While there is no way of knowing what the best portfolio is, empirical data and financial economics have fixed the problems surrounding investing. But if we’ve fixed investing, then what’s the point of financial advisors? Today we dive into this topic and reveal why financial advice is still valuable to the everyday investor. We open the episode by touching on our movies and books for the week, as well as the latest from the financial world. We then explore why, despite their failure at making predictions, experts are so important across many industries. After defining what financial advice is, co-host Benjamin Felix systematically unpacks the value that financial advisors provide as they relate to key areas including goal-setting and quantification; asset allocation; understanding your human capital and insurance needs; selecting the right financial products; and tailoring strategies to tax considerations. Later, Benjamin highlights how financial advisors can help investors overcome their biases while helping them align their investing goals with living a meaningful life. We close the episode with our Talking Sense segment, followed by the bad financial advice of the week. When so much data is available, it’s necessary to revisit the relevancy of financial advisors. Join us to hear why they continue to play such a valuable role in helping people meet their investing goals.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Cameron shares the birthday message he received from Seinfeld’s ‘Soup Nazi.’ [0:00:35]

• We discuss community feedback and the documentary The Last Blockbuster. [0:02:53]

• Details on financial educator Paul Merrimen, our next guest. [0:06:10]

• Updates on podcast merchandise and shipping times. [0:07:32]

• Elon Musk and Mark Carney; hear about our books of the week. [0:09:00]

• We talk about the latest from the financial world. [0:10:14]

• Introducing today’s planning topic: What is financial advice? [0:18:40]

• The role of financial planners when index fund investing is so easily available. [0:19:45]

• Exploring what financial advice is and what it isn’t. [0:23:37]

• We unpack the link between goal-formation and quantification and sound financial advice. [0:24:35]

• The challenge of trying to predict what will make us happy in the future. [0:27:07]

• Happiness, life satisfaction, and goal-setting as it relates to financial advice. [0:29:00]

• Pricing your goal and avoiding the hedonic trap of never ‘having enough.’ [0:32:00]

• Asset allocation as key to the value of financial advice. [0:34:02]

• Quantifying human capital and your insurance needs. [0:37:00]

• Why knowledge of financial products is the basis of financial advice. [0:37:50]

• How taxes impact investing strategies. [0:39:05]

• Why managing wealth and getting financial advice is an iterative process. [0:40:02]

• How financial advisors help you eliminate biases that affect decision-making. [0:40:40]

• The many reasons that people seek expert advice. [0:43:28]

• We summarise the arguments for the value of financial advisors. [0:47:00]

• Advice on determining a financial advisor’s level of expertise. [0:48:34]

• Hear our answers to the profound questions posed in our ‘Talking Sense’ section. [0:51:02]

• Courtesy of TikTok, we share our bad financial advice of the week. [0:53:30]

Read The Transcript:

Ben Felix: This is the Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision making for Canadians. We were hosted by me, Benjamin Felix and Cameron Passmore, portfolio managers at PWL Capital.

Cameron Passmore: So when you record that or say it, are you in the back of your mind playing our theme music?

Ben Felix: No, I'm in the back of my mind saying don't mess it up, don't mess it up.

Cameron Passmore: Well, you hardly ever mess it up, but after I look at the YouTubes afterwards, I now realize I've got that music on my head, even though we're not listening to music while we're doing this. Anyways, I thought I'd indulge myself a little bit to kick it off. I had a birthday recently and I just wanted to give a shout out to Russ and our team who got me something really cool for my birthday. I don't know if people have heard of this or not. Many people I shared this with had not heard of it, but a thing called Cameo, where you can get a celebrity to do a birthday shout out for you.

So as everyone in our office knows, I'm a Seinfeld fan. And if you can believe it, Seinfeld went off the air 23 years ago this May. You were like, what, 10 years old when it went off the air. So many people in our office or even younger, they have no idea. They knew Seinfeld is, but it wasn't such a cultural thing as it was for us. Anyways, Russ sent a Cameo from the Soup Nazi for my birthday. So I just want to play a couple of short clips from it. It was pretty cool, pretty fun.

Larry Thomas: Cameron Passmore, Larry Thomas here, the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld, and I have a birthday message for you from Russell and the Soup Nazi. Yes, of course, Cameron, you're pushing your luck, little man. In that case, it would be bread, $3. No soup for you. Come back one year. Next.

Anyway, so I turned 55 and it's amazing having grown up in Canada, having seen these London Life Freedom 55 ads for forever. And this was even before I got into the business, I remember these ads of the other retired couple on the dock with her Labrador retriever, and life is perfect. When you reach 55, you have no more worries anymore. And it became such a powerful beacon to your working life. Honestly, turning 55, I can't even imagine not doing something that's meaningful work. Just the notion of having nothing to do or just to stop doing what you were doing, it's a completely foreign concept to me now.

Ben Felix: It might be good for a week, a little vacation.

Cameron Passmore: A vacation, I've nothing wrong with vacation. And maybe we're lucky to have careers that are so engaging and it's kind of cool having found the purpose in the podcast and other work that we're doing. So anyways, I am 55.

Ben Felix: Happy birthday. I said it when it was your birthday, but I'm saying it again now.

Cameron Passmore: I know you did. Have you seen the show on Netflix called The Last Blockbuster?

Ben Felix: Nope.

Cameron Passmore: But the video rental stores, it is a crazy, incredible movie. Well, it's a documentary, and hour and a half long documentary about how there were 9,000 Blockbuster locations at the peak. And we talked about this when we talked about the Netflix book, I don't know, sometime last year, and how the point of the Netflix book was... One of the points was that it basically eliminated Blockbuster from the landscape. But they talk about it in the movie, it's the whole story of how it built up and how it went into great decline, and it was not necessarily because of Netflix. Actually at the time, in 2008, Netflix and Blockbuster both had big digital online presences. And it was a lack of capital financing, because Netflix was so big, their capital supply dried up in 2008. Anyways, it's a great movie, especially if you ever visited a Blockbuster or some other video rental stores. The way they have these quirky characters describing going into the stores, it all comes back to, even the feeling of the video cassette boxes and the weight. And remember the little stickers on it that used to say, "Be kind, rewind"?

Ben Felix: Oh, yeah.

Cameron Passmore: They talk about the smell, the popcorn, the lining up. Remember going up and they give you that receipt?

Ben Felix: Yeah.

Cameron Passmore: And they say, Okay, this movie is due back on Thursday. This one's on Saturday. "And no one ever knew where they're supposed to be back. And then Blockbuster decided to eliminate late fees. That cut two thirds of their revenue overnight.

Ben Felix: Wow.

Cameron Passmore: And all these videos are just left in the wild. No one would return them. Anyways, it is a great, great documentary for anyone who used to go to a video rental store or Blockbuster.

Ben Felix: Wait, so there is still a last blockbuster?

Cameron Passmore: There is one left in Bend, Oregon, and they just renewed their... It's owned by Dish Digital. They just were renewed for another year. And it's the story of the manager. The manager, she's been there for 15 years, I think. She goes out the Walmart and buys the candies and movies for rental. It's all self-sufficient. There's one left.

Ben Felix: Wow.

Cameron Passmore: Yeah. There's some viewing ideas for you. We just passed 500 ratings online, which is awesome and very kind of people.

Ben Felix: Yeah, that is awesome.

Cameron Passmore: And we have an overall rating of 4.9, and we've had some recent great reviews from Krazzykris, Spritestar141 and Matthew A from Oakville. So thanks to you guys for the great reviews. Talk a bit about the community board, perhaps. Some may have noticed that I'm attempting to become a little bit more active in there and try to find my voice inside the board. Often, the feeds are a lot more technical than I have the energy and perhaps the ability to even jump into. It's incredible the effort that a lot of people put into the discussions there.

Ben Felix: Yeah. It really is incredible. A lot of it this past weekend, a lot of it was less portfolio management, technical, and a lot of it was focused on stuff like what is your financial independence number? So some interesting philosophical discussions stemmed from that. I know I've been saying this ever since we started it, but it's a really warm but analytical community. They've managed to be both of those things, which is pretty unique, I think.

Cameron Passmore: Yeah. And I put a post up there in the weekend letting people know, because there's a feed in there already about Paul Merryman. So I hopped on there and said, well, "We're interviewing Paul Merryman this week for an upcoming episode." I said, "If you have any questions, feel free to add them." So we got a bunch of really good questions, which I did add into the list for Paul tomorrow. And we're also kicking around the idea of doing an AMA, Ask Me Anything event. And figured since there's such high level of engagement for Paul already, we asked him and he said, "Sure, I'd love to do an AMA." So we'll let you know that date closer to it, but likely early May, there will be alive AMA with Paul Merryman.

Ben Felix: I like that idea for guests. And a lot of our guests don't have the time to dedicate to doing something like that. Paul's dedicated himself to financial education at the moment, so it makes sense for him to do it. But yeah, the more guests that we can do to follow up on episode a week after with an AMA in the community, I think that's such a cool idea.

Cameron Passmore: And speaking of Paul, I read his book this morning. He's got a new book that came out. So I'd like to give you guys a heads up on upcoming guests books. So his latest book is called, We're Talking Millions, 12 Simple Ways to Supercharge Your Retirement. Very easy read. Paul Merriman has a handful of very smart, easy choice that you can make that will improve your financial future. It's a very good book. It actually pivots to his two fund portfolio, which is different from his ultimate buy and hold portfolio, which I believe has 10 holdings plus fixed income.

Something else I wanted to mention too, in the merchandise store, we have a whole new shipment of socks in. So every order you place, you get a free pair of socks. I thought we do something. I wanted to run a test to see if people that listen actually go out and jump into the store. So anyone that is listening, hop in the store, buy anything you want, and just make a note. There's a little note thing in the Shopify store that you heard it on the podcast, and the next 25 orders, we will send you a free water bottle, like the water bottle that I use inside the podcast that people comment on.

Ben Felix: The water bottle.

Cameron Passmore: Well, not this one, but one just like it. You'll get one, just like it. So just put a note with your order. So get a hoodie, and with that, you get a pair of socks and a free water bottles. We have 25 we'll ship out. Also, Angelica wanted us to mention that international shipping is and has been extremely slow. I know some orders last fall were almost three months to get to the UK. Now, often we'll ship surface, which does explain the delay. The prices from Canada overseas gets really, really expensive if you go air for a lot of countries, so that can explain it. We've had three orders lately that have been very slow. If you don't receive it, let us know. We'll happily ship you out new merchandise. Anything else to add, Ben, for getting into the episode?

Ben Felix: No, I think we can go ahead. Welcome to episode 142 of the Rational Reminder Podcast.

Cameron Passmore: So I just want to start with a couple of books. One, I finished off the Elon Musk book by Ashley Vance that I mentioned last time. Fantastic book, fantastic story. I have great new found respect for Elon Musk and the type of risk he took on. It will be real interesting to see where the story goes though, with the electric cars. I don't know if you saw the ads on the weekend. I forget what I was watching, but there's some pretty cool electric vehicles coming out from Kia and Volkswagen. So it will be something to see. And I also started another new book from Mark Carney. He just released a book called Values, Building a Better World for All, and it was just released past couple of weeks.

So Mark Carney has moved back to Ottawa after leaving his job. He was the central banker of the UK. And before that he was central banker in Canada. Currently, he's the UN special envoy for climate action and finance. And he is also an advisor to the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson. He's back in Ottawa. I would love to get him on the podcast, so we're trying to connect to have that happen. It would be great. The book is fascinating. It's a slow read. It's a dense read. It's a very long book, so it'll be a while to Frank give any sort of a review. But so far, it is very interesting.

And in other news, so much talk lately about the level of the Dow Jones Index and how it's hit all time highs, which clearly it has. But I found this article talking about some of the stocks that were recently included and excluded. So they switched out three stocks last August. And that's the 57th time that the Dow has done that in this 124 year history.

So remember the Dow Jones Index is a price index. So the more expensive your stock price is a greater weighting you have. So out last August was Exxon, Pfizer and Raytheon. Since then, Exxon is up over 50%. Pfizer's flat and Raytheon is up about 29%. The Dow is up 17%. But these shares were all relatively cheap per unit per share, $60, $35 and $79. So in total, those three stocks made up less than 3% of the index level. So those are the three that were out. The three that were in our Salesforce, Amgen and Honeywell International. So Salesforce is down 17%. Amgen is down 3%, and Honeywell is up 28%. But what's interesting is all three of these stocks are high priced stocks. So now they make up almost 14% of the Dow index, as opposed to...

Ben Felix: It's not a high relative price. It's like the number per share, which is such a... It's a nonsensical way to weight an index.

Cameron Passmore: Correct.

Ben Felix: Because obviously, a company can split, the value or the cap weight of the company stays the same, but the dollar per share decreases, and that decreases the weight in the index. It makes no sense.

Cameron Passmore: Yeah, It's not market cap weighted like the S&P 500. And in this article I was reading about, it talked about how Amazon and Alphabet will probably never be in the index because they're so expensive per share at 3,000, $2,100 or something. But those two stocks, Amazon and Alphabet, so Google make up almost 8% of the S&P 500 Index. So it is completely wacky, but that is the index level that everyone is so aware of from the nightly news.

Ben Felix: It's such a strange index. I remember NPR did an episode a while ago on Planet Money about the Dow Jones Index and why it's basically useless, but still around because it's got such a long history and people just kind of know to know how to think about the day-to-day changes or they think they know how to think about the day-to-day changes in that index. But meanwhile, it's weighted based on price, which makes no sense.

Cameron Passmore: And only 30 stocks.

Ben Felix: Right. Also, yeah. Yep.

Cameron Passmore: The housing market in Ottawa, we're finally living the market, roaring market like Toronto and Vancouver. It's just been wild to hear people going into these bidding wars. The bids close at four o'clock. The vendor has until 7:30 to get back, to see if they want to rebid. So often people are bidding against themselves on the second go around at 7:30 at night. Lots of houses that you would think they'd be in the five, $600,000 range are going two, three, 400,000 over ask.

Ben Felix: Oh, yeah. It's nuts, truly nuts. I don't even know how to describe it, really.

Cameron Passmore: You jumped into the owning pool though.

Ben Felix: Yeah. Not in Ottawa, but I did buy a house. I'm not there yet, as people watching on YouTube will be able to see. I'm still at my old house.

Cameron Passmore: That's true.

Ben Felix: I move in July. I did not engage in a bidding war. Similar to my portfolio, I'm a bit of a value investor. So I found a house over in Quebec, actually. I'm about 30 minutes out of Ottawa, but 27 minute drive from my current house, which is about a 30 minute drive from our office.

Cameron Passmore: You're a valued buyer, but with four children, you can't be small cap value.

Ben Felix: No, no. It's definitely mid to large cap, but deep value. No other bids, quite a bit under ask, actually, we ended up being able to get it for, which was nice. It had been on the market for a bit. A bit of a unique house, which I loved. It's made out of ICF form. It's like poured concrete for the whole, all the walls and stuff, which is something that I've always been a fan of. Likewise, the floor is a poured concrete with in-floor heating.

Cameron Passmore: Radiant heating. That's fantastic.

Ben Felix: Yeah, radiant heating. Yep. But I think I'll probably do a YouTube video hopefully soon on my personal decision to buy a house, walk through the math that I did to make that decision. One of the big things was the commute. So I won't be doing one because I'm not going to go into the office anymore. We've grown our team remotely since last March. And so for at least a reasonable portion of our team at PWL, we'll continue working remote. So I'm fairly comfortable with that idea that I'm not going to have to go into the office post vaccine or whatever it may be. My whole life I've lived within walking distance of my university, I guess that's probably pretty normal, or my work. I've always just found a place close to where I work so I didn't have to drive. I could just walk to work. I did the same thing with PWL, but now that constraint is gone. So I looked for a house that had nearby elevation changes because I like hiking and I like hiking up hills. So it's a little bit of a workout. Close to water, so I can kayak. Space, didn't want to be close to lots of other houses. But there's probably other stuff too, like the size. Obviously, like you said, we lots of kids to house. Anyway, so we found this house that met all of those criteria and wasn't... For whatever reason, the other people weren't interested in. And we had all the inspections and all that stuff, so it wasn't because there's something wrong with it.

Cameron Passmore: You actually have to do an inspection, which is good.

Ben Felix: Yeah. True. Yeah. All those conditions that you would lift in a bidding war, we did not have to. We were able to put all the conditions, from our perspective, that made sense. So I don't think that I would... I just wouldn't buy a house. If the alternatives were continue to rent or buy a house in a bidding war, I would just keep renting.

Cameron Passmore: Yeah. It's interesting. I talked to a number of clients who just want to get out of the current house. And you start to see like, "I'll pay whatever I get out of this," that kind of mentality. And that's what's driving this. And there's hardly any supply.

Ben Felix: We've always had... There was a discussion a while ago on the Rational Reminder community about this. We've been happy renting. We're happy in the house that we're renting now. It's a great spot. Being out of the city would be nice because we like to go for walks. Walks in the city aren't that nice. Driving to take a walk isn't that nice. So we definitely wanted to get out of-

Cameron Passmore: Your new spot's going to be fantastic.

Ben Felix: Yeah. Very happy to have not had to engage in a bidding war.

Cameron Passmore: So I was going to put this peace of bad advice that week, but I thought I'd just make it a shorter here at the beginning. Headline that came across Yahoo one day last week talking about one of the best known macro strategists, Mohamed El-Erian, saying that because of the Fed's current policy, investors should get more active. Quote, "It's going to be an environment to be very active for very active management building portfolios from a bottom-up perspective."

Ben Felix: Wait, is this news or bad advice? I'm lost.

Cameron Passmore: Oh, it's news. I put in the news part. I was going to put it as bad advice, but hey, I thought I'd put it in here. I think people know what we think about that advice. There's also a neat survey that came out from Ernst & Young last week that I caught in the magazine Wealth Professional that we each get, quoted in title, "More Canadians are seeking to ensure their financial wellbeing." So the article points out the pandemic has really highlighted the dangers of unknown risks, which has led to increased demand for certain insurance products. Get this, mortgage protection insurance policies for three months of protection are up 64%. Credit card payment insurance is up 71%.

Ben Felix: Wait, are these all the predatory ones that are attached to the other products?

Cameron Passmore: Well, this is why I'm wondering what's driving this. 70% of respondents in this E&Y survey are concerned about their financial well-being. So I'm wondering, is it... I find it hard to believe people are asking for these products, but are people doing more refinancing and being approached to inquiries?

Ben Felix: Well, we know there's lots of real estate activity. Maybe it's related to refinancing and real estate transactions.

Cameron Passmore: I don't know. I also wonder if there's an uptick in life and disability insurance applications. I don't know. I couldn't find that data. 45% of people surveyed plan to pay off more of their debts. And 67% of people are willing to wear a fitness tracker to access lower premiums for their policies. And that's the end of the news segment.

Ben Felix: That's it.

Cameron Passmore: So there’s a topic you've really been thinking about for awhile.

Ben Felix: Yeah. We decided we're going to alternate between portfolio management topics and financial planning topics, as opposed to trying to do both in each episode. So this week we're on the financial planning portion of the rotation. And yeah, something that I've been thinking about for awhile is this question of what is financial advice?

I like to say that investing has been solved. We know that's not completely true, and I can't tell you what the perfect portfolio is going to look like for the next 30 years. But we have a pretty good idea from financial economics and the empirical data on fund performance and all that kind of stuff, what works and what doesn't. I think there's pretty good theory backing up why we should probably expect that to continue to be true in the future. So I'm talking about index funds, obviously, being the most sensible investment for most people, which, as most people listening know, you can go out and buy an index fund yourself from a whole bunch of different platforms for a very, very low cost. Now, this question that I get asked quite often, mostly through comments on my YouTube channel, is kind of like, "Okay, Ben, if you're telling me that index funds are the smartest investment and they're super easy and low cost for me to access on my own, why do you, Ben, still have a job?"

It's kind of a funny question. It's not a funny question. I understand why people ask it. It was not that long ago, even when I started in the financial services industry, eight or nine years ago... Jeez, it's almost 10 years. Oh, man.

Cameron Passmore: Mine is 30.

Ben Felix: Okay. I guess I feel a little better. Jeez though. Almost 10 years. Even when I started, it was starting to become better known this idea of index funds and low costs and all that stuff. But it really was not that long ago when the concept of financial advice was focused on picking the best, you name it, funds, stocks, managers, whatever.

Cameron Passmore: Look at the quote from Mohamed El-Erian. It's time to be active. The biggest macro strategists on the planet.

Ben Felix: Yeah. I've long disagreed with lots of his views, but that's a story for a different day. So now, I think at least the overall narrative, the net narrative has shifted toward index funds being the smartest investment. So I would say that given that, given that we know that and it's such a common knowledge amongst consumers and professionals for the most part... Maybe not for the most part.

Cameron Passmore: I was going to say, people watching on YouTube are watching me squirm. It's like, really? Maybe in the US, certainly not in Canada.

Ben Felix: Okay. Maybe it's like 51% then. Not a large majority. Not even 51? By assets, at least, it's around there.

Cameron Passmore: Okay.

Ben Felix: But if you believe that, then I think that any advice that takes investing as the problem to solve, as opposed to a solved problem, like I said, I think investing is pretty well a solved problem, so any financial advice that does take investing a problem to solve, try and pick the best fund, the best stock, and outperform the market and all that stuff, that isn't financial advice. Based on the data, that's counterproductive advice. If that's being sold as financial advice to anyone listening to this podcast, you should run in the other direction. But it leads to the question of what good are experts? If I'm saying that they can't help you pick good investments, what are experts useful for?

There's a book. I mentioned this book a while ago on the podcast, that's called Decisive, by Chip and Dan Heath. So they explain in their book that experts are really bad... And this is in any field, not just in investing. Experts are really bad at predictions. Experts cannot predict the future, and you shouldn't listen to them if they try to predict the future. Again, that spans to any industry, not just finance. But what experts are generally pretty good at is assessing base rates. Base rates are known probabilities.

=So I'll never tell you which fund manager or which stock is going to do well in the next 10 years. That's a prediction. But I can tell you the base rates. I can tell you that 90% of active fund managers trail the index over 10 year periods and 63% of individual stocks trail the market at the decade horizon. So those are base rates. And base rates are really important in making decisions. So if we back up for a second and think about the main question, what is financial advice or what isn't financial advice, I guess is what I'm talking about right now, advice on how to allocate to the best fund managers or pick the best stocks, while ignoring the base rates, which is arguably the only thing experts are good for, is probably not the kind of advice that you want to listen to. So like I mentioned before, if that's being sold as financial advice, I'd be running pretty quickly in the other direction.

So given that, what is financial advice? I would break it down, and I have broken it down in my own brain, into five areas where a knowledge of base rates, technical competence in financial planning, and an understanding of human psychology can be applied to help people arrive at high quality financial decisions. So I think these are areas where expert opinion, based on those items that I just mentioned, based on base rates, technical competence, and an understanding of psychology are actually useful as opposed to trying to make predictions. So those five areas are goal formation and quantification, I'll expand on these in a second, asset allocation, insurance needs analysis, financial product allocation, and tax awareness.

Cameron Passmore: So you would bring those three levels of competencies to those five categories.

Ben Felix: If I were to describe how financial advice can be useful, that is what I would say. I'm going to just dig into each one of those. So goal formation and quantification. This one's interesting because I think it's probably historically gotten the least amount of attention, and even now is probably just starting to get the amount of attention that it deserves in the overall process of managing money. And people that listen to our podcast know that we've been doing our best to speak with experts, to try and make these ideas more known to our listeners and to ourselves. We've gone through, in the last 12 months, I think a lot of learning by having conversations on the podcast, but also offline with, in many cases, the same experts that we talk to on the podcast, to make ourselves better at this.

Before anyone starts investing, they need to know why they're investing. And financial goals, I think if you step back and think about what financial goals to do to your life, they influence how you spend your time, they influence who you spend your time with, they influence the job that you take, how much you save, what you spend on, and how you invest. You think about it. What does the financial goal impact? It's pretty broad. Now, one of the ways to explain this that we got from talking with Brian Portnoy who's been on the podcast is that financial goals dictate how we allocate our temporal time, temporal, social, human, and financial capital. Now, that might sound obvious when you hear it, like, of course, of course, that makes sense. But the problem is that humans are really bad at setting goals that actually align with a meaningful life.

So there's a 2005 paper, Effective Forecasting, Knowing What to Want, by Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert. And they found that we're really bad at predicting our future emotions. So this becomes problematic. Because if you think about setting an ambitious goal, like an early retirement, just as an example, making significant [inaudible 00:26:29]... I'm not picking on the fire movement. I have respect for it. This isn't the side. But if you just take that example, setting an early retirement goal, making sacrifices today, taking excessive risk today to achieve this aggressive goal, and then getting there and realizing that you're not actually any happier.

Cameron Passmore: Looking at my example off the top with Freedom 55. Imagine if I saved all the way along and decided to retire now and give up what we're doing. I never would have dreamed it would be this much fun at 55.

Ben Felix: See, and the fire people are thinking to themselves, "Well, that's not what we want to do. We don't want to actually stop doing stuff." That's why I set I've got no problem with the fire movement. But the point is if somebody does make sacrifices, if they give up quality of life, and again, I'm not saying that fire movement people give up quality of life, but if someone was giving up quality of life or taking on excessive risk to achieve a goal, and then you get there and realize it didn't actually make you happier, it's that idea of trading off happiness in the future, or what you think is going to be happiness in the future, for happiness today. And that can be problematic because we're bad at forecasting what's going to make us happy in the future. The concept of hedonic adaptation plays a pretty meaningful role in this problem. That's our ability to adapt quickly to our circumstances, good and bad.

And there's a 1978 study. Lottery winners and accident victims. Is happiness relative? And they found that recent paraplegics and lottery winners converged at their previous levels of happiness or sadness not long after their life changing event. It's pretty staggering, that study. So that early retirement, the new car, the big house, the lakeside cottage, whatever the aggressive financial objective may be, might not actually increase your wellbeing as much as you think, or at least not for long. It might feel good at the moment. Getting a new car might feel good for the first week or something like that. But those feelings don't last. Those feelings of positive emotion don't last. There's this distinction between experienced happiness, which is like pleasure, and reflective happiness. Experienced happiness is fleeting. It happens based on external stimulus, whereas reflective happiness is... Well, it's more introspective. It's harder to experience and doesn't rely on external stimulus.

Now, just like managing investments, and we spend so much time talking about the evidence on portfolio management, but there's also this large and growing body of evidence. And like I mentioned before, we've had lots of experts in related fields to talk about it on the podcast. There's this large body of evidence on happiness and life satisfaction. So keeping in mind that we're talking right now about what is financial advice, I think it's sensible to say that anyone giving financial advice, anyone in a position where they're giving financial advice to others, and that could be an... It could be us where we're dealing with clients and people are paying for our services. But I think it's true for anybody.

If you're a person in your group of friends that happens to be relied on for their financial knowledge, because you're a dedicated listen to The Rational Reminder Podcast, I think taking these things into account is just as important. Anyone in a professional or a non-professional role where they're being relied on for their financial advice, I think they have to be able to take the base rates, like I mentioned, with base rates for fund performance, you've got to be able to take the base rates on life satisfaction into account to offer perspective on what a meaningful life looks like on average. It doesn't mean you're going to have a meaningful life or feel like you have meaningful life, but understanding the base rates is really important. Going down the analytical path, like how do we tactically execute on this financial goal? If someone comes to us or comes to you, a podcast listener, and says, "I have this goal, how should I achieve it?" I think going down the analytical path of how do you achieve this goal without stepping back and scrutinizing the goal is what I've termed in my thinking about this, it's a recipe for a misallocation of capital. You might end up spending time, relationships, working hours, or money, on stuff that doesn't align with a meaningful life.

Cameron Passmore: Really?

Ben Felix: Just say this goal that pops in my head, I want to achieve it. I want to afford this car. I want to afford this house. I want to retire at this age. I think without asking why, it's a recipe, maybe not disaster, but it must be for a less than ideal outcome.

It may sound strange for me to be suggesting that financial advice requires an understanding of psychology, but one of the things that we've learned is that money and, this stuff all sounds obvious when you think about it, but money is where it happens. It's where everything happens. Our financial lives are so intertwined with our life lives that financial decisions are where emotional decisions are expressed. So I think it's a necessity to take this into account.

Now, figuring out a set of meaningful goals, that's like you mentioned earlier, very important. Probably doesn't get enough attention, but the next piece, so once you've figured out what those meaningful goals are, the next piece is also important, which is figuring out how much they're going to cost.

Now, at this point, I think we're closer in line with what lots of people might think about when they think about financial planning. You have a financial goal, so you have to figure out how much it costs and how to achieve it. I think it's really important to step back and ask if the goal makes sense, but it is an important next step to price the goal. How much does achieving this goal cost? And then what does that mean for how much you need to save? How long do you need to work? All those calculations that people are probably a little bit more familiar with.

Now, what quantifying goals gives you, obviously it gives the path to achieving them, but I think it also, probably more importantly, avoids the single biggest hedonic trap, which is the infinite pursuit of more. We had Morgan Housel on the podcast not long ago. In his book, The Psychology of Money, he wrote "The hardest financial skill is to get the goalposts to stop moving." And he also wrote, "Enough is realizing that an insatiable appetite for more will push you to the point of regret."

Now this is tricky because the pursuit of enough is actually harder than the pursuit of more.

Cameron Passmore: Absolutely.

Ben Felix: And it's harder. There's real evidence on this. More is like a drug. It's like gambling. So that more for the sake of more and maybe getting a win in your pursuit of more, that's really like a drug. Whereas enough is highly introspective, highly reflective, and that engages the system two thinking in your brain.

Now we know that turning on system two thinking is demanding in terms of energy usage and uncomfortable. Your body, because it's more demanding to turn on system two, your body doesn't want to do it. So it's actually uncomfortable to sit down and reflect and think about what enough is. And I think that this is reflected in, it ties back to, I guess, that idea of goal formation, where it's common for people to have gold driven by their system one brain, the pursuit of more, as opposed to enough goals, system two goals.

So you've got meaningful goals. They've been quantified. The next critical piece of financial advice is asset allocation. Given a set of meaningful goals and their estimated costs, how should you allocate your financial assets? Now important to keep in mind that without going through what I just talked about, without having goals and quantifying them, figuring out an asset allocation would be kind of hard. At least it'd be hard to have what's it anchored on at that point. But I guess more, maybe that's the answer. If you haven't completed what I just talked about, then your asset allocation is just going to be based on more for the sake of more.

Cameron Passmore: Are you talking just about portfolio asset allocation?

Ben Felix: I am talking about financial asset allocation, but that doesn't mean that's the only input into this. So goals like we just described are one of the major inputs, one of the major anchors for asset allocation, but that decision also has to take into account human capital and other non financial assets. Like the classic professor example of the tenured professor versus the commissioned salesperson in a volatile industry. Your professor can take more risk with their financial assets because they're human capital is so much more stable. There's a paper that David Blanchett, who was a guest on episode 137, did in the financial analyst journal and it was called No Portfolio is an Island and they built a portfolio optimization framework, but they took into account the characteristics of human capital, region specific real estate and pension benefits. And they found that the optimal solution for the financial asset portfolio was materially different depending on the other non-financial asset inputs.

So thinking about asset allocation, including non-financial assets, that's really important, but thinking about it in the context of the broader, what is a meaningful life to me? That's a big question, but the goal is related to that. That becomes the big anchor for asset allocation.

Now, importantly, asset allocation from a financial asset perspective is probably the most important determinant of expected investment outcomes. Like a more aggressive portfolio, you've got higher expected returns. Maybe you can achieve a goal more quickly or with less additional savings, but you also might have a more uncertain outcome and it might be harder to stick with that more aggressive portfolio if markets are volatile, maybe even, especially if you don't have a goal associated with the asset.

But then on the flip side, picking a portfolio that's too conservative that can also have a pretty significant implied costs because of lower expected returns. So I think in terms of, again, we're talking about what is financial advice? That asset allocation piece is another really big one, but it hinges on, it depends on, the goal formation piece.

Now the next one depends, I guess, a little bit on this financial situation, but for a lot of people they're not yet financially independent, so we can talk all we want about asset allocation and goals and things like that. But the reality in most situations is that the biggest asset is human capital. And human capital, obviously it goes away or it can be impaired, if a person dies unexpectedly or if they become disabled. So quantifying that, quantifying the insurance need again, probably the least fun to think about. I don't particularly like thinking about dying or becoming disabled. Quantifying it is kind of fun, thinking about the circumstances is not fun though, but again, critical piece of financial advice, figuring out if there's an insurance need. And if so, what does that need look like?

The next piece is financial products. So given an asset allocation, keeping in mind, we haven't talked about what's going be used to implement that asset allocation yet, but given an asset allocation and an insurance need, which financial products should be used to implement those strategies and that product knowledge, I think in a lot of cases is where financial advice starts. Bad financial advice like that idea of product sales or picking funds and all that kind of stuff. That starts with product.

Cameron Passmore: Well, it's also the thing that a lot of consumers go out seeking too, right?

Ben Felix: That's a very good point. When I was preparing these notes, it's just interesting to think about, people say, "Ben why do you have a job?" And just now at, after however long I've been talking, we've just gotten to the point of, okay, now index funds part of the part of the solution. And not even the only solution. Like there's index funds to consider. There are annuity products depending on the situation, likewise insurance to cover a need or for tax planning. Yeah, so after all that other thinking, we finally arrive at financial products.

And then overarching all of that stuff, every step of the way is taxes. Given a set of goals and asset allocation strategy and financial product mix, there's always going to be a consideration for taxes. Might choose a different product. You might implement a strategy to achieve a goal in a different way. I'm thinking about, this isn't the only consideration, but I'm just thinking in my head about stuff like estate planning. You might do things differently to set things up to optimize for that. If leaving an estate to a certain person or entity is an objective.

So all of that, I think Brian Portnoy is summarized in his book, Geometry of Wealth, quite well by referring to it as that whole process is defining your purpose, setting your priorities, and then lastly, implementing your tactics. So index funds, tactic, term 10 insurance policy from this company, tactic, but it comes after purpose and priorities.

And then the other piece of this is that it's not like you just do this once and you're done. The whole thing is an iterative process. People change over time. Their objectives, their values change over time. So the process of managing wealth, and it's not to say if you're doing it on your own, or if you're working with a professional, it is a process of continuous improvement, always looking for better ways to align the overall plan with a meaningful life. And it sounds like such a big thing to say, but it's what all of this has to be anchored in.

Now, something that I have not commented on yet is why would someone not? As many of our listeners do, why would someone not subscribe to common sense investing, listen to the Rational Reminder podcast, read the books that I'm going to recommend at the end of the episode here, and then just do this on their own? It is a good question because we do provide all of this information for free to the public so that they can, so that some people can do it on their own. But I think again, in that book, Decisive, which is just a great book, Chip and Dan Heath, they describe the four villains of decision-making. Narrow framing, which is the tendency to define choices too narrowly, or see them as binary when they're not. Confirmation bias, which is the human tendency to form a quick belief and then seek out information that confirms it. Short-term emotions, which can get in the way of good decisions obviously. And overconfidence, which is a feeling that we know more about how the future will unfold than we actually do or can know.

So I'm not here to say that everyone needs professional financial advice. If I thought that true, we probably wouldn't be doing this podcast and providing all that information to the world for free, including the model portfolios and the podcast and all stuff. The idea that people can take control of their own finances is extremely powerful.

But at the same time, the four villains of decision-making exist in what psychologists called the inside view. So that's the view that stems from the information that person has directly in front of them, including all of the biases and lived experiences that may taint a good decision. And in the same book, in Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath talk about one of the best ways to overcome the inside view is by reality testing your assumptions and in a complex area like managing wealth, one of the best ways to do that, and in some cases, one of the only ways to do that is by consulting an expert. So, yeah.

Cameron Passmore: It's interesting. You make a compelling case for someone who is into this stuff to seek advice, but so many people aren't. They just know they want someone to take care of it for them.

Ben Felix: Some people want to be taken care of. Some people don't look for the outside view. Some people do, like I know The Loonie Doc, when he was on, I know he's mentioned that he has a fee only planner that he checks in with to get some outside perspective, but he's also doing a lot of it on his own. So I think there's a bit of a continuum where you can be completely do it yourself and potentially be exposed to some of the villains of decision-making. You can completely hand it off to somebody else and trust that they're going to do a great job, but I think there's a lot of space in between for different ways of getting some outside view.

And then I wanted to finish up with some of the reasons that people seek expert advice. The outside view thing, I think is important. The idea that it's an objectively good idea to get a second perspective, I think that makes a lot of sense. But in Dr. Moira Somer's book, Advice That Sticks, she gives a handful of reasons for why consumers seek expert advice. She says that expert advice allows people to optimize trade-offs. Going through the advice steps that I described with an expert results in a relationship where there's a mutual understanding of goals, definition of a meaningful life, preferences, values. And if you take that mutual understanding and combine it with technical competence and a knowledge of relevant base rates, making financial trade-offs, which come up all the time, becomes far more efficient. You spend a lot less time in action than in decision paralysis.

So I mean, stuff that pops into my head, should you buy a bigger house with a bigger mortgage? How does that impact your overall plan? Should you take a lower paying job to spend more time with your kids? Should you opt for the survivor benefit on your pension? Should you sell the shares that you own in your employer? This is stuff that comes up all the time. And I mean, I know from my lived experience in my professional capacity that having a conversation about one of these things with a client where we do have all of that context, we're able to say, "Well, listen, based on this, this, this, and this, and how you felt when we said this last time, I think you should do this." And it makes the decision a lot easier. Whereas some people, not all, but some people can end up agonizing over those types of decisions for a long time and potentially making a suboptimal choice.

Expert advice also reduces complexity. Ton of information available online, including from us. We're guilty. But it's not always easy to know how to weigh the relative value of information that exists on the internet or elsewhere. But an expert should be able to judge the credibility of information quickly to reduce the number of inputs in a decision. Too much, and I kind of, I guess, mentioned this with the trade-off thing, but too much information and complexity very quickly leads to time consuming and potentially stressful decision paralysis.

Expert advice, and this is still from Dr. Moira Somer’s book here, expert advice increases confidence. And there was a survey from FP Canada, Financial Planning Association, which is clearly a biased source, but it's still interesting to hear what the study found. I don't know if it's actually a biased study, but you could see where someone might say this is a biased source. So this study found that people who had consulted with a financial planner had increased financial and emotional wellbeing, and they had increased confidence in their ability to meet their goals and deal with setbacks without having to make financial sacrifices. How good was that study? I can't tell you, but again, based on professional experience, I'm not surprised at the result.

Then the last piece is time-saving. Expert advice can save time by minimizing the need for large amounts of up front research, eliminating the tasks, like actually implementing all of the stuff. I mentioned all of those different tactics and financial product selection, all that stuff. That goes away, depending on the arrangement I guess. If you're working with a fee-only financial planner, maybe that's not completely true. With a wealth management firm like PWL we do all of the implementation. Then there are also less obvious channels, and this is again Dr. Mara Summer's commentary, like reducing the time spent in action, but also time spent dealing with stress, not the actual task of implementing the plan, but the time spent dealing with the stress of knowing that you have to implement the plan.

Cameron Passmore: Absolutely.

Ben Felix: So I would summarize all of that by saying that, and this is where my brain goes when I get this question of if index funds make sense, why do you still have a job? Financial advice is not about which fund managers or stocks or index funds even to pick, maybe which index funds, but the fact that the index funds are the most sensible investment for most people, it does not negate the need for financial advice. I think financial advice starts with setting meaningful goals, quantifying them, determining an appropriate asset allocation given the goals, and determining insurance needs, and only once all of those steps are completed you start thinking about which financial products. That's where index funds come in.

Now, like we've mentioned, all of these things can be accomplished on your own. Like I said before, many of the people listening to this podcast are probably doing a great job. It's probably a bit of a biased sample, a bit of selection bias going on there.

Cameron Passmore: Do you think?

Ben Felix: Do you think? You think you can do it with sufficient research, but humans have this tendency to get stuck in the inside view, where narrow framing, confirmation bias, short term emotions and overconfidence can contaminate the decision making process, and Chip and Dan Heath in their book suggest that one of the best ways to overcome the inside view and get an outside view is by consulting with an expert.

Now there's a whole other question that I don't have the answer for, which is, how do you evaluate who is actually an expert?

Cameron Passmore: was waiting for that.

Ben Felix: And I think that's a harder question to answer because even educational standards may not be enough. There are physicians probably who don't do as good of a job as other physicians. So other than listening to their podcasts and getting a feel for-

Cameron Passmore: The physician's podcast?

Ben Felix: Well, I guess that could be it too. We actually, we had a guest, Dr. Wendall Mascarenhas. on our podcast who does have his own podcast. It's called Teeth and Titanium. I was a guest on it. So if I was going to get dental surgery, maybe I would go and listen to Dr. Mascarenhas' podcasts before agreeing to the procedure. But in all seriousness, Josh Brown, he had wrote a blog post a while ago where he said, something, I'm paraphrasing and probably butchering it, but something along the lines of, "I would never invest with someone who isn't on Twitter." But he's basically saying, if you can't see a documented version of who a person is and how they think out in the public space, like Twitter being his example, podcasts being another one, YouTube being another one, it would be very difficult to -

I think that's actually pretty sensible because credentials only get you so far. And I mean, maybe it sounds like I'm just plugging us because the people listening are listening to our podcasts anyway. But I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, I have trouble thinking about this one because of our positions for any financial, legal, I don't know, any of those major decisions that people might seek expert advice for, I've always had the luxury of having our own contacts where I can say, " Hey, hey Cameron, I'm looking at getting a mortgage. Who do you trust?" And you doing this for so long, you always have the contacts.

And then likewise, we've again, had the luxury of, we spent the better part of a year interviewing accounting firms to find one that we really got along with and thought they were doing a great job. So again, for tax stuff, I know I can go to them. But for a field that I was completely unfamiliar with, I think it would be very difficult to choose an expert to trust. So I'm not saying that that part's easy. That part's maybe even hard, but I hope that I did articulate what financial advice should be, at least.

Cameron Passmore: That's great. Ready to pick a card?

Ben Felix: I'm ready.

Cameron Passmore: So this one is for you at random. You have not heard this question before. When you lend something, what do you expect in return?

Ben Felix: Oh man. Well, it depends. Who am I lending it to? I would not lend money to anyone that I, unless I was comfortable not getting it back. I don't know. Nothing? If I were going to lend something, I'm probably just trying to help out whoever I'm making the loan to. What about you?

Cameron Passmore: Interesting. Yeah, that's what my answer was going to be too. When I lend something out, I've never lent a large amount of money out before, but I always assume it's not coming back. I just want to borrow the, whatever, the garden spade or it's like, just help yourself. If it comes back great. If not, no problem. No big deal, but I've never had a large lending ask before.

Ben Felix: Okay. Ready for number two.

Cameron Passmore: Right.

Ben Felix: Have you ever not been able to afford something important?

Cameron Passmore: Wow, I guess it depends how you define important. I can remember a couple of years in university where things were mighty tight, when we used to buy the cheapest tofu we could find then buy a little quarter pound of ground beef and cook a big pile of tofu, a little bit of ground beef so all the tofu tasted like ground beef for the week. So food's pretty important. And not that we couldn't afford it, but we were independent. And I mean, our parents could have helped, even though we came from modest means. That's just the way we lived. We made a certain amount of money in the summer that had to last us, our friends and I, the whole year at school. I've never felt, and maybe I'm just going to sound spoiled, but I didn't grow up wealthy or anything like that, but I've never felt financially constrained. And I've thought about this. Because I've never felt that way, I've thought about why that is. Even though I can't go and buy whatever I want. Maybe it's just because I've always lived within my means and framed what I want within that, maybe?

I've always felt like I have an internal locus of control. I feel like I'm in control of all of the outcomes. Not all, but I can heavily influence the outcomes in my life.

Ben Felix: You control what you can.

Cameron Passmore: Yep. So maybe that's it. Yeah. I've never felt financially constrained, but maybe that just means I don't want things that I know I can't afford or something. I don't know.

Anyways, those are Talking Sense cards from the University of Chicago Financial Education Initiative. And every two weeks we ask ourselves two more cards.

So bad advice of the week comes from our friend, Ramon, in Barcelona, which is a fabulous city. Anyways, he found some really bad advice on TikTok, and don't worry, we're not going to play TikTok. I promise you, no more TikTok audio. But the message was pretty wacky. So this guy goes on TikTok and starts basically screaming at you that maxing out your 401k could be the dumbest advice that I've ever heard for anyone who wants to take control of their financial future, even with matching contributions from your employer. Are you kidding me? I give you my money and I don't see it for decades? Why would he give it to you? It's not real. It's fake funny money. I can't do anything with it. And it's on the roller coaster of the stock market. And you will only average three to 4% on the money. If you leave it for the next 30 years, it will turn into a pile of nothing. "Poof," he says.

So these are plans where you put in a dollar, the employer matches it to a certain percent at, say 3% match 3% or something like that, in the US it's a 401k. And in Canada, it would be like a defined contribution plan. Basically just hammers it, but doesn't tell you what he does. But there is a little link at the bottom of the TikTok, of course, that goes to an app and a website called The Strait Path to Real Estate Wealth from kriskhron.com. We'll have a link in the show notes, but ends up becoming this, again, we've talked about these types of sites before, this site that has all kinds of fancy programs and books and videos and DVDs that you can buy. So they'll send you a book for free, but, standby, there are other programs available, such as the Real Estate Deal Finder Pro, which means you can become 10X wealthier today for 67% off.

And it includes the 11 principles plus three bonus items for total value of $1,689, but today only $197. You also, Ben, could become a maverick today, complete with two event tickets, I guess when they get their events going again, or you can join in the Chris 5k Club. But the best deal I could find was the Lease Option Pro digital course, a $20,769 value. I could have gotten it that day for only $997.

Jeez. You're losing money if you don't buy that.

Ben Felix: You can't afford not to buy it. So it included the Lease Option Pro Digital Training, the Deal Finder Pro, which is a $ 797 value, custom legal contracts, automatic cashflow, the game plan accelerator, and the lease option handbook. That was all included. And the website ends by saying that your financial freedom is calling, kind of like my Freedom 55, and you can learn the power of his No Money Down system, and you can also partner with Chris. And it's just loaded with flashes and big discounts and all kinds of promises, all from a TikTok. So who knows how successful it is, but how people react to this, it just blows my mind.

Cameron Passmore: That's completely unbelievable. I'm watching the video right now. I wonder if that's even the guy that wrote the stuff or if it's just an actor. You got to wonder.

Ben Felix: That's Kris Khron?

Cameron Passmore: That is though? That's actually the guy?

Ben Felix: Presume so, that's the guy in the TikTok.

Cameron Passmore: You would presume so, but I don't know, maybe it's just an actor.

Ben Felix: TikTok is so outrageous. It's just crazy. You give your money and let it go for 30 years. Uh-huh (affirmative). Yeah. That's how long-term, patient investing works.

Cameron Passmore: Yeah. And the roller coaster of the stock market.

Ben Felix: It's fake funny money and your money goes poof.

Cameron Passmore: Yeah. The alternative perspective is that investing in the stock market for the long-term is a way to move economic value through time, as opposed to letting it be fake and disappear. So there you go. That's your bad advice of the week, and Ramon got a hoodie for his cold evenings in Barcelona. Anything else this week?

Ben Felix: No, I think that's good. I'm always a little self-conscious talking about the value of financial advice because I never want our podcast to come across as being a sales pitch for what we do, but I also thought it was an important topic to speak about just because it is a question that I get often enough where people just don't understand what financial advice... When they don't understand what it is. And I think going through life not understanding that and thinking that it's all about picking the best managers and picking the best stocks or just not knowing that there are resources out there that are able to help with all of the things that I talked about, that's probably not ideal either. So hopefully it didn't come across as a sales pitch, but I hope it was useful information.

Cameron Passmore: You didn't plug the service, that's for sure. Everybody knows that, but I'm going to plug the free water bottle. Go order a hoodie, a free pair of socks and free water bottle. Hey, we're losing money. That's not like there's something in it for us. We're just trying to get the merch out there.

Ben Felix: That's true. It is a funny plug because we are losing money.

Cameron Passmore: We are losing money. So anyways. Everybody, thanks for listening as always.

Ben Felix: Yeah. Thanks for listening. I know Cameron already mentioned this, but we always appreciate reviews on iTunes. It seems like every time I mention that we get a bunch more. I don't pretend to understand the iTunes algorithm, but my understanding, my limited understanding, is that the reviews do help other people find the podcast, and I think the more the podcast community grows, not just the actual online community, but also the overall listenership, I think the better it is for everyone involved. I don't really have any way to quantify that though, but it feels good. So anyway, we appreciate it.

Books From Today’s Episode:

We're Talking Millions!: 12 Simple Ways To Supercharge Your Retirement on Amazon — https://amzn.to/2P1S8l2

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future on Amazon — https://amzn.to/3vVNNR9

Values: Building a Better World for All on Amazon — https://amzn.to/2NT7Gaq

Links From Today’s Episode:

Rational Reminder on iTunes — https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-rational-reminder-podcast/id1426530582.
Rational Reminder Website — https://rationalreminder.ca/ 

Shop Merch — https://shop.rationalreminder.ca/

Join the Community — https://community.rationalreminder.ca/

Follow us on Twitter — https://twitter.com/RationalRemind

Follow us on Instagram — @rationalreminder

Benjamin on Twitter — https://twitter.com/benjaminwfelix

Cameron on Twitter — https://twitter.com/CameronPassmore

'Fed easy monetary policy means it's time for active management: Mohamed El-Erian' — https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-policy-means-the-days-of-easy-returns-are-done-its-time-for-active-management-104422804.html

'More Canadians are seeking to insure their financial wellbeing' —https://www.wealthprofessional.ca/news/industry-news/more-canadians-are-seeking-to-insure-their-financial-wellbeing/354015

'Affective Forecasting: Knowing What to Want' — https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x

'Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?' — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/690806/

'No Portfolio is an Island' — https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/research/financial-analysts-journal/2015/no-portfolio-is-an-island