One Good Thing: Gamifying Your Budget, Playing Financial Tetris, and Learning to Laugh at Money with Emily Guy Birken

[00:00:00] Eric Brotman: Welcome to Don’t Retire… Graduate!: The podcast that teaches you how to advance into retirement rather than retreating. I’m your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman and we have a terrific guest today. You’ve already met her co-author Joe Saul-Sehy in an earlier episode, but Emily Guy Birken is joining us today. And let me tell you a little bit about Emily.
She’s a former educator, lifelong money nerd, and a Plutus award winning freelance writer who specializes in the scientific research behind irrational money behaviors. Her background in education allows her to make complex financial topics relatable and easily understood by the lay person. She’s the author of several books, including the five years before you retire, end financial stress now, and the brand new book stacked your super serious guide to modern money management written with Joe Saul-Sehy.
Hi, Emily. Welcome to the show. I’m so glad you’re here.
[00:00:52] Emily Guy Birken: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:54] Eric Brotman: This is going to be fun today. First of all, it has to be fun because it’s Cinco de Mayo and for lots of people, that means that means happy hours and family fun and company events and all kinds of fun. So we need to be extra lively. Are you ready?
[00:01:07] Emily Guy Birken: Yes. I brought the Fiesta with me.
[00:01:10] Eric Brotman: Excellent. Excellent. Well, your, your background is one that is very educational and very academic. And yet some of the writing, particularly this new book and I, and I was just at your book event and I heard you say how much fun it was to write a book that was maybe a little less academic and a little more fun. Can you talk about that process? Because clearly stacked is a really fun read. I’ve enjoyed it very, very much. So talk about that a little.
[00:01:34] Emily Guy Birken: Yeah. So I like to tell people that I have two major life goals. One has very little to do with my career and that is to have shiny hair. The other one also generally has little to do with my career.
And that is to be funny. And so people are mistaken when they, when like I say that and they’re like, oh, but you’re funnier than you think you are like, no, that’s by, by design, it’s a goal I’m working towards it. So the thing is when you write about finance funny as sometimes not welcome. Even when I put in like the gentlest subtlest humor in an article that I write for a major name, it will get edited out.
And I’m not talking about like the hemorrhoid jokes that I really want to tell. I’m talking like very lightly humor. And so when Joe approached me to ask if I would be willing to co-write this book with him, I was so excited because it sounded like it was just an amazing creative challenge to not only do the educational stuff that I am very much committed to.
You know, I trained as an English teacher. I tripped and fell backwards into writing about money. It was completely by accident, a happy accident but you know, series of events that hadn’t taken place, I wouldn’t be here today. But so, but I come at things from an educational perspective for that reason.
But I also want to indulge my love of humor and the like have some creative fun with, with what I’m writing and because I was a teacher, I also know you’re going to get people’s attention and get them to like, be really invested when you are a little bit shocking and a little bit funny. And so that was the other aspect of writing this book that I was really excited about is it’s a book for people who don’t read books about money. Because often there are, you know, lots of wonderful books about money that will help people improve their finances and the people who most need to read them would never even consider picking them up because they are stressed about money and the idea of reading a book about it sounds awful.
So a book that’s full of hemorrhoid jokes and other juvenile humor, humor, and like pop culture references and, you know, star wars references and things like that. That’s going to get someone who would normally be like, oh, I don’t read that to pick the book up and try it and actually learn something while they’re laughing.
[00:03:54] Eric Brotman: You’ve already set the record just a few minutes into our episode for the number of times the word hemorrhoid has appeared on this show. I’m quite certain. So congratulations for that. That is a, that is a new record. And I challenge our future guests to try and roll that into conversation. One of the very cool things about this book, first of all, every chapter ends with this, this neat, you’ve completed this, get a badge, get your mom’s signature, all these kinds of funny things. It’s kind of like scouting. And I love the format of it. It’s very accessible to just about anyone. But one of the early chapters created some some images for me that I’d love you to share with our listeners. And that is comparing the act of budgeting, which by the way, on this show, I do often refer to as the B word budgeting you’ve compared to the game of Tetris. Now as a, as a, as a college student w you know, I, in the early nineties, Tetris was, was about as good as it got from a gaming perspective. And so we played a fair amount of that in between all of our rigorous studies. That’s the story I told mom and dad. But nonetheless budgeting Tetris is a very cool idea. Talk a little bit about that. And hopefully we’ll have some folks who, who have rulers and T squares and, and graph paper ready to go.
[00:05:06] Emily Guy Birken: Yeah, so Tetris I think is is very, very resonant with those of us in the gen X and the, and like elder millennials in particular, because like you said, it was, that was what came installed on the computer. And so, you know, and that’s what, you know, something that you can quickly get away from to make yourself look busy at work, but so. I had noticed that when you are dealing with a budget, a lot of the same rules apply as when you’re playing Tetris. So for instance, Tetris is not a game that has a specific end.
It keeps the blocks, keep falling forever. That’s the same way with bills, bills, keep coming forever. And in fact, death doesn’t even get you out of them because you still have to pay taxes after you die. Well, I mean you don’t, but someone will on your behalf. So so that’s one similarity. Another similarity is that if you make a mistake early on in the Tetris game, or you make a financial mistake early on, you know, like run-up credit that you can’t pay or something like that, that makes it much, much more difficult to clear your bills or clear the the Tetris lines later on. And so an early mistake takes a lot longer to fix than getting into the habit of putting things in a helpful place early on. The other thing about Tetris is that oftentimes if you turn one of the the Tetronimos, I know that that’s what those are called, turn one of the pieces in one direction or another, you can figure out, oh, it’ll fit here. I didn’t even realize it. And you, if you similarly start looking at your money that way, where like, Hey, if I turn it this way, if I think of it that way, if I take a little bit from here and put it over here, that’s actually gonna mean that I make make it to the end of the month just fine. So that was just kind of the way that my mind works when it comes to budgeting. So I can recall my first job out of college. I worked at Barnes and noble. I was making $8. 25 an hour, which ended up being about $250 a week. And I remember like downtime at the store there were little scraps of paper that we would use to write down titles and stuff, and so I used that scrap of paper and I’ll be like, okay so I know I’m getting a $250 check this week. I know that I need to pay this. I know that I need to do that. And this is coming up. What do I need to do? And kind of like work around it. And it reminded me of the feeling that I got when I’m like deeply in a, in a Tetris game where like, okay, where can I go?
Where can I go? What can I do? And then the other thing that’s the other way budgeting is like, Tetris is. If you know, you’re not familiar in the world of Tetris, there’s something called the easy spin, which purists do not like, but when the blocks start falling faster, there, there’s a way that you can click on it to slow it down so that you can buy yourself a little more time to figure out where it’ll go.
And I think that the easy spin is a lot like having an emergency fund so that when something happens like, oh no, how am I gonna to pay for that? Oh, I have an easy spin cause I have an emergency fund. Okay. I don’t need to worry about where, you know, all of my normal stuff is going to go. So there are two things that happen when you start thinking of your, your money as being like a big Tetris game.
One is it takes a little bit of the pressure off because instead of thinking of it as like, oh my God, I’m going to screw up my money and everything is going to be terrible. You’re like, this is a game I can win. And that really kind of helps shift your focus instead of it being on like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?
I’m out of control. It’s like, oh, I have control. Even if something is not perfect, things are going to, you know, things are going to keep coming in a way that I can improve upon. And then the other thing is it gets to be a little bit more Enjoyable to think of your money this way, because it is again, that’s the sense of a game.
It’s the sense of you know, this is something that I am doing that I have power over and then you can enjoy those random moments, like the, the money equivalent of when you get that that long, thin block. When you’ve got a space for it. Cause we’ve all had that happen in Tetris. We get the one long thin block.
You’ve got the space for it and immediately zaps four rows at a time. And then there are similar financial issues where you get an unexpected windfall and it can all of a sudden take care of a bunch of things all at once. And you’re like, ha ha I’m ahead. So, when you’re thinking of your money, this way, you have just a bunch of different options available to you that are really helpful when money is often a source of stress.
[00:09:41] Eric Brotman: Let’s talk more about gamification. Because we’re seeing in the modern world, we’re seeing a lot of gamification of money. Some of which I think is really, really good. And some of which I think might be a slippery slope to trouble. I was an early adopter to the Quicken software when it, when it was first introduced and I’m still a big fan of it.
First of all, it keeps everything organized. And even when I wasn’t downloading transactions like you do today with linked accounts and so forth, It, it provided me a map, a landscape to use, but it also made that noise. Have you ever used that software?
[00:10:13] Emily Guy Birken: It’s been years.
[00:10:14] Eric Brotman: Okay. So th there’s a noise that is like an old time cash register ringing every time you enter a transaction. So whether the cash registers ringing as a deposit or as an expense, it still makes that noise. That was the early form of gamification. That was what Tetris was to now virtual reality. Right. But you look at some of the gamification in things like cryptocurrency or Robinhood or these game stock meme situations where, where folks are really taking a lot of risks that they may not understand because they’re getting a Badge or something’s flashing on the screen. You talk a little bit about maybe the, the, the, the good and the evil of gamification a little bit.
[00:10:55] Emily Guy Birken: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, this is, this is something that. Worry about because when you have that gamification, it, it activates something in our brain. And so like, you’re talking about that, that, that old time cash register sound. There’s no rational reason why that would feel good, but it does. And so you want to keep putting in transactions. And so when there is gamification, you want to look at what behavior is that rewarding. So when you have like crypto, when you have a Robin hood, I mean, who I think is like a big offender on this case. Behavior they’re rewarding is not necessarily in your best interests. So like you’re saying people are getting involved in things that they don’t necessarily understand because they’re chasing that next light, the next cash register sound, the next, you know, whatever little dopamine hits that you get.
So I think it’s very important for people to be intentional about how they gamify what they do. And I’ll give you a personal example. So I write about this stuff. I know it, I I’m, I’m very aware of it. And so I’m in some ways kind of immune to it, which I think is good. So, you know, my, my husband downloaded Robin hood last year when, you know, the, the everything happened with GameStop and he, he he’s a little bit of a, of a, of a bandwagon guy.
Like he’s, he’s a wonderful guy and all of that, but he gets excited when like something gets big. And so we talked about it and all of that, and he’s just, and we, we decided like, okay we can use some fun money just going to see where it goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so I’m looking at the app going like, Hmm.
Yeah, I’m going to do what I’m going to do. This is no good. And so that’s, that’s great. Now I also, around that time downloaded the Noom app because the pandemic had kind of changed my shape a little bit. And I’m looking at the Noom app, going, like, yeah, I’m too smart for this. And it didn’t work for me.
Now several months later, I was like, all right, I want to try this again. And the Noom app got me to do something that I hate doing, which is recording everything I eat every day. I hate doing it, but it’s because the way that they set it up, they reward you for doing three activities every day. One is reading several articles. One is weighing yourself and one is recording everything you ate during the day. And so the first two are super easy for me and I wanted that third one, cause that would complete the coin that I got. And like, I let myself get activated. You know, I let myself get into that gamification because I knew this is going to reward something that I actually want to do.
So when you encounter something that, you know, You know, beeps, lights, you know, gives you a coin, you know, shows your progress. Any of those things, you can be very intentional about, like what behavior is this rewarding and is this behavior I want to engage in? And be very intentional about whether or not you allow that gamification to kind of burrow into your brain.
[00:13:55] Eric Brotman: I’d like to shift gears a little bit because in stacked, you have all of these these incredible lessons along the way, and they’re all fun and they’re all amusing, but they’re also very poignant. And the very last one, after you’ve gone through this entire landscape of stuff to do and, and habits to get into and ways to think about money and so forth is hiring an advisor who won’t bleed you dry.
So the very last badge that you can win while we’re gamifying things. The very last badge you go in is to hire an advisor. Now, not everyone necessarily needs a financial advisor. Although an accountability partner, I think is important for many. Let’s talk about this because in don’t retire graduate, we talk a lot about the questions you can ask to interview an advisor and so forth, and we have like a dozen and you’ve narrowed it down to three.
So, let me, let me jump at these three, if we may, and then you can talk about why this, why it continues to happen. That folks who call themselves financial advisors who have little or no actual financial advisory education, continue to prey on the public and the public continues to get fleeced by this.
And, and I think it’s serious. So the three questions that you asked the. And technically, it’s not a question and you’re an English major. You should know better, but it’s
[00:15:12] Emily Guy Birken: Can I claim that Joe wrote that part?
[00:15:15] Eric Brotman: Well, yeah, you don’t have to. We not, we, I know Joe well enough to know that he definitely wrote that and said, well, it kind of looks like a question without that funny mark at the end, but it says tell me about your average client. You know, he would’ve failed on jeopardy. It’s you know, Alex it’s it’s what does your average client look like? Question mark, but nonetheless, tell me about your average client. Why is that important?
[00:15:36] Emily Guy Birken: So asking your advisor to tell you about their average client is in some ways a shortcuts to get around shysters because someone who is interested in actively working with you in you know, doing the work to help you meet your goals and to, you know, make sure that you figure out what your money values are and find a way to live them is going to like, appreciate this question. And be, be happy to, to answer it at length. You know, someone who is just interested in, in being a Bernie Madoff to you is, is gonna say something along the lines of like, oh, they’re all like you, and this isn’t, this is a no lose prospect, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
They don’t want you to know about their other clients. So so that’s the first part, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s kind of the, the instant failure of someone who is like uncomfortable answering that question, resents the question, or kind of like talks in circles around it. And the other aspect of it is you want to know that your prospective advisor works with people who are similar to you.
You know, don’t have to be exactly the same, not cookie cutters or anything like that, but you want to know that this is someone who has experience with people who are in similar situations to you with similar goals to yours. And so if they describe their average client, and it sounds pretty much like where you are, then you can feel fairly confident that this is someone who is going to know how to help you get to where you want to go.
[00:17:06] Eric Brotman: All right. Question one check. I love that question. A question two. What designations do you hold? This is actually a question. And you guys did a you really narrowed this down to two paragraphs and one designation and there are, I don’t know how many. 50? But one that you’ve I think labeled as the gold standard. Talk a little bit about that.
[00:17:25] Emily Guy Birken: There are a lot of people out there who just put a shingle out, says financial advisor. And in the past, I think five or six years you also get a lot of people calling themselves money coaches or financial coaches. And the, the problem is that there are no regulations for a lot of these things. So when you are talking to someone you want to know, do they have any actual designations? Have they gone through any kind of standards, testing, ethics review, anything like that? And a certified financial planner is one where you will know that that is what they have done, because that has a specific meaning, a specific designation. And, you know, you can actually look them up on online.
You can see if there have been any complaints about someone who has a CFP and all of that. And so that’s something where, again, like you don’t want someone dancing around this question. And you want to know exactly how they are qualified to help you with your money.
[00:18:28] Eric Brotman: All right. I like that too. Last question. Also not a question two out of three, epic fail. Tell me what you do for your clients.
[00:18:37] Emily Guy Birken: So this is another one where you are hoping to get kind of a relatively specific general answer. What I mean by that is you know, you, you don’t want them to, you know, break out the spreadsheets. And so show like the specific dollar amounts for the Mr. and Mrs. Jones here and all of that. But when I say so, you know, you want it a little more general than, than that, but you want specific in that like, what is it that you do that I need? And again, the type of people who don’t want to answer that question or who want to dance around it are the ones who, you know, you don’t want to be working with because they, if they are using buzzwords, they’re like, you know, oh, we’re I actively manage your portfolio or, you know, give you an alphabet soup of things and you don’t understand what they’re saying, that’s not someone you want to work with. So, no, There are some people that are not necessarily good communicators. So when you, you say like, okay, that’s an alphabet soup, can you like break it down for me? Break it down for me, break it down for me, get it to where like, talk to me like I’m five. Get it to where I understand.
And again, a good financial planner will do that. Will sit like when you say like, I’m sorry, I’m lost. Can you, can you tell me in some way a little bit clearer and there they’re happy to do that. They want you to understand it’s the people who are only interested in making a quick buck or, you know, Even the people who just want to earn a commission off of you, all of that, they will get annoyed if you ask for details and ask for, for that kind of specificity because they want to get to the part where they are in charge of something of yours. And because they can make some money.
[00:20:17] Eric Brotman: Okay. I, I think that is a really interesting three question well, three statement landscape. And for the record, for the record, I always talk to your co-author as if he was five about everything, not just about money, but about everything.
And you can tell him I said so. So, so we have we have some time left to talk about what’s next for Emily Guy Birken. What is the next and maybe, maybe it’s okay not to have one yet, but I like to ask everybody what they want to be when they grow up, because who we are is not necessarily what we do or what we’ve accomplished. So what’s next? What and it doesn’t have to be professional, but what do you want to be when you grow up?
[00:20:59] Emily Guy Birken: So I’m very lucky in that with the exception of when I was about eight and I wanted to be a paleontologist for, for about six months, I have always known I wanted it to be a writer. So like from as soon as I knew what a writer was onward.
So I have always known that this is what I want to do. One of the reasons why I love what I do though, is that I’m never at a place where I’m like, and I’m done, I’ve attained it. So when, when you asked me what I want to be when I grow up. I mean, well, I, I, my gut answer is a unicorn, but that’s just like off the top of my head.
[00:21:39] Eric Brotman: Well, I wish you incredible success at the transformation.
[00:21:44] Emily Guy Birken: So my, my, my niece, one of my favorite things is she for a little while, she was saying she wanted to be a puffer fish when she grew up.
[00:21:50] Eric Brotman: So that’s up there with paleontologist as far as I’m concerned.
[00:21:55] Emily Guy Birken: Yeah, you know, who knows? So, but what I want to, what I want to do is continue to grow as a writer, continue to challenge myself as a writer. I would love to get a novel out at some points. In addition to writing about money, I also write creatively and I would love to write something does not have the word percentage in it at some point, I think.
[00:22:18] Eric Brotman: How about the word fossil? What if the novel could tie your eight year old self love to, to archeology and paleontology? You could tie that together and make it. I know they’ll call it Jurassic park. No, one’s thought of this.
[00:22:34] Emily Guy Birken: You know what? That is a brand new idea. I don’t think anyone’s ever thought of that.
[00:22:37] Eric Brotman: No, listen, I would never plagiarize Michael Crighton. Never. Well, I love that. And I do think it’s nice that you found your calling early, not everyone does. And you know, there’s a lot of folks fluttering through 50 and 60 and $70,000 a year education who don’t have any idea why they’re there or what they want to do. And which is creating some student loans and some false starts and some non graduations and all kinds of things that are really, you know, to your point, like making that big mistake in the first couple of, of tiles in Tetris, and really, really hamstringing yourself.
There are so many resources. There are so many books you may have noticed in the personal finance space, but there are something like a million personal finance books. And so for someone to pick up yours is either about the same odds as you becoming that unicorn or there has to be something unique and special about it, about the messaging, the branding, the the impact that you’re having on people. Why should folks pick up stacked when they’re looking at the, you know a homepage with 70 personal finance books on it? Why, why stacked?
[00:23:44] Emily Guy Birken: Well, the first reason is stacked is not your average money book. We came at it from the point of view of like, we want to entertain you while we teach you, rather than like, you know, sit down and cram this knowledge in your head.
Now that means we turn off a lot of not a lot, but we turn off some money readers. Cause they’re there, that’s a, that’s the complaint that we get in the complaint that Joe often gets for, for a Stacking Benjamins, his podcast, is like, you’ll screw around too much, you know, get, get, get to the point.
So You know, if, if you’re someone who’s like, I want that money information and I want to efficient and quick, not the book for you. This is the book for you. If you find the phrase partial deduction kind of funny because of what it sounds like. This is the book for you. If if you can’t if you can’t talk about retirement withdrawal strategy without giggling like Beavis and Butthead, this is the book for you.
And I think that there are a lot of us who they need that like, yeah, this is kind of silly. There’s a lot of financial terms that really sound kind of dirty if you don’t, you don’t know what they’re about. It’s going to be a lot easier to get interested in, in a book when we acknowledge the silliness and lean into it and do our best to have fun. That’s one thing.
The other aspect of it is Joe and I don’t come at this book as if we are, you know, the gurus at the top of the mountain saying like, this is what you must do. We share our own money screw ups, because every single person on this planet has screwed up with money at some point or another, every single one.
There’s no one who’s been perfect with money. And we lose a lot of people when we act like, you know, oh, I’m perfect. And so, you know, sharing our screw ups and sharing how we got past them and what we have done to, to recognize the mistakes and learn from them while laughing at ourselves, because that is one of the most important types of humor there is, is having a sense of humor about yourself.
And so that’s what you’re going to find in Stacked that’s I really think different from any other financial book that I have seen or read.
[00:25:52] Eric Brotman: I did enjoy it. Literally covered a cover. I agreed with a good chunk of it. Certainly not everything, but that’s, that’s the way this works. There’s a lot of nuance in personal finance and we all have different I’m not going to say biases necessarily, but different, different strategies that we like better than others. And one size never fits all. So I loved the book. I hope our listeners will get a copy. I, if there’s a, if you’re still on tour by the time you know, folks hear this and they, and you’re in their town, I would love for folks to meet you and check that out because it really was a fun evening to, to see the, the variety of people who came out to meet you. You know, when, when I launched don’t retire graduate, it was during the pandemic and I couldn’t do a book tour as much as it would have been not only fun and rewarding, but I’m sure exhausting.
But hopefully, hopefully you’ve had a chance to meet some, some people and you’ve impacted their lives, not just to entertain them. I think you probably Emily are not giving yourself enough credit because yes, it’s funny and it’s, and it’s, it’s accessible, but it’s also really wise. There’s a lot of wisdom in this book. Do not tell Joe I said that cause I know the wisdom is yours and it’ll go right to his head.
[00:26:58] Emily Guy Birken: Your secret is safe with me.
[00:26:59] Eric Brotman: Oh, good. All right. Yes, no one will. He’ll never hear this. That’s good. Okay. Well, we’re reaching the end of our show. We’re at that extra credit moment where we need one takeaway. I know you’ve put together a special download for don’t retire, graduate listeners. I’m gonna let you tell us about that, but in spirit of Cinco de Mayo, I’d like you to tell us in Spanish.
[00:27:19] Emily Guy Birken: So I never took Spanish, but I did take 10 years of French and was once as fluent as I’m capable of being. You’ve put me on the spot though cause it’s been 21 years since I last studied French. So I could maybe if you gave me 10 minutes do it in French, but um,c’est possible.
[00:27:39] Eric Brotman: Perfect. No, I, you there you’re off the hook cause I don’t have that kind of time. So let’s, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about this free download you’re offering don’t retire, graduate listeners. I think it’s awesome. Tell us about that and where to find more about you and where to get a copy of your book.
[00:27:53] Emily Guy Birken: Absolutely. So I love that you offer extra credit as a former teacher, and you probably can guess that I was a kind of, you know, teacher’s pet type who always loved extra credit when I was a student. So, you know, having extra credit, always awesome. So I have a PDF download that is the retirement readiness checklist, and it has several different questions that you can fill out that can help you think about different aspects of retirements, whether you’re planning it for next year, 10 or 15 years or even 30 years from now, it gives you a sense of what are the sorts of things you need to be thinking about to know that that you’re going to be ready when you want to retire. So you can find that download my, my website I’ve I have a special welcome page for don’t retire graduates listeners, and that’s emilyguybirken.com/DRG. And when you’re there, you’ll find that PDF, you’ll find a link to buy the book stacked, which is also for sale anywhere books are sold. All your finer book establishments, and also the seedy ones.
[00:28:59] Eric Brotman: Right? I was gonna say, even some of your less fine establishments probably have the book.
[00:29:03] Emily Guy Birken: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We love seedy bookstores. Let me tell you. And so that’s, you can find that there, then you can also reach me from that website or you can find me on Twitter. I am on Twitter way more than is healthy, which means I’m there to say howdy when you come, when you stop by. And one of the things I do on social media is every single day I share one good thing that happened that day.
It’s something I started about four years ago and it has been just this wonderful project that I have been working on that has brought me close to many people, has like kind of shared lovely moments has helped me in, in hard moments. And I love sharing that with people and I would love to see you on Twitter and see what your one good thing is every day.
[00:29:47] Eric Brotman: What is your twitter handle?
[00:29:49] Emily Guy Birken: Oh, gosh. Yeah.@EmilyGuyBirken. Sorry
[00:29:53] Eric Brotman: @EmilyGuyBirkenSorry. No, just @EmilyGuybirken. Got it. Just Emily Guy birken. She is not sorry.
[00:30:00] Emily Guy Birken: I am just amazing at self promotion. Can you tell this is
[00:30:02] Eric Brotman: tomorrow, tomorrow. I expect to see that the one good thing that happened to you today is you survived don’t retire, graduate, and and really rocked it. This was awesome. Thank you so much. We will put those links in our show notes. @EmilyGuyBirken on Twitter and emilyguybirken.com/DRG to get that download. Thank you, Emily. This was awesome. And I wish you continued success in your writing career. I think a paleontologist and a writer coming together for a novel would be a, a great capstone for a life well lived.
[00:30:33] Emily Guy Birken: Oh, well, thank you. You know, if I could just manage that while turning into a unicorn, I think I could die a happy woman.
[00:30:38] Eric Brotman: Well, well now we know how the book ends. Now we know how the book ends. Spoiler alert. I’m sorry we did that to you. I’d like to thank all of our listeners for listening today. If you like what you hear, please subscribe and rate our podcast on Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Please also check out our books, workbooks and online financial literacy resources at Brotmanmedia.com. We’ll be back next week with another installment of office hours and in two weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman reminding you: don’t retire. Graduate!
[00:31:10] Narrator: From this day forward let us begin changing the way we view retirement. Today, I implore you: don’t retire. Graduate! Visit our website at brotmanmedia.com to subscribe and please like us and post comments on social media.
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