Episode 380: John Y. Campbell - Fixing Personal Finance
The Rational Reminder Podcast · 2025-10-23 · 1h 23m
Episode notes
What if capitalism itself is confusing your personal finance decisions? In this week's episode, Harvard economist John Y. Campbell joins us to unpack his new book, Fixed: Why Personal Finance Is Broken and How to Make It Work for Everyone, co-authored with Tarun Ramadorai. John argues that the financial system - while essential - is failing ordinary people through complexity, hidden costs, and misplaced incentives. Drawing on decades of research in household finance, he explains why products are too expensive, advice too conflicted, and decisions too difficult, and how policy and design can fix it. Key Points From This Episode: (0:04) Introduction - Rational Reminder's focus on sensible investing and decision-making. (1:46) Why Canadian finance feels broken: complexity, branding, and lack of competition. (4:53) Introducing John Y. Campbell and his new book Fixed. (5:43) The role of the financial system in everyday life: smoothing income, enabling investment, and managing risk. (7:14) The two main problems in modern finance - products are too complicated and too expensive. (9:17) Why financial decisions are so hard: our brains didn't evolve for math, and temptation bias wins.