The Biggest Myths in Personal Finance

**Benjamin Felix** (0:00)
The myth might end up being better advice than the actual optimal thing to do, which is, it's kind of funny.

**Dan Bortolotti** (0:05)
People make graphs, you know, like this is the stock market without dividends. And it's like, it's just totally misleading.

**Benjamin Felix** (0:12)
People who have this mentality and don't want to spend money because they want to accumulate wealth, they can end up with a lot of wealth and an inability to spend it, because they're so anxious about wanting to live frugally and wanting to save even when they've surpassed any amount of wealth they could ever need, they still can't spend it because they've had this mentality. This is The Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision-making from two Canadians. We're hosted by me, Benjamin Felix, Chief Investment Officer and Dan Bortolotti, Portfolio Manager at PWL Capital.

**Dan Bortolotti** (0:49)
Good to be back with you, Ben. It feels like a long time.

**Benjamin Felix** (0:51)
It has been a while, Dan. It is very good to see you. Good to be back recording.

**Dan Bortolotti** (0:55)
Yeah. You're in a different location today.

**Benjamin Felix** (0:57)
This is my first time recording from our Montreal office. First time ever.

**Dan Bortolotti** (1:02)
There you go. Some fresh space.
Let's get into today's topic.

**Benjamin Felix** (1:07)
Real quick before we jump into the topic, we have a new idea that we're going to be trying in the podcast. We just want to give listeners a heads up to know it's coming. We're going to have some PWL clients on the podcast to talk about their experience with PWL, stuff like the planning work that we've done for them.
It's interesting and this is probably going to sound hyperbolic, but I don't think it is. How working with PWL has changed their lives. That's something that we knew, but when we started reaching out to clients to ask if they'd be interested in doing this, a lot of them, they've agreed to do it and a lot of them have come back with points that they want to discuss that were even more interesting than I think we had anticipated, just in terms of the impact that working with us has had literally on the trajectory of their lives. I think it's going to be really neat. As you can imagine, there's a whole legal and compliance angle that we have to sort out, but we're working on that right now.
And you can be sure there will be a new disclaimer for those episodes. But we think it's going to be a lot of fun and hopefully interesting for listeners to hear. This is something that has come up in comments in the Rational Reminder community in the past that people would love to hear client stories and client experiences. So we're going to make it happen.

**Dan Bortolotti** (2:16)
Yeah, I'm not too surprised, frankly, that people have said that it's had a profound impact on their life. I think especially if you're coming from a situation, maybe you were working with an advisor, an advisory firm that left a really unpleasant taste in your mouth and really set you back in your financial goals, to be able to come to a place that's a better fit and delivers a higher level of service. For sure, it would change your life.

**Benjamin Felix** (2:40)
I think some of the feedback that we're seeing is around clarity in making important life decisions, and people realizing that there were things that they could have been doing with their lives that they were not doing, because they didn't have clarity on their financial situation. But anyway, we'll see.

**Dan Bortolotti** (2:55)
Yeah, it's going to be interesting for sure.

**Benjamin Felix** (2:57)
I do want to mention also real quick that July 2026 was the biggest month ever for Rational Reminder Podcast views and downloads, so that's audio downloads and YouTube views combined. They hit 385,000, which breaks our previous record. Just kind of neat and wanted to say thanks to everyone for tuning in and making that happen.

**Dan Bortolotti** (3:19)
That's exciting. Big number.

**Benjamin Felix** (3:21)
It's a big number. I remember when we first launched the podcast, and we got a few hundred downloads, and we're like, wow, that is amazing.

**Dan Bortolotti** (3:29)
We've come a long way for sure.

**Benjamin Felix** (3:31)
Yeah, pretty cool. I keep saying real quick, but last thing here, I was on a couple of other podcasts recently. I was on the Iced Coffee Hour podcast. When this comes out, I think that will have come out the previous Sunday.
I was also on the Investee Podcast, which is a Montreal-based podcast that is usually a French language podcast. They made their first ever exception for me to do an English episode. They gave me a little bit of grief for that, but that's okay. That was a really fun conversation, so that was neat. That's actually why I'm in Montreal right now. Iced Coffee Hour is based in Las Vegas, so I actually went there to their studio to record, which was a very cool experience. Investee as well is an in-person studio, so they do all their recordings in person.