A trillion reasons to pay attention. August 21, 2026

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
A LiSTNR production. Cheers.

**Scott Phillips** (0:05)
Market.

**Andrew Page** (0:05)
The S&P.

**Scott Phillips** (0:06)
The ISX.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:06)
Stocks. This is Motley Fool Money.

**Scott Phillips** (0:10)
Welcome to Motley Fool Money, the podcast that has unfortunately hit untold levels of debt. But this man hasn't.
He has reached untold levels of fame, fortune, life satisfaction. Because one day, way back, kids, when there were dinosaurs in the streets, and TV was in black and white, and you had to have a cord on your phone. This man said, I think I've got an idea. I think if the internet was ever invented, I would create Australia's premier online investment club. It would be called strawman.com. And lo, it came to pass. And lo, that man became Australia's first trillionaire. Andrew Page, how are you?

**Andrew Page** (0:53)
Good, mate. Love it. Love the pep talk. Yes.
Yeah, how are you going?

**Scott Phillips** (1:00)
I'm...

**Andrew Page** (1:02)
He's Australia's second richest trillionaire.

**Scott Phillips** (1:05)
The answer is I'm slightly under the weather, mate, but I will push through it. I'm always enjoying our chats, mate. It always gives me a bit of pep and energy, so we will power through. So I'm okay. How about you?

**Andrew Page** (1:15)
Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. As I said to you off air, this is when your coworker has a cold, and it's going to zoom catch up, so the way to go, right?

**Scott Phillips** (1:25)
Such a better option, isn't it? Yeah, I have a decent constitution, to be fair, so I'm not sick that often. But I think I reckon, and I'm working today, I'll work all day, maybe not 100%, but pretty close.
I think working from home, you probably get fewer germs, and the bar is just lower for actually staying or working, right? Because you have to get up, get in the car, get in the train, go to the office, sit around feeling crap. And kind of, I don't get the word from home thing, but I am absolutely sure I've taken a few or six days and I would have had I worked in an office.

**Andrew Page** (1:59)
Yes, I 100% agree. Two caveats to that though, if you have school-aged children, you're in, you know, there is a vector that comes into it. The other one, the downside, look, I'm all about working from home.
I would have to be a very strong inducement for that to ever kind of change. But the downside of it is, is that you're always at work.

**Scott Phillips** (2:20)
Yeah, that's actually true, too.

**Andrew Page** (2:22)
You know, like sometimes it's good to just, I'm at home, I'm sick, I'm just going to lie in bed, and I'm going to get better. It's just with the temptation to open up the laptop is always there. It's probably ill-advised when the body needs a bit of rest, but yeah.

**Scott Phillips** (2:37)
No, that's fair, that's fair. That may say my opening up the laptop is not exactly that much more exertion than not opening up the laptop, is it? Let's be honest.

**Andrew Page** (2:43)
I said that to you, it's all off air. It's not like we're digging holes, right? It's just like, oh, I'm not going to be able to sort of lift the crowbar today. It's like, you'll struggle through. See if you can press those keys, big guy.

**Scott Phillips** (2:57)
Thanks, sweetheart. Just keep going back to your computer. It's okay.

**Andrew Page** (3:01)
Bless your little cotton socks. See if you can struggle through.

**Scott Phillips** (3:04)
Exactly. Mate, we are going to talk about the trillion dollar debt. We're recording this on Thursday, the 20th of August, and it'll be a day after that when it goes live. Today is a red-letter day on that front. We'll talk about that in a minute.
I wanted to start, mate. We will surprise nobody at all. But I wanted to start with the Vanguard index chart.
Yes. The Vanguard released the latest version. And if you've listened to this for any length of time, you know exactly what I'm talking about, and that's great. If you haven't, welcome to the once or twice a year. Well, I probably do it more than that. But when the chart comes out, it is kind of a great opportunity to start at that point again, and just reset the awesome power of compounding. So I'm going to do a bit of a cheerlead for compounding, a cheerlead for investing. No surprise, if you're listening to this, I hope you get it. I really, really do.

**Andrew Page** (3:54)
I'd be really surprised if someone tuned in though, and he'd go, you know what? Vesting's not really that good.