March 29, 2021 • 36 mins
Michael Meyer is the founder of Obolx.com - an app that helps you visualize your personal goals alongside your financial and health milestones for your entire family. Powered by AI, and using a stacked timeline visualization, it promises to help you conceptualize your life and your most valuable asset: time.
Website: https://www.obolx.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Michael Meyer (00:00):
You probably know your parents you've seen or your
(00:02):
parents friends, where one ofthem is going through a very
different kind of health cycleat retirement than the other
one. And it creates issues withhousing, it creates issues with
planning in terms of financialplanning, travel, because a lot
of people want to do a lot oftraveling at that time. And then
(00:22):
one partner is in this differentthing. And, and it's really is
fascinating, because you can seethese things, you can see them
you can project them out fromnow.
Preet Banerjee (00:39):
Do you have trouble conceptualizing what
your finances look like overyour lifetime? For many people
and acid accumulation anddecumulation graph might just be
too abstract. And for mostpeople, money is a tool that
helps us tell us what ispossible in our lives. And our
lives are certainly about morethan just money. On today's
(00:59):
show, I'm going to be speakingwith the founder of a new
service that tries to visualizeyour whole life, and not just
your life, but your kids lives.
And your parents lives too, allin one place. But we think about
planning differently, or withmore conviction. If we can see
what year we might be expectedto have kids. Or if we're going
to retire while we still have amortgage and those kids are
(01:21):
still in school. What might ourhelp feeling? Well, this new
startup is trying to helpvisualize those considerations,
and more.
This is mostly money. And I'myour host Preet Banerjee, and on
(01:43):
the show today I'll be speakingwith Michael Meyer, he's the
founder of a company calledoplex, which is a cloud based
life planning app. It visualizesnot only your financial
milestones in life, but alsoyour health, major life events
and your personal goals. usingartificial intelligence, it will
(02:04):
help you visually map out andpredict things like when you
will have kids, when your kidswill have kids, when you when
your kids will graduate, ifthey'll be in post secondary
school while you still have amortgage. And we're hoping to
retire and more Michael, welcometo the show. Hello, thanks
Michael Meyer (02:21):
for having me.
Preet Banerjee (02:22):
Very interesting piece of software. And this was
brought to my attention by myfriend Bruce salary, because I
think you were a guest on hisSirius XM Satellite Radio Show.
And he said you need to talk toMichael Meyer, about this app
that he's brought out. And sowhen Bruce asks, I listen. So
it's a pleasure to have youhere, and is wondering if we can
(02:43):
get right down to brass tacksGive me the elevator pitch on
what oplex is? Well, I
Michael Meyer (02:50):
think you actually did a great job in the
intro. So thank you, thank youso much. That That really is is
what we do, we take your basicdemographic data of yourself and
your family members. And wecreate what is a stack timeline.
And on that timeline, we weproject all of the kind of data
points that we have generalpopulation data, and we kind of
(03:12):
create a view of the future foryou, then we allow you to, to
fill in the blanks as it were,and add in your own goals or
things that you'd like toachieve. And then we start to
overlay on top of that some ofyour financial information,
health data, and what we startto quickly see is we get these
(03:34):
interesting intersections, nowwhen these overlaps happen, you
kind of can come away with some,some, some learning and some,
some some ideas of what's goingto happen, what's coming down
the pipe for you. And and itkind of gives you both a way to
visualize it and kind of takecontrol of the future. And it
really makes planning, you know,it takes it out of a, you know,
(03:55):
a sheet and a simple, you know,growth chart, which is, you
know, we've all seen those andit's kind of how do we
personalize data, that's a bigpart of it, you know, how do we
kind of make this a little bitmore relevant to ourselves, and
also our family members.
Because, you know, as people, weare able to have a, you know,
we're kind of, we've evolved to,to, to, to be in the here and
(04:16):
now and to survive, and, youknow, these immediate needs,
make sure those are taken careof. And as, as we get forward
into the future, we have sometrouble even visualizing our own
future. But when you ask us to,okay, let's overlay your partner
and overlay your, your kids andeven your parents, you know,
plotting my parents health inthere is is helpful. It really
(04:37):
it becomes something that's veryhard for us to do without some
assistance. And so I thinkthat's what we try to do and
it's and really a computer thatit's, you know, technology is
good for some things and notit's technology is really great
at taking a ton of data andmaking it user friendly. And I
think that's what we're reallytrying to achieve and then at
(05:00):
the end users is somebody whocan now walk away without and
kind of say okay here's what itlooks like and here's what i can
do about it if i want to
Preet Banerjee (05:09):
you were kind of to give me a demo a couple of
weeks ago and it's sort of hardin in an audio format to really
describe the visualization ofthe data and i think that is
kind of where it'll make a lotmore sense some of the things
that we talk about because it isif i recall correctly it was a
couple of weeks ago it's kind oflike a giant timeline and
(05:29):
overlaid on this timeline thereare different phases of life not
only your own life other membersof your family as well will be
put onto this time it's not justone line as a couple of lines
but and you can very quickly seethe overlaps in different
people's different phases oflife and it's just a different
(05:50):
way to sort of have thisholistic big picture view of
kind of like your family and notjust an individual but to your
point right you have theaccumulation phase you retire
and then you've got the dcumulation phase and as they say
you know you you accumulate tillyou get to zero you write your
last check it bounces and thenyou die right it's very easy
Michael Meyer (06:13):
if you do it right yes
Preet Banerjee (06:14):
depending on your goal right there's some
people say i don't want to leaveanything to anyone right other
people want to leave a legacybut but that's essentially what
it looks like and this is quitedifferent so okay let's let's go
through some some basics now isit is this live now
Michael Meyer (06:31):
yes it is absolutely you go in and you the
onboarding process isessentially what asks you the
questions in terms of your youknow the year you are born the
sex and the country you comefrom and it does that for
yourself and your partner andyour children and your parents
you know you can add them in andthe reason those things matter
(06:53):
is because you know just evenwithin canada males and females
have different life expectanciesand different healthy life
expectancies and we use thatthen we stack those those
timelines together to createwhat you see when you when you
when you get into the app andthen similar to you know it's
(07:15):
often been described as kind ofediting software so when you see
visual editing software forsongs or for for video editing
software so you see these kindof these lines at the bottom and
you can kind of then add to themso you can simply add notes you
can add milestones and you canstart creating things like you
(07:36):
know education goals familyplanning goals fitness goals and
then layer that data over overthis so so i think i think you
made an interesting pointearlier where you're talking
about the traditional line ofyou know here's my retirement
savings going up and then itcomes down we do that so that's
projected but it's actuallyoverlaid over your family so you
(07:58):
can see okay at this timelinewhen i reached my peak what's
happening with with my partnerwhat's happening with my kids
what's happened to my parents atthat point and for me that was
really interesting you know i'llmy partner's a little bit
younger than myself but alsowomen aged differently than men
so so we right away when i didthis for myself and this is just
(08:21):
using general publish iimmediately thought you know
what i'm going to i'm going toto have my healthy lifespan i'm
going to hit that before herretirement age and this has
really made me think okay we'vegot to have a conversation about
this and then i think i thinkyou know you probably know your
parents you've seen or yourparents friends where one of
them is going through a verydifferent kind of health cycle
(08:46):
at retirement than the other oneand it creates issues with
housing it creates issues withplanning in terms of financial
planning travel because a lot ofpeople want to do a lot of
traveling at that time and thenone partner is in this different
thing and and it's really isfascinating because you can see
these things you can see themyou can project them out from
(09:07):
now you know it's really is andthose those overlays i think are
what's revealing beyond justokay if you you know you save
this much per month and then youwithdraw this much per month you
don't have a frame of referencefor that and i think what we do
is we try to give you that andso it's a much richer plan a
(09:29):
much richer view that you cantake away
Preet Banerjee (09:32):
what i want to sort of like draw a comparison
to and get your perspective onthis is to traditional sort of
financial planning projectionsand software so we've heard this
phrase that you know time ismoney and i would say that
financial planning software ismoney centric but your planning
perspective seems to be moretime centric in a way in other
(09:55):
words like while money is afactor that impacts life
enjoyment or misery, you know,when we retire, what retirement
looks like based on how much itwill cost and so on. It's all
very sort of money centric inthe way that traditional
planning software takes a lookat it. But looking at it through
a lens of time centricity andhaving everything sorted based
(10:18):
on time, you are essentiallysaying, Listen, time is an asset
that needs to be sort ofallocated over a lifetime. And
qualitatively, just spending 20years in retirement isn't really
deep enough, you need to thinkabout, what does that time look
like in retirement? Is it goingto be? Am I going to be healthy,
but my partner is not or viceversa? So and I think I saw this
(10:41):
on the website, you say that,you know, time is our single
biggest asset? So is it fair tosay that this is not necessarily
something that shouldnecessarily replace, you know, a
traditional financial plan, butit is maybe a more palatable
perspective for people to take alook at all those factors that,
(11:02):
you know, I think a really goodfinancial planner takes into
account like your health, andwhat do you want to do? And what
are your goals? What is yourperspective on how this compares
to traditional financialplanning software?
Michael Meyer (11:15):
Well, well, I think I, first of all, I do
agree that that is on this site,and that is my kind of core
philosophy, in terms of thattime is your most valuable
asset. And I would say that, youknow, if you look at,
fortunately, the people who havea house and have a retirement
savings account, generally arethe people who have enough money
(11:36):
to get through this and do whatthey want, and you spoke about
it, it's more, it becomes morean issue of what your goals are.
Because for the majority ofthose people they have enough,
you know, we're essentiallypreaching to the choir, they
have enough money to to to, toachieve these things. And it's
just termination, do you want tospend it all? Or do you want to
give some of it away. So I thinkif you think of this kind of
(11:58):
fire movement, which is reallythe, you know, I think almost if
you if you take out retireearlier with you could be a
better name, it's financialindependence. And that really
means to me, and it has been myphilosophy through my life is
control of my time. So if I haveenough money to really be able
to control that, that time anddo the things that I want to do,
(12:21):
I don't, I don't, it's not thatI don't want to work, but it's
just, I want to be able to havecontrol over my time. I think
that's where we see that, thatprioritization of time. And I
think it's going to change formany people, you know, the idea
of working from home, many ofthese things are just going away
from just a simple accumulationof a number two, having control
(12:44):
over your time. And the idea ofof retirement coming earlier, is
something that I think we'llwe'll kind of keep working with.
And yes, I believe that, youknow, traditional, and I'm not,
I don't want to be disparagingtowards a traditional financial
plan, its focus, because it issingular, focused on a person,
and it has to be to some extent,on that individual to be
(13:07):
effective. And I think I thinkwe can coexist with that,
because I think, you know,within this software, we're able
to accumulate different, youknow, you can plug in your, your
mortgage, if it's at a differentinstitution, you can you can,
you can kind of bring in yourdifferent financial information.
But I think you're able to, totake a larger view of it than
(13:34):
something that's justindividual, what's at this,
what's at this institution, thatthat is generally limited to a
way that that, as you said, isentirely financial. But I think
I think there is, you know, weknow, there are different levels
of that planning, you can gosomewhere and you can get a more
sophisticated plan, you can payfor a an advice, only life plan,
(13:58):
which I think is is a is avaluable, something going to go
and do. So I think we cancoexist with with with these
these different types offinancial planning. And I think
I think it's something that isportable. And what I like about
it is that it's dynamic, it cankind of keep being updated with
(14:18):
with different information. Youknow, when we have some of your
health information here, let'ssay that's something that
financial institutions don'twant to essentially keep. And,
and I see it as more of a, youknow, a way to funnel and kind
of keep these different pools ofinformation and get them in a
way that that creates aforecast, forecast becomes
(14:40):
better with more data. And so Ithink that the more places that
we can take data from that areyou that's your data that you
can control, we can create aricher forecast for you. And
part of the other part of ourgoal is to not take any data
from you that we can't use togenerate a valuable forecast. So
if I say to you, you know, Dothis quiz or or enter this
(15:03):
information. It's only so thatwe can give you a projection.
It's not just simply to collectthe information. And I think
Preet Banerjee (15:09):
you're not going to ask my my doctor's office for
my blood work, or you
Michael Meyer (15:14):
know, no. And I mean, in terms in terms of in
terms of the quiz, one of thethings that we generate, as we
go through and we do a healthquiz, you're able to calculate
your biological age, you're ableto calculate your, your actual,
we start with general populationdata, and then we get down to
individual data, which is your,what is actually your life
expectancy. And then weFurthermore, we go into
(15:36):
something called the Sphinxscore, which gives you your
survivable sort of probabilityof survival into the future. So
it's taking an actuarial tableand saying, you know, based on
your answers to the to thehealth quiz, as we scroll
through, and as we look throughinto your future, this is
actually what it what it's whatit looks like, for you. So so we
(15:58):
can get very specific, but wedon't ask you questions unless
we can give you a forecast fromthem. Right?
Preet Banerjee (16:03):
Yeah. So let's, let's talk about so now we're
opening up Pandora's box alittle bit when it comes to the
question of data. And so, youknow, I was joking about, you
know, contacting my doctor'soffice to get certain data, but
you're not pulling healthrecords from anywhere you're
ascertaining health informationthrough basically surveys that
(16:24):
people can't even put answers,yes,
Michael Meyer (16:26):
in the same way that you would do a life
insurance quiz to go through andkind of get an idea of what's
my, you know, how healthy Am Iit's really focused on your BMI,
your habits, your dietaryhabits, your health habits, and
then we can get a projection foryou of what your what your
health looks like. And and forsome people, that's valuable. If
(16:49):
you don't want that you can justuse the general population data.
So it's still it still showsyou, you know, what I was saying
before with me and myself and mypartner, wow, just, I'm retiring
it x age, because as a womanshe's going to be has a longer
life expectancy, a longer sorry,healthy life expectancy, and
(17:11):
she's younger than me, it reallykind of throws this this last
decade off, you know. So it's upto you, I think it's still
valuable in a general populationsense. But if you want to get
kind of deeper into it, you can.
Same thing with the financialinformation as much financial
information as you want to putin there, you get a better
projection from
Preet Banerjee (17:38):
the conversation with Michael Meyer from mobile x
continues in just a minute. Butfirst, a few thank yous to
listeners who left comments onApple podcasts, Maxie from the
Maritimes, who was a longtimelistener, and I am the real
Jenny, thank you both for takingthe time to leave a comment and
reading, taking just 30 secondsout of your day. And leaving a
(17:59):
rating and or a review on Applepodcasts is much appreciated.
And thank you, as always, toeveryone who has already left
ratings and reviews, I do readthem all. ever even more content
on my main YouTube channel, Ijust put up a deep dive into all
those buy now pay later appsyou're starting to see on e
commerce websites, apps likeklarna, afterpay, quadpay,
(18:22):
paybright, and others are prethe option of splitting your
purchases into four equalinstallments with no interest.
But they do come with a costover and above getting you to
spend more than you otherwisewould. And if you want to learn
more, you can check out thatvideo on my YouTube channel. And
now back to the conversationwith Michael Meyer from mobile
(18:43):
x.com.
You talked about differentmeasures of age, you talked
about a biological age and lifeexpectancy. And then there's the
concept of your chronologicalage, which is how will you
(19:04):
actually are and that differsfrom your biological age. So can
you can you tell me how thosewould differ and give me an
example? Sure.
Michael Meyer (19:14):
Well, so you know, if you were born 20 say 20
years not gonna have 30 yearsago, you're 30 in chronological
age. Now if you go through andyou you you answer these
questions, in terms of what isyour your BMI when I say your
BMI, that's your your height andyour weight, the relationship to
(19:34):
that. What you eat, how howhealthy your diet is, how much
exercise you do kind of low,medium, high intensity exercise
a week, to smoke, you know, thefactors that are and the factors
that mattered in terms of lifeinsurance, we ask those
(19:56):
questions, and let's say thoseare the things that matter. And
the other interesting part aboutthis is those are the things
that you can actually controlmany of them. So it's something
that you could kind of come backto in a little while and see,
you know, how am I doing withthis? Am I getting the output
that I want? Can I can I dosomething to change that? Well,
Preet Banerjee (20:16):
this is interesting, because you
mentioned that some of the goalsthat you can put into your, your
life plan, like what do you callthe progress of the life plan or
Michael Meyer (20:25):
your timeline timeline. So,
Preet Banerjee (20:28):
one of the goals you mentioned that you could
factor into your timeline ishealth goal. So, so give me an
example. So let's say that Ifill this, this survey out, and
it says, alright, well, yourchronological age is 43, your
biological age is 50. Becauseyou drink your smoke, you're a
couch potato, whatever, then canI go on and say, all right,
(20:49):
well, I've got a health goal toyou know, get my BMI down to x
or whatever. And then I go back,and I say, All right here,
here's my updated information.
Now is my biological age, youknow, creeping down towards my
chronological age and hopefullygetting younger, is that
something that that peoplewould, is that a use case for
this? Absolutely.
Michael Meyer (21:08):
I mean, so what we would do, I would suggest
that you do is, is go throughit, you know, in another six
months and say, you know, youcan see as you go through this
quiz, and to be honest, this,this was one of the, you know,
we're jumping out of it. Butthis was one of the things that
happened to me why I decided todo this. I went and got life
insurance when my when my sonwas born, and then when he
(21:30):
turned 10, I had to renew it.
Okay, so I had to go throughthis whole thing again, I had to
go through a quiz. And then, youknow, they do the quiz. And then
they verify it. So they come outand they take your blood work
actually measured my height, andthen they get you on a scale. So
you know, you can you can writethat whatever you want on a
piece of paper, but they'll comeand verify it. So I when I did
that, something went off in myhead, while I think you know, my
(21:53):
wife is actually an actuary aswell. So I have an idea of
what's what the calculation Iknow, I picked, you
Preet Banerjee (22:02):
know why she picked? You mentioned the age
gap. She's an actuary. Smart.
Michael Meyer (22:11):
She Yeah. So, so so i think i think i want to
say, you know, what, I they'reessentially pricing me and I
want to understand that right? Iwant to understand I want that
information. And I think I thinkthat goes for many things.
There's many ways our data iscollected projections are done
on us by companies. And we don'tnecessarily get the benefit of
(22:32):
that projection. Right? So I'dlike to turn that around. I like
to say, Okay, I'm interested inforecasting, I studied commerce,
I, you know, I studied to be ananalyst, I really am interested
in the future What, what, whatthe data tells us what, what can
we project from that? And sothat's why I thought, okay, they
know now a whole bunch of thingsabout my future, because I've
(22:52):
gone through this quiteextensive quiz. And they did do
blood work if you know,insurance, right. So so you know
that we're not going to thatstage or that level of it. But
we can tell you a whole bunch ofthings about your future, just
from these algorithms. Right.
And to me, that's, I want toknow that, you know, I think
it's I think it's useful. Andit's helpful to me, you know, in
terms of understanding what aremy constraints, again, time, we
(23:15):
talked about timeslot? It's aconstraint. But it's a valuable
constraint. Because if I didn'tunderstand this, I would, I
would kind of assume you, youtouched on appreciate earlier,
this just linear projection ofthe next 20 years. Well, the
next 20 years, every year is notas valuable, they're not equally
valuable, you know, to me,right, some of them are going to
(23:36):
be much better. And sounderstanding that and
prioritizing those effectively,I think is really important and
is a useful exercise. Right?
Preet Banerjee (23:47):
I want to ask you about sort of the business
model for people who arelistening to thinking Alright, I
want to take a look at this andkick the tires a little bit. So
first off, this is a b2coffering. So this is not
necessarily directed at plannersto use this with clients,
although they could I imagine.
But this is primarily a b2coffering. And what is the cost?
(24:07):
So if someone wants to go to thewebsite and say, Alright, I'm
sold, I want to see what mytimeline looks like, with all
these different dimensions,what's the cost,
Michael Meyer (24:20):
it is free to use. So we are we have launched
and, and it is free, free touse. I think, in the in the
future, there will be a maybesome recommendations that we
could make in terms of financialproducts or health products or
things like that. But we areit's a free planning tool that
(24:40):
allows you to kind of get thisprojection. And then basically,
I like, you know, it's one thingto take this and see what this
future looks like, but then tohelp people to actually act
towards a better future. Andthat I think would be the be the
next stage of what we can do.
How can we make this actuallysomething better for you and
(25:00):
that's what i think we will doand i think there are financial
products that we could we couldbring in and partner partner
with in different differentareas but that's not what we're
not what we're doing at this atthis point so
Preet Banerjee (25:19):
so i know a lot of people when they when they
hear that a product or anoffering is free they say all
right well that means that i'mthe product now when it comes to
launching a business surecertainly one of the models is
you know to get scale first youmake it free to run at a loss
until you get to critical massand then you monetize later
(25:39):
because you need a certainnumber of people using the
platform or you need time todevelop alright now that we've
established that a lot of peopleare using this this is now more
valuable to these partneragreements so if you were to
link up with you know aninsurance provider or a robo
advisor for the investingcomponent or whatever that is
another way for for yourbusiness to make money so so
(26:01):
you're saying that the cost isfree to the consumer and down
the road you will look tomonetize to generate revenue
through the promotion ofproducts that i guess are going
to be more tailored right out ofthe bag to the individual
because he knows so much aboutthem
Michael Meyer (26:20):
right and i think you know i understand this
financial and obviously we'rehere to talk about financing
even even the word life plan isa very kind of has a very
financial connotation to peoplewithin the industry obviously it
means something but what wefound is that our users to have
different interests and there'sthe there's the user that's
(26:42):
interested in kind of familyhistory so genealogy dna now
what is my so we've done a lotof research about our family
past what is our family futurelook like you know they may not
care about their mortgage ortheir retirement savings they
just are interested in what isthe family the future look like
so i think that's an area thatwe have we have longevity
(27:03):
longevity is just such aninteresting topic you know you
touched on it what can i do tochange it so i would really like
to see that prioritize issomething that that we go down
and we develop you know we can'tgo and develop every you know
every every feature from fromday one but we see when people
are interested in something wecan kind of go down that path
(27:25):
and i think longevity is goingto be something that people want
to know the good news i wouldtell you is that from everything
that we've done and we've seenit's it is largely within your
control it's not as much of agenetic issue that people kind
of assume okay am i you know ihave some bad genes i inherited
this in our family xyz youreally through your diet and
(27:45):
your exercise are able to do somuch and you really have control
of that stress sleep now i knowthese are not easy things to
control easy easier said thandone but it is within your
control so that is good news andthen the last part that we have
which i think is is also just aninteresting group is people who
(28:09):
are just are interested in goalslife planning you know life
coaching without necessarily thefinancial part of it just how do
i achieve the things that i wantto achieve so here we're talking
about financial planning andthat's a that's a component of
this but it is it is i would saynot the internet it's not the
whole picture of what we'retalking about here and what
(28:30):
people go into and use thesoftware for so i think we'll
see how that how that over thenext how it plays out in terms
of what the users are most keenon i think the other thing that
we do have going for us is thatwhen you come in you invite your
partner and if you think of asocial network you know you know
(28:50):
facebook something like that youinteract with many people in
this you have a it's more like asupport network so you interact
with your family maybe maybe youinteract with an advisor in some
capacity but you you and yourpartner can add to your timeline
together so it's something thatyou can work on independently
(29:12):
but you still have your owndashboard that is private in the
same way that you know on othersocial networks i can interact
with somebody in this timeline ican drop notes i can create
goals i can create events forour family and i can see you
know we can look into what ourchild's education savings looks
(29:33):
like our projection savings looklike that but i can also still
keep some data my own in my owndashboard so that i think is is
interesting and we'll see howthat plays out as well
Preet Banerjee (29:44):
now let's say i was younger let's say i was 20
years old and i come across thewebsite i start to you know
build out my my life plan is itgoing to because i noticed it
says it uses artificialintelligence is it going to tell
me hey listen you're going tohave a child Rather than eight
years or statistically, youknow, based on your cohorts your
age, where you live, I'm goingto tell you, you know who your
(30:08):
partner is going to be what yourkids name is, like how it is, if
Michael Meyer (30:11):
you're if you're a female, yes, I mean, we have,
we have mean, mean age ofchildbirth, for every country in
the world. So that when you whenyou say, you know, this is what
we can do about grandchildren,we can give you projections on
when you're going to have agrandchild. It's really, it's
kind of neat. And, and, youknow, just also from your, from
your grant from your parents tosee those overlays quite
(30:33):
interesting, right? Like, whatwhat am I What am I? What are
what is my mom going to see?
What are my in laws going tosee, of the graduations, the
high school graduations, theUniversity graduation, the first
grandchild? You know, it's,it's, it's powerful information,
I think, you know, it's outthere. There's a whole bunch of
(30:55):
interesting things going on withthat right now, if we can just
kind of jump into that if you'recomfortable jumping into that,
you know, if you look in theStates right now, that's
dropped, life expectancy hasdropped a year, in the last. So
the opioid crisis had had kindof shaved off some, some, you
know, months of the, you know,the average lifespan in the US.
(31:18):
since World War Two, it has notdropped a year, like it just
did. So it just has gone downone year, in Canada, Quebec has
been the hardest. And I thinkQuebec is between four and six
months. This last COVID hasshaved off our expected life
expectancies. So yes, we will beable to give you an updated
(31:38):
version of what is happening asit changes. So you know, your
health, and then the populationdata set, you know, what's
happening, right? As that getsricher, as more points get in
there, you'll be able to make amore accurate, that is a model
that is forecasting, you know,one on one, the more data points
you have, the more informationyou have, the richer it becomes.
(32:00):
And I think like I said, for me,I see that as a as a way to to
make the hearing now moreimportant, and to help people
prioritizing and do things in away that allows them to actually
achieve their goals, you know,so I think there's, that's a
real benefit.
Preet Banerjee (32:19):
I think one of the things that you just talked
about was one of the things thatstood out for me when I was
going through the demo with you.
And that was the overlapping ofthings like, knowing how will
you be when you're when yourkids graduate? And I mean,
that's something you could yousort of, like, jot down and
figure out, but to see it mappedout, especially when you have
(32:41):
multiple generations of family,and you see the interaction. So
for example, you know, your yourparents being able to see their
grandkids, go to school orgraduate or something like that,
seeing that visually, that waspretty cool. So let's, let's
tell people where to go. So wetalked about the site, but we
didn't talk about the spelling.
(33:02):
So at the end of every, at theend of every podcast, every
guest gets a bit of a commercialnow, this entire podcast has
just been about your product.
But why don't you tell peoplewhere they can go if they want
to sort of kick the tires andsee if they want to fill in
their data?
Michael Meyer (33:16):
Great, thanks.
Okay, so so the site is calledopal x, and that is spelled ob o
l x.com. The name is actually aplan opalesque, which was the
outside the Egyptian monuments,it was actually outside the
pyramids, where the pharaohswere buried. And those look like
(33:36):
little rays of sunshine from achild's drawing. So we use that
those those obelisks were movedeventually. And they were used
as milestones. So we use thekind of double meaning that we
want to light up the milestonesof your life, and illuminate
your future. But again, it's obo l x.com. And you can go and
(33:57):
check it out. And let me knowwhat you think I'd love to hear
it.
Preet Banerjee (34:04):
And in the last point is it's not Canada
specific is it this can be usedby anyone, because it's not
specific to any one country interms of people's life plans.
100%.
Michael Meyer (34:15):
So we are we have users from around the world. And
the other thing is that, youknow, even as Canadians even if
you are Canadian, you may have apartner who's not from Canada or
your father in law or mother inlaw that's not from Canada. So
you want their historic data inthere. And that's why we that's
why we use that term. That'scool, you know, a global
(34:39):
perspective. It's alwayshelpful. Very good.
Preet Banerjee (34:42):
All right.
Michael, thank you so much forcoming on the show and
explaining globalex to thelisteners looks like some
interesting software, certainlysomething interesting to sort of
kick around. If you areinterested in learning more
about creating your own lifeplan your timeline, you can go
to alexa.com michael thank youfor being a guest
Michael Meyer (35:03):
thank you so much for having me it was a real
pleasure
Preet Banerjee (35:27):
if you want more personal finance content or you
have questions for me or topicsuggestions for the podcast you
can follow me on twitter orinstagram same handle in both
cases at Preet Banerjee alsohave two youtube channels you
can subscribe to my main channelwhich covers personal finance
and investing topics that areglobal in scope and a canadian
(35:49):
specific channel as well that'sit for this episode thanks for
listening
You probably know your parents you've seen or your
(00:02):
parents friends, where one ofthem is going through a very
different kind of health cycleat retirement than the other
one. And it creates issues withhousing, it creates issues with
planning in terms of financialplanning, travel, because a lot
of people want to do a lot oftraveling at that time. And then
(00:22):
one partner is in this differentthing. And, and it's really is
fascinating, because you can seethese things, you can see them
you can project them out fromnow.
Preet Banerjee (00:39):
Do you have trouble conceptualizing what
your finances look like overyour lifetime? For many people
and acid accumulation anddecumulation graph might just be
too abstract. And for mostpeople, money is a tool that
helps us tell us what ispossible in our lives. And our
lives are certainly about morethan just money. On today's
(00:59):
show, I'm going to be speakingwith the founder of a new
service that tries to visualizeyour whole life, and not just
your life, but your kids lives.
And your parents lives too, allin one place. But we think about
planning differently, or withmore conviction. If we can see
what year we might be expectedto have kids. Or if we're going
to retire while we still have amortgage and those kids are
(01:21):
still in school. What might ourhelp feeling? Well, this new
startup is trying to helpvisualize those considerations,
and more.
This is mostly money. And I'myour host Preet Banerjee, and on
(01:43):
the show today I'll be speakingwith Michael Meyer, he's the
founder of a company calledoplex, which is a cloud based
life planning app. It visualizesnot only your financial
milestones in life, but alsoyour health, major life events
and your personal goals. usingartificial intelligence, it will
(02:04):
help you visually map out andpredict things like when you
will have kids, when your kidswill have kids, when you when
your kids will graduate, ifthey'll be in post secondary
school while you still have amortgage. And we're hoping to
retire and more Michael, welcometo the show. Hello, thanks
Michael Meyer (02:21):
for having me.
Preet Banerjee (02:22):
Very interesting piece of software. And this was
brought to my attention by myfriend Bruce salary, because I
think you were a guest on hisSirius XM Satellite Radio Show.
And he said you need to talk toMichael Meyer, about this app
that he's brought out. And sowhen Bruce asks, I listen. So
it's a pleasure to have youhere, and is wondering if we can
(02:43):
get right down to brass tacksGive me the elevator pitch on
what oplex is? Well, I
Michael Meyer (02:50):
think you actually did a great job in the
intro. So thank you, thank youso much. That That really is is
what we do, we take your basicdemographic data of yourself and
your family members. And wecreate what is a stack timeline.
And on that timeline, we weproject all of the kind of data
points that we have generalpopulation data, and we kind of
(03:12):
create a view of the future foryou, then we allow you to, to
fill in the blanks as it were,and add in your own goals or
things that you'd like toachieve. And then we start to
overlay on top of that some ofyour financial information,
health data, and what we startto quickly see is we get these
(03:34):
interesting intersections, nowwhen these overlaps happen, you
kind of can come away with some,some, some learning and some,
some some ideas of what's goingto happen, what's coming down
the pipe for you. And and itkind of gives you both a way to
visualize it and kind of takecontrol of the future. And it
really makes planning, you know,it takes it out of a, you know,
(03:55):
a sheet and a simple, you know,growth chart, which is, you
know, we've all seen those andit's kind of how do we
personalize data, that's a bigpart of it, you know, how do we
kind of make this a little bitmore relevant to ourselves, and
also our family members.
Because, you know, as people, weare able to have a, you know,
we're kind of, we've evolved to,to, to, to be in the here and
(04:16):
now and to survive, and, youknow, these immediate needs,
make sure those are taken careof. And as, as we get forward
into the future, we have sometrouble even visualizing our own
future. But when you ask us to,okay, let's overlay your partner
and overlay your, your kids andeven your parents, you know,
plotting my parents health inthere is is helpful. It really
(04:37):
it becomes something that's veryhard for us to do without some
assistance. And so I thinkthat's what we try to do and
it's and really a computer thatit's, you know, technology is
good for some things and notit's technology is really great
at taking a ton of data andmaking it user friendly. And I
think that's what we're reallytrying to achieve and then at
(05:00):
the end users is somebody whocan now walk away without and
kind of say okay here's what itlooks like and here's what i can
do about it if i want to
Preet Banerjee (05:09):
you were kind of to give me a demo a couple of
weeks ago and it's sort of hardin in an audio format to really
describe the visualization ofthe data and i think that is
kind of where it'll make a lotmore sense some of the things
that we talk about because it isif i recall correctly it was a
couple of weeks ago it's kind oflike a giant timeline and
(05:29):
overlaid on this timeline thereare different phases of life not
only your own life other membersof your family as well will be
put onto this time it's not justone line as a couple of lines
but and you can very quickly seethe overlaps in different
people's different phases oflife and it's just a different
(05:50):
way to sort of have thisholistic big picture view of
kind of like your family and notjust an individual but to your
point right you have theaccumulation phase you retire
and then you've got the dcumulation phase and as they say
you know you you accumulate tillyou get to zero you write your
last check it bounces and thenyou die right it's very easy
Michael Meyer (06:13):
if you do it right yes
Preet Banerjee (06:14):
depending on your goal right there's some
people say i don't want to leaveanything to anyone right other
people want to leave a legacybut but that's essentially what
it looks like and this is quitedifferent so okay let's let's go
through some some basics now isit is this live now
Michael Meyer (06:31):
yes it is absolutely you go in and you the
onboarding process isessentially what asks you the
questions in terms of your youknow the year you are born the
sex and the country you comefrom and it does that for
yourself and your partner andyour children and your parents
you know you can add them in andthe reason those things matter
(06:53):
is because you know just evenwithin canada males and females
have different life expectanciesand different healthy life
expectancies and we use thatthen we stack those those
timelines together to createwhat you see when you when you
when you get into the app andthen similar to you know it's
(07:15):
often been described as kind ofediting software so when you see
visual editing software forsongs or for for video editing
software so you see these kindof these lines at the bottom and
you can kind of then add to themso you can simply add notes you
can add milestones and you canstart creating things like you
(07:36):
know education goals familyplanning goals fitness goals and
then layer that data over overthis so so i think i think you
made an interesting pointearlier where you're talking
about the traditional line ofyou know here's my retirement
savings going up and then itcomes down we do that so that's
projected but it's actuallyoverlaid over your family so you
(07:58):
can see okay at this timelinewhen i reached my peak what's
happening with with my partnerwhat's happening with my kids
what's happened to my parents atthat point and for me that was
really interesting you know i'llmy partner's a little bit
younger than myself but alsowomen aged differently than men
so so we right away when i didthis for myself and this is just
(08:21):
using general publish iimmediately thought you know
what i'm going to i'm going toto have my healthy lifespan i'm
going to hit that before herretirement age and this has
really made me think okay we'vegot to have a conversation about
this and then i think i thinkyou know you probably know your
parents you've seen or yourparents friends where one of
them is going through a verydifferent kind of health cycle
(08:46):
at retirement than the other oneand it creates issues with
housing it creates issues withplanning in terms of financial
planning travel because a lot ofpeople want to do a lot of
traveling at that time and thenone partner is in this different
thing and and it's really isfascinating because you can see
these things you can see themyou can project them out from
(09:07):
now you know it's really is andthose those overlays i think are
what's revealing beyond justokay if you you know you save
this much per month and then youwithdraw this much per month you
don't have a frame of referencefor that and i think what we do
is we try to give you that andso it's a much richer plan a
(09:29):
much richer view that you cantake away
Preet Banerjee (09:32):
what i want to sort of like draw a comparison
to and get your perspective onthis is to traditional sort of
financial planning projectionsand software so we've heard this
phrase that you know time ismoney and i would say that
financial planning software ismoney centric but your planning
perspective seems to be moretime centric in a way in other
(09:55):
words like while money is afactor that impacts life
enjoyment or misery, you know,when we retire, what retirement
looks like based on how much itwill cost and so on. It's all
very sort of money centric inthe way that traditional
planning software takes a lookat it. But looking at it through
a lens of time centricity andhaving everything sorted based
(10:18):
on time, you are essentiallysaying, Listen, time is an asset
that needs to be sort ofallocated over a lifetime. And
qualitatively, just spending 20years in retirement isn't really
deep enough, you need to thinkabout, what does that time look
like in retirement? Is it goingto be? Am I going to be healthy,
but my partner is not or viceversa? So and I think I saw this
(10:41):
on the website, you say that,you know, time is our single
biggest asset? So is it fair tosay that this is not necessarily
something that shouldnecessarily replace, you know, a
traditional financial plan, butit is maybe a more palatable
perspective for people to take alook at all those factors that,
(11:02):
you know, I think a really goodfinancial planner takes into
account like your health, andwhat do you want to do? And what
are your goals? What is yourperspective on how this compares
to traditional financialplanning software?
Michael Meyer (11:15):
Well, well, I think I, first of all, I do
agree that that is on this site,and that is my kind of core
philosophy, in terms of thattime is your most valuable
asset. And I would say that, youknow, if you look at,
fortunately, the people who havea house and have a retirement
savings account, generally arethe people who have enough money
(11:36):
to get through this and do whatthey want, and you spoke about
it, it's more, it becomes morean issue of what your goals are.
Because for the majority ofthose people they have enough,
you know, we're essentiallypreaching to the choir, they
have enough money to to to, toachieve these things. And it's
just termination, do you want tospend it all? Or do you want to
give some of it away. So I thinkif you think of this kind of
(11:58):
fire movement, which is reallythe, you know, I think almost if
you if you take out retireearlier with you could be a
better name, it's financialindependence. And that really
means to me, and it has been myphilosophy through my life is
control of my time. So if I haveenough money to really be able
to control that, that time anddo the things that I want to do,
(12:21):
I don't, I don't, it's not thatI don't want to work, but it's
just, I want to be able to havecontrol over my time. I think
that's where we see that, thatprioritization of time. And I
think it's going to change formany people, you know, the idea
of working from home, many ofthese things are just going away
from just a simple accumulationof a number two, having control
(12:44):
over your time. And the idea ofof retirement coming earlier, is
something that I think we'llwe'll kind of keep working with.
And yes, I believe that, youknow, traditional, and I'm not,
I don't want to be disparagingtowards a traditional financial
plan, its focus, because it issingular, focused on a person,
and it has to be to some extent,on that individual to be
(13:07):
effective. And I think I thinkwe can coexist with that,
because I think, you know,within this software, we're able
to accumulate different, youknow, you can plug in your, your
mortgage, if it's at a differentinstitution, you can you can,
you can kind of bring in yourdifferent financial information.
But I think you're able to, totake a larger view of it than
(13:34):
something that's justindividual, what's at this,
what's at this institution, thatthat is generally limited to a
way that that, as you said, isentirely financial. But I think
I think there is, you know, weknow, there are different levels
of that planning, you can gosomewhere and you can get a more
sophisticated plan, you can payfor a an advice, only life plan,
(13:58):
which I think is is a is avaluable, something going to go
and do. So I think we cancoexist with with with these
these different types offinancial planning. And I think
I think it's something that isportable. And what I like about
it is that it's dynamic, it cankind of keep being updated with
(14:18):
with different information. Youknow, when we have some of your
health information here, let'ssay that's something that
financial institutions don'twant to essentially keep. And,
and I see it as more of a, youknow, a way to funnel and kind
of keep these different pools ofinformation and get them in a
way that that creates aforecast, forecast becomes
(14:40):
better with more data. And so Ithink that the more places that
we can take data from that areyou that's your data that you
can control, we can create aricher forecast for you. And
part of the other part of ourgoal is to not take any data
from you that we can't use togenerate a valuable forecast. So
if I say to you, you know, Dothis quiz or or enter this
(15:03):
information. It's only so thatwe can give you a projection.
It's not just simply to collectthe information. And I think
Preet Banerjee (15:09):
you're not going to ask my my doctor's office for
my blood work, or you
Michael Meyer (15:14):
know, no. And I mean, in terms in terms of in
terms of the quiz, one of thethings that we generate, as we
go through and we do a healthquiz, you're able to calculate
your biological age, you're ableto calculate your, your actual,
we start with general populationdata, and then we get down to
individual data, which is your,what is actually your life
expectancy. And then weFurthermore, we go into
(15:36):
something called the Sphinxscore, which gives you your
survivable sort of probabilityof survival into the future. So
it's taking an actuarial tableand saying, you know, based on
your answers to the to thehealth quiz, as we scroll
through, and as we look throughinto your future, this is
actually what it what it's whatit looks like, for you. So so we
(15:58):
can get very specific, but wedon't ask you questions unless
we can give you a forecast fromthem. Right?
Preet Banerjee (16:03):
Yeah. So let's, let's talk about so now we're
opening up Pandora's box alittle bit when it comes to the
question of data. And so, youknow, I was joking about, you
know, contacting my doctor'soffice to get certain data, but
you're not pulling healthrecords from anywhere you're
ascertaining health informationthrough basically surveys that
(16:24):
people can't even put answers,yes,
Michael Meyer (16:26):
in the same way that you would do a life
insurance quiz to go through andkind of get an idea of what's
my, you know, how healthy Am Iit's really focused on your BMI,
your habits, your dietaryhabits, your health habits, and
then we can get a projection foryou of what your what your
health looks like. And and forsome people, that's valuable. If
(16:49):
you don't want that you can justuse the general population data.
So it's still it still showsyou, you know, what I was saying
before with me and myself and mypartner, wow, just, I'm retiring
it x age, because as a womanshe's going to be has a longer
life expectancy, a longer sorry,healthy life expectancy, and
(17:11):
she's younger than me, it reallykind of throws this this last
decade off, you know. So it's upto you, I think it's still
valuable in a general populationsense. But if you want to get
kind of deeper into it, you can.
Same thing with the financialinformation as much financial
information as you want to putin there, you get a better
projection from
Preet Banerjee (17:38):
the conversation with Michael Meyer from mobile x
continues in just a minute. Butfirst, a few thank yous to
listeners who left comments onApple podcasts, Maxie from the
Maritimes, who was a longtimelistener, and I am the real
Jenny, thank you both for takingthe time to leave a comment and
reading, taking just 30 secondsout of your day. And leaving a
(17:59):
rating and or a review on Applepodcasts is much appreciated.
And thank you, as always, toeveryone who has already left
ratings and reviews, I do readthem all. ever even more content
on my main YouTube channel, Ijust put up a deep dive into all
those buy now pay later appsyou're starting to see on e
commerce websites, apps likeklarna, afterpay, quadpay,
(18:22):
paybright, and others are prethe option of splitting your
purchases into four equalinstallments with no interest.
But they do come with a costover and above getting you to
spend more than you otherwisewould. And if you want to learn
more, you can check out thatvideo on my YouTube channel. And
now back to the conversationwith Michael Meyer from mobile
(18:43):
x.com.
You talked about differentmeasures of age, you talked
about a biological age and lifeexpectancy. And then there's the
concept of your chronologicalage, which is how will you
(19:04):
actually are and that differsfrom your biological age. So can
you can you tell me how thosewould differ and give me an
example? Sure.
Michael Meyer (19:14):
Well, so you know, if you were born 20 say 20
years not gonna have 30 yearsago, you're 30 in chronological
age. Now if you go through andyou you you answer these
questions, in terms of what isyour your BMI when I say your
BMI, that's your your height andyour weight, the relationship to
(19:34):
that. What you eat, how howhealthy your diet is, how much
exercise you do kind of low,medium, high intensity exercise
a week, to smoke, you know, thefactors that are and the factors
that mattered in terms of lifeinsurance, we ask those
(19:56):
questions, and let's say thoseare the things that matter. And
the other interesting part aboutthis is those are the things
that you can actually controlmany of them. So it's something
that you could kind of come backto in a little while and see,
you know, how am I doing withthis? Am I getting the output
that I want? Can I can I dosomething to change that? Well,
Preet Banerjee (20:16):
this is interesting, because you
mentioned that some of the goalsthat you can put into your, your
life plan, like what do you callthe progress of the life plan or
Michael Meyer (20:25):
your timeline timeline. So,
Preet Banerjee (20:28):
one of the goals you mentioned that you could
factor into your timeline ishealth goal. So, so give me an
example. So let's say that Ifill this, this survey out, and
it says, alright, well, yourchronological age is 43, your
biological age is 50. Becauseyou drink your smoke, you're a
couch potato, whatever, then canI go on and say, all right,
(20:49):
well, I've got a health goal toyou know, get my BMI down to x
or whatever. And then I go back,and I say, All right here,
here's my updated information.
Now is my biological age, youknow, creeping down towards my
chronological age and hopefullygetting younger, is that
something that that peoplewould, is that a use case for
this? Absolutely.
Michael Meyer (21:08):
I mean, so what we would do, I would suggest
that you do is, is go throughit, you know, in another six
months and say, you know, youcan see as you go through this
quiz, and to be honest, this,this was one of the, you know,
we're jumping out of it. Butthis was one of the things that
happened to me why I decided todo this. I went and got life
insurance when my when my sonwas born, and then when he
(21:30):
turned 10, I had to renew it.
Okay, so I had to go throughthis whole thing again, I had to
go through a quiz. And then, youknow, they do the quiz. And then
they verify it. So they come outand they take your blood work
actually measured my height, andthen they get you on a scale. So
you know, you can you can writethat whatever you want on a
piece of paper, but they'll comeand verify it. So I when I did
that, something went off in myhead, while I think you know, my
(21:53):
wife is actually an actuary aswell. So I have an idea of
what's what the calculation Iknow, I picked, you
Preet Banerjee (22:02):
know why she picked? You mentioned the age
gap. She's an actuary. Smart.
Michael Meyer (22:11):
She Yeah. So, so so i think i think i want to
say, you know, what, I they'reessentially pricing me and I
want to understand that right? Iwant to understand I want that
information. And I think I thinkthat goes for many things.
There's many ways our data iscollected projections are done
on us by companies. And we don'tnecessarily get the benefit of
(22:32):
that projection. Right? So I'dlike to turn that around. I like
to say, Okay, I'm interested inforecasting, I studied commerce,
I, you know, I studied to be ananalyst, I really am interested
in the future What, what, whatthe data tells us what, what can
we project from that? And sothat's why I thought, okay, they
know now a whole bunch of thingsabout my future, because I've
(22:52):
gone through this quiteextensive quiz. And they did do
blood work if you know,insurance, right. So so you know
that we're not going to thatstage or that level of it. But
we can tell you a whole bunch ofthings about your future, just
from these algorithms. Right.
And to me, that's, I want toknow that, you know, I think
it's I think it's useful. Andit's helpful to me, you know, in
terms of understanding what aremy constraints, again, time, we
(23:15):
talked about timeslot? It's aconstraint. But it's a valuable
constraint. Because if I didn'tunderstand this, I would, I
would kind of assume you, youtouched on appreciate earlier,
this just linear projection ofthe next 20 years. Well, the
next 20 years, every year is notas valuable, they're not equally
valuable, you know, to me,right, some of them are going to
(23:36):
be much better. And sounderstanding that and
prioritizing those effectively,I think is really important and
is a useful exercise. Right?
Preet Banerjee (23:47):
I want to ask you about sort of the business
model for people who arelistening to thinking Alright, I
want to take a look at this andkick the tires a little bit. So
first off, this is a b2coffering. So this is not
necessarily directed at plannersto use this with clients,
although they could I imagine.
But this is primarily a b2coffering. And what is the cost?
(24:07):
So if someone wants to go to thewebsite and say, Alright, I'm
sold, I want to see what mytimeline looks like, with all
these different dimensions,what's the cost,
Michael Meyer (24:20):
it is free to use. So we are we have launched
and, and it is free, free touse. I think, in the in the
future, there will be a maybesome recommendations that we
could make in terms of financialproducts or health products or
things like that. But we areit's a free planning tool that
(24:40):
allows you to kind of get thisprojection. And then basically,
I like, you know, it's one thingto take this and see what this
future looks like, but then tohelp people to actually act
towards a better future. Andthat I think would be the be the
next stage of what we can do.
How can we make this actuallysomething better for you and
(25:00):
that's what i think we will doand i think there are financial
products that we could we couldbring in and partner partner
with in different differentareas but that's not what we're
not what we're doing at this atthis point so
Preet Banerjee (25:19):
so i know a lot of people when they when they
hear that a product or anoffering is free they say all
right well that means that i'mthe product now when it comes to
launching a business surecertainly one of the models is
you know to get scale first youmake it free to run at a loss
until you get to critical massand then you monetize later
(25:39):
because you need a certainnumber of people using the
platform or you need time todevelop alright now that we've
established that a lot of peopleare using this this is now more
valuable to these partneragreements so if you were to
link up with you know aninsurance provider or a robo
advisor for the investingcomponent or whatever that is
another way for for yourbusiness to make money so so
(26:01):
you're saying that the cost isfree to the consumer and down
the road you will look tomonetize to generate revenue
through the promotion ofproducts that i guess are going
to be more tailored right out ofthe bag to the individual
because he knows so much aboutthem
Michael Meyer (26:20):
right and i think you know i understand this
financial and obviously we'rehere to talk about financing
even even the word life plan isa very kind of has a very
financial connotation to peoplewithin the industry obviously it
means something but what wefound is that our users to have
different interests and there'sthe there's the user that's
(26:42):
interested in kind of familyhistory so genealogy dna now
what is my so we've done a lotof research about our family
past what is our family futurelook like you know they may not
care about their mortgage ortheir retirement savings they
just are interested in what isthe family the future look like
so i think that's an area thatwe have we have longevity
(27:03):
longevity is just such aninteresting topic you know you
touched on it what can i do tochange it so i would really like
to see that prioritize issomething that that we go down
and we develop you know we can'tgo and develop every you know
every every feature from fromday one but we see when people
are interested in something wecan kind of go down that path
(27:25):
and i think longevity is goingto be something that people want
to know the good news i wouldtell you is that from everything
that we've done and we've seenit's it is largely within your
control it's not as much of agenetic issue that people kind
of assume okay am i you know ihave some bad genes i inherited
this in our family xyz youreally through your diet and
(27:45):
your exercise are able to do somuch and you really have control
of that stress sleep now i knowthese are not easy things to
control easy easier said thandone but it is within your
control so that is good news andthen the last part that we have
which i think is is also just aninteresting group is people who
(28:09):
are just are interested in goalslife planning you know life
coaching without necessarily thefinancial part of it just how do
i achieve the things that i wantto achieve so here we're talking
about financial planning andthat's a that's a component of
this but it is it is i would saynot the internet it's not the
whole picture of what we'retalking about here and what
(28:30):
people go into and use thesoftware for so i think we'll
see how that how that over thenext how it plays out in terms
of what the users are most keenon i think the other thing that
we do have going for us is thatwhen you come in you invite your
partner and if you think of asocial network you know you know
(28:50):
facebook something like that youinteract with many people in
this you have a it's more like asupport network so you interact
with your family maybe maybe youinteract with an advisor in some
capacity but you you and yourpartner can add to your timeline
together so it's something thatyou can work on independently
(29:12):
but you still have your owndashboard that is private in the
same way that you know on othersocial networks i can interact
with somebody in this timeline ican drop notes i can create
goals i can create events forour family and i can see you
know we can look into what ourchild's education savings looks
(29:33):
like our projection savings looklike that but i can also still
keep some data my own in my owndashboard so that i think is is
interesting and we'll see howthat plays out as well
Preet Banerjee (29:44):
now let's say i was younger let's say i was 20
years old and i come across thewebsite i start to you know
build out my my life plan is itgoing to because i noticed it
says it uses artificialintelligence is it going to tell
me hey listen you're going tohave a child Rather than eight
years or statistically, youknow, based on your cohorts your
age, where you live, I'm goingto tell you, you know who your
(30:08):
partner is going to be what yourkids name is, like how it is, if
Michael Meyer (30:11):
you're if you're a female, yes, I mean, we have,
we have mean, mean age ofchildbirth, for every country in
the world. So that when you whenyou say, you know, this is what
we can do about grandchildren,we can give you projections on
when you're going to have agrandchild. It's really, it's
kind of neat. And, and, youknow, just also from your, from
your grant from your parents tosee those overlays quite
(30:33):
interesting, right? Like, whatwhat am I What am I? What are
what is my mom going to see?
What are my in laws going tosee, of the graduations, the
high school graduations, theUniversity graduation, the first
grandchild? You know, it's,it's, it's powerful information,
I think, you know, it's outthere. There's a whole bunch of
(30:55):
interesting things going on withthat right now, if we can just
kind of jump into that if you'recomfortable jumping into that,
you know, if you look in theStates right now, that's
dropped, life expectancy hasdropped a year, in the last. So
the opioid crisis had had kindof shaved off some, some, you
know, months of the, you know,the average lifespan in the US.
(31:18):
since World War Two, it has notdropped a year, like it just
did. So it just has gone downone year, in Canada, Quebec has
been the hardest. And I thinkQuebec is between four and six
months. This last COVID hasshaved off our expected life
expectancies. So yes, we will beable to give you an updated
(31:38):
version of what is happening asit changes. So you know, your
health, and then the populationdata set, you know, what's
happening, right? As that getsricher, as more points get in
there, you'll be able to make amore accurate, that is a model
that is forecasting, you know,one on one, the more data points
you have, the more informationyou have, the richer it becomes.
(32:00):
And I think like I said, for me,I see that as a as a way to to
make the hearing now moreimportant, and to help people
prioritizing and do things in away that allows them to actually
achieve their goals, you know,so I think there's, that's a
real benefit.
Preet Banerjee (32:19):
I think one of the things that you just talked
about was one of the things thatstood out for me when I was
going through the demo with you.
And that was the overlapping ofthings like, knowing how will
you be when you're when yourkids graduate? And I mean,
that's something you could yousort of, like, jot down and
figure out, but to see it mappedout, especially when you have
(32:41):
multiple generations of family,and you see the interaction. So
for example, you know, your yourparents being able to see their
grandkids, go to school orgraduate or something like that,
seeing that visually, that waspretty cool. So let's, let's
tell people where to go. So wetalked about the site, but we
didn't talk about the spelling.
(33:02):
So at the end of every, at theend of every podcast, every
guest gets a bit of a commercialnow, this entire podcast has
just been about your product.
But why don't you tell peoplewhere they can go if they want
to sort of kick the tires andsee if they want to fill in
their data?
Michael Meyer (33:16):
Great, thanks.
Okay, so so the site is calledopal x, and that is spelled ob o
l x.com. The name is actually aplan opalesque, which was the
outside the Egyptian monuments,it was actually outside the
pyramids, where the pharaohswere buried. And those look like
(33:36):
little rays of sunshine from achild's drawing. So we use that
those those obelisks were movedeventually. And they were used
as milestones. So we use thekind of double meaning that we
want to light up the milestonesof your life, and illuminate
your future. But again, it's obo l x.com. And you can go and
(33:57):
check it out. And let me knowwhat you think I'd love to hear
it.
Preet Banerjee (34:04):
And in the last point is it's not Canada
specific is it this can be usedby anyone, because it's not
specific to any one country interms of people's life plans.
100%.
Michael Meyer (34:15):
So we are we have users from around the world. And
the other thing is that, youknow, even as Canadians even if
you are Canadian, you may have apartner who's not from Canada or
your father in law or mother inlaw that's not from Canada. So
you want their historic data inthere. And that's why we that's
why we use that term. That'scool, you know, a global
(34:39):
perspective. It's alwayshelpful. Very good.
Preet Banerjee (34:42):
All right.
Michael, thank you so much forcoming on the show and
explaining globalex to thelisteners looks like some
interesting software, certainlysomething interesting to sort of
kick around. If you areinterested in learning more
about creating your own lifeplan your timeline, you can go
to alexa.com michael thank youfor being a guest
Michael Meyer (35:03):
thank you so much for having me it was a real
pleasure
Preet Banerjee (35:27):
if you want more personal finance content or you
have questions for me or topicsuggestions for the podcast you
can follow me on twitter orinstagram same handle in both
cases at Preet Banerjee alsohave two youtube channels you
can subscribe to my main channelwhich covers personal finance
and investing topics that areglobal in scope and a canadian
(35:49):
specific channel as well that'sit for this episode thanks for
listening
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