl as an excuse to talk about being a champion at whatever you do.

But before that. I think Doug’s got a little Super Bowl trivia for us, don’t you?

Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and man, there are a lot of rules to remember about the super, the big game. You know what I’m talking about? I’m not allowed to have fireworks until I finish paying off Joe’s mom’s hospital in wig bills. I’m not allowed to ride my electric scooter after touchdowns, just because OG had to have one wall replaced.

Geez, speaking of Breakables, the Lombardi trophy is made of sterling silver. So my question is, what Famous jeweler makes it? I’ll be right back after I go deep. Hit me. I’m open.

Hey there, stackers. I’m wide mouth Cheeto receiver and Super bowl of chili snacker. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, the same designer of the Lombardi Trophy, also makes trophies for the biggest championships in the N-B-A-M-L-B, US open, WNBA and PGA. And now they’ve been designing it since the first Super Bowl when Len played.

So which company is it? Tiffany and Company. Wow. That’d be a huge blue box, huh? And now for more super advice, it’s Joe and og. Wouldn’t that be funny if. Roger Goodell on Sunday is opening this monster blue box to, to the winning team. He’s on his knee. He’s, he’s like down on one knee. Yeah. Boy, it, it sure felt like he wanted, uh, he wanted one certain team in the Super Bowl, man.

Some of that. Oh my goodness. Oh, don’t wanna complain about the refs. However, that was, I’d feel bad if I was a Bengals fan right now. That’s all I’m gonna say. It’s all I’m gonna say, Hey, let’s not talk about the refs. Let’s talk about getting your act together. ’cause you know what, OG All you can do is the best that you can do.

Everybody else can do what they do. If you focus on you. My coach used to always tell me this, focus on you and your stuff. Don’t focus on, and you’d see this, I would see this, I mean, to get a little serious. Now, I, I would see this with clients. So they come into my office, they would say, Hey, the economy, Hey, the election, Hey, the fed, hey, the, you know, the stock market.

Hey, this stuff. And I would reset to, okay, to reach our goal, we need to be at X number by June. The good news is we’re already there. Oh, we’re already there. Yes. So now we have some decisions to make. And I would reframe the, the discussion around all the things that they could do. They could either stop saving and take an extra vacation.

They could get further ahead. They could, they could do all these different things. They could take less risk with their investments that they wanted to, if they felt like, Hey, I wanna get more conservative. I’m not sleeping well at night. We can now do that. So all the different things we do, and if we’re behind also, we don’t worry about the stock market being end down about all this stuff.

And actually what’s cool is the times we’re behind usually correlated with bad stuff going on in the economy and the stock market, whatever. And instead of worrying about that, we’d do the right thing and we’d save more money and we’re saving when it’s low. And then when it goes higher, we can ease off the gas pedal if we want to.

But, um, but deal with, with what, what you, what you really need. And I think that’s the key. Certainly, certainly the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. I don’t think they’re thinking about anything other than their own game plan. Are they? I mean, truly anything other than, Hey, here’s what we’re good at and what we need to focus on.

Yeah. Maybe the other person’s game plan a little bit from defense side, but I see what you mean. Your analogy is 80% correct. We’ll go with it. All right. Let’s start this. Mr. Uh, announcer dub from the uk. Number five. You wanna kick us off or you want me to kick it out? Kickoff. How about that? I didn’t even mean that.

No pun intended there, but that was pretty cool. You wanna begin? I was a little unclear on the rules for today, just to set the stage here early. ’cause I’m not sure if I did this right, but you said this last time and you killed it. You did amazing. Well, I think you’re just making me feel better, but, okay.

All right. So number five is the opening of the game. So we’re talking about the Super Bowl. It’s the opening of the game. It’s the opening of your financial plan. So, uh, the first thing that you have to do is really kind of take stock of what is what I’ve heard the phrase, all progress comes from telling the truth.

So, so your balance sheet is your balance sheet. Your cash flow is your cash flow, right? So get a clear understanding of exactly where everything is, what everything looks like, and take stock of exactly where you are. Because when you do that, then you are able to make good decisions moving forward. If you don’t, if you just kind of say, well, I’m gonna pretend I don’t have that credit card debt, or I’m gonna pretend that that cashflow item on my budget doesn’t exist, then you can never make progress.

’cause, ’cause you’re gonna have this, this anchor kind of holding you down. So mine is the beginning of the game. Step number or number five, beginning of the game is tell the truth. Get yourself a good balance sheet and uh, income statement. Well, I think this is why Super Bowls don’t begin two weeks before the game, or even at the beginning of the playoffs, or heck, even at the beginning of the season.

I mean, it really begins in the general manager’s office by what players do we need to replace and put better ones on the field. You know, we talked earlier with Eric about some of the problems with cut rate insurances and maybe you need, uh, a better player in that field and maybe in some areas of your life you’re not that concerned about it.

So going with lowest cost is the best way to go. But having a truthful assessment is clearly the way these two teams have made it to the top. They know, Hey, you know what? It’s not about getting a better quarterback, the guy that really controls the ball. Maybe I need these offensive linemen that protect him, that give him time to think.

Right? And I think that sometimes OG here, their second level thinking that needs to happen. Like we hear all the time, Hey, why wouldn’t I, why wouldn’t I just use my credit cards as my emergency fund? Why would I have this money sit in a savings account? Well, savings account is your offensive lineman. It is your, it’s your protection when things go bad.

So you can take a second and assess, or God, if I gotta run my credit card for every purchase. I just think about the feelings you go through every time I’m running my credit card. ’cause I have no other option. I’m freaking out more and more and more and I’m much more likely, I think, to make a mistake. I agree.

My number five and the key I think between good and great here is, is to fail faster. Like you think nobody on any of these teams has failed before. Like they haven’t made the same mistakes that you and I have made. I think the big problem is, is that the average person makes a mistake and they sit around and they stew on it.

They think about it, they’re frustrated about it. They kick themselves for a week, maybe a day, maybe an hour, but man, when I was around those next level people, OG as an advisor and still in my life today, these people make the same mistakes you and I do. They just make a ton of them and faster, and they’re off it.

They’re off it. They make a decision and they’re on. When you accelerate the decision making process, I think this is the big aha. You’ve got two ways that you can, you can solve an equation. Number one is just become a hell of a lot smarter, and sure we can do that and we should always be sharpening the saw.

But the other thing is just fail faster. If we can keep our winning percentage at 70%, but I make a hundred decisions versus making only 50 decisions. Yeah. Now that winning percentage is really gonna pay off. And, and domino, after domino, after domino, uh, you’re gonna find then six, 10 dominoes down the road.

You’re way ahead of your competition. You’re way ahead of your goals because you had the, you had the foresight to just get on with it, get moving. So I think realizing that financial planning, there’s very little that we talk about on this show that can burn you forever. You know, there’s very few things.

Go ahead and make the mistake, mess it up, learn from it, fix it, move on. That’s my number five. Okay. I like it. Number four. Why don’t we ping pong this one back and forth, og my number four is to take all the little stuff. I don’t think that in the, uh, Philadelphia Eagles or the Kansas City Chief Locker room, they’re talking about the techniques of how to lay a block or how to make the, i, I know enough football to be dangerous, but how to make the swim move as I’m trying to get by the, you know, offensive lineman to sack the quarterback or how to catch a ball.

We’re not dealing with that little stuff, and I think it’s the same for our game. We gotta put these little decisions that we occupy our brain with every day, and we gotta put those on automation. This is my number four. Automate the little stuff. Your brain only has so much room. I think the clear weight of the championship is when you mess something up, figure out just now how to fix it once.

Figure out how to fix it for good through automation or somebody else doing it, or some technique that you can do. So a flag comes up in your face automatically, so you don’t step in that again. And then over time you’ll find that all the stuff that doesn’t, that matters toward you getting rich, but that you don’t need to think about to get wealthier.

That, uh, that those are all taken care of for you and now your brain is on thousand dollars and then $10,000 and a hundred thousand dollars decisions instead of these 50 cent decisions we’re making every day. So that’s my number four automation. I found it to be so helpful. It sounds really simple to automate the mortgage payoff and automatically the a CH that goes into the brokerage account every single month.

Everything else I kind of still, I mean, bill paying happens automatically, but we have the strong desire to pay off our house and I figured out like how much extra every month to pay on it, to pay it down in the, in the manner in which we wanna pay it down. And I was doing it manually. Like I would, you know, the mortgage payment would be paid and then I would go in and I would.

Like, ah, how much extra do we have this month? And okay, let’s put an extra 200 bucks on it. And you know, my goal is 300, but we’ll do 200. Now we’ll try to do 400 later. And what I found was by just setting the payment at the Amount plus and never touching it, kinda life expands to the money that you have.

Once you get past the, the need number, which is probably somewhere in that 70, $80,000 a year range. Once you’re above 70, $80,000 a year of income, you have some extra, more or less, depending on where you live, right? There’s some cost of living issues there. The difference between making 80 grand and making 120 grand, when you’re staring at, when you’re at 80 and you look at one 20 and you go, oh my gosh, I’d have $40,000.

I’d have, I’d have, I’d have so much money, it would be insane. And then I guarantee you get to one 20 and you go, you know, one 60 would be amazing. I’d have 40,000 extra dollars. You know that that extra 40 just gets used. You know, obviously there’s taxes and that sort of thing. It’s not that linear. But after you get past the needs, right after you get past your human needs, if you can just say, I’m gonna set this this way.

Same thing with charitable contributions. I’m gonna set it this way and then my life is just gonna grow around that new thing that I have in the way, which is totally fine. And I found that for the last several years that has helped us tremendously. So I like automation for the win. Yeah, I remember to your point, when I was at the TV station in Detroit, I worked with one of the anchors and they made so much money that their life should have been really easy.

They had so much stuff going the wrong way. And the very first thing I did, and this is one of the few clients I ever did this for og. ’cause usually people are okay, they’re not great at it and they can go set up a few things themselves. But we literally took three meetings and we dug into their entire life and just automated stuff to go the right way.

They were not paying their credit card and their credit score was horrible. Even though they made close to half a million dollars a year because of the fact that they were so busy doing all these other things and their life was so scrambled, their financial life, they would just forget. They would totally just forget.

They would get reminders. Their reminders would get buried. ’cause they’ve got all this stacks of stuff going on. We just set that credit card payment on automatic credit card paid off every month because they had plenty of money. Credit card paid off every month. Within six months, their credit score goes from, you know, two digits because just, just skyrocket.

Cracked the three digits. Yeah, yeah. No, it just skyrocketed six months. And I remember them saying, I can’t believe it was this easy and it was right in front of me. Just this little idea of automation. Yeah. Can truly change the game to either number one on, on my client’s level, get some stability or on your level to really start creating some wealth in the area where you want it.

Yeah. Momentum for sure. What’s your number for. So keeping the, uh, super Bowl theme, uh, mine is at halftime. So we started the game. Now we’re at halftime. At halftime. You know, it’s time to reevaluate. You know, you have to see how we’re doing against our goal. Too many people get a lot of energy around starting the game and then a lot of energy around finishing the game, but miss all the stuff in the middle.

You know, if you took an hour every year or an hour every six months to review, sit down and go, are we on track with where we wanna be and what changes do we have to make to stay on track? Or to get back on track? And you’re 40 years old and you’re thinking about, well, I’ve got retirement 25 years. So that’s, you know, that’s a long time from now.

If all you did was a meeting every year with yourself, or a meeting every, every six months, you will spend a grand total of 40 or 50 hours, one work week on this entire process. Which is not very much. That’s not a lot in the, in 25 years, one work week spent on your retirement, if you do once every six months, you know that halftime period is critical to evaluate how are we doing against the things that we said are super important and what do we have to do differently.

So that’s my number four. Well, you know, as a long time Detroit Lions fan, for people that don’t follow football, the Detroit Lions have had a way of losing games over and over and over at the last second. And one thing, their new coach who’s started to turn things around, Dan Campbell has said, we don’t know how to close out a game.

We dunno how to keep the sustained energy to get through the game. And now I’m watching this series on Netflix Breakpoint, which follows top tennis stars or these up and coming really tennis stars that, but frankly, most of ’em I never heard of. ’cause I don’t actively follow tennis. So I know who Nadal is.

I, you know, Sharapova, I know some of these stars of present and past that are the top, top stars. But these new up and coming people, I don’t know. But it shows the up and down of the intensity level and how much we can get in our own head at halftime, og, and just blow up the plan. We just completely blow up the plan because our head can’t stay in the game, which is why I like that idea of setting up milestones that we talked about earlier.

I like going, okay, assess where are we supposed to be right now? So I really, really like that halftime assessment, not just taking a break, which I think sometimes we need to just go take a walk. Like I feel like if some of these tennis stars weren’t in the heat of the moment with all these people watching and all these people around the world watching on tv, if they could just go for a walk and come back, I feel like the game would change.

But the key is you’re in the, there was a game that that actually happened, and it was very controversial where the, like the young person was beating the older person quite substantially. Oh, Kovic decided to go to the bathroom? No, this was worse. Oh, this was like, I need a break. I’m, you know, it was like, I have an injury and they kind of, you know, and it was all like this.

No, I really do. And it was like an hour long thing. Where the whole, you know, the whole momentum of the thing changed and, and, and the young person lost. It was a women’s event, I don’t remember. About a year ago. Yeah, no, I saw the one where Kovich decided he’s gonna, the bathroom. They said, no, you can’t go.

He’s like, well, I’m going, going ahead. Stop me in the world’s, I’m, I’m the world’s number one. I’m gonna gonna go. Yeah. But he can get as many points as he wants while I’m, while I’m taking a leak. I’ll catch ’em. I’ll be back. I’ll be back. So, uh, I do think we have that opportunity. They might not have that opportunity, but certainly, yeah, certainly we do number three.

Okay. What, what do we watch the Super Bowl for? Oh, the commercials come on. Commercials. Absolutely. So the commercials in this storyline is you have to, you have to stop and make sure that you have some fun along the way. I. If you’re so worried about exactly timing out your exact retirement, you know, or your exact, you know, amount that you need for your kids’ college, that that is the motivating factor in your life and you don’t have any fun.

You need to take some time out and have some fun. You know, if nothing, over the last three or four years, we’ve figured out that tomorrow isn’t promised to every single person. So if you’re only got your head down so that you can finally pick your head up in 25 years from now, I think you’re missing out.

I think you can make those changes to maybe make it, uh, 21 years instead of 20 and have lots of fun now and enjoy, enjoy the journey along the way. There’s that great book by George Leonard called Mastery and the whole, the whole concept of mastery is to enjoy the plateaus, enjoy the flat parts. You know, we all like the growth part where I like the.

It’s the part where, you know, our portfolio does this or our career does that, or our kids do, you know, these great things, but it’s the boring stuff that we have to get excited about. And if you’re not taking time for yourself and if you’re not taking time for the people around you, you know, what’s the point?

Did you see the, uh, controversy lately around Marie Kondo? How she said, screw it. I didn’t see controversy. I heard she said, turns out having kids is hard. But the controversy is, is somebody who’s giving advice. This sounds incredibly good. And I love Marie Kondo’s advice. No matter how many family members you have, I love the whole idea of the sparking joy.

Ken Honda kind of did that for us in the personal finance space. I love his book, happy Money from a Similar Space. So I like that. But also somebody that gives you the advice, Hey, your life will be happier if, and Marie Kdo goes, you know what? I have to learn to experience the joy in the mess of three kids.

Like I have to learn to be where I am. And when you’ve got a person who’s as, as internationally renowned expert as she is, like the huge number of people who gave her backlash, OG going, I was thinking that when you were saying this crap, like how does my, how does my life get better by cleanup? Now, don’t get me wrong, I do agree that less clutter in your life can give you more mental clarity and study after study shown that.

But I think there’s a lot to what you’re saying here, being happy where you are today. Enjoy the commercials. Yeah, enjoy the commercials. I love that one. My number three is now that we’ve automated the little stuff and we’ve learned to move faster now where we wanna spend time is digging into that big stuff.

And this is where. You see the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs have really just, just beaten the heck outta everybody else. It’s not about beating one position anymore, og. They don’t have two or three people either. These team have two or three weapons. They have tons of weapons, and they’ve learned to use all these different weapons on the other team, on offense and on defense.

They have been and on special teams, frankly. So they can do trick plays, they can run the ball up the middle, they can throw along, even if you don’t know football at all. They can do lots and lots of different things. And you know why? Because they’ve automated the little stuff and they’re moving at a faster rate.

They can now dig into those things. And if you’re just starting off on this journey with us, there’s three big ones. Three big ones. Think very critically about where you lived. We talk about being, uh, last week about being a, uh, young professional in different places to live around the world. And you even brought up, oh gee, it doesn’t have to be around the world.

If you’re in the United States, you can just move. You know the difference between living in Texarkana where I live and living in San Francisco, the cost of living difference is at least 3% different between the two. It doesn’t even have to be worldwide. But thinking very critically about where you live is number one.

Number two, thinking about your transportation is your second biggest expense. And by the way, a great book to read or listen to is called The Walkable City. And about all the side effects, OG of setting yourself up for a lifestyle where you walk more often, where you’re walking down. You guys got this great little downtown area that’s maybe, what about half a mile from your house?

Point nine. You guys can just walk that, but who’s counting? No, but seriously, and it’s down a big hill and it is a little far, but man, I could just imagine, you know, when, uh, we were babysitting your house for a while, Cheryl and I would just walk down to that little downtown area and back. And so we’re going out to dinner, but we’re also, we are also, uh, you know, living a healthier lifestyle.

The guy that wrote this book said when he got rid of his car. He immediately lost 10 pounds, like within the first couple months. Mm-Hmm. Lost 10 pounds. You know why? ’cause he just, he set up his life for a win from a health perspective. So, I’m not saying get rid of your car, but I am saying think about your transportation options.

Our friend, uh, Pete Adney, Mr. Bunny Mustache, who’s been on the show, Pete famously rides his bike everywhere. Just chooses to be in a place where he can ride his bike 99% of the time. And then the third one is your grocery bill, and obviously your grocery bill. We’ve seen what an impact that can have this last year, well, even during Covid, right as we went through toilet paper and meats and now eggs.

So, uh, depending on what it is, but if you can also control your groceries, you’re gonna be better off. So dig into those big things and ignore the little ones. Number two, my number two probably could have been number five, but I really liked people focusing on those first as we went down these top five I.

And that surround yourself with great people. Eric talked about in that interview earlier about, obviously as an agent, he’s gonna advocate for agents, but you and I are not property casualty agents, and I will advocate for an agent all day long. Yeah, but only a good one, right? If you’re gonna have an agent, they have to be somebody that gets you.

You have a relationship with, you can call up if people don’t have the time of day for you, and it just, well then heck, go to the cut rate place. Forget about, forget about having the agent. But I certainly, I certainly on a lot of these complicated products, I like having an agent. The good news is, you know, we have Haven Life or term insurance here on the show.

Term insurance is straightforward. You find a great calculator. You choose your number, you do some math ahead of time, you buy it. There’s not a lot to it. Now, if you’re going to permanent life insurance, for a myriad of reasons, myriad reasons. I also may not do that for most people listening, but. For a myriad of reasons.

You might go to permanent life insurance. I would have an agent to buy permanent life insurance to make sure that, that, that stuff’s so complicated that I would do it correctly. ’cause you can win. It’s just very complicated, right? So surround yourself with the right people who’s on your board. Ask yourself this while you’re listening.

If, if, if you can take out your, you know, iPhone, notepad, whatever it might be, and write down who’s on your board of directors and how often do you actually talk to that board of directors. Who are they? I’ve only started doing that in the last couple years and it’s such an important part of your life to have these great people that you can bounce ideas off of.

Because for these two teams, og, you look at both of their coaches and then the coaching staffs they have, this is every bit as much about those coaches as it is about the players. The same coaches wind up in the Super Bowl or in the playoffs a lot. Andy Reed, notably from Kansas City, has been to the playoffs a bajillion times with both of these teams.

With both of these teams. Surround yourself with some Andy Reed. Okay, so, uh, now we’re getting close to the end of the game. It’s a fourth quarter number two fourth quarter rounding, the turn toward home am mix. I’m mixing so many sports right now. You’re Wow, you’re, wow, you’re on the downhill. You can shoot the goal so you can shoot the goal.

You’re about ready to hit the slap shot in fourth quarter for the three point pointer. With the three pointer as you round the corner in your race of life. This is it. We talk about this a lot. This is the chance for the last double, and a lot of the stuff that you’ve done up to this point gives you the opportunity to enjoy this last little bit.

But a lot of times people get too concerned with this last little bit. They’re like, oh, I’m 50. I only have till 60. Or I’m 55, I only have till 65. I need to let off the gas a little bit. And we can see what happened in the Super Bowl with the, um, Patriots and the Falcons. They decided, Hey, we’re up 28, 3 in the third and just let off the gas a little bit.

We don’t have to be as aggressive. I mean, what’s the likelihood of losing this game pretty low and they lost. So as you get to that fourth quarter period, is it not time to be conservative? It’s, it’s time to win. It’s time to keep doing and doubling down on the things that have made you successful up to this point and recognize that this game might be close to being over, but not the whole game.

Just ’cause you’re working on kids’ college or just ’cause you’re working on your retirement. That’s not the end end, right? There’s still lots of partying to go after that. So you have to kinda keep your foot on the gas. So there’s the fifth sport in this analogy. The keep your foot on the gas as you round the corner on the downhill as you slap, shot the three pointer into the upright.

Yeah. How many times, I mean not just in games but in life, have we seen that foot off the gas? It’s gonna be okay. I’m not gonna pay attention. And that really is the point where you go Yep. And that’s when the bad stuff started. Yeah. I mean, you think about, I mean, no different than our god awful target date funds, right?

That when you turn 50, they start getting more conservative because they say, well, you’d need all of this money at 65. It’s like, no, I don’t. I need one year’s worth of money at 65. I need a whole bunch of money at 85 and 95 and 105. And the most important double of all that lasts double does not happen.

Or it takes longer, like slow down. You wanna do slow down the most critical doubling of your money. Yeah, absolutely man. Time for the fanfare. This is it. I love doing this. This is so fun. Here we go. Number one, I want you to finish off your game last ’cause you clearly have this overarching analogy. So I’d like to finish that analogy kind of to put the cherry on top of this entire thing.

’cause mine’s not an analogy. Mine are just these ah, these spots. Well, I told you I misunderstood the assignment. My bad. Yeah. But I like it. It gives us a theme. I knew you’d be proud of me. I could tell I had a dream last night about it. You seriously did though. You seriously did. Did I did this. Was it? It took a second to come back and I was like, oh yeah.

Can you tell everybody what the dream was? It was this, it was that. You were so proud that I was prepared for today.

That’s so great. I’m on, uh, I’m on steroids, so I barely slept last night. I gotta call my doctor as soon as it’s over and say, Hey, can I back this down a little bit? ’cause I need some Zambian. Now. Ormb, Zambian a different thing than Zambian. Zambian is a whole different drug. Don’t take that. I don’t even have any idea what Zambian is.

I’ve never heard of that. I don’t think that’s, I don’t think it’s a thing. I don’t even, I don’t even think I want Ambien. But the, uh, the number one for me is the big thing about both of these teams. og no matter, you know what I felt about the officiating in, in the last game that I mentioned at the top of this, no matter what these, these teams didn’t shortcut.

There’s no shortcuts. You see teams at the bottom of every league. You see people. I would see people in my office, and the people that were losing with their money were always people who are looking for a shortcut. The people that were winning were always people that ignored the shortcut. Look at the number of wealthy people, and certainly some people got wealthy off of crypto back in the day, but look at the number of wealthy people that you know in your life that a lot of people poo-pooed, who went, yeah, I don’t think I need that.

Because it felt like a shortcut to them. Like, I don’t know what the use is, I might do it later. You know, usually I, I found most people were open to it. Okay. Use case. Yeah, I get it. Clark Howard is a person I’m thinking of who was very famous, like, yeah, I love blockchain, I love that stuff, but buying, uh, eight bit art on the, on the internet for $400,000, uh, I don’t think I need that.

I had this problem in the nineties. I had this lie, and the lie was that I could out earn my bad money habits, and that is a complete lie. I always thought if I just made a little more money and you brought this up later out, exercising your diet Exactly. I thought that if, you know, like you said, if 80 to 1, 21, 21, it didn’t matter how much money you made, I kept making more and more and more money.

And my habits were so bad. If I had made a million dollars, I would’ve spent 1.3. Like I totally would’ve ’cause my habits were just so bad. And tomorrow was always gonna be better ’cause I was just gonna make a little more money. It was gonna, and we hear that. We see it. I watch TikTok videos and that is the lie.

We’re all being fed. You have to lock down your money situation first. Get rid of those shortcuts, build a foundation. And what was amazing was once I did that and I surround myself with good people, dug into the big stuff, automated, the little learned to quicken the pace. My top five here, things went in the right direction in a hurry.

Not even in a little hurry. Like in, in a hurry. Uh, it got better. Way faster than I thought that, that it would. So that’s my number one tip to win at money. Stop trying to find the shortcut, do the work. It’s like we planned this a little bit because, because, uh, it ties in nicely. At some level to, to my last one, which is now it’s, it’s gotta be the final play of the game, right?

And if you’ve done all this stuff ahead of time, then you’re taking a knee, it’s like a victory lap. It’s the victory formation, right? Or it’s, or, or, or Hold on, hold on. Or you’re the Seattle Seahawks and all you gotta do is hand it to Marshawn Lynch. That’s all you gotta do. Or. Sorry, Seattle, or, or you’re a little behind and you need a shortcut, in which case, Yolo Hail Mary time.

See what happens. Uh,

that’s perfect. I don’t have anything to add beyond that. There is no way Victory Formation or Hail Mary. Those are your two choices on the final plan. I don’t know what to tell you if you’ve done it all right. If you’ve game planned this whole thing, you’re taking a, you’re taking a knee. If you’re, if you’re behind, sometimes you just gotta toss one up and see what happens.

It’s like the TikTok minute from Monday. Just, you know, work till you die. There’s your financial plan. Yeah. Something like that. Or, or to get your last double right now. Yes. Well, I think taking time to celebrate is good. Or like we said on Monday, truthfully, it doesn’t matter what age you are. Start start today.

You’ve got your, uh, Winston Churchill quote for that one, og. Those are our top five ways to win at the game of money. That was super fun. If you wanna dive back into those and have curated links on how to handle more of those, our friend, uh, Kevin Bailey, who, uh, orchestrates about 95% of our 2 0 1 newsletter that goes out for free the day after the Monday and Wednesday shows, includes all kinds of links that will help you put into practice the things that we talked about today.

Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1, the number 2 0 1 free newsletter. Unsubscribe whenever you want. But, uh, it’s, uh, fantastic. They’re usually about, uh, 3000 words. Kevin leaves no stone unturned, and you just. Go to the area that you want. Oh, I really like this stuff. And dive into that. Alright, I think that’s gonna do it for today.

Just a couple quick things. I will be St. Patrick’s Day weekend at a, the Economy Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. If you want to join us. Of course. If you’ve listened to our show, Diana Miriam, uh, fills in for Doug from time to time on our Friday episodes. Diana runs a great conference. You know, we talk a lot about a conferences OG that we go to, like podcasting conferences or FinCon for financial media.

I get emails all the time from people going, is this a conference I should go to? The answer largely is no. These are for creators. Helps us make a product that you want to listen to, to pay attention to for us to do a better job and. Sharp at aaw. And I know that we do have people that go to those because there’s so many of their favorite creators at these, uh, these events.

But generally, I’m, we’re, we’re not focused on that. And there’s not a lot for you to do, and the ticket is generally wasted. The Economy conference is not that at all. The Economy Conference designed for you, Diana has a fantastic range of speakers and topics. It’s a fantastic way to dive in with a lot of your new, best nerdy friends into your money.

It’s economy conference.com for tickets. I know she just mentioned to me yesterday, there’s a few tickets left. I will be there. Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast will be there on Thursday night, the night before economy officially opens. We’re doing a Stacking Benjamins. Earn and invest joint Meetup gonna see if our fans OG, can beat up their fans.

We’re gonna have like a big o no prob pro, probably not gonna do that. We’re gonna give away some books, cuffs, uh, doc G and I, yeah, doc G and I both gonna give away some books. Economy conference.com. Also, I mentioned that I will be also in Bali at a retreat, uh, for a wonderful woman, Amy Minkley, who I met at Camp Phi.

I’ll talk about Camp Phi another time, but that’s another great place to go. But Amy’s conference to get tickets if you want to join us to talk, uh, finance and be in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’ve been told a bajillion times and I can’t wait to go head to five freedom retreats.com and you’ve got plenty of time to plan.

It’s, uh, in Bali, September 27th through October 1st. I will be there as well. All right, if you’re not here to talk about going on a money flavored vacation to either Cincinnati or Bali, two places that are a lot alike, a a ton alike. It’s very simple. If you’re more concerned about, about the market and the fact that it’s been all over the place, finally moving in the right direction again, but the chatter around recession doesn’t go away, uh, OG and his team have put together a free guide that shares eight moves to make.

This guide will help you plan more and panic less no matter what the market does. So head over to stacky Benjamins dot com slash guide. That’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash guide, and get this helpful free guide from og. All right, that is it for the community calendar. Man, Doug, I think you’ve got the very last thing and super important, and that is this.

What should we have learned today, man? So, what should we have learned today? First, take some advice from Eric Sorenson. Compare your insurances recently. Don’t just compare price. Create policies that actually protect what you need. You may save money and find better coverage. Second, how about our top five lists?

Huh? Don’t forget OGs. Point to create milestones like halftime along the way and celebrate your wins. Also, Joe’s advice to fail faster. Top performers still make mistakes. They just move on quickly. Glad the big lesson. I say. It’s not the end of a Super Bowl without dumping a bucket of Gatorade on someone, but apparently Joe’s Cat, Cooper, it’s not on the same page.

This show is the property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Rein. The show is written by the brilliant Paulette per hatch. With help from me, Joe, and g from the Earn and Invest podcast, you can hire Paulette as your very own writing coach with her program, your personal editor.

You get 10 sessions, one-on-one with Paulette to add power to your words. More information@yourpersonaleditor.com. Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1. You’ll find the 4 1 1 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just go to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1.

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. Wanna chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude is our social media coordinator and 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 Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. 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.

Man around Super Bowl time. I love thinking about the snacks. Maybe it’s just ’cause I, I love food and I love food. That’s not necessarily good for you. I have to say, since I’ve been sick, I was really craving. Milk and my Met Pro Diet doesn’t have a, I hope Jesse’s not listening. Jesse, if you’re listening, just turn this off.

My, my Met Pro coach, but I’ve been craving milk and I just needed some comfort food ’cause I haven’t been eating much at all. And so I went and I bought breakfast cereal ’cause I’ve had breakfast cereal in forever and I usually have this egg white concoction first thing in the morning. And I like it. I, I usually lean into it, but lately I’m like, oh, I can’t do it.

I need breakfast cereal. So I bought some and it’s heaven. But I’ve realized after a couple of, uh, days of eating it, well, I don’t have it more often. When I had the flu in the pneumonia stuff over Thanksgiving, all I ate were Insta Cup noodles. Lipins and I lost like 11 pounds. Wow. Wow. Mostly, I’m guessing muscle mass because, oh yeah.

Right near, as I could tell, I was taking, taking in copious amounts of sodium, water, and carbs. So chicken broth. Yeah. But the food around the Super Bowl. What is your favorite Super Bowl menu item? I’ve got this website up 31 daily.com, which goes over the top 10. Oh, in America? Yeah. I don’t really, um, I don’t know what we’re gonna do for Super Bowl this year.

Yeah, we’ll probably, probably smoke some meat. That’s, that’s probably, we’ll probably have some sort of barbecue. Very, very Texas of us that I, I don’t think made their list, but I thought we’d go over their top 10 since we did, just did our top fives. Really gave people 10 other things. Number 10 is potato skins.

You a big potato skins fan? Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s good. It’s a good if they’re good snacky snack. If, if, if they’re crunchy. If they’re crunchy, if that potato is all dried out inside, no, I will take all the crusty stuff off the top and I will chew on the burnt ends of the peel, the potato skin. But if there’s too much potato gut in the middle, not great.

Okay. But tons of sour cream, which makes it, uh, even worse for you. Exactly. Number nine. I can’t do jalapeno poppers. Your number nine. I can’t do ’em. I just, I’ve two plain palette. Not my favorite. I’m not my favorite. I have, uh, Northern European ancestry, and every time anything mildly, mildly hot enters my mouth.

I love it. For two seconds, OJI, have you been around me before when I’ve eaten a pepper? The first three seconds, I’m like, man, this is good. And then like by second five, I’m like, Hey, does somebody got some? What can I, oh my God, I can’t taste anything. It is, it’s very discouraging. Number seven pigs in a blanket.

No, hate it. See, they’re okay, but just give me a hot dog. You know? Let’s just go right for the, I I don’t want to be like half pregnant. Let’s just, let’s just do the deal. Let’s just, let’s just, if, if I’m having all this stuff around a hotdog hot dog, me, let’s just do that. By the way, hotdog, did he make this list?

And, and rightfully so. I don’t know that I’ve ever, have you ever had a hot dog at a Super Bowl party? No. Yeah, I haven’t. Number seven, I also don’t do, although from time to time when I have done them, I’m like, yeah, it’s pretty good. But it just, it’s deviled eggs. Number seven is deviled eggs. Oh, I do like deviled eggs, but I can’t imagine that they would be a Super Bowl treat.

I. It’s like brunch food. Dude, the picture they have here is the same picture that I have. They take a little bit of, uh, sour cream and they put it on the top or they take, uh, they take some food coloring or something and they make like a football design. So you know how an eggs kind of oblong. They’ll put the devil stuff on top of it, the yellow, you know, mixed up egg stuff on it.

And then they’ll put like a football design on the top. I almost every party I’ve been to where they serve deviled eggs, they have ’em, like little footballs, huh? Okay. Number six, pulled pork sandwiches. That’s kinda like barbecue. I was gonna say that’s getting close to what you’re doing. That is a barbecue for the rest of us.

I’ll even do just sloppy Joe’s, you know, sloppy the, the old ground beef sloppy Joe’s. Gimme that thing. Yeah. Yeah. I like them extra sloppy. Do you? No, you can’t. Sloppy. A little extra sloppy, sloppy Joe and I got married. You. There’s one day that I od on sloppy Joe’s every year, and it’s my birthday. I just, I, I dig in and I have tater tots too.

Just tons of tater tots. That’s your birthday. That’s your birthday meal. Every year. Every year. Sloppy Joe’s and tater tots. Oh my God. So good. I’m 11 years old, number five. I understand why people love it. It’s okay. Guacamole. It’s all right. I like guacamole a whole bunch. Yeah. Cheryl loves guacamole. I feel like sometimes Cheryl would just like stick her head in the guacamole and just have all of it.

Yeah. Uh, ’cause she delicious, loves guacamole. Speaking of guacamole, number four, is nachos been to a lot of, if it’s a smaller party, I like the nachos. If I’m in a room with like 25 people and they’ve got a big plate of nachos and people just grabbing ’em, I’m like, yeah, that just looks like a Petri dish to me.

I’m out. Can’t do it. So you a nachos fan, eh? I’d eat ’em if they were there. Cheryl and I on Friday nights when we don’t want a full meal, we’ll sometimes just go to the local. We’ve got a lot of good Tex-Mex places around here. We’ll just go to the Tex-Mex place again. Uh, earmuffs. Jesse, my met Pro coach.

We, we, we’ll just get a margarita and some nachos and that’s our like Friday happy hour. Have ley. Now we’re off to the big three. Anything you’re waiting on that, uh, hasn’t been mentioned yet? No. Being done. I’m waiting on being done. Oh, come on. You’d love these. Number three is chicken wings. Okay. I can eats chicken wings all day.

Can’t do the buffalo. Just again, too hot. I know. ’cause you’re, I do like the Parmesan garlic version. Okay. It’s good. Good. Uh, off-brand. All right. Number two to wrap this thing up. Chili, this is the one I didn’t expect to see on the list, but then I think I’ve had chili at almost every Super Bowl party I’ve been to Kind of passes the smell test a little bit, I guess.

It’s perfect. Every time that I go to a uh, tailgate, I always try to bring chili to the tailgate. Like I love standing outside before a football game, drinking a beer, eating some chili, like that’s, that’s great. And the number one Super Bowl food at Super Bowl parties everywhere. Pizza, huh? It’s like a duh.

Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Boring. Boring. Yeah. No, but super easy. Hit the easy button. Alright. Domino’s, if you want to, Domino’s, little Caesars should be a Little Caesars ’cause they’re from Detroit. If you guys wanna sponsor this segment, just uh, please write to me, Joe’s Stacking Benjamins dot com. Just let us know.

Yeah.