Episode 271: Expected Returns of the AI Revolution (plus People are Lying to you About Money w/ Anthony Walsh)

27:29And so it just started to bother me a little bit. And then over time, little things started to happen. Like in one of the units, the dishwasher broke three times in a year. This is a brand new dishwasher. It shouldn't break three times in a year, but it wasn't the first year. And so like the warranty was up on it. So it cost me like, I don't know, several thousand dollars to repair. And you have to make this decision with something like that. It's like, okay, the dishwasher itself is 1500 bucks. The repair is $400. So you fix it the first time. And then you end up with this sunk cost problem, the sunk cost fallacy, where the second time it breaks, it's another$400.

28:00And you're like, okay, well, I've already sunk$400 into this. Should I fix it again or just replace the whole thing? And then by the third time it happened, I realized in hindsight, I should have just replaced it the first time and it would have actually been more cost effective, right? So little things like that just started to pop up and nothing major. And then every year I'd get the property tax bill, I'd get the utility bill, there'd be a small assessment, the strata fees would go up. And still on paper, the rental income is covering all of the expenses. So again, as far as real estate investment goes, this was generally a positive experience.

28:29But every single time I got one of these bills or got the property taxes or something like that, I didn't like it. And then I had to track all of these expenses for accounting purposes and everything like that. And look, I mean, for a lot of real estate investors, this is just cost of doing business. This is not a huge thing. For me, I absolutely detested it. and it bothered me. And I was actually late filing my taxes one year just because the mental energy that I needed to put into just going back and tracking all of the deductible expenses and everything just seemed like too big a project for me.

28:59And so I just kind of kept kicking it down the road. I asked my accountant, he's like, you're probably in a refund position. So if you don't file, there's probably not any penalties. And that just gave me permission to just kick that can down the road. And so I was like nine months late filing my personal taxes as a result of this rental. So then we had kids. And so obviously life gets hectic. And this just became a job for me. And it's not like I'm putting 20 hours a week into this, right? Like this is probably relatively low from a labor intensity standpoint. But it was just enough that I looked at my wife, I think maybe six months ago.

29:31And I said, I'm done. We're selling them both. I don't care what the market's doing. I'm not talking about interest rates. I'm not making a prediction on real estate prices going forward. That has absolutely nothing to do with this decision. Let's just get out of this. There's better things we can do with the money. We can just stay diversified, stay liquid, clear off all the debt on that balance sheet. We decided to do that. Just last week, we finally closed on that second rental property. They're gone. Just because I don't know why this happens to me, but things like this tend to happen to me.

30:01The bank is still taking mortgage payments out of my bank account, even though the mortgage has been totally cleared off. I don't know if that's normal for this type of thing. It happened to Lisa when she sold her house. Oh, okay. Another example right here. Yeah. And I'm told that mortgage departments are just so busy right now that they're just slow on processing things. So now I'm fighting with the bank to get my mortgage payments back and all this type of thing. So it's done. It's over. The relief that I felt when that second property closed and this was all done was really difficult to measure, but it was overwhelmingly good for me.

30:33And so I think the interesting lesson here is that even if on paper, and even if the actual experience of owning real estate goes as well as it can go for you. And I'll be blatantly honest here, like from a return standpoint, it went quite well. You know, West Coast of British Columbia has done pretty well price-wise since 2016. So we did well from that perspective. But even with all of those things going perfectly, I was not cut out to be a landlord. It just was not for me. It was not for my wife. And so we decided we're getting rid of it, never doing rental properties again. I'm guessing you're talking to the converted here.

31:09I'll speak for myself. I'm not up for that either. Dan, I'm not sure that's your jam either. No, not a chance. I don't even like having my own house. I agree with that. Actually, I was talking to somebody this morning about that. And I've always said if I could get like a 99 year lease, a one way lease where I could not be evicted on a property, I would never own my own house. It's just, you want this again, you guys have talked about this, but you want the security and the consumption hedge of owning the property. But at the same time, it's expensive. It's a lot of work. You're locked into a place.

31:42And landlords are not bad. Well, some of them can be, but I had great landlords. And on one place that we lived in, he was the builder. And so I proposed that I'd pay for materials if he built us this really nice deck. He's like, great. We lived there for, I don't don't know, three years. I think we for sure got value for the cost of materials. And our kids used to play out there all the time. So I don't know. People always say, well, you can't customize your rental to be what you want. But it's like, I don't know, you can't. But at the same time, I could not rent the house that I live in now.

32:16And my wife was always worried about what if they sell or whatever, just that uncertainty that comes with renting. And I don't mind that at all, but it's something that my wife really didn't like. It's an expensive problem to have to solve too, right? There's not really an easy way to solve that except for buying a property. And we all know what real estate prices are like in Canada, right? So I get it. I actually have a friend who's a tax lawyer and he showed me his lease and he's actually negotiated something like that. Basically like a one-way perpetual contract where it's like an option where only he can exercise the option every year.

32:53So he gets to choose only whether he wants to continue the lease and the landlord has forgiven their right on paper. I don't know if that contract would hold up in court, but he obviously agrees that it was quite interesting to see that. So while you were trying to become a real estate mogul, what were you saying to your clients about real estate? That's a great question. I'm an open book with clients. I tell them exactly how I'm invested, what my portfolio looks like. And so I was very candid about it. Now, I'm not a real estate expert. I wasn't recommending people do what I do at the same time.

33:25But a lot of my clients already had some form of real estate, whether it was their primary residence or what have you. So when they would ask questions about rentals and real estate, I would describe my experience with it and trying to recognize my own bias as an advisor that doesn't generally recommend real estate. So I would just have kind of open conversations with them about it. And it's funny, when I posted this story on Twitter, tons of people came in and said, same, like, I hate it. I'm just getting rid of my rentals or I got rid of mine 10 years ago and I've never been happier. And that was so fascinating to me because the narrative that you see online about this generally is totally different.

34:00And it doesn't feel like a lot of people are honest about their experience with rental real estate being negative. But yeah, in talking to clients, some people shared the same experience, but it was rare. A lot of people were endeavoring to buy rental real estate. So I could at least speak to the process and like the administration process behind buying and managing rentals. But, you know, I fell short of straight up recommending them. Super interesting. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So that's it for me this week. But if anybody wants to chat about it or just tug on any of that experience, let me know.

34:29I'm happy to chat about it. Awesome. Thanks for joining us, Mark. Yeah, of course. Always a pleasure, guys. Thanks, Mark.

34:38Just awesome having Mark join us on the podcast regularly. Love it. Okay. Let's shift to look back on a past episode that might be of interest for listeners who have not had a chance to go through the entire collection. Actually, someone funny today on Twitter asked me for suggestions of other podcasts to check out. And I said, well, if you listen to all 268 that we published, Plus Your Crypto series. And he said, no, I'm going to get through that. So anyways, Don Ezra joined us, just a little preamble here back on episode 155. I think you'd agree, Ben, Don is one of the nicest people, certainly that I have ever met.

35:13He's become a friend of both of us and also PWL. He was telling us when we last spoke to him that his family jokingly calls him 155 as we sent him a bunch of mugs with, remember the episode mugs we had that had the guest name and the episode number? So he's got his name beside 155. So his family and kids and grandkids call him 155. So that's pretty funny. Anyways, he's been a great resource and supports us, which we appreciate. So with that, we'll do a quick brief. So in June of 2021, Don Ezra joined us to talk about planning for life after full-time work. And he, I think it's safe to say, He is the perfect person to speak with authority on this subject.

35:52After a very successful career in the investment world, Don retired to a new world, a world where he felt uprooted, completely discombobulated, as he put it. This caused him to learn about the process of retirement and published the book Life 2, representing what retirement is, or at least what it is to him. He described the U-curve of happiness and how happiness actually increases as you get older. And given Don's background as an actuary, we jumped into the risk retirees face, such as outliving your money, sequence of return risk, and of course, the benefit of considering annuities and asset allocation.

36:28At the end, we talked about lessons Don learned from his years advising, yes, some of the largest pension funds on the planet. So for anyone either approaching retirement or currently retired, Don is an absolute gem of a resource. and episode 155, I'd suggest is worth checking out. Agreed. And again, like you said, he's just a gem of a person. I agree. Great guy. For this week's book review, this is a book I came across on LinkedIn. And I know you asked me after the interview how I met Anthony. And honestly, I think it was through LinkedIn. And he posted his book, which was recently released called People Are Lying to you about money.

37:08I read it, I enjoyed it. And one of our goals this year was to bring more financial planning, broadly applicable financial planning and investment books to the audience. I thought this would be an interesting one to bring. So I reached out to Anthony on LinkedIn and he agreed to come on. He does his background, his background is probably the most eclectic background that I think I've ever heard from where he's lived and what he's done through his career. Young guy was on a path towards financial independence. He talked about that then he got inspired to write this book. So with that, let's go to our conversation with Anthony Walsh.

37:44Anthony Walsh, welcome to the Rational Reminder podcast. Thank you for having me. Lovely to be here. Great to have you and congratulations on your recently released book, People Are Lying to You About Money, which I read. I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'm glad to have you join us. So off the top, Anthony, just give us a very brief, your very brief background. Sure. So my name is Anthony. I am half French, half Irish, but I lived abroad most of my life. Just to give you a very quick run through. I was born in France, but I grew up in Scotland. I went to kindergarten in Louisiana, primary school in Netherlands, secondary school in Thailand, high school in Singapore, bachelor's degree in Poland, master's degree in New York, first job in Dublin, Ireland.

38:25I then moved to Germany where I worked at the European Central bank for six years, been saving money since the age of 16. That allowed me to reach lean FI at age 29. I then left my job and tried this lean FI lifestyle for a while. I learned how to surf, I learned how to dive. Realized that lean FI wasn't really for me. So I'm now trying to transform it into coast FI by trying to build a lifestyle business around money. Wow. That's one heck of an intro. So your book is called People Are Lying to You About Money. pretty provocative title. How did you come up with that name and why did you write the book?

39:01Because that's how I felt on my journey to financial literacy. My journey to financial literacy has been full of mind-blowing moments and full of moments of that stuff is awesome. Why has no one told me this before? And I've been through so many different schooling systems and I was a bit upset that not a single school, not a single teacher, not a single classmate of mine told me about financial freedom. And then I worked in different places. I worked in data analysis, consulting, two different Fortune 500 companies. I worked in fund management. I worked at the European Central Bank, where I was surrounded by people with PhDs in economics.

39:36And there too, nobody told me about financial freedom, not one person. I had to discover it at the age of 26 on a random US blog talking about dividends. And so I was a bit upset. And so I thought I would take all of these mind-blowing moments which I've accumulated in my journey to financial literacy, put them together in a book and sort of present it to people and say, well, there you go. That's the stuff that you've not been told and you should probably have a look at. So how are people lying about money? It's a good question. I think there are four main types of lies. So I would say the first type of lie are lies that are born out of ignorance.

40:12So for example, that's when people tell you that real estate is safe, that you can't lose money in real estate. Now, of course, We have data. We know that real estate does fluctuate and that people do occasionally default on their mortgages. They do lose their family home. So these things do happen. So that is simply not true. Another form of lies are lies which are born of what I call intellectual laziness. An example of that is when people tell you that the stock market is the casino. Again, we have academic evidence. We know that if you invested in the US stock market at any point between 1926 to today, and you held on to that investment for at least four years, the probability that you would have made money is 91%.

40:51Now, in my view, 91 % probability of success is not the casino. So that's also a lie. The third type of lies are what I would call nonverbal lies. That's when people are lying to you without necessarily opening their mouths. So for example, if somebody is poor, if somebody is in debt and they wear like a really fancy watch,$20 ,000 watch, or they have a fancy car or they live in the fancy part of town and they insist in flashing it into your face, that's a bit of a lie. And I think it's a very destructive lie because it causes the rest of us to feel like we're lagging behind and we try to keep up with the Joneses.

41:26But a lot of the time the Joneses are themselves pretending to be rich. And the fourth type of lie are when people lie to themselves. And this sometimes they don't even realize it. An example of that is when people tell you that their number one priority in life is their children. And yet, if you look at their bank statements, we would notice that their number one priority in life is actually alcohol, cocktails, parties, brunch. How well do people understand money? On the back of my book, I have this sentence. It says that I worked at a consulting firm, a startup, and a central bank. And I've never met anyone who truly understands money.

42:03Now, This single sentence probably accounts for about 99 % of all the criticism I ever received in my book. People hate the sentence. They hate being told they don't understand money. And that comes from people in general who have, let's say, a degree in business or a degree in economics, and therefore they believe they understand money. And the truth is, the field of money is huge. Even if you have a degree in microeconomics, it doesn't mean that you understand macroeconomics or political economy or monetary policy, fiscal policy, behavioral finance, financial therapy, financial planning, investing, personal finance.

42:38It's a huge field. So even if you have a PhD in 16 different fields related to money, it's still not enough because next year we're going to come up with new concept. We're going to come up with financial therapy. We're going to come up with financial counseling. And only now we're really scratching the surface on what it means to have a personality type around money. And so as a result, I think that we don't have enough information as a society about money yet. So as a result, we don't know much. How do you think someone should assess how much they know about money? It's a very good question.

43:07So correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel as if 90 % of what there is to know about money has not yet been discovered. We're sort of pushing the frontier every year. We're sort of sailing uncharted waters. As I said, every year we come up with new topics, and therefore there's more to learn. And probably 10 years from now, somebody will take up all these new concepts, put them together in a book, and we're going to have a whole new way of looking at money that we've never seen before. And so what this means is that as a society, we know very little. And I think that's reflected in mainstream media, that's reflected in our politicians, that's reflected in our leaders.

43:42And here's something that recently blew my mind. It turns out, maybe I was naive for believing this, but it turns out that you can actually look up the portfolio of your politician online. In most places, they are legally required to disclose it, which means if you want to check what the head of the IMS is invested in, you can check that. If you want to check what the president of the European Central Bank is invested in, you can also check that. And I did. And if you look at Christine Lagarde, who is a big fish, I mean, she was minister of the economy in France. She was the head of the IMF. She is now president of the European Central Bank.

44:17She sits at the G7 and the G20. And she's also a member of the board of trustees at the World Economic Forum. She's clearly on authority in this field. There's no dispute in that. No one can boast such credibility in that field. And yet you look at her portfolio, and this is public information, and it's made up of six funds. Three of them are actively managed. Two of them are multi-asset funds. And one of them is a fund that tracks convertible bonds for some reason. She doesn't have any index funds. She doesn't have any factor funds. And the lowest fees on these funds is 1.3%. The highest fees is 2.3%.

44:54And she's not a loner. She's not a black sheep. Others are much worse. The governor of the Bank of Belgium, for example, has 24 funds, half of which are actively managed. Two or three of them are tracking the exact same index, the MICI world. There is some overlap. There is some potential for help from a financial planner, for example. So as a society, we just don't know enough about money. And I think that's reflected everywhere in society, including our leaders. And I think this really underlines how you can be an expert in economics, but still not an expert in financial planning and investing.

45:29Does that make sense? Sure does. You mentioned real estate earlier. What is real estate propaganda or lies? So real estate propaganda is when people are willingly or unknowingly giving you false information about real estate. An example of that is when people tell you that real estate is a good investment. For example, they might tell you, look at your uncle's. He bought a property and now he tripled his money on it over a lifetime. It can happen, but most of the time it doesn't. And again, we have academic evidence on this. Robert Schiller, who is a Nobel Prize winner in economics, put this together in his book, Irrational Exuberance.

46:04And he looked at almost 200 years worth of historical data on US real estate. And he found that the average real increase in home prices after accounting for inflation, taxes, renovation costs, and real estate investment fees was only about 0.3 % per year, which is not great. It's not something that a real estate agent would tell you. Another example of that is when somebody tells you that unlike stocks, real estate is safe, that you can't lose your money, that it's safer than stocks. And again, we have data, we can check. And if we compare or if we analyze the US real estate data, and we can take a substitute of that and look, for example, at US real estate investment trusts, which are composed of multiple apartments, multiple buildings, which are arguably a bit more diversified and therefore a bit more safe than a standard apartment.

46:55If we look at that, we can see that the volatility on these funds is higher than the average volatility for the average stock market, which means the idea that real estate is safer than the stock market is simply not true. Just because you can't see the volatility does not mean it's not there. Why do you think more people don't invest in stocks? It's a good question. I think there are four levels of what I call investment confidence. So level one is ignorance. So you don't know you should invest, therefore you don't. Very clear. Level two is you know you should invest, but you don't know how, therefore you don't.

47:29Level three is when you know you should invest, you sort of know how it works. And that's where most educated people are at because they've heard of index funds before. They've heard of Vanguard. They've heard maybe of factor funds, of rebalancing, et cetera. But they're not convinced the stock market is the right solution for them. They're not convinced it's the best way to build wealth. As a result, they're always looking for alternative ways to invest their money. They're looking into Bitcoin. They're looking into real estate, maybe into bonds or maybe into cash now because some savings accounts are paying 5%.

47:58As a result, they are faced with a paradox of choice and they're immobilized by choice. So they don't invest in stocks or they invest not enough in stocks to reach their desired outcome. And the last level is what I call investment confidence is when you know you should invest, you know how it works, and you are convinced the stock market is the best way to grow your money. And what this means is that when there is going to be some downturn in the market, which will happen eventually, you will have the mental fortitude to put down more money or at least hold your investments so that you can get the best outcome in the future.

48:32What is risk in your mind? So I'm somebody who's very risk averse. I don't like taking risk. You would never see me jumping out of an airplane. You would never see me going bungee jumping. I'm also not a big fan of debt. And I always tend to get to the airport way too early for my flight, which always sort of annoys my wife. My friends know that. They know that I'm risk averse. And yet when they discover that I've got about 80 % of my money in the stock market, they're very puzzled. They ask me, isn't that risky? Isn't that irresponsible? And I respond with, well, actually, no, it's actually investing in stocks is actually probably the most responsible thing I could do with my money.

49:08And the way I see it is the following way, right? If I was to lose my job right now, if I was to lose all my income coming in. My current portfolio on how it is based on expected returns and safe withdrawal rates would be enough to finance my lifestyle for the next 21 years. If I take my money out of stocks and put it into cash, it would only be enough to finance eight years of lifestyle. So the idea is by investing in stocks, I'm improving my financial security from eight years of expenses into 21 years of expenses. In that sense, investing in stocks actually makes me safer even though my portfolio will have more volatility.

49:48It guarantees me or gives me a higher probability of achieving my goals, which I think is what really matters. Does that make sense? Yep. I think that's a good way to define risk is the risk of not achieving your goals. And I agree that for long-term investors, stocks are from that metric, probably safer than bonds and cash if you have a long time horizon. Can you talk about how you differentiate between being rich and being wealthy? So rich is quantifiable. You can check how rich you are. So historically, we've got data on this. And it turns out the average Chinese person today is 16 times richer than the average Chinese person in 1950.

50:27The average Canadian is six times as rich, or sorry, four times as rich. The average Italian is six times as rich. So we can check how rich we are on a historical level, but also on a global level. Here's something else that blew my mind. Turns out if you earn the minimum wage in Spain, measured in purchasing power, you are richer than 90 % of the world's population. You are in the top 10%. But it doesn't feel this way because you compare yourself to people who are earning more. Maybe you compare yourself to Northern Europeans or people from America. As a result, your views are going to be skewed.

51:01That's why most of us in the West are rich, but we're not necessarily wealthy because rich is quantifiable. Wealthy is more subjective. I would say you are rich when you have enough money to support your lifestyle without having to work. And that is very subjective. Somebody might be very happy with$2 ,000 in passive income sitting on a beach in Mexico while someone else may be earning$10 ,000 in Vancouver thinking that it's not enough. How does our spending habits affect, I mean, And speaking as someone who is approaching or is that financial independence or some level of it, how do spending habits affect your financial freedom?

51:38I think it doesn't just affect it. I think it shapes it. I'll give you a very quick story here. About 13 years ago, I was hanging out in Thailand with a few friends and we were approached by this guy who started speaking to us in French. And it turns out he was a metro conductor in Paris who's on vacation by himself. This guy was in his 20s and he was on vacation by himself in Thailand for about two weeks. Now, at the time, I didn't really develop any social filters. So I just asked him straight up, how did you afford the 12-hour flight on a train conductor salary? I mean, your salary is only 1 ,300 euros.

52:11Paris is really expensive. How did you do it? And he said something that I will always remember. He just looks at me and he says, oh, I'm Muslim. And I thought, well, what does that have to do with anything? And then he explained that because of his faith, he maintains the exact same lifestyle as his friends, with the only exception being that he doesn't drink. So he's not spending on alcohol, he's not spending on the cover charge to get into nightclubs, and he's not spending on buying drinks for girls. And so he can have the exact same lifestyle as his friends, but save a bit of money because of that.

52:45And that gives him enough money to go vacation in Thailand. So I think people really underestimate how much small efforts can aggregate into, because in life, small efforts aggregate into incredible things. But in personal finance, they don't aggregate, they compound. So you switched from being on lean FI to coast FIs. Is that because you, was it too lean? Was that what happened? I think it was more of a lack of intellectual stimulation and also a bit too lean, to be honest. And also being risk averse and being only 29 at that time, I thought, well, my safe withdrawal probably is not looking too great if I have to maintain my living standards for the next 60 years.

53:25So I also thought I might need to change that up a little bit. Does that answer your question? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Can you talk about how the value of money changes as we age over time? A dollar amount is not worth the same to everyone. So for example, a 10-year-old with$1 ,000 is incredibly rich, but a 70-year-old with$1 ,000 isn't. $1 ,000 is not enough to retire. It's not enough to buy yourself a home. So money is worth differently or a different amount to different people. Next, in general, money is worth more when you are young because you haven't experienced lifestyle inflation yet. As a result, because you've got lower standards, you can appreciate life in different ways.

54:05That's why hostels are full of young people and all inclusive resorts are full of old people. It's not because young people can't afford it. They spend money on many other things. They can't afford all inclusive resorts. They just choose not to. They've got different standards. It's also why if you're in your 20s and your friend says, hey, let's go to Colombia for a month, let's backpack through the country and sleep in hostels. If you're 20, you're getting excited. If you are 50, you feel insulted. So it will depend on your background. And the last element is that in general, as you get older, you progress through life, you get kids and life becomes a bit more expensive, as you know yourself.

54:41Even if you just want to go out for a drink, you need to hire a babysitter. And that just adds up or piles up a lot more cost on top of that. So what are the implications of all that on financial planning, life planning? It means that you should try to plan your life decision according to two components, which are finances and health. And what this means is, for example, if one of your goals is to hike Mount Fuji in Japan, you should probably do that when you're young because you're fit, you're healthy, you're good looking, you can do it. If you postpone that until your 60s, there's no guarantee that you're going to be fit enough or that your knees will be good enough to hike that volcano.

55:17On the other hand, if one of your goals is to sit on the beach and drink cocktails, you can probably do that in your 60s. So it's okay to sort of delay that by a few decades. Where it gets, I think, really tricky is for young people, because young people face an incredible choice. We know that money is worth more when you are young, but we also know that the earlier you start investing in the stock market, the better returns you're going to have. So if you're like me and you're trying to maximize wealth, you live below your means, you invest a difference, which from a financial perspective makes a lot of sense until you start looking at the data.

55:51And this is going to get a bit more difficult here, a bit more morbid, let's say. But if you look at the US Social Security data, only 90 % of US men live up to age 50, which means there's a 10 % chance I will not make it to age 50. Only 82 % of men make it to age 60. And only 68 % of men make it to age 70. So statistically speaking, I think it is unwise to postpone all of your spending, all of your happiness until after the age of 50. Let me put it this way, right? If you make a deal with the devil and the devil tells you, okay, I'm going to give you phenomenal stock market returns, but there's a 10 % chance you're going to die when you're 50 or before 50.

56:32Would you take it? If you're like me, you would say no way. but that's not the deal with the devil, that's life. That's a decision that every single person who's investing when they're young is taking. So I think the middle ground is try to maximize enjoyment as much as you can while also keeping an eye out on financial security because the goal is not to be rich, the goal is to be happy. Good answer. The book is People Are Lying to You About Money. Anthony, it was great to have you on. Thank you for having me. Lovely to be here.

57:06Great to have Anthony join us, Ben. Let's head to the after show. What's been on your mind lately? What's been on my mind? Eh, a little queue up for you. I don't know. You always talk about shows that you watch. This is a few weeks ago now, I think, but Angelica mentioned it in our chat. So it reminded me of the show Painkiller on Netflix about Oxycontin and Purdue Pharma. It was really good. Really, really good. So I've seen one documentary on them, but not this one, but it did show up on a Netflix feed. It's not a documentary. It's a series. It's a dramatic series. I don't know what you call it.

57:43Like they're acting out. Okay. Not exactly what happened. A lot of it's filled in with writing fiction, but the broad theme and the general story is follows what's actually happened. And it's yeah, just crazy, crazy story. And the impact that it's had on, and they don't, well, it references quite a bit, I guess, but we know a separate from the series how impactful opioids have been around the world. And yeah, seeing the story is just mind-blowing. Wow. Well, we'll check it out. I saw it there last night. This past weekend, Lisa and I took our bikes and spent a lot of time riding around Ottawa and we went out to what's called River House.

58:21Have you been? No, you sent me a picture, but I've not been myself. I couldn't believe it. So first of all, the trails through Ottawa and the bridges for bikes is fantastic. But just to the east of downtown on the river, obviously, is this 100 plus year old heritage building right on the water. And they built beside it on the river, this massive decking, this plastic decking with this huge open square in the middle for public swimming in the river. It is a spectacular, spectacular spot. I was blown away. Like it's so nice to see, you know, free access to a fantastic facility, beautiful deck, nice little cafe and gelato spot there and place you can go for lunch.

59:08Beautifully done. So I was pretty proud to see that as an Ottawa resident. So if you're looking for a place to travel and some pretty cool sites, it was really cool. So living downtown while a few rentals happened at our house has been a lot of fun for us. Why don't you talk about this review we got this past week? Yep. So we got a review from Tuco Salamanca, who I believe is a character from... Oh, no. What's the show called? Oh, that's Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad, yeah. Tuco, you're right. Yeah. The review was titled Never Boring, which is a, hey, I'll take it. They said, no matter the topic, Ben and Cameron make it accessible, interesting, and palatable.

59:49Their guests are incredible and they can make the most out of any conversation. For example, episode 237 about storytelling. I didn't put much emphasis on improving my discussion skills with clients, and now I want to write a story every day of my life. Thank you, RR, for educating, giving perspective, and doing what you do. Very nice. I heard from Joseph on LinkedIn, who's a 17-year-old from Atlanta. Reached out to thank us for the pod and discovered it after coming across your video, Reasons to Avoid Index Funds on YouTube. nice he's getting head started his age on learning about this stuff also heard from patrick in seattle who wanted to come to our meetup in huntington beach and by the time this episode airs we will know if he came to see us or not but it was very kind to hear from patrick also heard from constantine in new york who will also be at the live recording in california i wanted to highlight in the store a special offer while supplies last so eight years ago i'm holding it up here, the book for people on YouTube.

1:00:51Dimensional Fund Advisors produced a special edition book for their 35th anniversary, which again was eight years ago. And the book is called Quotations on a Better Way to Invest. It's a beautiful hard copy book with quotes from some of the greatest minds in finance, including many of our past guests, people like David Booth, Gene Fama, Ken French, Bob Merton, Mac McQuown, Myron Scholz, Dave Butler, George O 'Reilly, and many others are quoted in this book. Yes, it's a dimensional book. It is not a sales tool or anything like that. But I think there's lessons for anybody as they build their portfolios and implement their portfolios, how these thinkers in finance do what they do, I think is applicable to everyone.

1:01:35So if you want a copy of this book, just place any order for any sort of merch in the store and just leave a note in the apps and Jackie will send along a free copy of this book to you. Just drop a note and we'll send you a copy with your order. Can you crack it open and read one of the quotes? Sure. Just take a quote at random here. Modern finance is based primarily on scientific reasoning guided by theory, not subjectivity and speculation. That's from Mac McQuown. Here's one from David Booth. The important thing about an investment philosophy is that you have one you can stick with. Here's another one.

1:02:12Let me see if I find someone different here. Gene Fama, we build diversified portfolios that capture the dimensions of expected return. Myron Scholes, ideas alone are cheap. Implementation is what really counts. Oh, I didn't know that was a Myron quote. I've heard that before. I didn't know it was from him. Let's see. Merton Miller, I like that Dimensional invited all these Nobel lorias on their board before they got their Nobel prizes. It's easy to invite them afterward. word. That is cool. Ken French, it's just fun to do research, learn new stuff and potentially have an impact on the way other people are thinking about the world.

1:02:48It also talks about the background of these different people in the book. It's not a long book. I don't know the page count is here, but beautifully done. I mean, beautiful piece. I think we have 50, 60 copies on hand. Reach out, order anything and we'll send you a free copy. Coming up on the pod next week, Rob Carrick joins us again. That was a great conversation. It was. And the week after that will be our live interview that we taped in California with our good friend Hal Hirschfield. The week after that, wow, another ringer, Ben, with Professor Sam Hartsmark. Oh, yeah, it's a good episode.

1:03:24That's a, what do you call it, the red meat episode? That's a red meat episode for sure. I loved it. And in four weeks, we will have recorded our live event in Toronto at the CFA Toronto Wealth event. So we'll be broadcasting that. Both of us are on X. Did you call it X? I still call it Twitter. And we both have open county links there. I'm very active on LinkedIn. Love to hear from listeners. We're easy to find. Follow the rational minder on all these different platforms that we keep up to date on the live events. Ben, any final thoughts? I've got a couple of secret projects that I'm working on, but I'm not ready to announce them yet.

1:04:04So I'll start building the excitement now though. And these are the ones that I know about? Yeah. Okay. As long as I'm in the loop. Oh yeah, no, you're in the loop. Not secret to you, secret to everybody else. Kind of like Radar O 'Reilly. Anyways, that's an old reference that maybe some listeners will remember. Okay, awesome. With that, thanks everybody for listening.