Ep 16 - Andrew Tobias - The Only Investment Interview You Will Ever Need (And How Money CAN Buy Happiness)

There are just a few basic, simple things that everybody should know about money.

Once you know that, you don't really need to know a whole lot of this stuff.

In fact, if you do know a whole lot of other stuff, you can get kind of sucked into it.

And before you know it, you're speculating in commodities and losing all your money, or you're doing this and doing that.

It's not like chess or gardening or cooking, where the more you read, the better you get.

Hello, friends.

This is Tyler Gardner, welcoming you to another episode of your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing.

So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be.

My guest today is a personal finance legend, someone whose work has shaped the way I first started thinking about money and investing.

In fact, one of his books, The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, was quite literally the only investment guide I ever use for about 20 years.

And to this day, it sits on my bookshelf and I keep going back to it for its timeless principles, its wit, and most of all, its compassion.

Andrew Tobias has that rare ability to make money feel human, less intimidating, more accessible, and somehow, even fun.

Andrew's career has been anything but conventional.

He majored in Slavic languages at Harvard, but spent most of his time running a student business empire and helping publish Let's Go, The Student Guide to Europe.

He went on to Harvard Business School, wrote for New York magazine, Time, and Esquire, and eventually became and continues to be one of the most trusted voices in personal finance.

He's written 12 books, including The Invisible Bankers, Fire and Ice, and the groundbreaking memoir, The Best Little Boy in the World.

He also developed one of the first personal finance software programs, Managing Your Money, you know, back when floppy disks were still a thing.

And beyond money, he spent decades advocating for causes that matter to him.

From anti-smoking campaigns to insurance reform to his long tenure as treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.

But today, we're not just talking about his resume, we're talking about life, writing, money, and why good advice, when delivered with humor and heart, tends to stick.

So, with that, I give you a conversation with one of my personal literary heroes, Andrew Tobias.

When I was in college, I majored in English and economics, and anybody connecting the dots would see that I love writing.

I love talking about finance.

I love connecting with people like you and learning more about this whole world.

But you majored in Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard.

And at 23 years old, you wrote your first book, The Funny Money Game, that was obviously reviewed heavily, excerted in the Times of London.

But could you connect the dots for us and for me from your interest in Slavic languages to being a globally recognized writer in finance of all spaces by 23 years old and writing for the incredible powerhouses that you did?

Well,

that makes me into way more than I was at 23, but I'll try to connect the dots.

When I was 16, I went off and spent three months behind the Iron Curtain with a bunch of other 16 and 17-year-olds with a

life-changing kind of trip.

I had never been that far from home.

And I came back a little communist, more or less.

And then I started college a year later thinking I wanted to major in Russian Soviet stuff in the Soviet Union.

It was just so interesting.

Their whole system was fascinating.

But you weren't allowed to major anything practical where I went to school.

So the closest I could come was called Slavic Languages and Literatures, which wound up meaning reading war and peace in English in the trot, you know, the cliff notes.

By coincidence, I ran into a high school classmate who now was a freshman classmate.

Before school even started, he was riding his bike, and finally I was allowed to ride my bike on the street.

I mean, I was a very sheltered kid.

And so I'm riding my bike, and Eric, hey, where are you going?

And he said he's going to Harvard Student Agencies to get his student job and start earning some money to help pay for school.

And he said, come with me.

So I followed him up.

We went down the stairs of 993A Massachusetts Avenue.

And the old guy there, who was like 20, the upperclassman, he said, finally, you guys are here.

Here's what you got to do.

There's six piles here, 5,000 pages, 5,000 in each pile.

When you collate the six pages, you put them in the cover, staple it.

And then when you're done with all 5,000 of them, you've got to deliver them to every door in the university.

And we pay $1.85 an hour.

And I said, oh, no, no, no, you don't understand.

I'm not on scholarship.

This is my friend.

I just was riding the bike.

So I started to leave.

He said, I don't care.

We need to get this done.

So Eric and I spent all night doing it.

And I made $35 my own money that I could spend any way I wanted.

That was the end of my being a communist.

I wound up running Let's Go the Student Guide to Europe, which was one of the businesses of Harvard Student Agencies.

And my last year, I was ostensibly president of Harvard Student Agencies, which meant that when the faculty advisor and I agreed, I was in charge.

And when we disagreed, he was in charge.

So now I'm a capitalist, and I got a job offer from a company called National Student Marketing Corporation.

The president of it, I had been on the phone with, trying to get him to help with some project that we were doing with my little business.

And he called up and he said,

listen, when you graduate, you have to come work for me because your business does a million dollars, which is 1968, so it was a long time ago.

A million dollars now, I guess, would be more like four or five million.

But your business does a million dollars a year on one campus, and there are 2,000 campuses in the country.

I want you to do that here, and we'll have $2 billion in sales.

And I said, you don't understand.

After 12 years, this business has a cumulative loss of $27,000.

So multiply that by 2,000 campuses and you would have a loss of $54 million.

He said, oh, no, no, no, you won't do it that way.

You'll use the lessons you've learned and it'll be great.

So I went to work for National Student Marketing, which had gone public in April of 1960 at $6 a share.

And by the time it was six months to go before I could exercise my options, age 21, It turned out that the creative accounting the company was practicing with the help of what was then called Pete Marwick and Mitchell, one of the big eight accounting firms.

Now they're big four, was so creative.

And this was at a time when you were supposed to be creative in your accounting.

If you weren't, Wall Street would penalize you and Fortune and Business Week and all that would say, what's wrong with you?

It was so creative at Nationalist Student Marketing that the president wound up going to jail, as did the managing partner at Pete Morrick and Mitchell.

Usually the accountants didn't go to jail, but he went to jail.

And the law firm, the head lawyer, didn't go to jail, but he had to go back to England.

And Whiten cases

never became quite as big as it would have become without this scandal.

And I went off to a business school and wrote a book about it.

And the book was excerpted in New York magazine, and they put my face on the cover and gave me 10 pages.

And from then on, I started writing instead of actually being the business entrepreneur I thought I was going to be.

And what led you then to be interested in personal finance specifically?

Well, I wrote the book and went off to business school to have something respectable to do for a couple of years.

And then I started working for New York Magazine.

And every time I came into the office, which wasn't all that often, it was sort of work at home long before, like 50 years before COVID.

I was working mostly from home.

But I would come into the office every so often.

The receptionist on the first floor would say, hey, what should I do with my money?

And I would try to be helpful and give some very basic, boring advice.

And then when I got up to the third floor, where, you know, Clay Felker, who was the editor and, you know, a business guy, what should I do with my money?

And he was a sophisticated guy who had friends who were the heads of investment banking firms and stuff.

And he's looking to me.

By then, I was 25, I guess.

What should I do?

And all these different, and everybody thought that I actually knew something.

And it was so ridiculous because, you know, I knew the basics, but I had no magic formula.

And everybody wants to get rich quick, but there's no way to do it unless you take crazy risks and are crazy lucky.

And that never really works out.

So I would do my best to give good advice, but I got really tired of it.

And I realized, you know what?

I want to just write all this stuff down.

And so instead of having to do this over and over and over again, I can just hand them the book.

So I wrote what at first was a very short book, and I had been very lucky, and I had my first New York Times bestseller by then.

I wrote this little book, brought it to my publisher, and assuming that they would publish it because, my gosh, I had, you know, they just had a bestseller.

And they said, no.

And I said, look, you don't even have to pay me in advance.

Just do it, you know, and they still said no.

So I went with a different publisher, and it wound up being sold more than a million copies.

And Knockwood, I was very lucky.

But it was their idea to call it the only investment guide you'll ever need.

And I said, are you crazy?

I can't, I mean, that's so outrageous.

And they said, no, no, this is a great title.

You should do it.

We'll sell a lot of copies.

And I said, well, okay, but that's why in the very beginning of the book, as you've seen, it explains that, you know, this wasn't my idea to call it that.

And and it's an outrageous title, but really, there are just a few basic, simple things that everybody should know about money.

And once you know that,

you don't really need to know a whole lot of this stuff.

In fact, if you do know a whole lot of other stuff, you can get kind of sucked into it and intrigued, and before you know it, you're speculating in commodities and losing all your money, or you're doing this and doing that.

So it's not the only investment guide that's any good.

It's just you don't necessarily need three or four or five or ten investment guides because, as I explained in the book and you've read, it's not like chess or gardening or cooking, where the more you read, the better you get.

So that was the title, and that's how it all started.

That's incredible.

And what I found particularly, I would say it was kind of a combination of intriguing and humorous is that obviously, as you know, then nine years later, you publish and write the only other investment guide you'll ever need.

And so I've never heard this story.

I'm curious because from my perspective, it really did live into its title in that it was the investment guide that served me personally for probably a decade.

And you're spot on that it was so simple and well said and well articulated that it worked for me and got me on the path of simple investing.

But then I see this only other investment guide you'll ever need.

And I'm going, well, what what did he think was potentially missing or left out from the first one that now needed to be either modified or expanded upon?

Well,

this was not my smartest move, and I can't remember why I did something so dumb, but it was the wrong title.

What it is, is just a collection of magazine articles that were in New York Magazine and Esquire or wherever I was writing at the time.

And we needed a title for it.

And I don't know, it was my idea or somebody else's idea.

It's probably my dumb idea.

But I guess I figured I would try to get the people who bought the first one to buy the second one.

And the stories in it, I think, are fun, and you know, it's a good read, or I hope so.

But it's not what it sounds like.

It wasn't that I forgot stuff in the first book or that new things had happened.

I should have had a totally different title that didn't reference the first book, particularly because

there was another problem, which was the first book was the only investment guide you'll ever need,

except I kept revising it every five or six or seven years because they did outrageous things like I mean, the most recent example or fairly recent example is they invented a thing called the Internet.

Well, oh well, before that, they invented a thing called discount brokers.

And that changed everything.

And then there's a thing called crypto.

I didn't know in 1978 about crypto because there was no crypto or any internet or any Amazon or any anything.

It was the dark ages, as some of your older listeners will know.

So the first time we revised it, oh, this is a problem.

So we called it still the only investment guide you'll ever need.

But the basics are still the basics, and you still want to diversify, and you want to

buy low and sell high, and you want to, you know,

all the things that that are in the book.

So now we're kind of coming up on almost the 50-year anniversary of the publication of the only investment guide you'll ever need.

And beyond obviously talking about timely asset classes such as crypto or timely political situations, do you believe that any of the principles have changed?

Or are you as convinced today that the principles in the text in 1978 are as timeless and as true in 2025 and beyond?

Yes, first of all, I've been very lucky with the book and it's done well.

But these are things that go back to like Aesop's fables or Benjamin Franklin.

You know, this is common sense kind of stuff.

I didn't invent anything.

My only contribution, if it was a contribution, was to kind of make it fun.

So you would actually read it.

and take it seriously and maybe get into the right habits.

And a lot of people have read it, and And the nicest royalty checks I get now are just emails or, well, mostly emails, not letters anymore.

But every so often I get an email from somebody who bought the book 30 or 40 years ago.

And they tell me how nicely their lives have worked out.

And that's so much better than a royalty check.

But the basics don't change.

But you also bring up, obviously, your ability to write in a fun way.

And I was a former English teacher.

And one of the reasons that I was particularly drawn to not just the text, but the way that you wrote about money is that you made it incredibly engaging, you made it fun, and you made it far less intimidating.

So had that been your goal prior to writing it, or did the tone evolve as you came to learn more about who your audience was and what they were looking for in a finance text?

No, the reason I wrote it was literally because I got so tired of saying the same thing over and over again to all these people ranging from the receptionist to the CEO who were looking for advice.

And the reason I hope it's, you know, for some people, they find it fun to read is that's how I write.

I don't want to be boring.

I want to be fun.

Well, it's interesting.

That was one of the pieces of advice I always tried to share with younger writers, which was whatever you do in life, don't be boring.

So whether it's fun, whether it's obnoxious, whether it's anything, have a personality in the writing.

So that's obviously one of the things that has stuck with me since I read your text.

But now you're at the point where you've written, and please obviously correct me if I'm mistaken here, but I believe you've written 12 books at this point, three New York Times bestsellers.

Can you share a little bit about the writing process and how you come at it?

So the first thing,

maybe a little bit off

your question, but

people come to me a a lot.

They probably come to you as well.

And they say, can you help me get an agent or how do I get an agent and all that stuff?

Because I want to write a book.

And I always say, look,

do not try to find an agent and do not tell anybody anything.

I mean, I'm

the last time you tell anybody about this book is me.

You just told me about it.

Stop telling people about the book.

If you really have a book inside you, don't let it come out your mouth telling people and looking for an agent.

Let it come out your fingers.

Just find somehow, get two or three weeks that you can set aside, go off into a cabin someplace in Vermont, and have it just gush out of you through your fingers.

Don't worry about getting everything perfect.

Just get the first draft down on paper.

And then you can take a lot of time going over and over it.

Then you can try to get an agent and all that.

But what a lot of people do is first they get an agent,

and then they, six months later, they get a contract with a publisher, if they're really lucky.

And now they've got a contract, they've got a deadline, they've got an advance, and they have to write the damn thing.

What do you mean, write the thing?

I've told you a thousand times what I've, you know, I've told you 16 times, I've told five different agents, now I have to write it.

So instead of it's being something that's fun to do and it's pouring out of you because you really want to do it, and you have something you're dying to tell the world in one way or another, you've got this awful thing hanging over your head, and it's not a carrot, it's a stick, and you know, probably you get it done, but it's one of the worst experiences of your life, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't make outlines and all that.

I just more or less start writing.

And

oh, the other thing I tell writers, and I basically this is what I do, is I say, just pretend you're writing a letter to somebody.

It could be me, it could be your cousin, it could be somebody, but because you have some really interesting thing you want to tell them.

And, you know, dear Tyler, and then start at the beginning,

tell them what you have to, and then, you know, sincerely yours.

And then when you're ready to hand it into the Asia or the publisher or whatever, clip off the dear Tyler part and the sincerely yours part.

And that's your first draft.

Do you have the same person or audience in mind for each book, or does it adapt as you adapt with your writing and your content?

Well, it's a great question.

And the answer is no.

I basically kind of picture my audience, meaning smart people with a sense of humor who kind of like the old New York magazine audience or the Esquire

audience.

But no, I don't literally dear Tyler.

I mean, it's not as specific.

It's bright people who are giving me the great privilege of a little of their attention.

And the one other thing I guess I should mention about my process, I still type with two fingers.

Never learned to touch type.

So I learned to type when I was 10 on my dad's little, you know, obviously manual.

Well, people don't probably know what typewriters used to be.

But I learned when I was 10.

And here we are 68 years later, later, and I'm typing the same way with

my left index finger and my right index finger.

Are there specific topics within finance that you've liked writing about more than others?

Yeah, and I asked because when I read through your texts, there are certain chapters that it always almost feels like you're really enjoying this process.

So are there any specific chapters or topics that you say, like, this is what I really like doing and what I like writing about?

Well, again, thank you for that

softball and very, very fun question because I particularly like writing about things that I've done that are really stupid and the mistakes I've made.

And the best part of the most recent edition of the Only Investment Guide,

Liberty book, is the part about venture investing.

And it's only a couple of pages, but it goes through

this whole long list of different ways I've made money.

And they, sorry, I'd lost money.

When I got to the end of reading it, I was on the one hand kind of delighted because I figured people are really going to enjoy laughing at me as I have enjoyed laughing at me.

And I realized the way to end this little section is to say,

I really have to...

question your judgment in buying this book.

I mean, you know, why on earth would you listen to somebody like me?

And over the years, there have been a lot of things where I've gotten to do it myself.

Of course, some have worked out nicely and knockwood.

Things are on balance.

I've done great.

But boy, have I done a lot of stupid things along the way, which are the most fun to write about and perhaps the most useful because it might get people to be more cautious and avoid scams or pitfalls or making the same mistakes I made.

Well, and now in turn, I thank you for the softball answer because now I have to ask ask the obvious, is there any chance you'd be willing to share one of these stupid anecdotes of something that you've done that you would maybe advise the listeners not to potentially do or a road that they might not want to go down with their money?

Oh, boy.

Well, no, I mean, the problem,

I only say, oh, boy, because there's how to choose among them.

Well, instead of choosing, you could just, or I would invite you to potentially read from the latest edition of the only investment guide you'll ever need

because if my memory serves me i believe there is a rather lengthy laundry list of the ways in which you have lost some money through different investment choices over the years and i would love and i believe the audience would love to hear a section of that

well for those with considerable assets and or appetite for risk i offer a quick primer in venture investing, also known as angel investing, also known as something to do only with money you can truly afford to lose because, sing it with me, you probably will.

I love venture investing.

There's nothing more constructive an investor can do than fund new enterprises, particularly when those enterprises seek to improve lots of lives.

And along with the likelihood of total loss comes the chance, however slim, of phenomenal reward.

It's exciting.

Some people will follow their favorite sports teams.

I follow my favorite startups.

There was Honest Tea.

Coca-Cola bought us out.

There was KSTAC.

I had lost track of that one over the years after a series of disappointments and then noticed an email in my spam file asking me to sign something.

A bankruptcy release?

I didn't know what it was.

I opened the document.

It was a notice they were being acquired for $252 million.

So those two worked out very, very nicely.

But most of my adventure investments have either gone broke or remain ships just beyond the horizon.

I lost $100,000 as the sole investor in a proposed low-cost debit card for teens, $50,000 in a personal fund website that would calculate the weight of your mutual funds jockey and steer you to funds with less drag.

I lost $50,000 investing in a bar, $20,000 in a restaurant, $40,000 in a restaurant reservation app, $60,000 in a prescription drug vending machine that would sit in your doctor's office, $75,000 on a business that advertised on Jim Treadmills.

The founder had previously co-founded Quicken.

I lost $100,000 betting on a clot removal device.

$250,000 in a non-thermal pulsed radio frequency treatment for amelioration of knee pain.

Lost $100,000 in a venture that would help homeowners get through the 2009 housing market collapse, quarterbacked by a sentient millionaire investment banker.

A crazy amount of money in a Nebraska company partnered with local utilities to finance home energy efficiency upgrades, $50,000 on a Brooklyn-based artisanal ice cream company, $10,000 in the early days of the internet on a one-man company that won a rave from Walt Mossberg and the Wall Street Journal.

Yeast, I thought when Walt's column ran, this one's going to pay off big.

It didn't.

I lost it all.

I've lost varying amounts on tons of worthy off-Broadway shows, as one does.

It's the producer you want to invest in.

And $50,000 investing in a producer.

I lost $200,000 in the the co-generate.

I don't know how that goes.

Anyway, so it keeps going and there's more to read.

But the final thing is something about

so I really have to question your judgment in buying this book.

So for those listening who are interested in venture capital and potential angel investing, is there any takeaway you have from this lovely laundry list of experience that you have now aggregated at this point in your life that you would want to share with somebody who's potentially just becoming interested in this type of space?

Well, the main takeaway is don't do it

because you really will lose your money, even if the idea is great, and even if the person who's pitching it to you has wonderful energy and well-intentioned.

The second piece of, oh, by the way, one of the good things about it, though, is in case you actually have one that works, there's a thing called the qualified small business stock.

There's an exemption.

So if the capital gains you make, you have to check with your lawyer and check.

But basically, it's tax-free.

The first $10 million, which has never been a problem for me, but the first $10 million is tax-free unless they change the law.

So it's exciting, it's intriguing.

But first off, you're betting on the person more than anything else.

So if the person telling you about this thing has never started a company or run a company or doesn't have amazing credentials and amazing satuitiveness and all that.

That's a big problem.

And then there are so many other big problems, including most of the startups, they're going to run out of money.

And then somebody else is going to come in.

And depending on the situation and the overall markets, there are times when it's easy to raise venture money.

And so the fact that they ran out of money or

imminently going to run out of money isn't a big problem.

They just get some more.

But at a time like this, where venture money is very tough to come by, and so many people are running out of money, you thought you owned 10% of the company because you put in, you know, umptium from out for your

child's college roommates' amazing startups with technology you don't really understand because you're 40 or 60 or 80.

And anyway, so you thought you owned 10%,

but you ran out of money and you personally didn't want to put more in.

So now somebody comes along and says, Sure, I'll rescue the company, but I want 80% ownership for 15 cents.

And suddenly, instead of having 10%, you're diluted down to having a tenth of 1% or something like that.

There are tons of pitfalls.

The most obvious advice would be try to find a venture fund that invests in 20 or 30 startups, and you have a much better chance that you won't lose all your money.

And I've done that a few times, and some of them have worked out pretty well.

But the fees

that you have to give up are very substantial, and the fun that you give up is substantial.

For me, part of this is the fun of

actually really

being pretty deeply engaged.

But the more prudent thing would be to put some money in a fund with other people, with very experienced managers who know how to try to find the winners.

And that can work out.

I mean, this probably would be a good time to do it because the deals that

they're funding these days should be, and in most cases, at much more attractive valuations than back when everybody was throwing money at

new ventures.

And not to dwell on the downside, obviously, and things that haven't gone well for you in investing, but you do comment that part of this was because it was fun.

It was a way that you really enjoyed thinking about money and investing money in the pursuit of finding the right company.

What's something beyond venture cap and angel investing that you've personally spent money on that has brought you deep joy and fulfillment in life?

So, the things that bring deep joy and fulfillment in life are not things.

They're, at least in my view, they're people.

My best investment in that regard was I bought a beach house that I share with basically like half a dozen or a dozen wonderful young friends who

come out for a bunch of weekends during the summer or weeks.

And the house is the cheapest, most poorly maintained house in the community where we live.

It's right on the ocean.

But there has been more fun and happiness per square foot in that house, I think.

I mean, this house is the opposite of granite countertops.

It is the opposite of.

I mean,

the idea of painting it or sandblasting or all the things you're supposed to do.

Oh, please, I can't afford to do that, and I don't have time for that.

It's the world's cheapest house,

at least for where it is.

But there's been more happiness per square foot.

So I don't think you get joy from

things.

I have a pinball machine that for a while was given me.

I got up to 32 million one of my scores.

And I mean, there is something very special about pinball.

But I think it's people, not things.

That's phenomenal.

My brother just got a place in Prince Edward Island this past year.

And even though it's an 11-hour trek from here, and it's just what you're describing, it's the proximity to the ocean is outstanding, but it is a very small place.

Yet every time we've gone up there, it's just with the right people, it's the right energy, and it's been phenomenal.

So I definitely can appreciate that the space and the people mean so much to so many.

And this kind of ties really nicely into the next idea: is that a number of people listening I know are close to or have retired at this point.

And the more I think about it and the more I write about it and the more I talk to people about it, that word is so plagued with different definitions and energies and meaning.

When you think about the word retirement, what does it mean to you?

Do you believe that the concept even exists?

What do you think about there?

The concept certainly exists.

So, and it brings to mind many things.

The first thing I think about is that once once you've turned 65, you have free medical care, which is pretty good, whether or not you're retired.

And once you've, I guess, hit 59.5, which used to be far off in the distance and now still is, but in the other direction, you can start withdrawing money from your IRA without penalty.

But don't, if you possibly can afford not to, and don't start taking Social Security until you're 70, if you can afford to wait, unless you're in ill health and so on.

But retirement, for me, I've been retired more or less, I guess, since I was

anyway in my 20s, because it's not work if you enjoy it, first of all.

And

it used to be before COVID that work used to mean going to work.

Well,

I haven't gone to work,

you know,

and ever.

I've worked from home always thinking, what a waste of time this commuting stuff is.

And you have to get dressed dressed and then you got to, you know, get undressed to go to the gym and then you got to get dressed again.

Now, so many people get to do it.

I used to have this awful Schadenfreude, which is not a good thing to have, but it made me feel amazing that on Sunday night, I didn't have to go back into the city, and I could stay out at the beach, and I could work from the beach and all that.

Now, everybody can do that, whether they're retired or not.

For me, the big thing, I don't think of myself as retired because I'm not sure I ever thought of myself as working.

I don't get out of bed until I want to get out of bed.

And oh my gosh, what a luxury that is.

On top of all the other luxuries we get to enjoy, like hot water anytime we want, as much as we want it, which for the first 200,000 years of humanity was, you know, just a dream and all the other astonishing things we take for granted.

But

not having to get out of bed until you're damn

good and ready to get out of bed and really want to, who gets to do that?

So to me, that's retirement.

But once I do get out of bed, I try to be as useful as possible.

Well, except I have to do the spelling B and the Wordle and the connections and the strands.

But as soon as I've done those and my Duolingo on day 707 of learning Spanish, I can say almost nothing.

But as soon as I've done that stuff, I try to be useful and I do millions of emails and try to write my little daily columns,

which I do.

So this may be retirement.

I'm not sure.

I'm enjoying more or less every minute of it.

Well, and now I've got to ask, too, strategy-wise, what's your starter word for Wordle?

That and my bank pin, I'm not telling you.

Fair, okay.

Are you kidding me?

I'm a rather competitive person.

You may not know this about me yet, but I'm not telling you.

I just found out.

I have a two-year-long competition with two of my best friends from back in college, and we all have our different unique starter words.

And we've obviously finally shared them with one another.

But I appreciate and commend the fact that you are keeping that one to yourself.

Have you found it pretty successful thus far?

Oh, yes.

Oh, yes.

Well, Andy, I have appreciated your taking the time to connect today with me, with this audience, and I am just thankful that you chose a life path that allowed you to share so much timeless finance wisdom with the world.

This has been fun and very flattering.

And try not to make me look too stupid.

Couldn't do it if I tried.

Thanks, Andy.

Bye.

Thanks for tuning in to your Money Guide on the Side.

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Until next time, I'm Tyler Gardner, your money guide on the side, and I truly hope this episode got you one step closer to where you need to be.