 So it's my great pleasure to I should start by saying what an honor it is to have an opportunity to participate in this conference I've long admired the Bogle heads. I know you mainly from the discussion board. I'm a dilettante there I I've not earned my stripes on on Bogle heads discussion boards to be a regular contributor But all the same I've learned so much from all of you and it's an honor to be a part of this morning's Proceedings and congratulations on what sounds like has been a very very successful Conference so I wanted to tell you a little bit about Nick. I think he probably doesn't need any introduction To many of you Very very successful author blogger An operator in his own right, but all the same it could be helpful to have a thumbnail So I thought we would start with that and I'll bring Nick up and he and I have a chat for 3035 minutes and then we'll open things up to you all To to make sure that you have an opportunity to ask questions of him same way I do but but for those of you who aren't familiar with Nick Nick is chief operating officer for Rithol's wealth management Which I think as you know as a registered investment advisor, which he joined in 2018 He's also the author of a best-selling book I think Nick you said was it 35,000 copies and and counting which is a very very significant Accomplishment and deservedly so it's a fantastic book if you haven't read it I should say a one that'll be a focus of our conversation in a moment in addition to the book Nick is The author of dollars and data which is a blog that explores the conversion of data in personal finance He's a graduate of Stanford University with a degree in economics. I'm very pleased to welcome him to the stage today So Nick welcome Thank you. Okay. Thank you everyone for having me. Thanks for your time and Christine. Thanks for the invite. Appreciate that so So I think we'll start at an obvious place which is which is the book Maybe you can the title is just keep buying maybe you can talk about the origin story for that because it's interesting Yeah, so there's a youtuber named Casey Neistat and he used to vlog at a New York and One day he uploaded this video called Three words that got me to three million subscribers and the three words were just keep Uploading and he had gotten these this recommendation from another youtuber and said just like upload every day Vlog every day and you'll be successful and he is successfully now. It's like 12 million subscribers He's been on like the Academy Awards all sorts of stuff Anyways, I had seen that video and at the same time. I had right around that time I had started blogging early 2017 was very new to it I was running all this analysis on US stock market returns And this is something that I learned at the time many of you probably already know this But it doesn't really matter when you buy like regardless of you know valuations starting valuation P ratio, etc All that matters is like the holding period over a 30 year period all the returns converge regardless of the starting P Right and so when I saw that I said, you know, the real solution here to build wealth is just to keep buying over time That's kind of how it came about Fun little side fact when I was coming up with the the name for the book little context So every chapter in the book I basically answer a question, you know, how much should you save? You know, how much of your raise do you need to save lifestyle creep all sorts of stuff like that? But when I was coming up with the the book title like my publisher was like Why don't we call it a data scientist answers the 15 biggest questions in finance and I said And I said that's the worst title. I've ever heard so we went with just keep buying said so We're gonna talk some more about the book particularly On the topics of saving and spending but before we did that I think we'd be remiss if we didn't spend a little bit of time talking about the market's Inflation and so at the time you published the book Inflation was relatively benign markets were flying high risk was being rewarded different story this year obviously What would you say to those who might question whether they should just keep buying given their recent experience in the market? I mean, it's only been what 10 and a half months into this from the highs So like if you're giving up hope at 10 and a half months, then you're not truly a long-term investor I think I'm preaching to the choir in here I mean, we've had decades where you know markets go no or you can think of 2000 2009 You can think the 1970s most of the 1930s, right? So if you're giving up hope after you know 10 and a half months Then maybe you need to reassess your risk profile amongst other things, but the joke I like to say It's not my joke. I stole it from rap capital But he says, you know, yeah the markets down but the hundred-year moving average is looking pretty good And so that's what I you actually look at the data the hundred year the hundred year real return in US stocks If you look up through September is seven point one percent real. That's like with dividends That's like insane, and I don't expect that going forward if I to assume a real rate of return across, you know Global markets, I would say four percent. I hope we get that. We obviously can't know but that's how I plan going forward You wrote a piece in which you examine market performance following drawdowns of different severity What did you find and and how does that apply to now? Yeah, so when we when people like to talk about drawdowns people like to say, okay We're now in a dip of let's say right now the markets down 24 percent The question is our future returns higher over like the next one year the next three years the next five years given conditional on being in a drawdown of some amount and the answer is Generally, no once you're in a 20% drawdown or a 30% drawdown you go back to 1926 It doesn't really in at least in US stocks. It doesn't really make a difference You're saying oh, I'm down 20% this the one year returns don't really change you're down 30% when your returns don't really change However, once you're down 40% or more so the very extreme drawdowns then the return start to shoot up So what's the logic behind it? Why why does it not make a difference because when you're down 20% you could go down another 20% and then another 20% right? So you don't know what's to come so when you're down like a little bit there can be more pain ahead But once you're down a lot once you're down 40-50% most of the pain most of the time has already happened Right, and so that's just what we have in US stocks if we look in world stocks It's a little bit different. So and it and world the world day only goes back to like 1970 MSCI world XUS and so from 1970 through now Roughly, there is a little bit of a benefit once there's a dip So like buying the dip or having you know putting more in once the market declines by 30% or more generally There's some benefit there, but where we are now. I would say we're going down 24% There's no evidence that that necessarily the pain's over yet So I wouldn't say oh my gosh back up the truck and buy everything because we don't know that yet Now if the market was down 50% I would be making a very different argument So I think that's the context to think about Drawdowns and so I don't really get excited about buying until you know, there's a very large drawdown So I think like the last time I even got excited all was March 23rd 2020 because we were down 33% Which is like the most I've seen in my investing career. So You also wrote a piece last year in which you tried to answer the question of how to invest When inflation is high Can you talk about what you found and maybe also update us on your thinking on that topic if it's changed any sense Yeah, so if you look at since the mid 1970s The asset cloud the best performing asset classes in terms of real return The top three are us stocks us re International stocks like this is just broad asset classes that most of us can buy We're not talking private equity and things where I can't really get into for retail investors So those are the top three going back to like the mid 1970s If you actually then subset to the periods when inflation exceeds 4% So that's not high, but it's higher than most of history So you subset to those the top three asset classes are us reets International stocks us stocks the same set of assets and so my takeaway from this is like owning income-producing risk assets like global stocks You know real estate other types of income producing assets is the way to go regardless of the inflationary environment because Yes, there's inflation that can happen But it's really tough to know, you know when to get in and out of those strategies like we're thinking back like 1973 US market was down. I think 21% in real terms the year after that it was down 34 percent So we basically got cut in half within two years and right now I think in real terms what we just had a percent print or down 24 So we're about down about 32 percent real terms in the last year So that's almost like our 1974 again right for thinking about the current environment So that doesn't mean the pain's over anything, but just thinking about that like what happened in 1975 You know, there was a 28 percent real return on the upside So I'm not saying that's going to happen now But you know once we get through that the real return start to happen later So at this point I was going to turn and talk a little bit about saving and spending in the book You state saving is for the poor investing is for the rich and you provide a framework for Determining where you sit on that saving investing spectrum. Can you can you walk through that for the audience? Yeah, so I think the best way to do this is with the story because it'll make more sense that way So when I was 23 years old and I was living in San Francisco. I just graduated got my first job I'd saved about a thousand dollars within a few months and I'm a true bogel head even from back in the day before I even knew what the bogel heads were I had spreadsheets. I was projecting my net worth I was over analyzing my asset allocation. I had a thousand dollars to my name Even it with a 10 percent return, which I you know, let's assume 10% make the math easy That's a hundred dollars at the same time and I was making all these spreadsheets I was going out with my friends don't go into dinner buying rounds of shots getting my Uber home Like I would blow my entire investment return in one night and I did it multiple times throughout that year So when I say savings for the poor investing for the rich What I'm saying is like it didn't really matter what I did with my investments then I'm not saying you shouldn't invest when you don't have a lot of assets. That's never my I would never say that to anybody I'm just saying it doesn't really matter tax loss harvesting doesn't matter when you have a thousand dollars You know your asset allocation doesn't matter your rebalancing frequency doesn't matter now Most of the people in this room have been accumulating for some time So it does matter and so the question is when does it start to matter more and how do you think about it? And so I have a framework I use called the save invest continuum and basically every person in this room is on this continuum And you can figure out where you are just from two numbers in your life first number is How much can you save in the next year? Whatever that is, maybe you save 10,000 You can save 100 maybe save a million whatever that's your number. This is a contest by the way So just privately keep these numbers The second number is how much can your investment portfolio earn you in the next year? So assume maybe five ten percent return whatever just take something just an average return, right? So let's say you have you know hundred thousand dollars ten percent return. That's ten grand, right? So you have your first number you have your second number the question is which number is bigger and the bigger number is where you Should spend more of your focus now, obviously if they're both similar then you need to care about both So let me give you the example when I was 23 I probably could have saved five ten grand in a year my investments would return me a hundred dollars, right? So you see the difference when I was 23 I should have been focusing on my income raising my income saving that money to get the other number higher over time now Think of someone who's retired they can't save anything all of their focus is on their investments It's about tax loss harvesting. It's about all the little tiny details And so when you think about that framework you can use that throughout your life And so for most young people they're gonna be focusing on income and I say don't really worry about your investments But as you get older and you start to accumulate more wealth You need to really focus on the investments And that's what I think the bulkheads do because you guys have been accumulating for so long at this point Which is also why it's funny We talked about this this breakup and this is exactly how the conference has broken up Like we had the accumulator room and then we had the retirement room because there are different focuses, right? And we talked about saving money in there I think it was a Chris is that your name? Yeah, Chris had a great panel in there where he's talking about fire And he was talking about you know spending money and income and all that and that's for accumulators Where in here we're talking about retirement and a lot of little tax strategies and things like that So I think that's probably the defining idea of the book and how the whole books even laid out In the book you also talk about what you call the biggest lie in personal finance Which is the notion that people can be rich if they cut spending Why do you think that's a big lie and what should people focus on instead? So I've just like looked at the data pretty religiously on this and there's a great paper called do the rich save more and They basically show that the highest correlation with savings rate is income and it seems pretty obvious to me like okay Obviously you have more income you have more savings rate now, of course It's very easy like to say well I know this person that has a high income and they don't save a lot and it's easy to find Anecdotes and anecdotes are fine, but like over on average That's not true right if you look at between that that piece of that paper They put out and then there was a there's a guy named manual say as in Gabriel Zuckman They do a lot of great stuff on inequality and wealth inequality They found that the higher your wealth is the higher savings rate and this has been true since 1910 They have data going all the way back to 1910. They find higher savings rate is correlated with higher wealth Besides the 1930s great depression apparently it's really tough to save money so besides then Yeah, I just think the data is pretty clear on that and I'm not saying you can't cut spending to save save money and to build your Wealth it's just a short-term solution I think we need to be honest about this and we need to talk about income and how do we get people's incomes higher and how can People individuals increase their income. I think that's the main takeaway Can you talk about the 2x rule and and also whether splurging is the 2x rule is is one of the concepts Constructs that Nick writes about in the book and also whether splurging should be thought of differently Sharply rising prices or if the same basic framework applies irrespective of where inflation is Yeah, so I think there's a lot I mean a lot of people can't save money, but for those that can I think there's a lot of Spending guilt right like I think most people in this room are probably very good at saving and maybe we're not it because we're so good at one Side to then flip in retirement and go to spend a lot of money It's very difficult So I'm trying to come up with ways to get people to spend their money without feeling guilty about it And so if you're gonna splurge on something and every for every person splurge is defined differently I just said you're gonna spend, you know, $500 on a nice dinner save another 500 and you know invest that in income producing assets S&P 500 whatever or donate that to a good cause. There's different ways You it's just tricks to try and get over the spending guilt. You don't have spending guilt. Don't worry about it In terms of yeah in terms of like how do I feel differently now with rising prices? Well if inflation is going up that means an old splurge of you know, $300 maybe now the splurge is you know Maybe now the splurge is even cheaper now that used to be relatively right so like now It's like oh I used to just go I'd say we go to the opera and it was you know 300 bucks I'd spend now it cost $500 or whatever and so I think that's price levels change your level of splurge is gonna change so In the book you also talk about the interplay between human capital and financial capital and the role each plays and In amassing wealth and enjoying a secure retirement Do you think the personal and in professional disruption of the pandemic raises questions about how reliably? We can estimate our future capacity to earn and and how we'd estimate human capital Yeah, I think this is a really tough question because you know, we all we're all planners I mean, this is what it's all planning for our financial futures We're planning based on certain assumptions about our income and all these things but stuff happens where you know, we can't predict and Unfortunately, the pandemics one of those examples where if you were in a particular industry you could have gotten you know hit very badly I was actually talking to Jim here about he had a conference the white code investor conference and that same week when they shut down the MBA and everything He had a conference where a bunch of positions were coming and that he just got completely unlucky with that And that's just if you said he had it the week before it would have been perfect if it was a week later You could have canceled everything. That's a great example of something you cannot control and so Unfortunately, it's really tough to predict future human capital future market conditions at the same time though I think there's always a market opportunity There's always opportunities for people even when things look bad You just have to really kind of try and figure out what they are and so it can be tough But you know, I don't really have a great answer. That's my best take on it No, I think that's really helpful actually I do want to touch on personal finance We're gonna I think to vote more of the morning to personal finance as a topic you write about it in the book quite compellingly Your your book it's it's not pro-dat But it it certainly isn't a polemic against borrowing to do things like reduce risk or attempt to amp up returns Now that interest rates have jumped would you caution more strongly against taking out debt even in the circumstances that you walk through in the book where you think a little bit can be acceptable and manageable I This is always a marginal decision. It's gonna be different for every person in this room So like whether it makes sense to take out debt or not. I think it's a very personal decision So I I don't have a great answer for that either, but I think the end of the day Yeah, you have to figure out like it's always relative to something right because like everyone's like, oh should I buy a rent? Well, it's relative to what's the you know, what's the rental rate? What's the mortgage rate like all these things are relative to each other and that system's always changing, right? So for us to say you should always buy or should always rent it It's it's not, you know, really being intellectually honest how conditions are always changing and so I just want us to be more open to that idea What's another piece of received personal finance wisdom that you think is off base? Saving up cash to buy the dip. I think that is the worst thing you can do I think there's a lot of people that oh, I'm gonna hold a lot of cash and wait for the next big dip and The the issue with that is it only works if you can if you know a big dips coming and it's got to be a pretty big dip It's a smaller dips not gonna really be profitable. So it's really tough to know that in advance and I know it's very popular in the culture I'm I don't think it's that popular with the vocal head So you guys are like oh I'm preaching the choir here But I just think it's it's very misguided and people shouldn't be holding a ton of cash in anticipation of a dip Now the converse to that is if by chance we're in a dip and you happen to have cash Let's say you sold your business That's just how it turned out and you happen to have a bunch of cash and we happen to be in a dip then it's great The but you shouldn't be waiting on the sidelines for that type of stuff because generally the market does not reward that You also devote a section of the book to housing and and explore the buy versus rent question How does the sharp rise in both home prices and mortgage rates? Change the equation for perspective home buyers. It seems like affordability for instance is a real problem now Yeah, so I think most people use very simple heuristics with a lot of their financial life And so I think housing heuristic is what's my payment? You know, what's my mortgage payment going to be? So if rates go up and prices have not changed, obviously payments have will go up all those equal So I think I I read somewhere that like for payments to Equilibrate with what they were a year ago prices would have to drop like 40 or something which is a large amount and so I don't think they will drop that much. Maybe they will drop. I don't know how much obviously is the question So if you're really just anchoring on payments, which is what most people do then yes, it is it is going to be difficult right now for people Yeah, a couple good file follows. I don't know if you follow them to on housing right now bill mcbride that calculated risk and Collin roach for what it's worth. They're both in I think probably I suspect in both our twitter feeds But they do great work on housing if that's an area that you're keenly interested in for what it's worth Sticking with housing for a minute First-time home buyers. Do you think it's wise for them to hold off now and in if so What should they be monitoring engaging when the time is right to buy their first home? I think this is more of a personal decision than a financial decision I mean, of course it is a financial decision for most people It's going to be the biggest financial decision you ever make, but I mean, how long can you hold off? Could rates go higher? Yes, could they come down? Yes I mean, it's really tough to know what's going to happen and you're basically asking me to predict the future Which I obviously cannot do so I think for the most part I would say like if it's the right time for you to buy even though the the market rates are high So your payment's probably going to be higher You may have to get downsized a little but if if you think it's the time for you to have a home then You know go for it I wanted to shift and talk again about investing if we can one of the arguments you make for investing is that It promotes saving for your future self I think that argument builds on research that folks like Hal Hirschfield have done in this area Talk about what that research found and and why empathizing with one's future self can can induce one to invest Yeah, so they did these experiments or they basically I don't know if you guys remember this face app thing That was going around this is kind of where you took a picture of yourself You can see yourself as an old person or as a woman or whatever if you're a man and vice versa, right? So it was very interesting to you know see you see that But they did this before face app was a thing and they basically took yourself and they you know photo real Aged you to be older and they said and after people that saw these you know photo realistic older versions of themselves They were more likely to save more and increase their retirement contributions afterwards Which is kind of interesting So just from that little thing and they've done other studies where they ask people You know, what are you saving for and they find that the only real saving motive, you know Whether you're saying for an emergency saving for your kids education Vacation marriage, whatever the only one that really causes people to save and can save consistently saving for yourself So when it comes to saving money, you be selfish is what I say, so And I think between that research and the other, you know surveys they've done I don't know how great, you know, perfect. They are but I feel like it's a pretty good way to go go with it And if you're interested in that topic, I'll put in a little selfish plug for our podcast We did have Hal Hirschfield on the long view spoke to him. Maybe it was Earlier there. Yeah, it was not too long ago. It's Real interesting research that that he's done and and nick does an outstanding job of walking through it In the context of the of the book I maybe wanted to sort of couch this in the experience that you're having, you know, you're in an r.i.a You're dealing with clients. They're being confronted not only by a market downturn But synchronous declines across asset classes except for things like maybe commodities related And so what are those conversations sound like right now when you have clients that are coming to you and questioning the virtues Of diversification questioning the benefits that diversification might confer to them in light of the experience that they've been Having recently beyond sort of the obvious, which as well like you said earlier It's only a year, you know, your time horizon is much longer than that What else what else has been mentioned in talking to them about diversification and how to approach that So I don't talk to clients because I would say it's only been 10 months. Why are you like freaking out? So there's a reason I'm in the back office if I'm being honest, so But um, I think and more seriously though, like we are talking about these things We're talking about, you know, we have certain strategies I'm not trying to plug firm, but we have certain strategies and things we use to kind of do risk off and trend following Stuff like that when when necessary. And so I do think it's about focusing on like the long-term plan I think Dan Egan said something very interesting yesterday, which is kind of also how we like to think long term If you think about, you know, every Every dollar that you have for retirement, that's eventually going to be converted into some sort of income measure when you're retired Right. So let's just use a rough metric for every hundred dollars. You basically need 30,000 You know, that's like rough 4% rule right hundred dollars a month. You need 30,000 in capital So if your retirement account right now is down, let's say 90,000 What that equilibrates to in retirement is you just lost 300 dollars a month for the rest of your retirement All else equal assuming, you know, the market would just stay like this forever So when you're thinking about that, you're like, okay, I didn't lose 90,000 I lost 300 a month for the rest of my life and I'm not saying that's that's trivial But it's just when you think of it that way, it's a little bit different You can kind of adjust that way and most retirees you actually look at how they actually spend their money They're not using the 4% rule. They just match to their income If they have five grand a month in income, they spend five grand a month at most, right? They don't say, oh, I have this much in most of them don't do this and say, oh, I have a million dollars I'm going to pull 40,000. No, they don't do that They say I have a million dollars. How much income do I have plus all security and then they adjust that way Why don't we shift and we'll talk about retirement and taxes recent retirees as we all know have been greeted by A painful market downturn and high inflation. What do you think they should be doing to ensure? They don't outlive their assets and in conversely, what should they refrain from doing? I mean, I think this is kind of a misnomer in the industry I think there's all this fear about people outliving assets But I think it doesn't happen that often if I'm being honest, especially as I said Once you look at how retirees actually spend their money and and how people think about retirement Once I said people use simple heuristics They use you know the payment on a mortgage and in retirement they use income So most people are not using the 4% rule, you know of the people out So 40% of retirees don't have any savings. They're just using social security But of the 60% that have savings, which is probably everybody in this room, right? They only One in seven actually pulls down principal in a given year Six out of seven do not pull down principal. They just live off the investment income or even less than the investment income, right? Most people get RMDs, you know the requirement of distributions. They reinvest most of that money, right? I think there was a camera which panel was yesterday They said there was a vanguard payout fund which is like, hey, you have to spend this money and it pays out to you And most people just take that money and reinvest it in the fund and the fund manager was getting very frustrated, right? So I think the the idea that people, you know, I'm not saying people don't run out of assets I think that would be very foolish, but I don't think it's as big of a problem as people Think it is people just adjust and they just cut back. They're going to tighten the belt and they're going to say, hey My you know my income's down because the market's down. I'm just going to cut back our inflation's up I'm going to cut back on these these areas and so people make do I mean for most, you know Retirees are just living off social security, which on average is $1,500 a month So it's not a lot, but you know, you have two people and you have a spouse there now You have three grand a month assuming your mortgage is paid off. You can probably get by with that Yeah, some of the other retirement myth busting that you do in the book you mentioned You know, you you think that probably people are overstating the risk that they'll Outlive their retirement assets a couple of others that you mentioned are, you know, they'll be worse off And also that social security won't be there for them You want to talk about those other two categories and why you think Those are myths that probably need to be dispelled Yeah, so I think social security is going to be there Even if the fund runs out of money just from income people are paying into the system, you know Younger accumulators, they'll be able to pay at least 70% of benefits to like on 20 70 or something Of course every year it changes I think there's going to probably be some sort of reduction in benefits So they'll raise their retirement age or something but to think that when I hit retirement It's going to be zero dollars a month. I would be absolutely shocked by that I don't think there's any evidence that's going to happen I do think they'll have to reduce benefits or do something with retirement age to kind of Make it work, but I don't think this whole idea that it's just going to run dry and there's no one's paying in I think just doesn't make sense now In terms of some of the other things you said about people running out of money I think one of my favorite studies that was done on this Michael Kitsie's who many of you may know Wrote a post about they were just using a 60 40 portfolio 4% rule and basically over 30 years You're more likely to 4x your wealth than you are to go below your starting principle, right? So if you have a million dollars and you're you know pulling doing the 4% rule in a 60 40 Historically you would have had 4 million after 30 years more likely to have 4 million than below a million which goes to show Most retirees your wealth just keeps going up in retirement. Of course this year That's not true But generally most of the time if you retired in 2017 you've probably done pretty well for yourself, right? So I think that's the thing to kind of keep in mind here Um and in terms of whether retired future retires me better off This is a very interesting question. I do think millennials have had it a little bit tougher than prior generations I know this is not me just saying this, you know, but because given I'm millennial But I mean there have been differences in the housing market amongst other things things are more expensive At the same time though, I think future retirees will be better off because all this wealth has to be passed down somehow More importantly, I mean, I don't think wealth is the only metric to look at I mean the story I like to tell so Cornelius Cornelius Vanderbilt, right? Everyone knows what the Vanderbilt's are He was in 1864. He was worth 40 million dollars just a couple billion when you you know change for inflation everything his Favorite son who's going to take over his you know empire and everything died, you know of tuberculosis 25 of people in europe died of tuberculosis in the 1800s, right? The richest man in the world couldn't stop a disease that today Basically like 500 to a thousand people in the us die of so we want to talk about being better off Like I think stuff like that is completely, you know I think if you could would anyone in here trade place with the Cornelius Vanderbilt I think almost no one would maybe someone would but I think most people would not and so I think that's something to keep in mind I'm not saying that those advances will happen in the next 30 years in that way But over the next our grandchildren and great-grandchildren should have much better lives than we did I think on average We're gonna ask you about 401ks, which you write about in the book You you do warn about contributing too much to a 401k Which is a somewhat controversial take and I actually think there was a thread on bogelheads about this at one point Can you walk through your thought process on that? Sorry, I said get ready for this one so I'm I just wanted to start a discussion around this I think saying you should never max out your 401k is a foolish thing to say But I also think the opposite you should always max out your 401k is also equally foolish and the reason I say that is because No one actually looks at what is the actual after tax benefit of everything above the match, right? I think you should always get to the match. There's no debate there. It's free money Everything above the match. No one's actually analyzed how much that after tax benefit is and then adjusting for the fees You have to pay in your 401k. So let's just walk through this very simply I'm going to use a Roth 401k because I only care about the avoiding capital gains as you guys know There's traditional 401k And there's Roth and that difference is an income tax difference. I don't want to look at that So let's put that aside. Let's say you've already paid your income tax So now you're in a Roth 401k and you're comparing that To a brokerage account that you're you have some discipline. You're not trading in and out every year You just have some discipline in a taxable brokerage account. Okay How big is the benefit of having the Roth against all those capital gains at a 15 percent capital gains rate over like 30 40 years The average after tax benefit is about 73 bips. Let's say 70 to 80 bips to make it easy, right? So if that's how much extra benefit you're getting in a 401k The question is well, what about the fees the average fee in a 401k and this is not even the fund fees This is just like the all-in fees is about 40 bips. So half of that's already gone just from the 401k So now you're getting only about 20 to 30 bips a year an extra after tax benefit by maxing And my question is is it worth it for that extra 20 to 30 bips? And I know over a very long period of time that can add up, but is that worth the flexibility? So I'm just running the numbers. I'm saying hey when you look at these numbers It doesn't look like it's always worth it And then that doesn't include the people that have like a 401k fee that's like 1% or more If you're 401k fees over a percent all the extra after tax benefit is gone, right? So if you have a good 401k you're young you're saving a lot It's probably fine But I I kind of regret maxing for a few years because that money I could have had outside in a taxable brokerage account that I could have been using to maybe buy a house or afford a wedding Or whatever it is, right? I think the flexibility and the optionality is more important than that 20 to 30 bips a year And I just want us to kind of talk about that because every personal finance expert says max out your 401k And I'm one of the I think there's there are others now, but I have not met many that's that don't say that Another piece of conventional wisdom that you challenge in the book very thoughtfully at that is on asset location You argue for putting growth assets in tax advantage accounts and low growth assets like bond funds In taxable accounts. Can you talk about why you hold that view how you came to that conclusion? So historically Bond yields and obviously distributions were much higher than they are now I mean maybe now now now, but where they were when I was writing the book And so as a result most people would say, oh, you want to shield that income from your bonds You want to put it in your qualified accounts and you want to put your Stocks which don't have any payments, right besides maybe a dividend once in a while into your taxable accounts but the truth is you want to have your highest growth assets in your Non-taxable and your qualified accounts, right now, that's if you're just trying to maximize every dollar you can I personally don't do that. I think the way to go is to have Every kind of account be like a carbon copy of each other So if I have a let's I'm going to make this very simple with 60 40 I have a 60 40 in my taxable account. I have a 60 40 in my 401k. I have a 60 40 everywhere else It also makes it very easy to rebalance Across accounts because I don't have to take I can't get money out of my, you know Non-taxable and put it into my brokerage and vice versa So because of that I just kind of have them be cookie cutters of each other But in theory if you're trying to maximize every dollar You should put as much of your high growth assets into non-taxable accounts And I think the person that did this best was peter teal when he put his paypal shares into a Roth IRA And it's now worth five billion dollars. So but we all can't be so lucky We're to shift and talk about behavioral and and maybe we'll get to trading I think you've said that around 90 of your personal investments are in traditional asset classes like Stocks and bonds and the remainder are in what you term non-income producing assets It could be stuff like art crypto In the like how'd you arrive at that mix and in do you view the 10% is a way of Scratching an itch to to play in more speculative fair without putting your financial future at risk Yeah, that's exactly what I would say Every person's going to be different in terms of how much risk they want to take in what I call, you know Non-income producing assets like gold wine art, etc I just came up with nine. I say 85 to 90 percent of your assets should be in income producing They have cash flows. There's something. I think there's some fundamental weight to cash flows And even though yes people can bid up and down prices. There's still something there It's like a suitcase with a hundred thousand dollars in it People may not know exactly how much money's in the suitcase But they have an idea and so they will bid up and down the suitcase But there's still some sort of fundamental value in the suitcase And I think that's what cash flows represent in theory So that's why I'm a fan of income producing assets and why I recommend most people to and I don't I think most people in this audience would probably agree with that. So I'm not worried about it In the book you you write that just keep buying is easier to follow today than at any point in history Is it's much easier to transact and you can diversify in a snap to paraphrase The flip side is it's never been easier to sell and transact in general How confident are you that the benefits conferred by easier purchase of assets Exceeds the costs some incur and in opportunity buying and selling as we saw them do unfortunately during some stages of the last few years Yeah, so I think the benefits way outweigh the costs I mean, I think Jason's why I said something yesterday that you know because of technology It's the best it's ever been for investors and I completely agree with that Now, of course, you know, does it make it easier to sell? Yes But like if you're disciplined that shouldn't matter all that much I don't think a $15 trade cost is stopped, you know, when the when the market's down and you're panicking I don't think it's like well, I would sell but that $15, you know, if you just lost 10 grand Oh, I don't want to spend that 15 bucks I don't think that's enough of a barrier to stop people from selling personally But you know, that's kind of how I look at it. So So I had a few more questions and I then I think we'll throw it open to the audience for questions Am I just going to hand the mic to you and we're walking around. Okay, sounds good So so if you do have sort of questions that you'd like to ask Nick You'll have an opportunity in the in the next few minutes to do so But Nick, I did want to ask you about something you touch on in the book, which is The inadequacy of your education on financial matters during your upbringing Reflecting on that. What do you think is the best way to educate young people about finances? I think it's a really difficult question But I think just exposing people to these things and kind of getting them out there I think the Bogleheads does a great job at that and talking to people I know every one of you has networks you can talk to younger people people who don't know about this stuff And just knowing that they'll say hey, I know that person's that maybe I should look into it Or maybe you recommend a book or whatever it is. It's stuff like that That kind of gets people interested and like the only reason I even learn this stuff I haven't been in the financial industry that long. I've been here for four years But I've been writing for about six now and the only reason I know this because I read William Bernstein and Jason's wife and I wouldn't be here without them Like that's period end of statement Like I wasn't reading Jason in the journal or wasn't reading, you know, intelligent asset allocator I wouldn't care about the data and all this stuff. So I think it's stuff like that that really can make an impact on people You can change people's lives. I think in a very big way. I mean, I think last night we saw that, you know With Taylor Lattimore, he's like, you know, the house that Jack built There is something to that and people you don't realize the impact you have on people until it's already, you know Till it's already too late, you know So before one more before we turn it over to the audience for questions, maybe we'll leave the audience with a parting gift Who's an under the radar writer or a podcaster on personal finance or investing matters that you'd recommend reading or listening to So there's a woman named katie katie her brand is money with katie and um, I'm not just going to tell you Joe would go reader but I'm going to tell you why so this whole idea of thinking about, you know Everyone hundred dollars a month in retirement. That's thirty thousand dollars you need in capital That was her idea and I took it from her and did not say that but I would have told you guys So it was her idea. It's really great. It's a great way to think about okay So let's say you need four grand a month in retirement. You get 1500 from social security. That's the average benefit That means you need 2500 a month extra. Well, how much does that mean if you're using four percent rule very simply You know, you do 30 000 times those 25 Hundred dollar units and that's 750 thousand dollars. So you can now back out very easily how much you would need, you know for your income So I think it's a cool rule. It's very easy to think about and it's also when you're thinking about your retirement You're like, oh, I'm down as I said, let's say you're down 30 grand That means you're down 100 a month in retirement. I'll see cool, right? You're down 300 grand That's a thousand dollars a month, right? So there's very easy ways to kind of think about that and how it easily translates into income I think you'll cool. Um, heuristics like that can be helpful That's great So with that, why don't we go ahead and we'll open it up to questions from the audience Hi there, um, just a little bit of helpful basics from investing in your I wanted to discuss your, uh Maxing out your for your 401k. I think we have a difference of opinion here But first thing is you mentioned the word bips bps to new investors You're talking about a basis point and this initialized bps. That is one one hundredth of one percent So that's how investors just to explain a little bit about that, but I Didn't quite catch this but you were Based on your assumptions your comparison You are comparing you don't want to max out your 401k because you'd rather put it in taxable to me And you said you had like a 20 or 30 bips difference And you were ignoring you used the word 401k because you wanted to ignore income tax to me This is a behavioral change Because you the reason you put money into a 401k is because you can't take it out Until you hit 59 and a half when you if you do that trade now while you're accumulating There's that behavioral thing that says oh money's in taxable. I can use it to pay the bills No, it's for saving for retirement. So I I would disagree or I'll make sure I Tell me if I'm misunderstanding anything But I would absolutely max out the 401k because of the behavioral aspects And besides you don't know your tax rate. You can't I don't think you can ignore taxes You can't predict that so take the safe approach conservative approach and max it out and another promo for for the wiki prioritizing investments is a very key page on how you should save for retirement So that's a little bit different what you're discussing with say use the wiki as prioritizing investments And that will tell you how to save so that's what I wanted to say just a difference. Thanks Yeah, so I think the behavioral benefits are definitely there I'm guessing and I don't want to I don't actually have data on this I'm just guessing based on a lot of people I've talked to so I will say this is anecdotal But the people who are maxing their 401k. I'm assuming most of those people are disciplined enough to You know when they're saving in their brokerage account, they're not they you know, it's like I have a brokerage account Why haven't I drained all that's because I put the money in there and I don't use it for bills or groceries and things like that I'm not saying that people don't do that that does happen. So for some people that is a feature That is a that's a benefit. So I'm not saying for for everybody. That's not true So if you're someone who thinks you might touch the money then yes max I agree with that completely But if you're someone who knows you're not going to be touching that then I would say hey, you know You probably don't need to max. I think the optionality is worth more than that But yeah, you have to be disciplined. I agree that is a condition. I should have specified yeah, so When are could you list some situations where you would recommend that an investor adopt trend following instead of a buy and hold portfolio and then what are some advantages and risks and you can compare that to a buy and hold portfolio I think trend is really tough. I think I won't name names here, but one of the best trend followers in our industry's fund Missed sold in March 2020 and then bought back four months later after most of the rally happened I think it's really tough to know this type of stuff. So I'm going to be honest with you. It's difficult If you're going to do it I think behaviorally you have to make it a smaller portion of your portfolio So not all of your assets because I think the whip sign can really get you and behaviorally It's not great But I think having some some of your money risk off while Markets are crashing gives you enough of a behavioral hedge to say hey at least I got you know 10 20 percent of it out before all this happened. So I don't recommend it for most of your portfolio I think the swings are too violent, but I think having a smaller allocation to it can be helpful How do you do it? There's a lot of ways There's a lot of different arguments about which moving average you use and things like that But most of the time it's just following price and that tells you a lot. So Thank you I actually had a different follow-up from one lady geek had about the Nexting up 401k. I think one of the most important considerations is that For most people you're not stuck with the 401k forever Is when you leave your employer you can roll your 401k into an IRA and at that point there's no extra cost Or if you retire in a lower tax bracket and it was traditional 401k, there's an extra benefit So I think that it is important to consider the cost and it's something I've posted Sometimes does come up on the Bogleheads forum But but unless you really expect you're going to be stuck with this employer for 20 years, which Happens unfortunately to a lot of teachers in particular who have high cost 403b's You need to look at a somewhat lower At the cost is on the cost of the 403b or 401k is only compounded according to how long you expect to stay in the job And so I think that's a better that's a better number to look at I agree completely I just wanted to I just want to open the discussion because a lot of people don't even look at their 401k fees And if you're paying over 1% you're losing that benefit So that it's really just about opening the discussion because if 10 out of 10 personal finance experts say max So your 401k there's a lot of people who are getting screwed over And that actually comes up on the forum. I have people who say I'm paying I'm paying over 1% in this 401k And then I say well, do you expect to leave this employer in five years? If so, you're losing 5% and it's probably worth losing 5% While if you're going to be there for you would have to run the numbers on that I mean if your whole career you're and you're losing 30% then no, you don't want to lose 30% of your to Thank you And a great job with the presentation and I enjoy your blog One little thing that I want to kind of just mention You talked about like focusing on like the things that matter at the right time And I mostly agree with that but there's like one little nuance I think it's really worth pointing out because I'm kind of an extreme example of that So my wife and I we figured out how to save half of our income from basically day one and we doubled our income Within a couple years So if you do that you're going to end up with a big balance really quickly, which is the good part of the advice We also were the extreme on the other side where we didn't know anything about investing And so we ended up with this like six figure portfolio and actively managed funds With huge taxable gains. We had to figure out how to get rid of and we had a In a rollover account. We had a variable annuity We had to figure out how to get rid of and so that can be really expensive and painful So I think the beauty of the Boglehead's philosophy is like just Not that you can focus on these big things early And if you get those right I can save you a lot of pain later So I agree with you. I think 98 of the way there But I think that little bit of nuance of getting those things right early too because if you don't You can find yourself in a lot of pain and it costs you it costs us a lot an opportunity cost to get there And then going forward tens of thousands of dollars So it's really important to to not totally ignore that either and I think that's preaching to the choir here But just as we try to educate people going forward. I think it's an important point and love to hear your thoughts No, I agree. I mean, of course, I would say, you know by low cost index funds or ETFs, right? I'm never gonna stray from that. I've been a Boglehead. I used to be a Boglehead in the Boston chapter and so I don't disagree with that at all I of course, but there's so many people out there who spend so many hours analyzing their trading this and that and it's like Okay, you made an extra one that let's say you have, you know, $10,000 portfolio and you had a 10% alpha So you 10% more than what the market earned you earned an extra thousand dollars, but you spend 10 hours a week doing that So let's run the math on that thousand dollars 10 hours a week. Let's say you took two weeks off for vacation That's 50 weeks 500 hours thousand dollars 500 hours. You made two dollars an hour You put you better going to mcdonald's and saving that extra money So like you start running these things very quickly and you're like, oh, wow, that doesn't make any sense So I agree with you like yes, you should have a low cost portfolio I agree with all that stuff. Don't touch it, you know, just keep buying That's the premise of the book the same time though It's like how much does that matter versus like just that person raising their income, you know Even working at mcdonald's would have been better for that person than what they did now Of course, if that person was managing a billion dollars, this is a very different story, but they're not so Hey, nick Wondering how can any advice on being a smart consumer of long-term capital market expectations? I see different models around some of them have mean reverting valuations. Some of them are simpler what works I think this is a tough question. Once again, it's like trying to predict the future and it's like I just assume and I think everyone should be conservative in their modeling And so I try to assume a four percent real return going forward across a globally diversified, you know Income-producing asset portfolio. That's what I assume and if you look at like the equity risk premiums, you know DFA is really some data on this across like most developed countries. It's like four to five percent Obviously the u.s south africa australia there are exceptions to this rule that are on the high end Um, and then there's exception on the low end which is like russia this year grease, right? We can think about those japan a little bit, right? So I think for the most part just try and find a a good conservative estimate going forward And I think four percent real is the way to use obviously everyone we can differ on that and that's fine But I just use that and I find it it works well Sorry, this is about the 401k, but I have two questions. Um I think what you said is partially true, but Specifically for the Roth there are ways and tricks to get out the money before you reach 59 and a half like Rolling over the Roth IRA. That's the five-year rule two five-year rules and you've made that you wouldn't have this problem so it's Partially correct the traditional one. I think it's a bit tougher to pull out There is one thing that you're missing though The 401k has creditor protection and you don't have any creditor protection and taxable And I think that is worth like the 20 30 basis points and I think we also have to assume that the person doing this is somewhat intelligent enough to have Extra cash in taxable assets in in cases of emergency So like the wedding that you need the money for shouldn't be a thing like this is something that you should be planning for So just my comments My other more important question is that I've noticed you have a 10 percent Non-traditional assets where you put your fund money and scratch your itch and I have something similar and I've tried for over 15 years and I could never get any asset that would do well in practice and I'm wondering if You have found anything that works well in practice or if not, maybe we can go through the list of stuff that has utterly failed in the last In in your in your experience. I mean I've gotten lucky I will say that I the the tweet my most famous tweet I think besides I did this tweet about Leonardo DiCaprio and the women he dates and how old they are But let's not get into that right now But my most famous no it was actually went like 30 like 30 million impressions. It was crazy Anyways, I did not expect that my most famous tweet before that was I said I sold my bitcoin and half my bitcoin at $52,000 ask me anything and I was raked over the coals Like how you're gonna tell your your future grandchildren about this and like how disappointing they're gonna be and all this stuff So there are ways you can do it You have to obviously get lucky like obviously I bought bitcoin much cheaper and I sold No, half of it at 52k and so it's one of those examples where it can happen. I think on net I'm up, but you know wait. I also lost a bunch of my lost 70 in a little bit of money But in altcoins this year and that was stupid, but like, you know On net I'm probably up a little but I agree. It's probably not I should have just bought the s&p 500 every time I've regretted that I should have just Like I should have just listened to myself. Why didn't I just have I read my own book? I'm an idiot, right? Thank you for being here nick. I've learned a lot from your writing over the last few years And I just you've been very kind to us saying, you know This audience probably already knows this this audience probably already knows that What is a mistake that you would be afraid that we would make the people in this room who are pretty knowledgeable? What's something you would be afraid of us overlooking? Yeah, I think the the it's not an investment mistake. It's not a mistake with You know how much you're saving it's probably your spending. I think I think a great book out there is die with zero I know that book has a lot of you know connotations and stuff out there with it I'm not saying people should die with zero But I think that's a closer approximation to about how people spend money I think over accumulation is more of the problem I'm guessing in this room than anything else And so I think most people have nothing to worry about in terms of financial things Is like the the rock stars of the financial world that people like trust me. I'm under I've had spreadsheets I do all this you guys know people in here love spreadsheet. I just know it. I can feel the excel energy in here So I'm just saying like if I'm saying what's the thing in here? It's spending the money and figuring out how to feel comfortable spending the money and and how you kind of can live a life That you enjoy with doing that and so a lot of different discussions we can have on that But I think that's the big thing I would say. Thank you. Thank you everyone