MI329: Wealth Simplified w/ JL Collins

26:42And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. I want to look under the hood of index funds in general and pretend someone can't buy VTSAX for whatever reason. I mean, you mentioned 401k. I'm in Canada, so I would have to buy a different ticker symbol. But let's say that they just don't have access to it at all. What exactly should they be looking for in an index fund to help compound their wealth? As I say, index funds are, when Bogle first created them, the first one he created was an index 500, S &P 500 index fund. Well, now you can get an index fund that tracks almost anything.

27:25You can get an index fund that buys gold-related companies or tech or, you know, it's in, I don't, I'm not in favor of any of those. So when I talk about index funds, as I think I said a little bit earlier, I'm talking about broad-based, which means going across a broad range of stocks, S &P 500, total stock market, broad-based and low cost. Because of course, the lowest cost ones are in fact the broad-based ones and cost matters. Again, as Bogle once said, performance comes and goes, but costs are forever. So that's what you're looking for. And I mentioned the ones that are available in the US because I'm an American.

28:09There are equivalents in a lot of markets. So a lot of markets, your other world markets, you're able to buy things like VTSAX or S &P 500, but not always, but they tend to have something along those lines. And you can most easily identify it because it It will probably be called an index fund of some sort. But the key thing is to look for the absolute lowest cost. So to put a number on that, I want to say VTSAX at the moment is the ER expense ratio is 0.04 or maybe even 0.03 % now. So that's down to where you want to be. That's what you're kind of looking for. Yeah, it's funny. I remember when I was literally just a kid and my mom instilled in me to save for RSPs.

29:02And so I saved a little bit of money each month for RSP. And then I would put it into... It was always a bank mutual fund. I had no idea about anything that I know now. I wish I had because I'd have a lot more money. And then you look at the expense ratio and it'd be in the tiniest, tiniest writing at the very bottom. And it'd be like 1.4%. And you'd be like, oh, well, that's nothing. but once you break that down into how much money that can be over decades, it makes a huge difference. Like even just going from 1.4 to like you said, with the Vanguard funds of 0.04%, I mean, it's a huge difference.

29:36I mean, it's, it's stunning. And, and I, you know, as you say, and there are people who have done this to extrapolate out what that drag means long-term on your performance. And there are people who've done it better than I have. So I haven't, you know, I haven't duplicated that, but it's worth seeking out. But it's just, it's incredible. And any normal person is going to say, you know, 1.4%, that's nothing. I mean, that's cheap, but it's not. So maybe the easiest back pocket way to think about how enormous that really is, is if you think about what's called the 4 % rule, right? So, the 4 % rule suggests that you can take any given portfolio and you can pull 4 % a year out to live on and you can expect that portfolio to have a very good chance of lasting for 30 plus years, right?

30:30So you get to spend 4%. Well, now suddenly, if you think about that expense ratio of 1.4%, you know, now suddenly you realize that over 25 % of your annual income is going to pay that expense ratio. So instead of having 4 % to live on, you're now living on 2.6%. Well, that's a big difference. If you look at it in that fashion, if you're pulling$10 ,000 a year, what does that come to? Anyway, I'm confusing myself with the math. But yeah, it's a big, big deal. And of course, 1.4 doesn't sound like a lot. But anybody who looks at it and compares it to a 0.04, you realize, well, it's far, far. It's a huge multiple more than what you should be paying.

31:27I really enjoyed your views on dollar cost averaging concerning investing a lump sum of money. So the basics are that the market goes up approximately 77 % of the time. So if you have cash waiting on the sidelines to attempt to time the market and buy when it comes down, the odds that you'll get more money in at a cheaper price are only 23%. So since this is the Millennial Investing Podcast, and many of my listeners are millennials, they will probably be in the wealth building phase that you outline. So I think the audience would get a lot from learning specifically what you would tell a millennial today who is looking to invest to one day become financially independent.

32:02Well, so first of all, I would tell them the same thing that I was writing for my daughter in The Simple Path to Wealth, which published in 2016. And that's investing in the broad-based index funds. In terms of dollar cost averaging, you described it pretty well. I do make the distinction that I'm talking about if you come into possession of a lump sum that you want to invest, right? Then that's when you have to make the decision about dollar cost averaging. And as you described accurately, I'm not a fan because the odds favor lump sum investing in terms of getting a good result. If you dollar cost average, you're only going to come out ahead if over whatever period of time you've chosen to dollar cost average, the market actually goes down and you get to buy those shares at lower prices.

32:52If it stays flat, you've just delayed putting your money to work. And of course, if it goes up, then you are spending more for those shares each time you buy them. But there is a form of dollar cost averaging that I'm very much in favor of, and it's the one you can't avoid. And that's if you are, as you should be, taking a portion of your earned income every week, every month, whatever it is, and you are buying your investments with it. Well, now by definition, you are dollar cost averaging. You don't have the option of putting a lump sum in because you can only invest as the cash flow comes to you.

33:31And that's a very powerful thing because then you really not only don't have to worry about the periodic drops in the market, and the market's a very volatile thing, but they work to your advantage because whenever the market takes a plunge, which it does on a regular basis, perfectly normal part of the process, well, that money you're putting in every month is buying more shares. You're getting them on sale. So that's a form of dollar cost averaging you can't get away from, and that's how it works to your advantage. But now you're talking about something you're going to be doing over decades.

34:06So my advice to millennials is get started because time, you're young and time is your friend when you're an investor. The longer you're in the market, the better the results. In your opinion, I think I'm probably going to know the answer to this, but is there any situation where keeping some cash on the sidelines to deploy into a cheap market is a good strategy or is that just overcomplicating things? Yeah, I think that's overcomplicating things. I think that the time to invest is when you have money to invest. The only time I would accumulate cash is if you are planning to spend it in the near future.

34:43So for instance, maybe you want to buy a house and you're saving for a down payment on that house and you're thinking it's going to take me five years to save the down payment. Well, then that should probably be in cash because the market is volatile and the time comes, if it happens to be in one of its swoons, you don't want to have to be selling your shares in VTSAX for your down payment. Now, if you're a little more of a gambler, and you're willing to accept the risk that at the end of five years, it might be a market slump, and you might have to delay buying that house, then you probably get a better return keeping your money in the market or some portion of it.

35:28But now you're kind of playing the odds and it depends on how flexible you are about buying the house. If you do that, maybe you wind up buying the house in four years instead of five, or maybe it takes you seven years instead of five, right? So the unfortunate reality is the popularity of paying other people to manage money for you. In my immediate family, almost everybody is paying someone else to do it. And even when I break down how much fees my mom or dad are paying. They just keep doing it. So how do you like to simplify the pitfalls of investment advisors to people who are using them? You know, Wall Street has intentionally, I think, made investing feel very complicated.

36:09And the truth is, most of the products sold by Wall Street are indeed very, very complicated. In the collapse of 08-09, famously, they created products that they themselves didn't understand. And so, when people think, man, I need to get professional help because this is just too complicated for me, a normal person to understand, well, they're thinking rationally. But what I would like them to understand is all those complicated things that they hear about on TV and maybe they read about in the newspaper, you don't need any of those things. You can put your arm on the table and sweep all that on the floor.

36:49All you need are these very simple, low-cost, broad-based index funds. And you will outperform all those other things, and your life will be a lot simpler. And you certainly don't need a professional to put you into those. In fact, professionals will tend not to precisely because they're low-cost, and there's not the commissions and fees to be available to that advisor for those things, unless you're using an advisor who is fee-only, where you're paying them by the hour. then that's the only time you're going to get somebody who's going to recommend something like an index fund. Advisors inherently, what's good for the advisor is not often the same thing that's good for the investor.

37:33And so, there's an inherent conflict of interest. And that requires an advisor to put the needs of his clients ahead of his own. And that's a very difficult thing for humans to do. Because if that advisor wants to buy a boat or has a child who's about to go to college, it's a very human thing to say, well, my needs are going to come first. And that's not what they're consciously saying, of course. They're saying, well, this high fee investment is still a pretty good investment. So, I'm still doing a good thing for money. So nobody's going to care about your money more than you do. And I have a, there's chapter in the Simple Path to Wealth about this.

38:19There's a post in my stock series about this. You know, if you need help with your tax returns, then hire a tax accountant. I have one. If you need specific kinds of help, but in terms of investing, by the time you know enough to pick an advisor who will truly serve your needs, you know enough to do it on your own because it's just not that simple. So at the risk of sounding self-serving, I would say, before you hire an advisor, read the simple path to wealth and pathfinders. And then if you read those and you say, no, I still don't want to deal with this, well, okay, maybe. And even if you have an advisor and you're thinking about it, the last thing I'll say about this is, you know, when you talk to people who are using an advisor, almost inevitably, at least in my experience, It's what they'll say is, well, yeah, maybe, but old Charlie's a friend or old Charlie, he manages my parents' money and he's a family friend.

39:20How do I leave old Charlie? I've heard this so much, I've come to think that the real skill of investment advisors isn't financial. It's in becoming or pretending to be somebody's friend. And the last thing in my cynical frame of mind that I will share on that is I've yet to have anybody who made the decision to step away from their advisor, report back and say, you know, Charlie, he's still my friend. Because, you know, the moment you tell your advisor that you're going to handle it on yourself, then you're going to find out how deep that friendship is from old Charlie's point of view. Robert Leonard It's funny.

40:01The other thing too, I would also add is just that most of these funds, their overall performance is essentially whatever the market gets anyways. But then on top of that, you're paying more and more fees. So because of that, I literally underperformed the market. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to invest with an advisor. Robert Leonard It really doesn't. Now to be clear, there are times when advisors can be useful giving advice, and there are, in fairness, good advisors out there, if you feel the need, my advice would be seek one that charges on an hourly basis, a fee-based advisor, because then there's not the inherent conflict of interest.

40:39So, let's just think about one potential conflict of interest with even an honest advisor, but one who's working on a fee. Let's suppose you go to them and you say, you know, I'm thinking about paying off my mortgage. I'm thinking about maybe taking some of the money I've invested in selling those shares and paying off my mortgage. What do you think? Well, from the advisor's point of view, if you do, let's say your mortgage is half a million dollars. Well, if you do that, that's half a million dollars that is no longer going to be managed by that advisor. And so, if that advisor is charging you 1 % a year to manage that money, Well, that 1 % a year, which is what,$5 ,000, is going to go out the door.

41:27So, for that advisor to recommend that you pay off your mortgage is going to cost him$5 ,000. Well, that's the kind of conflict of interest. Now, you'd like to think your advisor would look at the interest rate you're paying on the mortgage, look at the investments you're in and what your goals are and all that fashion. Hopefully they do. But I got to imagine for most advisors who've got a kid coming up to college or a boat payment or whatever, that loss of income is going to be somewhere in the back of their mind as well. So you're asking a lot from an advisor. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

42:08Hey, it's Sean O'Malley, just popping in with a quick message. If you like this podcast, well, I've got great news for you. We've got a handful of other shows for you to explore, from learning about Bitcoin to embracing a richer, wiser, happier lifestyle. Just go into your podcast app and type in We Study Billionaires to find our collection of shows. We Study Billionaires is our flagship podcast, 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 Grieve, Preston Pysh, and William Green each hosts their own We Study Billionaires episodes and bring their own unique perspectives.

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45:23That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. So you list 18 aspects of what the worst possible investment would look like in a great article on your site. Coincidentally, real estate ticks nearly all of the boxes that you list. And I've come to the same conclusion that you do many years ago myself. my reasoning was quite simple. The opportunity cost of having a mortgage is way too high when you can rent and invest the same amount of capital. The difference is that your investment will be worth a lot more than your house in a few decades. So do you think the reason most parents try to tell their kids home ownership is so important is more of a generational thing?

46:03I think it probably is. I think there is... Home ownership is sort of the American religion. And from what I understand, it's probably even, if anything more, the Canadian religion. You guys seem to really be into homeownership. And you look back at my parents' generation who went through the depression, which of course was not a good time for financial assets. And homeownership just felt more stable to a lot of people. And if you're not a saver, an investor, if you're prone to spend every dime that comes your way on other things, well, then at least if you have a house, it's kind of a forced savings plan, so to speak.

46:47That's the way it worked for my parents, but it's not optimal. And I think the post you're referring to is why your house is a terrible investment. And my basic premise is that houses are not good investments for a lot of reasons. It doesn't mean you should never own a house. I own a house. I've owned houses most of my adult life, but I didn't own them thinking they were investments. I own them because I could easily afford them and they provided a lifestyle that I wanted. So, I think of houses as being expensive indulgences. Now, of course, there's a huge real estate industry out there that is motivated to convince people that houses are great investments and that's the drumbeat that you hear all the time.

47:33And then, of course, there are all the stories you hear about somebody who bought 30 years in San Francisco and they paid$100 ,000 and now it's worth 10 million or whatever. Those things, I'm sure, do exist. You don't hear the stories about somebody who bought in Detroit and saw their investment get absolutely trashed. Now, it's important to recognize, and people will say, well, obviously, you shouldn't buy in Detroit. You should only buy in San Francisco. Well, what I understand, San Francisco is having a lot of social problems at the moment. And I've been to Detroit recently, and Detroit's beginning to enjoy a renaissance.

48:14So, who's to say 10 years from now, you know, the people who are pro-houses are going to say, well, of course, you don't want to buy in San Francisco. Everybody could tell that was about to go downhill. You wanted to buy in Detroit, which was... By the way, I'm not predicting that necessarily. But Detroit of yesterday might be the San Francisco of tomorrow, and the San Francisco of tomorrow might be the Detroit of yesterday. You don't necessarily know, and you are making a huge bet on a very specific location. If you want to live in San Francisco, and you can afford a house, and you see it as expensive indulgence by all means.

48:52If you want to live in Detroit, the same thing. Personally, I think I'd be a little more comfortable investing in Detroit at this point in a house because it's, I think, at the beginning rather than teetering at the top. So you brought a really good point up there just about how us Canadians love the housing market. And I live in Vancouver where it's probably one of the worst situations. Yeah. So actually, I know a couple of people in Vancouver who have bought houses as an investment, but I've looked into it just running back of the envelope math. And the return is, it makes long-term bonds look really attractive.

49:30Let's put it that way. I think it depends where you're from. And like what you're saying, completely rational, and I agree. But let's say you were talking to someone in Vancouver's market who was looking to deploy some money either for investment purposes. And they saw that their parents' house, they bought it in the 80s for 200 grand and now it's worth 2 million. So outside of the risks that you just talked about with not knowing exactly what's going to happen in the future, what are some other risks that are inherent in property that people should know about? Robert Leonard If you buy a house, I think you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who buys a house and doesn't begin to renovate it or fix it up in some fashion.

50:11So what people lose sight of, a lot of people say this to me all the time. My mortgage is the same as my rent. And so why not buy? Well, okay, I'll take your word for that. But now you're also paying real estate taxes. Are you going to remodel your kitchen? Are you going to replace the carpeting? Does it need a new roof? Houses, both optional things that homeowners choose to do because one of the reasons people say, oh, I want to have a house because I want to make it mine. Well, that's great. That's part of the expensive indulgence thing, right? I understand that. But the moment you start putting money into that house to make it yours, now it's a whole lot less expensive.

50:53Nobody rents an apartment and says, gee, I'm going to remodel the kitchen, right? So inherently, the apartment is going to be less expensive over time. Again, this is lifestyle decisions, which are fine when you own a house. I've done it myself. I've remodeled houses. And so that's great, but it's not a good way to invest your money. It can be, depending on what your desires are, a good way to indulge yourself with your money. But that's a different kind of thing. So if you own a house, you're always going to be spending money to maintain it. You're always going to be wanting to spend money to make it more yours and improve it.

51:31Which by the way, that fancy new kitchen you put in when you want to sell that house 10 years from now, might not be in fashion anymore. Or your taste might not be the taste of the buyers. So they might be looking at that kitchen you spent 50 grand on and saying, yeah, this is a nice house, but I got to rip that kitchen out. So there's all kinds of things. Building is always doing its best to return to dust. And if you own it, you have to expend a lot of energy and money preventing that from happening. It's funny because kind of bringing it back into the comparing it, for instance, with an index fund, right?

52:08I mean, it's essentially basically like, you know, you can buy a house, you can or buy an index fund. Let's just say you can buy those two, but the house is going to have a massive expense ratio because like you said, you know, you're not just paying rent as your mortgage. There's tons and tons of expenses. And even if you don't want to upgrade it, stuff happens, right? You get floods, your roof collapses, you know, your toilet stops working. I mean, you know, it's not like, it's not like, oh, I'm going to gamble and nothing's going to happen. I'm not going to put a dime into the house. It's like, no, no, no, no, that's not how it works.

52:38You're going to be spending money. You know, on that post you referred to that I have on why your house is a terrible investment there, that's the post that's gotten me the most hate. It's also gotten me the most love and it's generated the most comments. And one of those comments buried in there. I don't look at the comments anymore because it's been a while, but when it was first out, I paid more attention. And one of the comments came from a guy who was arguing the point that he thought houses were great. And he said, I don't know what you're talking about. I own my house for 30 years and I've never spent any money on it.

53:16And I'm thinking, okay, I'll take your word for it. But I can't imagine what kind of condition your house is in if you've really spent 30 years and done no maintenance, no improvements, you know, it's whatever. So, I think people are a little delusional. I think if you really sat down with that guy and said, well, okay, you know, what do you mean you haven't done anything? Well, of course, I had to replace the roof back in, you know, in 08. I think people tend to forget. But if you had a house for 30 years and you genuinely spent no money on maintaining it, then good luck with your resale. So you wrote a wonderful passage about when your daughter was eight and you guys were watching the news together on TV.

54:05I think it was about the depression era. And you mentioned that you hadn't been working for the past year or so by choice. And she asked you, quote, Daddy, are we poor? Unquote. And you reassured her everything was okay. But under the surface, you were thanking the FU money, which you referenced there a little earlier, that you would work so hard to save up for in situations exactly like this one. You kind of defined what FU money already is. But I was wondering if, I know you've utilized it that one time that you referred to when you were with your daughter, but is it something that you've used multiple times and I would just be interested in knowing how you've used it in the past?

54:40Yeah. So that particular story comes from, I want to say 2002. So this was in the after aftermath of the tech collapse at the end of the, there was the tech boom in the nineties. And then of course it collapsed, one of the worst collapses we've had. And then of course, there was 9-11, the attack on the, on the world trade centers. And that just drove the economy into a tailspin. And at the time, my career was spent in business to business publishing. And I was a group publisher of some tech magazines for the company I was working for. And of course, because they were tech magazines, our business fell off the cliff.

55:18And I worked for the advanced technology division of that company. And the whole division just went from posting a record year to just plundering. We all lost our jobs. So I was kicked to the curb. And my daughter and I were, she knew I wasn't working and I'd been out of work probably for a year or something at that point. And we're watching, and these were hard economic times in general. And the news had this story of other people had lost their jobs and they were standing in basically a breadline, right? And that's when she asked me, Daddy, are we poor? And it was, it gave me a great idea. I said, no, sweetie.

55:52And she said, well, you don't have, you know, like those people on TV don't have a job and you don't have a job. And so, how come we're not poor? And I said, well, we have money that's working for us, which of course is the whole idea, right? So, that was the, I've stepped away from a lot of jobs in my career. That was the one time when it wasn't my choice, you know, and I kicked to the curb. But I loved working. And when I was working, I worked pretty intently, which sounds good and sounds like a humble brag. But the downside of it is that you burn yourself out. And it's you can't, at least I can't do it consistently.

56:28So, I would have to step away periodically to recharge my batteries. And so I would take sabbaticals that having this FU money allowed me to pay my bills. And also, most often I'd travel during those sabbaticals and that's how I used it. And it wasn't enough money that I never had to work again, but it was enough money that I didn't have to worry about paying the rent or the mortgage in the immediate future and I and I could afford to do other things. That's how I used it. And it was very powerful to have. And that's one of the things I tell people is, you know, it can be intimidating if you're starting at ground zero and you're thinking, wow, how do I get to a million dollars?

57:13Let's say that just seems like a long journey and it can be. But you have to understand it's not an on and off switch. It's not like one day you have nothing and then the next day you have a million dollars. along the way, you keep building what I call your FU money. And the moment you start on the path, the moment you start saving and investing, you're a little bit stronger. And then you're a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger until finally you're fully FI. But that strength allows you to make bolder decisions long before you are fully financially independent. Preston Pysh So I have one quick question about FU money.

57:52And do you delineate between your general pot of savings and FU money? Like for instance, I know you referenced earlier, if you had an expense coming up, you might just put that in cash rather than keeping it in an index fund. But yeah, I'm just interested. Do you delineate between the two or is it kind of just FU money is kind of just like a subset of your general savings? David Gardner No, I don't delineate. So for me, to be clear, for a lot of people, FU money is the equivalent of being financially independent. And I'm not the authority on defining what it is. But just for me, I choose to see FU money is that the money that you are steadily building in the interim from start to full financial independence.

58:38So for me, it's the entire amount of money that I have. Because, Because if let's say you've decided you need to have a million dollars to retire, and at some point you're at$100 ,000 that's invested in different ways, maybe some of it's in VTSAX, maybe some of it's in a money market fund, that totality would be how I think of the FU money you have, because that's money you can draw on if you need to to pay your expenses while you're stepping away from trading your labor for money. I have a 15 month old son and I want to eventually teach him as well about lessons, about, you know, savings and compounding money as well.

59:20And thank you very much. And I know, like you mentioned that basically everything you've done with all this FI pretty much started with your daughter. So I'm interested in knowing what would you like to what would you tell parents about how to help teach their kids, you know, understand some of these concepts better? And also, I'm also interested in knowing at what age do you think it's appropriate to start teaching them? Well, I am probably the exact wrong person to seek advice from on this subject. At the very end of Pathfinders, there's an interview that Christine Benz of Morningstar does with my daughter and myself.

59:57And so you get to hear from, and of course, Jessica is now an adult and she's on the path, but you get to hear from Jessica how she thinks about all this stuff. But I pushed it way too hard, way too soon. And in the process, I managed to turn her off to all things investing. In my defense, I did it because if you get money right, your life is so much better. You have so many more options. And if you get money wrong, your life is so much harder. There's great irony. If you get money right and you begin building your FU money and ultimately become financially independent, you really don't have to think about money all that much, especially if you're on the simple path to wealth because your investments are really simple and they're automated.

1:00:45If you don't get money right and you're spending every dime that comes to you on stuff and you're living paycheck to paycheck, well, then you have to think about money all the time and in the most negative possible framework. So clearly, I didn't want that for my daughter. And clearly, I wanted all the options and freedom and the expansion of her life that understanding money correctly could provide. So that was why I pushed it so hard. I don't know what the balance is. It turned out okay because eventually, she started paying attention. But she will say, as she does in the interview, she didn't really pay attention until she got to college and started seeing all the financial problems that people she was meeting had and the lack of understanding.

1:01:36And so then I think she... But my daughter loves to tease me. She says, you know, Dad, if I'd listened when I was young, there'd be no blog. You know, there would be no Chautauqua. There would be no books. And Kyle wouldn't want to interview you. And she's right. So I owe it all to the little girl who wouldn't listen. So I noticed you just mentioned the Chautauqua and I know that you're pondering not holding them anymore, but I'm interested in knowing what got you interested in holding them in the first place. So I run a mastermind community for TIP and we recently did a book club on Robert Peirce Xen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was the first time I'd ever seen that word Chautauqua.

1:02:17So I'm just interested, is that where you got the term or was it somewhere else? And I'd love to know more about that. You're the first person who's ever mentioned that book in this context and asked that question. And it is, in fact, and I hadn't even thought about this, but looking back on it, it was that book where I first came across the word. And I love the word. I mean, it's a Native American word. It means gathering to discuss ideas and concepts and all that kind of stuff. And it was just absolutely perfect for what I want it to do. And it's just a wonderful word, which is I think why he used it in the art of motorcycle maintenance.

1:02:53But I started the blog in 2011. And by 2012, it suddenly was developing this audience that was interested in this stuff. And I thought, wow, it'd be kind of fun to go out and give talks about this. So, I started looking around for a venue to do that. And at the time, there weren't any. Now, there are quite a few in the community, but at the time, I couldn't find anything. And in the summer of, I want to say it was 2011, my wife and I had gone to Ecuador because we'd never been and just hang out for the summer. And we really liked Ecuador. And when I came back, I subscribed to a newsletter about Ecuador.

1:03:35And there was an ad one day in there for a retreat on happiness that this American woman was putting together and she was living in Ecuador. So, I reached out to her and I said, hey, you know, if you have money, it facilitates the pursuit of happiness. And, you know, if you ever want to add a financial aspect to the things you're doing, I'd love to talk to you about it. And she responded and said, well, we're not actually going to wind up doing this because nobody's signing up. And that started a conversation. And because of my background, when I was listening to her, it became pretty clear to me why people weren't signing up.

1:04:13And the solution to that became pretty clear. And so I flew back down to Ecuador to meet her to see if she was a real person and got to know her a little bit. And while I was there, we hammered out the outline of what became Chautauqua and then conducted the first one in 2013 in Ecuador. J.L., I really appreciate you joining me today. But before we say goodbye, where can the audience connect with you and learn more about you? It's been my pleasure and I've had a blast in our conversation, Kyle. Probably the easiest thing is to start at the blog. It's jlcollinsnh.com. And then from there, you'll find links to Pathfinders and Simple Path to Wealth.

1:04:55And my second book, which is How I Lost Money in Real Estate Before It Was Fashionable. and you can find your way to my Twitter and Facebook if you want to hang out there. And when you send me the link for this interview, I'll be putting it up on both those places and on the blog. So yeah, if anybody's interested, that's probably how to go about it. Okay, folks, that's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here very soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial Investing on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on our episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com.

1:05:39This 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.