July 10, 2025

Episode 365: Rob Carrick's Eight Lessons Learned in 27 Years of Covering Personal Finance

July 10, 2025

In this episode, we welcome back Rob Carrick—one of Canada’s most trusted personal finance journalists—for his third appearance on the Rational Reminder podcast. Rob recently retired after an incredible 27-year career at The Globe and Mail, where he shaped how millions of Canadians think about investing, advice, and their money habits. Rob joins Ben, Cameron, and Dan to reflect on the biggest lessons from his decades-long career, the state of Canadian financial advice today, and why young Canadians face headwinds unlike any previous generation. From the shift from mutual funds to ETFs and the rise of DIY investing to the dangers of overestimating stock returns and underestimating inflation’s bite—Rob shares practical, timeless wisdom for every generation of investor. We also hear Rob’s frank thoughts on how the financial industry fails seniors, why Canadians stick with the big banks despite better options, and what stay the course really means when markets inevitably crash again.

Key Points From This Episode:

(0:00:04) Rob Carrick returns for his third appearance, marking his retirement from The Globe and Mail

(0:06:39) Why it’s harder than ever to be good with money in the social media age

(0:08:19) How longer lifespans are reshaping traditional retirement timelines

(0:09:51) The evolution of financial advice: from mutual fund sales to real planning

(0:11:45) How regulation, ETFs, and self-interest changed the advisory industry

(0:12:45) The rise of DIY investing in Canada: from brokers to discount online platforms
(0:14:51) Why some investors still struggle to embrace ETFs

(0:17:11) The flip side of frictionless DIY investing—when simplicity fuels speculation

(0:18:19) How realistic are today’s stock return expectations?

(0:20:03) The true challenge isn’t average returns—it’s enduring the volatility

(0:24:01) Why staying the course should really mean buying the dip

(0:26:04) The generational reality check: how boomers bought homes and why today’s young people can’t

(0:29:03) How advisors can adjust advice for younger clients facing new headwinds

(0:31:39) Should 25-year-olds give up or go all in? Rob’s advice for young investors

(0:35:29) The myth of home-run investing and why steady, boring investing works

(0:37:04) Why inflation has done more damage than any stock market crash

(0:39:50) How the financial industry ignores seniors—and what needs to change

(0:43:32) Canadians’ blind loyalty to big banks and why you should try an alternative

(0:46:29) How Rob will define success in retirement—and his parting advice for listeners

Read The Transcript:

Cameron Passmore: Welcome to episode 365. Well done, Ben. This week, it's a special episode actually. We welcome back for a third time to celebrate his retirement. It was just announced last week in The Globe and Mail, Rob Carrick, who has been an amazing voice for financial planning and the consumer in Canada and is such a connected journalist to the industry. It was just super to have him back to look back on his career and his top eight pieces of advice that were featured in the Globe article last week.

Dan, I know you and Rob had a parallel career. Maybe, what do you think?

Dan Bortolotti: For listeners who don't know, I mean, before I made the pivot, I worked as a journalist myself for about 20 years. In the last, I'd say, eight to ten of those, it was really specifically focused on personal finance journalism. I know just how difficult it is to stay relevant and to continually put out, let's call them articles with good advice that is genuinely good advice and not just something refreshing because, hey, I have to crank out two columns a week, so I'm going to write about a number of things that are not terribly relevant, but just fill the space.

Rob has been so good during a very long career at having boots on the ground and talking to individual retail investors and people of all generations. He really understands, I think, how people think and approach personal finance and has managed to take that understanding and turn it into great advice. That is very, very difficult to do for as long as he has done it.

Ben Felix: Boots on the ground is a good way to describe it. Cameron, you mentioned he's so connected to the industry. I think he's also so connected to individuals like you said, Dan. It's like he's this walking data set of what's happening with personal finance at the individual level in Canada. That comes from one-on-one conversations. It comes from the many, many emails that he gets and reads or used to get and read from his readers and from the surveys that he would do through the globe about personal finance issues.

He had just a different set of information about what's happening at the household level for Canadians at any given time. I think that gives him and even throughout his career, a really interesting perspective to speak about.

Cameron Passmore: Exactly. Speaking of advice, and you guys know this, a couple of months ago, I started putting out a weekly post on LinkedIn just talking about the fact that we're looking to have other advisors join our team that might be a good fit. I just put out a simple weekly message and it seems like I've reached a tipping point.

It's really amazing. So many people are reaching out on LinkedIn saying, well, I keep seeing your posts almost like I'm posting every day, which I'm not. But this message of looking for financial planning nerds who feel like they're a lone wolf inside the organization, it's amazing how that connects with so many people.

Three of us have talked about this often, which is I don't understand and this perhaps is my weakness. I don't understand how people work inside a firm next to colleagues that don't share the same philosophy. Not only that, they kind of think you're a little bit nuts for believing that markets work. I mean, you're smiling, Dan, but we know that in many industry settings, a lot of people think we're kind of crackers.

Dan Bortolotti: Let's remember though, that that's how advisors are trained. If you go back into all the courses that they take to get licensed, that idea is ingrained in them, that your job is to produce market-beating returns with your great calls. The business is about sales.

Once you grow up in that environment, it sometimes takes a little bit of guts or you just need to meet the right people at the right time in your career to turn the corner and change the direction of where you want to take your practice.

Cameron Passmore: But a dynamic at play though is as many of us get older and you start bringing on the next generation of advisors who may be more progressive, more aware of the evidence. I've talked to advisors who say, yeah, I know I kind of have to go that direction, just don't know how to communicate that to my clients given my current circumstance. So there is a movement underway, but Canada is still so far behind so many parts of the world on the adoption of index funds. It's great to hear from a lot of people.

Ben Felix: On the professionalization of financial advice, we're still behind too. That's happening slowly and it's happening through different channels. The regulatory channel is improving on things like advisor proficiency.

I think that firms like PWL that are structured as proper professional services firms, there are a few other ones that are independent and structured similar to the way that we are. I think that's changing things, but it is happening slowly. I agree with you, Cameron.

I think it would be really tough. I mean, I started my career in a place where once I started to believe that this is the way that you should invest, I was the crazy guy in the office. I think PWL is a pretty special place.

Cameron Passmore: Awesome. So you guys good to go to our conversation with Rob?

Ben Felix: Yeah. Did we mention that Rob is retired from the Globe and Mail? He's coming on to share his thoughts on that?

Cameron Passmore: I think so, but tee it up.

Ben Felix: Rob had his last article for Globe and Mail as an employee. He'll still do some freelance work. Was out on June 25th and he talked about the eight big things that he learned throughout his 27 years as a personal finance journalist.

We structured a conversation roughly around those big eight themes that he had, but we talked about a lot of stuff. It's always great to hear from Rob, but it's really interesting to hear him reflecting on his career a bit and thinking about how he's going to approach retirement in addition to all the interesting personal finance themes that we talked about more generally.

Cameron Passmore: 27 years as a columnist with the Globe. Incredible.

Ben Felix: Quite a career.

Cameron Passmore: All right, let's go to our conversation with Rob Carrick. Good to go?

Ben Felix: Good to go.

Ben Felix: Rob Carrick, welcome back to the Rational Reminder Podcast.

Rob Carrick: Thanks, Ben. Always glad to talk to you guys.

Ben Felix: This is the first time we're talking to you as a retiree, which is pretty cool.

Rob Carrick: Yes, I'm four days in.

Ben Felix: Very exciting. We will ask you a little bit about that later on in the conversation, but to kick things off, we want to talk about this great article that you posted pre-retirement about the big things that you learned in the last 27 years writing about personal finance. Can you talk about why it's harder than ever today to be good with money?

Rob Carrick: I think the reason why it's harder today is that there is more pressure than there ever has been to spend money and to be seen to be spending money. The internet laid the groundwork for this more complex environment and then social media just layered on top of that. Fear of missing out, FOMO, is not new.

It was a concept long before someone coined the phrase, but I feel that with social media, you're seeing what you're missing out more. I feel like there's just sort of this competition out there to who can live the best life, who can put the best face forward. I think that has added to the psychological pressure out there that people feel that I must spend.

I know I got to save, but I'm going on vacation and maybe I should just crank it up a notch to go somewhere Instagrammable, especially for the younger generation. I think that's really weighing on them. It's like an amplified consumption message and it increases almost constantly.

You sort of see these counterintuitive things happening in the economy. We know how stressed people are about money because every poll tells us that, and yet you see restaurants are full and car sales are clipping along and travel is really happening. Yes, there's certainly a segment of the population that's very well situated financially and they're able to spend regardless.

I think people are spending against their best interest. When I look at what's happening with cars and SUVs and the prices people are paying and the payments they're making and the terms on loans, I think that's the perfect metaphor for this accelerated consumption world we live in.

Dan Bortolotti: Rob, you mentioned in the article as well, people are living longer than ever, but we're all still trying to hit the same financial milestones. Should we be rethinking those traditional timelines of saving for retirement.

Rob Carrick: Yeah, totally. We're not talking about a lot of the challenges in personal finance. I'm always struggling to find something good, helpful, uplifting in a way.

I'm thinking one thing is that longer lifespans give us longer runways to reach all of life's milestones. You could buy a house in your mid-30s, no problem. You could retire, let's say, instead of 65, maybe aim for 68 or 70.

You could extend your education longer to get additional accreditation. You can take a few years to find your feet in the workforce. You don't have to find that great career-building job right away.

It takes the pressure off. You need to normalize that maybe you don't find your way in your career until 30. You don't get into the housing market until your 30s.

I can tell you the concept of early retirement, it might be active in people's minds, but I'm looking at the StatsCan data on average retirement age, it's now above 65, 65 point something. Obviously, in reality, people are coming to grips with the idea of ultra 65. How about pushing it ahead to 70?

You live to 95, you're still going to have a block of 25 years retired. Maybe your 65 to 70 years are done at half or two-thirds pace like I've been talking about. It gives you more time to accomplish things that you might think along the old timeline aren't doable.

If I don't own a house by 30, I'm financially unsuccessful. Well, not true at all. I can map out how you could buy a house at 40 and make it work.

Cameron Passmore: Congrats on an amazing 27 years, Rob.

Rob Carrick: Thank you.

Cameron Passmore: I like to hear you talk about the evolution of financial advice has been available to consumers over those 27 years.

Rob Carrick: Well, when I started my job, it was mutual fund central. Mutual funds were the financial world. ETFs, I think there were like two ETFs in the world.

Discount brokers were there, but you had to call in and the trades were quite expensive. It wasn't really a thing. The advisory world were the gatekeepers for investing and what they had to offer was mutual funds.

There was such an intense sales culture. It led to such unhappy results. As soon as I started as a personal finance columnist and my email was printed in the newspaper, it was like Niagara Falls of complaints and sour comments from people about their advisory experience.

It really hit me hard. I thought, I've got to do something about this. I wrote a lot of critical stuff on advisors and advice and the sales culture.

It became my mindset. Then I got out and went to events and met planners and conscientious advisors. I realized, okay, there is a segment of the industry that is advice forward.

What's happened is that the sales side of things has shrunk and the advice forward side of things has grown. There's just more of a focus on portfolio building and on financial planning and on dealing with the client where they are rather than just dumping a bunch of mutual funds on them. I don't want to sound naive and over dramatize how wonderful the advice profession is.

There's still a lot of sloppy work out there. There's probably investors. When the market crashes next, we're going to find out how many people had portfolios that were too aggressive because they paired back on bonds because they didn't like interest rates and they were going after tech stocks and all that stuff.

That's happening. I do think that there's more advice to be had than there ever was and that's a big plus.

Ben Felix: You've documented the shift as it's happened over time from commission driven sales to proper financial advice. What's your sense of what made the biggest difference? Was it regulation? Was it competition? Was it awareness from consumers?

Rob Carrick: Part of it was self-interest. If you're an advisor, you get a 1% or a 1.5% fee. I think a lot of them discovered that if I can get a good client base, I can actually probably have smoother revenue experience than selling mutual funds by the bunch and getting trailing commissions when people are coming in, they're coming out of funds.

I think there's self-interest, but I also think there's competition. I don't just mean competition among advisors and financial planning firms. I mean product competition.

The rise of ETFs has shown people, yes, I can do this myself. Advisors are thinking, well, if my value proposition is just building portfolios, that might not be enough to get me the client base I want. What else can I do?

Planning and guidance and coaching and that sort of thing is where you really generate the value. I mean, it's a cheap commodity now, building portfolios. You can just go buy VBAL and that's probably suitable for quite a high number of people.

They don't need anything more than that. I think advisors are starting to realize that. They're asking themselves, what else do I have? Advice is the answer.

Dan Bortolotti: Rob, that leads into the next question here. You and I have known each other for a long time. I think we probably first met back when I started doing my blog back in 2010.

So that's 15 years ago now. I've watched DIY investing involve a lot over that time. Your career has been much longer writing about personal finance.

How have you watched DIY investing change from the late 90s till today?

Rob Carrick: Well, when I started, there was barely any DIY investing. You could go into your bank branch and buy GICs. Back then, interest rates weren't bad.

The banks were just getting started in the mutual fund business, so there really wasn't much of an infrastructure there at all. You either had an advisor or a broker. Broker was a big term back then.

It's kind of fallen by the wayside, but that was big back then. Then there were discount brokers. There was TD Green Line, and all the banks were gradually adding theirs, but it was expensive.

You had to call in, and it was really suited for a very financially sophisticated sort of person. But from there, we had the tech boom in 1999, 2000, 2001, and that prompted a lot of interest from retail people to get into investing. That is really where what we now call digital investing or discount investing or online investing, that's where it started to really blow up.

It became really big after the tech crash. It sort of pulled back in a little bit, but you started to see E-Trade come to Canada. That sparked some interest.

Charles Schwab briefly came to Canada, and it started to become sort of a big thing. Side by side with the growth of discount brokers or online brokers was the rise of ETFs. You had this great vehicle, and you had this great product to use, and they sort of grew up together.

Now, we're at a point now where you can manage portfolios at almost no cost. You could buy index tracking ETFs with management expense ratios of 0.05 or 6%. You can use an online investing app with no commissions to buy them.

It's cheap, but it's also very sound. You can do this, fractional shares. You could just go to go flick, flick.

I got $50 left at the end of the week. Boom, I'm going to buy three and a half shares of whatever asset allocation ETF I'm using.

Cameron Passmore: You've been a fan of ETFs for a long time. What do you think still holds some people back from embracing them?

Rob Carrick: I've been a fan of ETFs since they were called index participation units. What's holding people back is the fact that you have to buy them through a self-directed platform. I think for some people, it's a little bit unnerving to go out there and throw your money into the stock market.

Placing the order is a bit intimidating. If you're younger, and you can sort of think of it in a gamified way on an app, it's probably easy. For a boomer who's never really handled this sort of thing, and you say, I'm going to take over my investing, you have to take that step and jump into the unknown of clicking a button.

All of a sudden, the dollars you can comfortably see in your account are now in some abstract security that you now own. Just to take this back one level of simplicity, I've talked to a lot of people out there about the idea of keeping your savings in a high interest savings account with some alternative bank. They go, how do I do that?

Well, you just set up an automatic transfer. It's really easy. The alternative bank probably has a get me, just read the bottom of the check, the numbers there, plug them in here, boom, you've got a link set up to it.

It's really easy, but they haven't done that. They haven't really thought it through. They haven't clicked on the information to find out.

Then you tell them, transfer money into this brokerage account and start trading. It's a bit of a leap. Online investing has come a long way, but I think it could be simpler.

They've made a lot of strides in making it more appealing. They don't say fees and commissions. They say pricing.

They say place an order instead of trading. They're trying to use more plain English, and I think that's helping. Everybody in the brokerage industry wants to appeal to sophisticated traders with lots of money who place lots of trades, but no one's really come up with introductory trading screen that you can click on and open that up.

Then once you get more sophisticated, you can opt for the more experienced investors trading screen. No one's really thought of a transitional idea. I think if they did, that could scoop up a lot of people who are trepidatious about DIY investing.

Dan Bortolotti: Rob, I wonder if there's a flip side of the same coin though, where DIY investing in many ways has become so simple and so easy and so at your fingertips that you can buy and sell individual stocks on your phone. Have there been any drawbacks to that ease of investing through those online DIY platforms?

Rob Carrick: Without doubt. It's not a perfect solution. You saw that in, what was it, 2021?

Was that the insane year for the markets when everything went up and that was the GameStop year and people were kind of bored and I think online trading became a game to play and people were trading on whim, on news. There was just this link between something I read online on Reddit and investing. I think that's died off some.

The markets are in a very speculative froth right now in a lot of ways, but I feel like the retail frenzy has died back a little bit. But there's no question you can make mistakes. You could always make mistakes with investing.

I got an old friend who we talk about our investments. He used to talk about the penny mining stocks he used to buy. He was a young guy and he met a broker.

He used to call his broker up and place these trades and of course, he blew his brains out. Then there was a generation who got overly involved with tech stocks and lost a lot of money. There's always a trap in the investing environment, but I think by far the greater good is served by having, I know there's people who say proximal shares and no cost trading.

There's a downside to it. I can see that there is, but I say it's overwhelmed by the good side.

Cameron Passmore: Rob, how realistic do you think investors' return expectations for stocks really are?

Rob Carrick: I think they are way inflated. The markets have done exceptionally well. When I look at the five-year numbers for the S&P TSX composite and the S&P 500 was last I looked 15% on average annual total return basis.

Phenomenal. I think when I look at the financial planning guidelines calling for 5% or 6%, this is well over double what a good diligent planner might be using in their plans. It's working people's expectations.

I have to tell you that they anchor their expectations on what's just happened. What's just happened has been phenomenally good returns. I heard someone in the business of advice talk about using 10% returns in their modeling.

I thought, what? I think that is a sense that we can continue this on through. I don't think we can.

I think there's going to be a lot of disappointed investors out there. When the markets went down hard in March and April, I was taken aback by the amount of anxiety that was coming in through reader emails. I don't think I saw that level of anxiety, even in 08, 09.

In ‘08, ‘09, people barely understood what was happening. Lehman Brothers is going down. Okay, well, what's that?

You could say the financial system was under threat, but it wasn't tangible. The whole Trump thing, and there's still the tail end of the pandemic, people were very jangly. I feel like they haven't recovered from that.

If the market were to tank at some point, and not pop right back up again, like it's done in 2020 and earlier this year, that I think there's going to be a lot of really bewildered and angry and upset people who thought they had amazing portfolios and now realize, no, they actually didn't.

Dan Bortolotti: I always felt people's expectations for the long-term expected returns on stocks are often in the ballpark. They might be saying 10%, 11% when it should be maybe seven or eight, but I think what people are truly unprepared for is the volatility that you need to endure in order to get those long-term returns.

Rob Carrick: You are so right about that. It was really hammered home to me in March and April. People think that the smart money sidesteps the market downturns.

They think, I don't want to participate in that part of stock market investing. I'll just take the good years, please. There was so much talk of getting out.

I'm getting out of the market. I'll tell you, there was a lot of smug readers who said, oh, I got out of the market in January when I saw Trump got elected. I was thinking, oh, when did you get back in?

A week ago. There's nothing surer than the disappointment of the person who got out early because eventually, there's going to be massive regret. The work of teaching people that markets are good and bad, but there's a lot more good than bad, but the bad does happen, I don't think we've made a lot of progress in that.

In fact, it might be worse than it used to be. The past five years have been too good in a way. When I think of a reversion to the mean on returns, that's nastiness ahead.

There's going to be a pretty sharp period of down draft and that's how we're going to get back to our usual average annual.

Ben Felix: It's probably worse than the last five years because we've had 15 longer of pretty good markets. Then you alluded to this, Rob, the one downturn that we did have, the big one was COVID and it bounced right back. People are conditioned that that's a downturn, but it's not.

Rob Carrick: We could have a downturn like, remember the S&P 500 after the tech crash, like that was a wasteland where they have three consecutive down years. I remember when the US equity category was so bad that there were investors thinking I would never bother with that. I'll just have Canadian equities.

Energy was strong. If you go back to those years, that's shocking. It was just epically bad period of investing.

I make no predictions about what's to come, but when you've seen these twists and turns, you can't help but think something similar, unpredictable, but shocking will happen and it will rewrite everybody's thinking about portfolios for a while until the next big rush comes. Not everything is working right now, but enough is working that you're thinking there's money out there to be made, just scoop it up.

Cameron Passmore: But you're right, Rob. I remember those days when clients would ask, why do I need US stocks?

Rob Carrick: I remember the Canadian market just trounced the American market for a few years, but equalized and then they surpassed us. But I noticed, if you look at the five-year numbers, and I think if you look at the S&P and US dollars, we're right in line with them over the past five years. 15% returns for all.

Cameron Passmore: Do you think the media has contributed to unrealistic expectations?

Rob Carrick: The media has a role. It's a feedback loop. The media reports on the great gains and then investors read about the media about the great gains.

I think I've got to get me some of that. Then they jump in and then the market goes up more and then the media reports on that. Leaders of the Globe and Mail, where I've worked for almost 29 years, are keenly interested in the markets and it's our duty to report what's happening there.

Believe me, when the markets were plunging, we were right all over that too. I remember 2008, 2009 was just writing these crisis columns. I was thinking things I'd never seen before, talking to people who'd never seen these things before.

We play it as it lays. Right now, the story is money flying through the air, just get some. Maybe columnists such as myself should be trying to calm people down, but people do not listen to that sort of thing.

It's not to say it shouldn't be said, but people hear what they want to hear. You could tell them temper expectations, but when the market falls, the amount of shock that's going to be out there will show that no expectations were actually tempered.

Dan Bortolotti: Is there a way, Rob, to get past the cliché of stay the course? This is a message that we all want to get out there, but as you said, I think people have a limited appetite for that message and it sounds a little bit too pat. Can you take it to another level and help it sink in a little bit deeper?

Rob Carrick: I wonder if maybe the idea of this as a buying opportunity needs to be played up. The concept of the bargain, of buying things marked down, is well understood. You said, as the media to blame before, I'll put a lot of blame for not being open to bargain hunting on the investment industry.

All these people say, oh, don't catch a falling knife. It's not time to get back into the market. John Templeton, when he was talking about buying when others are fearful, he didn't talk about the falling knife.

You talk out of both sides of your mouth. You say, oh, you got to buy when it's down, but don't catch a falling knife. People are picking up on that and they're thinking it's not time.

These pros aren't buying. I think if you say, let's buy on the installment plan when things are down, this is a fabulous time to be buying. I think that might turn it into an active thing instead of a passive thing.

Just sit there and take the pain. We are out there hunting for those double digit returns you're going to get because you bought at market lows. In my personal career as an investor, if I were to pick my number one regret, it would be not pouring more money in at market bottoms.

When I've done it, I'm no genius about picking bottoms, but I did invest blocks of money for my wife and I at low points and it did fabulously well. If you give it like two years, there's moments when you feel like an idiot. I can't believe I put money in and it just plunged.

If you can take the long term, it is a way to give clients and investors really good results. These are the results that make them feel like they've tapped into some expertise. The expertise is just following basic investing wisdom.

We tentatively talk about buying low and there's bargains out there, but I think maybe turning stay the course into charge ahead is something. I know the investment industry has a million examples. If you bought at market lows, stop doing them at the market bottom and do halfway to the market bottom and say, over two years, look how much people made.

You want to turbocharge your returns, do that.

Ben Felix: One of our early episodes of this podcast, we had William Bernstein, author and financial advisor. He said that young people should pray for bear markets.

Rob Carrick: I could not agree more. Bear markets in everything, real estate, in any asset that they want to acquire, the pain is all on the boomers. That never happens. It's usually the reverse.

Ben Felix: On that topic, how does the economic landscape for young adults look today compared to when you started your career?

Rob Carrick: When I started my career, it was mid-80s, coming out of the 1980 recession. I was a journalist and a lot of newspapers had had a tough time because they had revenue to dry it up. I was oblivious to it.

I just thought, I'm a new journalist, I'll go out and find a job. It took me a little while to find one, but I did. I met my wife and we went out for a while.

We got married and we decided to buy a house. We thought, oh, let's buy a house. We'll use the RSP, the homebuyers program.

My wife did. We think we saved for like 18 months, put together our 10% down payment or what it was. We never really thought, oh, this is so hard.

I remember thinking, well, it's a big financial responsibility, but the friction out there was minimal. It was very, very affordable. All our friends were buying houses.

There was no talk about, will we ever own a house? It was just, when are we going to buy? Having families, I know a lot of young people today talk about the economics of having kids.

We never did. It was doable. A balanced life of financial acquisition and saving and investing was quite possible.

Today, it is not. The big things in life, having kids and owning a house are just way out of whack with income growth. In my day, there was much more of a traditional gap.

A house cost about three times your annual income. Now, it's probably 10 in Toronto, if not more. You add to that inflation of the past few years, so just treading water is more expensive.

You're a young person, you graduate, you get a job, you're renting. How do you save for a down payment when you're paying $2,500 rent in Toronto? I do think it's harder.

Boomers fight me every inch of the way talking about this sort of topic. It all comes back to the high interest rates of the 1980s. I thought your house was $10,000.

The mortgage rate was high, but your payments, I don't want to diminish the financial burden of that. I'm sure it was quite significant to imagine 21% mortgage rates. It almost can't be done.

Everything got better from there. Whereas for it to get better for today's young people, we need the real estate market to crash, flat out crash. We need a 1989, 1990 Toronto style crash to completely remake the housing market as being more affordable.

That's when my wife and I bought our first house in Toronto. It was in 1994, if I'm remembering correctly. Everything was still on sale from that crash.

In fact, all the houses we were looking at were on sale for much less than they'd sold for previously. We looked at quite a few power sales. It was devastation in the market.

My regret is I didn't buy multiple houses back then.

Cameron Passmore: Given that backdrop today, Rob, should advisors adjust their approach when they're working with younger clients who don't see a lot of hope about ever owning a home?

Rob Carrick: I think what you have to do is map out that it can be done, but it just might take a bit longer. Everything is still possible, but on a different timeline. I wouldn't say longer, I would say a different timeline.

You are going to be living longer and working longer, and you can save for longer. You can use your FHSA, and then you can top it out, and then you can move to a TFSA, and you can do this gradually. It's fine to buy at age 35.

You're working to 70. Buying at age 35 could be the same as buying age 30. If you were working to 65, you have time.

As for retirement, it's always been true. Most people don't really power up on retirement saving until later. I think what we need to do is map it out.

There's a home-saving phase of your life, and then there's building up financial resources for emergencies and starting retirement, and then there's the full-on retirement saving. If you work to 70, we can make this work for you. We don't have to have 20% rates of return, but you need to commit to saving a little bit now, just a little tiny bit now, and we'll move along.

Now, how does that work in terms of revenue generating for an advisor? I'm not really sure. I don't think the industry really has a model for that.

There are some fee-for-service planners who will deal with people buying homes. They'll do a consultation, charge $500 or $1,000, but in terms of being an investment advisor and helping them build a portfolio, it's not a lucrative market niche, and I'm waiting for someone to just completely ace this, deliver a turnkey package. You're starting to save for a home.

You say you want to buy it in five years. Okay, we're putting your money in savings products. Oh, you have this money allocated for your midterm for retirement or for longer terms.

We're going to put that in equities and basically give them a multi-screen savings and investing approach where it's all based on timelines. Young people are wide open to getting help and advice from smart people, but the old sit-down young investor and I will give you my years of experience, that does not wash with them at all. In fact, if you could give them an app-based approach with a human face to talk to once in a while, I think that would work out quite well.

The industry runs around chasing high net all the time. Upstart's like, well, simple. I can see them turning the ship a little bit with offerings to appeal to a racier market share.

Someone's got to figure out in this country a way to serve the middle segment in a cost-effective way. I don't think it needs to be a lot of touch. I think it can be mainly tech-based, but no one seems to want to tackle that.

I mean, the recourse is I go to my bank and I get what they have to sell.

Ben Felix: A bank or TikTok where the advice may be questionable.

Rob Carrick: Well, it's all over the map. I've looked a lot of TikTok videos and I thought, this person's really good communicator. They're talking about TFSAs and I can think, if I didn't understand what it was, I think I do now.

It's really good basic stuff and so it's all good. Then there's a lot of just nonsense and get rich quick and getting people talked about silly things that are probably going to really hurt them in the long term. There's a lot of self-promotion, much like the investment industry.

Ben Felix: If you were 25 today, Rob, what do you think your personal finance priorities would be?

Rob Carrick: I'd probably be on mapping a way to home ownership. I mean, when I was 25, I did not think ever about home ownership. When I was 25, I was just basically enjoying life.

I was not saving. I had the good sense not to go into debt, but I was not a saver or an investor. I mean, luckily, I worked in journalism back then.

It was like a fine benefit pension plan, which I got into, so that was a big help. I think now any 25-year-old has to be thinking, the next 10 years, what do I want to do? If I want to own a house, I think you need to start thinking about that.

Obviously, you get your debt paid off, so you start to build your savings and you think, am I saving for a less than five-year period or a five to 10-year plus period? Then I adjust what I'm doing accordingly and I go from there. It wasn't a mountain to climb to get a house.

I had a pension, but I also had RRSP money and I didn't have to use all the RRSP money to buy the house. I didn't take out everything I could. Today, you have to think one goal, then on to the next.

I think I would probably be focusing on getting a home and then building financial stability and then thinking, okay, now I have to start thinking about retirement, maybe in my 40s.

Dan Bortolotti: Rob, what do you think about a subset of the young people today who are looking at the headwinds that they're facing, the almost impossible dream of home ownership, retirement at 60 or 65 seems out of reach. They take the approach, there's no point in me putting my head down and working really hard to achieve these goals because I'm never going to get there. I might as well enjoy my life now.

I'm going to travel more. I'm going to eat well. I'm going to do all these things that I enjoy and that's the best I can do.

Rob Carrick: I've been thinking a lot about that. It's a theme and a meme. People are talking about it and I think it is very short-sighted.

I think everybody should enjoy themselves. I actually once wrote a long, long time ago saying when you're 25 or so, that's the time to enjoy life. You don't have to have a big retirement savings fund at that time.

By the same token, I think you need to realize that life as you see it from age 25 is not how it's going to be. You don't really know a lot about life at age 25. I think that people are short-selling themselves and their earning power and their careers and their whole trajectory of life when they think it's all over for me at age 25.

It's a bit dramatic. Things can improve. You can meet someone and double up your power to save for a home or put a down payment down.

I'm sympathetic and I think everyone should have a little enjoyment in their life. If at 25, you're not going to save and you're just going to go on trips and go on restaurants and socialize, I say get it out of your system for a year or two, but don't penalize your future self by giving up at age 25 because if you can get some good habits going, then you can make things happen when your career suddenly takes off at age 28 or 29 or 30 or whatever. If you completely blow up your finances at 25, that can be damage that could take 10 years to fix.

If you're at 25 and it's live for the day, has to be a zero debt proposition. You can't afford to live for the day if you're putting on your credit card. If you don't take on debt, then at least you have a good reasonable platform on which to launch yourself at a year or two when you get that out of your system and you see that, wait a sec, the economy is improving.

People are being hired at my work. I can get a raise. I can get a promotion.

I can get a job at somewhere else. I don't want people to make pronouncements about their entire life based on the age 25 year.

Ben Felix: The other thing I've seen along a similar line of thinking, I'd be curious if you've seen this too Rob, is people thinking that the only way they'll ever get ahead is by hitting a home run. They'll pick individual stocks or they'll pick a crypto and hope that they hit it because they don't see any other way to financial success.

Rob Carrick: I've done a few financial literacy sessions on campuses or universities and colleges. I have heard that sentiment. Should I get started with investing?

That's the question. Because I know if I pick a hot stock, I can double my money and all that. I think it's a symptom of the economic plight of these people.

I don't think it's anything more than that. It's just them saying, I'm so stressed about money. I don't see a way through it unless I batch the script together 10,000.

If I could turn it into 50, what a big home run that would be. The problem with sensible investing is that's boring investing. Home run investing, investing in GameStop and Nvidia and all that stuff, it's so exciting.

You can track it online and watch it going up day by day. The other stuff is just applause along. Oh, there's your 7%.

Yay. It's not exciting, but it's so effective. I think we need to communicate to people that wealth building is best done on a steady, slow basis.

I think the whole home run thing is going to be flushed out of the system the next time the market really goes down hard and stays down for a while. That usually washes everything out for a little while, and that will recalibrate people. As I said before, people will make their mistakes in their investing careers.

I think all generations have. If you are a home run investor and playing tech stocks or AI stocks or whatever, and you get blown out, well, that happened to your parents too.

Dan Bortolotti: Now, Rob, we've been talking about some market crashes. You've seen a lot of them in your day. We've seen a lot of different crises that young investors have faced.

You mentioned in your article that really nothing has been as damaging as this recent wave of high inflation that we all experienced in the post-pandemic period. Why has that been the single most damaging incident?

Rob Carrick: The effect of it has seeped out of the financial realm into people's general emotional health. There's a general sourness, a judginess, an unhappiness out there. Inflation has contributed to that.

It's given people this focal point of what they're angry about. It's warped people's thinking. They're angry.

They're resentful. They feel like they've been cheated. That's what inflation does.

It cheats people. It says, your money's not worth as much as you thought it was. I was talking this morning.

I had coffee with a guy. He's a fairly affluent person. He was saying, I figure that my money is worth 15% less than it was last year.

He is not hurting for money, but he's feeling like even someone in that strata is feeling it. If you are trying to feed a family of four with some teenagers, you've got little kids, and you're renegotiating your mortgage this year, you just feel like inflation has destroyed my finances. There's no moment of calm now.

Everything is grabbing more money away from you. It contributes to this overall sense that Canada is broken, or America is broken, and this idea that everything is wrong. As a problem and a phenomenon in the economy, it's punched way above its weight.

When the market goes down, there's a number of people who feel bad about it, but a lot of people don't really feel like they have direct stake in the stock market. Maybe their pension, or they've got a few small investments, but it's a boomer-y kind of thing, but the stock market going down is a crisis. Inflation affects everybody, all ages.

It goes seniors are in tough because they don't have the opportunity to go out and ask for a raise, or get a better job, or anything like that. They're stuck with what they have. Young people who don't have a lot of money are finding that there's nothing left.

There's no way to better yourself because there's no money for saving. Inflation has just wrecked a lot of things. I don't blame the central bankers.

I think they were trying to save the economy from a depression, and they went too far, but who knew? There was no playbook for pandemics out there. One thing I was thinking is I would like to know what data they were looking at when they thought we have to keep interest rates down and keep them down.

They must have been seeing some pretty scary numbers that they weren't sharing, because I'm sure it wasn't a gut feeling that they should just keep interest rates down, like the overnight rate of 50 basis points for an extended period. They misjudged it, but it was a tough call to me. If it was a choice of a depression or inflation, I guess inflation is the better choice.

Cameron Passmore: You mentioned seniors and boomers. What do you think the financial industry is getting wrong about addressing Canada's aging population?

Rob Carrick: Well, I think they're getting wrong. The fact that they're just ignoring them. They're expecting seniors to transact like everybody else.

We're going to give you all these great apps, and we're going to have bank branches where there's almost nobody. You're going to wait in line for hours, but we have a great app. I was in a bank branch recently, and there was somebody walking up and down the line saying, did you know you could do a lot of stuff online or at the ATM over there?

Yeah, we all know. We don't want to be in this line, but we're forced in, and some of them are seniors. I think when you tell them we've got a great app, but you need two-factor authentication, and we're going to send a text to your phone, and you have to take that text and go on and type it into your computer, people are just dropping away by the dozen who think they can do this.

If you've got physical or cognitive challenges, it is not happening. You pick up the phone, and then you hear, oh, it's going to be hours, or your call gets dropped. I've got family experience with this, and I think the financial industry has just got its fingers in its ear, and it's going, la, la, la, la, la.

We don't hear anything. I just wonder how long this can last. I don't think there's enough children out there who could help their senior parents do all their banking.

There's going to be a point where there's going to have to be better service. Then there's the small other problem of if you are the power of attorney for your parent for financial, or you're settling in a state, and you're dealing with banks and investment companies, and how slack-jawed a lot of them are about how to handle this. Oh, we don't know.

We're going to have to see this. It's going to have to be a legal document. It has to be notarized.

There's two stories. They change their story. People die all the time.

How do you guys not have a system for this? But they don't. It's quite obvious they don't, and everybody's sort of out there navigating it, trying to transact for their parents who's had a stroke or who died.

It's very simple stuff, but they're all petrified of being sued, I guess, and so they've erected these barriers. Then there's also the people who don't know the procedure. They're not brief.

They're not trained, and they're giving half-true information and stuff. There should be a department of estates. You just call them.

I'm going to send you a copy of the will. I'm the executor of the will. Free me up to take care of this.

Ben Felix: I've heard some wild bank stories with stuff like that. What do you think financial firms need to be doing to better serve older Canadians? Is it more staff? Is it more branches?

Rob Carrick: I think they need a dedicated seniors' helpline and maybe a person in branch whose job it is to just say, this is the seniors' queue. If you're over 65 and you have the seniors' account here, come over here. We'll help you.

We can show you how to do it online, but we'll do it together. You can't do it for whatever reason? You don't have a kid to help you?

You come into the branch anytime. You come into this queue or make an appointment, and you're just going to have to invest in that staff. I mean, a lot of these people are sitting on a lot of money.

I think they are struggling. They don't want to be in that shape. They want to be able to look after their money.

They're trying their best. You've got to meet them somewhere, but they're not. They just think everybody's the same.

It's like the financial industry with young people. They think young people are just high net in training. They think seniors are just basically the same as boomers, and they're not.

I know it costs money and all that stuff, but the shape of the country's demographics mean that I think eventually they're going to have to go under this. In that column, I asked, who will be first to set up some sort of dedicated seniors help situation? I think it'll be a wait for that.

Dan Bortolotti: One of the things we've all seen in Canada is this really remarkable loyalty that Canadians have to the big banks. It doesn't seem to matter how badly people get treated. They just assume that the big banks should be the pillar of their financial lives.

Obviously, banking is necessary, but also for investing and other services. What message do you have for consumers who have that endless loyalty to the big banks?

Rob Carrick: You need to try an alternative. I'm not saying switch your checking account or have your paycheck deposited to some bank with no branches, but how about you set up a savings account and you take 500 bucks and you put it in there and you collect your higher interest rate and you learn to use their app on their website and you get comfortable transferring money back and forth and you see how your interest is adding up and you get comfortable with it and you think, okay, well maybe I can use this account as a checking account and then maybe you think, what else do they offer? Who else is out there offering alternative services? I think everybody should make a point to try at least one alternative financial institution this year.

Banking or investing, give it a try, but I think there's too much fear of the unknown. It's not as unknown as you think it is. All the deposit taking players out there are members of CDIC.

You can't be a player in deposits without being a CDIC member. You have no risk of losing your money. I mean, CDIC, well, how's your back?

I've been briefed up and down on this. I'm in row 809. I got a full briefing on what happens if a bank collapses and they've got everything tracked and the fact is that they'll probably find a buyer for your failing bank before anything falls apart.

But the banks are geniuses at marketing. They have created these six brands and people, although they feel like they're probably not getting the best deals, they're okay. There's someone there who's going to look after them.

I'm amazed. When I came to Ottawa in the mid-90s and I was reporting for Canadian Press, banks were being hauled up for parliamentary committees all the time. Why are fees for small business so high?

Why are mortgage fees so high? Like these show trials, you get the bank CEO and these senators and MPs would ask all these tough questions. Nothing really changed about it, but there was some accountability.

But somewhere in the past 15 odd years, that just went away and the banks have no oversight on Parliament. No one's really watching. No one's asking questions of Parliament about why the banks are doing this.

They feel they have carte blanche and you can see that in some of the ways they behave. They are acting like we don't really have competition and it's one of my disappointments how alternative banking and alternative investing are so tenuous right now. The number of serious, serious bank competitors, I mean, Wealthsimple is maybe the only one.

EQ Bank maybe on banking, but beyond that, there's a bunch of small tier players who cannot seem to break through.

Ben Felix: I'm guilty of using a big bank even.

Rob Carrick: I have a big bank account too, but I also have accounts of at least half a dozen alternative players. I mean, partly that's my job. I'm testing everything out, but I recently did a reno and I was keeping the savings for it in a bank with a pretty good interest rate and I found I could just pay my credit card bills for the reno bills through the online banking.

It was great. I was thinking, why would I have kept this money in a big bank when I would have been earning no interest and I was looking at the interest lines on my account statement. Yeah, that helped.

Ben Felix: So Rob, we've asked you on this podcast before how you define success in your life. Now that you're moving to a new chapter, how will you define success in your retirement?

Rob Carrick: I'll define success as finding the right mix of staying busy, contributing positively to the debate and finding rewarding things to do with my expanded free time. Finding a balance of doing a mix of things, I'll be looking for the sweet spot there. One of the reasons why I decided to retire is I thought I don't have the kind of balance I want and I'm looking for retirement to give that to me.

Hopefully we can talk again sometime and I'll tell you the longer term view from retirement.

Cameron Passmore: Definitely. As we send you off on your retirement, Rob, what's your parting advice for listeners of the Rational Minder podcast?

Rob Carrick: My advice to people is there's this feeling of personal finance that you have to get everything right. You either have to be just a master of it or stay home. I like to encourage people to try one thing you can do to better your finances and accomplish that and then move on.

If you can do one thing well, and it has to be a small thing, pay off a debt, open up an investing account and buy some good products, go find a financial planner and get a plan. It's very empowering. You'll be hungry for more positive momentum once you establish it.

Everybody makes mistakes. All four of us here have made our share of mistakes. I know it.

All the mistakes are fixable over time and I don't want that to hold people back. Try something, get some momentum and forgive yourself for your mistakes.

Cameron Passmore: Great advice. You're a three-timer on the podcast. We're grateful.

Also grateful for 27 amazing years of financial journalism. Thanks, Rob.

Rob Carrick: Thanks, guys. Always a pleasure talking to you.

Cameron Passmore: All right. That was a great conversation with Rob and what a nice send off. It'll be great to have him back on too.

Ben Felix: It'd be cool to hear from a guy like that who's so dialed in but so thoughtful at how he's experiencing retirement after some period of time. That'll be a cool thing to talk to him when he comes back on at some point in the future.

Dan Bortolotti: One of the interesting parts about this story I think is those of us who work in the financial industry or like Rob as a financial journalist for so long, he spent so much time writing about retirement, speaking to people who have made the transition, speaking to experts who help people make the transition. Hopefully, he will find himself much better prepared for it than most people because I think a lot of people who go into retirement, they're tired and they think this is going to be great. It's going to be so relaxing and then six months in, they're climbing the walls.

Rob knows all of that already. He's heard these stories from many other people. He's heard the advice.

I think people who have grown up in that environment and lived their careers with those expectations being more realistic are probably likely to have a much more enjoyable retirement.

Cameron Passmore: Think of the impact he's had, like what Bogle's had, the impact on so many people and being such a profound fan of ETFs and indexing. Think of the expense ratios he saved people over the years.

Dan Bortolotti: That's a lot of good advice that I would like to be able to put some value on. He is one of the columns that I would say to that reading over many years, I just have almost always found myself agreeing with his sound advice. He is anything but an industry shill, which is easy for financial journalists to lapse into because that's where you get all your leads and your interview sources.

He has never done that. That takes a lot independence and a lot of guts to be able to hang in there and do that over a 27-year career. He's as much an investor advocate as he is a journalist and those are very important.

Ben Felix: He's been balanced too though. It's easy and fun to bash advisors and talk about why nobody should have one, but he's been very balanced about what clients should expect or demand from an advisor if they're paying them a fee, but he has never said that nobody should have an advisor. He's always been very balanced about the limitations of people's abilities as DIY investors.

He's just advocated for, if you're going to pay for advice, this is what you should be demanding from your advisor.

Dan Bortolotti: I don't know if he coined it, but a term that he uses a lot is the do nothing advisor. The ones we all know who focus all their energy on sales and acquiring new accounts and they get you set up and then you hear from them once a year to nag you to make your RSP contribution. That's the kind of advice, unquote, that he has always spoken up against, but as you said, he's always been a very big advocate of financial advice done properly that focuses on planning.

Ben Felix: All right. We've got a couple of reviews here. Should we do those?

Cameron Passmore: Fire away.

Ben Felix: All right. I'll do the first one from pbrook546 in the United States.

They say, amazing financial podcast. So rare to find unsponsored and evidence-based advice of this quality. This podcast has had a significant positive impact on my life, financially and personally.

Thank you for everything you do.

Dan Bortolotti: I'll take the next one, Dan. So this one is from Kieran from the UK and he says, I've been a listener for nearly six years and had the pleasure of meeting Cameron in person at the London meetup in 2022. The time and effort that goes into the podcast is clear in every episode from the polished production to Ben and Cameron's meticulous approach to uncovering the truths about investing. My God, Ben, how do you do it whilst raising a family?

I love whilst, by the way. At this point, it's hard to believe the pod is free. It's really like a master's in finance just without the formal certificate at the end.

Keep up the great work.

Cameron Passmore: Very nice. Speaking of meetups, we're planning a couple of meetups out in the West Coast, probably middle of September, Ben, you and I are going to hit the road. Be in Vancouver for sure and hopefully Vancouver Island.

If you're interested, drop us an email and we'll keep track of that. It'd be fun to have a couple of meetings.

Ben Felix: If we're going out there, we're going to the island for sure. That's my hometown.

Cameron Passmore: True. I've got good friends in Victoria, so that is the plan. Okay, Ben, we know you want to talk about the premium t-shirts.

Ben Felix: We have to. They've been such a hot item. At the time that we're recording this episode, the premium t-shirts have sold out for a second time.

We have ordered more. They'll hopefully be back in stock by the time the episode is released. I did say that last time we recorded and they were not out when the episode was released, but it was later that day that they were restocked.

If you hear this and you go and check and they're not in stock, maybe check back later in the day or the next day or something. We have ordered more. They will be restocked.

They are these limited run shirts. I don't know how limited yet to be determined, I guess, but it just shows the factors in the Fama-French five-factor model on the front and big white letters. We call them premium t-shirts because they have the premiums on them and it's a play on a t-shirt being like a premium shirt.

Cameron Passmore: You got a laugh out of Dan.

Dan Bortolotti: This is really a deep nerdy dive here.

Ben Felix: Big time. The thing that we found though is that if we hype the shirts up, similar to the factor premiums, if these risk premiums are out there that the factor models kind of predict they should be, if they get too hyped up and everyone chases them, they'll disappear. That's true for both the factor premiums and as we're finding out, also the premium t-shirts.

Cameron Passmore: Nice.

Dan Bortolotti: Classic Ben. We're expanding the inventory of merch as well to include small caps. Sorry, that you put on your head.

Cameron Passmore: Man, we're nerdy. I mentioned my friend there in Victoria and if you want to feel old, my buddy and I were talking a few weeks ago. I said, you know what?

Because growing up, we used to ski literally every day of the winter. There's a small ski hill near the house. Six of us would go out every day, virtually all winter to ski at night.

We said, you know what? For our 60th birthday next year, we should get together and go skiing, kind of relive the memories. We're actually planning a 60th birthday ski trip.

Four of the six, three of the six, four of the six, I have not seen in over 40 years if you can believe it. We're just connecting now to plan that ski vacation next March, but boy, 60 comes fast. I know you guys got a long way to go, but it comes fast.

Dan Bortolotti: Have you slowed down at all on the slopes over the last 40 years?

Cameron Passmore: Yeah, I don't do the double diamonds anymore. I used to do all the diamonds. That was the cool thing to do and I was like, yeah. The hips and knees don't really like the diamonds.

Dan Bortolotti: Just the green circles now?

Cameron Passmore: Just the green. I'll go blue, but we go fast. It's not that difficult and try to avoid the ice. Other than that, it's an amazing sport.

Ben Felix: Time flies though. My 20-year high school reunion will be coming up. I remember at my 10-year reunion thinking about how old the people that were coming for their 20th year reunion looked. Now, here I am.

Dan Bortolotti: There you go.

Cameron Passmore: The slide has started.

Dan Bortolotti: Now, you hang around old people to look younger.

Ben Felix: That's right. That is the strategy.

Cameron Passmore: That's why I'm here, Dan.

Dan Bortolotti: I hear you.

Ben Felix: Very specific recruiting.

Cameron Passmore: I'm here to make Ben look good. What are you guys up to?

Dan Bortolotti: We're both shaking our heads here because all we do is work.

Ben Felix: I do work a lot. I've been on the kayak a few times, which has been nice. The weather's been a bit crazy though.

Last time we went kayaking, we got caught in a crazy rainstorm walking back up to the house. Oh, I thought you meant while you were on the water. No.

We could have been though. It didn't seem like it was going to get stormy like that. Came out of the water, started walking back up to the house and a bit of thunder and then just pouring rain. It was crazy.

Cameron Passmore: I'll tell you what, Lisa's kayaking at the conference we were at in South Carolina on the coast. Some coastal kayaking, like three or four feet of water and came across an alligator, a hammerhead shark, and two dolphins were jumping beside her.

Ben Felix: That's wild.

Cameron Passmore: In four feet of water. How cool is that?

Yeah, it was really cool. Any kayaking, Dan, in Toronto?

Dan Bortolotti: No. I don't typically kayak. I like to try to get out on a canoe trip once a year.

Hopefully, planning on that for the Labor Day weekend or the weekend after, whatever we can manage. I love to do it in the summer because it's just the best way to get away from the city.

Ben Felix: Out on the water is nice.

Cameron Passmore: It is.

Ben Felix: That's pretty much it though, Cameron. Not a whole lot of exciting stuff going on over here.

Cameron Passmore: That's enough banter for today?

Ben Felix: We've, I think, filled the quota approximately.

Cameron Passmore: All right. Great to see you guys.

Dan Bortolotti: Thanks, guys. Take care till next time.

Cameron Passmore: Thanks for listening.

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