MI283: Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Money & Investments w/ Chris Pedersen & Paul Merriman

29:18And so the quest part of it, in some ways, was me challenging myself to do enough research to be confident that what we were going to recommend would work for people in the future. When you test looking backwards, there's no guarantee that the future will look like the past. So we tested lots and lots of different periods of time, hundreds of different scenarios starting as early as 1928. And we did January of 1928, February of 1928, March, all the way through to the end. And we looked for very simple but effective strategies that would help people prudently get a gain on the money that they set aside while taking reasonable risks and hopefully help them set up for a good retirement.

30:09Most of us are not going to be able to save enough money to retire uncomfortably. It just doesn't work that saving 10 % per year, let's say you work for 40 years, you save 10 % for 40 years, you're only going to have four times your annual salary saved. Well, if it didn't grow, you might be able to live off that for four or five, maybe six years in retirement, but most of us are going to be retired a lot longer. And so we were looking for ways with not 10 funds, but just one or two funds to be able to recommend something that we thought would be prudent and would help people grow. And obviously the simplest solution and the one that lots of and lots of young people use is a target date fund.

30:53If you invest in a target date fund, the backtesting says that the median, like half of the scenarios are better and half of the scenarios are worse, but the median outcome is that you'll have about twice your lifetime spending power if you save 10 % for 40 years working and then are retired for 30 years. So that means if you weren't to invest at all in the target date fund, you'd just have the money that you earned to spend. That's it. But on an inflation adjusted basis, if you set 10 % aside into the target date fund, and that's all you do, by the time you retire with 4 % withdrawals, and then by the time you die, between what you spend in retirement and what you die with and what you spent while you were alive, it's worth double what you would have had had you not saved.

31:43So that's a huge win. And that is a simple and effective strategy. It's an amazingly simple and effective strategy. You outlined also in your book, the different levels of elegant simplicity. You had symbiosis, intermediates, and complexity for different fund combinations. Take us through those different levels. Obviously, one fund is about as simple as it can get. So it's a target date fund. You just pick the year you're going to retire and you find the fund that's got a name that's pretty close to that. That's as simple as it can get. But we think most investors could probably handle a little bit more complexity.

32:18And in fact, we know that people who invest in target date funds often also invest in a second fund or a third fund. They can't help themselves. They have a little complexity. So then the question comes up, well, if you're going to add a little complexity, what would be the best complexity to add? Would it be adding more target date funds of different dates? I have friends that do that because they're uncertain about when they're going to retire. the net effect is that you just average the dates together and that's what you've got. You still really only have the glide path of one target date fund.

32:56So that does nothing. So the question was, what could you add that would make a meaningful difference? And from the work that Paul had previously done, I was led to the academic work of Nobel Prize winners Fama and French, who basically have studied how different parts of the stock market perform over time. And what they say is that, or what the research shows is that the small and value part of the market goes up and down at slightly different times. It behaves a little differently than the large part of the market, which dominates what's inside a target date fund or the S &P 500 or a total market fund.

33:38And it has a little bit higher return historically, the small and value parts of the market. And so when you combine these two things, the small and value parts with the total market, which is kind of the equity piece inside a target date fund, you end up with a higher return per unit of risk. You get an improvement in the performance with only a slight decrease or increase in the risk. And that seems like a good gain. And in fact, if you just take, let's say you're doing that 10 % saving rate in the target date fund, that means you're saving 10 pennies out of every dollar into a target date fund, and you're spending the other nine on taxes and living and everything else you got going on.

34:22Well, if you take one of those 10 pennies you're saving towards retirement and you put it into small cap value, the difference over a lifetime is millions of dollars. It's a huge bump in what you will have to spend and pass on to heirs. If you take two of those pennies and put it in small cap value, it's even more. And in the book, I talk about how you can do that with just two funds, US small cap value and the target date fund. Or since we mentioned the slightly more complex chapter talks about, well, what if I still want international diversification? You can split that small cap value in US small cap value and international small cap value.

35:05And then there's all kinds of questions that come up about other ways to do it. And that's why I wrote a book. I knew that along the way, as somebody invested in this strategy, there would be a lot of questions. And I wanted to prove to myself and also give readers the answers when they needed them, these other questions. You briefly touched on this, but I want to dive a little bit deeper. What are the pros, cons, and maybe shortcomings of backtesting and all the backtesting research that you've done? Well, the biggest pro is that the future might not look like the past. Or I mean, the biggest con is that the future might not look like the past because everybody's history, everybody's life experience is going to be different.

35:50But you could say that about a lot of things. The weather, the future weather might be, the future climate might be different from the past. But my best indicator of what is likely to happen when I walk out the door is still what I know about last year's weather or about the forecast. And so I rely on it and I adjust my clothing accordingly. It's a very imperfect science. So what we look for when we look at these back tests is not a one-off occurrence that said small cap value helped, but we look at every 20-year period since 1928. And what we see is that 99 plus percent of the time, small cap value was a performance enhancer.

36:35It helped. And so the odds of small cap value being helpful to somebody moving forward, then we conclude is pretty good. And the other thing we look at looking back is how often did it hurt? And it very rarely hurt somebody. It's an imperfect science, but we try to look for things that have overwhelming evidence that they're likely going to be helpful. And because it's an imperfect science, it tells you you probably shouldn't go back and be too extreme in the conclusions that you draw. We would not recommend that somebody put all of their money only in small cap value for their entire lifetime, even though history says that has the highest return.

37:22Not just because we think that it may be different in the future, but because you could wait through five years or 10 years or 15 years of underperformance before that premium or advantage came to pass. And if you were to give up on it partway through and trade while it's down, so to speak, then you have no chance of getting the benefit. So it's really important that you pick a strategy that is, I'll call it moderate enough that you can stick with it. And that's one of the reasons I love the idea of putting 10 % or 20 % in small cap value and not even rebalancing it. Because if it's 10 % and it's a little underperforming, A, you probably won't notice and B, it's not a huge part of your portfolio.

38:12So I think people are likely to stick with it and stay the course. Where if you put all of your money in it and then you find out five years in that the S &P 500 has been outperforming, you're far more likely to second guess your strategy and switch. Paul, in your book, We're Talking Millions, you wrote, the reality of having a million dollars 40 years from now might fall short of your fantasies. And you also wrote that 40 years of actual inflation from 1980 to 2020 reduced the purchasing power of$1 ,000 to slightly less than$300. How should young investors be thinking about inflation and its impact on their retirement?

38:50Well, I think they should be building it certainly into their plans as a cost of living, just as they would health care and taxes and other things they'll have to deal with. When I came into the industry in 1966, I used to talk to a lot of young people. And if you ask them, what is your financial dream? How much money would you be happy with if you just have that as your goal? And what was the answer? A million dollars. A million dollars. And again, I mean, it was always a million dollars. And I still teach. I teach university classes. And I'll ask young people today, how much would you like to have?

39:35What's that number? It's still a million dollars. Now, a few engineers in the class will say five or six million, but most people still think a million dollars is a really big deal. And of course, in order to replicate that million dollars that looks so good in 1966, you probably do need$6 million today. So they need to understand that the cost of living is likely to be a lot higher in the future from everything we know about the past. and they need to understand that the expected life that they're going to live is going to be longer. We have a brand new granddaughter just born last November. According to actuaries studies, she has a 50 % chance of living until she's 103.

40:27And in Japan, the number is 107. So not only do we have to worry about inflation being part of our life, we may have to worry about it being a longer term that it's going to be impacting our financial needs. So I think it's imperative that you understand that is a cost. And so many young people are not willing to put money in the stock market because it's so risky and it's gambling and it's speculative. And you might as well go to the horse races and put money in the stock market. Well, none of that is true over the long term. But what we do know over the long term is bonds have made about 5%, the safe investment, and stocks have made about 10.

41:11I also know the worst 40-year period for the S &P 500 since 1928 was an 8.9 % compound rate of return. If we look at the bonds, the worst 40-year period is a gain of 1.6 % a year. So those people who are hiding in bonds because they're afraid of the risk of the stock market just don't get it. And that's because they haven't looked at it carefully enough to see that the risk is in the bonds, not in the stocks, when we look at the long term. And between living longer, inflation, higher taxes, by the way, when I came into the industry, Robert, the marginal tax bracket was about 70%. That was the highest they would take from you.

41:58Now it's much lower than that. But you know something? 50 years from now, it could be right back up at 70%. So they have to also understand that that's a possibility. I want them to over-save. I want them to have more money than they think they needed, not because I'm greedy or they should be greedy, but because things don't always work out like we think they will. And unfortunately, one of the factors that most of us are really not prepared for is bad luck. And in the market, there are periods of good luck, like 1975 to 1999, a 17 plus percent compound rate of return. But put the money into the same investment in 2000, and since then, it's only been a 7 % return, 10 % less per year.

42:52and that's the bad luck and the other was the good luck. And fortunately, I grew up during the good luck period and that helped a lot. You mentioned that bonds are the risk compared to stocks when you're looking at returns. I think there's also the risk of people my age just not investing. Everything you said, Paul, is so true that I've heard. Not to say that you gentlemen are old, but I'm a little bit younger than you guys and I hear it every day from my friends, my family. I grew up in a very blue collar family. I think I'm the first one in my family to ever make any type of real stock investment or any type of real investment.

43:32So the conversations I have with them are very, I want to just say representative of general population America of non-investors. And that's a lot of my friends growing up are the same way. And everything you said in terms of they all say, oh, it's gambling. I'll go and go to the casino or I'm just throwing money away. Those are all legitimate, real things that I hear almost every day, every conversation I have with people that are not educated on financial topics, whether it's stock investing, personal finance, budgeting, et cetera. It's so, so true. And Warren Buffett has a great quote. I'll be 80 in October.

44:08So I'm trying to come up with my favorite 80 quotes for October. But one One of them is Warren Buffett's quote. He says, don't say what's left over after spending, but spend what's left over after saving. Just pay yourself first. And it doesn't have to be a lot. And the idea that, well, I can't possibly afford that because I have so many expenses and things. Well, if that's the case, take a second job. Now, I know that sounds very aggressive, But I have known a lot of young people that in order to fund their retirement, they took a second job. Not a lot of time, but enough to be able to fund that.

44:53And that commitment means delaying gratification. And we know for a fact, and I am the first to admit that I'm guilty, delaying gratification at the dinner table for me is really difficult. I have been overweight since I was a kid, and I'm still overweight because it's there, it's fun, I love it, and you just have to be able to have the discipline. The beauty of investing is that you can put it away and just forget about it. You don't have to watch it. That's not true of eating. Every day, I have to face three to four meals and start all over again. But with investing, No, you can just do it once a month and ignore it.

46:01Podcast. And we've made a name for ourselves over the years by interviewing the best investors in the world, including Ray Dalio, Howard Marks, Joel Greenblatt, and many, many more. My colleagues, Stig Brodersen, Clay Fink, Kyle Greve, Preston Pysh, and William Green each hosts their own We Study Billionaires episodes and bring their own unique perspectives. A whole new world of insights awaits you. Just go ahead and type in We Study Billionaires into your podcast app and see what you've been missing out on. Seriously, go ahead. I promise you'll like what you find. Bonus points if you show your support for our work by clicking follow.

46:36If something piques your interest, just start listening. No hard feelings. I'll be waiting for you back here. Just like everybody else, there was a time when I was a beginner investor, and I have to say, investing is particularly filled with jargon that can just make it so difficult for new investors to understand what is going on. But it's never too late to get smarter about stock investing from the ground up. At The Investor's Podcast Network, we've made a habit of studying the world's best investors. And now I'm distilling those learnings into a simple course for you or for anyone in your life who you might want to share the gift of knowledge with.

47:07With my How to Get Started with Stocks course, you can master the principles of excellent lifelong investing with valuable insights for both beginners and pros. The course covers 10 different sections, beginning with the basics of what a stock actually is and how the stock markets work, to strategies to optimize your retirement savings, how to pick great companies for the long term, what to look for in ETFs, and how to monitor your investments, plus so much more. To begin getting smarter about investing, just visit theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash get started with stocks.

47:43And for a limited time, you can use code STOCKS15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. Not to be cliche, but building a market-beating portfolio really doesn't have to be a mystery. at least with the right tools. If you've listened to our podcast for a while, then you know we spend a lot of time learning from savvy investors. So why not use the same tools we do? With TIP Finance, you can. Screening for great companies, calculating intrinsic value, keeping up with legendary investors' portfolios, and more are all not just possible, but easy to do. TIP Finance was created by investors for investors.

48:20It's quite literally the tools we wanted to use ourselves when researching investments in a simple-to-use interface. You can get started by creating an account for free. Who knows, maybe TIP Finance will help you find your next 100 to 1 investment. Between the screener and Legend Investment Portfolios to reference, I've gotten a ton of ideas from TIP Finance. What are you waiting for? Take the next step in your investment journey today with the right tools at your fingertips. Grab your device and type into your browser, theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance to get started. That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance.

49:01All right, back to the show. Some people, Paul, say that we have a limited amount of decision-making capabilities or ability to delay gratification, et cetera. So you just used all of that in your investing. And so now in the food side of things, you might not have as much left to give. Now, you both, Chris is very analytical, Paul, but you both are pretty principled in your investment approaches. So I'm curious to hear how you, this is probably one of the questions I was most excited to ask you both, is how you think about the debate between investing versus paying down debt. Should they be done together at the same time?

49:41Should they be done one before the other? How do you guys think about that? We lived through a very different history than the one that young people are living through today, although it's a little more similar now than I wish it was. When we bought our house, I think it was a 10.5 % annual percentage rate on the loan. And so it seemed prudent to us to try and pay it down. And our mental models about personal finance were very unsophisticated. We just thought to ourselves, we have four children. We want to help them with college because our parents helped. Well, my parents helped me with college and I thought, all right, I'm supposed to pay this forward.

50:26That's going to be incredibly expensive. If we have our house paid for by the time the kids are in college, then it'll work out. We'll have that cashflow to help for them. I know coming up on retirement, we were also really stressed about cash flow. Just trying to figure out what's it like to live off your investments? Will they maintain their value? Will we be watching them decline in value? As my wife said when we retired, she's like, where's the money going to come from? I mean, you've had this paycheck for all of those years. So when I think about paying down a loan, the thing that comes to mind first for me are the psychological factors of having debt.

51:08I think that a purely analytical perspective or from a purely analytical perspective, if you have a 1 % or 2 % loan, 2 % would not be unheard of in recent years, 2 % to 3%, you'll probably get a better return in other places. But that doesn't mean that there aren't psychological advantages or cash flow advantages within your life that may make it interesting to pay it down sooner. It's a balance. It's a very personal thing. I think for many young people, if they have a low interest loan, I would encourage them to get going on the retirement savings while just paying down the loan at whatever the minimum required rate is, provided that fits with their comfort levels and their other life plans and things.

51:59I do think that there are a couple of things that I would like to see young people do. First of all, the choice between a regular 401k and an IRA, and a Roth 401k and a Roth IRA. There are lots of reasons why you might pick the traditional over the Roth, but I really encourage young people to take advantage of the Roth now only because we have no idea what tax rates are going to be 40 or 50 years from now. And it is a way of protecting against the risk of higher taxes later. So that is one fork in the road that may not be the same as other advisors would recommend. As far as this decision between debt and putting money away for retirement.

52:51When you see how big that first five years of IRA investments are compared to the rest of your portfolio, and by the way, it may even be that you would say, okay, this is my first five years. I'm going to be all equities. And as a matter of fact, with this five years, I'm going to be all equities for the rest of my life. The rest of my portfolio is going to be a traditional, more balanced portfolio. But This is for the long-term, and boy, does it have a long-term to work. And if you miss those five years, you miss an absolutely golden opportunity to maybe early retirement, having way more in retirement, or leaving more.

53:35I mean, those are the potential outcomes of that. Now, if that means extending the payment of the debt period, I would be okay with that. Now, when it gets to be got debt that costs 12 or 13 or 14%, that's a hard one to suggest that they do the 401k or the IRA first. But when there's a match out there, there's no question you should jump on that match. I don't think you ever let a match go by because that's free money. And even if you end up spending more interest in the long run, you will have caused a discipline to happen that when you look back at it, you'll say, you know something, the extra two years I had to pay on that debt is nothing compared to what I got in my pocket right now.

54:27The problem is we can't get young people to look at life 50 years from now. And I don't think that we probably did either. But boy, we see it now. That would be my approach. There's a balance between when it makes sense to go ahead and invest and pay the debt later. I don't mean make your regular payments. I'm not suggesting you stop making payments. But as far as paying it off, it's okay to wait. If you're doing something powerful with that money and getting it to work in a tax-free environment at a young age, that's golden. Yeah, I think that powerful piece is important because if you have money, to pay down debt and you don't invest, the question is invest versus pay down debt, not pay down debt or spend that money frivolously, right?

55:16If you're going to either pay down debt or go spend that money on a new bag or computer or car or whatever, that's different than the question between debt and investing. So I think your point is right there at the end is really important, Paul. But I asked this question, I was excited to hear you guys answer because this is something I'm really struggling with myself right now. And listeners of the show go back even a year ago, two years ago with this podcast, and you listened to my philosophy on debt back then, I was okay with debt. I was okay with if you had some consumer debt, maybe a car loan or any other type of debt that was really low rate, 2%, 3%, 4%, 5%, but you had some extra cash flow.

55:52My philosophy back then was I would rather buy a rental property with that, generate cash flow from that, take the cash flow from the rental property to cover the debt. And now you're getting the asset, you're still covering your, et cetera. So that was my philosophy for had been. And I was so against Dave Ramsey. I couldn't stand him. He just made me cringe. And now, the last, I don't know, six months or so, I've kind of, I don't know, Dave Ramsey has been kind of getting in my brain a little bit. And I'm actually coming around a little bit to what he's saying. And I kind of understand and I'm kind of going that way.

56:26And Chris, to your point, some of it's psychological. I had a truck loan. It was relatively small. It was like 10 ,000 bucks. So it wasn't like a big deal, but it was 2%. And so I was like, okay, I could do a lot better things with this money. But just knowing that that truck loan was there, it just bugged me. And it wasn't too big of a deal. So I just focused on paying it down. But I looked at the interest calcs. It tells you like, okay, if you pay a little bit extra, I was only going to save total$250 in interest. So I really wasn't saving much in interest. And it just mathematically wasn't probably the right decision, but it just bugged me having the car loan there, or the truck loan, I should say.

57:04And so I just got rid of it. But now I have a little bit bigger debate because I have my student loans that I'm trying to decide, do I want to pay those out a little bit faster? That's a little bit bigger balance. But I'm thinking like, okay, let's say it's like$50 ,000. So that's a little bit bigger than$10 ,000. And now I have to say, okay, well, well, if I put$50 ,000 in my investments now, how much is that going to be in the future versus if I pay down my student loans? And so I have Dave Ramsey on one shoulder. I have the investment thesis on the other shoulder. And I'm like, I don't know what to do.

57:35There's a reason that personal finance is called personal. It's very individual. It's not all analytical. It's got a lot of emotional components to it. We went through times in my life where I was out of work and not having obligated payments or having smaller obligated payments in those period of times helped a lot. So it's really hard to know exactly what's going to come your way and when you're going to appreciate not having those payments. Yeah, it's tough. Well, and the other part, the reality of making the choice to invest is about one out of four years, the market goes down. And so you can decide to invest and not pay off the truck.

58:25And the next thing you find out a year later, the money you put it is down 40 % or 30%. And because there's no risk in the past, we always know what we should have done. it really bothers us. We get upset with ourselves. I can remember as an investment advisor sitting with couples and they had just gone through a year when the market was down. And one of the couple would say, we could have gone on a trip to Europe with that money. And so that isn't the way you should think about it, but it is the way people think about it very often. And it doesn't make for great investors, if that's how you look at it, because you're in a business.

59:05When you invest in the stock market, it's a passive business, but you are in a business that goes up and down like businesses go up and down. I started a business, my investment advisory firm back in 1983. It took 30 years of ups and downs before it matured and became what I was able to use to pay for my retirement. But if every time it was down, I would try to get out and go to work for Boeing or something. You know, it would not have worked. And that is the hard part is helping people, particularly young people who are inexperienced, get into that state of mind that says, look, this is not something I'm worried about day to day, year to year.

59:50It is something I'm worried about for 40 years. And even though the foundation may not be as big as it could be because I could have invested and the market went up, but it went down. The fact is you got some money working in the portfolio. And in the early years, it is your money that is most important. This is one of the interesting points that Chris brings up in his book, the importance of that early money. It's not about the stock market. It's about you building the foundation. And you have to understand that it might not quickly work out well, but that's part of the process. One of the hardest truths about personal investing is that it's too easy to learn the wrong lessons.

1:00:35You can step into the market. You can see it go down. You can conclude that, oh, this is not for me. This is never going to take me to a good spot. You can get out and stay out the rest of your life. And it's just too easy because of the randomness to learn the wrong lessons. And that's where we're really trying hard as educators to help people understand that even though there might be short-term volatility in the long run, these are prudent risks that are going to help you out. And if I could add something that I think is really important. We have on our website a thing that says Boot Camp. boot camp, there's a series of eight articles, eight podcasts, and eight videos about eight of the biggest decisions that you will ever make.

1:01:24And one of those decisions is to understand the implications of adding bonds to your portfolio to modify the volatility in the bad times. but we don't just say get ready for losing some money along the way we show you in every situation whether you're 100 % bonds or 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 % bonds what was the worst month what was the worst a year what was the worst three years the worst five years this is what you have to expect to go through to make it to the end of this trip. And that is hard. And it's the reason that I think this is important that so many of our followers are engineers or other people who are numbers driven people by their nature.

1:02:15And people who don't like numbers will probably find our work to be a little bit frustrating. I can't give myself much credit as an investor, but the one thing I can give myself credit for is I tend to have a really good stomach when it comes to this stuff. I don't really go in and out. Friends of mine during COVID and that crash, they were always like, what are you doing? And I'm like, honestly, I haven't logged into my brokerage account in, I don't know, two years. I can go years without ever logging in. It's all automated. I haven't looked at it. I haven't done anything. I've literally gone years at a time without even logging into my brokerage account and thinking about it.

1:02:53So that is the one thing I can give myself a little bit of credit for. But I have one last question for you both before we wrap up today. And that is, is there a place in people's portfolio for play money? Is there a small percentage of a portfolio that people can go pick stocks, trade options, play with pennies, do whatever they want really? Is there a 1 % of their portfolio, 5%, 10 %? Is there an allocation you guys think that's reasonable to be able to go play around and make risky non-long-term investments? I think play with what you want to lose. That would be my starting point. Just assume that if you're playing, you might lose it all.

1:03:36Now, having said that, there's some fun history in my family. My grandmother and grandfather bought some uranium rights in Utah and then sold it. It kind of went crazy and they did well, but it was a small investment and they ended up buying houses for their kids out of the gain. So, you know, sometimes these things play out, but I can tell you it didn't change their investing strategy for the rest of their lives. That was the only time they ever invested in uranium. And in fact, if anything, they got more cautious as they got older and they invested less and less in that kind of play money stuff.

1:04:21Because that uranium stuff that they sold at a profit, they eventually went to zero. They just happened to get lucky, right? And they could recognize it for what it was. It was luck. I think that if you're going to play with something, make it the money you're happy to lose. and I personally, I don't play with anything more than, actually, I don't have anything in my portfolio I would call play money. But yeah, if I did, it would probably be 1 % or less because I don't want to lose a lot. I don't have any money in my portfolio that I would call play money. I would say that in a way, in 1983, when I started the investment advisory firm, I said I was not starting the firm to have it grow, be a big firm.

1:05:11I was looking to do something that I thought would be fun. And so I committed to being willing to lose$15 ,000 and that was it. And that's all I ever invested in it. Of course, I put a lot of sweat equity into it over the years, but as far as actual investing and taking a risk, but in a sense, it was like for me, because I don't have any hobbies. What I'm doing right now, this is my hobby. I don't play golf. And so I was investing in a sense in my hobby. And I don't see how that's any different than spending money on golf. But I do say to people who want to speculate, all I care for you is that you don't speculate with money that you might need later in life.

1:06:00And the problem with that is we have no idea what we're going to need later in life. My wife and I have a dear friend who's, I think she's 68, and she requires around-the-clock help. And I think her cost of living is something like, I mean, cost of being taken care of is$24 ,000 a month. And she had accumulated a lot of wealth thinking she was going to leave it to her daughter. And in our last conversation, she says, I'm not going to leave anything to my daughter because it's likely to take what I've got to get through where I am. So how do we know this stuff? And of course, at that point, you could say, well, would that$5 ,000 have made really made any difference?

1:06:47So there's probably it's all back to what Chris said about when it's about personal investing, they're all personal decisions. and behind almost every one of those decisions is a kind of a dream, either a short-term dream or long-term dream, because it's about the unknown. It can't be anything more than a dream in a sense. But I really don't encourage people to speculate with a lot of money. Well, thank you guys both so much for joining me. You both were very generous with your time. I know you're retired, but time is still very valuable and I appreciate you taking over an hour of your time out of your day today to chat with me and the audience and help us get better with our finances.

1:07:30So thank you both for joining me. Where can the audience go? Where would you like them to go to connect with you both? Well, we are both available at paulmerriman.com. And our dream in life is that every one of your listeners will get the free two funds for life and the free, we're talking millions. And the reason we provide it as a free PDF is because you can then send it to all of your relatives you think might find it helpful. We really are on a quest to help as many people as we can. And that is the greatest help that people can be in helping others get our stuff. So thank you, Rob, for this opportunity.

1:08:20And Paul said earlier that the ultimate buy and hold wasn't the ultimate in the sense that it's the ultimate for everyone. But we really want people, if they're going to be buy and hold investors, to find their ultimate portfolio, whether that's a target date fund, a two fund for life strategy, any of the other portfolios we have on our website. It really is about finding the one that is right for you that you can stick with. Because that's what lets you, Robert, look away, right? You've decided, hey, I'm good. I got it. I mean, this is good for me. And the six words in investing that I love to quote from Jack Bogle were buy right, hold tight, don't peek.

1:09:02And to do that, you have to find your ultimate buy and hold. You have to find your portfolio. And that's really what we're trying to help people do. I will put a link to you guys' resources, the website, everything in the show notes below for anybody that's interested. And to what Paul alluded to is that if you go to their website, there's a book section. If you click on the books, the titles, it actually opens a PDF with the books for free, like the entire books all in PDF. It's no email capture, no nothing. It's free. It literally just opens right up. So it's pretty neat. I was telling Paul and Chris before the interview that I was surprised that it worked that way, but it's pretty great.

1:09:36So if you guys want those free books, go to the website, check it out. I'll put links in the show notes below for everything that we talked about today, the website and all their resources. And again, Chris, Paul, thank you guys so much for joining me today. Yes. Thank you, Robert. Appreciate the opportunity. All right, guys. That's all I had for this week's episode of Millennial Investing. I'll see you again next week.

1:10:06We teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor's Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.