You've Got Enough Money to Quit. Should You? SB1752

The Stacking Benjamins Show

Joe Saul-Sehy and Josh ‘OG’ Bannerman, CFP

Financial Planning, Cfp, Education, Business, Retirement, Personal Finance, Money, Investing

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Here's a question nobody in the FIRE movement talks about: What if you reach financial independence... and don't want to quit?

Joe Saul-Sehy, OG, Paula Pant (Afford Anything), and Doc G (Earn & Invest) tackle the idea of Reverse FIRE—people who've hit their number but choose to keep working anyway. And before you roll your eyes, hear them out.

Because it turns out that having enough money doesn't automatically make you happy. And for a lot of people, walking away from work means walking away from purpose, identity, and the structure that kept them sane. The question isn't just "can I afford to retire?"—it's "what am I retiring to?"

This conversation gets real about the hidden costs of quitting too soon, why some financially independent people feel guilty for wanting to work, and how to think about retirement not as a finish line but as a design problem. Whether you're sprinting toward early retirement or secretly wondering if you'd be bored out of your mind, this episode will make you rethink what freedom actually looks like.

Plus: Doug's T-shirt trivia takes a weird turn (as always), and the crew proves that the best financial conversations happen when nobody's trying to sell you a course.

What You'll Walk Away With:

• Why "enough money" doesn't equal "enough purpose"—and what to do about it

• How to think about work after financial independence (hint: it's not all or nothing)

• The identity crisis nobody warns you about when you stop working—and how to avoid it

• What financially independent people actually do with their time (spoiler: many keep earning)

• Permission to want both: financial security and meaningful work

Before You Hit Play, Think About This:

If money wasn't an issue tomorrow, would you keep doing what you're doing? If the answer is "no"—why are you still doing it? And if the answer is "yes"—what does that tell you about retirement?

Drop your take in the comments. The basement wants to know: Are you racing toward FIRE, or are you building something you never want to leave?

Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.StackingBenjamins.com/201

Enjoy!

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Can you fly this plane and land it? Shirley, you can't be serious. I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. Live from the basement of the YouTube headquarters, it's the Stacking Benjamin's show.
0:29.4	I'm Joe's mom's neighbor, Doug, and you've heard of Financial Independence retire early,
0:32.6	aka the fire movement, right?
0:34.8	Well, then there was Coast Fire,
0:36.9	where you save enough to get on track,
0:38.6	barista fire where you take on small jobs, and even my personal favorite dumpster fire,
0:43.9	where you have absolutely no clue what you're doing. Today, we're expanding that envelope
0:49.0	and asking our panel of financial enthusiasts about reverse fire what is it well stick around to find out
0:57.7	and you know what else you'll find out who's going to win today's installment of our year-long
1:02.8	trivia competition that's what and now a guy who learned reverse with his money before finding
1:09.2	first gear it's joe oh saw see hi
1:16.8	hey there stackers and happy happy friday so happy that you're here welcome to another edition
1:23.1	of the stacky benjamin show i am joe saw see hi And I can't wait to talk about this because, of course,
1:29.2	Doug, everybody else talks about how important the fire movement is. Leave it to Stacky
1:35.7	Benjamin's that we're like, what if we do this whole thing backwards? Wait a minute. We've got a
1:42.1	different thought. What if we look behind us and go the other way? It's going to be
1:46.7	fun. So strap in everybody. Get ready for a wild ride because we're going to introduce the team
1:53.1	that helps us on Fridays with these discussions, starting with the gentleman across the card
1:58.0	table from me. Oh, geez here. How are you, man? Back away from the camera. Oh, hey, oh. Hey, I'm right here. Take a step back. Super happy that you're here with us. And he's getting it all together. And the woman in Manhattan, high above Manhattan, Paula Pant is here from Fort Anything. How are you?
2:19.0	I am so happy to be here.
2:36.1	I can't wait for today's discussion. We got a good one. You're just like Friday in reverse. Actually, it's Friday we want to go forward to Saturday, don't we? Yeah, yeah, you know? But if you love your work, Friday, you just want to be in the present. Forever. We're going to talk about how great that is to extend
2:34.9	the Friday. And even because these are older people that we're going to be talking about, too,
	...

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