Smart Financial Moves for 2025: Tax Policies, Investing, and Retirement with Joe Saul-Sehy

Eric Brotman [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Don’t Retire, Graduate, the podcast that asks you what you want to be when you grow up so you can graduate into retirement with a purpose and a passion. I’m your host and valedictorian, Eric Brotman. And after nearly 200 episodes and a year long hiatus, Don’t Retire, Graduate is back for season 6. We’ll be bringing you interviews and amazing guests every other Thursday. And on alternating weeks, we’re hosting a new segment called Diary of a Financial Advisor, which we know you’ll all enjoy. So please subscribe, check out our new episodes every Thursday. Today to kick off season 6, I am incredibly pleased and in fact, honored to be joined by Joe Saul Sehy. Joe’s the creator and co host of the Stacking Benjamins and Stacking Adventures podcast.

Eric Brotman [00:00:42]:
He’s the creator of a network of 5 podcasts and a monthly contributor to at least one more. He’s a current board member at, at large of the Plutus Foundation, a former board president of partnership for the pathway. He’s a former financial advisor. He’s a reformed financial advisor after 16 years represented American express and Ameriprise in the media. He was called the money man on Detroit television. WXYZ TV appeared twice weekly there. He’s appeared in bride magazine, which I’m definitely going to ask him about as well as best life and child magazines. The Los Angeles times, the Chicago sun times, the Detroit news and our Baltimore sun.

Eric Brotman [00:01:20]:
He’s also appeared online in more than 200 different places, including CNBC and wall street journal dot com. Joe, thanks for being our first guest. Welcome to Don’t Retire Graduate.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:01:31]:
Oh, man. So good to be here. And I I love how you get to call yourself the valedictorian, by the way. Can we just call that out right now?

Eric Brotman [00:01:38]:
If you This is as close as it’s ever come.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:01:43]:
Like, valedictorian, really? Don’t get me wrong. You’re a smart dude. But just thought, who who used to bestow that title? Oh, wait a minute.

Eric Brotman [00:01:51]:
Yeah. I I once was told that C’s get degrees, and that that was all I had to hear. So I was I was good on that front. I I want you to know I searched high and low for a picture of you in Bride Magazine and could not find it. So if you have that, we’ll share it in the show notes. Nothing would give me more pleasure. Tell us what you’ve been working on. You’re you’re one of the busiest humans I know.

Eric Brotman [00:02:11]:
You’re involved in so many different things and, and making a difference in financial literacy and in the, the Podverse and in, in financial planning. What you’ve been up to, Joe?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:02:20]:
Well, thanks, brother. I’m just trying to keep up with you. Actually, we’ve we’ve been doing some fun stuff. I have, begun creating a series of guides. Ultimately, there’s gonna be 5, but we started off, talking about your workplace benefits. And our first guide is called, read this before choosing your workplace benefits. And what I like about it, Eric, and you know this and I know this, is that so many people think you gotta get esoteric with your investment choices, that you gotta use all these funky, weird, wild things. And I feel like that’s just people getting bored, people thinking, oh, there’s gotta be something better.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:02:55]:
And you know what? You can find, as you know, at most workplaces, especially with major companies, you can find most of what you’re looking for right there. And it’s good to dig into those anyway because, also, as you know, sometimes your disability coverage isn’t what you think it is. Some you know, and you gotta make a life insurance decision if you’ve got kids or if you’re worried about what happens when you pass away, which I think we all should be. And then there’s some surprising things. Like, maybe we can get a discounted Costco membership. Maybe we can get a gym membership that that is is either free or discounted through our workplace benefits. There’s just so much in there that we thought, okay, we’re gonna make a guide on that first. And over the course of the next 2 years, we’ll be releasing 4 more for a total of 5.

Eric Brotman [00:03:41]:
That’s that’s amazing. First of all, nobody brags about their workplace benefits. And it’s so important. I mean, you know, you, everybody wants to brag at the water cooler about that, the hot stock pick or something that happened or their bet on FanDuel or whatever in the hell it was. But the, but in terms of the workplace benefits, these are foundational blocking and tackling type things and people misuse them. You know, we, BFT we’ve been doing, we’ve been doing financial wellness programs for companies, for nonprofits and people are not naming beneficiaries properly. They’re not signing up for the right things. You’re right about the investment choices.

Eric Brotman [00:04:14]:
They’re choosing things based upon, you know, rear view mirror. Oh, this one did well last year. It must be the right thing for me. And, and, you know, getting advice from the guy or gal in the next cubicle is probably not the best way to do it. And yet that’s how so many do. So I think it’s a great first, a great first step. Is that guide something you’re going to be putting out on, on social? Is that going to be on, on Amazon? Is that something part of your show or what, how you, how are you structuring that?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:04:40]:
No. People can go to stackybenjamins.com/benefits to to look at it. We do charge a fee for it. The cool thing is we update it every month to make it better every month. And we also so it’s a continuous improvement plan. You pay for it once, you have it forever. Average person changes jobs every 3.4 years. Your company’s gonna mess with your benefits roughly once every 5 years.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:05:02]:
And you know what? If your company doesn’t mess with it, you stay with the same company. Heck, you know, there was no such thing as an HSA or a Roth 401 k when I started in the working world. The government’s gonna change things. We’re gonna consistently update this guide so that as long as we have it, you just go back in and get the most updated copy and bam, you’re there. Now

Eric Brotman [00:05:23]:
you also wrote a book, with Emily Guy Birkin sometime ago that first of all, I read and loved. It’s it’s as funny as you are. So clearly Emily had something to do with the the writing. What what, how how’s the book doing? Is that getting I mean, is that getting some traction? Are you getting a lot out of that at this point?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:05:43]:
You know, it’s funny. Like anything, it slows down and you see some of the new books come out and you’re like, my book was better than that. You know? And you go, come on. Let’s let’s bring this thing back. But very seriously, mostly as I do the speaking circuit, you know, is when we see book sales quite a bit. So that’s you know, it’s a little disappointing, but that’s what happens in books. I’m a guide like you that interviews authors. Right? And so there’s the hot new thing.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:06:09]:
I remember when I remember when Stacked was 4 months old, CNN hadn’t yet called it the best business book of 2023. There was none of that. And this bookstore told me I couldn’t come because the book was too old. It was 4 months old, dude. And they told me, no. No. No. You can’t come talk about the book because it’s 4 months old.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:06:29]:
We gotta talk about the new stuff. That’s somebody that’s way too called to the new for me. Because you know what’s funny also is that when you look at the best seller list of the best books, especially when it comes to finance, these are books that have endured the test of time. Right? Books that like doctor Tom Stanley and the millionaire next door. Like, that book, when did that book come out? 94, 95, maybe? And that book is still as relevant to and and, you know, he and his daughter made a sequel to it, but the original one still has legs.

Eric Brotman [00:07:01]:
I I’m looking forward to the sequel for stacked. It’s call it double stacked or something. I I can picture more stacked again, something. I can I can see the sequel? And and if you can do it in 3 d, sequels in 3 d always do better than sequels when they’re in 2 dimensional.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:07:19]:
They have to like Jaws 3 d. What a classic one. Correct.

Eric Brotman [00:07:21]:
It’s like a pop up book is what I’m picturing. I’m picturing somebody open it up and it jumps out at you and stuff. Hey o. Well, why not? So, so a lot has happened in the world, as we, as we record this here starting, 2025. A lot has happened in the world. There was, an election a couple months ago, but there didn’t get much news or press coverage. Nobody knew it was happening, but it it because of the election results and and I am definitely not going political with you or anybody else on this show ever. However, it did change what some of the prognostication is around tax policy, around, around the economy, around interest rates, around other things.

Eric Brotman [00:08:03]:
Do you find that that some of the messaging that you’re running into with with the Stackers is is now a little bit, a little bit deviated from where it was maybe in October when it looked like we might have a different result?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:08:16]:
Well, our messaging is the same because, frankly, you you’re gonna play the same game no matter who’s in office. And one of my favorite quotes, Eric, and we don’t do politics on Stacking Benjamins either because, you know, we’re about personal accountability, and it is what it is. And you do you do what you need to do based on the current facts the way that we have them right now. And and and here’s the way that I see it. I love this quote from Jack Welch, the guy that ran GE during the nineties. Except reality the way it is, not the way you wish it were or hope it to be. Right? And on one end, I’m seeing the the personally, I don’t understand why anybody’s a fanboy of of any politician, and I feel like we’ve turned it into a football game. I gotta be a Trump supporter, or I gotta be a, you know, Biden supporter, Harris supporter, whatever.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:09:07]:
Why am I a supporter of anything but good ideas? But on one end, I’ve got the quote Trump supporters who are like, oh, eggs are gonna be down to a dollar. Gasoline’s going down to a dollar 50. Gasoline’s not coming back to a dollar 55. Eggs are not going to be a dollar again. This guy is going to be president. He’s not gonna be king of Kroger or of the gas pump. Right? So that’s that’s not happening. And on the and on the other side, what we’re seeing is Yeah.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:09:36]:
Trump’s president, the sky is falling. You know? The world’s going to hell. I gotta move out of the country. That also isn’t gonna happen. Like, none of this stuff is good. Now are we going to see heck. As we record this, we will definitely see some waves. The day before we record this, the stock market had its biggest, well, point drop since 1973.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:10:00]:
And so, I think that that we definitely will see some waves as we see a new administration and new ideas, but those waves also bring opportunities. And if we look over long periods of time, what we see is is that, the market goes down, the market goes up, politicians come, politicians go, and you just continue to move. Now the thing I think we need to look at more is really what the federal reserve is doing than what the president’s doing, frankly, because we kinda go the way of the federal reserve over the short term anyway.

Eric Brotman [00:10:35]:
Well, and and the fed showed their cards yesterday. And I know this is not, we’re we’re releasing this in early January and we’re having this discussion right before Christmas. So that’s a little unfair. However, you know, they they showed their cards and it did it did spook the markets a little bit. And, you know, like like you, I feel like these things, these things ebb and flow over time and you know, it no sooner will, will, Trump be back in office in January later this month. Then they’ll be talking about on the news, the midterm elections in 2 years. Like, let’s start that again, because it’s, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve had electoral, you know, election ads on. But I do think that this could affect, this could affect some of the planning that was being done around, for example, the tax cuts and jobs act.

Eric Brotman [00:11:19]:
You know, there was, there was just talk that, that, that was gonna sunset and now none of us know. And how does that affect the state taxation and how does it affect legal planning and how does it affect the, the difference between how blue states and red states candidly higher or lower tax states, how they handle federal taxes. I think there are some things that that now feel cloudy.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:11:41]:
I think they’re well, and I think that part of this game of investing is you have to be comfortable playing it in fog. Right? You just have to become comfortable because the fog isn’t gonna go away. Sometimes we get a longer term view. You know, maybe we can look out 4, 6, 8 weeks and think we have some level of certainty what might happen if no news happens, which news happens all the time that surprises us. But but but but but let’s just look at this from really what you do and the planning perspective because I really like the way that you guys, good financial planners, look at this, which is let’s just walk down the strategy avenue of which way of playing this is best. We know the stock market at some point is gonna go down. We don’t know when. We don’t know how.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:12:23]:
Nobody knew yesterday as we record this to your point, and we don’t know what’s gonna happen between now and the time this releases. But we we don’t know when the stock market is gonna go down. We don’t know how far it’s gonna go down. We but we do know it will go down. Right? And then the second thing that we know is that over time for the economy continue, it has has to it has to, over long periods of time, go up for the economy continue. Companies have to make money. A reflection of them making money is the stock market. It’s not voodoo.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:12:51]:
It’s not magic. It is a reflection of the economy as a whole. So I have 2 choices. Choice number 1 is I’m gonna wait till the smoke clears. How many times have you heard this over your career? I’m gonna wait till the smoke clears. Yeah. I’m gonna put my money on the sideline, wait till the smoke clears, and then things are gonna that then I’ll put my money in. You know, when you think the smoke is cleared, when the market reaches all time highs again, and it’s actually the most dangerous time to invest is when you think you’ve got clarity versus a time like yesterday.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:13:22]:
I’ve got a friend I wrote to him, and and I said, hey, look at, you know, Trump’s putting pressure on the Republicans, and we get the Fed in the same day. So we get this huge drop, right, in the stock market, these these forces together. And you know what he said, Eric? He said, I put $60,000 in the mark. He he actually had a rollover IRA, so it was already in the market. But he’s like, I had $60,000 that happened to be out until yesterday. He goes, this is great. Yeah. Which if we take if we if we take a long term view, man, if I’m sitting here and and I and it gets bumpy for a little while because of an administration change, and I don’t need the money for 15, 20, 25, 30 years, this is heaven for me because I can shove more money in while the market’s bumpy.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:14:11]:
That is phenomenal. Now for somebody on the other end of that, if you’re somebody who’s taking money out, I think you just gotta be like like always, you have to have a careful withdrawal strategy, but that’s that’s that can be smartly navigated too by making sure you don’t have your long term money in a place where you have to quote wait for clarity because that strategy has never won and it never will.

Eric Brotman [00:14:34]:
Yeah. This won’t never clears. I think, Billy Joel, we didn’t start the fire. I think this is literally, we’re seeing that you could, you could write that song again for the 30 years that have passed since he did. And it would be the same noise, the same nonsense, because it really does continue in that way. So, so Joe, I get the sense that, that, that people have to understand the difference between strategy and tactics, right? Strategy doesn’t change over time. You know, strategic financial advice and financial planning and investment management and, and all the things that we do as a strategy really don’t change a whole lot. They might change a little through our lifetime because of our time horizon, but the strategy itself doesn’t change a lot.

Eric Brotman [00:15:13]:
The tactics though sometimes feel important. You know, and you were talking about the workplace benefits and people feeling like tactically, they how are we, how are we trying to teach people not to take tactical, too many tactical moves when the news du jour is every 7 minutes, there’s a new cycle. I mean, I how do you how do you Yeah. How do you suggest we do that? Because it’s it’s not easy.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:15:42]:
Well, I think you gotta consider the source. Right? One of my first most fun things to do is to watch CNBC. And when the next guest comes on to guess what they’re gonna say ahead of time, they say, oh, Eric Brotman is a corporate bond fund manager, and he joins us now. Eric, what do you think about interest rates? Oh, I think interest rates can be favorable to bonds. I think things are gonna change, and I really think bonds are the future. Right? Oh, so and so manages gold. What do you think? I think gold is amazing. I think that while it’s bumpy right now, that is gonna clear up.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:16:12]:
It’s gonna be it is so fun to do. So, you know, whenever you have news, what are they looking for? Imagine, Eric, if you got an elevator and your two choices were sore or plummet. Right? I mean, that’s what we get on a daily basis about the stock market. It’s bored today or it plummeted today. And Right. Certainly, they’re just trying to sell newspapers. So that’s why I really think if you begin with the goal and you work backwards to choose where your money goes and then build what you professionals call an investment policy statement. What I love about investment policy statement is this, is that it gets rid of the new cycle culture.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:16:53]:
And instead, you build this machine, and you talk ahead of time when you’re not emotional, you’re in a room with the television off. You’re talking specifically about what am I going to do in the future with my money. And then if that’s not working, instead of panicking or, you know, making a change because you had a bad tuna fish sandwich and you’re just not feeling it today, you will adjust the machine. And you do that, what, maybe once every 6 months or once every year instead? I love that approach because I can watch the news. I can listen to the news. I can feel the fear, but I can continue to stay on the path that we know historically over long periods of time is the best place to be.

Eric Brotman [00:17:37]:
My my takeaway is not to eat tuna fish when the markets are open. I mean, I I don’t know if that my takeaway from the show is I should stick stick with turkey and not go there.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:17:49]:
Because then I’ll sleep. I’ll get that tryptophan and I’ll just sleep through the second half of the the market.

Eric Brotman [00:17:54]:
It makes total sense to me. It makes total sense to me. So I I want to ask you about some of the, some of the stuff you did earlier in your career. I really want to dig up some, some, some fun facts. And when you were the money man, did you have, like was there a cape involved? Was there a costume? Was there did you have, like, some kind of some kind of mask?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:18:15]:
It’s so disappointing, Eric. I didn’t. And, you know, you asked them for the costume, but they wanted me to look, quote, professional, quote, and reliable. I don’t know what that’s all about from a

Eric Brotman [00:18:27]:
So this was a radio this was definitely a radio show. This was Right.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:18:31]:
It was it was it was it was TV, and it was twice a week. Yeah. I did a radio show too for Ameriprise, which, was just absolutely horrible.

Eric Brotman [00:18:41]:
You know, live television’s a lot of fun. Live television is is a rush. I mean, you know, you talk about the soaring and the plummeting. You know, there there’s no roller coaster on earth like a 3 minute segment on live TV because you don’t know what you’re gonna be asked. You don’t know what you’re about to say. And then it happened so fast and with you know, it feels like it’s 20 seconds, and then you’re like, what just happened? It’s like a black I

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:19:02]:
don’t even remember what I said.

Eric Brotman [00:19:04]:
Right. It happens so fast. It’s it’s an it’s an amazing thing, and then the sound bites are forever. So you better have said something reasonably erudite

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:19:12]:
where you could Can I tell you my story of that when I started, Eric? Because I think you’ll like this.

Eric Brotman [00:19:16]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:19:18]:
So, I, I get this call from a PR agency that American Express had hired, and they said, hey, the local news station, channel 7, the number one news in Detroit, they they want you to come on and do a segment for a week. And if it goes well, then we’re gonna rotate different advisers. Well, they didn’t tell me that at first. They just said, we want you to do this. And I had done a bunch of radio. Radio is fine because over the years, I’ve become good at controlling my voice, but controlling that look on your face when there’s sheer and utter panic, I could not do that. So I literally I said, no. I don’t wanna do TV.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:19:57]:
I said, no TV for me. And then they told me they said, well, if you do really well, we’re gonna rotate advisers and have different advisers do this segment every week. And I’m like, oh, 1 week? This will be a good resume builder. I can do it. I can fight the fear to do it. So I go to to come on, and the night before, I find out the dirty secret. And the dirty secret is the PR person and I wrote the segment, and we give it to the TV station. Now they can edit it.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:20:25]:
They can change it, like, what the talking points are gonna be, the lower third, the full screen graphics, what points I want them to hit, the questions I want them to ask me. I write the whole thing. And so you can imagine, I walk in there with a ton of confidence as, Joanne Purton in Detroit. All your Detroit listeners will know who Joanne is. Joanne’s asking me these questions. I’m like, that’s a smart question, Joanne. Well, no crap. Because I wrote it.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:20:46]:
Right? And it was such it was so fun, and it was so easy. And I’m like, oh, I really wanna do this now. This sounds really, really fun. And then American Express says, no. No. No. We’re gonna rotate. Well, the next day, my buddy, Adam, goes and he does the segment.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:21:02]:
At the end of the segment, Joanne leans forward, and she goes, how is Joe? Is Joe okay? Because he’s gonna be here every week, not you. Right? Like, on on live TV. Wow. She tells him she wants me back. And so the producer the producer calls and goes, what happened? And the PR person goes, well, no. We were gonna switch out. They’re like, no. No.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:21:21]:
No. We’re local news. They want the same person every week. We really like that first guy. I don’t know why, but they really like that first guy, so we want Joe back. And then that lasted 9 years.

Eric Brotman [00:21:33]:
That’s amazing. And poor Adam, he’s still in therapy. I mean, that that’s I mean, that’s a really hard thing. I mean, I you know, it’s it’s it’s it’s like it’s like being the the wingman for your friend when you’re a teenager. It’s like, where’s the really handsome guy? I wanted to talk to him.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:21:48]:
It’s like I want it’s like I wanna date your sister, not you, you know, for all the women out there. Yes. Yeah.

Eric Brotman [00:21:53]:
No. Thanks. Thanks for thanks for doing that. Now we have, now we have a plummeting listenership. We wanna soar, Joe. We wanna soar. That’s right. So, yeah, live TV is a lot of fun and and you’re right.

Eric Brotman [00:22:06]:
You do write your segment, which actually is difficult because, one of the things that PR agencies and others talk about so much is it’s okay to have your message and, almost say the same thing over and over again. But the TV producers don’t want that. They want some nugget of, of, of, you know, recency. And so, you know, you run out of content. I wrote for forbes.com for a, a long time and I was in their, you know, their retirement lane and it’s always about stay in your lane. And when I was writing for forbes.com, I ran out of new things to say and didn’t wanna regurgitate. And so I eventually resigned and said, I, you know, I’ve said everything I have to say. And what I’ve learned now is that it’s okay to say the same thing over and over again in different ways, because you’re reaching different people each time.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:22:51]:
But

Eric Brotman [00:22:51]:
that just felt, it felt strange to me. It felt foreign to me to, and so sticking to your message, even when your message is boring, sometimes it’s, it’s the, the advice you give us to do nothing. And then people think you’re not doing anything, but sometimes that’s the best advice is turn off the TV. Go have that tuna sandwich Joe was talking about, but don’t, don’t leave the TV on. And that’s a hard lesson to learn sometimes. Do nothing. You know, what’s it? Don’t just do something, sit there. I mean, sometimes that’s the that’s the message.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:23:22]:
It’s one of the only pursuits as you know, is it as a human, it is the hardest thing to do because almost everything else is movement based. If we don’t move, we accomplish nothing. We learn that from the time we’re a kid. And yet, if we have the right allocation, we know markets are bumpy. We know that just sitting there historically has always been the right way to go. It’s so hard to do this thing that is against every other thing we do. If I don’t get off this chair today and eat against every other thing we do. If I don’t get off this chair today and eat, I will eventually die.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:23:53]:
Probably not today. Probably not tomorrow. But at some point, I gotta get up out of the chair and eat. I mean, even the little things like that. But with the stock market, if I get the right allocation, I don’t move it for 10 years. I just did the right thing. Like, that’s fantastic.

Eric Brotman [00:24:10]:
So what’s next for Joe Solsior? What’s what’s the next you told us about the about the the 5 Yeah. The five guides, which is very cool. And I love the first one. What’s what’s next for you? I know you’re doing some some travel some travel stuff with Stacking Adventures. Tell us about that because you went to Rome. Right?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:24:28]:
I have been all over the place and my spouse and I. My my wife like me, I don’t even know if that’s a good sentence. We love what we do, Eric. I mean, we’re we’re blessed to be in a thing like you’re in where, you know, you and I have talked about this before. We work because we love the mission of what we’re doing. But Cheryl is, she’s in medicine, and she’s like, I got about 10 years left in me. We’ve done a lot of travel over the years, and we decided to launch this travel blog called Stacking Adventures and, and really chronicle our trips. And it is really fun.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:25:06]:
A couple days a week, we’ll take a couple hours at night together, and we’ll just work on our blogging. And then my friend, Krystal, and I, who I’ve podcasted with before, we decided to to create a podcast end of that called Stacking Adventures. There’s Krystal for people watching the video there in the on the left. And Crystal and I have a blast talking about, talking about the trips that that you can take and traveling the world because I believe, like you believe, this is not about the money. Like, finance isn’t about the money. It’s about what you can do. And one of the biggest one of the the the biggest problems I ever saw, and it continues year after year after year, is people that are good savers, people that listen to this type of a show, people that follow somebody like you, they will do great things saving money and be a good steward for their money. But then they get to those years when you really wanna make sure that you get those wonderful experiences.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:26:05]:
And you know this, Eric, they have trouble doing it. They have trouble adventuring because a good saver does not overnight become a good spender. And being a good spender and getting more out of life really is the key. So we we have a lot of fun with our it it really is different than Stacking Benjamins, which is a good variety show. This is a community based show. We will do a topic, like, we just had one of our stacker adventures on Anne. Anne is not a PR person for Ireland. She hasn’t written a book on Ireland.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:26:34]:
She’s one of our listeners who just went to Ireland. So we have her tell her story, and then we have this phone line, stackingbutchers.com/mystory. And people have 5 minutes to tell their story. And about 6 weeks later, we do a second episode with anybody else that wants to call in and tell us their adventures. And we just play those, and we stop them partway, and we laugh about their stories. And so it’s the sharing, podcast about all the different cool adventures we’ve had as normal people, not as p certainly, about once a month, we’ll have a cool guest on that is an expert in travel. But the rest of the time, man, this is just a community show about us sharing what we messed up, what was fun, the serendipity that happens when you meet people that you didn’t know that, you know, some of the wonderful things that happen when you go see the world.

Eric Brotman [00:27:25]:
I I think your message is is not only important because people do build this nest egg, and then they don’t know what to do with it. And they’re so afraid to lose it. It it’s really, there’s a lot of head trash around money and money itself. You don’t take it with you. Money itself is just a number. It’s what it can do for you, whether it’s, whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s travel and entertainment, whether it’s philanthropy, whether it’s kids and grandkids and great grant, whatever is important to you. And we’ve seen way too many people build significant wealth and then either die or get sick before they could enjoy most of it. And to me, that’s tragic.

Eric Brotman [00:28:02]:
I, I think if you can figure out a way to put away enough so that your long term is set and then you can enjoy some along the way, don’t wait till you’re 73 to take the trip.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:28:12]:
I mean, just ask

Eric Brotman [00:28:13]:
your, if you’re, if if you’re 37, go take the trip. You might not you might not do it, you know, 4 seasons, Ritz Carlton style, but go because you’ll we get a chance to see some things.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:28:25]:
We did a story just a couple weeks ago. I did not know this fact. Like, we know longevity, and we know that there’s this great divide in America. People that can shop at the at the fruits and vegetables area, the fresh fruits area of the grocery store, those people are living longer and longer. Right? And then there’s other people that can’t afford that. They’re now living shorter lives. But what’s interesting is for all of us, I never do this, Eric, the average healthy life expectancy, not when we’re gonna die, but when our health deteriorates to the point that that that life becomes less fun, that age is 66. 66.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:29:03]:
Oh. So if if we’re waiting till 72 to take the trip Yeah. There’s a good chance that your feet are gonna have problems, your knees are gonna have problems, your hips are gonna have problems, You might have heart problems. Whatever it is, your body is not gonna cooperate. So this idea that we’re gonna live till our eighties or nineties, yeah, we will. But at 66, our body starts going, I think I gotta do something different than what’s in the plan. So I love your idea of of not waiting. But let me and and let me tell you how small this is because I’m gonna brag about you for a minute because I tell this story to everybody.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:29:38]:
It’s not about huge amounts of money. Eric, you and your daughter had this thing that I did. Maybe you or that I saw that maybe maybe you still do it. But I know people that I’ve been at the Lego store at at Disney Springs, and I see these things, and I’m like, oh my goodness. These are expensive. I’m not gonna buy that. But in the big scheme of things, they’re not. Right? You bought this this huge Lego set and did it with your daughter.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:30:07]:
And the money the money that it took versus the joy I saw from you being able to have this wonderful time with your daughter putting these Legos together. Like, this isn’t, like, going to you know, you showed a picture of us in in Jordan there on the screen earlier. You showed a picture of us in Egypt. That’s not going to Jordan or Egypt. This is at home with my daughter, and this is one of the things you will remember forever. I’m just a friend of yours, and I remember that. Like, that’s how powerful this can be.

Eric Brotman [00:30:39]:
That’s cool. We actually worked we’re working right now on one of the Lord of the Rings projects. What’s interesting is now she’s almost 15. In fact, she’ll be 15 when this goes live. And now I have to beg her to play with me. So I’m glad that all those years when she was like, dad, can we? I always said yes. I always said yes. It was never, oh, I’ve gotta finish this email.

Eric Brotman [00:31:01]:
Like never, I, I knew that that, that, that this would be fleeting and that she’s gonna go to bed and I can do the email later. It’s just not as important. So we have the Eiffel tower at home. It’s 10,000 pieces. We have the, we have the Titan. The Eiffel tower is almost floor to ceiling. We have the Titanic. We have the home alone house complete with the tree house in the back.

Eric Brotman [00:31:21]:
Like, it’s just very cool. And you know, people say, where are you gonna put these? And I’m like, well, at the moment we have a museum And Rivendell is next. And,

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:31:31]:
Rivendell. Really?

Eric Brotman [00:31:32]:
The Rivendell. And by the time this goes live, she will know that one of her Christmas presents is actually the set from Wicked. It is that there’s a Lego set from wicked, which we did go see. And she just got cast as Glinda in one of the local area high schools plays in the wizard of Oz. So wicked was a big win. Her birthday party involved the wicked movie. Like it’s just, these are great. And I, I think projects like that with your kids are really, for me, it was really important.

Eric Brotman [00:31:58]:
It’s it’s not screen time. I mean, there’s plenty of screen time. God knows, but it’s, it’s building something. It’s spending time together. It’s it’s, and that’s the stuff that matters. As far as I’m concerned, that’s my happiest 15, 20 minutes in the day, quite candidly. So

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:32:13]:
It’s the same it’s the same reason I like board games, by the way. You know? Board games are not about the game. It’s about you and I across the table. Instead of us staring in a screen and not talking, we’re laughing about what you did, about what I did. You’re going, damn it, Joe, which, by the way, in my our game nights, damn it, Joe, means fine play, my friend. Right? When you’re Yes. When you’re upset with a person across the table. And it’s just these shared experiences that, I don’t think we get enough of.

Eric Brotman [00:32:42]:
I I I want you to know that I I considered myself a pretty decent board game player. I I spent the first four plus decades of my life having never lost a monopoly. Never. I won every time people got really angry. You know, it’s one of those things where grandma throws the board and pieces go flying. But, but I played with, one of my close friends, his daughter, when she was in high school, had challenged me to play and she beat me. And I mean, soundly. And she wore that like there was a trophy at their house.

Eric Brotman [00:33:11]:
She was like 16, 17 years old. She’s now graduating from RIT and is brilliant by the way. So I don’t feel as bad as I did when she was a teenager who stomped me at the game where I thought I was invincible. Joe, we could talk all day. We’re we’re running out of time. I’ve gotta keep this I gotta keep this show 2 things, 1 on time and 2 PG, and you’ve done you’ve done that. So I appreciate you for that one. I gotta ask you one last question.

Eric Brotman [00:33:35]:
And I, and I, I feel like, I feel like this answer, not no pressure, but this has to be a good one. It’s the kickoff for season 6. And that’s, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:33:46]:
Oh, you know, I wanna be Rick Steves. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t wanna be an advocate for marijuana, which I didn’t know until, like, a year ago how big of a pot advocate that guy is. But this guy that gets to travel and have fun and live his best life, and whenever he’s interviewed, you know, just the joy around what he does, and he’d rather be doing nothing than that. So not just the travel aspect, but I always try to remind myself to be Rick Steves in my daily existence. Like, looking at my calendar, is this the most fun thing I could be doing? Now don’t get me wrong for a lot of us. It can’t be all fun all the time. We have to pay the bills, and sometimes the most boring work is the work that really pays.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:34:29]:
But is it building this life? And, man, when I see Rick Steves and what he does people don’t know who Rick Steves is. He’s a big travel guy, big, nerdy travel dude. There he is, for people watching the video. He’s, super fun to watch and listen to. And, yeah, I love his shows on Amazon Prime. I think if you’ve got Amazon Prime, you can watch Rick Steves. So if I could be Well, now now now he’s or Eric Brotman. If I could be Eric Brotman.

Eric Brotman [00:34:56]:
Well, don’t don’t be me when you grow up. B b Rick. It sounds like he’s having more fun, although we did just lose our PG rating. So thanks for that. So I said crap. I I know. So no. No.

Eric Brotman [00:35:08]:
It wasn’t that. So before we went on air, I I want you to know that the I want the audience to know that I compared you to Mac Davis. Mac Davis was a country singer in the seventies, and he sang a song called, Hard to be Humble because he got better looking each day. And I I just thought that that Mac Davis was that’s who I thought you should be when you grow up. There he is. There he is with a full head of hair, just like yours.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:35:34]:
Why are you comparing me to Mac Davis? I’ve wondered that since we got on.

Eric Brotman [00:35:37]:
Because you get better looking each day. I mean, that’s just it’s a song lyric, Joe. What can I tell you?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:35:43]:
This has been fun. Hilarious. We do have a nice feature that’s been similar.

Eric Brotman [00:35:47]:
We should do this again for season 12. Thank you so much for being on. I I where can folks find out more about Stacked, more about Stacking Benjamins, Stacking Adventures, and all the stuff that you’re up to?

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:36:00]:
Yeah. Let’s just go right to Stacking Benjamins because as this comes out, we had our our most, wild episode, one that broke the mold for what we do. Our January 1st episode and January 3rd, episodes, part 1 and part 2, are how to make a $100,000,000 in 2025 from a guy who’s done it. His name is Alex Harmosi, and we have a 2 part interview. I actually went out to Las Vegas and interviewed this money making machine of a man. And the interview was so dense that I came back and OG and I, we don’t have our normal format where it’s a variety show. We take this interview and we just cut it up, and we play a little bit of it. We pause and we say, okay.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:36:41]:
How do you implement this? What do you do? And then the next thing, then the next thing, then the next thing. So January 1st 3rd, Alex Harmosi episodes. Go listen to those if you want to increase your income in 2025.

Eric Brotman [00:36:53]:
That’s exciting. Although, I don’t think you should limit yourself to a 100,000,000 this year. I think you should really push it

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:36:58]:
Perfect. It’s a good start. You just can’t live on it. Yeah.

Eric Brotman [00:37:00]:
Yeah. No, no, you can. I mean, it’s a good January. So, well, Joe, thanks for being on. It’s always a pleasure. I I’ve enjoyed my time in your basement on your show. It’s great stuff. And I know I’ll be seeing you throughout the year at, conferences and different things, but I thank you for being the, the, the premier guest in, season 6 for us.

Joe Saul-Sehy [00:37:20]:
Happy new year, my friend. Thank you so much.

Eric Brotman [00:37:22]:
I’d like to thank all of you for listening and watching today. If you enjoy our show, please subscribe, leave a rating on your favorite podcast platform and share it with your friends so they can join you on your journey to financial freedom. If you’d like to send us a topic or idea you’d like to discuss in a future episode of Don’t Retire Graduate, please post it on our Facebook page or tweet us at Brotman Planning. We’ll be back next week with our first entry of Diary of a Financial Advisor and in 2 weeks with another engaging guest. For now, this is your host and yes, valedictorian reminding you don’t retire, graduate.

Unnamed Voiceover [00:37:58]:
Securities offered through Kestra Investment Services, LLC, Kestra IS, member FINRA SIPC, investment advisory services offered through Kestra advisory services LLC Kestra AS an affiliate of Kestra IS Kestra IS or Kestra AS are not affiliated with Brotman financial or any other entity discussed