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Guaranteed Human. Welcome to How to Money. I'm Joel. And today Icerting to stand next to someone who's taller than me. I'm not used to looking up at

people. But I'm not in the same room with Ben Felix today, and I'll gladly deal with that

discomfort to chat with him. He's 6'11. He's a former basketball player, unlike me, and he's

one of the clearest voices in finance and investing today. Ben is the co-host of the Rational Reminder podcast,

and he runs a killer YouTube channel full of thoughtful evidence-based investing advice.

He's a CFA, he's a CFP, and basically an alphabet soup of credentials after that. But more

importantly, he helps regular people understand the why behind their investing decisions. So, Ben, thanks so

much for being here today. I appreciate it. Oh, thanks for the invitation and for the very kind

introduction. So my first question, I'll get to that first. Then I have another question about

your height. But we drink a craft beer on the show most of the time. We spend outrageous sums.

Some people would say on good craft beer, but we're still being thoughtful about our investments of the time. We spend outrageous sums, some people would say, on good craft beer,

but we're still being thoughtful about our investments for the future. What do you like to

splurge on that some people might also think is a little outrageous? Probably things related to

health and physical activity. Like I have a pretty expensive mountain bike, which I had to have

custom made because of my height, as you noted. I don't shy away from spending money on good food. I don't actually drink any alcohol, uh, so I don't spend money on that. Uh, yeah, stuff related to health. I have, uh, I don't know if people will know what these are. I have Norma Tech boots, which are like these airbag boots that you put on after you play sports to help you recover more quickly. Oh, I have seen those. Yeah, yeah. So I'm 38 in a couple weeks here. So when I play a basketball game, the next day I'm more sore than I used to be, but the airbags or the normatac boots help. So I don't know, stuff like that. Health-related, physical activity-related stuff.

I'm more than happy to splurred John.

How often do you get asked about your height and whether or not you played basketball?

And does it always happen when you're at the grocery store?

Because it's when it always happens for me.

If I'm out in public or in a place that I'm not usually, I get asked pretty close to 100% of the time about my height. If I'm, you know, if I'm in a place where I know everybody, I don't get asked. But yeah, anytime in a new location, grocery store, whatever, out in public, it's, yeah, it pretty much happens all the time. When you get asked,

though, at least you can be like, yeah, I was a great basketball player. When I get asked, I can be like, uh, not really. And so it's even more shameful, I think, for me. Your first degree, Ben, was in engineering. Yeah. Do you think that's had an impact on how you think about money and investing, kind of taking that engineering mindset into how you think about finances?

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