Investing Unscripted Podcast 116: Investing Near Retirement

Note: All transcripts are edited for clarity. We may earn commissions from some (not all) links. Thanks for the scratch.

Jeff Santoro: [00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Are you paying too much to trade options? Well, if you're not on Public.com, the answer is yes. Public is the only platform where you earn a rebate on every option contract traded, and that's in addition to no commissions or per contract fees. There's no one else out there paying trading rebates.

So you won't find a better deal. Bottom line is if you're paying more than 0 to place an options trade, then you're paying too much. Switch to Public and start getting rebates on every single contract traded only at Public.com paid for by Public Investing. Options not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Full disclosures in podcast description.

​

Jeff Santoro: Hey 

Jason Hall: everybody. Welcome back to Investing Unscripted, where we ask the hard questions about investing. We'd love to give our answers. And of course, sometimes we have great guests to come on to give their answers as well. We have a guest today, but before we get to that, I'm Jason Hall joined as usual by my good friend, Jeff Santoro.

He who is the voice of the [00:01:00] people. Hey, buddy. Hey. How you doing? I'm good. I'm good. It's a, it's a Monday. We're taping on a Monday. We don't usually tape on Mondays, but it's a good Monday. Jeff, you know why it's a good Monday? 

Jeff Santoro: Because I get to talk to someone other than you. 

Jason Hall: Yes, exactly. That is exactly it.

And you hear the laughter from Mr. Brian Withers there in the background. We are joined today by a good friend, Brian Withers. Hey, Brian. 

Brian Withers: Hey, how are you, Jason? 

Jason Hall: I'm good, man. And Jeff, 

Brian Withers: I guess. Hello. Hello to both of you. 

Jason Hall: Hello, Jeff. Hello, uh, 

Jeff Santoro: Brian. Thanks for being here. 

Jason Hall: Brian is one of the three Brian's that is part of Long Term Mindset.

We're going to get to some of that in a little bit before we get to that though. The episode that we're doing and I'll tell you our conversation, Brian, when you reached out to me about something completely unrelated, and it led to the idea of you coming on, uh, the timing couldn't have been better. And we're calling this investing for very, very, very old people.

Brian Withers: I love that I'm your token old person. 

Jeff Santoro: We said, who's the oldest person we know? [00:02:00] 

Jason Hall: But actually that's completely untrue because the realities that Jeff and I, the age that we're at, where, where you kind of were maybe 10 or 15 years ago, like in terms of like your cadence of retirement, still kind of in the middle of like head down net contributing, building wealth, not really close enough to retiring or getting to a level of financial independence where you're living out of your portfolio, but you're in that part where you're starting to make the transition and you're getting closer and closer to, you know, reaching a point where your portfolio is going to be providing more and more of your income.

So it's a perfect conversation because we've, we've talked a lot, a lot about like volatility in the markets and all of those things that like we see as opportunities and they're, they're not always opportunities for every investor depending on where they are in their, in their journey. So thank you for reaching out.

And we're excited about talking about kind of how you manage your portfolio, where you are. Stocks and all of the assets that you that you are looking at. [00:03:00] 

Brian Withers: Awesome. Yeah it's getting real now. 

Jeff Santoro: Well, and it's it's funny that you say that because the thing I was thinking as we were planning for this was we we occasionally will get someone who reaches out to us and.

isn't angry or anything, but points out that we, we probably shouldn't be so focused on just people who are investing in like the wealth building stage. And we, we actually, I think both the Jason and I have gotten a little bit more careful, like when we get giddy about a down market. Because we're thinking about the buying opportunity.

We always sort of check ourselves and say like, we understand that this is just for where we are in life. But it's also, you know, you're not in retirement yet. And I don't even know, I don't even get the sense that you're necessarily like close, close, but you're definitely It at that point where I think you need to start thinking about it more than than we do.

So I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Before we get to that part, though, you were on the podcast a while ago, you were one of our first couple guests back in, I guess it was early, early January, [00:04:00] 

Brian Withers: January, 2023. 

Jeff Santoro: So you've actually 

Jason Hall: never been on Investing Unscripted. That's true. He's only been on The Smattering.

That's the, 

Brian Withers: the, the, the former name. Yes. I've not been on Investing Unscripted. 

Jeff Santoro: But for, you know, I'm sure we have people who've not listened to every single episode. I don't know why. I'm sure they will all catch up at some point. But for those who've, who came on after episode 36, when you were on why don't you just give us, uh, a A little bit of your background, uh, how you got to where you are now, what you're doing, where you've been and all that kind of stuff.

Brian Withers: Oh, my life story in, in a minute or less. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, perfect. 

Brian Withers: All right. 

Jason Hall: 90 seconds. Talk fast. 

Brian Withers: Well, I'm 57. I'm older than these, these other two guys. I have, I have. I have two kids, a wife the kids are 25 and 27. The younger one still lives with us. The older one is married and lives in outside of Philly.

I have, I left corporate in April of 2019. So almost five and a half years now and [00:05:00] been freelancing started writing for the Motley Fool. Doing more Fool Live stuff. Um, where I interacted with you guys quite a bit and and then joined the Long Term Mindset, um, a few years ago. And so I, I've left corporate really, uh, there was like, I guess a couple of things, there was something that was sort of pushing me, which was the grind.

I didn't like the grind and, uh, the drive. And this was, this was pre COVID obviously, April, 2019. 

Jason Hall: People 

Brian Withers: don't drive to work anymore, Brian. Yeah, no, apparently not. 

Jason Hall: Yeah, 

Brian Withers: my, my, my, uh, my commute is about 20 steps from my kitchen to my, the office that I'm sitting in now. But the other piece I wanted was more flexibility.

And when I left corporate and you, you know, if you go back to the other episode, we talk a good bit more about it. I took a 75 percent pay cut. And I'm still here. I, we eat regularly and, uh, we 

Jeff Santoro: do eat 

Brian Withers: daily. [00:06:00] We do. Yeah. 

Jeff Santoro: Regularly meeting once a month. 

Brian Withers: So, but the. On the flexibility side, they gave us flexibility to move someplace warmer and cheaper.

We were, we were in New Jersey. Yeah, Jeff, um, kind of an expensive, but you guys both live in expensive places. Yeah, that's true. But yeah, we moved to North Carolina mainly the two criteria I said to my wife was I want warmer and I want cheaper. So we ended up, I live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Um, we love the triangle area.

We when we first were married in 1990, way back when we lived, we lived in this area and we really liked it. So, yeah. And when we last talked in January of 2023 my portfolio had just dropped 65%. Over the past 12 months. So that's that's kind of where we left things. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah, I remember that conversation because we were we were talking about that.

It was right after, you know, that brutal 2022. And it wasn't [00:07:00] 2023 ended up being a great year for the market, but we hadn't quite seen that yet being so early. Early in the year. So we, I'm glad you mentioned that because I, I know I want to get to where you've been with your investment since then. But I think it would be helpful to maybe take a step back and talk about the kind of investor you were.

So like maybe if we think about you as an investor by decade, maybe like what you're, what you were like in your twenties and thirties and forties. And then let's talk later about how you've been the last couple of years. So how, what kind of investor did you used to be? I guess is a good place to start.

Brian Withers: Yeah. That's, that's kind of funny that just thinking back on this, yeah. When I was in my twenties. I really had no clue. I really didn't. I knew I needed to invest. I didn't know how, how much, what, what should I be doing? Kind of all those things were very sort of nebulous and unknown. And it was just one of those things where I, well, okay, let's give this a [00:08:00] shot.

And I was mainly invested in mutual funds. Put stuff in the 401k. And I was also participating. Um, I worked at IBM at the time. I participated in the employee stock purchase program, which was interesting because at the time I could start the employee stock purchase program, like after I'd been with the company for a month or something, but the 401k, you weren't allowed to put in until you'd been there a year.

It was, it was, it was weird back in the, back in the nineties. But, um, yeah, it's amazing 

Jason Hall: how much that's changed Brian, because now companies like they auto enroll you, auto enroll you in like rate raising your contribution. Like it's just gotten so much better. 

Brian Withers: Yes. The tools and the options for people have gotten.

Much better, easier, certainly you know, when, when I was buying stocks, I started in my thirties. I remember paying 10 bucks a trade, [00:09:00] 14 bucks a trade, something like that. But yeah, the thirties was kind of a mix of being from no clue to thinking I'd figured things out. Kind of when I was 37, I had the, what I'll call the oh shit moment.

When you're like, okay, I've got two kids, they're five and seven. And you know, I'm 37 now and I want to retire in 20 ish years. I don't know if I'm going to get there. And the math looked really scary. And like I, I just was like, how is it, how is this all going to work? And I kind of, at the same time stumbled on the Motley Fool.

And I remember, you know, one of the Morgan Housel articles talk about time in the market versus timing the market. And that really hit home. And kind of at the same time I got into individual stocks in 2004, I got my kids, Into individual stocks at the same time. 'cause I was like, I'm not gonna let [00:10:00] them miss the 20 years that, that I missed.

Yeah. Um, so that's, that's another story for another podcast. But kind of at the same time I got investing into individual stocks, they did too. And I, I really. It, um, jazzed my curiosity and got excited about investing and, and gave me hope that I could figure this thing out. So the forties was all about piling as much money into gross stocks as I possibly could.

And if you remember during that time, 2004 and my forties, It was 2009 and the great financial crisis. And not only was I, I got excited about fully investing. And so every spare dollar I had, I put into stocks. I didn't worry about an emergency fund cause I was fully employed and all that kind of stuff.

And then the day the market hit bottom in March of [00:11:00] 2009, I was laid off. So that was a little bit of a shock. And I ended up having to sell NVIDIA, Starbucks, you name it. A few of these, these names that have gone on to be great winners from there. But that was, that was a hard lesson learned. But throughout my forties, I kind of recovered, got a job, continued to buy stocks.

I had over a hundred stocks in the portfolio and probably the investing at that time was sort of chasing the new shiny idea. And buying and selling way, way too often. Kind of fast forward to my fifties and realized that what I was doing probably wasn't sustainable or, nor at the same time, I was looking at what my kids were doing.

We were kind of buying with them once a year. And just, just not doing anything with it. They were, their returns were better than mine. 

Jeff Santoro: They were crushing you. 

Brian Withers: They were crushing my returns. Totally. And I was like, [00:12:00] well, maybe, maybe I need to do something different. So I worked on building an investing checklist and really honing in on my, what my sweet spot was from a circle of competence and, and, and, Making bigger bets on smaller positions.

And I got down to around, I'm around 20 stocks today. And then I'll kind of leave it there. Cause that the, the, the last five years have been quite a bit different for me as well. 

Jeff Santoro: Well, and that's, that's a perfect place. Cause I was going to, the next thing I wanted to ask was, and maybe. Maybe this is still kind of happening, but like, this is thing I something I wonder for myself, Jason, I don't know if you think about this too, like, I don't have a defined.

Retirement age in my head. So I find it difficult to know, like, okay, when do I need to start thinking about if I do need to think about doing anything different? Right? Like, if you knew, like, you had to retire at this age on this day, then you could sort [00:13:00] of backdate it and say, all right, so five years before 10 years before seven years before, whatever, I'm going to start to do these things.

Was there a moment when, you know, You, you consciously decided like, Hey, I need to, I need to shift strategies here because I'm getting closer to my goal. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. Well, my, my view of retirement and my retirement age have changed considerably since I've was 22, 23. When I was 22, I was like, I'm gonna make all this money.

I'm going to retire at 52. I'm going to live on, uh, live on the beach and play golf every day. And, you know, By, by the time I'm 52, the kids will be outta college and, and you know, we can travel the world and whatever, because 

Jeff Santoro: when you're 22, 52 feels like a really long time away. . 

Brian Withers: It does, it does. Well, that was five years ago, and, um, that, that, that, that, you know, lay on the beach and buy a beach house and play golf every day.

Hasn't happened. 

Jason Hall: well, but it's, it's, we've, and we've, we talked about this when [00:14:00] you came on before, um, and I shared the story of my neighbor that lives behind us, that. You know, is he's still, I know it's hard to believe, but there are people that are older than you, Brian. He's in his early sixties and he's not ready to retire yet because he's trying to figure out what he's going to retire to, and that was the title of that episode was, you know, you, you, when you kind of went through your journey, really, I guess, probably a decade.

Before you really fully made that transition away from like being in the corporate rat race, a lot of it was kind of figuring out what your path looked like and what you were moving to. Right. You were when do I think about like retirement and that sort of stuff?

So this guy right here. This is Tate. You say hi Mr. Jeff and mr. Brian, 

Tate: yeah 

Jason Hall: If you listen to the podcast feed, you can go to YouTube and you can find a picture of my son who decided to hop in my lap and participate here. Like I got to get this guy out of the house first. I'll be eligible for [00:15:00] social security, Brian, when he's graduating from college.

I'm on a slightly different trajectory than, uh, than you are there. So 

Brian Withers: there you go. Yeah. The retiring to. That's a really good question. And I, and I almost, I, part of it was I didn't know the answer, but I knew what I was doing in, in corporate and where I was or our nest egg at 52. When I left the corporate world five years ago I, I knew I didn't, I couldn't continue doing what I was doing.

But I also felt like our portfolio was in such a place where if I just gave it more time, I would be, I would be fine. That was before COVID,

but so really the, the thing was not necessarily retiring, but giving myself a little bit of flexibility, um, doing something more that I enjoyed. And with the, with the, you know, with the Motley Fool and [00:16:00] the Long Term Mindset guys, I have tremendous amount of flexibility and you know, You know, we can go on vacation and, and do, do some of these things, but I also have income coming in, so I don't have to like worry about you know, I, I don't have to worry about drawdowns yet, which is, which is super helpful.

So I'm in sort of this in between stage of not working in corporate, but not retired. And. For those folks that are interested in financial independence, retire early. I'd like the financial independence part, but the retire early, you gotta find something that you enjoy doing. 

Tate: Yeah, 

Brian Withers: keep you active in your mind active and I like this sort of state that I'm in it's sort of this in between that you know, if, if, if, if it's beautiful out or whatever, I can, I can go ride my bike or take the afternoon off and I don't have to really ask anybody.

And I can just go make [00:17:00] it happen. And that's, that's really been, been wonderful. And, um, from a financial independence standpoint, if you can get to the place where you don't need that corporate paycheck that's just tremendously free freeing is the right word.

Jeff Santoro: Hey everybody, we'll be right back, but first a word from our sponsors. FinChat.io is the complete stock research platform for fundamental investors. They have all the standard financial data on more than 100, 000 stocks globally. But beyond that, they have company specific segment end KPI data on around 1, 800 stocks.

So for example, do you want to see NVIDIA's data center revenue growth? They've got it. Do you like to track Apple's iPhone sales? They've got that too. Or how about nights and experiences booked for Airbnb? You guessed it, they've got it. And they just added around 8, 000 ETFs and mutual funds to the platform.

The breadth [00:18:00] of FinChat's data is truly one of a kind. I use FinChat every single day as I'm researching the stocks in my portfolio, specifically when I want to see how they're doing on KPIs that FinChat is famous for. So to get 15 percent off any paid plan, go to FinChat.io/unscripted. That's FinChat.io/unscripted to get 15 percent off any paid plan today. The link will be in the show notes.

Hey, Investing Unscripted listeners. This episode is brought to you by our friends at yellow brick investing. Yellow brick is an aggregator of the best stock pitches across the internet. By tracking thousands of blogs, newsletters, fund letters, podcasts, and more, they're able to collect and summarize the best stock pitches from all over and bring them to you in one single place.

Think of it like a modern value investors club. I have to say, this is pretty cool. I can just type in the company I'm interested in and get a bunch of different stock pages from across the internet. It helps me think through new ideas and find opposing points of view on the stocks I'm interested in.

And the best part is access to Yellow Brick is [00:19:00] completely free. Try it for yourself. Simply go to joinyellowbrick. com and search a company or ticker you're interested in. You're bound to find a great report on just about any company. That's joinyellowbrick. com.

Yeah. When I was. I, when I was younger and thought about building wealth, it always felt I never had the desire to be like a rich person.

Like that was never like, I don't know. I, I meet young people now who are like, what do you want to do when you grow up? And they're like, I want to have a lot of money and I want to be rich. And I, and I don't, that was never in my. In my ethos like I just never it almost felt me either Jeff. I just I just knew it was gonna happen though You and I have different people It just it didn't it wasn't my thing, right?

So like it always I always felt uncomfortable talking about building wealth but it really wasn't until I I shifted my thinking away from like Building wealth to have a really nice car and a big house to pay for kids college. Well, yeah that But also like building wealth so that I can [00:20:00] go do something I like more 

Tate: or that I'm 

Jeff Santoro: passionate about when and if I want to make that decision.

I happen to like my career, so I'm perfectly happy where I am right now. But you know, and I think that's the piece of this that I don't know really gets driven home to younger people. People who are like trying to make decisions about how much they want to save and how much they want to invest, you know, the idea that in your 40s or 50s or early 60s or whenever you can decide like this career I've had has been great for me, but I'm tired of it.

I don't like the rat race like you and there's this other thing I really am passionate about, and maybe it's. Volunteering at a food kitchen or, you know, like tutoring kids for free. Like it's, it's could be anything, but like you need the money to be able to live that lifestyle of less income. So I, it just, it was a huge shift the way I thought about retirement.

Once I thought about that, exactly what you just said, like building wealth for the flexibility to do something you enjoy more. 

Jason Hall: So let's talk a little bit about. Um, [00:21:00] specifically like where we left off in January of, you know, a year over a year ago now, a year and a half ago at this point. But the, the, really the whole transition of going from, so there was that great period and Brian, you and I have been massive beneficiaries of, you know, you started buying individual stocks just a few years before me and really focused on supercharging your wealth.

But you talked about the bottom of the market there, but you landed on your feet, right? You had the sell some, but you landed on your feet. In the early 2010s and you start charging for it again, just so happens that that March 2009 date basically through now has been one of the best 15 year periods that investors could have ever invested through.

So we've benefited significantly from that. So like your, your focus and kind of the style that you were talking about that became problematic as you began really. Focusing on managing and allocating and having to be more precise [00:22:00] and thoughtful about managing an entire portfolio you know, probably benefited you in a lot of ways.

I know it certainly benefited me. But what's changed over the past five to seven years as you got to that point where it's like, okay, I'm walking away from the corporate world. I'm walking towards this other life, this other lifestyle where I'm still going to be earning income, but again, I'm not quite to the point of drawdowns now yet, but it's going to happen.

How have you been, what's the kind of the thought process and what are the catalysts that you've gone through? And what are you, what are you doing now? 

Brian Withers: Yeah, so. I like to think of the stage. I really like the pioneers published something that they call 

Jason Hall: pioneers with an F F is in financial independence as opposed to pioneers, 

Brian Withers: pioneers.

And they will, uh, 

Jason Hall: we'll have the link in the show notes and we'll put it in the transcripts. 

Brian Withers: Yeah, this is, they, they, they are, they are also financial creators and they were chasing financial independence [00:23:00] and realized that as they got to a certain point in their life, they're like, well, wait a minute.

Let me look at my nest egg. If I just leave this alone and don't do anything with it, we will get to our FI number at some point in the future, whether it's five years, seven years, et cetera, and let the market do its thing. That's where I am. And that's where our family is right now at a, at a coast FI state.

So if I just don't touch my portfolio I was thinking about it today to get to my fine number, I needed to go up 50 percent or 60 percent or something like that. And, and to me, whether that happens in two years, five years, seven years, I have built flexibility. In my life and what I'm doing to enable to me to be patient.

Whereas if I was in corporate. I would have been much more impatient and like, I got to get out of here. [00:24:00] This sucks. I don't need this anymore. When is my money going to, you know, get to the number that I, that I'd need to get to, to, to leave it all behind. So kind of having this in between state has been just an absolute wonder.

But also at the same time, So do you feel like 

Jason Hall: it's, it's, do you feel like it's helped you be more objective and make better investing decisions?

Brian Withers: It doesn't hurt that my job is helping other investors. It's 

Jason Hall: kind of nice being paid the research. Yeah, that, that, that's 

Brian Withers: certainly, that's certainly a fun element of it. But five years ago. Very much the portfolio was all gross stocks all the time. I mean, I remember I did a, I did a, a ranking show with some of the guys in the Motley Fool.

And they're like, Brian, does any of your companies actually are profitable? And I was like, looking, I'm like, nope. And so, you know, I had been investing in early [00:25:00] stage gross stocks. And in 2021, that looked like a brilliant strategy. You know, everything that I owned would go up 5 percent a day. I mean, it was insane.

It was ridiculous. I mean, my portfolio, and you're going to, you're going to like not believe this number and I didn't believe it either. Went up 147 percent in one year. 

Jason Hall: Yeah, 

Brian Withers: like seriously and, and then, and then it didn't take market gives and the market takes away. Right. Well, then the next year went down 65%.

So my brilliant, I'm so smart strategy was like, maybe this isn't so smart. And you know, we talked in January, 2023. And that was a very much a big wake up call to me that said, you know, I can't experience having experienced a 65 percent downturn when I'm 55. Not so bad. But if I was [00:26:00] 65. And, you know, in retirement and counting on that as income, that would have been disastrous.

Tate: Yeah. 

Brian Withers: That would have been, I would have been like, you know, selling pencils on the corner to, for spare change to, to eat. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. And now you, you could Uber. 

Brian Withers: Well, yes, you'd have to have a car. 

Jeff Santoro: No, but that's exactly, so I'm, I'm so glad you said that because that's, And this calls back to what Jason said earlier about the timing of this conversation being pretty, uh, pretty right on with what we've been talking about the last several episodes.

Because, you know, last, last week we did over the last couple weeks, we've done episodes about topics related to this. And then we did even a quick Uh, 15 minute rough cut where we just talked about the first four days of August, right? That last Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, where everything was kind of going crazy.

And before that we were talking about CrowdStrike because we're both big fans of that company and it had dropped after the big tech outage. And we kept coming back to this idea [00:27:00] of sometimes what you decide to do or not do, how impatient or patient you end up being is tied to just where you are in your investing journey.

You know, as it relates to CrowdStrike specifically, one of the things that we were discussing was You know, both of us could make the case for, for people in their mid 40s who, who plan to retire. Let's just say mid 60s, buy because, 

Tate: you 

Jeff Santoro: know, even if you're wrong, I mean, maybe not buy like backup the truck by, but buy some, because even if you're wrong, you have 20 years to, to, you know, be okay.

And, and, and, you know, Whereas if, if you're planning to retire in six months and that stock is 8 percent of your portfolio, maybe you have a different calculation. So, uh, yeah, it really does call call back to a lot of stuff we've been talking about.

Jason Hall: Brian. , you, you had a nadir back in March, 2009, right. No emergency savings. Yeah. Uh, had the sell stocks at the worst possible time. So you had short term money. Yeah.

Stocks. And then going through this nadir. Coming [00:28:00] out of 2021 where the market market bottoms which was maybe an idea for your portfolio, but you had built more of an, to, to kind of crib from Stoffel who cribbed from somebody else, you'd kind of built kind of an antifragile lifestyle.

And now you're, and you'd already started that transition of shifting away from kind of the growth of your side of your portfolio into kind of building more of a higher floor as part of your holdings. Let's talk about that process and exactly what you're doing. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. So I actually looked back at my numbers.

When I left, uh, corporate in April of 2019, I had. This amount of money. And at the end, uh, when we were doing, 

Jason Hall: we can call that number more than Jeff, 

Brian Withers: more than Jeff. Okay. I had more than Jeff in when I left corporate in April of 2019. And then when we did the show in January of 23, I actually had [00:29:00] less money.

Oh, four, three and a half years later, I actually had less money in the portfolio. 

Jason Hall: We can call that number more than Jeff. 

Brian Withers: Well, yeah. And just, just so that you know, the other, the other piece of it is. I am very much a stock investor. So, we own, we, we, we have a mortgage on our house and we own individual stocks and that's it.

And I have cash. Those are sort of the three places where money is. And so having less money in, having less money in January of 23 was not part of the plan in April, 2019. 

Jason Hall: Right, 

Brian Withers: that was, that was not in the, not in the, in the roadmap or the cards. And so part of that was I had started investing in dividend stocks in 2021, but it was more of a dabbling.

And, you know, Matt [00:30:00] Frankel and you, Jason, we had kind of chatted and started diving into REITs a little bit was sort of my first things I like, uh, real estate investment trusts. I don't know if you guys have done a show on that, 

Tate: but, 

Brian Withers: um, that's a, that's a really cool way to diversify your portfolio. And I started getting into that a little bit.

And then in January, 2023, when we talked about, you know, whether it was the, the, the 65 percent downturn I was like, I need to balance this growth thing that I love doing. And I don't know that I'll ever stop doing. But I need some sort of barbell. You've talked about the barbell, Jason, right? I need something on the other end to balance this, this, this crazy, more risky growth portfolio with some more stable dividend stuff.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. And cause you were mentioning, you have this percentage you use, like you just have this much percentage more to get to your number. And it's probably easier to protect that with, with safer dividend [00:31:00] stocks, balancing out the super risky fun stuff, so to speak. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. 

Jeff Santoro: So what. 

Brian Withers: No, 

Jeff Santoro: I was just gonna say like, is there, do you, is it a 50 50 barbell right now?

Like if you just were kind of to ballpark it, are you still more heavily weighted towards the growth of your stuff? Like, how has that kind of shook out as we look at your portfolio today? 

Brian Withers: So, so when we chatted last time, I was about 12 percent into 12 percent of my overall portfolio was in dividend stocks.

And I had, I had two holdings at the time. There were two REITs Digital Realty and Prologis. The portfolio since we've met and I, maybe this is cause I was on your show. Uh, my portfolio has gone up 60%. 

Jason Hall: You're welcome. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. So, you'll have to have me back in another 18 months and hopefully I can say the same thing.

Jason Hall: We can call that number more than, more than Jeff's. 

Brian Withers: But, but 

Jason Hall: Jeff keeps muting when I make these great jokes and we can't. [00:32:00] Like he'll talk to the screen, but he's, we can't hear his great. I keep muting 

Jeff Santoro: myself. Yeah. I was going to say that we call that the Investing Unscripted bump and you're welcome.

Jason Hall: There you 

Brian Withers: go. 

Jason Hall: Well 

Jeff Santoro: played. Well 

Brian Withers: played. Yeah. So I was, I was only a small percentage into dividend stocks. One could say it 

Jason Hall: was a smattering of dividend stocks. It could have been a smattering. 

Brian Withers: Well, it was only two, but, but out of my 20, you know, 10 percent of my holdings, 12 percent of my, my money was in dividend stocks.

And now it's up to about 23. I have seven different dividend stocks in a portfolio of 22. you know, that's been a conscious over the last. You know, I'm not in a hurry. And so kind of what I've done is I've looked at Hey, are there gross stocks like CrowdStrike? And this will be a little humble brag, but as CrowdStrike was going up there, I was like, man, this is a big position in my portfolio.

It looks overvalued. And so I set a, I set a limit order for, and this is like blind squirrel finds a nut [00:33:00] every once in a while. Uh, I sold like almost right at the top, a quarter of my CrowdStrike. And so what I did at that point is I take some of that and invested in some of my small growth stocks that aren't yet larger positions. I take about half of it and put it in the growth and half of it and put in the, and bolster my dividend portfolio.

So that's kind of what I've been doing over the last year and a half. And, uh, the, the other piece is the dividend stocks, just so that you know, are all in my retirement accounts. They're in a Roth and an IRA. And then anytime I buy a dividend stock, Uh, I'm dripping it. So I'll do dividend reinvestment. And so what's nice is that 23 percent has given me tremendous comfort when the market does its crazy market things.

And, um, so if the market goes down, I'm like, woohoo, I'm dripping at [00:34:00] lower prices, so the, this investment portfolio, the dividend portfolio, and if the market goes up, that's great. And what I've kind of seen is the divot, the beta for the dividend stocks is smaller. So they go down less when the market goes down and they go up less when the market goes up.

Jason Hall: We talked about beta on a recent show, but that's the metric that's, uh, volatility compared to the S and P 500 typically. So a number below one means a stock typically moves less. Um, when the market goes up, it go up, but probably not as much market goes down. Okay. Probably won't go down as much. A number above one is more volatile than the market.

So 

Brian Withers: yeah. So I generally think my growth stocks are like two beta of two or something. I'm ridiculous, crazy, volatile number. So, the beta may not be under one, but it's certainly less than my growth, growth of your arm for sure. 

Jason Hall: A couple of things you said I want to circle back to and just kind of spend some [00:35:00] time on.

So the first thing is. You, you mentioned it earlier and I think I really want to hammer on it. And this, your situation might be a little bit different than other people that are kind of going through that same transition phase as you, where you can kind of see the point down the road where you really need to be getting to the point where you're taking distributions from your accounts.

But a lot of those. Folks in that same age, they're still contributing. You're not contributing new money to, to your retirement account. So what that means is we have to think about the implications here is it means that you don't just have to get, and you run a concentrated portfolio, like you said, around 20.

Give or take a few stocks, you have to get not just one decision, right? About what you're buying, but you have to optimize for your decisions around selling. And we've, Jeff, we've talked about selling before and eventually we're going to do a show where I think we dig into selling maybe even more than we have and we've done it a lot.

But what's, What does your process look like for when you think about how [00:36:00] you've, you know, you've, you have a stated goal of, you know, gradually increasing the percentage of your portfolio that's in stocks that generate income for you. But what does that process look like for identifying the companies that you want to sell?

And how do you think about cash too? Cause from talking in the past, you, I think you generally try to stay mostly invested. Um, has that changed? So what does that process look like? 

Brian Withers: Yeah. So for, I do have a decent cash cushion. Probably six months of income. If we were to both my wife, wife and I work, um, she actually, um, works at the, the UNC Chapel Hill here and we get our benefits through that.

So that's, that's. That's, that's really great to, to have, uh, a spouse who has, has, uh, health benefits. But you know, having a six month cash cushion is, so that, that gives me, um, certainly flexibility and, and comfort in that there's cash, but that's not investable. [00:37:00] None of that money is investable.

So if I think about my investable portfolio, yeah, I'm a hundred percent invested all the time. You know, and when I sell something, it, it might be a day or two until I buy something else. But generally I know both sides of that equation and what I'm going to do. 

Jason Hall: well, you keep a watch list of stocks that you're, 

Brian Withers: yeah, so generally, so this is something that's been interesting to me as I've.

I've reduced the size of my portfolio and gotten down to like 20. Is I'm much more picky and I'm willing to take more time to either sell or take more time to buy, which has been interesting because when I was at a hundred, a hundred plus back in my forties, I would buy and sell on a dime and you know, Ooh, new recommendation from this stock service.

I need to get some, Oh, I don't have any cash right now. Let me, let me sell, sell off [00:38:00] that and, and move into this other one. And you'd 

Jason Hall: like. This was me, like, I would invent bullshit reasons to sell a stock. 

Brian Withers: I didn't think they were bullshit at the time, but yeah, they were the new shiny thing. 

Jeff Santoro: If we ever do another show on selling, we don't have to explore this right now, but I think the three of us would have a fun conversation around this, like, the things you try, the things you'll convince yourself of in order to justify selling a stock.

The lies we tell. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. So in, so here, here's, I'll just digress for one moment. In 2010, Netflix had gotten as big, was, was probably twice the size and market cap than Blockbuster ever was, even it is high. And I'm like. They're done growing.

Anybody who is follows Netflix or the market go back to 2010 and just put it, put that in. There you go. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. That's uh, I, anyone, I, I have not been investing long enough to have an individual stocks [00:39:00] long enough to have like a story, like to that magnitude. I've certainly made my mistake selling things, but yeah, anyone I know who's been investing for a decade or more has that, right?

Yeah, that one they sold back in 10, 15 years ago that 

Jason Hall: Netflix has increased its market cap. 9, 133%. 

Jeff Santoro: Well, you're just going to pour salt right in the 2010. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. Now, I mean, the stock hasn't done as good. They've, they've diluted the investors a little bit, so it's only up 7, 940%. Yeah. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was, that was dumb.

Jeff Santoro: So I, I, but I'm glad you talked through. Cause, you know, I sold mine in 2013 to use as a, 

Brian Withers: there we go. 

Jeff Santoro: We also have a whole episode about how you were wrong about it from a couple of years ago. But 

Brian Withers: yes, 

Jeff Santoro: I digress. I'm glad you talked about you, Brian, initially, and then Jason kind of driving at home about the decision process being very different when you're no longer contributing to your account.

[00:40:00] Because again, to get us out of our bias, we are still contributing to our retirement account. So it's easy for us to say like. Oh, that position's too big. Sure. You can trim it, but you could also just buy other stuff and reduce your exposure that way. It's a different calculus when the only way to 

Brian Withers: generally, generally, it's, it's a fairly my, my, my universe of stocks that I'm interested in investing are the ones at the bottom of the portfolio that haven't yet become full positions or another dividend stock.

Um, and that's sort of what prompted me to text Jason yesterday is I might be at the point where I would, I would go up to eight dividend stocks and was like, okay, what's the next thing. And what's cool kind of, I'm at the place where I am not in a hurry to make these decisions and I can leave.

Something I know recently I just sold out a lemonade, [00:41:00] but that one had been on my list for like months of let me watch it is the thing that I'm doing. Does the logic make sense of why I want to get out of this and and, you know, very, I, I plot along rather than. You know, gunslinger back in, but back in the early days is all, let's just swap this one for this one and see how it goes.

Jason Hall: Well, Brian, that's, I mean, that's an excellent kind of real world example of somebody that's had success doing something that Jeff and I've talked about before and Jeff's what's your mantra now, Jeff, Don't trade learn. 

Brian Withers: Oh yeah. Yeah. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. Yeah. Trade less, learn more. That was, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's exactly it.

And I mean, but that's the reality. It's like thinking more slowly so you can then act decisively when you, when you reach the conclusion. I think that's really, really valuable. So do you, do you find yourself more likely to maybe pare down a position than to sell a full position? 

Brian Withers: Yeah, definitely pairing, [00:42:00] you know, trimming, trimming a little bit or adding to existing positions is mostly what I do.

Jason Hall: Yeah. 

Brian Withers: Um, it's a pretty high threshold 

Jason Hall: for a new stock to get into the, Oh yeah. So 

Brian Withers: that's, Oh, that was, that's a great question. So the other thing that I was going to say is when you only have 20 stocks. And you're looking at a new stock to come in. I know you recommended one for me to look at. I was like, is this stock better than the average of the stocks that I have?

And because right now I feel like the 22 stocks that I have are my best ideas. 

Jason Hall: You have three that might be better than this one. It's 

Jeff Santoro: very, very good. Uh, Brian, that's a, that is a signal to not buy the stock. Let me tell you from experience. 

Brian Withers: I got a, I got a bridge to sell you. Uh, but yeah, so when you have less stocks, you're, you always want to increase the, the quality.

Of the companies in your portfolio. And so if I add [00:43:00] one to me, it's gotta be from a quality perspective, it's gotta be middle of the road or better of all the ones I, so I want it to increase the average of the quality of, of, of the, the portfolio. So that's a, that's a, that's a high bar. 

Jeff Santoro: Hey everybody, we'll be right back, but first, a word from our sponsors. Earlier in the show, you heard us talk about investing platform Public.com. That's where you can trade options with no commissions or per contract fees, and you get a rebate of up to 18 cents per contract traded. NerdWallet recently gave public five out of five stars for options trading.

If you want to see why, go to Public.com and start getting a rebate of up to 18 cents per contract traded. Paid for by Public Investing. Options not suitable for all investors and carry significant risk. Full disclosures and podcast description. US members only.

Hey, Investing Unscripted listeners. My name is Brett, one of the hosts of the Chit Chat Stocks podcast. If you love Investing Unscripted, we think you [00:44:00] will love listening to Chit Chat Stocks on our show. We research individual stocks, interview investing experts and well chitchat about investing every week.

From hot stocks, such as Nvidia and Celsius to hidden small cap gems. We have something for every type of investor. Follow the Chit Chat Stocks podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcasts and level up your investing skills today.

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. It's. It's one of the exactly what that is, is one of the reasons I've been trying to slowly over time pare down my stock portfolio.

I mean, part of it's because it's just not a big part of my overall portfolio anyway, but part of it's that I do find myself even now it's down to 41 stocks, I think, and but I used to be up over 102 when I was brand new and everything was shiny and I was trying to get a little bit of everything. But even that, getting it down from 50 to, or from 60 to 50 to 40, I find myself getting pickier and pickier and pickier as it comes, as it [00:45:00] pertains to putting new ones in because it's that same calculus, a little bit different because I have almost twice as many as you do.

But like, when I have new money to invest, it's that decision of like, is one of the Stocks I already own that I have a lot of conviction in. That's not a big position yet. Is that the best place for this money or is it this other new thing? And when you're trying to not have a lot, even if it's not just a set number, it really does change.

It raises the bar for like what gets in. And I think it makes you a better decision maker, I think. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. Well, it makes, and I remember as I, as you get past 40 to me, the decisions get much harder and, and. What happens is I think you define a little bit more of. What's my circle of competence? What stocks do I enjoy following?

What's really important to me. And so part of, part of that getting from a hundred to 20 is I had to put together [00:46:00] a, uh, an investing checklist and says, how the heck am I going to make these decisions and hold myself accountable for sort of what I'm doing? And that's been, that's been super helpful. 

Jason Hall: you know, Brian It's interesting you mentioned you say the decisions are Harder and and I think part of it is we see this professionally as well the decisions get bigger as you move up your your Your, your career pipeline.

And it's the same way when you're managing your own investing portfolio too, is something worth, you know, 10 percent of your, of your portfolio when you're 35 versus when you're five or 10 years out from retirement, the percentage is the percentage, but that number gets really big, right? And the decisions start to get kind of heavier.

So one of the things I think would be interesting to talk about is. As you think about, you know, you've clearly become comfortable making those concentrated portfolio decisions, you know, 20, you know, less than 25 stocks are [00:47:00] talking your smallest average position. So going to be 4 percent of your portfolio, like on average, right.

When a lot of people like 0. 4 percent might be your starting position in a stock. So there's an order of magnitude right there. But what I'm interested to hear you talk about is how you think about it. In terms of dollar amounts versus percentages. And let's start talking a little bit about as we get closer to the end, the income side of the portfolio that it's generating, what exactly are you looking to generate?

Brian Withers: Yeah, definitely that as, as your portfolio grows. You have to get, it's, it's something that's, that's actually taken me a while to get comfortable with is I, I've looked back. I remember when I first started in 2004, and there was a certain number I had with a fully invested position. Today that number is 20 times bigger.

than it was back in 2004. And [00:48:00] so one it's, it's, it's, I don't recommend that people start to reduce the number of, of, uh, stocks that they own until they're much more comfortable with how am I making my, you know, having a structured, organized decision process on how am I making this decision? What am I doing?

Cause the gunslinger Brian of his forties. Dealing with the kind of portfolio that I have today would have been disastrous. So, but, but yes, the numbers are, the numbers are a lot bigger. And when you talk about income, I don't have what we talked about today. I'm 23 percent of my portfolio value is in dividend stocks.

I don't have a target percent. I don't want to get to 50 or whatever, but the dollar number that I want, there's a certain dollar number that I want in one of the Thornburg. 

Jason Hall: So dollar number in the value of the portfolio or the dollar number in dividends. 

Brian Withers: So what's [00:49:00] interesting is I am looking for a specific dollar number.

I'm anchoring on a dollar number of income producing stocks and the rest, I don't care. The rest is sort of gravy because eventually I want that income producing to be probably some around 70 to 80%. I have no pension. That actually there's a small thing that I'm going to get. I'm not really counting on social security.

So really the stock portfolio is going to fund the retirement. So I want about 80 percent of my expenses to be covered. Based on dividends that come out of the portfolio. 

Jeff Santoro: Yeah. love that idea because the benefit, just in case it's not obvious to everyone listening, of generating a lot of dividend income in retirement is then you don't have to sell as many or maybe even any of the actual stocks.

You can just live off, you know, I mean, 80%, you probably will end up selling some. But that's, that's what I have in my mind as I try to think about how much I want [00:50:00] to start getting into dividend stocks now. Just trying to build towards that. Cause it's such a small part of my overall portfolio. Um, cause I got such a late start in the individual stocks thing.

So that I'm really interested to hear that. Yeah. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. So if you, if you say that, Hey, now dividends aren't guaranteed. Just be, be clear there. It's not like an annuity, but generally the companies that are in this. S ome of my dividend stocks are home Depot Hershey's they've paid increasing dividends over the last 20.

40 years, whatever. It's almost guaranteed. And so there's a set amount of 

Jason Hall: Ask anybody that invested a large percentage of their wealth in, uh, office REITs. Oh, how safe those dividends are, right? It's just like every other aspect of business ownership. You want to diversify the risk factors that you're exposed to so you can make it as, as secure as you can.

Brian Withers: And so the idea [00:51:00] is, you know, back to this 80 percent covering my expenses, the, what happens in the market when I'm retired will be much less of an 

Jason Hall: issue. You want it, you want it to be inconsequential. 

Brian Withers: I do. I don't want to have to have 2022 happen when I'm 70 and like freak out that we're going to be, you know, kicked to the curb and the street and I'm going to have to live with my kids.

Jason Hall: Yeah. Your, your kids also 

Brian Withers: don't, they don't want that. 

Jeff Santoro: They told us. 

Brian Withers: So, so, and part of how I'm targeting what that dollar amount is. And I hope you'll put the Thornburg the value of dividends, um, study in there that Thornburg looked at. They did a Dividend King portfolio. If you bought in January 1st of 1990, they said, put a million dollars in and then pull out at the end of the year, 50 [00:52:00] grand every year for the next 30 years.

And increase that with inflation. So it's inflation adjusted throughout the 30 years. 

Jason Hall: Right. So it's the five, it's the 5 percent version of the 4 percent rule. 

Brian Withers: Right, so we'll take out 5 percent of this dividend Kings portfolio of a million bucks. And after 30 years, you've pulled out probably two and a half million dollars worth of money to use for your.

to fund your life and the portfolio, let me get the number. I want to say 15. 5 million at the end. 

Jason Hall: So last I checked both 2. 5 million and 15 and some odd million are more than 1 million. 

Brian Withers: Yes. 

Jeff Santoro: Wait, hold on. Wait, I'm just going to, Nope. You're right. Yeah. I just checked. 

Jason Hall: Okay. Thanks Jeff. You have me nervous for a second there.

Brian Withers: So this Thornburg article was just like, [00:53:00] Like the light bulb went off and I'm like, this, this is really, this is kind of what I want to model. Yeah. And so I use that million dollars in the 50, 000 and I scaled it to, to the number that I want. And so that hopefully you guys will put that in the thing.

That's, that's something that as people get it or getting into dividend stocks, That's a great, great way to think about the power of dividends. 

Jason Hall: We'll have this in the transcript, not the show notes. You have to go find the transcript now, people. That's the, that's the deal. That's the deal you're making with us.

I want to, I want to say this is kind of my closing thought before we close. Wrap things up and you can share a little bit about where our listeners can find you and two other guys named Brian This is a perfect example of like as you're picking individual stocks You know there's a Certain period of time where your aspiration absolutely needs to be if I'm gonna put in the time and effort and energy to do this I need to outperform an index I need to do better in the S& P like if I'm not I just need [00:54:00] to go buy the ETF and And then I can go do something else to make money or spend more time playing golf or whatever.

But you, you're in that phase now where you have like actual tangible financial goals. And your focus right now is laser focused on reaching those goals, no matter what the market is doing. 

And that is so important. And that's the position that. I can see it like so close for me that for people to be in that position, guys, that's, you're doing it right.

You're doing it right when you get there, Brian. If 

Brian Withers: you had told me that 10 years ago, I wouldn't have believed you. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. 

Brian Withers: Um, it's, it's so, you know, I, I think one of the things we, we you guys threw out at me is beforehand is, is, is there anything that you would do different? 

Tate: Yeah. 

Brian Withers: And I, I would encourage you if you're in your thirties or in your forties to start dabbling in a [00:55:00] small percentage of your portfolio.

It doesn't have to be big five, 10 percent and, and start to look at. Investing in income producing stocks. If you guys are all individual stock or, or even just an index, because the other thing that happens is not only did the, for this dividend Kings, the example, the, the stocks grew. So it's not like the stocks are zero growth.

The stocks actually grew in value and at the same time the dividends grow as well. And so I, I remember meeting a guy in at one of the Motley Fool events. And I was asking him about his portfolio and I said, well, how many stocks do you own? He said, two. I'm like, what are you kidding me? And I think he said he bought Amazon and Microsoft and maybe not Amazon.

There was another, [00:56:00] there was another company. I don't remember the second, the second company, but Microsoft, he bought it in And he only bought a couple thousand dollars worth. And he said, I'd never sold a single share. And he said, 

Jason Hall: that's worked out. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. And he said, what's interesting is that his quarterly dividend check that he gets is more than his original cost basis.

Jason Hall: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Brian Withers: It's just insane. 

Jason Hall: Yeah. 

Brian Withers: And so, that did that, that power of the dividend as is coming from a, from a diehard growth investor for the last 30, you know, 20 plus years. That's amazing. And so to me, there's nothing more than experiencing it. You can see it on paper where the Thornbirds study that that won't do it for you.

But if you buy a dividend stock today, I remember I owned Home Depot 20 years ago. 15 years ago or whatever. And I was like, I sold it after a year. And I'm like, this thing's going nowhere. I'm tired of this thing. 

Jason Hall: And that's what we call the bullshit reason. [00:57:00] 

Brian Withers: Yes, that's definitely, definitely a bullshit reason.

Right. But I, what I didn't realize is I wasn't counting the dividend. I didn't see it. It was a small number. It didn't matter. But yeah, so I would encourage you if you're in your thirties or forties to dabble a little bit in dividend stocks and reinvest them and just see what kind of just see what happens.

And you know, picking out dividend stocks is quite a bit different than picking out gross stocks. But I, it's, it's, I'm, I'm, I'm a changed man. I will never give up my growth side, but definitely this dividend stuff is going to make it so that I don't have to worry about the market on a day to day basis, and that is incredibly it's, it's a great sleep at night factor.

Jeff Santoro: And, and that's good to hear because when you're at the beginning of your stock buying journey, whether you're. young and that's just the beginning of your investing journey or you're like me and there's a, there's 20 plus years of index funds behind you, but you're just starting to buy [00:58:00] stocks. It's really hard to wrap your head around the fact that the 13 cents you get a quarter from the couple hundred dollars of the stock you own can over time with, with buying more and decades and decades turn into actual real money that can change your life.

The, the most tangible example I have is there's. older people who I've known in my life who have now passed. One was my grandmother and one was the great aunt of a friend of mine who both like, we're not investors necessarily, but you know, these are people who lived through the great depression in World War II and all that stuff, but they either inherited or had just a little bit of money in maybe just one company, like because it was the company their husband worked for.

And, and Now here they are in their 80s, just living off dividends, like almost all of their income off of, you know, and it wasn't ever literally planned that way, but it just shows you like what. Decades and decades and decades of not selling dividend stocks can, can do for you.

So I think we're pretty much at the end of the questions we wanted to ask. [00:59:00] Ask, but we want to give you an opportunity, Brian, to let the good people know where they can find you, where they can find Long Term Mindset. And, you know, share any information you want about what you have going on. 

Brian Withers: I'm in a business with two other Brian's. Brian Feroldi and Brian Stoffel and was so excited that I think They asked me to join, not just cause my name was Brian, but I actually brought skills to the team. So. 

Jeff Santoro: You can think that. 

Jason Hall: But mostly because your name's Brian. 

Jeff Santoro: Mostly at the universe of Brian's, you were, you were one of the options.

Brian Withers: There we go. But yeah, so you can check us out. We have a weekly newsletter. A, it's a quick and easy read. Stoffel writes the intro every week and then we share a resource, a Twitter thread uh, a helpful infographic and a couple other things. And it's, and it's just a super easy read and kind of keeps you connected You know, we don't, we don't think we invent all the greatest content in the world.

And so, you know, we share things that we [01:00:00] find that are helpful to all investors, but yeah, you can check us out. Our, our website is longtermmindset.co. Dot C O. If you put in dot com, nobody owns that one, but they, they wouldn't let us buy it for whatever reason. So, uh, but you can, you can put your, your email in.

And you'll, you'll get on our newsletter. 

Jason Hall: We'll have a link in the show notes and also in the transcript. And we'll have a special code that you can get it for absolutely free. It's free. There's not a code. 

Brian Withers: Yeah. I was going to say that's a hundred percent off what the, what the current price.

Jeff Santoro: That's right. It's going to be freer with our code.

Well, I, I, I just want to, I want to plug what you guys are doing too. Um, I, what I like about the regular newsletter kind of reminders is kind of how I think of them is like, it's you forget these things like you talk about them and they're and they're like, Oh, yeah, I remember that I these are things I could keep in mind.

But like, having it in your inbox, like you said, keeping you connected. And I [01:01:00] think that's a good way to think about it. It's just a nice kind of daily activity. Reminder, a weekly reminder, whatever, what's the, I forget what the cadence is of the, of the 

Brian Withers: Wednesdays at 9am. 

Jeff Santoro: Okay. So one, it's like just a weekly reminder that keeps you grounded. And it's just like drives home those universally, you know, known facts about investing that I think makes everyone a better investor. 

Brian Withers: Awesome.

Jason Hall: So normally this is the part of the show where I would say, Brian Withers, thank you for coming.

Coming on with us, but I'm not going to, somebody else is going to say it.

Tate: Thank you, Brian Withers. 

Jason Hall: for coming on. There you go. Yeah, this was great. Great conversation. Look forward to having you back on again sometime. 

Brian Withers: Awesome. Totally fun. I, uh, when, uh, we, we should do it in another 18 months when my portfolio goes up another 60%. 

Jason Hall: And we'll call this the Brian Withers retirement show.

Yeah. 

Brian Withers: I don't know. So the whole retirement thing, we're still trying to figure out. 

Jason Hall: Don't do it. It's overrated. It's overrated. That's my suggestion. Okay. Once again, Brian, thank you so much for coming on. We'll have plenty of [01:02:00] links in both the transcript and in the show notes for folks looking to find Brian, the study that he mentioned, all that kind of stuff.

So in the meantime, I'm going to remind you, Brian's answers, just like mine and Jeff's, they're our answers. They ain't your answers. Try them on if you want to, but then you have to make sure they fit on your own. Find your own answers, friends. You can do it. I believe in you. All right, Jeff. Friend, we'll see you next time.

Jeff Santoro: See you next time. 

Tate: See you next time.