This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.
The Ramsey Show: You're going to list out the debts from smallest to largest, so the smallest credit card debt to the largest one. We're not looking at the interest rate. We're not going to do math right now. We're going to work on progress. James Choi: While the most popular of these authors, they have millions and millions of viewers or listeners or readers, and if I can get 500 people to read one of my papers, I think that's a pretty good reach that I've had. Often, academic researchers are talking to a fairly narrow audience. If we're lucky, then the audience includes some policy makers who will implement some sort of legislation or policies or whatever.
James Choi: Well, I'll confess that I did not read every single word of every page from all 50 books. I had specified ahead of time which topics I wanted to cover in my survey. It was interesting because there are certain themes that come through.
James Choi: I think there is this notion that you build a certain discipline of saving, that you become a type of person who is frugal by consistently saving over time. That's not something that's really present in academic economic models. The economists will assume that you can just flip the switch on at age 35 and suddenly you become a super saver even though you have hardly been saving at all up until that point in life.
James Choi: Then have a very equity-forward strategy through midlife, and then become more conservative in your asset allocation as you approach retirement. So there's an area of a lot of agreement between those two camps in terms of the life cycle of asset allocation. I think there's also a lot of agreement when it comes to actively-managed versus passively-managed funds.
Stephanie Kelton: Welcome back to the Best New Ideas in Money. Before the break, we talked to professor of finance, James Choi, about a new study where he looks at the advice given by the popular authors of personal finance books and how it stacks up against the advice from economists.