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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Masters in

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Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 2: This week on the podcast boy, What an extra special

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Speaker 2: guest I Have? Jonathan Clements was the personal finance columnist

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Speaker 2: at The Wall Street Journal for nearly twenty five years.

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Speaker 2: He wrote over a thousand columns. He also worked as

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Speaker 2: director of financial education at City Group. Jonathan kind of

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Speaker 2: famously announced that he was diagnosed with terminal cancer on

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Speaker 2: his website as well as social media, and that started

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Speaker 2: this cascade of not just an outpouring of affection and

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Speaker 2: appreciation for his work, but just a dialogue about how

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Speaker 2: we all should be thinking about our lives, our money,

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Speaker 2: and our life satisfaction. I've been a reader of his

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Speaker 2: for forever, and it was really a privilege to have

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Speaker 2: him come into the studios and with no hesitancy, discuss

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Speaker 2: what many people find to be difficult subjects with just

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Speaker 2: tremendous grace and insight and dignity. And I found it

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Speaker 2: to be an absolutely fascinating conversation, and I think you

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Speaker 2: will also if you are at all curious about estate planning,

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Speaker 2: or investing or personal finance. This is not the usual discussion,

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Speaker 2: and I think it's very worthwhile for you to hear

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Speaker 2: this and share it with friends and family with no

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Speaker 2: further ado. My discussion with Jonathan Clements Barrio.

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Speaker 3: It's great to see you again and it's great to

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Speaker 3: be on your podcast.

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Speaker 2: Well, well, thank you so much. I'm glad we have

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Speaker 2: the opportunity to do this. Before we start talking about

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Speaker 2: the serious, heavy stuff, let's get a little background for you.

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Speaker 2: You grow up in London, you graduate Cambridge and you

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Speaker 2: start at Eural money magazine in London. What were you

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Speaker 2: studying at Cambridge? What was your original career plan?

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Speaker 3: So from a relatively early age, I actually thought about

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Speaker 3: being a financial journalist because my father had been a

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Speaker 3: financial journalist. He spent ten years in journalism in London.

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Speaker 3: He worked for the Daily Telegraph, he was city editor

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Speaker 3: for the Glasgow Herald. His first job out of college

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Speaker 3: was at the Financial Times. In fact, wow, and this

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Speaker 3: will blow your mind, Barry. My father graduated from Cambridge

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Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty six. He decided he was going to

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Speaker 3: take the highest paying job he was offered, and the

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Speaker 3: highest paying job he was offered the second highest paid

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Speaker 3: job he was offered at seven hundred pounds a year

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Speaker 3: was as a management trainee for Shell Oil. The highest

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Speaker 3: paying job he was offered at eight hundred pounds a

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Speaker 3: year was as a cub reporter for the Financial Times.

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Speaker 3: Can you imagine a world to where the highest paying

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Speaker 3: job you get offered out of college is a job

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Speaker 3: in journalism?

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Speaker 2: That's amazing. Journalism today has, you know, technology has changed

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Speaker 2: it so much that's really hard to fathom. Although you

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Speaker 2: and I not far apart in age, grew up in

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Speaker 2: an era where media was very specific and thought of

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Speaker 2: as a genuine career. I don't think even at the

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Speaker 2: journalism schools people are approaching.

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Speaker 4: It the same way.

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Speaker 2: What's your thoughts on the state of journalism in the

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Speaker 2: modern world.

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Speaker 3: Well, if you said to me, you know, what advice

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Speaker 3: would I give to somebody who wanted to go into journalism,

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Speaker 3: My aunts would be dope. I really feel like I

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Speaker 3: was the last generation that got into journalism and made

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Speaker 3: a career out of it and made a living wage.

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Speaker 3: But anyway, going back to your question, yeah, financial journalism

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Speaker 3: was always on my radar screen, and even before I

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Speaker 3: went to Cambridge, I actually spent eight months working for

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Speaker 3: a little suburban newspaper outside of Washington, DC, and in

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Speaker 3: many ways it was the most fun and then the

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Speaker 3: most educational experience I had in journalism. I worked for

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Speaker 3: this you know, rinking little paper that came out every

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Speaker 3: other week. The circulation was twenty five thousand, but as

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Speaker 3: a nineteen year old, I was able to not only

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Speaker 3: get involved in writing stories, but also I was involved

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Speaker 3: in the paste up of the paper. For people who

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Speaker 3: remember what paste up was. I even went on advertising

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Speaker 3: calls with the advertising director. It was so much fun

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Speaker 3: and I learned so much.

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Speaker 2: So you're from the UK, but you've spent a lot

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Speaker 2: of time in the US. Where did you grow up?

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Speaker 3: Both places? I was born in London, and when I

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Speaker 3: was three and a half, my father got a job

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Speaker 3: for the World Bank in Washington, d C. So we

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Speaker 3: all moved to Washington, d C. Then, just before my

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Speaker 3: tenth birthday, my father was posted to Bangladesh for four years.

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Speaker 3: So my mother and father and my sister went to

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Speaker 3: live full time in Bangladesh, and my two brothers and

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Speaker 3: I got packed off to boarding school in England, which

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Speaker 3: explains everything you know. We'd go out there during vacations.

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Speaker 3: Four years later, my parents moved back to DC, but

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Speaker 3: with my parents' encouragement, I stayed on a boarding school

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Speaker 3: in England, went to Cambridge, worked there for a year,

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Speaker 3: and then after a year as a journalist in London,

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Speaker 3: I realized the standard living for reporters in England seriously socked.

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Speaker 3: And that's when I decided to move to New York

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Speaker 3: City and I joined Forbes magazine as a glorified fact

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Speaker 3: checker and immediately doubled my salary moving from London.

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Speaker 2: Well didn't you also double your cost? New York back

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Speaker 2: then was still in the nineties, New York was really

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Speaker 2: an expensive place to live.

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Speaker 3: London is also a really expensive place to live. And

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Speaker 3: in any case, at the time, I was actually living

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Speaker 3: out in Princeton with my graduate student wife.

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Speaker 2: You go from Forbes pretty much during the golden era

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Speaker 2: of mutual funds and star managers, like the eighties and nineties,

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Speaker 2: that was peak mutual funds. What was that like looking

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Speaker 2: at it as the data was begun coming clearer that hey,

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Speaker 2: this may not be the best deal for investors.

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Speaker 3: When I was at Forbes, after this initial spell as

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Speaker 3: a fact checker, I was given the mutual funds beat

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Speaker 3: and the core article as the mutual funds reported for

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Speaker 3: Forbes magazine and subsequently when I covered mutual funds for

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Speaker 3: the journal, was the star manager profile, and it was

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Speaker 3: very formulaic. You went and you interviewed some star manager,

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Speaker 3: usually a man, and you would have a couple of

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Speaker 3: paragraphs about their investment philosophy and strategy. You would offer

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Speaker 3: three of their stock picks where they were probably touting

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Speaker 3: stocks they wanted download from their portfolio, and the managers

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Speaker 3: you selected were all based on past performance. And one

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Speaker 3: of the things I started to realize in those years

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Speaker 3: was the star managers, well, their stars started to flame

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Speaker 3: out pretty quickly. And this, of course was the experience

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Speaker 3: of many investors across the US, and that was in

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Speaker 3: many ways, you know, the seeds of the index fund revolution.

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Speaker 3: That people bought these star managers, you know, one after another,

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Speaker 3: the managers started to flame out, they bought new star managers.

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Speaker 3: They ended up with these portfolios that were just a

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Speaker 3: hodgepodge of x star fund managers and that really set

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Speaker 3: us up for the boom and index scene in the

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Speaker 3: late nineteen nineties and into the two thousands.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The funny thing is the behavioral aspect of mutual

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Speaker 2: funds seems to have been when people finally learn about

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Speaker 2: a manager who's put up great numbers. By the time

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Speaker 2: it makes it to Forbes, hey, most of that run

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Speaker 2: is probably over in a little mean reversion is about

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Speaker 2: to kick in. That experience led you to becoming the

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Speaker 2: index guy. Tell us a little bit what it was

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Speaker 2: like being an index guy at a time when it

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Speaker 2: wasn't as popular or well thought of as it is today.

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Speaker 3: So in nineteen ninety four, at the lofty age of

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Speaker 3: thirty one, the journal gave me my own column, which,

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Speaker 3: in retrospector is obsurd. I have a thirty one.

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Speaker 2: Year old their own It seems to have worked out

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Speaker 2: well for them, though, to be fair.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm not sure I would give a thirty

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Speaker 3: one year old that that chance. Okay, but yes, I

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Speaker 3: was given my own column. And by that point, having

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Speaker 3: seen all these star managers come and go, you know,

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Speaker 3: I had become an index fund devotee. And in column

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Speaker 3: after column I banged the drum for index funds to

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Speaker 3: the point where my editors were asking me, hey, could

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Speaker 3: you write about something else? But the numbers you can't

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Speaker 3: argue with. I mean, we all know that the brutal

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Speaker 3: math of investing before costs, investors collectively will earn the

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Speaker 3: market's return after costs. They will earn that mark return

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Speaker 3: less whatever they're paying. If you can just match the

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Speaker 3: market's return minus some tiny amount for an index fund's expenses,

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Speaker 3: you're going to outperform the vast majority of investors, and

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Speaker 3: that annual advantage snowballs over time. Until probably the early

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Speaker 3: two two thousands, that message didn't resonate as widely in

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Speaker 3: pot because index funds were the preserve of bank gotten

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Speaker 3: a couple other, you know, fun companies. But then these

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Speaker 3: ETFs came along, these exchange traded index funds, and at

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Speaker 3: that point any financial advisor, any broker, could sell index

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Speaker 3: funds to their clients. And it was really the ETF

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Speaker 3: revolution that took indexing and turned it into a national

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Speaker 3: phenomenon that now supposters the amount of money and actively

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Speaker 3: managed funds.

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Speaker 2: So that's an interesting thesis. I know ETFs are really

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Speaker 2: significant to the adoption of indexing, But spy has been

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Speaker 2: around for seems like forever. It certainly was around in

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Speaker 2: the nineties. What was it about the two thousands, specifically?

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Speaker 4: Was it just the variety of choice?

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Speaker 2: Why do you think ETFs kicked off so much attraction

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Speaker 2: to indexing, especially considering the bulk of those moneys, the

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Speaker 2: flow of black Rock, Vanguard, and State Street.

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Speaker 3: Well, so you're right, you know, spiders Spy came out,

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Speaker 3: I believe in nineteen ninety three, but it was just

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Speaker 3: the S and P five hundred and it was just

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Speaker 3: that single fund. The exchange traded index funds really did

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Speaker 3: take off thanks to what was then Barclay's now part

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Speaker 3: of black Rock with the I Shares series, and suddenly

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Speaker 3: you could buy index funds that cover all of the

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Speaker 3: major asset classes, and you because they were stocks that

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Speaker 3: traded on the market, you didn't have to have an

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Speaker 3: agreement with Vanguard or with Fidelity in order to sell

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Speaker 3: those funds. You just needed a brokerage account. And suddenly

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Speaker 3: every broker, every financial advisor where they were operating through Mery,

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Speaker 3: Lynch or Schwab, could sell those funds and indexing was

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Speaker 3: available to all. Prior to that, there were a lot

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Speaker 3: of brokers who would never have sold an index fund

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Speaker 3: because they didn't have access to Vanguard's platform.

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Speaker 2: So let me push back a little bit on that.

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Speaker 2: My experience has been that the brokerage side, at least

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Speaker 2: up until recently was much more interested in the value

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Speaker 2: add And I'm making air quotes for listeners of stock selection,

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Speaker 2: fund selection, manager selection, and they seem to have been

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Speaker 2: less keen on passive or indexing, whereas the RIA side

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Speaker 2: of the street, the independent advisor that or the certified planner,

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Speaker 2: they seem to be more focused on let's get a plan,

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Speaker 2: let's figure out what your objectives are, and the market

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Speaker 2: will take care of itself. How do you see that

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Speaker 2: that shift? I've watched that over decades. You you were

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Speaker 2: in the thick of it. I'm curious as to what

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Speaker 2: you witnessed.

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Speaker 3: So you're right. I mean, these are traditional brokers were

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Speaker 3: much slower to adopt ETFs than you know, the only

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Speaker 3: financial advisors. But today you know a lot of brokers,

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Speaker 3: you know, whether they're with the big full service brokerage

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Speaker 3: firms now have advisory accounts. They flog to clients where

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Speaker 3: they can buy ETFs and as long as they're getting

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Speaker 3: their fee, whatever it's you know, one one and a

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Speaker 3: half percent, whatever amount it is, you know, they now

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Speaker 3: have an incentive to sell those ETFs. And remember, if

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Speaker 3: you're an advisor and you're selling ETFs, I mean there's

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Speaker 3: no reason to ever say sorry.

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Speaker 4: Right, that's right.

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Speaker 3: You get the market's a ton surprise, surprise.

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Speaker 2: Well, if you tilt it all towards international or emerging

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Speaker 2: markets or value, there are occasional apologies along the way. Hey,

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Speaker 2: but that's what's the old joke. The cost of diversification

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Speaker 2: is frequently having to apologize for something that's not keeping

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Speaker 2: up with the SMP.

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Speaker 3: If nothing in your portfolio is performing badly, you're not diversified.

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Speaker 2: That's right, that's exactly right. So so you said something

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Speaker 2: interesting that jog something in my mind. That you are

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Speaker 2: constantly flogging passive indexing and ETFs, much to the sugarn

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Speaker 2: of your editors, kind of makes me think of something

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Speaker 2: Jason has said, which is his job is to write

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Speaker 2: the same column over and over again, but in a

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Speaker 2: way that neither his editors nor the readers know. What

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Speaker 2: are your thoughts on repeating yourself over and over again,

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Speaker 2: but in new and interesting ways.

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Speaker 3: So Jason was the next employee hired by Forbes after me.

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Speaker 3: That's hilarious. And when I left Forbes, Jason ended up

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Speaker 3: with the Mutual Funds be Then he went onto Money Magazine,

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Speaker 3: And then when I left the journal for the first

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Speaker 3: time in two thousand and eight, they said, well, who

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Speaker 3: should we hire to replace you? I said, Jason's why. So,

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Speaker 3: Jason and I have known each other for over thirty years.

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Speaker 3: I consider him to be one of my best friends,

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Speaker 3: and in fact, you know, through my recent diagnosis, he's

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Speaker 3: been a super supportive You know, we remain great friends

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Speaker 3: after all these years, and I'm a huge admirer of

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Speaker 3: his work for the Journal and elsewhere. So, yes, Jason

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Speaker 3: has the same joke that I do, which is, you know,

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Speaker 3: there are only twenty postal finance stories, which means by

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Speaker 3: the time I left the Journal and writing a thousand columns,

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Speaker 3: I've written each of those stories fifty times each. If

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Speaker 3: you are going to serve your readers, well, you know

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Speaker 3: there are only a limited number of stories to be written.

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Speaker 3: You know, if you're a reporter who spends their career

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Speaker 3: writing the stock of the day, the fund of the month,

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Speaker 3: just flogging one thing after another trying to predict the

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Speaker 3: market's direction, you'll be plenty busy, but your readership will

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Speaker 3: be a whole lot poorer. So if you want to

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Speaker 3: do the right thing, you're basically going to have to

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Speaker 3: have a set of sound principles and focus on them

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Speaker 3: again and again, and one of the things you discover

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Speaker 3: is that you start to sound like a repetitive, blathering idiot.

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Speaker 3: And that's when, for me, and I think also for Jason,

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Speaker 3: you start costing around for other things to write about.

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Speaker 3: So when I go back to the late nineteen eighties

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Speaker 3: and I started as a financial journalist, the sole topic

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Speaker 3: was investing. It was all about which fund to buy,

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Speaker 3: which stock to buy. Fortunately, over time, the field that

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Speaker 3: is personal finance has expanded to today, if you are

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Speaker 3: a good financial journalist, you should be writing not just

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Speaker 3: about investing, but about topics like you know when to

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Speaker 3: claim Social Security, what should you have in your estate plan,

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Speaker 3: you know what sort of house should you be buying,

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Speaker 3: and then beyond that, writing about things like behavioral finance,

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Speaker 3: thinking about things like money and happiness. The topic that

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Speaker 3: we call financial journalism has expanded enormously over the past

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Speaker 3: three plus decades. And that's good news for somebody like me,

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Speaker 3: because if I'm still writing only about index funds, I

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Speaker 3: would have been out of a job a long time ago.

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Speaker 2: Really really interesting, So the twenty years you spent at

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Speaker 2: the journal really is a fascinating couple of decades. You

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Speaker 2: wrote at the Journal, through the dot com implosion, as

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Speaker 2: well as the whole run up to two thousand, September eleventh,

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Speaker 2: the Great Financial Crisis. What era of finance did you

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Speaker 2: find the most intriguing as a journalist.

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Speaker 3: I know this probably sounds like I'm an ambulance chaser,

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Speaker 3: but you know what, the periods that I enjoyed the

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Speaker 3: most was when the stock market was going down.

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Speaker 4: I'm I totally agree with you.

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Speaker 2: I have been warned repeatedly, hey, people are getting, you know,

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Speaker 2: really hurt out there. Can you stop whistling into the

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Speaker 2: office like that? But that's when the most amount of

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Speaker 2: fascinating things happen and the most amount of opportunities present themselves,

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Speaker 2: Which leads me to my next question. Right into the

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Speaker 2: teeth of the financial crisis, you went ninety five percent

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Speaker 2: into stocks. Tell us a little bit about why you

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Speaker 2: did that, which turned out to be the right call,

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Speaker 2: and how you shared that information with your readers.

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Speaker 3: Coming into sort of late two thousand and eight, I think,

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Speaker 3: if I recall correct, I have somewhere between seventy and

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Speaker 3: eighty percent stocks. By that point, I'd left the Journal

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Speaker 3: and I was working at City Group as director of

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Speaker 3: financial education for the wealth management business. And a number

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Speaker 3: of things happened. One was I was working on Wall streets.

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Speaker 3: I was earning a whole lot more money. Two, I

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Speaker 3: got my first Wall Street bonus. Three I sold another book,

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Speaker 3: which meant I got a big advance. And four tragically,

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Speaker 3: my father was killed during this period and I inherited

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Speaker 3: money from him, and I took every one of those

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Speaker 3: dollars and put them into the stock market. And it

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Speaker 3: was a time when the sequence of returns, that combination

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Speaker 3: of what's going on in the market and whether you're

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Speaker 3: pulling out money from your portfolio of putting it in

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Speaker 3: worked like magic. And said to people numerous times when

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Speaker 3: we have a period in like two thousand and eight,

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Speaker 3: two thousand and nine when everybody thinks the world is

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Speaker 3: going to hell in a hand basket, well, if it

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Speaker 3: really does go to hell, doesn't matter what you own, right,

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Speaker 3: More than likely, you know, we humans being humans, will

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Speaker 3: figure out a way to solve this problem and the

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Speaker 3: market will come roaring back, and what you want to

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Speaker 3: own at that point is stocks. So I just backed

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Speaker 3: up the cart and bought stocks like crazy.

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Speaker 2: So that's kind of interesting that you're making an active

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Speaker 2: decision in the face of market turmoil and increase volatility.

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Speaker 2: Did at any point in that process did you feel like, hey,

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Speaker 2: you know, I'm kind of going against everything I've said

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Speaker 2: in the past. Or was it people said stocks were

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Speaker 2: pricing now they're cheap.

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Speaker 4: I'm just a value investor.

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Speaker 3: Well, guilty is charged, Barry. I mean, I can't entirely

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Speaker 3: justify it. But over my career as an investing the

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Speaker 3: things that I've learned is one that you know, you

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Speaker 3: can't win through stock selection. You can't win by buying

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Speaker 3: actively managed funds. You know what you need to do

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Speaker 3: is indexing. But one way you can tilt the field

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Speaker 3: in your favor is in periods when people are panicking.

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Speaker 3: Is too, as I like to put it, over rebounds

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Speaker 3: to move even more into stocks. It's it's a temporary move.

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Speaker 3: But you know I've done it repeatedly. I did it

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Speaker 3: in two thousand and two thousand and two, I did

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Speaker 3: it in two thousand and eight and nine, I did

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Speaker 3: it during the coronavirus collapse in twenty twenty, and I

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Speaker 3: did it again in twenty twenty two. You don't know

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Speaker 3: what the bottom of the market looks like, I think

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Speaker 3: it's very hard to say stocks are objectively cheap because

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Speaker 3: all of these valuation metrics have become unreliable over the

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Speaker 3: decades as the nature of the stock market has changed.

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Speaker 3: But the one thing I have learned is that if

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Speaker 3: the market is off twenty thirty percent, things are a

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Speaker 3: whole lot cheaper than they were prior to the decline,

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Speaker 3: and what you should do is buy.

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Speaker 2: It's easier said than done. You mentioned covering behavioral finance

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Speaker 2: as a way to look beyond just indexing funds. Tell

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Speaker 2: us a little bit about the challenges that the average

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Speaker 2: investor faces trying to buy into a down thirty percent

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Speaker 2: market when everybody else is panicking and running the other way.

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Speaker 3: Well, we know how investors behaved, which is they extrapolate

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Speaker 3: recent returns. So if the market's going up, they think

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Speaker 3: it's going to keep going up, it's going down, they

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Speaker 3: assume it's going to keep going down, and that, of

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Speaker 3: course is what everybody around them is doing. They're also

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Speaker 3: extrapolating returns. It's very hard to step aside from the

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Speaker 3: narrative of that time and think independently, but that's what

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Speaker 3: you need to do to be a successful investor. At

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Speaker 3: a bare minimum. At a bare minimum, if you can

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Speaker 3: just stand your ground, you'll probably do a whole lot

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Speaker 3: better than most investors who will tend to be buying

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Speaker 3: and selling it just the wrong time.

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Speaker 2: I just have to ask you a little bit about

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Speaker 2: what you did after the Journal, and that includes both

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Speaker 2: City Group and Humble Dollars. You were at City Group

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Speaker 2: for about six years and you were director of education.

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Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about what that role encompassed

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Speaker 2: and what it was like dealing with City investors rather

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Speaker 2: than journal readers. And I'm sure there's a bit of

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Speaker 2: an overlap there.

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Speaker 3: So in a couple of years running up to early

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Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, I was getting increasingly burned out

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Speaker 3: on writing the column and I was thinking, like I

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Speaker 3: got to do something else in life, and I cast around.

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Speaker 3: I talked to various people about different jobs. Nothing quite

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Speaker 3: rang a bell for me. And then I was approached

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Speaker 3: by City Group about being director of financial education for

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Speaker 3: this startup called ma FI. And the idea was they

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Speaker 3: were going to help small investors with their entire financial

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Speaker 3: life in return for a fixed monthly fee. That was

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Speaker 3: the notion, lovely notion. But two things went wrong. One

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Speaker 3: is The idea of doing a startup within a large

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Speaker 3: corporation is absolutely absurd. Companies large companies are incapable of

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Speaker 3: innovating in that way. It was just a struggle from

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Speaker 3: day one, particularly in the rehdatory environment that is the

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Speaker 3: securities business between lawyers and compliance people. Everythink was a headache.

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Speaker 3: And then on top of that, of course, we ran

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Speaker 3: straight into the two thousand and eight two thousand and

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Speaker 3: nine Great Recession, So the business was pretty much dead

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Speaker 3: before it began. And by the summer of two thousand

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Speaker 3: and nine they'd pulled the plug on this venture and suddenly,

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Speaker 3: you know, I've thrown away my journalism career to join

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Speaker 3: the City Group. You know what would happen next, Well,

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Speaker 3: this group of people that were part of this startup,

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Speaker 3: well my FI, were rolled into the traditional bank based

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Speaker 3: brokerage business, if you can imagine two completely different group

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Speaker 3: of people. And then on top of that, they decided

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Speaker 3: they were going to try to turn these bank based

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Speaker 3: brokers into feelingly financial advisors.

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Speaker 2: Which, by the way, was the underlying trends outside of

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Speaker 2: the broker's firm. They were watching what was a small

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Speaker 2: part of the business really begin to blossom post crisis.

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Speaker 3: So I became part of this new business, and I

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Speaker 3: did a lot of writing and a lot of public

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Speaker 3: speaking over the next four plus years until I realized that,

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Speaker 3: you know, I really wasn't doing much good in the world.

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Speaker 3: I was collecting the nice paycheck, the biggest paycheck in

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Speaker 3: my life, but I really felt like I was wasting

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Speaker 3: my time, and I've I've never already done anything in

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Speaker 3: my career solely for money, and it's suddenly dawn on

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Speaker 3: me that really I was just living for my paycheck.

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Speaker 3: So I made a plan to get out of there.

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Speaker 3: I realized I had enough to retire if I wanted to.

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Speaker 3: I was in my I was fifty one, so I

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Speaker 3: spent ten or eleven months preparing to leave. I contacted

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Speaker 3: the journal about writing for them again. I also started

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Speaker 3: working on a book, and after I got my lost

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Speaker 3: year in Bonus in early twenty fourteen, I walked in

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Speaker 3: and handed in my notice.

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Speaker 2: So you said something I have to follow up on.

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Speaker 2: I can't tell you how many people have said, you know,

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Speaker 2: I don't really do this for the money, and very

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Speaker 2: often they get pushedback. But I feel that way, and

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Speaker 2: I know you feel that way. What sort of response

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Speaker 2: do you get from people when you say, well, I'm

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Speaker 2: getting a nice paycheck, but that's not why I do this.

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Speaker 3: I think that in this case, I probably did not

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Speaker 3: express it to people in that way. I'm not saying

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Speaker 3: that I don't like getting paid.

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Speaker 2: But well, we all like getting paid. But my question

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Speaker 2: is why do we do what we do. Is it

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Speaker 2: for the money or is the money like a nice

436
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:13,160
Speaker 2: aspect of being able to do what you really love?

437
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,679
Speaker 3: And it's really the latter, And I think it probably

438
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 3: depends on the economic comfort in which you grew up.

439
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:21,879
Speaker 3: I mean, I grew up in a very comfortable middle

440
00:24:21,880 --> 00:24:24,639
Speaker 3: class or from middle class household, so money was never

441
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:27,560
Speaker 3: my priority going into the workforce. You know, I wanted

442
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:30,399
Speaker 3: to cover the costs obviously, I wanted to save for

443
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:32,920
Speaker 3: the future, but I was never motivated by money. If

444
00:24:32,920 --> 00:24:34,840
Speaker 3: I was motivated by money, I would never have ended

445
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:35,920
Speaker 3: up in journalism.

446
00:24:36,640 --> 00:24:41,680
Speaker 2: That's interesting, and you have said, especially post diagnosis, you've

447
00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:45,960
Speaker 2: very publicly said, gee, had I known when when the

448
00:24:46,040 --> 00:24:48,520
Speaker 2: clock was going to run out, I would have spent

449
00:24:48,600 --> 00:24:52,800
Speaker 2: money more aggressively. It's kind of interesting that you were

450
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 2: saving despite having come from a fairly comfortable background. Clarify

451
00:24:59,160 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 2: that a little bit. How did you think about spending

452
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:06,080
Speaker 2: money and how did the diagnosis change your perspectives on this.

453
00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 3: So there are two reasons why I became very focused

454
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:12,679
Speaker 3: on saving money. First, what I call the great family story.

455
00:25:12,800 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 3: So when my great great grandfather died in eighteen eighty eight,

456
00:25:17,760 --> 00:25:19,919
Speaker 3: he was listening in the newspapers as one of the

457
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 3: richest men in England.

458
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:23,000
Speaker 2: Really, I had no idea.

459
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:23,800
Speaker 4: That's fascinating.

460
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 3: He he was based out of Liverpool and he and

461
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:30,879
Speaker 3: his brother had launched a cigarette company called Cope Cigarettes

462
00:25:31,359 --> 00:25:35,680
Speaker 3: and they made a ton of money. That fortune ended

463
00:25:35,720 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 3: up with my great grandmother, uh huh, and she lived

464
00:25:39,160 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 3: the Downton Abbey lifestyle. She had an estate in the

465
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:45,600
Speaker 3: Cotswolds on which there were five mansions. She lived in

466
00:25:45,640 --> 00:25:49,320
Speaker 3: one and her various children lived in the other houses

467
00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:54,240
Speaker 3: on the estate. The estate was inherited by the kids

468
00:25:54,800 --> 00:25:57,400
Speaker 3: to a person. They blew the money in short order.

469
00:25:57,200 --> 00:26:00,000
Speaker 2: Classic three generations shirtsleeves to shirts life.

470
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:02,560
Speaker 3: So I grew up with that great family story about

471
00:26:02,600 --> 00:26:05,840
Speaker 3: how you shouldn't you know, waste money, how you should

472
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,919
Speaker 3: think about the future. And then added to that was

473
00:26:09,600 --> 00:26:11,920
Speaker 3: when I got out of college and I got into

474
00:26:11,920 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 3: the workforce. I ended up getting married and having kids

475
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 3: really quickly. I was a father at age twenty five,

476
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,440
Speaker 3: supporting a graduate student wife and living in New York

477
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:22,280
Speaker 3: City and tight.

478
00:26:22,359 --> 00:26:23,120
Speaker 4: Money's a little tight.

479
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:26,240
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, ordering a pizza on a Friday night

480
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,720
Speaker 3: was a questionable decision. And you know, I learned to

481
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 3: be super careful with money, and that continued for probably

482
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,399
Speaker 3: thirty years. It's really on the last five years that

483
00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 3: I've become happier about spending money, eating out more often,

484
00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,800
Speaker 3: traveling more. And of course since my diagnosis, you know,

485
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 3: I've been doing even more of that. I mean, I

486
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 3: still want to make sure that my kids and my

487
00:26:50,040 --> 00:26:53,240
Speaker 3: wife inherit plenty of money, but I'm at the point where, Okay,

488
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 3: I don't need to stay for the future anymore because

489
00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 3: there isn't much future left for me. So we've been

490
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 3: traveling more. But to come back to the question you're

491
00:27:02,840 --> 00:27:04,439
Speaker 3: going to ask me, which is do I regret my

492
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:08,639
Speaker 3: earlier frugality. Not really, because what I would say to you, Barry,

493
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:14,160
Speaker 3: is one sure way that money buys happiness is by

494
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 3: allowing you not to worry about money. And so I

495
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 3: have not worried about money for years.

496
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:22,840
Speaker 2: And to be fair, you know, I don't want to

497
00:27:22,840 --> 00:27:26,480
Speaker 2: engage in what anti Duke calls resulting when you you know,

498
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 2: all of us are born not knowing how long we

499
00:27:29,680 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 2: have and when you get an end date, when you

500
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:36,120
Speaker 2: know when the game is going to end, well, now

501
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,200
Speaker 2: you have that information, it's not fair to go back

502
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 2: and say, hey, twenty years ago, had you known, what

503
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 2: would you've done differently, Because at the time you don't know,

504
00:27:45,080 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 2: it's impossible to go back and revisit those decisions. The question, really,

505
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:54,360
Speaker 2: the fairer question, is the advice you would offer people

506
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 2: who don't know what the end date is. How much

507
00:27:57,840 --> 00:28:01,119
Speaker 2: should they be saving, how much should they be occasionally

508
00:28:01,200 --> 00:28:04,760
Speaker 2: taking money out and enjoying it? And obviously it's all

509
00:28:04,760 --> 00:28:08,399
Speaker 2: a function of specifics, but how has your perspective changed,

510
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:10,800
Speaker 2: if at all, when you're giving that sort of advice

511
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:11,280
Speaker 2: to people.

512
00:28:12,280 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 3: So, first of all, I'd say to you, Barry, one

513
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:16,359
Speaker 3: of the things that's the greatest source of happiness to

514
00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:19,919
Speaker 3: me is just the day to day. Just getting up

515
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:22,080
Speaker 3: in the morning, having a cup of coffee, sitting at

516
00:28:22,080 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 3: my laptop writing in edit, seeing you know, going out

517
00:28:25,080 --> 00:28:27,760
Speaker 3: for lunch, having a glass of wine in the evening

518
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 3: with Lane. These are not expensive things for me. A

519
00:28:31,520 --> 00:28:34,480
Speaker 3: happy life does not cost a whole lot of money. Yes,

520
00:28:34,520 --> 00:28:37,640
Speaker 3: you know, we all are doing more traveling now, and

521
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 3: you know we are traveling first class or business class,

522
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 3: which I wouldn't have done a couple of years ago.

523
00:28:42,840 --> 00:28:46,120
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm spending more freely. But the real happiness

524
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 3: I get is basically doing what I've always done, which

525
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 3: is to do work that I think is important. That

526
00:28:53,280 --> 00:28:55,760
Speaker 3: is a big source of happiness for me, And not

527
00:28:55,840 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 3: only does it not cost very much, but it actually

528
00:28:57,760 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 3: owns me some money. So up. The other thing I

529
00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 3: would say to people is you do not want to

530
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:05,200
Speaker 3: do all of this too early on. You know, if

531
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,720
Speaker 3: I had flown business cross regularly in my twenties, it

532
00:29:07,760 --> 00:29:11,280
Speaker 3: would not be special to be today. Having a gradually

533
00:29:11,440 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 3: rising standard living throughout your life is a wonderful thing.

534
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 3: You know. If you stayed at Motel six in your twenties,

535
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 3: staying at HIGHTT in your sixties seems pretty special, right.

536
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:25,680
Speaker 4: That's really interesting.

537
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:28,800
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about Humble Dollar. When

538
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 2: did you set that up? And you're still you're still

539
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:35,320
Speaker 2: running that and publishing yourself with a group of other

540
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 2: people tell us a little bit about the humble Dollar.

541
00:29:38,120 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 3: So Humble Dollar was launched right at the end of

542
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 3: two thousand and sixteen. I used it essentially to take

543
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:47,600
Speaker 3: a annually updated financial guide that I was producing, and

544
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:49,720
Speaker 3: I decide just to throw it on the web and

545
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:52,240
Speaker 3: make it freely available and run some mads against it.

546
00:29:52,480 --> 00:29:54,920
Speaker 3: And as part of that, I invited a few people

547
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:59,720
Speaker 3: to start writing for the site. And that snowballed over time,

548
00:29:59,800 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 3: and I have, you know, probably fifty or sixty people

549
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 3: who write occasionally for the site. They all do it

550
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 3: for free. They're all amateur writers. And the thing I

551
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,280
Speaker 3: say to these amateur writers is, you know, you know,

552
00:30:14,320 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 3: you may not be financial experts, but you are experts

553
00:30:17,960 --> 00:30:20,480
Speaker 3: on your own life. So I encourage them to write

554
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 3: about their own financial lives. And the result has been

555
00:30:25,400 --> 00:30:29,880
Speaker 3: that people engage in a level of financial disclosure about

556
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 3: what they've done with their own money that the readership

557
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 3: finds fascinating, they find liberating, and it's become to my surprise,

558
00:30:38,320 --> 00:30:39,760
Speaker 3: I mean, this is not what I set out to do.

559
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:42,719
Speaker 3: It's become a place where people happily talk about their

560
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 3: own finances, and the readership tends to be very supportive.

561
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:51,280
Speaker 3: I do carefully moderate comments. I mean, if I feel

562
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:54,480
Speaker 3: like people are getting too rough on somebody, I'll delete comments.

563
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:57,920
Speaker 3: I also steer people away from the endless political commentary

564
00:30:57,960 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 3: that's poisoned social media and it's becomes I like to

565
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:04,800
Speaker 3: take a safe place for people to talk about their

566
00:31:04,800 --> 00:31:05,480
Speaker 3: own finances.

567
00:31:05,680 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 2: I think that's the right approach. I mean, I had

568
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:10,840
Speaker 2: a comment section on the blog on the Big Picture

569
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 2: for I don't know, close to ten years and literally

570
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 2: millions of comments, and at a certain point, really post

571
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:22,040
Speaker 2: financial crisis, it kind of began going off the rails

572
00:31:22,040 --> 00:31:24,200
Speaker 2: and I did the same thing you did. It's like, hey,

573
00:31:24,200 --> 00:31:27,200
Speaker 2: this is not a political forum, and if you're gonna

574
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,000
Speaker 2: just really be you know, it takes so much time

575
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:32,400
Speaker 2: and effort for someone to write something, and it's so

576
00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 2: easy to just dismiss it. It doesn't seem fair, and

577
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:39,680
Speaker 2: I think your approach is the right way to go.

578
00:31:39,880 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 2: Is I don't know what sort of pushback you get

579
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 2: to it from the readers. But the other thing I

580
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:47,840
Speaker 2: wanted to ask you about that, not just the other

581
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 2: writers on the Humble Dollar, but the comments is people

582
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 2: are kind of weird about money sometimes people are just

583
00:31:55,600 --> 00:31:58,600
Speaker 2: like it's perplexing how some people think about money or

584
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 2: use money. Tell us a little bit about your experiences

585
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:05,600
Speaker 2: dealing with the public and trying to be sort of

586
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:10,960
Speaker 2: calm and rational when consumerism and materialism very often isn't.

587
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 3: So. I'm not sure I have a clear view on

588
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:17,920
Speaker 3: how the typical American thinks about money these days. You know,

589
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 3: what I have is a realtively narrow audience, somewhat older,

590
00:32:23,080 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 3: more affluent. They tend to have been drawn to the

591
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:28,600
Speaker 3: site because they followed me for a number of years.

592
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:32,400
Speaker 3: A lot of them are indexers. Most of them are

593
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 3: great savers, and the biggest issue for them is not

594
00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 3: saving more and delay and gratification even more, but learning

595
00:32:39,480 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 3: how to spend in retirement. I mean, that is the

596
00:32:41,560 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 3: biggest struggle. Obviously, not a struggle for most Americans. People

597
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:47,920
Speaker 3: do have peculiarities about money. You know this as well

598
00:32:47,920 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 3: as I do. It varies enormously, so it's hard to generalize. Right.

599
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 3: Probably most people are naturally inclined to spend too much

600
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 3: and to save too little. But in terms of my audience,

601
00:32:57,200 --> 00:32:59,640
Speaker 3: their inclination is to spend too little and save too much.

602
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:03,640
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that because we have about thirty advisors

603
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 2: who are cfps that work in my shop, and one

604
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:11,120
Speaker 2: of the common conversations is I have a client. He's

605
00:33:11,160 --> 00:33:14,760
Speaker 2: got millions of dollars invested. We can't get him to

606
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:17,960
Speaker 2: spend money. He wants to buy a vacation property, he

607
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:19,800
Speaker 2: can't pull the trigger. They want to take the family

608
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 2: on a European trip, and he thinks it's going to

609
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 2: cost too much. How do you help people who were

610
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 2: earners and savers pivot in their fifty sixties seventies to

611
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 2: becoming spenders.

612
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:37,520
Speaker 3: I think that pushing people to spend more is unlikely

613
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:41,080
Speaker 3: to work. I think instead you should talk about other goals.

614
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 3: I mean, do you want to stop giving money to

615
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 3: your kids? Do you want to start giving money to charity?

616
00:33:45,760 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 3: Think of other ways to get them to let go

617
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,600
Speaker 3: of some of their dollars, and maybe that doorway will

618
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 3: become the doorway to start spending more on themselves. Suddenly,

619
00:33:57,320 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 3: I've changed up the last five years. Five years ago,

620
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,920
Speaker 3: pre pandemic, I was very careful about spending. I didn't

621
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,440
Speaker 3: go out to eat a lot, didn't spend a lot

622
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:08,000
Speaker 3: on travel, And I think one of the things that

623
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:11,360
Speaker 3: for me coming out of the pandemic was a willingness

624
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:13,800
Speaker 3: to spend more to God and enjoy life more after

625
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:17,600
Speaker 3: that long period stuck at home. And of course my

626
00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 3: diagnosis has done that even more. And not only I

627
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:22,399
Speaker 3: have I've been spending more, I've also been giving more

628
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,799
Speaker 3: to my kids, to charity and so on. So I

629
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:27,839
Speaker 3: think if you could open the door a little bit

630
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:30,879
Speaker 3: and people get comfortable with it, then they'll spend more.

631
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:34,640
Speaker 3: And giving away money, whether to charity or to your children,

632
00:34:34,920 --> 00:34:36,239
Speaker 3: is a way of opening that door.

633
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 2: So I don't know if this is my perspective or

634
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,760
Speaker 2: if this is accurate or not. I kind of recall

635
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 2: prior generations the wealth was passed down out of the

636
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:52,359
Speaker 2: estate after the person passed away.

637
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:53,960
Speaker 4: They would leave their money to their family.

638
00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,839
Speaker 2: It seems like it's a little more modern concept is

639
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 2: why not give them the money one you can watch

640
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,359
Speaker 2: them enjoy it, buy a house, travel whatever. Is that

641
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:07,280
Speaker 2: a skewed perspective or do you see something similar?

642
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 3: No, absolutely, people definitely seem to be happier to give

643
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 3: away money now. And it's not simply that you get

644
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 3: the pleasure of seeing your kids enjoy the money. You

645
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 3: can also guide how they use it. I actually just

646
00:35:20,200 --> 00:35:22,160
Speaker 3: wrote checks at the beginning of the year to both

647
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:24,799
Speaker 3: my kids, and you know, my kids asked, well, what

648
00:35:24,840 --> 00:35:26,720
Speaker 3: should I do with the money? So it's a chance

649
00:35:26,760 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 3: to say, yeah, you know, you want to put it

650
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:31,359
Speaker 3: into your retirement account, you want to put it into

651
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 3: your emergency fund, you want to use it to pay

652
00:35:33,600 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 3: down the mortgage. The other thing, of course, is that

653
00:35:36,600 --> 00:35:41,399
Speaker 3: you get to see them enjoy it, right, And they

654
00:35:41,440 --> 00:35:43,440
Speaker 3: are at the point where, you know, if I give

655
00:35:43,480 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 3: my kids nineteen thousand dollars this year under the gift

656
00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:49,320
Speaker 3: tax exclusion, which is the sum you can give without

657
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:53,879
Speaker 3: how finding a gift tax return, that money to them

658
00:35:53,920 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 3: in their thirties is so much more valuable than it

659
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 3: is to me in my sixties, right right. I mean,

660
00:35:59,160 --> 00:36:00,839
Speaker 3: they're at a point where they're still under a fair

661
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:03,319
Speaker 3: amount of financial stress. And I'm not saying that's a

662
00:36:03,320 --> 00:36:07,239
Speaker 3: bad thing. I meanial stress, yeah exactly. That's how you

663
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 3: learn good spending habits. But you also get a lot

664
00:36:11,080 --> 00:36:13,480
Speaker 3: of pleasure from getting a nineteen thousand dollars check from

665
00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:13,839
Speaker 3: your father.

666
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 2: So a theme that we seem to be talking about

667
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 2: is things that have changed. People are giving money away

668
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:23,800
Speaker 2: sooner rather than as part of the estate. We've talked

669
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:27,920
Speaker 2: about the shift from active mutual funds to passive ETFs.

670
00:36:28,480 --> 00:36:32,240
Speaker 2: What other significant shifts have you observed over the course

671
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 2: of your career.

672
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:35,200
Speaker 3: So we did touch on this as well, which is

673
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 3: what is considered financial journalism has changed. It used to

674
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 3: be that everybody was solely focused on investing and solely

675
00:36:42,880 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 3: focused on beating the market. I mean, that was the discussion,

676
00:36:46,600 --> 00:36:49,240
Speaker 3: you know, day in day out, and to some extent

677
00:36:49,280 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 3: it still is in the financial media, but you know,

678
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:57,279
Speaker 3: the playing field is widened. So we are talking about

679
00:36:57,320 --> 00:37:02,439
Speaker 3: things in what I consider PUSS finance, home ownership, social security,

680
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,760
Speaker 3: tax management, state planning, and so on. We're also talking

681
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:10,720
Speaker 3: about how money meets life, things like behavioral finance, things

682
00:37:10,800 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 3: like money and happiness. And I think the next big

683
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:20,439
Speaker 3: focus within personal finance is trying to bring this down

684
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:23,560
Speaker 3: to the individual level, not just making you know, broad

685
00:37:23,600 --> 00:37:28,360
Speaker 3: generalizations about you know, investors have this behavioral bias or

686
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 3: that behavioral bias. Not talking in generality is about how

687
00:37:31,640 --> 00:37:36,000
Speaker 3: you can use money to boost happiness. But you, as

688
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,640
Speaker 3: an individual, you know what sort of individual are you?

689
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,440
Speaker 3: Are you a savior, are you a spender? You know

690
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:43,839
Speaker 3: what is it from your past that is triggering you.

691
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:46,839
Speaker 3: I think that in the years ahead, we will start

692
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 3: focusing more on that and that will lead to even

693
00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:54,239
Speaker 3: more interesting conversations about money as people get to know

694
00:37:54,320 --> 00:37:58,400
Speaker 3: themselves better and that works into how they manage their money.

695
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:02,839
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about your announcement. Last year,

696
00:38:03,440 --> 00:38:08,080
Speaker 2: you received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis. You're a

697
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:12,040
Speaker 2: non smoker, so this is the genetic variation of the disease.

698
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about that diagnosis and what

699
00:38:18,200 --> 00:38:20,759
Speaker 2: motivated you to share it so publicly.

700
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 3: So back in May of last year, Barry, I started

701
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:28,080
Speaker 3: having balance issues and I thought I might have an

702
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 3: ear infection. I couldn't figure out quite what was going on,

703
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:35,920
Speaker 3: so I on a Sunday decided to go to an

704
00:38:36,000 --> 00:38:39,400
Speaker 3: urgent care clinic and the doctor told me that the

705
00:38:39,480 --> 00:38:43,560
Speaker 3: urgent care clinic must have realized something that was going

706
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 3: on that you know, was obviously I was missing. So

707
00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,359
Speaker 3: I got dispatched the emergency room and the next thing

708
00:38:49,560 --> 00:38:53,720
Speaker 3: you know, I was stuck in the stroke victim really

709
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:57,440
Speaker 3: ward at at a hospital in Philadelphia. So it was

710
00:38:58,080 --> 00:39:01,719
Speaker 3: sixteen beds up there, guys who are intbated, plus me

711
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 3: sitting on the edge of my bed, like what am

712
00:39:03,680 --> 00:39:08,560
Speaker 3: I doing here? So after some scans, some MRIs, they

713
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 3: realized that I had not had a minor stroke. Instead

714
00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:16,840
Speaker 3: I had cancer. They found ten lesions on my brain

715
00:39:17,200 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 3: and a gulf ball size growth on my lungs, and

716
00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 3: after some some genetic testing and so on, they discovered

717
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 3: that I had a relatively rare form of cancer that

718
00:39:30,000 --> 00:39:34,240
Speaker 3: tends to flick people of Asian origin and women, called

719
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:39,120
Speaker 3: eachfr exon twenty and it's a relatively aggressive cancer. The

720
00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 3: median life expectancy for people who have each gfr x

721
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:46,200
Speaker 3: on twenty is sixteen months. So by the time I

722
00:39:46,200 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 3: got into see the ecologist, she suggested I might have

723
00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 3: a year to live, and that was in June of

724
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four. Since then, I've had a couple more

725
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 3: lesions on my brain and the cancer has also spread

726
00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:05,040
Speaker 3: my spine. In both cases, the the cancer my spine

727
00:40:05,080 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 3: was dealt with with radiation, similarly to the new lesions

728
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:12,759
Speaker 3: on my brain. I've also had recently had a to

729
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:14,880
Speaker 3: hour procedure to shore up my spine because of the

730
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:18,239
Speaker 3: damage done by the cancer. Otherwise there's a risk I

731
00:40:18,239 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 3: was going to fracture my spine. So as of today,

732
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,440
Speaker 3: I'm feeling okay. But you know, the cancer is you know,

733
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:28,240
Speaker 3: isn't my blood. It's likely to crop up somewhere else.

734
00:40:28,640 --> 00:40:30,520
Speaker 3: I think I'm gonna beat the one year mark that

735
00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:33,200
Speaker 3: I was given. I'm hoping I'll make it through twenty

736
00:40:33,400 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 3: twenty five, but you know, realistically, it's unlikely that I'm

737
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 3: gonna make it much beyond them, though of course I

738
00:40:41,200 --> 00:40:44,560
Speaker 3: would love it. I mean, I have to say this, Barry. Yeah,

739
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:50,360
Speaker 3: I love every day and I want every moment I

740
00:40:50,400 --> 00:40:53,759
Speaker 3: can get, But you have to be a realistic and

741
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:56,719
Speaker 3: you know, this is stage four cancer. There is no recovery.

742
00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 3: You know, it's just a matter of trying to control

743
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 3: the cancer. And do I have the good fortune that

744
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,800
Speaker 3: came into this in reasonably good physical shape. So I've

745
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 3: coped with the treatment fairly well. You know, I'm having

746
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:16,640
Speaker 3: chemo immunotherapy every three weeks, taking countless medications. You know,

747
00:41:16,680 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 3: I've had these radiation treatments. As I said, I just

748
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:22,759
Speaker 3: had my back operated on in order to shore it up.

749
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:26,400
Speaker 3: But you know, at some point, you know, cancer is

750
00:41:26,400 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 3: gonna win. I just don't know when. So come back

751
00:41:30,160 --> 00:41:32,000
Speaker 3: to answer the question that you asked, So, Yeah, after

752
00:41:32,000 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 3: I got the diagnosis, I wrote about it on my

753
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:39,640
Speaker 3: website and you know, put out the word on social media,

754
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:43,960
Speaker 3: and the response to me was quite surprising. I mean,

755
00:41:44,040 --> 00:41:46,200
Speaker 3: not only did I get, you know, an outpouring of

756
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 3: love heard from people I hadn't heard from in years,

757
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,200
Speaker 3: readers have shown a lot of love that People also said,

758
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:57,360
Speaker 3: you know, you're so brave for sharing your diagnosis. I

759
00:41:57,440 --> 00:41:59,479
Speaker 3: was like, brave. I've spent my entire life writing about

760
00:41:59,480 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 3: my own fine answers. Why would I Why would I

761
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:06,600
Speaker 3: stop now? And you know, is it that people don't

762
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:10,520
Speaker 3: talk about this stuff because of denial? Is it because

763
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 3: you know, they're just they're embarrassed? Is it because fear

764
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:16,160
Speaker 3: of death? I don't know, but it seems like the

765
00:42:16,200 --> 00:42:17,920
Speaker 3: most natural thing in the world to write about it,

766
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,160
Speaker 3: And to my surprise, I seem to have done a

767
00:42:21,200 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 3: fair amount of good by doing so. People really appreciate

768
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,520
Speaker 3: somebody talking openly about what it is, what it's like

769
00:42:27,560 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 3: to have a terminal diagnosis. I would also say to

770
00:42:31,600 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 3: you that a short life expectancy, this notion that your

771
00:42:36,600 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 3: life is finite. I mean, of course that's true for

772
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:43,000
Speaker 3: all of us, right, but it really does make you

773
00:42:44,239 --> 00:42:47,080
Speaker 3: focus on the day to day. I mean, when I,

774
00:42:47,160 --> 00:42:49,720
Speaker 3: you know, get up in the morning, I really noticed

775
00:42:49,719 --> 00:42:51,480
Speaker 3: the taste of the coffee. When I take a walk,

776
00:42:51,840 --> 00:42:54,760
Speaker 3: I really notice how beautiful the trees are, how lovely

777
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:57,919
Speaker 3: the sky is. It really does focus the mind. And

778
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,200
Speaker 3: if anything, because I know the time is finite, I'm

779
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:04,960
Speaker 3: joined the day to day even more. It's strange, but

780
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,640
Speaker 3: it's true. And I would say to people, you know,

781
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:10,480
Speaker 3: even if you don't have a terminal diagnosis, you know,

782
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:14,360
Speaker 3: try to be sort of more purposeful and more mindful

783
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:17,520
Speaker 3: about each day because you will get greater happiness out

784
00:43:17,520 --> 00:43:18,000
Speaker 3: of each day.

785
00:43:18,200 --> 00:43:21,640
Speaker 2: Well, that that's really good advice. You wrote a Wall

786
00:43:21,640 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 2: Street Journal piece some final personal finance advice, and some

787
00:43:27,120 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 2: of the things you discussed were really, I don't want

788
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:34,080
Speaker 2: to say funny, but just the way you phrase them,

789
00:43:34,120 --> 00:43:37,279
Speaker 2: we're so blunt and matter of fact, it was really intriguing.

790
00:43:37,680 --> 00:43:40,000
Speaker 2: Let me run through a few of these, and I'd

791
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:43,040
Speaker 2: like to get your your thoughts on it. The first

792
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 2: one that leapt off the page was death is hard

793
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 2: work explain.

794
00:43:49,440 --> 00:43:53,480
Speaker 3: So I've always had my finances pretty well organized, but

795
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:56,279
Speaker 3: until you know that you're about to pop off, you

796
00:43:56,400 --> 00:44:00,920
Speaker 3: realize how much, sorry to use the phrase, how much

797
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:04,120
Speaker 3: crap you've accumulated, and you realize how hard it will

798
00:44:04,160 --> 00:44:07,000
Speaker 3: be for your family to figure out your finances. So

799
00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:12,120
Speaker 3: in the weeks and months that followed, I've done all

800
00:44:12,200 --> 00:44:15,600
Speaker 3: kinds of things. I got a new will, powers of attorney.

801
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:20,719
Speaker 3: I closed accounts so that there is there are fewer

802
00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:21,399
Speaker 3: accounts for my.

803
00:44:21,400 --> 00:44:23,040
Speaker 2: Everything was consolidated in one place.

804
00:44:23,080 --> 00:44:25,239
Speaker 3: They were already consolidated. But for instance, I had a

805
00:44:26,040 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 3: a wroth for one K, and it's like, I'm I'm

806
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:30,879
Speaker 3: not gonna I'm not gonna fund this anymore, so I'm

807
00:44:30,880 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 3: going to close it and roll it into my regular IRA.

808
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:36,080
Speaker 3: I had an inherited diarray from my father. It didn't

809
00:44:36,120 --> 00:44:38,319
Speaker 3: have very much in it, so I closed that out.

810
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:41,880
Speaker 3: But also downe in the basement, I had a box

811
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:45,080
Speaker 3: of papers, a couple of boxes of papers. Some of

812
00:44:45,120 --> 00:44:47,160
Speaker 3: them went back to when I was in college. It's like,

813
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:50,799
Speaker 3: what I had every Christmas card from nineteen eighty six?

814
00:44:50,840 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 3: Why do I need every Christmas card from nineteen eighty six?

815
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:55,880
Speaker 3: So I just started trashing all of this stuff. And

816
00:44:55,920 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 3: you carry around this stuff for decades, one day you're

817
00:45:00,560 --> 00:45:02,600
Speaker 3: gonna look at it. Well, this was my moment to

818
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 3: look at it, and you know what I didn't. I

819
00:45:05,680 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 3: just started sticking in the recycling bind. So there was

820
00:45:09,600 --> 00:45:11,360
Speaker 3: a lot of work to be done in order to

821
00:45:11,400 --> 00:45:15,000
Speaker 3: simplify things for my for my wife and for my kids.

822
00:45:15,360 --> 00:45:17,400
Speaker 3: And I still have more work to do. So I

823
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 3: all the utilities are currently in my name, and in

824
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 3: the weeks ahead, one of the final things I want

825
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:25,840
Speaker 3: to do is to make sure that I move you know,

826
00:45:25,960 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 3: the internet, the cell phones, the gas, the water, the

827
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 3: electricity olint Elane's name, so that this one less thing

828
00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:33,359
Speaker 3: for her to do after I'm gone.

829
00:45:33,480 --> 00:45:35,480
Speaker 4: Huh, really really very thoughtful.

830
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:38,399
Speaker 2: The other thing that really leapt off the page was

831
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:39,840
Speaker 2: so much talking.

832
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:44,600
Speaker 3: So two days after my diagnosis, both my kids were

833
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 3: in town and was in town. I sat them down.

834
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 3: I explained my estate plan, and of course all this

835
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:54,600
Speaker 3: was obvious to me. You know, while there's this traditional iray,

836
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:58,000
Speaker 3: there are these roth iro rays, the regular taxable accounts,

837
00:45:58,040 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 3: there's you know this account that yeah, and they're looking

838
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 3: at me like like during the headlights, like what is

839
00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:07,279
Speaker 3: all this about? And it's when I realized that the

840
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 3: stuff that's second nature to me isn't second nature to

841
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 3: my kids. So had an hour discussion then and so

842
00:46:13,640 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 3: many discussions since then as I've tried to explain, you

843
00:46:17,080 --> 00:46:20,359
Speaker 3: know why you should not spend the roth ira until

844
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 3: the end of the ten year period, but you'll have

845
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:24,839
Speaker 3: to draw down the traditional ira over time because there's

846
00:46:24,840 --> 00:46:26,960
Speaker 3: going to be taxable income on top of your income.

847
00:46:27,680 --> 00:46:30,880
Speaker 3: Lots of stuff like that. That second nature to me,

848
00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 3: just wasn't clear to them.

849
00:46:32,880 --> 00:46:37,520
Speaker 2: And the last thing was simply taxing matters. How I'm

850
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 2: assuming your state is not going to be in the

851
00:46:40,120 --> 00:46:44,760
Speaker 2: taxable size, So what do you discuss with your wife

852
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 2: and kids about taxes?

853
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:51,520
Speaker 3: So my kids will be subject to the Pennsylvania inheritance

854
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:55,640
Speaker 3: tax four and a half percent, and so you know,

855
00:46:55,719 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 3: that's why I've started to distribute money to them now.

856
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 3: I had written a private mortgage for my daughter. It

857
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:08,120
Speaker 3: was currently a little over three hundred thousand dollars, and

858
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 3: I forgave that loan and then adjusted how much she's

859
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:13,480
Speaker 3: going to get versus how much my son is going

860
00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 3: to get. And as long as I make it through

861
00:47:15,280 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 3: to July past the one year mark, then Hannah won't

862
00:47:20,040 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 3: have to pay the inheritance tax on that money.

863
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:24,720
Speaker 2: It becomes part of the estate and it's non taxable

864
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:25,200
Speaker 2: at that point.

865
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:27,600
Speaker 3: Well, it's not part of the estate at all, so

866
00:47:27,640 --> 00:47:29,480
Speaker 3: she won't have you know, she won't have to pay

867
00:47:29,520 --> 00:47:32,360
Speaker 3: the inheritance tax on that three hundred thousand dollars. Okay,

868
00:47:33,080 --> 00:47:34,600
Speaker 3: So there are a variety of things like that that

869
00:47:34,800 --> 00:47:36,320
Speaker 3: you know, I've done in order to make things a

870
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 3: little less taxing. For my kids. It's also why as

871
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:41,840
Speaker 3: soon as January one past this year, that's why I

872
00:47:41,880 --> 00:47:46,520
Speaker 3: made them a gift for twenty twenty five. Similarly, for

873
00:47:46,719 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 3: my grandchildren, you know, I funded their five twenty nine

874
00:47:50,239 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 3: plans early in the year so that I can get

875
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:56,000
Speaker 3: that money, you know, out of my estate and hopefully

876
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:57,600
Speaker 3: I'll make it past the one year mark, so it's

877
00:47:57,640 --> 00:47:59,040
Speaker 3: not subject to the inheritance tax.

878
00:47:59,600 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 4: Really really intriguing.

879
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 2: So given you your diagnosis, has your perspectives on money

880
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 2: and happiness at all changed? How have you thought about

881
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,000
Speaker 2: some of your previous philosophies and views.

882
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:18,760
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that makes me happy

883
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:20,400
Speaker 3: through this period is not even that I don't have

884
00:48:20,440 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 3: to worry about money. With everything else that's going on,

885
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:24,839
Speaker 3: money is not a worry. So when I go back

886
00:48:24,840 --> 00:48:27,520
Speaker 3: to the twenties and thirties, and the sacrifices I made,

887
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:29,959
Speaker 3: I'm glad I made them so that I have that

888
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 3: financial security today, so that amid everything else that's going on,

889
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:37,000
Speaker 3: money is not something that's top of mind for me.

890
00:48:38,360 --> 00:48:41,560
Speaker 3: Truth is, I haven't really worried about money for years,

891
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 3: but you know, it would be terrible to be faced

892
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:48,680
Speaker 3: with huge medical costs potentially and not have the finances

893
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:52,880
Speaker 3: to cover it. I've also, however, you know, thought about

894
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:55,919
Speaker 3: you know, this is my retirement, right. If I don't

895
00:48:56,200 --> 00:48:58,759
Speaker 3: enjoy my retirement now such as it is, I'm never

896
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 3: gonna enjoy. So yeah, I have been spending more freely.

897
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 3: You know. We went to London recently, we went to Ireland.

898
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:11,240
Speaker 3: I took the family on a fairly luxurious long weekend.

899
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:16,160
Speaker 3: This month, we're going to Paris. We've got other trips

900
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:18,560
Speaker 3: planned in the months ahead. There's a limit how far

901
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:20,239
Speaker 3: I can plan ahead because I never know where and

902
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:23,680
Speaker 3: I'm going to get derailed by some bad diagnosis and

903
00:49:23,719 --> 00:49:27,239
Speaker 3: I hate the idea of the cancelation fees. But you know,

904
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 3: we do have trips planned, and we've booked the hotels,

905
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:32,960
Speaker 3: but I haven't booked the flights because I don't have

906
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:33,560
Speaker 3: to cancel them.

907
00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 4: Huh.

908
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:39,120
Speaker 2: So, So we talked earlier about money and happiness. I'm

909
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 2: curious as to how you think about the relationship between

910
00:49:43,800 --> 00:49:48,480
Speaker 2: life satisfaction, well being, and what money does.

911
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:51,000
Speaker 4: And does not help you obtain.

912
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:54,680
Speaker 3: So money, I believe can do three things for you. One,

913
00:49:55,280 --> 00:49:57,000
Speaker 3: it can allow you not to worry about money. We've

914
00:49:57,000 --> 00:50:00,320
Speaker 3: talked about this already in many ways. You know, money

915
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,239
Speaker 3: doesn't buy happiness. It lets you avoid unhappines it's the

916
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 3: unhappiness of being broke. But two, money can buy you

917
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:10,239
Speaker 3: the financial freedom spend your days doing what you love.

918
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 3: If you love your job, that's great, that's the greatest

919
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 3: combination get. But a lot of people clearly don't love

920
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:19,600
Speaker 3: their jobs. So what they want is the financial freedom

921
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 3: to do whatever it is they wished to be able

922
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:24,480
Speaker 3: to do. And you get that by saving diligently a

923
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 3: year after year, decade after decade. And then third, money

924
00:50:28,040 --> 00:50:30,239
Speaker 3: can allow you to have special times with friends and

925
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:34,279
Speaker 3: family and you know, whether it's you know, the barbecue,

926
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 3: the special vacation, flying across the country to see the grandchildren,

927
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 3: whatever it is, money can allow you to do that.

928
00:50:40,840 --> 00:50:45,040
Speaker 3: So those three things, avoiding on the unhappiness of being broke.

929
00:50:45,360 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 3: Two doing whatever you think is fulfilling, and three is

930
00:50:49,640 --> 00:50:52,239
Speaker 3: spending special times with friends and family. That's what money

931
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,400
Speaker 3: can do for you. That is the way that money

932
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:55,680
Speaker 3: can buy happiness.

933
00:50:55,880 --> 00:51:00,440
Speaker 2: Huh, very intriguing. So you've mentioned a lot of your

934
00:51:00,520 --> 00:51:07,359
Speaker 2: earlier in life financial decisions have set you up in

935
00:51:07,400 --> 00:51:11,080
Speaker 2: a good financial situation today. What what decisions do you

936
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:14,560
Speaker 2: look back and say, oh, I'm really glad I did that.

937
00:51:14,640 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 2: What were the with hindsight, with the benefit of hindsight,

938
00:51:18,640 --> 00:51:23,960
Speaker 2: what were the choices you made that you most appreciate today.

939
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:27,680
Speaker 3: Probably like everybody you know, Barry who has you know,

940
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 3: mass and wealth on their own, The smartest thing I

941
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:32,000
Speaker 3: ever did was to be a good saver. You know,

942
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 3: if you know, if you're a good saver, you know

943
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:38,439
Speaker 3: everything else is, everything's going to turn out fine. Even

944
00:51:38,440 --> 00:51:40,399
Speaker 3: if you're not a great investor. As long as you're

945
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:44,080
Speaker 3: a good saver, you know, good things will happen. If

946
00:51:44,080 --> 00:51:47,000
Speaker 3: you're a lousy saver, but a great investor, you know,

947
00:51:47,080 --> 00:51:50,839
Speaker 3: it's unlikely that you're going to succeed financially. So yeah,

948
00:51:51,239 --> 00:51:53,000
Speaker 3: saving with the number one thing, and then too, I

949
00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 3: was very early as you might imagine on the indexing train,

950
00:51:55,680 --> 00:51:58,319
Speaker 3: and that has also rebounded to my benefit. But it's

951
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 3: it's been a saver that was not the list.

952
00:52:01,160 --> 00:52:04,040
Speaker 2: So so let me flip that question around. What do

953
00:52:04,080 --> 00:52:06,759
Speaker 2: you think most people get wrong? What are some of

954
00:52:06,760 --> 00:52:11,360
Speaker 2: the biggest myths in investing in finance that we often

955
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:12,760
Speaker 2: have a hard time getting passed?

956
00:52:13,120 --> 00:52:15,760
Speaker 3: Well, suddenly, you know, this focus on investing, this focusing

957
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:19,520
Speaker 3: on beating the market is the wrong place to you know,

958
00:52:19,800 --> 00:52:21,680
Speaker 3: be spending your time. But let me let me broaden

959
00:52:21,760 --> 00:52:24,120
Speaker 3: it out, Barry, So something that I've been thinking about

960
00:52:24,160 --> 00:52:29,640
Speaker 3: a lot of late, which is most people, and this

961
00:52:30,040 --> 00:52:32,560
Speaker 3: was true of me in the early days, spend too

962
00:52:32,640 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 3: much time worrying in general and worrying about money specifically.

963
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 3: And I think this is hardwired into us. You know,

964
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:44,680
Speaker 3: we are here because our hunter gather ancestors survived. And

965
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:48,040
Speaker 3: why did they survive Because they were worriers, right, They

966
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:51,600
Speaker 3: worried about everything, you know, they wanted to make sure

967
00:52:51,680 --> 00:52:53,920
Speaker 3: that they were going to be okay no matter what happened. Well,

968
00:52:53,960 --> 00:52:56,239
Speaker 3: guess what, you know, the sabretooth tiger is not going

969
00:52:56,239 --> 00:52:59,200
Speaker 3: to leap out of the bushes. We do not need

970
00:52:59,239 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 3: to worry the way our ancestors used to. And yet

971
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:07,439
Speaker 3: people worry constantly. I mean, people are serial warriors. It's

972
00:53:09,280 --> 00:53:11,880
Speaker 3: like the hedonic treadmill. We talk about how, you know,

973
00:53:12,120 --> 00:53:14,680
Speaker 3: we strive towards goals, hoping that they're gonna make us

974
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:17,880
Speaker 3: happy forever, and then boom, we achieve whatever it is,

975
00:53:18,280 --> 00:53:20,040
Speaker 3: and we immediately saw us driving off to something else.

976
00:53:20,040 --> 00:53:22,600
Speaker 3: We can't get off that treadmill. But there's also a

977
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:25,759
Speaker 3: worry treadmill, and we worry about something blah blah bah

978
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:28,279
Speaker 3: bah bah. Choose away from us. The worry goes away.

979
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:33,040
Speaker 3: We're onto something else. People cannot escape their worries. And

980
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 3: what I would want for listeners and I want for

981
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:41,760
Speaker 3: my reader is is please find some way to worry less.

982
00:53:41,840 --> 00:53:45,440
Speaker 3: Because if you do the right stuff financially, you live

983
00:53:45,520 --> 00:53:50,000
Speaker 3: bene your means, you're not crazy with your investments. Hopefully

984
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 3: you index, you know, hopefully you don't take on too

985
00:53:53,360 --> 00:53:56,200
Speaker 3: much debt. You know you're not gonna get it all right,

986
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 3: but good things will happen in the end. You don't

987
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:02,960
Speaker 3: have to spend thirty forty years worrying about retirement. You

988
00:54:03,000 --> 00:54:05,680
Speaker 3: don't have to get to retirement and worry that you're

989
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:07,840
Speaker 3: spending a crazy amount of money because you're going to

990
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 3: get derailed by the stock market or whatever it is.

991
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 3: Things are likely to walk out just fine. We are

992
00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:18,080
Speaker 3: not you know, back you know in you know, like

993
00:54:18,120 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 3: our hunter gather ancestors, you know, worried about every threat.

994
00:54:22,360 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's time to like go of those worries.

995
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 3: That to me is the biggest mistake people make. And

996
00:54:29,640 --> 00:54:31,799
Speaker 3: I don't have a magic cure for getting away from

997
00:54:31,800 --> 00:54:34,399
Speaker 3: those worries, but I do believe that is the number

998
00:54:34,440 --> 00:54:36,000
Speaker 3: one thing we could do for our own happiness.

999
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:41,359
Speaker 2: Huh really really very interesting. Of all the things you've

1000
00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:45,800
Speaker 2: learned over the course of being a personal finance columnist

1001
00:54:46,760 --> 00:54:50,359
Speaker 2: first for Forbes and for the journal and everything you've

1002
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:55,440
Speaker 2: done at the Humble Dollar, aside from worry less, what

1003
00:54:55,520 --> 00:54:58,440
Speaker 2: do you think is the most important piece of financial

1004
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:01,439
Speaker 2: wisdom that you want to pass along that you want

1005
00:55:01,480 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 2: to have outlive you What what's the most significant thing

1006
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:07,920
Speaker 2: you wish people would embrace then it would make their

1007
00:55:07,960 --> 00:55:08,880
Speaker 2: life better.

1008
00:55:09,360 --> 00:55:11,799
Speaker 3: I think what people need to do is know themselves

1009
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:15,600
Speaker 3: right much more than you know, what's the expensive issue

1010
00:55:15,640 --> 00:55:18,680
Speaker 3: on their index funds or you know, which is the

1011
00:55:18,719 --> 00:55:21,760
Speaker 3: best age of which claim social security. Know yourself, because

1012
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:25,319
Speaker 3: everybody has different financial needs and different financial worries and

1013
00:55:25,360 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 3: so on. So if you customize your finances to your

1014
00:55:29,840 --> 00:55:32,440
Speaker 3: own needs, not to somebody else's needs, not to what

1015
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:35,240
Speaker 3: your brother in law says, not to what you heard

1016
00:55:35,360 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 3: on the TV. If you focus it to your own needs,

1017
00:55:37,880 --> 00:55:42,920
Speaker 3: what you worry about the most, that is likely to

1018
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:45,760
Speaker 3: lead you to have a happier financial life. I think

1019
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:48,680
Speaker 3: one of the problems is that we live too much

1020
00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:51,280
Speaker 3: under the influence of others. It's not just the influence

1021
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:54,759
Speaker 3: of people today. You know, our friends and family and

1022
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 3: the people we see in the media, but also we

1023
00:55:57,280 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 3: live under the influence of the past, what our parents

1024
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:04,239
Speaker 3: told us or what they modeled for us. People go

1025
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:06,960
Speaker 3: through their life buying what their parents bought because they

1026
00:56:06,960 --> 00:56:08,520
Speaker 3: thought it made their parents happy, and so they think

1027
00:56:08,520 --> 00:56:11,120
Speaker 3: it's gonna make them happy. Probably not gonna work out

1028
00:56:11,160 --> 00:56:13,719
Speaker 3: that way. So try to think for yourself and try

1029
00:56:13,719 --> 00:56:14,480
Speaker 3: to know yourself.

1030
00:56:15,080 --> 00:56:18,600
Speaker 2: Good good advice. Let me throw you a curveball. I

1031
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:22,200
Speaker 2: remember last summer, towards the end of July, you were

1032
00:56:22,239 --> 00:56:26,520
Speaker 2: the focus of a New York Times piece headline a

1033
00:56:26,600 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 2: money guru bit big on a very long life. Then

1034
00:56:29,760 --> 00:56:34,360
Speaker 2: he got cancer. You're usually the author of pieces like that.

1035
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:36,480
Speaker 3: How odd was it to.

1036
00:56:37,000 --> 00:56:40,439
Speaker 2: Be the subject of a piece I know you as

1037
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:44,320
Speaker 2: a humble person, not just because of the Humble Dollar website.

1038
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 2: You're not seeking to be the center of attention. How

1039
00:56:48,040 --> 00:56:50,400
Speaker 2: strange was that entire experience?

1040
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:54,160
Speaker 3: Well, Barry, to be honest, sitting here getting quizzed by

1041
00:56:54,200 --> 00:56:57,640
Speaker 3: you is not that difficult from different from getting quizzed

1042
00:56:57,640 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 3: by Ron Lieber at the New York Times. But that's it. Yes, Yeah,

1043
00:57:02,000 --> 00:57:04,320
Speaker 3: I personally do not want to be the center of attention.

1044
00:57:04,440 --> 00:57:06,560
Speaker 3: I would like the focus to be on my writing

1045
00:57:06,719 --> 00:57:09,960
Speaker 3: rather than me as a person. But you know, I

1046
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 3: knew Ron was not gonna be unkind. I've known Ron

1047
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:17,400
Speaker 3: for decades. He's a friend of mine. Much more on

1048
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:19,040
Speaker 3: couple actually was the photo shoot where I have to

1049
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 3: sit there and try to smile for now. But it

1050
00:57:24,600 --> 00:57:26,560
Speaker 3: sort of goes back to what I was talked about

1051
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:31,840
Speaker 3: earlier about the amount of publicity that my diagnosis has generated.

1052
00:57:31,880 --> 00:57:34,160
Speaker 3: I mean, since that came out, you know, I had

1053
00:57:34,160 --> 00:57:36,240
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal article that I wrote, I had,

1054
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:38,520
Speaker 3: I wrote a piece for the Washington Post. I've got

1055
00:57:38,600 --> 00:57:42,120
Speaker 3: a piece coming out in the ARP magazine. Ron Lieber

1056
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:44,439
Speaker 3: wrote that piece for The New York Times. I also

1057
00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 3: wrote a piece for my father's old paper in London,

1058
00:57:47,840 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 3: the Telegraph, which was a lot of fun. Well maybe

1059
00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:52,600
Speaker 3: not fun, but it was great to be in there.

1060
00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 3: So Yeah, the focus on my diagnosis is a little

1061
00:57:57,320 --> 00:57:59,960
Speaker 3: bit odd and Cerddainly, it's uncomfortable for me to be

1062
00:58:00,280 --> 00:58:03,600
Speaker 3: the folks of attention wrong on my writing. But I

1063
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 3: feel in some way in a way that I didn't

1064
00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:09,440
Speaker 3: really realize that it's it's it's doing some good and

1065
00:58:12,320 --> 00:58:15,040
Speaker 3: being of service to others has always been really important

1066
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:17,520
Speaker 3: to me. I mean, I feel like if I'm not

1067
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:21,240
Speaker 3: doing some little good in the world, I'm I'm not

1068
00:58:21,440 --> 00:58:26,040
Speaker 3: spending my days usefully. I never want to spend the

1069
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:27,920
Speaker 3: days focused solely on my own needs.

1070
00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:32,000
Speaker 2: But you were able to use the opportunity to amplify

1071
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:36,160
Speaker 2: the good message that you had for people, which was, hey,

1072
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:39,200
Speaker 2: here's just a fundamentally smart way to go about managing

1073
00:58:39,760 --> 00:58:43,000
Speaker 2: not just your investing but your personal finance and your life.

1074
00:58:44,240 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 2: That focus must have been gratifying to get that message out.

1075
00:58:48,080 --> 00:58:52,280
Speaker 3: No, absolutely it was, but it was also a little

1076
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:52,960
Speaker 3: bit uncomfortable.

1077
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:56,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can, I can certainly see. Knowing you and

1078
00:58:56,040 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 2: knowing your personality, I can see it was something like,

1079
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:01,520
Speaker 2: all right, let me uh, let me make this trade

1080
00:59:01,560 --> 00:59:05,320
Speaker 2: off and and but it all seems to have accomplished

1081
00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:08,440
Speaker 2: the goal of spreading what you wanted to share with

1082
00:59:08,480 --> 00:59:09,000
Speaker 2: the public.

1083
00:59:09,560 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 3: And you know, for as long as I am able,

1084
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 3: you know, I want to be able to continue writing.

1085
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 3: I do have a whole bunch of articles that I

1086
00:59:17,200 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 3: still hope to pen. But you know, I know this,

1087
00:59:20,680 --> 00:59:22,800
Speaker 3: this ride is gonna it's going to come to an end,

1088
00:59:23,920 --> 00:59:27,040
Speaker 3: probably sooner than I would like. But you know, for

1089
00:59:27,120 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 3: now what I can still write, well, I can still

1090
00:59:29,560 --> 00:59:32,000
Speaker 3: get my fingers on the keyboard. I hope to keep

1091
00:59:32,040 --> 00:59:33,360
Speaker 3: punching out a few more articles.

1092
00:59:33,800 --> 00:59:37,240
Speaker 2: So normally at this point I shift to some of

1093
00:59:37,280 --> 00:59:39,520
Speaker 2: the favorite questions I ask all of my guests.

1094
00:59:40,560 --> 00:59:42,280
Speaker 4: I'm not sure how relevant.

1095
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:45,160
Speaker 2: These are, but but let's uh, let's run through them

1096
00:59:45,560 --> 00:59:50,000
Speaker 2: for posterity stake. What's keeping you entertained these days? What

1097
00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:51,919
Speaker 2: are you doing if you just want to kick back

1098
00:59:51,960 --> 00:59:53,040
Speaker 2: and relax a little bit.

1099
00:59:53,360 --> 00:59:57,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not a thing. I'm very good at kicking

1100
00:59:57,800 --> 01:00:01,920
Speaker 3: back and relaxing. That said, as I mentioned, if I'm

1101
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:04,160
Speaker 3: gonna be retired, which I don't think I'll ever be

1102
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:06,360
Speaker 3: fully retired. This is the moment, right. If I don't

1103
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 3: do it now, I'm never gonna get to do it.

1104
01:00:08,160 --> 01:00:13,320
Speaker 3: And for the first time, probably twenty years, I actually

1105
01:00:13,320 --> 01:00:18,000
Speaker 3: started watching sports again on TV HM and it sort

1106
01:00:18,000 --> 01:00:20,320
Speaker 3: of takes me back to being a teenager and so on,

1107
01:00:20,440 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 3: sitting on the couch. I'm not sure I could ever

1108
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:25,920
Speaker 3: sit through a whole football game, but maybe I could

1109
01:00:25,960 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 3: watch the final quarter, and so I've been trying a

1110
01:00:28,000 --> 01:00:28,600
Speaker 3: little bit of that.

1111
01:00:29,840 --> 01:00:32,080
Speaker 2: So, yeah, have you played with red zone at all?

1112
01:00:32,400 --> 01:00:35,120
Speaker 4: No? My nephews are just crazy about it.

1113
01:00:35,120 --> 01:00:39,640
Speaker 2: It's just the highlights of every big game kind of

1114
01:00:39,680 --> 01:00:43,160
Speaker 2: all at once. It's just it's an amazing If you're

1115
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:45,880
Speaker 2: a football fan, you might want to explore that. It's

1116
01:00:45,920 --> 01:00:46,720
Speaker 2: pretty bonkers.

1117
01:00:46,960 --> 01:00:50,160
Speaker 3: So I live down in Philadelphia, So the Eagles are

1118
01:00:50,160 --> 01:00:54,560
Speaker 3: an obsession. Yeah, and you can't help but catch a

1119
01:00:54,560 --> 01:00:58,440
Speaker 3: little bit of the fever. On a Sunday afternoon, half

1120
01:00:58,480 --> 01:01:01,120
Speaker 3: the people and this is not actuation, half the people

1121
01:01:01,240 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 3: you see walking on the street are wearing Eagles gear.

1122
01:01:04,240 --> 01:01:04,439
Speaker 4: Wow.

1123
01:01:04,560 --> 01:01:06,640
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how much of an obsession it is

1124
01:01:06,680 --> 01:01:11,080
Speaker 3: in the city. And it's fun. You know. I've been

1125
01:01:11,080 --> 01:01:12,920
Speaker 3: taught by my son in law that when you go

1126
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 3: into a store in Philadelphia, you know, to buy something

1127
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:17,800
Speaker 3: on a Sunday, what you have to say when you

1128
01:01:17,920 --> 01:01:19,400
Speaker 3: leave is go birds.

1129
01:01:21,160 --> 01:01:22,080
Speaker 4: That's very funny.

1130
01:01:22,760 --> 01:01:25,680
Speaker 2: Tell us about your mentors who helped shape your career.

1131
01:01:26,520 --> 01:01:28,840
Speaker 3: So I would call out one person, which was the

1132
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:31,960
Speaker 3: editor of this little newspaper that I worked for when

1133
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:34,680
Speaker 3: I was nineteen. Her name was Leslie Levin, and she

1134
01:01:34,760 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 3: had just got out of the American University Journalism school,

1135
01:01:39,720 --> 01:01:44,520
Speaker 3: and she had all of this knowledge about journalism that

1136
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:48,040
Speaker 3: she was anxious to pass on, and literally she taught

1137
01:01:48,040 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 3: me how to write, she taught me how to report.

1138
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:55,680
Speaker 3: It was a great experience. I was so fortunate. And

1139
01:01:56,160 --> 01:01:58,160
Speaker 3: in fact, this was all before I went to college,

1140
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:02,160
Speaker 3: and I took the advice that she gave me about,

1141
01:02:02,240 --> 01:02:04,000
Speaker 3: you know, how to run a small newspaper, and then

1142
01:02:04,040 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 3: I took it and I used it when I edited

1143
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:10,000
Speaker 3: the student newspaper at Cambridge, and I've used it ever since.

1144
01:02:10,840 --> 01:02:13,400
Speaker 3: So if I ever, for instance, see a piece of

1145
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:16,800
Speaker 3: copy with an exclamation mark on it, immediately here Leslie's

1146
01:02:16,880 --> 01:02:19,240
Speaker 3: voice in my back my head, saying, you only ever

1147
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,440
Speaker 3: used the exclamation mark if it's World War III, otherwise

1148
01:02:22,520 --> 01:02:24,280
Speaker 3: no exclamation marks.

1149
01:02:25,040 --> 01:02:28,480
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. Tell us about some of your favorite books.

1150
01:02:28,640 --> 01:02:29,960
Speaker 4: What have you been reading recently.

1151
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 3: Lately? I've been doing a lot of reading about Philadelphia

1152
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:38,080
Speaker 3: and about the neighborhood where I live. I live very

1153
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:41,040
Speaker 3: close to the School River, across from the Pence the

1154
01:02:41,160 --> 01:02:47,040
Speaker 3: Penn U Penn campus and where I live now used

1155
01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:49,320
Speaker 3: to be full of Irish immigrants who worked on the

1156
01:02:49,360 --> 01:02:54,880
Speaker 3: wolves along the schookel and next to me is a

1157
01:02:55,000 --> 01:02:57,560
Speaker 3: very an elderly lady. I think she's probably in her nineties,

1158
01:02:57,680 --> 01:02:59,640
Speaker 3: and her son lives with her, and he's in his

1159
01:03:00,120 --> 01:03:03,520
Speaker 3: mid sixties. And Charlie tells me that when he was

1160
01:03:03,560 --> 01:03:07,440
Speaker 3: growing up in the neighborhood there were two Italian families

1161
01:03:07,920 --> 01:03:10,760
Speaker 3: and everybody else was Irish. And the fact that he

1162
01:03:10,880 --> 01:03:13,680
Speaker 3: was aware that there were only two families in the

1163
01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:16,720
Speaker 3: neighborhood who were Italian and everybody else was Irish tells

1164
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:19,600
Speaker 3: you something about that neighborhood at the time. So I

1165
01:03:19,680 --> 01:03:23,960
Speaker 3: enjoyed reading about Philadelphia. But in terms of favorite books,

1166
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:30,080
Speaker 3: the best time in terms of learning about finance was

1167
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:32,560
Speaker 3: when I was at Forbes in the late nineteen eighties.

1168
01:03:33,000 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 3: Back then, the workplace was less pressured. There's less drive

1169
01:03:37,080 --> 01:03:39,480
Speaker 3: to produce, and there was more time to sort of sit,

1170
01:03:39,640 --> 01:03:42,320
Speaker 3: kick back and relax and read. And Forbes had a

1171
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:45,280
Speaker 3: great library. So back in those days, you know, I

1172
01:03:45,360 --> 01:03:49,520
Speaker 3: read Burton Malkiel's ran Walk Down Wall Street. I read

1173
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:53,480
Speaker 3: all the books of Wall Street history by John Brooks,

1174
01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 3: and I picked to remember.

1175
01:03:55,480 --> 01:03:58,400
Speaker 2: Once upon a Time in Galanda's that the Go Go

1176
01:03:58,640 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 2: years right.

1177
01:04:00,520 --> 01:04:02,680
Speaker 3: And then there was this little book that I discovered

1178
01:04:02,680 --> 01:04:06,920
Speaker 3: in the Forbes library called Investment Policy by Charles Ellis.

1179
01:04:07,760 --> 01:04:11,280
Speaker 3: And Investment Policy, I believe, came out in nineteen eighty six,

1180
01:04:11,880 --> 01:04:15,840
Speaker 3: and I think the original edition was ninety four pages,

1181
01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:18,760
Speaker 3: and it just seemed like Charlie went through and picked

1182
01:04:18,800 --> 01:04:23,120
Speaker 3: out every word in that book with enormous care. Since then,

1183
01:04:23,160 --> 01:04:24,720
Speaker 3: the book has ballooned a little bit. It's over two

1184
01:04:24,760 --> 01:04:27,480
Speaker 3: hundred pages. But that and it's now of course called

1185
01:04:28,160 --> 01:04:29,560
Speaker 3: Winning the Losers Game. That's right.

1186
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:35,040
Speaker 2: That in fact, that began life as a research paper.

1187
01:04:35,520 --> 01:04:37,640
Speaker 2: I don't remember if it was the CFA Institute, but

1188
01:04:38,000 --> 01:04:39,320
Speaker 2: it was published.

1189
01:04:38,840 --> 01:04:40,959
Speaker 3: Somewhere I think with the General of Portfolio manage.

1190
01:04:41,000 --> 01:04:43,440
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right. But it was a short

1191
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:47,280
Speaker 2: twenty thirty page thing which has persisted.

1192
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:49,040
Speaker 4: Winning the Losers.

1193
01:04:48,640 --> 01:04:51,480
Speaker 2: Game is one of my favorite finance books. And you

1194
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:53,920
Speaker 2: know he Charlie has a new book coming out this year.

1195
01:04:53,840 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 3: Yep, Charlie's Unstoppable. Yes, if you can find Charlie's original book,

1196
01:05:01,080 --> 01:05:03,480
Speaker 3: Investment Policy, which is the one that I believe came

1197
01:05:03,520 --> 01:05:06,640
Speaker 3: out in eighty six, you know, it's ninety four pages,

1198
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:10,000
Speaker 3: it's a great read, and that I think was probably

1199
01:05:10,040 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 3: the most influential book on investing that I've ever read.

1200
01:05:12,760 --> 01:05:14,800
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a that's a big deal. I'm gonna have

1201
01:05:14,800 --> 01:05:17,600
Speaker 2: to hunt that down. I may have to reactivate my

1202
01:05:17,960 --> 01:05:22,520
Speaker 2: eBay account to get that. Our final two questions, what

1203
01:05:22,680 --> 01:05:25,480
Speaker 2: sort of advice would you give to a recent college

1204
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:29,720
Speaker 2: grad interest in the career in financial journalism or investment?

1205
01:05:30,080 --> 01:05:32,480
Speaker 3: Well, so, I think I already obnsered the financial journalism one,

1206
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 3: which is don't do it. I'm not a tilly serious.

1207
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:39,600
Speaker 3: I mean, journalism is the most fun you can have

1208
01:05:39,600 --> 01:05:41,720
Speaker 3: while keeping your clothes on. I mean it's you know,

1209
01:05:41,920 --> 01:05:45,280
Speaker 3: newsrooms are great places to be. You know, you will

1210
01:05:45,320 --> 01:05:49,160
Speaker 3: never meet a group of people who are more fun

1211
01:05:49,200 --> 01:05:51,680
Speaker 3: to be with and more cynical. I mean it's just

1212
01:05:52,280 --> 01:05:54,919
Speaker 3: so much fun to be in a newsroom. So yeah,

1213
01:05:55,080 --> 01:05:56,640
Speaker 3: go and be a journalist for a couple of years,

1214
01:05:56,680 --> 01:05:58,840
Speaker 3: learn how to write, learn about the world, and then

1215
01:05:58,880 --> 01:06:00,880
Speaker 3: go and make do something will make you some money.

1216
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:04,040
Speaker 3: But spending a couple of years in journalism in your

1217
01:06:04,040 --> 01:06:06,040
Speaker 3: twenties when you don't really need to worry about making

1218
01:06:06,040 --> 01:06:08,120
Speaker 3: a lot of money is a great thing to do.

1219
01:06:08,160 --> 01:06:10,040
Speaker 3: So yeah, I would encourage people to do it, but

1220
01:06:10,120 --> 01:06:11,800
Speaker 3: don't imagine you're gonna make a career out of it.

1221
01:06:12,160 --> 01:06:14,920
Speaker 2: And our final question, what do you know about the

1222
01:06:14,960 --> 01:06:18,240
Speaker 2: world of investing today? You wish you knew thirty years

1223
01:06:18,320 --> 01:06:18,880
Speaker 2: or so ago.

1224
01:06:19,920 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question. Why do I wish I knew?

1225
01:06:23,640 --> 01:06:26,520
Speaker 3: I guess what I wish I knew was to was

1226
01:06:26,560 --> 01:06:29,320
Speaker 3: that if I did the right things for long enough,

1227
01:06:29,360 --> 01:06:32,320
Speaker 3: everything was going to work out just fine. If you know,

1228
01:06:32,400 --> 01:06:35,240
Speaker 3: as long as I say, as long as I didn't

1229
01:06:35,600 --> 01:06:37,760
Speaker 3: fiddle around too much on my portfolio, if I just

1230
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:40,520
Speaker 3: let it ride, you know, I could just go off

1231
01:06:40,520 --> 01:06:43,959
Speaker 3: and worry about other stuff, not worry about it at all.

1232
01:06:44,240 --> 01:06:47,360
Speaker 3: You know, things generally do work out today. You know,

1233
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:49,960
Speaker 3: there are not many people you know who go into

1234
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:52,800
Speaker 3: the world, out into the world, and you know are

1235
01:06:52,840 --> 01:06:56,240
Speaker 3: reasonably prudent and managing money and soon who don't successfully

1236
01:06:56,240 --> 01:06:59,400
Speaker 3: get to retirement. You don't need to fret about it

1237
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:01,800
Speaker 3: every step of the way. You don't need to analyze

1238
01:07:01,840 --> 01:07:04,920
Speaker 3: every month spending in quicka and you don't need to

1239
01:07:05,120 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 3: find tune your portfolio every month. Just you know, set

1240
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:12,720
Speaker 3: up a sensible acid allocation, buy some index funds saved regularly,

1241
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:14,000
Speaker 3: and good things will happen.

1242
01:07:14,600 --> 01:07:17,360
Speaker 2: Jonathan, thank you so much for being so generous with

1243
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:23,280
Speaker 2: your time and your incredibly insightful advice. We have been

1244
01:07:23,360 --> 01:07:27,080
Speaker 2: speaking with Jonathan Clements. He is the author of numerous

1245
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:30,400
Speaker 2: finance books that you can find at your favorite bookseller,

1246
01:07:30,520 --> 01:07:34,040
Speaker 2: as well as the Humble Dollar blog. If you enjoy

1247
01:07:34,120 --> 01:07:36,920
Speaker 2: this conversation, well, check out any of the five hundred

1248
01:07:37,040 --> 01:07:40,120
Speaker 2: or so we've had over the past ten years. You

1249
01:07:40,160 --> 01:07:44,320
Speaker 2: can find those at iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you find

1250
01:07:44,360 --> 01:07:48,479
Speaker 2: your favorite podcast, and check out my new book, How

1251
01:07:48,520 --> 01:07:53,040
Speaker 2: Not to Invest The bad ideas, numbers, and behavior that

1252
01:07:53,160 --> 01:07:56,600
Speaker 2: destroys wealth and how to avoid them. I would be

1253
01:07:56,680 --> 01:07:58,560
Speaker 2: remiss if I did not thank the Cracked team that

1254
01:07:58,600 --> 01:08:02,480
Speaker 2: helps me put these conversations together each week. My audio

1255
01:08:02,560 --> 01:08:06,280
Speaker 2: engineer is John Wasserman. Anna Luke is my producer. Sean

1256
01:08:06,400 --> 01:08:09,760
Speaker 2: Russo is my researcher. Sage Bauman is the head of

1257
01:08:09,800 --> 01:08:14,040
Speaker 2: podcasts at Bloomberg. I'm Barry Ritolts. You've been listening to

1258
01:08:14,200 --> 01:08:16,920
Speaker 2: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.