Ben Felix: The Problem With Saving 10% of Your Income

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How has that shaped your view on your finances, your life, the things that matter? It forces you to be like, "Okay, I might not be here a year." I mean, I know who you are. Tid us. He subscribed today, as he said. But I just want to introduce you briefly if that's okay for the people at home that might not know your channel. So your Ben Felix, your portfolio manager and chief investment officer at PWL Capital, but you're known on the internet because of your YouTube channel and your podcast. I think, for me personally, I watch your content. As a finance creator myself, I don't watch many finance creators, but I really enjoy your content. And I think that's because of the academic rigour you bring to the space, the research. You don't mind standing there and challenging. You're quite contrarian, like your views on dividends have rattled more than a few people and you keep going back to poke that bear, don't you? But I think you're unique in that sense of the papers that you cite and the research that you bring. So first of all, thank you for that. It's really interesting content. He says this to all the finance creators, by the way. Just so you know, no, I'm joking. And I, Deemra does talk about you. I know he's a big fan, but I want to ask the most important question. I hear your six foot 11 and you're just like me, you're a basketball player. Is that correct? I am a basketball player. Yeah, I was listed at 6'11. I'm like six foot nine and three quarters without shoes on. So you can interpret that how you want. That's how we do it in basketball. Pretty short, right? I mean, I'm six three, but you would make me look tiny. I mean, I make you look, everyone makes you look tiny. Yeah. Little fellow. Yeah. I mean, it lists you as a C as your position. Is that right? Centre. Centre. So you're done here on people? Not so much anymore, but there was a time. You also rode, right? I did rode. Yeah. I rode for a few years in high school. I was pretty good at rowing, but I decided to focus on basketball. My dad actually rode for Canada. I rode at Durham University, so I know a bit, enjoyed it, but probably caught me at the wrong point of my life in the sense of you always out on the water at 6'a.m. so it often becomes straight from the bar with a gin and tonic in my hand into the boat just off the go. It was a. That sounds awful. Yeah, it was. You'd often be sick and people would be like, "Look how hard he's working." He's been sick. That's what you want. Rowan, a 2K in my under eight minutes, puke off the start of boat, people would be like, "Yeah, that's the kind of training we need." But it was just the hangover. Before we get into the serious finance topics, I'd love to know kind of the shift from pretty good basketballer into the finance world. How did that happen? By mistake, really. I never planned on going into finance. I studied mechanical engineering when I was playing basketball. I went to school in the US in Boston at Northeast Junior University, did a degree in engineering. Then I was able to go back to Canada to play a little bit more basketball. I was hoping to be a professional player, but that never worked out. I had some injuries, had some disagreements with my coach and just decided to stop playing. But when I came back to Canada to play, I had to pick a university program, a master's program. I didn't really want to do a master's in engineering. I didn't think I'd be well suited to work as an engineer and I figured if I did a master's in engineering, that's what I would end up doing. I did an MBA, figured that would open lots of other doors and pick the finance concentration because that was supposed to be the hardest one, which is also how I picked engineering in the first place. That was it. Then that led me to getting a job in finance and that's how it all happened. You picked routes based on them being the hardest? Academically, yeah. Yeah. You enjoyed that challenge. Even at that age, you were like, I want to be testing myself to that level. Yeah, that's kind of how I thought about it. I always figured that doing a hard degree would give you lots of optionality, even if you didn't end up working in that field. I wish I had to kind of force that at that age. And you did accounting and finance? I did finance, but like I just admitted to the fact I was drinking gin and tonics for 5am before getting to the bar to rest. I wasn't quite as future focused. No, no, not similar paths really. And the personal finance stuff I do now, I didn't learn much of that at all through my finance degree that was more traditional finance, marketing, all that kind of stuff. Perfect. So I want to start with a serious question. Well, we want to go into the serious questions now. You said in a brief in chat, and I've heard you say as well before that there's no piece of research really that you've ever read that changed the way you think too drastically because that's not the way it works. But some of the stuff that you've put out has changed the way I think, or at least challenged it. And I just wanted to know is there any one paper or bit of research that you've studied that's challenged you most, or the way that you think about finance? Challenge me most. I mean, the one the one paper and podcast guest that I think challenged the way that I think, and a lot of people think about portfolio management and long term investing is Scott Cedarberg's paper on the relative risk of stocks and bonds for long term investors. That was one that was like, okay, there's more to think about than things like maximizing the sharp ratio, which is really a short term term or a single period return measure. And so when you start thinking about different things, like what's the most sustainable way to fund long term spending? Bonds, nominal bonds, bonds that are not indexed to inflation, which is most bonds, start to become pretty risky for long term investors and stocks actually start to become a little bit safer. So that was one where I think it was counterintuitive and changed the way that I thought about some things. But yeah, other ones that really challenged the way that I think, I don't know, that's a tough. Let me give you one then, challenge my way of thinking because I think that would help you explore. Beyond the status quo and this idea of a domestic home bias, quite a large home bias, so just to explain is the idea that you buy what you buy, you have an exposure to the place that you're from, right? In the UK, so as a global component, the UK would make up maybe 4% of total global markets, but this paper suggested that you may have as much as 33%. I know that you, for your clients, being a Canadian, have a domestic bias, is that correct? I think I remember the video correctly. Yes, so that's the same paper actually. That's a different finding from that paper, but that's the same paper that I was referring to about the asset allocation for long term investors and how that differs from short term. But yeah, one of the findings in the paper is that a home country bias, some level of home country bias probably does make sense. We do. We're similar roughly in Canada, we're about 3% of the global market, and we, my firm, but not just us, you look around the market. BlackRock has an asset allocation suite of products, which are ETFs that you can buy one ETF, and it gives you a globally diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds if you so choose. They have different asset allocations. They do a pretty significant home country bias to Canada. Vanguard has a similar suite of products. Same thing. Same thing. Same. Same. Similar idea. They're not, they don't shift the allocation over time. They're constant allocation funds, so you buy like a 60/40 portfolio, and that's what you get forever. Anyway, so they all do a pretty significant home country bias. Vanguard actually has a research showing why they've done it that way, and that research was based on a minimum volatility analysis, which is, you know, it's very time period specific. I don't love that justification, but that's one of the reasons they did it. Dimensional fund advisors, which are the products that we use, they are also in their asset allocation funds, build in a similar home country bias. So yeah, we do it, and it's like around a third of portfolios. So, you know, you asked about challenging my views. That paper did not challenge my views, because I read it, and I was like, great. It says we should be doing exactly what we're doing. So I asked Vanguard UK why the life strategy funds had a UK lean, especially I would say like the last period where there's been American dominance and a pretty lackluster UK performance. And their argument was at the time we designed those funds, people in the UK wanted a UK lean. So if you come out of like the 2000, the early 2000s, period of pre-2008, the UK market was strong, so people bought the UK market. They kind of chased the performance, right? And they thought that if they offered a product that didn't have that, it wouldn't be as popular. There wasn't really a discussion around the fact that it's beneficial to have that. So can you help us understand why it might be beneficial to have a lean to a domestic market, especially outside of the US? Yeah. So I know you talk to Elridimson about this, and he disagrees with my position, and he's like not one of the people in the world that I would want to disagree with on something, but I guess here we are. So the justifications that I would give are at least from a Canadian perspective, it is more cost and tax-efficient. for Canadian to own Canadian stocks, then to own international stocks. So that's one piece. So if we take, if you think about like the average investor should own the world market portfolio in market capitalization weights, which would put a Canadian at 3% of Canadian equity for the equity portion of their portfolio, and then you think about what are the reasons that would shift you from that position. So if we say, okay, for the average investor, you own 3% in Canada. But then we say, okay, but you're in Canada and it's actually a lot cheaper to buy a Canadian ETF, a Canadian equity ETF, and it's a little bit more tax-efficient. So okay, maybe a Canadian shifts a little bit away from 3% because they're different from the average world investor in that one way. And then you start looking at other stuff like local consumption hedging, like the cost of buying stuff in Canada and how that relates to equity performance in that country. I think that's what the beyond the status quo paper that you mentioned. That's probably what they found in there. Like that's probably the reason is that there's a relationship between domestic equity returns and domestic consumption, which leads to such a high home country bias. So that's a somewhat empirical justification. It's like when you look at what has been optimal around the world historically, which is what that paper does. They find the roughly one third. It's really like between, I can't remember, maybe like 10% and 30% is sort of optimal. And it's not a whole lot different within that range, but lower starts to look worse and higher starts to look worse. So there's that one. And then Vanguard had the one that I mentioned where they looked at the what gives you the least amount of volatility for a given level of expected return. And they found about 30% in Canada historically has given you that portfolio, which is I don't love that one because it's very time period specific. I did extend their analysis back to 1900 actually using the Dimson, Dimson Marstant and the data set and found a similar thing going back to 1900 until 2024, I think the optimal allocation to Canada for Canadian investor was about 30%. And again, that's very time period specific. So I don't love that one. The other is a consumption hedging cost and tax efficiency, some level of empirical support. And the one that I think is really interesting that it probably doesn't get thought about enough, but Eugene Pharma brought it up when he was on the ration reminder on my podcast as a reason for home country bias, which is protection from expropriation in times of geopolitical conflict. And he said that I was like, whoa, I never really thought about that. But he basically said that in times of in in bad times, in times of conflict, in times of war, foreign investors don't get treated very well. And so it doesn't really show up in the data like in the Dimson, Marstant and data, they give you the historical return series of all the different countries. But that doesn't necessarily reflect stuff completely like, you know, if you were a foreign investor in Russia recently, you lost your investments. Russian stocks didn't go to zero, but for a foreign investor they did. And so that little bits of the pieces that happened over time, but you will not get that issue in your domestic stock market. So that's another like hard to measure, hard to quantify reason that domestic stocks may be a little bit safer for somebody in that country. I think those are probably the big reasons. But again, it's like even in the in the stat, beyond the status quo paper, they find a somewhere between 10 and 30% is a good home country bias empirically. So if someone said I don't want to have a home country bias, I don't think that that's going to be super detrimental. If someone said I want to have a 70% or 80% home country bias for a small market like Canada of the UK, that's probably going to be detrimental. But if you're within that range of 10 to 30%, I personally don't think that that's problematic and I think that there are reasonably good arguments that it's beneficial. So you mentioned our way and you got ahead of the push back there, but I just want to, you know, he would say, he said to us essentially that a UK investor is exposed to the UK market through their labor. They work in that market and I'd, the argument is you go and diversify away from the economy that you operate in. What would you say to that? Yeah. So you know what? I was going to, I didn't pull it up. I was going to look at beyond the status quo because they do actually look at, they do look at the correlation between your labor income and your domestic stock market in that paper to address that exact criticism or concern and they do still find a home country bias. I just don't remember how it varied based on labor income. Let me just look real quick because you guys don't mind. Yeah, it's in the awards. Okay. So it's in table seven here. Yeah, they're income domestic correlation. Yeah, here we go. So they've got optimal asset class weights. This is table seven of the beyond the status quo paper on page 49 for anyone that wants to go and check it out. I don't know how near to your listeners are. Some of them are pretty naïve, definitely. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So panel L of table seven in this paper, they look at income domestic stock correlations between 0.1 and 0.5. And I'd have to go check the other part of the paper, but I'm pretty sure that there was an academic reference for those labor income correlations. And at a labor correlation of 0.1, they still find the optimal domestic allocation to be 30%, which is a little bit lower than the base case, which has a just the income and stock market is uncorrelated. And then when you go all the way up to the higher end of the range of an income domestic stock correlation of 0.5, the optimal home country allocation is 18%. So it falls if you assume there's a high correlation, but not by that much. Anyway. Yeah. And then market like the UK or Canada where they operate with massive international companies, you might not be exposed. You might be exposed more to international events than you are to domestic ones. You might, maybe if you're working in a FTSE 250 business, I don't know. You know, it's, if you're working at AstraZeneca, it's a global player, right? More than it is. Yeah. Yeah. So I can see that counter. We'll have to get our way back on and continue this, this far in much. He said as well, similar to you, he's going to agree to you with you this time. So this is good news for you. Around expected returns, he expects lower returns going forwards. Could you just kind of share with us on the audience why you believe that that's the case over the next century, 10 years, 20 years or whatever period you measure that over? Well, it really just comes down to valuations, which I believe is what Al-Roy would have been talking about as well. I read all of his stuff. He's someone that I'd love to get on our podcast. One of the, they have an old paper. I believe it's called the, the world equity risk premium, a smaller puzzle or something like that. It's an older paper, but there's this idea and finance that stock returns have been too high. It's called the equity premium puzzle. They've been higher than they should be based on any economic model. And that's usually based on US data. So they have this paper from a while ago where they look at international markets and they show that the equity risk premium has actually been smaller when you look around the world. So the US is basically an outlier. But one of the things they do in that paper is they decompan, they do this in their yearbook too, I believe. They decompose the historical sources of returns from different markets. And they talk about how they're a repeatable and non-repeatable sources of returns and increases in equity valuations over a period of time. They talk about as being non-repeatable because if returns have been what they have been in the US market, for example, because evaluations have expanded because you're paying more for every dollar of earnings that you buy of expected future earnings that you buy, that portion of the return you would only expect to repeat if you expect valuations to continue to expand. If you expect to continue paying more and more for each dollar of company earnings that you're buying. Which historically, when valuations have been high, they have tended to either level out or come down. So they either tend to have lower returns for a long period of time or you have a market correction where valuations come down. Valuations don't typically continue expanding forever and ever. And I mean, at some level, of course that can't happen. You're not going to pay an infinitely large amount for every dollar of company earnings. It just wouldn't make any economic sense. And so when you look around right now, US stock market valuations are quite high relative to history. And so we're in this period where the US market has done exceptionally well. Their economic fundamentals have been very good. And they've got the largest, most successful companies in the world that have continued to generate significant profits and all that's great and has been happening. One of the results of that is that US stock returns have been really high. And part of the reason is that US stock valuations have expanded on the expectation that this incredible economic performance is going to continue in perpetuity. And again, when we look through history, when valuations have been as high as they are now, future returns have tended to be lower. And so I think there are two cautions. One, at the very least, I don't think it makes sense to look at recent US stock returns and extrapolate that into the future. Which has been high because of fundamentals have improved, which is a repeatable portion of the realized return, but also because valuations have expanded, which is not repeatable. So it doesn't make sense to look at US returns for the last 10 years or 20 years or whatever and say, yep, I expect that really high return to continue forever. which I think a lot of people actually do. And then the other side of that, or the other piece of that, is beyond just not expecting the high returns of recent history to continue forever, it may make sense to temper your expectations. Maybe we should expect returns that are quite a bit lower from the US market specifically going forward because evaluations right now are so high. So I agree with Illinois on this, as you mentioned, and I think it's something that probably doesn't get quite enough recognition or attention. And it does tie back to things like, you should probably be diversified in markets outside the US. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but it's common, two things are common in Canada. It's common for people to have a home country biased to Canada. One that's even larger than I would say makes sense. Like I think the average home country allocation, last time I looked from Vanguard, had a paper on this, was like 60%. That's too high. But the other thing is you see a lot of investors are just investing the US stock market because they look at the ETFs that are out there and they say, wow, that S&P 500 ETF has done really well. I'm going to invest there. And that's what that becomes their whole portfolio. So I think that's a real risk for a lot of investors right now. They've invested solely in the US market because it has done so well in recent history. But I also think it's the market that has the lowest expected returns. Now the problem with this is, I've been saying the same thing for like five years. And I think Elroy has too because - Some people have been saying it for 15 years, you know? - Yeah, and the market has just, you know, blowing away all expectations and valuations have continued to rise. Fundamentals have continued to get better. So it's a really tough thing. I'm not, and I guess that ties back to what am I actually saying. I'm not saying you should short the US market or not invest in the US market at all. I'm just saying it's probably reasonable to expect lower returns than we've had in recent history. And it probably makes sense to be diversified in the markets outside the US. - Yeah, I think when it comes down, we're all doing this to hit a goal, right? To hit a financial goal of retirement, whatever, and you have a number. And what you're basically saying is be a bit more conservative in your forecasting because if you're sitting going, well, the market's done 16% on average in the last five years. I'll just run that number out and there we go. And another forecast in tool that you've kind of been a bit, you critical of is the 4% rule? Or the use of that rule in terms of safe withdrawal rates. I know that you said a withdrawal rate close to 2%, 3%, is probably more realistic than a 4%. So this is how much you can draw off a portfolio and it lasts for a typical retirement length. 2% to 3%, lower expected returns. I guess the question I want to put to you is how is anyone going to hit retirement if returns are lower and withdrawal rates need to be lower as well, meaning portfolio sizes need to be much bigger? Yeah, so I think that there was kind of the end of the video where I suggested that the 2.7% rule makes more sense than the 4% rule. At the end of that video, I basically say that none of this really matters because the fixed withdrawal rates are not very useful anyway. So I think if people are doing their financial planning, thinking that they need to spend a fixed amount from their portfolio every year, that's problematic. And yeah, people need to save a lot because expected returns are low. And because when you factor in markets outside of the US, 4% has not been sustainable anyway. Then you add in longer life expectancies for all these reasons. If you just take the original 4% rule research that was done by Bill Bengan. So he did this research, I believe in 1994. And if you just take what he did and test it against markets outside the US, 4% is not sustainable. And if you test it for longer life expectancies than what he looked at, 4% is not sustainable, which is a problem I think because many people who are planning to retire early, which even if life expectancies weren't rising, it would be a problem. If it's based on a 30 to 40 year retirement period and someone's retiring for 50 to 60 years, maybe not so good. Yeah, so basically the point of my 2.7% rule video was if you repeat Bill Bengan's analysis exactly the same way that he did it, but using international stocks, using longer life expectancies, not even moderating for currently lower expected returns. I didn't even include that in that analysis. You get a number that's much lower than 4%. So that's whatever, 2.7% to 3% or something like that. If you must use a fixed withdrawal rate, then yeah, I mean, you have to save more than you would under a 4% rule. But like, I don't think that's the right way to do financial planning. Nobody would spend down their portfolio with a fixed withdrawal rate plan if things were not going as expected. If markets were worse than they were hoping that they would be when they were tired. But I don't think people would just keep their head down and keep spending, spending, spending until their portfolio was depleted. They would course correct, they would realize, hey, things aren't going as expected. I'm gonna spend, I'm not gonna go on that trip this year. I'm not gonna buy my parents as lavish of a gift this year. I don't know, stuff like that. People can cut discretionary expenses to address changes in the world around them as they go through their retirement period. And I think that's realistically how most people plan and live. I mean, we see that with our clients, people do make adjustments. When you factor that in, the total amount that people can spend throughout the retirements is a lot higher. In percentage terms over the long run, it's just not a fixed annual percentage or a fixed annual dollar amount of spending. So it's harder to think about and communicate proper retirement spending planning. The nice thing about the 4% rule is that it's super easy. It's super easy to do the math on how much do I have to save for retirement. If I can live off of the 4% rule, it's harder to think about a variable spending plan and how much you can spend over your lifetime doing that. But I don't actually think that the, that the amount you have to have saved is as insurmountable as it would seem. If you say, oh, 2.7%, I need to have X amount saved. It's probably a lot lower than that when you factor in a proper variable spending plan. - We mentioned earlier you've got a podcast, the rational reminder, which I think is an amazing name for a podcast. But why do you think people struggle so hard with being rational in investing? - Well, yeah, I don't think that they should be rational necessarily. The genesis of that name was, you know, we don't think people should be perfectly rational all the time, but we think that they should understand what a rational person would do so that they can make informed decisions about the trade-offs. Investing is hard. Like there's so much uncertainty about future returns. You can never know if what you're doing is actually right. And even if it is, it can feel wrong or seem wrong for a long time. So I think that's really hard. And then so many of the biases that affect decision-making, the cognitive and behavioral biases that affect good decision-making, they just show up so easily and so prominently in financial markets. So I think that it's just, it's a playground for biases and that makes decision-making when it comes to investing really hard. Like people aren't good at thinking long-term, they're not good at thinking about compounding. It's like our brains just don't comprehend exponential growth over time. That makes long-term decision-making hard. We are drawn to attention-grabbing stuff so that might be a stock that's done well recently or a news headline about how bad things are going to get. And that'll be a very prominent thought in our minds when we're trying to make a decision, a long-term decision, even though that information probably shouldn't matter. Other than, I mean, those are some of the big ones, but it's tough out there. - Do you think it's unique to invest in this kind of, this playground that you talk about? Are there any other areas in life or fields where you believe it's as challenging, it's as about the human? - Well, yeah, so I did a podcast episode. I wanted to do a video on my channel too. I just haven't gone around to it yet. But it was, I called it investing in your health and I drew a bunch of parallels between investing in financial markets and investing in your physical and mental health. And I think that a lot of the parallels are compounding, like health compounds over time, wealth compounds over time. And that's not easy to think about, which makes it easy to whatever, not save in a given month because you want to spend, but you're not thinking about the compounding effects or have a more conservative portfolio rather than a more aggressive one without thinking about the expected return trade off because you don't understand how impactful that can be in the long run. And then with health, it's like whatever, eating the bacon cheeseburger feels like it's not that big of a deal in the moment, but you do that every week or every day for years and all of a sudden in both cases, you wake up with less wealth than you had hoped when you're 55 or heart disease in the case of health when you're 55. And by the time you realize, oh, I made a mistake or I shouldn't have done that, I should have done that differently, there's not much you can do. You can't undo compounding because it needs time to work and it would likewise need time to be, well, I don't even know if you can unravel it. If you wake up in your 50 years old and don't have any savings, that's gonna be tough to recover from. Likewise with health and heart disease and stuff like that. So yeah, I think health is an interesting one where there are a ton of parallels where long-term thinking is beneficial, but not easy to do. short term thinking is easy and often pleasurable, but it leads to these incremental degradations that don't show up until they show up all at once, slowly and then all at once. - Yeah, and there's no one single workout or lift that you could point to that you say, that's the reason I became strong and fit, in the same way it's more about consistency of effort over time with investing. I say to my personal trainer all the time, you have got everything you need to be a long-term investor because you're in great shape. And then I come in the next week and he's like, so should I buy Tesla? And I'm like, no, mate, come on, come on. Like, oh no, you not got this yet, you know? It's funny to see that. Yeah, discipline people in fitness should be amazing for investors and probably why you're good at it because you were disciplined within sport, right? - Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't know, I never feel the pull to do weird stuff with my investments. I really, I don't know, I just don't have the experience. - I don't think that is, I mean, I'm a disciplined athlete or like, exercise or but I couldn't say, I'm getting more disciplined in investing but I don't think there's a correlation. I know so many people that they work out every day but they're terrible with money, they're scared to invest. So I think it's, there were definitely similarities but I don't think just 'cause you got the discipline to exercise every day, you got the discipline to, you know, stay in the stock market, have an investment strategy and stick to it and not think with it. - I also think there's an element of like, understanding that you can. I mean, as a white guy who grew up in Innocentie Birmingham in the UK, I never really thought about the fact that I could play basketball. It's like play football, go for a swim. You know, these are the things that were in front of me and if you're a kid and you're born on a basketball court like within your community, right? You think that's what we do. - That's a good point. - So, and how many people from where you're from even think that the market is something that they could do approach and if they were just consistent, bought the same thing one thing one time and did it like they played basketball, then it would work for them. - That's true. - So yeah, I don't know if it's like an exposure thing as much as anything else. - There's a pretty famous Canadian book called The Wealthy Barber as written for a Canadian audience in 1989. It sold like a few million copies, but the author, Dave Chilton, bit of a Canadian celebrity and he just wrote a new version of the book, which I've got a video coming out. I think this Sunday kind of reviewing the book, but one of the first lessons in the book is you can do this. It's basically just saying like even if you don't think you have the financial mind with the mathematical mind to manage your investments and to make good financial decisions, you can do it. It's basically not that hard, but I think it's a powerful message that the first lesson in this book about long-term decision-making is these words of encouragement. Even if you feel like you didn't come from the right background or don't have the right knowledge to do this, you can do it. It's not that hard. - I want to ask about your investment approach because you're saying long-term diversification, but then you manage money for clients, right? And is that under the pretense of that you could beat the market? - No, no. So we use funds for a company called Dimensional Fund Advisors, which are really similar to index funds. They tilt a little bit toward smaller and lower priced stocks. So I just call it like an index fund with an edin's-based tilt. They're not technically index funds because they don't track an index, but they look very similar to an index fund. They've got super low fees, they're tax-efficient, all that kind of good stuff. But that's not our value proposition. We use those because they're evidence-based and we think that they make sense. But if someone comes to us and says, I want to invest with you guys so I can access those funds that you use, we would say, no, that's not what we do. You should not pay our fees for that purpose. Our main value proposition is the marriage of portfolio management, tax-aware portfolio management, and financial planning. So that covers things like tax and state planning, retirement planning, and you add that in with portfolio management, integrate them all together. That's generally referred to as wealth management. So that's what we do for clients. And that's kind of the, I don't know, objective service. Like those are the things that we do. But people usually pay us for those services for sure. But they're really paying us, I think, for peace of mind where they have someone that they know and trust, where they can offload this stuff. They know that we're doing good work. They know that we're giving them good advice and they don't have to think about it. And I've always been a huge advocate of do-it-yourself investing, DIY investing, and I think that's a great thing for people to learn and for people to do. But man, if I think about myself, I am a good client of my firm. Like our clients are like me. I've got a reasonably high income, I've got some investments. I'm very busy with my work and with my family. I don't have time to think about stuff like, I mean, in my case, it's not a great example 'cause I think about managing portfolios all day. But if there was some other thing that was similarly important, I don't have time to think about learning how to do it, watching content, building spreadsheets, all that kind of stuff, doing analysis for something that's not core to my work or my family. So I think for busy people who have better stuff to do with their time, firms like PWL can be really viable because they can just say, take this and it's out of their head. So that's what our clients typically look like. But the value of the property is really financial planning, portfolio management on paper, but it's really peace of mind. - That would be a great compliment. - To make this go. - To make this go. - Yeah, so that reassurance is big. But when you look at what actually gets discussed in client meetings, yeah. There's a lot of sort of therapy and Jason stuff. 'Cause a lot of it, it's like what I talked to it earlier with the rational reminder idea. It's like giving people the information, here are the trade-offs, here are the considerations you should be thinking about in making this decision, but then people wanna talk through the social or emotional or familial implications of the thing that they're going to do. And who it's gonna affect and how and how they might feel after the fact. So that's a lot of the discussions or stuff like that. So as you have to have the skills and the knowledge from a financial planning perspective and a portfolio management perspective to frame the trade-offs for people, but that's really what people are doing. They're making trade-offs that are gonna affect non-financial areas of their life, and they wanna do that in a way that's informed. And that's what I think a good financial advisor accomplishes. - From speaking to your clients and to yourself, do you think there's a point where more money just stops making it happy? Like enough, there's a certain point when you've got enough and it doesn't make a difference if you get an extra 100 grand, an extra million or two. - Yeah, so I think that the research on this, I can think about clients. I can think about very wealthy clients who are very happy and very wealthy clients who are unhappy. I think that distribution's always gonna be there, but if you think about averages, if you think about what the literature says on this, I think it is pretty interesting where there does tend to be increasing well-being, increasing happiness with increasing wealth. But that does tend to plateau a little bit. There's a recent paper found that it, depending on what type of happiness you're measuring, it actually doesn't plateau, but it is increasing with log wealth. - No, well. - Which means like, yeah. So it's like, if you're making a million dollars an extra $10,000 is not going to make you much happier, but an extra $100,000 might. And then as your income increases, the proportional amount of additional wealth or income that you need to feel happier is increasing at that rate, not linearly. So like $10,000 will make someone who makes $10,000 very happy, but $10,000 isn't gonna affect someone with a million dollars, but if you increase it on a log scale, then it does have a lasting impact. But I think that there is still like, the money you need to cover your basic needs, that's obviously necessary and people will be miserable without that. And then there's a point where you have enough to be comfortable, you're probably enjoying yourself, you can go on trips, whatever, you don't have to worry too much about money. I think that that's probably a sweet spot. And then as well, it starts to increase above that. Yeah, I think there's probably diminishing returns to increasing wealth. Now, I think we all start to think about trade-offs. If someone said, "Band, you want a billion dollars," I would say, "Yes." And I'm sure that I would be happy to have it and I could do whatever I wanted with my billion dollars. But if someone said, you are gonna have to grind for the next 20 years and not see your family to get a billion dollars. But I still do it, probably not. So I think we have to think about trade-offs when we're thinking about the marginal utility of wealth, like how much happier will you be with more money? I think everybody would be happier with more money if it was dropped in their lap. But that's not what happens. And so when you think about the trade-offs, having to work more hours, having to be maybe more stressed with the job with more responsibility and all that kind of stuff, yeah, I think that the trade-off starts to get less attractive once you already have a high amount of wealth or a high amount of income. So how do you, with your clients, build that into retirement planning and kind of, how do you shape a good retirement for them, holistically, not just a dollar figure? We talk about that. So I wrote this paper called "Finding and Funding a Good Life." I don't know when that was a few years ago. And I basically just tried to take academic papers, other books, and I tried to just take it all and synthesize it into a relatively short paper that has, at the end of each section, it has what I called reflective questions about whatever the topic was. You know what, let me pull it up. We can tell you some of the questions. And so our advisors now, when they're meeting with clients, they'll factor this type of stuff into the planning process. So it's not just like, Do your client what do you want to retire with? Okay, here's what you need to do. It's like let's have a conversation and reflect about what a good life looks for you and how we're going to afford that. So let's see. So there's a section on circumstances and adaptation. So that's like a big part of that literature on diminishing returns to increasing wealth from the perspective of happiness. This is the idea that we adapt to our circumstances. So you give me the billion dollars that I talked about earlier. I'd be like super pumped at first, but the happiness boost that I get from that would decrease over time as I adapt to my circumstances. Whatever I'm eating caviar and stuff every day. I don't even like caviar, but whatever, expensive stuff. And at first I'm like super pumped about it. It's all new and fun, but then you adapt to it and that happiness boost goes away. So I've got the section of the paper on that, just explaining how that works and why it happens. And then the questions to reflect, when contemplating a major purchase, do you have a narrow focus on one aspect of it or do you consider how it will impact your life minute to minute? Which is a big thing. People talk about I want to buy a cottage. And it's like, okay, let's talk about why that's important to you. And people usually imagine the great memories they're going to have with the kids and the grandkids or whatever it may be at the cottage, but they don't think about the two hour drive and traffic on the weekend to get there or the kids spilling their drink in the back seat and messing the car up or having to go there in the winter because we have seasons in Canada to go and shut the cottage down before it gets too cold. Or like having to go there in the middle of the winter because of pipe bursts like all that kind of stuff. They don't think about how it will affect their life minute to minute. They just think about the one good aspect of it and that can lead to questionable decisions. This is another one. This one, man, I use this with my kids too. It's in a different way. Have you made a major purchase expecting it to increase your happiness? Did it? And people think about that. They reflect back on some major purchase and they think, "Oh, I did that. "Effect my happiness." And a lot of the times that the answer's no. I use it with my kids because they'll be like, "I want this new toy or whatever." And I'm like, do you remember how hard you worked to get this other toy? And they're like, yeah. I was like, "How'd you feel when you got it?" Like, super excited. Do you ever play with it now? And it's like, no, it's like sitting in the box over there. Okay, do you think the same thing's gonna happen with this toy that you want now? And I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. Anyway. - My son would not give me the toy. - I know, honestly. I've got about 100 little poor patrol doggies in my house and Damien bought a giant tower for my son. I said, don't buy anything big. Damien bought something this big for my son. - It's got a fog on on the top of it. - It's got a fog on it. It's got cars, it's got everything. And I'm just like, I just keep stepping on the pieces. - I have a bad role model for kids. Unfortunately, but no, no, I get that. I try and have that conversation with him and my son is 12 and he's just so, he's like, yeah, no, I'll run that risk. I'll say, give me the toy. - Yeah, my oldest is 11, same. - No. - Yeah, they sometimes get it, but sometimes they're pretty persistent. Anyway. - You got any other questions? - I need other son there, they're good. - So this is, we're still on just the one section. Oh, this is an interesting one. Have your values and preferences changed in the last decade? - Do you expect them to change in the next decade? - Because people will think they'll focus on some long-term goal. I really want to accomplish this thing. I'm gonna make these sacrifices today to accomplish that. But part of the problem with that is this thing called the end of history illusion, which is like people change over time, but they think at any moment in time that they have become the person that they're gonna be forever, which doesn't tend to be the case. And so someone makes these, I'm gonna make these big sacrifices. I'm gonna do all this stuff to try and achieve this end state. But they don't recognize that they may be a different person five years from now, 10 years from now. And that may materially change what the objectives are making the sacrifices they made to get there in hindsight a waste. - I think a good way to make yourself realize that is to look at your parents and look at how they've changed over your lifetime. My mom was desperate to retire. She retired, she went back to work. That tells me that I might do that. Or when you say to people, "Oh, don't worry about retirement too much, you might want to work longer." I get comments going, "Why would anyone do that? "I can't wait to quit." And I'm like, "Well, I'll look at the old people around me in 20, 30% of them are still working past retirement, so there's a good chance." - Yep, totally. And my parents are not working for money right now, but they're probably busier now than they were previously, 'cause they've taken up all these different volunteer positions and they're doing a ton of stuff. I agree with you on that. - Can you give us one more? - Can we get a copy of this? - Yeah, the share with the audience, 'cause I think the people would do it. - Yeah, it's on our website. So I wrote this paper, so we had this guy named Brian Portnoy. He wrote a book called The Geometry of Wealth. We had him on our podcast, and we did a year-long sort of consulting engagement with him, where he worked with our team of financial planners to get better at this at these sort of software skills. And at first, I was like, this makes no sense. Like why are we giving people advice that's not specifically related to finances? It took me a while to get it, but I eventually kind of clicked and I was like, oh man, okay, this is actually really big. And I needed a way to make it really actionable though, so I went and wrote this paper. I didn't think it was gonna be a big deal, but I don't know if it still is, but for years it was the most downloaded paper on our website. Anyway, and it really did transform the way that we interact with our clients because we focus on all this stuff. But it's on our website, but I'll send you a link. - Thanks. So this is still in the same section on circumstances and adaptation, but there's a section, a subsection on income satiation points, which is what we were talking about earlier, like one happiness, plateaus with increasing income. And so some of the questions there are, how would your life change if you earned an extra $1,000 per month? What would you spend it on? In some cases, it's like, you know, I would pay a little bit more rent so I can have a room for my kid instead of sharing a room. It's like, oh, that's, that's probably pretty impactful. But sometimes it's like whatever, I don't know, I'd buy a second Lamborghini. So that's maybe not the best. - It's also good to remember, it may me remember a time when a thousand pound would have been absolutely life changing. And like beacon, I should be grateful for the fact that now that is not the case. And kind of think, I'm really bad at looking back at past me and going, it was hard back then. You've done well. Congratulations to yourself. - I think it's really important to, like you said, remember what you could survive on before 'cause a lot of times you get more money, you get a raise, and then suddenly you buy a new house with a bigger garden so you've got more gardening bills or you've got a new car which takes more gas. Whereas me, obviously 'cause I'm a bit late to this whole long-term investing, I'm like, I just got a raise for $1,000 about two months ago. And I'm like, well, I can survive without it. So I'll just stick it in my pension straight away. But I know if I start spending it, I'll get used to having a new salary. So I think, yeah, if you know what you can survive on, you can deploy it a bit more tactically. - And if that 1,000 pounds is not gonna produce a marked increase in your quality of life today, well, you might as well save it for tomorrow because you're probably gonna get a better outcome from that down the line, right? - Yeah, so that's the perpetual tradeoff. It's an economics is called the marginal utility of consumption. How much happier will you be from spending money now as opposed to saving it for the future? And there's always a tradeoff there because spending money now can make you happier. Like Tee, if you, I don't know, if there was something that you really needed or really wanted or could improve your life and you spent that money now, like maybe that would be a good tradeoff as opposed to saving it. I think a lot of people, when they learn about personal finance, they build the reflex to save because that's what a lot of people talk about. And it's probably a good reflex. People do need to save. But I also think there's, you know, the idea for example, that everybody should save 10% of their income no matter what always. I think that's problematic because for a lot of people, they probably shouldn't be saving. If someone has a rising income, or expects a rising income over their life, and maybe you're there in our tea, so saving is the right thing to do. But if someone has a rising income over their life, when they're young, maybe they shouldn't be saving. - I wasn't, I was just enjoying the life of the other person. I know I definitely did. - Well, not my pension, but I nailed the first part of life. - Yeah, we have an organization in the UK, like kind of like a think tanker, the Institute for Physical Studies and they model out retirement savings because we essentially have a linear approach of 8% your whole life. And they basically argue this doesn't accommodate for the fact that your skin in your 20s, you have kids in your 30s, and you have really high disposable income in your 40s and 50s. And they model different paths, and you see how lumpy they are, and they're optimizing for lifetime spending, so that you don't have this like feast and famine, which I think most of us kind of relate to at different points. And they conclude the same thing of, it might not be right to save 8%. You don't wanna sit here and put people off and say, oh, don't save, but you also wanna say to kind of a family that are struggling 'cause they've got two young kids. It might be okay if you're not to save right now, and just focus on that until the kids are gone, and catch up with high contributions later on. - Totally, and in economics, that's called consumption smoothing. - Yeah. - So you smooth your consumption over time, where you spend, you spend when you don't have as much, and you save when you have more, overall, the objective is to have a relatively smooth path of consumption over your lifetime, which definitely means not having a smooth, if your income is changing over time, it means not having a smooth savings rate. Okay, I got a couple more, there's a couple more in this section that are I think are really interesting questions. - You're doing the work for us today, right? - You're doing all the work for us, hey, it's so good. - No, go on, no, no, honestly, don't take that badly. This is like, this is gold. - Okay, good. Would you work an extra three hours per day to earn more money? I love that one too. - Oh, God. - I feel like I already do. It's almost pitch dark outside. - So I struggle. I think it's like if there was an extra three hours in the day and there was no money, I would still work. And I think that's my problem. Do you leave me alone on any time when I just start working? This includes like Christmas day. I find it really hard to pull away from the work. And yeah, I don't even think it's about the money. I think it's about a sense of productivity and purpose. That I'm the same way. So here's another one that is maybe more meaningful to you. How much would you need to be paid to give up your favorite leisure activity? - Oh, that's tough. Mine's basket. - My favorite leisure activity is work. (laughing) - You've got problems, mate. Work your Christmas, your family. - No, I like going to gym and stuff and that, but I don't think there's any money because I spend a lot of money on my fitness. I never used to in the past, but now it's all personal trainers. And that's because I think it's all, it's my body and soul in that sense. So I don't think there's any amount of money that you could really pay me to give up on my health in that sense. I imagine you're the same, right? - Oh, yeah, I don't, I agree. There's no amount of money you could pay me to say, you can never play basketball again. - Yeah. - I have a, my right hip is like, it's wearing out. I can feel it. My dad had to have his hip replaced recently. He's obviously quite a bit older than me, but I know that's coming at some point. And I think about like, I don't know what the number is, but I have maybe like a hundred competitive basketball games left in my body. And someone came and said, "How much do I have to pay you to just give those up now?" Like, man, honestly, there's no, there's no number. - I guess a question for you on this is, rather than how much money would I pay you to stop, how much money will you pay to continue playing? You know, in healthcare costs. Take a direct debit, man, just take my card details and just take them. - Yeah, I mean, a lot. Like, I would pay, I've looked at, in Quebec where I live, you can do, like we have public healthcare in Canada, so you can go on the wait list or whatever to get a procedure like that. In Quebec, there's also private clinics where you can pay to do it. And I can tell you that that price is much lower than the maximum that I would be willing to pay to stay in the game. So I don't know, what's the number? I don't know, man. What could I afford? - You're gonna pay. - You're gonna pay. - I would pay it up until I couldn't anymore, but there's, yeah, if it trades off against, I wouldn't sell my house probably to do it. - You wouldn't jeopardize your family's finances, but you might jeopardize yours. - Yeah, I'd better take my card. - Take my card. - Yeah, take my card. - I'll take the bus, it's fine, just take my card. - I know, I know, I hope you don't mind talking about this, and if you do, we can cut it. I know you were diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, and you went through that kind of process. - Yeah. - How did that kind of, how has that shaped your view on your finances your life, the things that matter? - I've always been pretty aware of that type of thing. My mom had breast cancer when I was young and was given a very, very low probability of survival. She did survive and she's still alive today and she's fine. But ever since then, like that, I was, I think, 11 or 12 from that happened, and that affected me probably more than I realized at the time, where I was just like, I was honestly always waiting since that happened to get that news myself. I would always be like, just checking out, which is probably why I found it so early, but I would always be super aware of any changes to my body, and I was always worried about that stuff. So when it happened, I was kind of like, all right, I've kind of been expecting this, honestly. But it still was, it made it real. And it definitely made me think about, well, mortality, 'cause I didn't know. I ended up being fine. I was caught super early. It was not a type of test-take of the cancer that spreads generally, and so far, I'm a year in now, and I've been doing testing every three months to check for recurrence, and it's all been fine. I never had to do so far, at least chemo or radiation, which is some of the scary stuff. So all that was as good as could have possibly been, but at the time that I was initially diagnosed, or not even diagnosed, prediagnosis, the way that test-tacular cancer works, I mean, I hope this isn't too much medical stuff, but they tell you that there is a suspicion of test-tacular cancer, but they can't actually diagnose it until they have removed the testicle, because the way that it works is that if they try and biopsy it, it can actually cause the cancer to spread, just because of the way that lymphatic system connects to the testicle. So they do not biopsy testicles, it's my understanding. And so if there's a strong suspicion, they've removed it, and then they do the pathology afterwards. So all you know as the patient is there's a suspicion of cancer, but you don't know what kind, and so I started obviously reading a ton, figuring it out, okay, there are two types of test-tacular cancer, one tends to be more of a statistic, tends to spread, the other one doesn't, okay, so that hopefully it's the one that doesn't spread, which it ended up being, and then there's the stage, like you don't know, even with either one, if it's been there for a long time, it could have spread to other parts of your body. So I was like, okay, now there's two types of test-tacular cancer, and depending on the stage, for either one there's different range of treatments. And so that's like, okay, and different survival probabilities. Test-tacular cancer is generally pretty good, even in the worst cases, but it's still like, I don't remember what the numbers are, there's material differences in survival rates. So at the time of like, the urologist says, we have to remember the test school to do pathology because there's a suspicion of cancer, it's like, man, there's this massive range of potential outcomes, and that was hard. - For your brain as well. For someone who, you're gonna go away, you're gonna crunch the numbers, and you're gonna find every event you're at. - Right, you do a lot of easy things. - Ignorance is blistin' away, I kind of, I'm really good at parking those things, I get terrible news, I'm like, I'm gonna point it out in a box, and I'm putting it back there, and it's not good for me, but, I would just get on with my life and go, case the right, the right, you know, in that sense, but. - Yeah, I mean, I did, I had to have surgery, which is, yeah, it was still something to go through. So I had to deal with that, and then as I was recovering from that, I did have time to just sit and think about, like, okay, what's next? And that's the part that was hard, where it's like, it's either gonna be, maybe not so bad, or it's gonna be like really harsh treatments and uncertain survival probabilities. So yeah, I think the biggest way that affected me is like, I've always been pretty good about trying to trade off the present versus the future, but it definitely brought me a little bit more into the present, where it was like, simple stuff, man, like, I don't know, let's go to a restaurant with the kids and just chill out for a night, not make dinner. Like, I would be more willing to do that, probably now than I was, prior to all this stuff happening, and little things like that, like, let's go on a weekend trip to whatever a different city and rent a hotel or an Airbnb, and just not worry about that kind of spending as much. So yeah, I think the biggest impact was probably bringing me a little bit more into the future, even though I already tried to be pretty balanced, but it definitely, it may forces you to be like, okay, I might not be here in a year. - Did you tell the kids at all? - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We still talk about it, because I still have to go to like, on college, you follow appointments and stuff like that, so I tell them, gotta go to the cancer doctor to make sure I still don't have cancer, and then the last one I get home, do you have cancer? (laughing) But they get it, like, my two boys are older. They properly get it. My two girls are younger, and they understand the words that we're saying. I don't think they fully grasp like what it actually means. But yeah, my boys were very in tune with the situation and aware of what was happening, and they're, man, so like a matter of fact, and emotionally stable, they're just like, they process the information, very little emotion, but like, okay, well, you'll do that thing that you have to do, and then we'll see what the result is, but hopefully it's the good one. - I mean, I can see where they might get that from. - Yeah, I know, I'm like, I was like, "Why are they so analytical and quick?" - Rational, they seem very rational. - What one question I've got for you, this is so off piece with the finance, but you said a minute ago that your mom's experience with cancer shaped you and changed your behaviors. Like, do you want that same outcome for your kids in terms of do you want them to worry about themselves going forward? Is that a positive thing for you in that sense? I know it led you to discover any. - That's a tough question, man, 'cause it's not positive. Like, I've worried about that probably every day, ever since my mom was sick, and that's probably not healthy. Now, on the other hand, I probably caught mine so early because I'm so worried about it. Like, Tee, you mentioned you worry about it too, but I used to check my nuts all the time, and that's why I was like, - Yeah, you were like, "Ignorance is bliss." - No, 'cause my grandma passed away from breast cancer, but like, I went the opposite direction, she was like, "I'm just not gonna think about it." Like, obviously it was very sad, but like, I didn't take on to myself being like, "It might happen to me," but like you said, "If I'm in a shower," and I'm like, "What the frick is that?" And then my girl's like, "It's an ingrown hair." And I'm like, "I think," but like, I still, every single time, my heart palpitations, like, I'm not good with like, surgeries or doctors. When I got my teeth taken out, they, I made them to date me. That was like, "No, you're not pulling my teeth out, put me to sleep." So yeah, you really scary. - You kind of want your kids to have that power now, I don't know, but you don't want it to affect their, I don't know, man. I don't want them to live with that sort of fear that I have always lived with, but I would also hope, that they catch something like that early like I did. So that's a tough one. I think you approach it in a way that you have. And you say, it's no big deal because I found it early. It's not something to be worried about, but here's how you check. You know? And do that every couple of weeks. And that's part, like women need to do that, don't they? And I think men, like-- Women too. Yeah, men should. We don't have that kind of conversation. I think it's even controversial whether men should do it because it can lead to, yeah, I tried to read about that. And yeah, it wasn't super obvious to me that everyone agrees that you should be doing self-examinations. I had always been super intimate with that, but yeah, I'm not a doctor. I don't know. Don't take my advice on whether to check your nuts. For me, it was-- I would check periodically. It was like I was checking every day. But I actually got hit with a ball in the nuts when I was playing basketball. And whatever it hurt. But it was a finger, not a ball. It might have been a finger. Someone coming off a screen or something. And then I just got smacked in the nut. And it hurt. But I was like, whatever. I kept playing. But then the pain didn't go away. And so I told my wife, listen, my testicle hurts. It's super sore and it's kind of swollen. I won't go down. And then actually, because it was swollen, then I poked around. I did more of an involved self-examination. And I found this little tiny bump. It's like, all right, so I told my wife about that. She booked a doctor's appointment. So you're going to the doctor right now, which was good. Because I don't know if I would have done the same thing. And that doctor didn't do much. But they referred me to a urologist and to get an ultrasound. And that's how-- that was two years ago. And initially, it was so small that the urologist was like, listen, there is a thing there. But a lot of guys have things on their testicles. And it's so small right now that it's not at a point where we actually worry about it. We wouldn't do anything. Because like I mentioned earlier, they can't do a biopsy. So we tracked it. So then it was a year after the initial ultrasound that it came back and it was-- it had grown to a point where the urologist was like, OK, this is now suspicious of being cancer. So we got to do the surgery. But yeah, all started with getting hit in the nuts. Thank God for that guy. Like the urologist actually said that the person that hit me in the nuts may well have saved my life. You go back and tell him. Who's this around him? Hey, give me a turn. I'm a phythe. There's this one for you. [LAUGHTER] But no, thank you for sharing that. Because you don't have to. And I think like, influence is many things. And like, you're a big financial influence. But I think like, you're ability to talk about that like you do and be comfortable to do it. We'll inspire other people. I know I'm going home tonight and checking my nuts. I'm 100%. Yeah. You know, if I find out, thank you. So I talked about it really openly on the RASH Reminder Podcast. Because I just felt like I couldn't hide it. We do a podcast every week. And so I missed one. I think I only missed two podcast episodes ever. One of them was because Cameron interviewed somebody in person, or maybe twice actually, where I wasn't there. And so I wasn't on those episodes. But then the other one was I was the day after my surgery. And I just wasn't in any kind of shape to do the interview. So I missed that episode. And I just felt like I didn't know what the future was going to look like. And so I didn't want to try and hide it and be like weird about not being on episodes randomly and not saying what. So I just decided I was going to be super up front with the audience. This is what's happening, even pre-diagnosis. And people were-- it was received really well. Everyone was like, whatever, offering their words of encouragement, whatever. But the craziest thing is that I heard from-- I can't remember if it was one or two people. I heard from a bunch of people who went and got checked. But I heard from a couple of people who had been worried about something on their nuts. Heard me talk about it. That caused them to go and get it checked out. And they received a diagnosis. And I had to have surgery. I'm like, man, you talking about that, is my life. So I'm like-- Emphasis. It was a little awkward to talk about. But I'm glad that I have been open about it, even if it helped just a couple of people. Well, every conversation you have could have that impact. Because you're speaking to a whole new audience today that might not listen to your podcast. And it's in a way. True. So I don't want to make this about me, because the episode's about you. But I got randomly assaulted on a night out by a complete stranger, a sucker punched to the side of the head. And I hit my face off the floor pretty badly. And it kind of just exploded my face a bit. What was in hospital surgery? Got home after-- I've been up for like 48 hours at this point. And I felt really compelled to just turn the camera on and say to my audience, this has happened. Because it would be very noticeable on camera. Let's put it that way. So I just faced with a mess. Yeah, it was a bad way. And I just did it. And I put the video out and I posted it. And then I just got like hundreds of thousands of the exaggeration. Hundreds of men saying the exact same happened to me. And I never told anyone, or my brother died because of a random attack, like really common thing. Just male random attacks of violence. And all these people just reaching out, just saying, it's so nice that you did that because I felt weak because I got attacked. And it's really helped me. I think it's anything I'm radically honest now with my own audience. I had a hair transplant recently. And I just said it. I got no-- I don't think anything good comes from kind of sitting on those male issues. And you are a man that men follow. So you can lead from the front with all points, including your nuts. Yeah. So there is the two guys that said that they got to diagnosis. That was super impactful for me to learn. But there were probably in the hundreds of people that reached out to say, either that they have had. They've been through this before. They're going through it now, or that they have one testicle for some other reason. That's-- a lot of guys that have one testicle, which is kind of funny. I mean, do we end it there? Is that where we finish it? Do you want to leave us with any form of financial wisdom? But it's just a pivot at a labor people. Is there anything that you think is the bit of financial information that I already-- you would like to think, if they watch your content, what's the one thing they should take away from it, or the one overarching lesson? I think that the big thing-- and this is why I did the recent video on investing 101-- is that good investing or smart investing is really simple. You need to use low cost index funds. You need to be globally diversified. You have to figure out your assed allocation. But once you figure those things out, which I don't think are terribly hard, and I talk about some of that stuff in that video, you got to be disciplined. You got to pick a portfolio on a strategy that you can stick with, and you have to stick with it. You have to save the right amount, but not too much as we talked about. But it's not that hard. And I think a lot of people are intimidated. I think a lot of people who are not intimidated are probably doing the wrong things. They're probably overconfident and doing stuff like, I don't know, trading options, or trying to trade stocks, and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, if there is one thing that people watching my content would come away with, it's that you should own low cost index funds and stay invested for the long term. But I made that video because I talked to somebody that lives near where I live, and we saw each other at the gym. And they were like, hey, I found your podcast. I've been listening to it. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. Like it's so cool to meet someone locally that's listening to my podcast. And they started talking about their portfolio that they designed based on what they'd understood from the podcast. And it was like not what I would have suggested. And so that's why I went and tried to make a video. Like here's exactly what you should be thinking about and doing. But yeah, even for someone who has watched my content, it's not always super obvious what you should be doing. - That's not just you, just to reassure you there. I have people come up to me all the time, go, I watch all your content, I really love it. Can you check my portfolio? I'm like, okay, sure, I have a look. And then it's just like in video and, you know, just a lot of tech stocks. And I'm like, this is what you got from watching me. And I literally say in every video, buy a bioglabel index inside of a tax-efficient account. And that's it. And then it's like, you're all in on tech. So I don't take that as a you problem. - That's good. I'm glad it's not just me. - Yeah, well, no, thank you so much for your time, especially for all of it. Like we've gone through the research, we've gone through the emotion and then sharing this story at the end, I think, has really enjoyed it. We were both, we filmed six episodes and two days, and this is this final one. It's pretty dark here. We both tired, but I feel completely energy. - Before this, I was knocking on Red Bull, we were both yearning and then, yeah, you know. - I was really excited to talk to you, obviously, 'cause I love your content, but I was flagging. And now I'm ready. I could talk to you for another two hours, but we won't, 'cause you know, you got a life to live. - Hey, man, I feel the same way. I could keep hanging out and chatting with you guys for a long time. - No, thank you so much. Honestly, really appreciate it. I think the audience will love it. So yeah, legend. - Legend. Thank you. - Awesome. No worries.